ISSN 1440-9828
July 2004
No 219

German Unfinished Business – the hedonistic consumer anesthetic is wearing off Fredrick Töben 2 June 2004 Yesterday an Australian court in Perth sentenced to nine years prison a man who pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiring to terrorism, i.e. joining a Muslim terrorist group and threatening to blow up the Israeli embassy in Australia. How convenient for the judiciary that the man – after offering the standard evidence of Muslim conspiratorial claptrap – then pleaded guilty, thereby avoiding a close scrutiny of Australia’s security service, ASIO, and the Federal Police’s role in this matter. During his submission the man claimed his warnings to ASIO of a possible terrorist attack in Australia were ignored. He will now spend a maximum of four and a half years in jail, and then with time already served may be out in under that. Not bad for a self-confessed, aimless and vagrant alcoholic who became abstinent only when he converted to Islam. I extend my sympathy to Mrs Roach who had begun to love him when he converted to Islam. After the sentence was handed down it was good to see prosecutor, judge and justice minister admit that there was a conspiracy operating here – a Muslim conspiracy, a terrorist conspiracy! Interestingly, when I claim that a conspiracy of another nature brought about the 9:11 tragedy in the USA, I hear nothing but howling from those who believe in the Muslim terrorist conspiracy. They are true believers, while those that claim it was not a Muslim terrorist conspiracy – but rather an internal US job used as a pretext to save Israel from extinction - are labelled deniers! This reminds me how much of the 9:11 talk and writings that is flooding the Internet has become a religious matter. The believers in the conspiracy theory – that Arabs/Muslims did it – base their argument on this non-proven premise that Osama bin Laden‘s organisation did it. Like most religious arguments which are based on the premise that there is a God, the Muslim terrorist argument rests on the premise that the cause of, for example, the 9:11 tragedy, is Muslim terrorism. ‘Holocaust’ matters are also based on the premise that ‘it happened’. Critical voices that question the physical authenticity of the 9:11 premise are as yet not silenced through legal prosecution-persecution, as have critical voices of the physical ‘Holocaust’ story. Thanks to the Internet’s free flow of information the official/orthodox version of 9:11 is still open for debate because assertions made about the physical happenings just don’t add up. The same problem is now developing for the upholders of the 9:11 terrorist theory as faced by those who uphold the ‘Holocaust’ theory – how to deflect from a physical analysis of the alleged murder weapon/site. But the 9:11 sceptics are well on the way to becoming potential ‘terrorists’ themselves if they do not conform to the official version of events. Forcing individuals into silence is a show of power, political and legal, which in turn rest on economic power. Then, ultimately, it is a matter of a society’s leaders’ moral and intellectual integrity. Yesterday, also, our Prime Minister stated that as regards the Iraq torture matter he did not know about it and the security forces briefings had misled him about it. If I had the power to effect events, I would then charge our PM with being a dictator and sheet home the blame to him, as was done with Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein who was answerable to all the forms of abuse that occurred under his watch. Our PM escapes the noose by claiming that he was wrongly advised. Poor Adolf Hitler and his generals couldn’t pull that swiftie and blame someone below themselves for things that happened! Empirical-factual evidence in ‘Holocaust’ and 9:11 tragedy Empirical evidence is vital to settling doubts about assertions concerning physical events whose premises are unproven – such as the ‘Holocaust’ and the 9:11 tragedy. I say this with qualifications because it is a criminal matter in Germany, and other countries to doubt any aspects of the ‘Holocaust’. As Mannheim’s public prosecutor, Klein, gleefully stated to me in 1999, ‘The Holocaust is set in concrete and beyond debate – from the lowest to the highest court in Germany’! Anyone writing about these events needs unfettered access to physical evidence, something that was denied the 9:11 sceptics – and is still legally denied to the ‘Holocaust’ sceptics - when the authorities hurriedly removed vital matters before anyone had a chance of forensically analysing the various plane-crash sites. Being a sceptic should not be a criminal matter because absolute knowledge of the physical world is not possible. That is why our knowledge of the physical world is forever growing. It is different with knowledge that we create within our mind - that’s absolute in a way! Hence an open enquiry needs to have an element of doubt if we wish to achieve some approximate or relative certainty on physical matters. And the worry with 9:11 is that dissenting voices have been marginalized and ‘forced’ to conform to the prevailing ‘Arab-Muslim terrorist’ version of events. I need not reiterate what happens to those who refuse to believe in the orthodox ‘Holocaust’ story because the current prime example is Revisionist Ernst Zündel who has been imprison since 5 February 2003 – just because he will not accept the premise that ‘it happened’, and demands physical proof of ‘that it happened’. Still, intelligent and critical voices will never be silenced on any issues – and truth will out, thanks to scientific analysis and thanks to the still free flow of information via the Internet. That’s where an individual will find freedom to think and to speak unhindered, but hopefully in a civilized way about anything at all. Again with Robert Faurisson, for the individual Revisionist the situation looks bleak, but for Revisionism itself the dawning of the day is inevitable. Revisionism After ten