Translate

Mar 12, 2010

Racial Studies of Jews in National Socialist Germany

 

Racial Studies of Jews in National Socialist Germany 

Review of Alan E. Steinweis, Studying the Jew: Scholarly Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, and Christopher M. Hutton, Race and the Third Reich.

Daniel W. Michaels

March 13, 2010

A new book, with the provocative title Studying the Jew, describes the approach that analyses of the Jewish question took in Germany under the National Socialist government's racial studies program. The author Alan E. Steinweis focuses attention on scholarly German journals of the period, dealing with biological, anthropological, ethnological, theological, economic, and criminological studies as related to Rassenkunde (Race Science). Steinweis excludes vulgar, lowbrow anti-Semitic screeds from his study, concentrating instead on the academic literature on the Jewish question written by and for the better-educated segment of German society during the National Socialist period.

For centuries, indeed millennia, animosity toward Jews has periodically erupted into emotionally charged pogroms, expulsions, and persecutions. This animosity had variously been attributed to religious or political differences as well as to perceived unattractive personal characteristics attributed to Jews (e.g., their critical nature, their mocking attitude, business and financial acumen, exclusiveness, aggressive ness).

According to Steinweis, it was Adolf Hitler, who completely revised how anti-Semitism was understood. In the modern world Anglo-American countries especially have tried to ascertain why and how some people come to dis like Jews, assuming that the reason resides in the individual or in his life experiences. Hitler, on the other hand, approached the question assuming that something in the very nature of Jews evoked adverse feelings in many non-Jews. Hitler wanted his researchers to find "an anti-Semitism of reason" based on empirical scientific evidence, not just anti-Semitism as a "simple manifestation of emotion."

Because German universities for centuries had remained bound to tra ditional academic pursuits independent of politics, the incoming National Socialist govern ment had to establish separate institutes for racial studies that were deliberately designed to produce negative scholarship on the Jews. The two earliest and most prominent institutes were the Institute for History of the New Ger many under the direction of Walter Frank, and the Institute for Study of the Jewish Ques tion under Alfred Rosenberg. These insti tutes published most of their studies in their own journals outside the regular academic system. Frank committed suicide in 1945 and the Nuremberg Tribunal sentenced Rosenberg to death by hanging a year later.

The political aim of these studies was to make the expulsion of Jews from Germany more acceptable to everyone and to ease the way for a return to neopaganism. To achieve this, even the works of Jewish scholars and Christian theologians were recruited. In the end, Jews in National Socialist Germany were defined as racially alien, morally corrupt, inassimi lable, and dangerous.

When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the number of non-Jewish historians to whom the government could turn for scholarship on the Jewish question was very limited. Indeed, even after the new government came to power, Jewish scholars and publishers continued to produce most of the historical studies of Jews. Made aware of this situation and determined to rectify it, Walter Frank wrote:

Only one side of the Jewish problem has been addressed, the Jewish side; almost all books on the Jewish question have been written by Jews; at German universities, dissertations on the Jewish question have been submitted almost entirely by Jews; the historical journals have selected only Jews as editors for matters Jewish. (p. 94)

To remedy the lack of historical works on the Jews in Europe available in German libraries, the government during the war undertook to confiscate all the major collections of such works held in libraries throughout German-occupied Europe.

With respect to racial studies of the Jews, Steinweis first singles outHans F. K Günther as the German racial scientist whose early workRacial Characteristics of the Jewish People (1930) represented the kind of research the government wanted. Günther had earlier (1922) published The Racial Characteristics of the German People. Such stu dies had become quite common in German and European academia since the early 19th Century. A good number of the researchers and authors of these works were themselves Jews. For a long time and into the National Socialist period German and Jewish researchers even collaborated.

To paraphrase Günther's findings as presented by Steinweis: Günther believed that in the distant past a dozen Urrassen (prehistoric races) probably existed, but like the Ursprachen  (prehistoric languages), they eventually broke down and inter mixed with neighboring races. Therefore neither the Jews nor the Germans could be considered a distinct race. Günther preferred to refer to the Jews as well as the Germans as a Volk or people, each of whose national genetic pool was a mixture of several racial elements. The Ger mans, Günther argued, were primarily a mix of Nordics, Eastern and Western peoples of European origin. In the makeup of the German Volk the Nordic element was considered the most valuable. But unfortunately, according to Günther, the Germans had been increasingly denorticized ever since the 30-Years War in the 17th Century.

