TB News March 3, 2018
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. March 3, 2018: “Much of the dangerous turmoil in the Middle East today comes from the actions both of Saudi Arabia and Israel. The former are Sunni Moslems and they hate the smaller group of Shiite Moslems and want to destroy them. And Israel is occupied by Ashkenazi Jews who originally were Turkish and have no connection with the Holy Land. The Ashkenzi were noted for their aggressive behavior towards their neighbors ane we can see more and more of this aggression manifested on a daily basis. The Israelis use a fictional holocaust to force the Germans to continue to pay out huge sums to “Holocaust survivors” who are thirty years old! When the Saudis run out of oil, the US will stop supporting the Saudi-formed IS and when the American public gets its fill of ongoing Israeli suppression and land thefts in their neighborhoods Israel will have to survive without American assistance. The sole reason that energized Muslim fanatics direct their hatred towards the United States is because of that country’s blind support of Israeli aggression.”
Table of Contents
- Polish Law on Holocaust Draws New Attention to Anti-Semitism in Poland’s Past and Present
- The Root Causes of the Mid-East Conflicts
- Martin Luther’s Spalatin Letter
- Zionism versus Bolshevism.
- Russia’s Gazprom to terminate gas contracts with Ukraine
- ‘Call it chaos’: Trump adrift after week of White House anarchy
- Beaten Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore asks for money to fight lawsuit
Polish Law on Holocaust Draws New Attention to Anti-Semitism in Poland’s Past and Present
March 3 2018,
by Robert Mackey
The Intercept
There is no doubt that Polish Jews were not the only ones singled out for terror, persecution and murder by the Nazis during the German occupation of Poland that began in 1939 and lasted until 1945.
As Hannah Arendt reported from the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1962, the judges in Jerusalem had before them the minutes of two conferences of senior Nazi officials, from September 1939 and January 1940, in which “the fate of the entire native population in the occupied territories was discussed — that is the ‘solution’ of the Polish as well as the ‘Jewish question.’”
“Even at this early date,” Arendt noted, “the ‘solution of the Polish problem’ was well advanced; of the ‘political leadership,’ it was reported, no more than three per cent was left; in order to ‘render this three per cent harmless,’ they would have ‘to be sent into concentration camps.’”
In May 1940, the Holocaust Museum in Washington explains, the German occupation authorities launched AB-Aktion, an operation to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia: “The Germans shot thousands of teachers, priests, and other intellectuals in mass killings in and around Warsaw, especially in the city’s Pawiak prison. The Nazis sent thousands more to the newly built Auschwitz concentration camp, to Stutthof, and to other concentration camps in Germany where non-Jewish Poles constituted the majority of inmates until March 1942.”
Five years later, at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians were dead, and another 1.5 million Poles had been deported to German territory for forced labor.
It is those facts, not the murder of three million Polish Jews during the same time period, that Polish nationalists, who now control Poland’s government, want to put at the center of wartime histories.
But an effort to refocus attention on to Polish suffering, and away from the Holocaust, through a change to Poland’s anti-defamation law — which now makes it a crime for anyone, in any part of the world, to accuse “the Polish Nation” of complicity in Nazi war crimes — has backfired spectacularly.
The new law, which took effect this week, prompted widespread criticism from Israeli officials and Jewish groups in the United States — as well as Polish historians, Germany’s foreign minister and the State Department. In an effort to defuse tensions, Poland’s far-right, nationalist government has promised that the law will not be enforced in the coming weeks, until it can be reviewed by the nation’s constitutional court.
But even if the law is never enforced, the debate over the text of the amendment has already profoundly damaged Poland’s past and present reputation.
The clearest impact of the legislation has been to draw fresh attention to recent historical research which makes it plain that Poles rarely opposed and were frequently complicit in the persecution of their Jewish neighbors by the Nazis following the annexation of western Poland to Germany.
The increasingly hysterical response from Polish nationalists to valid criticism of the law has also revealed a virulent strain of anti-Semitism among supporters of the ruling Law and Justice Party, known by the Polish acronym PiS.
The amendment to Poland’s criminal code began as an effort to placate nationalists enraged by the frequency with which foreigners carelessly used the misleading phrase “Polish death camps” to refer to Nazi concentration camps where large numbers of non-Jewish Poles were also imprisoned. But the text was written so broadly that historians are concerned that the law could be used to prosecute even Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust for testifying to their own experiences of the prevailing anti-Semitism of Polish society in that period.