years of focusing on matters ‘Holocaust’, after the failed April 2004 Revisionist Conference at Sacramento, and in view of the appalling internal squabbles before and after that non-event, there are now voices joining Professor Robert Faurisson singing a Revisionist swan-song – it’s Götterdämmerung – Twilight of the Gods. Those who opposed the staging of the conference, unfortunately, had nothing to offer in its place, nothing but empty rhetoric dreamt up in personal isolation. I hasten to add that I am not decrying isolationists as such because most worthy intellectual impulses arise in isolation. How does this relate to Revisionism at a movement? Some isolationists have for decades claimed that if a snake is attacking your value system, then you needs to go out and chop off its head in order to guarantee personal survival. Although I understand such comments to mean that this is a call to action, my personal endeavour has always been to resolve disputes through dialogue rather than through us-them confrontation. Perhaps this is because of my having been raised on a farm, and of having spent much time in the Australian bush where any walk could bring me into contact with a snake. There was then never any urgency for me to strike at a fleeing snake because it is at home there – and I had been the invader/visitor. However, when snakes venture to the homestead, and during the setting sun laze about on some footpath that offers them some fleeting warmth before the evening chill sets in, they have to learn that this is not their home and that this home is defended – to the death. It has always amused me to hear my critics claim that our work is irrelevant because we have not posed the ultimate question: Power! Most societies operate a legal system that guarantees social stability and furthers the interests of the political elites. In this respect Australia is no exception, and my various ventures into our law courts attest to that where I have battled undesirable impulses against my person. My Federal Court of Australia gag-order arose out of an uncontested case because I could not find a single legal counsel that was prepared to take on Australia’s powerful Jewish lobby – and I was not fool enough to defend myself because it would have been a no-match situation. How can I compete against a Queens Counsel who has all the necessary legal arguments at his finger tips? And a judge, in order to hand down a ‘safe’ judgment, will take into consideration only the legal arguments, even if the matters of fact canvassed by myself held sway over him for a moment. The gag-order under which I have operated since 2003 indicates how powerless I am against the Australian Jewish lobby. It is much the same in Germany where the current ‘political occupying power’ has control of the judiciary. More of that below. So, here is my brief thought about power: German Pain – Jewish Power Jewish Pain – German Power Creating this German-Jewish dialectic process has some individuals battling to bring about a synthesis whereby Germans and Jews become harmoniously intertwined. Unfortunately this cannot be because certainly from the Jewish perspective it is highly undesirable to lose the Jewish exclusivist identity, and non-Jews are there to be subjugated. The cultural divide is also too great because German culture and German spirit would find itself stifled and reduced somewhat by Jewish thought and culture. The German free spirit cannot thrive within the Jewish-imposed mental dictatorship. The dialectic also raises the conflict between nomadic and sedentary forms of society, between nationalism and internationalism, between separation and integration, and how it is expressed in religious thought, and much more. Horst Mahler’s current endeavours in a Berlin court aims to liberate the Germans from this dialectic process that has been imposed upon them. Hence Mahler’s exclamations that his work in court is for those Germans who still want to be Germans. His aim is to create the German Volksgemeinschaft as a national unity where a monarchical system operates, rather than a republican-democratic-multicultural system. The latter is open to abuse because the concept of responsibility resides with behind-the-scene political lobby groups and not with members of a local community. He sees this as the only alternative to the current state Germans find themselves in - an occupation government imposed by the Anglo-American-Zionist allies on Germans since 1945, after the Third Reich’s representatives accepted an unconditional ceasefire. We are currently witnessing another occupation by the Anglo-American-Zionist Forces (AAZF) – of Iraq, and this is proving more difficult than was the occupation of Germany sixty-odd years ago. Also, the Iraqis are not falling for that freedom and democracy thing because they must know that the AAZF form of democracy means military occupation and economic-predatory capitalist exploitation, something that still persists in Germany, Japan, South Korea, et al. Unlike Iraq at the moment, Germany’s unconditional surrender and total subjugation of German life through a massive re-education program, did bear fruit. Germans are so vile to their own culture and to their dead – self-hating Germans! - that a fundamental characteristic of any healthy society has been abandoned: honouring the memory of their dead and fallen soldiers, and of remembering the injustices perpetrated upon their women by the occupying forces at the end of the war. Instead, anything non-German is celebrated as superior, and German history is distorted by a constant emphasis on uncontested ‘Holocaust’ mythology. If moves are seen to be afoot to challenge this ‘Holocaust’ straightjacket in Germany, they are quickly nipped in the bud, and this happens at all levels of German society where the spectre of evil Nazism is used to castrate Germans who want to be Germans. The following item illustrates this well: Protesters try to halt modern art show over owner's link to Nazi war criminal