The Jews, on the other hand, were made up of primarily Near Eastern ancestry, but also Oriental, Nordic, and other elements introduced in the Diaspora. Günther maintained that because of their dispersion, modern Jews differ markedly from the original Hebrews. Because of Talmudic prohibitions against exogamy and centuries long inbreeding in Europe's Ghettos (endogamy), modern Jews are not only quite different from their Biblical ancestors, but actually a distinct people. Günther therefore refers to contemporary Jews as a "race of the second instance." Günther also held that the conversion of the Khazars and their absorption into the Ashkenazim added a further Near Eastern element in the northern Euro pean Jewish communities, but this did not occur among the Sephardic Jews. Thus, a racial divergence developed within European Jewry itself.

While physical differences between the various peoples (skull shape, speech patterns, facial expressions, specific odors, and a hundred other factors) were routinely measured by ethnologists the world over, the Germans were increasingly interested in inherited psychological, cultural and behavioral traits. With respect to the Jews, Günther agreed with his Jewish colleague, Samuel Weissenberg, that the salient cultural trait of the Near Eastern peoples (Armenians, Greeks, Jews) was its "commercial spirit," which in turn was attributed to supple minds and characteristic verbal facility. For Günther, many Europeans had an instinctive, racially based aversion to peoples of Near Eastern racial origin precisely because of their different physi cal and behavioral traits. However, neither Günther nor his colleagues ever refer red to racial inferiority or superiority with regard to Jews or other peoples. No mention was ever made of a "super-race." Instead, they emphasized the racial "otherness" (Anders artigkeit) of Jews — their racial-psychological estrangement from Europeans.

Somewhat later in the mid-1930s, another German researcher, Walter Dornfeldt, exchanged information and opinions with Franz Boas, an American anthropologist of German Jewish origin on the degree to which environment alters heredity. Generally, American scientists felt that environment played a more important role in racial physiology and psychology than did German investigators. Since at that time Germany was an ethnostate, with 95% of the populace German, while America was a melting pot of various European peoples, it is not surprising that the former should adopt a theory that extols the virtues of a common heritage while the latter should see advantage in diversity. That both environment and heredity are at play in all instances is undisputed. Unfortunately, the exact proportion played by each varies.

During the Third Reich studies of the genetics of racial differ ences took on increasing importance. The most widely read German genetics text was The Study of Human Heredity by Eugen Fischer, Erwin Baur, and Fritz Lenz. As cited in Kevin MacDonald's A People That Shall Dwell Alone, Lenz proposed that the "Nordic" peoples evolved in harsh environments that favored small groups and a tendency toward social isolation. On the other hand, Lenz proposed that Jews evolved in larger groups and as a result have highly developed social skills related to social influence, enabling them to anticipate others' actions and desires. Steinweis emphasizes the point that Lenz was aware of the heterogeneity in the out ward appearance of Jews and therefore suggested that Jews might better be referred to as a psycho logical rather than an anthropological race.

In general, genetics researchers advised against racial mixing, but not specifically with regard to Jews. Otmar von Verschuer eventually became prominent for his research on genetic predispositions to disease. His research proved so important that he was quickly cleared by denazification boards and continued his career at Münster University until his retirement in 1964. Wikipedia notes that "Verschuer was never tried for war crimes despite many indications that he was not only fully cognisant of [Josef] Mengele's work at Auschwitz, but even encouraged and collaborated with Mengele in some of his … research."

Steinweis surveys German studies that implicated Jews in economic crimes and crimes against morality (Sittlichkeitsver brechern). Ironically, as Steinweis notes (p. 138), it was a Jew, the Italian crim­inologist Caesare Lombroso, who invented the concept of the "born criminal." J. Keller and Hanns Andersen used Lombroso's idea in their book The Jew as Criminal, in which Jews were described as "born to crime" and possessing a special pre disposition to and ability for fraud, dirty dealing, dishonest gambling, usury, sexual transgressions of all kinds, pick pocketing, and treason. As Steinweis points out, neither of the authors had academic credentials of any sort, nor were they associated with any university. However, Johann von Leers, a trained jurist holding a professor ship in history at Jena University, did publish a booklet, The Criminality of the Jews, in which he presented statistics showing a disproportionately high Jewish participation in white-collar crime. Jews were 12 times more likely than non-Jews to be involved in usury; 11 times more likely to engage in the theft of intellectual property; 8–9 times as likely to declare fraudulent bankruptcy. Between 1903 and 1936, Leers noted, the frequency of Jewish participation in usury was 29 times that of non-Jews.