After the international outcry, when Polish President Andrzej Duda seemed to hesitate before approving the legislation, supporters of the measure rallied outside his office in Warsaw last month displ
While that demonstration was not large, it was followed by evidence that more influential figures share some of the same sentiments. An adviser to Poland’s president said in a newspaper interview last month that Israel was “clearly fighting to keep its monopoly on the Holocaust.” The adviser, Andrzej Zybertowicz, also speculated that “anti-Polonism in Israel” might be motivated by “a feeling of shame at the passivity of the Jews during the Holocaust.”
“Many Jews engaged in denunciation, collaboration during the war,” Zybertowicz added. “I think Israel has still not worked it through.”
Polish state television, which acts as a propaganda arm of the current government, broadcast an extraordinary interview last week with Father Henryk Zielinski, a priest who edits a Catholic weekly, Idziemy. Father Zielinski attacked Jewish critics of the law as liars, claiming that Jews have “a completely different system of values, a different concept of truth.”
“For us, the truth corresponds to facts,” Zielinski added. “For the Jew, truth means something that conforms to his understanding of what’s beneficial.”
Even the nation’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, dismissed criticism of the law as an expression of anti-Polish racism. “Anti-Polonism around the world has been gaining in power because of a lack of reaction from Poland and the weakness of this reaction for the last 10 years,” Morawiecki told Bloomberg News last week.
Morawiecki then provoked an uproar in Israel when he seemed to suggest that there were as many Jewish collaborators with the Nazis during the German occupation as Polish collaborators. In a recent exchange in Munich with the Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, who asked if he could be prosecuted for recounting his own mother’s experience of fleeing from Polish informers during the war, the prime minister said that it would not be considered criminal offense merely “to say that there were Polish perpetrators — as there were Jewish perpetrators.”
Another banner at the same rally called on foreigners to “Stop Anti-Polonism.” News reports on the rally showed that one man even held up a sign that read: “Stop Jewish Aggression Against Poland.”
Anger over Poland’s attempt to deny that many Poles were indeed guilty of helping in the Nazi persecution of their Jewish neighbors during the war eventually prompted an anti-Polish backlash that only distorted the historical record further.
“There were Polish death camps and no law can ever change that,” the Israeli politician Yair Lapid tweeted in January.
Faced with objections from historians and the Polish embassy in Tel Aviv, Lapid, whose great-grandmother was arrested in Serbia and murdered in Auschwitz, doubled down. He argued in an opinion piece defending his tweet that the death camps had been built in Poland by the Nazis not because that country had the largest pre-war population of Jews, or as part of an attempt to liquidate the native population so that the territory could be incorporated into the Reich, but because “the Germans knew that at least some of the local population would cooperate.”
Lapid’s claims, which are not supported by historical research, tapped into a strain of anti-Polish racism that does exist in Israel. His comments even echoed the anti-Polish remarks of a former Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, a native of Poland whose parents were killed there in the Holocaust. In 1989, Shamir claimed that anti-Semitism among Poles was so “deeply imbued in their tradition, their mentality,” that they “suck it in with their mother’s milk.”
Perhaps the most inflammatory response to the new Polish law came from an American Jewish organization, the Ruderman Family Foundation. In support of the foundation’s petition drive calling on the United States to sever relations with Poland over the law, it produced an intentionally provocative YouTube video in which a series of American Jews pledged to break the law by saying that there had indeed been a “Polish Holocaust” of the Jews.
The foundation withdrew the video after the Jewish community in Krakow, the American Jewish Committee and the Holocaust museum in Israel, Yad Vashem, all complained about its inflammatory tone and inaccurate account of history.
David Harris, the head of the American Jewish Committee called the video “deeply troubling and misguided.”
“Whatever its intentions,” Harris added, “it only makes a bad situation worse by sweepingly and inaccurately accusing Poland of waging a ‘Holocaust’ against the Jewish people during the war.”
That video, which was front-page news in Poland, provoked a furious response from the far-right. In its commentary, one Warsaw publication, Do Rzeczy, made aggressive use of the Star of David —
in an editorial cartoon that suggested that Poles had been the victims of a Holocaust perpetrated equally by Nazis and Jews, and in a cover illustration that suggested Poland was under an “information warfare” attack from Jewish enemies.
As the historian Eva Hoffman explains in the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Poland’s reckoning with its wartime history only began in earnest after 1989.