Mercedes heir vows to go ahead with plan to exhibit his collection By Ruth Elkins in Berlin The Independent 30 May 2004 One of the key moral dilemmas left over from the Third Reich has been flushed to the surface by a fierce row over a forthcoming exhibition in Berlin of a huge contemporary art collection owned by the grandson of a convicted Nazi war criminal. The collector in question is Friedrich Christian Flick - or the multimillionaire Mercedes-heir "Mick" as he's known in society circles from Chelsea to Gstaad. At the centre of the dispute are plans to put on show some 2,500 works of modern art, ranging from Duchamp, Mondrian and Giacometti to more contemporary names such as Bruce Naumann, Martin Kippenberger and Paul McCarthy. Never before shown in its entirety, the collection of painting, sculpture, installations and photography is being billed as "one of the most exciting collections of contemporary art in the world". Mr Flick must be bracing himself for controversy every time he tries to show the works in public. Munich and Dresden have already turned down plans for an exhibition after widespread protests. A similar outcry led to its rejection in Zurich - along with a museum he proposed building to house the works designed by architect Rem Koolhaas. The reason is that his grandfather, Friedrich Flick, made his fortune as one of the Nazi regime's largest arms manufacturers and was jailed at Nuremberg for, among other offences, using some 40,000 German and East European slave labourers in his factories. Accusations have been flying back and forth all month. Salomon Korn, of Germany's Central Council of Jews, said: "This amounts to a moral whitewashing of blood money." He said it would be like showing the "Göring Collection": the head of Hitler's Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring, raided galleries and private collections across Europe. Looted treasures are still being returned to their rightful owners. Another leading member of the council, Michael Fürst, said that if the exhibition, at Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art, went ahead, it would be an "insufferable provocation to all those who suffered hunger, humiliation and torture in his grandfather's business". The Flick Industrial empire, with stakes in Daimler-Benz among other businesses from chemicals and construction to insurance, lost much of its assets after the war, but was rebuilt by the family. For his part, 59-year-old Mick Flick - whose company refused to pay into a German government compensation fund for families of forced labourers - claims his wealth is separate from that amassed by his grandfather. But, he said, "I have never shied away from what my grandfather did and never sought to relativise his acts". It is not the first time that the post-war Flick generation has struggled for public acceptance. In 1995 his brother Gert Rudolf "Muck" Flick's attempts to set up a history chair at Oxford were rejected after a massive outcry by academics, who said the Flick name would tarnish the university's reputation. Nonetheless, the Berlin exhibition looks likely to go ahead. Mick Flick is to pump some ?7.5m (£5m) into renovating part of the museum, and the exhibition has the support of Gerhard Schröder. "Art is Mr Flick's personal passion," said the state-funded arts organisation, Preussischer Kulturbesitz. "One cannot stigmatise art, and one cannot continually punish grandchildren for acts committed by their forefathers." Indeed, the issue has even split the Jewish community. As Michael Blumenthal, the director of Berlin's celebrated Jewish Museum, told Der Spiegel: "I do not think much of those who make the grandchildren of those with a Nazi past responsible for what their forefathers did." © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=526290 So what’s new as far as matters of German re-assertion is concerned – of German power rather than German pain? The academic rejection of the Flick-endowed chair at Oxford University only happened in 1995, and it indicates how insidious German hatred still is, especially among the wilting academics who are living on a lie. All too often individual academics and publicists will state that Germany still hasn’t come to terms with its past because it does not permit a free and open debate on its ‘Nazi past’. Dr Wilhelm Stäglich in 1983 had his doctorate revoked from the University of Göttingen because he wrote the definitive The Auschwitz Myth. That’s a powerful message to any academic to let that subject go. Some years ago Dr Stäglich advised me that all it needs is a courageous judge to stop the nonsense that passes off as justice when it comes to questioning the ‘Holocaust’. Perhaps Berlin’s Justice Faust, the judge who is hearing the charges against Horst Mahler, will rise to the occasion and exonerate Mahler of all allegations that public prosecutor Krüger has brought against Mahler. Likewise with Justice Adam, the Mannheim judge whose task it is to organize my re-trial, possibly set down for July 2004. Justice Adam is facing a legal dilemma. Although I stated to him, in writing, that I am quite prepared to return to Mannheim for my re-trial, a snare developed. He assigned a lawyer whose task was to defend me in court. I objected to that and asked for Horst Mahler to be my lawyer. Soon after, the Berlin public prosecutor initiated a ‘Berufsverbot’ for Mahler, which was then granted and so Mahler is not permitted to work as a lawyer anymore. On this happening I advised Justice Adam that without Horst Mahler as my defence counsel I now have to re-think my willingness to participate in a re-trial. I also posed a number of questions about the German legal process and how it is different to the Common Law where truth is generally a defence. Add to that the fact that I have legally been barred from entering any European Union country, how am I to get into Germany for the trial. I am still awaiting Justice Adam’s reply. Unzumutbarkeit Meanwhile, on 28 May 2004 I received an email