Steinweis points out that Leers' statistics did not include violent crimes of which non-Jews had the higher numbers and Jews the lowest. Moreover, the crime rates obviously reflected the occupations of the perpetra tors, Jews being highly represented in white-collar occupations. Replying to this, Leers declared:

The Jew does not become a criminal because he is a merchant, but rather the criminal Jew embraces the mercantile profession because he is predisposed to the crimes that are possible in this realm. (p. 140)

In the matter of crimes against morality, von Leers cited Polish statistics to the effect that Jews had dominated the prostitution trade before the war. The Polish publication esti mated that 100,000 Polish Jews made their living through exploi ting of immorality. Steinweis admits that while Jews were indeed heavily in volved in the management of prostitu tion in Europe, he argues that certain adverse socio logical factors prevailing at the time turned many Jews to this trade. Leers countered this argument by stating that both the immoral aspects of prostitu tion as well as the profits to be derived appealed to the Jewish nature. Adding to the public perception of Jews as criminals, the infamous Zwi Migdal, international crime syndicate specializing in the white slave trade, was controlled and run by Jews.

Steinweis labels Peter-Heinz Seraphim, a political economist, who specialized in assessing Jewish economic power in East Europe, as the most professionally and intel lectually accomplished "Jew expert" in Nazi Germany. Although Seraphim considered Jews in general to be economic parasites, his major work, The Jews of Eastern Europe, was deemed indispensable to his contemporaries, without which studies of Jews during the National Socialist era would be unthinkable. Published in 1938, the 732-page tome contained 197 statistical graphs, a bibliography with 563 entries, and over a thousand footnotes. (p. 145) concerning Jewish economic enterprises.

Seraphim objected to the so-called Lublin Plan, which proposed settling most of East European Jews in an area around Lublin. When Governor General Hans Frank, the Nazi governor of Poland, objected to "dumping" Jews in Poland, Seraphim threw his support to the Madagascar Plan, which was later discarded because of the war. Seraphim opposed any and all extreme measures against the Jews, preferring to integrate them in the German wartime industrial complex. 

Seraphim's economic knowledge of East Europe was considered so valuable that he became an adviser to the American Occupation forces and later pursued a successful career in West Germany. 

When the Nuremberg Laws, including the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law to Protect German Blood and Honor, were passed in 1935 the professional, usually apoli tical studies of the ethnologists were used to lend scientific backing to the legislation. Referring to the Talmudic Laws by which most Jews lived for centuries, apologists for the German Laws claimed that the German Volk simply wanted what the Jews have desired for themselves since the days of the Prophet Ezra, namely, to protect the völkisch integrity of their own people.

Because they shared a common goal, namely, to encourage Jews to leave Ger many, Günther and many other Party memberswith the approval of the Nazi governmentwelcomed and worked with Zionist representatives. As Günther put it:

The racial-biological future of Jewry could take one of two paths, either that of Zionism of that of decline (Untergang).

Steinweis quotes from a review of one of the few books written about Zionism in Germany that "it is better to talk with national-Jewish Zionism than with the hidden racial interests of assimilation." Some Germans were dubious that the Jews would be able to establish an inde pen dent homeland. In 1940, for example, German historian, Josef Sommerfeldt, publicly expressed his doubts:

The Jews will be given the opportunity, in a territory designated for them, to demonstrate whether their racial characteristics suffice for the creation from their own energies of a sensible and healthy social and economic order. So far, the Jewish people have not provided this evidence. (p. 111)  

When the presence of a disproportionate number of Jews in the USSR Communist Party and in the communist parties of most other European countries could no longer be ignored, a Zionist writer, Abraham Heller, argued that Jews who had repudiated their Judaism should not even be regarded as Jews — an argument made more recently by historian Yuri Slezkine. To which Wilhelm Grau, a Nazi historian, retorted that since Jews are no longer being identified by religion, but by race, Heller's argument was ridiculous. When Heller pointed out that Jews were also being killed in the Stalinist purges, Grau responded:            

A historian who wants to deal with the truth cannot represent Jewish suffering one-sidedly. The Jews were responsible for a much more violent and deeper stream of blood, that of the Russian people. (p. 106) 

Studies of the ancient Hebrews and analyses of the Talmud by theologians (e.g., Karl Georg Kuhn and Gerhard Kittel) at Tübingen University were not anti-Semitic. Kittel in fact even wrote kindly of the Talmud, referring to it as:

A giant sack into which was stuffed everything, which Judaism had stored up in terms of memories and traditions, so that its contents are the most colorful and joyful confusion and juxtaposition that one can imagine. (p. 76)

Theologian Kittel saw four possible approaches for dealing with the Jews: elimination, Zionism, assimilation, or a guest status in Germany. For practical reasons he chose guest status. Elimination, as demonstrated by the Inquisition and the Russian pogroms, did not work; assimilation was out of the question because the National Socialists considered assimilation part of the problem. The Party preferred dissimilation. Kittel and Sommerfeldt believed Zionism was doomed to failure because the Jews would be unable to establish and maintain a self-sufficient state. This left only guest status as the German option. As such, they should be referred to as "Jews living in Germany" (p. 69).