In Poland, as in other formerly Soviet-dominated countries, the cold war decades were an era of censorship and deliberately falsified versions of historical events, including World War II and the Holocaust. Between 1939 and 1945, Poland was the epicenter of several violent upheavals: the Soviet invasion from the east under the auspices of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact; the Nazi conquest and occupation, which resulted in the deaths of three million non-Jewish Poles; and the attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe, perpetrated largely on Polish soil, in which three million Polish Jews—90 percent of the country’s pre-war Jewish population—were murdered. In addition, Poland lost its eastern territories, now part of Ukraine, to the Soviet Union, and the region’s Polish residents were in effect deported westward. The enormity of these events, combined with the suppression of basic truths about them, meant that their legacies were preserved covertly by their various inheritors, all with their own adamant loyalties and wrenching recollections, and that Poland in the postwar period became a place of often conflicting and fervently defended forms of collective memory.
In the decades since the end of the cold war, Polish historians have unearthed sobering new evidence that relatively few Poles tried to protect their Jewish neighbors from the Nazis, in large part because of how widespread anti-Semitism was in Polish society.
One of the most prominent researchers, the Princeton historian Jan Gross, found historical records that documented the slaughter of 1,600 Jews by their Polish neighbors in 1941 in the village of Jedwabne, outside Warsaw.
Gross, who has been threatened with prosecution for his work by the Polish government, also completed a broader survey of Polish-Jewish relations during the Nazi occupation based on firsthand accounts from the time which make evidence of Polish complicity clear.
One of the accounts Gross quotes comes from was a report to the Polish government in exile by Jan Karski, a liaison officer of the Polish underground who infiltrated both the Warsaw Ghetto and a German concentration camp and delivered the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to the West. In one report from 1940, Karski was so frank about the prevalent anti-Semitism of the Polish population that the government in exile declined to share his information with its allies.
“One can feel all over that the [Jews] hoped Poles would recognize that both nations are injustly exploited by the same enemy, and that the Poles attitude toward them would reflect this awareness,” Karski wrote. “But such an understanding is lacking among the broader masses of the Polish society. Their attitude toward Jews is ruthless, often without pity. A large part avails itself of the prerogatives [vis-a-vis the Jews] that they have in the new situation. They use these prerogatives repeatedly, often even abuse them. To some extent, this brings the Poles closer to the Germans.”
“The anti-Semitism of a broad strata of the Polish society did not diminish at all,” Karski noted, even as millions of Polish Jews were isolated in ghettos and had their property seized. Even as the Nazis ruthlessly oppressed Poles, persecution of the Jews, Karski concluded, had created “something akin to a narrow bridge upon which the Germans and a large portion of Polish society are finding agreement.”
After the first wave of mass killings of Jews began in 1941, the commander of Poland’s Home Army, General Stefan Grot-Rowecki, sent a telegram to the exiled government in London complaining that its pro-Jewish rhetoric was costing it support. “Please accept it as a fact that the overwhelming majority of the country is anti-Semitic,” the general wrote. “Even socialists are not an exception in this respect. The only differences concern how to deal with the Jews. Almost nobody advocates the adoption of German methods. Even secret organizations remaining under the influence of the prewar activists in the Democratic Club or the Socialist Party adopt the postulate of emigration as a solution to the Jewish problem. This became as much a truism as, for instance, the necessity to eliminate Germans…. Anti-Semitism is widespread now.”
Gross also discovered a contemporaneous account of the Holocaust from a provincial Polish doctor, Dr. Zygmunt Klukowski, director of the county hospital in the town of Szczebrzeszyn. Klukowski recorded in dismay the breakdown of “public order” under the Nazis, to the point where the looting of Jewish homes and businesses became accepted, and there was frequent collaboration in the hunting down of Jews offered to the Germans by Poles. “Quite a few Poles, especially boys, eagerly help in the search,” Klukowski wrote on August 8, 1942, when the town’s Jews were ordered to assemble and had to be tracked down and dragged from their homes.
Looking at hundreds of other accounts from the time, Gross concluded one reason that so relatively few Poles risked their lives to hide Jews was the very great risk that they would be denounced to the Germans by other Poles.
In an interview with an Israeli broadcaster last month, Gross said that the true aim of the new law seemed to be to stifle the uncovering of difficult truths by historians like him.
“Unfortunately,” Gross said, “it’s a disastrous attempt to stifle first of all historical research and historical debate, and a totally lame effort to transform and change historical consciousness in Poland through just legislating a falsehood,”
On Saturday, a Polish group close to the government, the League Against Defamation, filed the first complaint under the new legislation, accusing a newspaper in Argentina of violating the law by using a photograph of dead anti-Communist Polish resistance fighters to illustrate an article about the Jedwabne massacre Gross exposed in his 2001 book, “Neighbors.”