letter from my court-assigned defence counsel, Michael Rosenthal. Therein he states that he has advised Justice Adam of his unwillingness to represent me, and thus he wishes to be relieved of his task as my court-assigned defence counsel. He also states that if this does not happen, then he will adopt the position that my legal counsel Ludwig Bock adopted during my November 1999 Mannheim trial – sit there and remain silent. In 2000 legal counsel Michael Rosenthal agreed to take my case to the appeal stage at Karlsruhe, and he explained in his 27 May 2004 letter to Justice Adam, that the appeal stage concerns itself with legal arguments only, and not with matters of fact. Rosenthal claims that Justice Adam cannot expect him to defend an accused because in any spirited defence legal counsel would have to grapple with the problem of possibly criminalizing himself when it gets to talking about matters of fact. Barrister Ludwig Bock had vigorously defended Günter Deckert before a Mannheim court, and state prosecutor Hans-Heiko Klein immediately threw a writ against Bock for having moved too close to the Revisionist mindset. Bock had to pay a DM9.000 fine! State prosecutor Krüger is doing the same thing to Horst Mahler in Berlin. Every time Mahler elucidates a point wherein he needs to elaborate on matters ‘Holocaust’ Krüger jumps up and warns him that what Mahler is stating in court will attract another charge. Mahler, of course, realizes that Krüger just does not have the mental capacity to understand Mahler’s argument, and this constant interrupting the argument’s flow is not helpful to gain an understanding and advancement of the argument. But that is, of course, Krüger’s intention – to impose his kind of mutated mindset onto the world! Back to my pending case in Germany. Somewhat disturbing is Michael Rosenthal’s comment to the judge about my having rejected him on account of his having Jewish ancestry! This is a nonsense claim, and I wonder why he did this. Before the appeal I had even met a person in Germany who spoke highly of Michael Rosenthal’s capacity as a defence counsel, and so I had no objection for Rosenthal to do the appeal on my behalf. This pulling out the Jewish card is what the quest for power is all about – when it suits – German Pain: Jewish Gain. Ethnic Cleansing of German Territories And now to some interesting material that comes from the Hausner Foundation, 28 Concord Drive, Oak Brook, Il 60523, USA. Email: medical@elmed.com For a number of years I have been following the written and video output of this organisation that primarily concerns itself with post-war Sudetendeutsche concerns, and also of those Germans who were forced to flee from East Germany – not to be confused with Central Germany /Mitteldeutschland, formerly the GDR/DDR. The foundation’s head, Dr Karl Hausner, is not associated with any kind of ‘Holocaust’ revisionism, but rather looks at the issue of historical truth in the following terms: Truth and Wisdom If you are seriously ill, you are advised to consult at least two, preferably three, physicians independently. If you wish to purchase a major piece of equipment, such as an automobile, a house, etc. or want to remodel your home, you should get three estimates. You will be surprised about the difference. If you wish to know historic truth, you must at least consult five different essays on the same subject, preferably produced in different countries and, if possible, one or two must come from neutral sources. Remember, our public schools and the primary media are tools of politics and/or government. History is written by the mighty and cultivated by groups who benefit from it. The above appears on the back cover of the foundation’s 2002 published book This Too Happened Ethnic Cleansing Happened Before Kosovo… One Hundred Witnesses Of Exodus, Expulsions And Deportations By Rudi Maskus The contents of this 152-page book should be compulsory reading for any German public prosecutor who still entertains a sick delight to stifle open debate on what Germans themselves endured during World War Two. I am thinking here of the Horst Mahler case in Berlin where public prosecutor Krüger suffers from deficiency thinking whenever anything German, not viewed through the distortions of the ‘Holocaust’ glasses, comes his way. From memory it was Krüger who conducted the 1999 trial of Ingrid Weckert who faced charges for minimizing the harm done by the National Socialist ‘regime’ during World War Two, and at which I was present. What had she done? Ingrid Weckert had written an article in which she compared the work of two diary writers who had spent time at the Auschwitz concentration camp; one writing positively and the other writing a horror story about time spent there. Prosecutor Krüger asked Ingrid Weckert why she had done this work. Spontaneously I interjected and said that she did this to find out the truth of the matter. I was immediately warned that if I again interrupted the proceedings through such an interjection I would be fined. I asked how high the fine would be. Krüger responded that he would tell me how much – ‘das verrat ich Ihnen nicht’. To that I asked him if he has secrets in this open court – ‘Geheimnisse im Gericht’. Upon that the judge stopped the proceedings and cleared the court and asked me for my name and other matters. I willingly offered this information, but when I asked for his name, the judge refused to give it to me. Subsequently I enquired at the court office where I received the answer. Then, during a break in the proceedings, I was able to approach the judge and address him by his name - and again apologize for that outburst of mine. A couple of weeks later, on 8 April 1999, I had become an inmate of Mannheim prison. The following is a brief selection of the tragic stories that until now have remained untold. Interestingly, all 100 contributors have given their name and current residential addresses: 1. Maria Hesselbarth: Handed Over To Partisans… My homeland was the Banat. I