Tübingen University remains to this day a world center for Hebraic, Judaic, and Christian studies. Pope Benedict XVI once taught and studied there. Because some of the theologians whose works were misused by the Party had studied or taught there, the Uni ver sity established the so-called Tübingen Board after the war under the eyes of the Occupation Powers to determine the guilt or innocence of its staff members. Both Kittel and Kuhn were exonerated. With regard to Kuhn, the Board determined that "he had never propagated Nation­al Socialist teaching" and that Kuhn's "purely objective and scientific introduction to the world of Rabbinic Judaism significantly contributed to immunizing this students against rampant anti-Semitic slogans."

Steinweis explains at length why he disagrees with the Board's decision exonerating Kittel. However, to this day, both Kittel's and Kuhn's pre- and post-war, Old and New Testament Biblical studies remain highly prized in the Christian ministry throughout the world.

The recently published book Race and the Third Reich by the Britisher Christo pher M. Hutton is an excellent companion to Steinweis' work. Hutton broadly agrees with Steinweis on the harmful content of Nazi racial studies, but he differs from Steinweis' in several ways. First, Hutton makes a sharper dichotomy between National Socialist ideology and the scientific, non political, research done in racial studies in German and other European universities of the time. Hutton distinguishes between early ideologically-driven (1930–35) racial tracts when the NSDAP was seeking power and not yet firmly entrenched, and the later (1936-44) racial studies in Germany after the Party had secured its power. Aside from the Germans' politically mandated application of their theories to the Jews, the techniques used in their racial studies were quite similar to those employed outside Germany.

Hutton notes that official publications on race in the later years of Nazi rule actually emphasized that the term "Aryan" belonged to linguistics and was not a racial category at all. Influenced by Mendelian genetics, German racial anthropologists recognized that there was no necessary link between ideal physical appearance and ideal character. Eventually, Hutton states, when World War II threatened and Germany needed allies, terms such as "Nordicism," "Germanism," and "Aryanism" that suggested exclusivity and elitism were discarded as a politi cal liability. Indeed, near the end of the war many SS units were made up of Slavs, French, Belgians, Scandinavians, and even Arabs.  

In the mature period of National Socialism the government terminated all rogue Aryan science and effectively suppressed all occultism, spiritualism, clairvoyance, and other such practices. Ultimately, the government completely separated science from ideology. National Socialism had accepted modernity.

Under National Socialism, the universities enjoyed a considerable amount of autonomy and often published articles at variance with the Party's preferred line. More over, the Nazi researchers even argued among themselves about the importance of this or that factor in racial anthropology. In fact, Hutton argues, in the course of the Third Reich, racial anthropological studies increasingly gave way to studies in hereditary psychology and the science of human genetics. 

Some German racial anthropologists even objected to negative descriptions of Jews. For example, Karl Saller (1902–1969) wrote:

The importance of the Jews for the development of Western culture is a matter of controversy. There is no question but that Jews are essentially different in type from the Western peoples (Völker). To this one should add that the frequent occurrences of hostility nowadays between the Jews and their host peoples must be attributed as much to the similarity in their aptitudes as to difference in type, as this leads to an intensely competitive relationship.  The Jewish spirit (Geist) is, next to the autochthonous culture, the main driving force in Western culture and to this culture Jews have contributed with many brilliant gifts. Anti-semitism is therefore unjustified in so far as it is directed against Jews as a matter of principle. It is only justified when it involves a rejection of far-reaching particularist demands and those activities, which seek to undermine or fragment the State, activities which are associated with substantial parts of the Jewish people. (Hutton, p. 152)

Hutton also cites the case of another prominent racial anthropologist, Ludwig Clauss, who won the support of his SS associates to defend and protect his Jewish research assistant. For this, the State of Israel later honored Clauss.

The Denazification Courts in fact exonerated most of the academic racial anthro pologists after the war. This reviewer believes that Rassenkunde was and remains a legitimate field of research, but that ideologically driven governments (National Socialist, Communist, Zionist) attempted to hijack the science for their own propagandistic purposes. Despite all that has transpired, research into the physical and psychological differences between ethnic groups as well as between the sexes continues throughout the world today, although it must often battle the tides of political correctness, particularly if it deals with race differences in intelligence.