The Root Causes of the Mid-East Conflicts
March 2, 2018
by Christian Jürs
Dublin, Eire- With the savage Israeli bombing and artillery attack on the civilian population of Gaza under the specious excuse of “anti-terrorist” actions, there are very few people, outside of Israel, who actually understand the underlying reasons for this decades-long and very bloody struggle between Israel and all of her Arab neighbors. Many historians are, in fact, well aware of the underlying factors but few, if any, would dare to discuss them in light of the savage retaliation that would immediately be visited upon them by pro-Israeli entities.
Forced out of Roman-controlled Judea by the Romans following a long and bloody series of revolts, internal massacres and destructive activities, the Jews were eventually expelled from Judea and went to reside in various places such as Alexandria, Egypt.
These deportees are today known as Sephardic Jews and are the descendants of the original Semitic inhabitants of Judea.
Another, larger, group of Jews are called Ashkenazi and are the direct descendents of the Khazar tribes of Central Asia. Originally nomadic peoples, the Khazars were located on the west bank of the Caspian Sea, noted for their savage behavior and in about 700 AD, were converted by their king to Judaism.
Defeated by the Russians, the Khazars spread to Russia, what is now Poland and other eastern European areas. They are not Semitic by background and today, 95% of the citizens of Israel are descended from these nomads, which were composed of Mongols, the occasional Swedish rus or Viking and other diverse ethnic groups.
The oft-repeated claim by Israel that they were the original inhabitants of Judea or Palestine is, from a historical point of view, entirely false.
Modern Zionism was the creation of Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) a Hungarian Jewish writer who advocated a Jewish state in Palestine. That the area was occupied, as it had been for thousands of years, by Arabs, themselves of Semitic origins, did not seem to bother the modern Zionists at all.
Following the end of the Second World War when huge masses of Eastern European Jews had been displaced from their countries in Poland, the Baltic states, Hungry, Romania, Greece, Germany, Austria and other European countries, they decided to move to Palestine and form their own state.
From 1944 through 1948, the entire area was subject to a literal reign of terror as large groups of DPs (Displaced Persons) descended on Palestine, wreaking havoc on the area. Murders, kidnappings, bombings, counterfeiting, bank robberies, blowing up hotels full of people and drive-by shootings were commonplace.Eventually, the disruptions proved to be too much for the British, who occupied Palestine after the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire which once controlled it, withdrew and in 1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed.
A detailed chronicle of these events was prepared by the United Nations in 1948 and covers the period from November 6, 1944 through September 17, 1948 and is a concise and very detailed coverage of the events in Palestine. It is far too long to post but can be found, in its entirely, at:http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1973.htm#002
To anyone not conversant with this detailed background, who wonders why the Palestinians, and later the entire Arab Middle East world hates Israel, a study of the UN report immediately puts the motivating factors behind the long-ongoing bloodshed in accurate perspective.
What is past is certainly prologue.
Year and region where Jews have been expelled since 250 A.D.
YEAR PLACE
250 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Carthage
415 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Alexandria
554 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Diocese of Clement (France)
561 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Diocese of Uzzes (France)
612 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Visigoth Spain
642 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Visigoth Empire
855 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Italy
876 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Sens
1012 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Mainz
1182 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – France
1182 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Germany
1276 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Upper Bavaria
1290 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – England
1306 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – France
1322 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – France (again)
1348 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Switzerland
1349 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Hielbronn (Germany)
1349 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Saxony
1349 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Hungary
1360 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Hungary
1370 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Belgium
1380 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Slovakia
1388 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Strasbourg
1394 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Germany
1394 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – France
1420 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Lyons
1421 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Austria
1424 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Fribourg
1424 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Zurich
1424 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Cologne
1432 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Savoy
1438 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Mainz
1439 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Augsburg
1442 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Netherlands
1444 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Netherlands
1446 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Bavaria
1453 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – France
1453 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Breslau
1454 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Wurzburg
1462 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Mainz
1483 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Mainz
1484 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Warsaw
1485 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Vincenza (Italy)
1492 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Spain
1492 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Italy
1495 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Lithuania
1496 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Naples
1496 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Portugal
1498 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Nuremberg
1498 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Navarre
1510 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Brandenberg
1510 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Prussia
1514 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Strasbourg
1515 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Genoa
1519 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Regensburg
1533 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Naples
1541 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Naples
1542 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Prague & Bohemia
1550 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Genoa
1551 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Bavaria
1555 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Pesaro
1557 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Prague
1559 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Austria
1561 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Prague
1567 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Wurzburg