am Donauschwäbin (Germans of Swabian descent along the Danube). Possibly, it has been public knowledge what happened to us in 1944, after the Russians had captured Yugoslavia. It is my homeland, but even at this time, it is impossible for me to completely reiterate the horror we lived through at the end of the war. We could not flee, where could we go? We were helplessly handed over to the Partisans. Our misfortune was the fact that we spoke German! Before World War I, we belonged to Austria-Hungary; afterward our region was divided between Hungary, Rumania and Yugoslavia. When the Russians came after World War II, all of the new Communist countries persecuted the so-called Ethnic Germans. But the worst ones of all were the Partisans, the treacherous criminals who took everything they wanted, letting nothing stand in their way. It was not so much the Russian Army that ravaged through our countryside, but the murderers who came from what is today called Kosovo and the surrounding areas, most of them from Bosnia. Their brutality cannot be recounted! As for myself, I was deported in 1944 to Russia, not alone, but with thousands of others. Ethnic Germans from Hungary, Rumania and Eastern Germany. There were 2,000 prisoners in a camp at Kriwoi Rog; half of them perished from starvation. None of them were even given a decent burial. Why should they be buried? They were only Ethnic Germans! No one speaks publicly about them. On the contrary! It is deliberately silenced about what happened to us! The deported German civilian prisoners were mostly between the ages of 16 and 30. I was 23 years of age at the time. In the middle of winter, we were transported inc cattle cars through Poland to Russia. We were held prisoners in buildings without windows or beds. We heard nothing about the families we had to leave behind. We were totally cut off from our homeland and civilization. Until the end of 1947, we had to perform inhuman slave labour on construction sites and saw mills. Even then, we were not allowed to go home. The Communist dictator, Tito, would not let us return to our homes. Rather, we were shipped to the Communist Eastern Zone of Germany where we were not welcomes, because all of us were in terrible physical and mental condition, sick and emaciated. I suffered from tuberculosis, along with other ailments…Only recently someone in the local newspaper, the Wiesbadener Kurier called all the Germans who were forced into slave labor, to apply for restitution. Unfortunately, we do not know to whom we can direct our application. Hardly to the Russians! Maybe we can apply to the present Government. But it would make no sense! To get attention one would have to be a foreign individual, not a German or an Ethnic German! Our rightful concerns do not find an ear in our government. They pretend to be deaf. Anyone who would stand up for the rights of German slave labors would deserve our gratitude! (Now: Faaker Strasse 11, D-65187 Wiesbaden, Germany) 2. Hildegard Fiedler: Brutal Rapes… Forests and lakes surrounded my home village of Mertenheim, County Lötzen in East Prussia. My mother, my brother (18 months) and I (18), had fled from the Russians on January 23, 1945. It was bitter cold, and we waited many hours for the train. It never came. We walked back home and fed out pigs and chickens. When we suddenly heard a freight train stopping at the depot, we grabbed a few meager belongings, ran across the fields and boarded the train. Many refugees and a few soldiers were on the train. We departed, but had to stop very often on the open fields. We proceeded extremely slowly. It took us eight days until we came close to Heilsberg, about 50 kilometers from our village. We were stranded again on an open field and were told: ‘Save yourselves if you can, the Russians are here!’ The children began to cry, and all of us were panic-stricken. In a village, about one kilometer away, we found shelter in a house. We slept in one room on the floor with 20 other refugees. A short time later, it seemed to us that the whole village was burning. I looked briefly through the window, and was hit by grenade splinters on my head and chest. I fell down, unconscious. One of the women made a makeshift bandage. Towards evening, the first Russians entered the house. They did not harm us,, but the next day they were cruel and horrible. The women had to endure brutal rapes, often accompanied by ceaseless clubbing with the butts of their guns, until they were unconscious. Their clothes were slit open from top to bottom. No amount of crying or begging helped! It went on day and night… (Now: Marktstrasse 14, D-06686 Lützen, Germany) 3. Vera Heger-Glatz: March Of Death Through Prague … The fortress of Breslau was already in Russian hands on May 6, 1945, when we got an official order to bring the women, children and old people to a safe place. My mother, along with us three sisters (16, 14 and 12), lived in Habelschwerdt in Grafschaft Glatz. Even before we began our exodus, our mother tried to explain to us the horrifying effects of possible rapes. An evacuation route through the Sudetenland was still accessible at the time, but it became our misfortune. Prior to our arrival in the city of Prague, we got a message, ‘You will be sent back home.’ But soon many of the Czechs stood along both sides of the road, spitting and cursing at us. They threw stones at us, and we were beaten and chased. The closer we came to the city, the worse it got. A little German boy sat crying on the side of the street, calling for his mother. While I watched, a Czech walked up to him with a few rude words, and then shot him dead. A forest ranger walking ahead of us carried his dachshund. His pet was ripped from his arm and the dog was beaten to death before his eyes. We ran for our lives, and threw away our last bundles to run faster. The Czechs had plundered most of our belongings earlier on. We saw many desperate Germans vaulting across the railings into the river. Mother and I still tried hard to keep our family together. .. (Now: Elbuferstrasse 41, D- 21436 Marschacht 1) 4. Liselotte Meyer: Free To Plunder The first news of the approaching Soviet tanks came to Köslin in Hinterpommern on March 1, 1945. Since we had not received an order to evacuate, we were surprised while we were at work. A few of our fellow townsmen fled, but returned later on, often without their baggage because the war front had come threateningly close. Some of them had to leave relatives behind because they could no longer walk. We never heard of their fate. Many children died during these ordeals, and had to be buried along the route. On March 4, 1945, we saw the first Russians, after we had hidden in a room in a cellar below the workshop of a locksmith shop. A few of the Russian officers tried to rape a 12-year old girl, but her mother was able to escape with her and her deaf son. Unfortunately, near our hideout, a boy fell into a mill brook and began to shriek terribly, and they were re-captured. Not satisfied with them, two other women were taken along and raped by the Russians. Another 12-year old girl escaped while her mother struggled valiantly against a Russian, suffering a severe beating with the butt of his machine gun. We no longer felt safe in our hideout and returned to our small apartment, sheltering four other women with us. At night we slept fully clothed, eight people in two beds and one cot. During the daytime, the Russians constantly molested us… (Now: Hoheluft 1, D- 24768 Rendsburg, Germany) 5. Anna Bank: Miscarriage After Rape… A short time before the Russians invaded our village, we were ordered to flee to Danzig. An East Prussian woman, who sought shelter with is, was hit and killed by enemy fire. The Russian troops came in late afternoon. Another woman and her daughter, who had fled from Küssow in fear of the Russians, were also staying with us. They became terrified and crawled under the bed, where they stayed all night. The rapes began right away! Very few females escaped. Our 13-year old daughter and a 12-year old girl from Küssow dressed in men’s clothes and shoved their hair under a cap. It saved them from the brutish Russians. It was a different story for my sister-in-law from Lauenburg, who had found asylum with her three children in our home. The women, who tried to defend themselves, were shot to death. Everything was stolen, without any consideration for our basic needs. The Russians loaded all of our food supplies on a wagon and carried them away. At that time, 21 people lived in our house. When things seemed to quiet down just a little, a woman from Küssow dared to walk back to look after her close relatives. She learned that her parents and siblings, ten people in all, had drowned in a pond, driven to suicide by the extreme horror and desperation… (Now: Haus#18, S-D23996 Dambeck, Germany)   6. Brigitte K Gabriel: Shot And Killed After Interrogation… I was born in 1930, in Buschwinkel near Schlochau, at the beautiful farm of my ancestors. During the bitter cold winter of 1945, inundated by huge snowstorms, the stream of fleeing people who sought refuge in our house never ceased. On February 22, 1945, just before the Russian Army broke through, we escaped with a horse-drawn vehicle to Klein-Karzenburg, County Rummelsburg. Mr Fedke, the shoemaker from Stretzin, with his wife and two children, came with us. Later, after severe interrogations by a Russian woman commissioner, my father and Mr Fedke were shot to death. The rest of us were plundered and chased into a nearby forest. At that time, a woman was shot and killed right at my feet because she was physically unable to follow a mounted Russian officer. I was able to crawl away and hide in a dense thicket; now I was all by myself. From a nearby knoll, I saw reddish-coloured skies in every direction. The village of Bublitz, Forst, Baldenburg, Karzenburg were all in flames. In my loneliness I did not even feel hunger or frost, just mortal terror deep inside me! It would never quite leave me during my entire life… (Now: 1038 East Vargo Lane, Arlington Heights, Il 60004, USA) 7. Margarete Dimke: Beaten To Death… I was born in 1917 in a village near Breslau. My father owned a small farm, which he was able to expand over several years. It was lots of work for us, but we enjoyed it, and we were happy when everything greened up and bloomed around us. In 1939, the unfortunate war began, and then came January of 1945. The Russian Army stood at the doors of Breslau, and the population of our village fled towards the Grafschaft Glatz, a former earldom. But we all retuned on May 9, 1945, when the war ended. The Poles arrived and began to take possession of our village. We were disowned and became slave laborers for them, without even receiving a zloty for wages. Our German money became invalid. We did not know how to survive. My brother caught sparrows; we cooked nettles and collected wild herbs. I was fortunate enough to get work from the Russians, which helped a little. I got a few zlotys for it and bought a piece of soap. At least we could wash ourselves. My father was dragged into a torture cellar in Breslau and nearly clubbed to death. These torture cellars were in almost every street of our metropolis, and the loud screams of the tormented Germans could be heard on the streets. The butts of firearms thundered on our doors many times, and we were plundered again and again. The German girls fled into the fields to escape the ravages of the rapists… (Now: Johann-Jakob-Rieger-Strasse 6, D-67149, Germany) The current feeding frenzy as to what the AAZF has done in Iraq prisons pales into farce when one reads the brief testimonies of individuals – still alive – who have graphically written first-hand accounts of the horrors that Germans, particularly women and girls, have had to endure as they fled from advancing Soviet soldiers. In the above volume there is no mention of the rapes and abuse suffered by women and girls living in the western sector under French control. A nation that