Legitimate, not ideologically hijacked, racial and eugenics studies, conducted before, during, and after the National Socialist period, remain important research tools, not least of all in the development of pharmaceuticals in cases where race-specific and even gender-specific medicines have proven to be effective. Ironically, National Socialism's racial policies even received high praise from Zionist organizations of the day whose policies happened to coincide with those of the Nazis. Both desired the exodus of Jews from Germany and their transfer to Palestine. Even Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, approved of the racial laws that changed the status of Jews in Germany from "Germans of the Jewish faith" to that of a separate national minority. Herzl confessed that the anti-Semitic reaction of non-Jews in Germany to alien Jewish behavior and attitudes was perfectly understandable in that Germans and Jews represented different nationalities. This mutually agreed-upon understanding was later formalized in the Transfer Agreement(Haavara) under which financial arrange ments to aid the Jewish emigrants in their new homeland in Palestine were established and regular passenger liner service was established between Hamburg and Haifa.

Moreover, Zionist leaders in other countries approved of the German racial laws, including the Nuremberg Laws. For example, in June 1938 in a rally in New York Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress, declared:

I am not an American citizen of the Jewish faith, I am a Jew. Hitler was right in one thing. He calls the Jewish people a race and we are a race.

Genetic studies of Jews is an active field of research today. (See, e.g., here.) This research indicates a common Middle Eastern ancestry for all Jews, but with some genetic admixture in the Diaspora so that different Jewish groups are genetically distinguishable. Mention must also be made of the work of Professor Kevin MacDonald, an evolutionary psychologist, who has written extensively on Judaism and explains Jewish behavior as being a group evolutionary strategy developed over the centuries for survival, protection, and advancement. MacDonald received his doctorate under the mentorship of Professor Benson E. Ginsburg, a renowned researcher in behavior genetics.

Obviously, political correctness is a time-dependent variable. Ideally, Rassenkunde, like all other sciences, should always be objective and make no value judgments, especially not with respect to perceived superior or inferior ethnic traits. The true purpose of Rassenkunde is to investigate the physical and psychological characteristics of the many and varied peoples on Earth in order to better understand and hopefully to improve the human condition. The abuses of Rassenkunde or racial studies must certainly be condemned, but the benefits of such research must be preserved.  

 

Daniel W. Michaels, a native New Yorker, received his BS in geography from Columbia University in 1954. Following five years in the Army (three of which stationed in Germany) and a Fulbright grant for studies in Tuebingen University, Mr. Michaels worked in the Defense Department until his retirement in 1993. He continues to contribute articles to various journals on World War II and Cold War matters. (Email him.)

Permanent URL:http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Michaels-Steinweis.html 


--


Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

__._,_.___
Recent Activity:
.

__,_._,___

Israel’s Lobby Imposes Crippling Sanctions on America — Again

 


Israel's Lobby Imposes Crippling Sanctions on America — Again

aletho | March 12, 2010 at 10:31 am | Categories: Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Wars for Israel | URL: http://wp.me/pIUmC-1Kv
By Grant Smith, March 12, 2010

The Israel lobby's campaign against US and international corporations doing business with Iran is gearing up this week.  The tip of the spear is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee sponsored expansion of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996.  If signed into law by president Obama, the legislation would institute onerous new monitoring to ensure exports never enter Iran, along with mandatory divestment from and penalties for any corporations discovered doing business in Iran. A new type of "office of special plans" at the Treasury Department that AIPAC and its think tank lobbied to create by executive order in 2004 is also on the warpath.  Stuart Levey, the head of the office of "Terrorism and Financial Intelligence" is traveling to Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman "pointing out that they face dramatic risks by doing business with Iran."   Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon finished a long set of meetings urging the US National Security Council to impose harsh sanctions on Iran.

The New York Times started the week with a list of corporations doing business in Iran and their US government procurement revenues.  Most companies on this list long ago appeared on hit lists compiled by AIPAC for quiet divestment campaigns in state legislatures across the country.  The New York Times ominously highlights in red any company that may be a "possible violator of the Iran Sanctions Act." National Public Radio's Scott Simon, after reading it, was apoplectic.  He fretted aloud on the air whether US companies and subsidiaries on the target list were "betraying their country's national security interests."

What should Americans make of this drive to label all companies doing business with Iran unpatriotic smugglers?  First, they should consider the source of the multi-tiered Iran sanctions drive.  Then, they should start getting angry.