1569 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Papal States
1571 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Brandenburg
1582 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Netherlands
1582 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Hungary
1593 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Brandenburg, Austria
1597 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Cremona, Pavia & Lodi
1614 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Frankfort
1615 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Worms
1619 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Kiev
1648 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Ukraine
1648 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Poland
1649 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Hamburg
1654 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Little Russia (Beylorus)
1656 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Lithuania
1669 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Oran (North Africa)
1669 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Vienna
1670 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Vienna
1712 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Sandomir
1727 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Russia
1738 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Wurtemburg
1740 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Little Russia (Beylorus)
1744 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Prague, Bohemia
1744 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Slovakia
1744 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Livonia
1745 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Moravia
1753 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Kovad (Lithuania)
1761 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Bordeaux
1772 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Deported from Imperial Russia to the Pale of
Settlement (Poland/Russia)
1775 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Warsaw
1789 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Alsace
1804 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Villages in Russia
1808 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Villages & Countrysides (Russia)
1815 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Lübeck & Bremen
1815 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Franconia, Swabia & Bavaria
1820 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Bremen
1843 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Russian Border Austria & Prussia
1862 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Areas in the U.S. under General Grant’s Jurisdiction
1866 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Galatz, Romania
1880s – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Russia
1891 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Moscow
1919 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Bavaria (foreign- born Jews)
1938– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Poland (emigrated Polish-born Jews)
1938-45 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -German Controlled Areas
1941-44– – – – – – – – – – – – – – -France
1944– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -Hungary
1948 — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –Arab Countries
Martin Luther’s Spalatin Letter
Luther’s first known comment on the Jews is in a letter written to Reverend Spalatin in 1514:
I have come to the conclusion that the Jews will always curse and blaspheme God and his King Christ, as all the prophets have predicted. He who neither reads nor understands this, as yet knows no theology, in my opinion. And I presume the men of Cologne cannot understand the Scripture, because it is necessary that such things take place to fulfill prophecy. If they are trying to stop the Jews blaspheming, they are working to prove the Bible and God liars.
But trust God to be true, even if a million men of Cologne sweat to make him false. Conversion of the Jews will be the work of God alone operating from within, and not of man working — or rather playing — from without. If these offences be taken away, worse will follow. For they are thus given over by the wrath of God to reprobation, that they may become incorrigible, as Ecclesiastes says, for every one who is incorrigible is rendered worse rather than better by correction.
On the Jews and Their Lies
In On the Jews and Their Lies, written in 1543 three years before his death, Luther recommends that Jews be deprived of money, civil rights, religious teaching, and education, and that they be forced to labor on the land, or else be expelled from Germany and possibly killed.
He refers to Jews as “a brood of vipers and children of the devil” (from Matthew 12:34), “miserable, blind, and senseless”, “truly stupid fools”, “thieves and robbers”, “lazy rogues”, “daily murderers”, and “vermin”, likens them to “gangrene”, and recommends that Jewish synagogues and schools be burned, their homes razed and destroyed, their writings confiscated, their rabbis forbidden to teach, their travel restricted, that lending money be outlawed for them, and that they be forced to earn their wages in farming. Luther advised “[i]f we wish to wash our hands of the Jews’ blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country” and “we must drive them out like mad dogs.” In conclusion, he wrote:
“There is no other explanation for this than the one cited earlier from Moses — namely, that God has struck [the Jews] with ‘madness and blindness and confusion of mind.’ So we are even at fault in not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord and of the Christians which they shed for three hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and the blood of the children they have shed since then (which still shines forth from their eyes and their skin). We are at fault in not slaying them. Rather we allow them to live freely in our midst despite all their murdering, cursing, blaspheming, lying, and defaming; we protect and shield their synagogues, houses, life, and property. In this way we make them lazy and secure and encourage them to fleece us boldly of our money and goods, as well as to mock and deride us, with a view to finally overcoming us, killing us all for such a great sin, and robbing us of all our property (as they daily pray and hope). Now tell me whether they do not have every reason to be the enemies of us accursed Goyim, to curse us and to strive for our final, complete, and eternal ruin!”
Luther advocated an eight-point plan to get rid of the Jews either by religious conversion or by expulsion:
1.”First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. …”
2.”Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. …”
3.”Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. …”
4.”Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. …”
5.”Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. …”
6.”Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them. … Such money should now be used in … the following [way]… Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed [a certain amount]…”
7.”Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow… For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.”
8.If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews’ blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country” and “we must drive them out like mad dogs.”
Zionism versus Bolshevism.
A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People
February 8, 1920
by the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill.
Illustrated Sunday Herald
International Jews.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus- Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
Terrorist Jews.
There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and an the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution: by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek — all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses.