does not protect the honour of its women is destined to disintegrate into a mess of consumer-driven hedonism where money and other material goods defines their mindset without any self-reflection. Such is the shame of the Germans who have succumbed to a mutated perspective of their own self. Rudi Maskus’s book re-kindles moral values lost to those Germans who are riding the consumer bubble like an express train out of control. It is worse when a nation does not honour its fallen soldiers! German Hatred in Australia In Australia we have the public broadcaster giving saturation cover to all things Jewish, and there is not a day when something about the ‘Holocaust’ or some story detailing the anguish experienced by some ‘Holocaust’ survivor is not aired. Never, never has there been a program that details the horrors experienced by Germans. But then I forget, the ‘Holocaust’ is pure German hatred, and thus Germans do not deserve any empathetic understanding because they were the perpetrators and not the victims of any crimes; in fact, if Germans suffered, they deserved it! Slowly, albeit in a perverse way, there are now writers in Germany who are slowly opening the Pandora box of suffering. Here is the advertisement as displayed by the public broadcaster ABC Radio:  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/stories/s1110872.htm Thor Kunkel Is fiction an effective place to challenge cultural blind-spots? Should novelists take responsibility when their works of fiction cause disturbances in the 'real world'? These questions loom large this week on Books & Writing as journalist Zulfikar Abbany examines the controversy surrounding the new novel from German author Thor Kunkel called Endstufe or Final Stage. There has been widespread criticism in Germany of this new book, not only because it suggests the Nazis were involved in a trade in pornographic films, but because it also makes the claim that Germany and the Nazis don't have a monopoly on evil. Moreover, Thor Kunkel says that a failure to recognise evil as a widespread human failing dooms us to repeat terrible acts of the past. That's on Books & Writing with Ramona Koval ...Sunday, 23 May 2004, at 1.05 Sunday afternoon and repeated on Tuesday afternoon at 2.30 ... on Radio National.   John Weir reflects “Personally, I find it bizarre that anyone believes the reality of the extermination of six million Jews can be determined based on the interpretation of the intent of a single German word. If Hitler meant "murder the Jews", then it is all true. If he meant ”breaking their political power" or something other than murder, then it isn't. Isn't this approach backward? There is a line in a Talking Heads song that goes: "Saying it don't make it so." This demonstrates the poverty of the evidence for the Holocaust. Why would anyone need to split hairs over the intent of a single word to determine the character of an historical event? In any event, we are not going to find an answer to this question in a dictionary. I have seen this semantic debate go on for at least 20 years. It is time to move on.”     ----- Original Message ----- From: Ola Misvær Sent: Friday, May 14, 2004 7:58 PM Subject: The real reason for the war against Iraq Dear Sirs: Ala Bashir was the private physician for Saddam Hussein through the last 20 years. Now he has written a book "Saddam's Confident" about his experiences with the leader of Iraq. Most important is the fact that Saddam used his last time in writing books. And the very last one has the title "Out! You are cursed" against the Jews. The MS was ready to be printed in the Ministry of Culture when Bagdad fell. The real reason for the Jewish war against Iraq was the fact that Saddam Hussein and his sons were antisemites. Uday was brave enough to edit a newspaper where the fact that plutocrat Jews are in power in the US was expounded upon. By the way Le Monde International has revealed that Iraq will be a paradise for speculators and liberal capitalism. After all the American soldiers were told that they are fighting for "democracy AND market economy". Moreover, already a year ago the American conquerors stated that all the industries of Iraq might be bought up by foreign capitalists. Sincerely, Ola Misvær About Bashir: http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0304/29/ltm.14.html P.S. The International Red Cross has just pointed out that between 70 and 90 percent of the prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison have been arrested at random and are totally innocent. Therefore even the skimpy "justification" for the torture against the prisoners (that the interrogators thus are able to extract "important information" from the Iraqis) is totally bogus. The war monger Bush and his Jewish advisors ought to be put before an International War Crimes Tribunal!   Secret US jails hold 10,000 The New Zealand Herald 13.05.2004 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3566058&msg=emaillink By ANDREW BUNCOMBE and KIM SENGUPTA WASHINGTON - Almost 10,000 prisoners from President George W. Bush's so-called war on terror are being held around the world in secretive American-run jails and interrogation centres similar to the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison. Some of these detention centres are so sensitive that even the most senior members of the United States Congress have no idea where they are. From Iraq to Afghanistan to Cuba, this American gulag is driven by the pressure to obtain "actionable" intelligence from prisoners captured by US forces. The systematic practice of holding prisoners without access to lawyers or their families, together with a willingness to use "coercive interrogation" techniques, suggests the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib now shocking the world could be widespread. Iraq has become a holding pen for America's prisoners from 21 countries, according to a report from the international campaign group Human Rights Watch. The US military is keeping prisoners