The proto Israel lobby was born in the cradle of a real arms theft and smuggling operation [pdf] that relentlessly preyed on the United States in the 1940s.  Violating US arms export controls and bans on weapons transfers to the Middle East, this network certainly did "betray national security" — but managed to establish a small state in Palestine.  The Director of US Central Intelligence judged that "U.S. national security is unfavorably affected by these developments and that it could be seriously jeopardized by continued illicit traffic in the implements of war." That was an understatement, but none of the financiers of the arms smuggling network ever faced any consequences.  When The Pledge, a tell-all book about the smuggling network, was published in 1970 the Department of Justice received public protests about the vast unpunished arms smuggling.  The Internal Security Section duly wrote and internally circulated a 9-page book report about the people, dates, and crimes committed.  The Chief of the Foreign Agents Registration Unit then responded to one protester that any arms smuggling prosecutions would be barred by the statute of limitations, though he did forward complaints to the FBI and State Department.

The Israel lobby further developed the ethos that "no crime for Israel would be punished in the US" when it allegedly stole and smuggled US weapons grade uranium from NUMEC, "an Israeli operation from the beginning" according to CIA Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden.   A secret nuclear arsenal would allow Israel to initiate "The Samson Option" pulling down the entire world if it were ever threatened — a capability judged worth all the stealing and law breaking.

Isaiah L. Kenen, a propaganda officer for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs office in New York in 1948, made it his business to infiltrate Israeli government mandates into US political party platforms while dodging Department of Justice orders that he register and conduct his business openly as an Israeli foreign agent.  Like AIPAC this week, Kenen even used the New York Times as a trumpet in his November 2, 1961 Near East Report to deny that Dimona was a nuclear weapons plant.  Six weeks after the DOJ cracked down with its final Foreign Agent order on Kenen and company in 1963 after a massive (Israeli-funded) stealth propaganda and lobbying campaign that rivaled the one currently unfurling in the US, Kenen was forced to abandon his American Zionist Council front for the Israeli government, and incorporated AIPAC in Washington, DC.  AIPAC went on to stage a full assault on US governance — from attacking the sanctity of our electoral process to trafficking in classified national security information — all to acquire unprecedented power on behalf of its foreign principals.

The most relevant example of AIPAC-Israeli government tag-team law-breaking went on display this week in the form of 49 declassified FBI files.  In 1984 71 major US corporations and worker organizations said "no" to an earlier AIPAC economic power grab (a demand to lower all US import barriers to Israeli products while allowing Israel to continue blocking US exports).  Israeli minister of economics Dan Halpern stole [pdf] a US government document containing proprietary information and business secrets supplied by US industries most opposed to the Israel Lobby's economic power grab.  Halpern passed it to AIPAC, which made great use of it to undermine the entire advice and consent process.  Douglas Bloomfield, AIPAC's top lobbyist, even made an illicit copy of the classified document after AIPAC was explicitly ordered to return it to the US government (rather than ever do time in jail, Bloomfield now fantasizes about militarily playing the United Arab Emirates off Iran).

The aftermath of this earlier economic crime against US industry has now become clear.  By locking many US products of export quantity out of Israel, the trade agreement has delivered an $80 billion dollar cumulative deficit (adjusted for inflation) to the US since enacted.  In contrast, last year all other (legitimate) bilateral agreements with such countries as Singapore and Morocco actually produced a $86.33 billion total trade surplus to the US.  AIPAC's trajectory clearly indicates it is a true believer of Julius Caesar's dictum "If you must break the law, do it to seize power, in all other cases observe it."  But does such ill-gotten might make right?

Americans should be outraged that a foreign lobby like AIPAC is actually trying to write the rules — when warranted application of the law would have abolished it years ago. AIPAC and other nodes of Israel's lobby successfully broke important US laws to seize power in America.  They now expect US private enterprise and workers — the world's best — to open their own little "offices of special plans" to carefully track company products, profits, and investments in the name of Israel.  But this new tax ignores some mighty important facts.

Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and there's no evidence that it is anywhere near producing nuclear weapons.  Non-signatory Israel, with its vast secret arsenal of nuclear weapons — likely built with uranium stolen (but never paid for) from the United States — suddenly demands rule of law from America.  Laws drafted by AIPAC.  (And by the way, it'll cost taxpayers at least $76 million to clean up the nuclear waste at NUMEC.)

Israel and its US lobby actually think Americans will go for all of this, that we're a forgetful and obedient lot, who don't care much about our laws, economy, or jobs — who are just aching to get into AIPAC's newly fabricated economic straightjacket.