The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing
Russia’s Gazprom to terminate gas contracts with Ukraine
Russian gas monopoly Gazprom has initiated a process that would end its gas supply contracts with Ukraine’s Naftogaz. The move has raised concerns about gas supplies to European countries.
March 3, 2018
DW
Gazprom announced on Saturday that the company launched procedures in the Stockholm international arbitration court to terminate its gas supply contracts with Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz.
“We have started the procedure of terminating contracts with Ukraine’s Naftogaz,” Gazprom deputy chairman Medvedev said.
The Russian gas giant made the decision after the court ordered it this week to pay over $2.5 billion (€2.03 billion) to Naftogaz for failing to deliver an agreed-upon volume of so-called “transit gas.”
Supply concerns for Europe
The move on Saturday not only marked an escalation in a multi-year dispute between Moscow and Kyiv, but also led to concerns about downstream gas supplies to European countries.
A gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine in 2009 led to significant cuts in supplies to Europe during freezing winter weather.
Russia attempted to allay European concerns in a phone call between Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak and European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcofic.
Novak reportedly said that gas supplies would not be at risk until Gazprom and Naftogaz fully ended their contract.
Minister Novak assured that the gas transit from Russia to Europe is under no threat. The transit remains as reliable as in the past,” the ministry said.
Naftogaz also said on Saturday that gas transit to Europe “remains intact.”
Ukraine’s state-owned gas pipeline operator Ukrtransgaz, however, said it had to take extra measures to ensure gas transit to its European customers.
Ihor Kravchyshyn, a spokesman for Ukrtransgaz, said it faced “a critical situation” after Russia kept pipeline pressure at a low level.
Gazprom said it would resume gas supplies to Ukraine in March after it stopped the supplies in 2015 when Kyiv began buying gas from Europe to gut its dependence on Moscow. The Russian group called off its plan on Friday.
‘Call it chaos’: Trump adrift after week of White House anarchy
As high winds bore down on Washington, the president lost his closest aide and saw his son-in-law humiliated. Fiercer storms may be round the corner
March 3, 2018
by David Smith in Washington
The Guardian
The god of giant metaphors struck on Friday. Winds of 65mph battered Washington, uprooting trees, cutting power to nearly half a million people and forcing the federal government to close. Donald Trump had to change his travel plans and fly via Dulles airport, where one plane had such a bumpy descent that, the pilot said, pretty much everyone on board threw up.
It was the apt end of a week that left the president, Lear-like, all but abandoned in a raging storm. Hope Hicks, an aide so close that she has been described as a surrogate daughter, became the fourth communications director to leave his administration. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, was stripped of high-level security clearance amid revelations about potential conflicts of interest. The king himself fulminated on topics from gun control to trade tariffs, leaving courtiers scrambling to offer reassurances about his state of mind.
There has been disarray in the White House before but this time, observers said, the checks and balances that have provided a modicum of restraint appear to be crumbling, leaving Trump isolated, angry and ready to lash out. It is, they fear, not inconceivable that the world’s most powerful country is now being guided by instinct, by impulse, by whim and by mood swing.
“This feels like it’s turned a corner and not for the better for the White House,” said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist, once press secretary to Vice-President Dan Quayle.
“As layers of this onion – the people who have seniority, who he listens to and who hopefully can talk him down – unpeel, there are fewer and fewer people to do that, which means he can operate on his gut, and he doesn’t have the experience to do that.”
Since Trump’s inauguration in January last year, there has been an ever-decreasing inner circle of trusted advisers. Back then, it seemed that three competing centres of power in the West Wing might provide a balance of sorts.
First, there was Reince Priebus, the chief of staff and former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). But he struggled to bring order and was gone by July, replaced by retired general John Kelly.
Second was chief strategist Steve Bannon, who had no political experience but personified Trump’s populist, nationalist base. His appointment was announced at the same time as that of Priebus, as if teeing up a palace rivalry. The men forged an alliance of convenience but Bannon stole too much of the limelight and was out by August. His philosophy lived on in Trump’s abrupt announcement this week of long-term tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, spoiling for a trade war.
Third, in a less formal role, was Kushner, also a political ingénue. His vast portfolio, including pacifying the Middle East, became a running joke but was steadily curtailed. This week he suffered several blows that could prove fatal. Kelly downgraded his security clearance, denying him access to the president’s daily intelligence briefing, because he had not been permanently approved for the highest level of access.
In addition, it was reported by the Washington Post that officials from four foreign countries discussed ways to manipulate Kushner via his business arrangements. The New York Times said two companies made loans worth more than half a billion dollars to Kushner’s family property company after executives met him at the White House. The disclosures could leave him exposed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia.
Rick Tyler, a political analyst, said: “It’s appalling that anyone would leverage their time in government to enrich themselves or do personal business and Jared Kushner appears to have been doing that consistently. He ought to leave immediately. They are nothing but grifters.”
Priebus, Bannon, Kushner: two down, one clinging on by his fingertips. Galen said: “The issue with the three is that none had any White House experience. Priebus came closest with the RNC, but that’s part of the problem getting worse and worse for the White House. There are fewer and fewer people. No one is banging on the gate wanting to work there because of the damage it will do to their reputation.”
‘Gunning for a fight’
Until now, Trump’s defenders have insisted that people should focus on what he does, not what he says or tweets. The machine of government is ticking over, they have claimed, with victories including economic growth, tax cuts and the appointment of conservative judges. According to this view, the infighting and shenanigans at the White House are just background noise.
The press secretary, Sarah Sanders, told Fox News: “If they want to call it chaos, fine, but we call it success and productivity and we’re going to keep plugging along.”
But this was one of Washington’s wildest weeks yet and, critics argue, there are signs that Trump’s unchecked volatility is bleeding into policy. On Wednesday, before the TV cameras, he hosted a negotiating session with members of Congress on the issue of gun violence. To the dismay of his own party, he backed several Democratic gun control proposals and even said that in the case of mentally unstable people, authorities should “take the guns first, go through due process second”.
Tyler, a former spokesman for a pro-gun rights senator, Ted Cruz of Texas, described it as “the single most disturbing thing he’s said as president”, likely to do “exponentially” more political damage than who’s in and who’s out at the White House.
“The NRA [National Rifle Association] are single-issue voters and will not take kindly to someone who talks one way on the campaign trail and then throws them under the bus,” Tyler said.
That evening, according to an official quoted by NBC, the president became “unglued”. The NBC report said three unrelated events – Kushner’s humiliation by Kelly, Hicks’s nine-hour testimony to a congressional committee investigating Russian election interference and recurring exasperation at the attorney general, Jeff Sessions – left Trump “angry and gunning for a fight”.On Thursday morning, he got it. The commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, an ally, arranged a meeting with 15 executives from the steel and aluminium industry. It did not appear on the public schedule and blindsided Kelly and other White House staff. Then Trump invited reporters in and, apparently off the cuff, announced plans to impose tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium imports.
The move caught the state department, treasury and Pentagon unawares, wiped hundreds of points off the stock market and rattled America’s closest allies.
In a flash, Trump had reverted to protectionist instincts that long predated his political career and that he championed during the election. He defied the protests of his economic adviser, Gary Cohn, and treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and tweeted unrepentantly: “When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win.”
There was a barrage of criticism from economists, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and Republican free trade advocates. Senator John Thune of South Dakota admitted wryly: “There is no standard operating practice with this administration. Every day is a new adventure for us.”
Late on Thursday, Trump appeared to change his mind again, this time on gun control after a meeting with NRA leaders. The erratic behaviour continued when he turned his ire on Saturday Night Live star Alec Baldwin in a misspelled 5.42am tweet that said: “Alex Baldwin, whose dieing mediocre career was saved by his impersonation of me on SNL, now says playing DJT was agony for him.”
The reality TV president is now in high definition. Michael Steele, a former chairman of the RNC, said: “That’s the space Donald Trump has been trying to get to since the day he became president. Now with Hope [Hicks] gone, he doesn’t have the voice in the room saying, ‘Mr President, we have to think about this’. Now when he wants something done, it gets done.”
The loss of Hicks, 29, who occupied the desk closest to the Oval Office, will leave a void. Along with Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump, she was one of the last survivors of the Trump Tower days and has been dubbed the “Trump whisperer”, soothing the president’s ego with constant affirmation and loyalty. She reportedly admitted telling “white lies” on his behalf.
But even she had enough, joining the cascade of departures. Steele added: “It’s consistent with anyone who generates chaos. It’s like a bunch of marbles. You shoot into a group of marbles and some of the marbles get bumped out of the circle. The problem Trump has is finding more marbles to put in the circle. With the departure of Hope Hicks this week, the president is missing one of the marbles.”
More could follow. NBC reported that Trump is preparing to replace the national security adviser, HR McMaster, next month, though officials deny this. There is also speculation over the future of Cohn, Sessions and Kelly, who bungled the handling of domestic violence allegations against a close aide, Rob Porter, and whose attempts to regulate Trump are said to have exhausted the president’s patience.