Better think again.

Add a comment to this post

--



Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

__._,_.___
Recent Activity:
.

__,_._,___

Wonder Why the White Crime Rate is so High?

 
__,_._,___

NASA funded study debunks IPCC myths about Amazon rain forests

 


New study debunks IPCC myths about Amazon rain forests

aletho | March 12, 2010 at 2:57 pm | Categories: Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | URL: http://wp.me/pIUmC-1KQ
By Richard Taffe | March 11, 2010

(Boston) — A new NASA-funded study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"We found no big differences in the greenness level of these forests between drought and non-drought years, which suggests that these forests may be more tolerant of droughts than we previously thought," said Arindam Samanta, the study's lead author from Boston University.

The comprehensive study published in the current issue of the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters used the latest version of the NASA MODIS satellite data to measure the greenness of these vast pristine forests over the past decade.

A study published in the journal Science in 2007 claimed that these forests actually thrive from drought because of more sunshine under cloud-less skies typical of drought conditions. The new study found that those results were flawed and not reproducible.

"This new study brings some clarity to our muddled understanding of how these forests, with their rich source of biodiversity, would fare in the future in the face of twin pressures from logging and changing climate," said Boston University Prof. Ranga Myneni, senior author of the new study.

The IPCC is under scrutiny for various data inaccuracies, including its claim – based on a flawed World Wildlife Fund study — that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically and be replaced by savannas from even a slight reduction in rainfall.

"Our results certainly do not indicate such extreme sensitivity to reductions in rainfall," said Sangram Ganguly, an author on the new study, from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute affiliated with NASA Ames Research Center in California.

"The way that the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while [the new] calculations are by far more reliable and correct," said Dr. Jose Marengo, a Brazilian National Institute for Space Research climate scientist and member of the IPCC.

Paper available here (PDF)

Richard Taffe
rtaffe@bu.edu
617-353-4626
Boston University Medical Center

Add a comment to this post



--


Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

__._,_.___
Recent Activity:
.

__,_._,___

Climategate: the IPCC's whitewash 'review' is the AGW camp's biggest mistake yet

 



Climategate: the IPCC's whitewash 'review' is the AGW camp's biggest mistake yet

aletho | March 12, 2010 at 2:45 pm | Categories: Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | URL: http://wp.me/pIUmC-1KL
By Gerald Warner | The Telegraph | March 12, 2010

It looks as if the tottering IPCC has just made its biggest mistake yet. Twenty-four hours after the announcement of an "independent" inquiry into certain aspects of its activities it is possible to make a considered assessment of its significance. By any reasoned analysis, it is not only a whitewash but one in which the paint is spread so thinly as to be transparent.

First, who appointed this review body? Those two iconic standard bearers of climate science objectivity, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and IPCC head (still!) Rajendra Pachauri. There is nothing like being judge in your own cause – it secures a less damaging verdict. Ban Ki-moon is the clown who, on a visit to the Arctic last September, despairingly proclaimed that "100 billion tons" of polar ice were melting each year, when the sea-ice around him had just extended itself by half a million square kilometres more than at the same time the previous year. Pachauri, among many other solecisms, is also the buffoon who denounced criticism of the IPCC's absurd claims about melting Himalayan glaciers as "voodoo science".

Then there is the review's terms of reference. It has four remits: to analyse the IPCC process, including links with other UN agencies; to review use of non-peer reviewed sources and data quality control; to assess how procedures handle "the full range of scientific views; and to review IPCC communications with the public and the media. So, most of its activity will relate to reorganisation of the IPCC's propaganda operation and how it can be beefed up.

Nowhere are there proposals for it to revisit, in depth, the IPCC's 3,000-page 2007 report and repudiate the vast range of inaccuracies and downright fabrications it contains. Instead, the review panel has to report by August so that its meaningless conclusions on a variety of irrelevant issues can be used to sanitise the IPCC's next report, to be prepared at a meeting in October.

As for the personnel, the review will be conducted by the Inter-Academy Council and headed by its co-chairman Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf, who recently broadcast on Dutch radio a complacent statement about the "consensus" on climate science. The Inter-Academy Council is a representative body for a number of national academies of science, most of which are committed to the climate change cause.

So, a very obvious whitewash and presumably very satisfactory to the IPCC camp. Nevertheless, I repeat, it is probably the most serious mistake the AGW fanatics have so far made. This is because they have seriously underestimated the amount of trouble they are in. Any competent political spin doctor (and the AGW scam is pure politics, not science) would have told them that, as things stand in 2010, they had one last chance – and only one chance – to salvage their bogus crusade.