West Wing morale is understood to be at an all-time low and recruiting high-calibre replacements is becoming harder. Bill Galston, who worked on policy in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “If you value your reputation, you now should have learned that you can’t serve in this White House and emerge untarred.”
‘His poll numbers have brightened slightly’
Increasingly isolated and mercurial, pining for the team spirit of the 2016 presidential election campaign, Trump is yet to be tested by a national security emergency. Thousands of miles away, adversaries such as Russia and North Korea stoke fear of nuclear conflict.
Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Trump has the greatest turnover of any modern president in his inner circle. It’s almost impossible for him to govern because of the chaos. They are staggering from one crisis to another.
“The thing that worries people is what happens when he faces the kind of genuine economic or international crisis that hits a lot of presidents early in their term?”
As the US capital reeled from another bomb cyclone of a week, one significant piece of news came and went quickly. Trump named digital strategist Brad Parscale as campaign manager for his re-election bid in 2020 – an election he could still win thanks to diehard supporters who care little for Washington intrigue.
Jacobs said: “His poll numbers have brightened slightly in recent weeks and the economy is gradually improving. Despite the chaos and cycles of problems in the White House, I wouldn’t describe his political prospects in the same way.”
A key Trump ally, the Newsmax chief executive, Chris Ruddy, told the Guardian he saw the president in Florida on Friday.
“He was in a very good and relaxed mood,” Ruddy insisted. “I’m a little bewildered by these reports he’s angry and in personal turmoil. I don’t see it.
“The last couple of times I’ve talked to him in the last two weeks he’s been in a very good mood. He specifically references the positive poll numbers and the economy doing well.”
Ruddy also disputed the reported timeline of the tariffs decision – one that he personally disagrees with – saying he heard two weeks ago Trump was moving in that direction.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with the staffing changes,” he said. “He’s used to a lot of changes and transformations. He’s perfectly fine with things happening as long as he thinks he’s on the right track.”
Beaten Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore asks for money to fight lawsuit
- Former judge seeks $250,000 in donations from supporters
- Leigh Corfman, who says Moore molested her, suing for defamation
March 3, 2018
by Martin Pengelly
The Guardian
Roy Moore, the former judge who lost a special US Senate election in Alabama in December, is appealing for financial help as he fights a lawsuit brought by a woman who says he molested her when she was 14.
A number of women accused Moore of inappropriate behaviour. The suit brought by Leigh Corfman, who accused Moore of touching her when she was a teenager and he was in his 30s, says he and his campaign defamed her. Moore has denied all allegations.
Despite such controversy, Moore was backed by Donald Trump and his former adviser Steve Bannon. He nonetheless lost in a deep-red southern state to the Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, after being abandoned by most senior Republicans.
Write-in votes for other candidates – among them Mickey Mouse and Jesus – helped tip the balance against Moore, who initially refused to concede defeat.
A Christian conservative hardliner, Moore has said homosexual conduct should be illegal and Muslims should not be allowed to serve in Congress.
He has twice been removed from the Alabama state supreme court, first for refusing to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments outside the court building and then for refusing to follow the US supreme court ruling which made same-sex marriage the law of the land.
During the campaign, Moore attracted controversy after he told the Guardian “maybe [Russian president Vladimir] Putin is right” to condemn same-sex marriage.
In a post to his campaign Facebook page this week, Moore thanked supporters who he said “helped me fight over $50m from Washington insiders who did not want me to bring the truth about God and our constitution to Washington DC”.But, he said, he now faced “another vicious attack from lawyers in Washington DC and San Francisco who have hired one of the biggest firms in Birmingham, Alabama to bring another legal action against me and ensure that I never fight again”.
Moore added: “I will trust God that he will allow truth to prevail against the unholy forces of evil behind their attack.
“I have lawyers who want to help but they are not without cost and besides their fees, legal expenses could run over $100,000. I have had to establish a legal defense fund, anything you give will be appreciated.”
On Saturday morning, a secure donation page had raised a little over $32,000 of a $250,000 target.
Moore said: “The liberal media, in association with some who want to destroy our country do not want my influence in the 2018 elections and are doing everything they can to stop me.
“Gays, lesbians, and transgenders have joined forces with those who believe in abortion, sodomy, and destruction of all that we hold dear. Unless we stand together we will lose our country.”
Moore laid blame for his defeat by Jones on “the Washington establishment, the Republican party, the Democrat party, the ultra-liberal media and people such as George Soros, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and many others who fear the truth.”
He added: “My resources have been depleted and I have struggled to make ends meet, but I have not lost my faith in our God, who is our true source of strength and will never leave or forsake us.”
In December, an Alabama state board approved an annual pension for Moore of $135,845.