That was to allow a genuinely independent investigation, including highly qualified sceptics, to analyse the 2007 report and expose all its fallacies – which are already in the public domain in any case. They could then have apologised, sacked Pachauri (which they will probably do anyway) and prepared an equally mendacious but more sophisticated report, jettisoning the more extravagant scare-mongering for the time being, and so clawed back wavering support among the public.

Instead, they have opted for a very obvious whitewash, discredited from the day of its launch, that will provoke hilarity and increased scepticism when it reports. After that, there will be no road back. We should be grateful that the arrogance and over-confidence engendered by their longstanding immunity from challenge (but not any more) prompted the AGW fraudsters to create so inadequate a smokescreen.

This investigation is very good news for sceptics – not because it will denounce any significant flaws in the AGW imposture, but because it will not. AGW credulity is already a minority faith; but there is a further constituency of waverers, ready to break off like a melting iceberg from the main floe, whose final defection will mean the AGW movement is deprived of critical mass. This pathetic attempt at a cover-up could well be the catalyst for that decisive departure. Think about it and be glad.

Add a comment to this post



--



Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

__._,_.___
Recent Activity:
.

__,_._,___

A former RCAF officer rebukes an unctuous German Consul General

 


March 8, 2010
 
Madame Sabine Sparwasser
Consul General
Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany
2 Bloor Street East, Toronto M4W 1A8
Canada
 
Dear Madame Sparwasser
 
Re: German "guilt" for the Holocaust
 
The published report of your remarks at the recent York University symposium on "Cultures of Memory in Canada, Germany and Poland", if accurate, indicates, in my view, a very serious fallacy in your interpretation of 20th Century history.
 
I am an economist by training, with degrees from Queen's and Toronto Universities and a diplomat by profession but have devoted intensive study to modern history, concentrating on  the origin, events and aftermath of World War II.  My first posting in the Canadian Foreign Service was as Assistant Commercial Secretary at the Embassy in Bonn where I had the distinction of initiating and negotiating (in the face of Ambassadorial disapproval!) the sale of 300 Canadian-built F86MkVI fighter aircraft which became the mainstay of the new Luftwaffe.
 
While living in Germany I came to know the German people at all levels of society. I found that almost invariably in their ourlook and habits they met or surpassed what one would expect of their culture and race. I felt growing remorse that just a few years earlier I had voluntarily joined the RCAF, with many of my similarly misguided teenage friends, to take part in their slaughter. I learned that others who had served in the RCAF at the time later had similar reactions, as would have, I feel sure, my intelligent first cousin, had he survived.
 
After many thousands of hours of study as a self-taught historian, I concluded that Canada had no legitimate quarrel with Germany in 1939 (nor did Britain and France) and that the war, if a second World War had to be fought, should have been between the Western Christian nations, including of course Germany, and our real enemy, the genocidal Stalin dictatorship that had committed the greatest mass murder of all time in the extermination of up to 30 million of its own Christian citizens - an event of truly "unparalled evil", to quote your reference to the Holocaust.
 
Inexplicably, the Western democracies allied themselves with the despicable tyrant and thereby abandoned any possibility of victory, since the vicious Stalin was not only kept in power but was enabled to extend his cruel dictatorship throughout Eastern and Central Europe, including Poland, whose independence Britain and France had, hypocritically, guaranteed to defend!  An even more disastrous consequence of our failure to keep peace or ally ourselves with Germany was the abandonment by the exhausted British administration of Palestine to the Zionists - a betrayal of the indigenous people and unpardonable desecration of the Christian Holy Land that has created seemingly intractable and extremely ominous problems for World Jewry that never would have arisen, but for the misguided decision to make War on Germany.
 
As for the "terrible burden" you suggest Germans should accept because of their forbears' alleged "crimes", I hope you were simply playing to your Jewish audience. The crimes committed against Germany and Germans, especially women and children, by the Allies, Russian, British and American, outweigh by a very large multiple the crimes allegedly committed by Germany. That War Crimes Trials were not held for Allied offenders reflects nothing beyond the fact that the motivation for the trials was vengeance, not justice nor, least of all, a search for truth.
 
Some years ago I had extensive correspondence with the CBC on these issues in response to their extreme anti-German bias. I shall take the liberty of sending you by fax in due course one or more of my salient letters.
 
With kind regards,
 
Ian Verner Macdonald






--



Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

__._,_.___
Recent Activity:
.

__,_._,___