at 10 centres, most of which were used by Saddam Hussein's regime. The total in January was 8968, and is thought to have increased. Prisoners are being held from, among other countries, Algeria, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Yemen. A report in the Washington Post has revealed that up to 8000 Iraqi prisoners are being held at Abu Ghraib, the jail west of Baghdad also known as the Baghdad Central Correctional Facility or BCCF, and nine other facilities inside Iraq. It is impossible to know for sure because the Pentagon refuses to provide complete information. Officials say prisoners range from those accused of petty crimes to detainees believed to be involved in attacks on US forces, though it is increasingly clear that many hundreds are simply Iraqi civilians swept up in raids by US and British soldiers. Military and diplomatic sources say a number of detainees were taken to Iraq from Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the US military still holds 300 or more prisoners at Bagram, north of Kabul, and at facilities in Kandahar, Jalalabad and Asadabad. The CIA, meanwhile, runs an interrogation centre in Kabul that is known by special forces and others simply as "The Pit". At Guantanamo Bay, more than 600 prisoners remain incarcerated more than two years after they were captured in the aftermath of the US operation against the Taleban. Last week the US admitted that two guards at the camp had been disciplined for using "excessive force" against prisoners. Michael Ratner, vice-president of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, which has represented many of the Guantanamo prisoners, said yesterday it was clear that a pattern was emerging. "To me it means they are breaching international law as well as domestic law. The treatment is obviously illegal," he said. "It puts what is happening in Iraq into perspective. The idea that just a few soldiers came up with this is inconceivable. It has come from very high up in the Administration." From interviews with relatives and lawyers for the seven US soldiers facing courts-martial for the Abu Ghraib abuse, there is growing evidence that their actions were encouraged and even ordered by Military Intelligence and privately contracted interrogators to "soften up" the prisoners. Major General Geoffrey Miller, formerly the warden at Guantanamo Bay, took control of Abu Ghraib last year with a plan to turn it into a hub of interrogation. He placed the military police under the tactical control of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. The lawyers representing Lynddie England, the 21-year-old woman from the 372nd Military Police Company who was caught in photographs sexually humiliating hooded Iraqi prisoners and leading one by a lead, insisted she was following orders. The pictures were a deliberate part of the humiliation, they said. "People told Pfc England, 'Hold that leash' ... told her to smile, so they can show the photos to subsequent prisoners," said lawyer Carl McGuire. Another member of her legal team, Rose Mary Zapor, said: "They picked her to get the smallest, youngest, lowest-rank woman they could find and that would increase the humiliation for an Iraqi man." This claim is supported by two members the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, assigned to Abu Ghraib, who on their arrival immediately realised what was taking place was illegal. The soldiers said beatings were meted out with the full knowledge of intelligence interrogators, who let military police know which prisoners were co-operating with them and which were not. A leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside body permitted to visit the prison, also confirmed widespread ill-treatment and abuse that the authorities failed to stop. It estimated that up to 90 per cent of the prisoners had been "arrested by mistake". – INDEPENDENT   Atrocities in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government' By Paul Rockwell -- Special to The Bee Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 16, 2004 http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/9316830p-10241546c.html For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp. The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C. When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved. Q: You spent 12 years in the Marines. When were you sent to Iraq? A: I went to Kuwait around Jan. 17. I was in Iraq from the get-go. And I was involved in the initial invasion. Q: What does the public need to know about your experiences as a Marine? A: The cause of the Iraqi revolt against the American occupation. What they need to know is we killed a lot of innocent people. I think at first the Iraqis had the understanding that casualties are a part of war. But over the course of time, the occupation hurt the Iraqis. And I didn't see any humanitarian support. Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines? A: I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident – and there's many more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That's the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn't slow down. So we lit them up. Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns? A: Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: "Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong." That hit me like a ton of bricks. Q: He spoke English? A: Oh, yeah. Q: Baghdad was being bombed. The civilians were trying to get out, right? A: Yes. They received pamphlets, propaganda we dropped on them. It said, "Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons." That's what they were doing, but we were still lighting them up. They weren't in uniform. We never found any weapons. Q: You got to see the bodies and casualties? A: Yeah, firsthand. I helped throw them in a ditch. Q: Over what period did all this take place? A: During the invasion of Baghdad. 'We lit him up pretty good' Q: How many times were you involved in checkpoint "light-ups"? A: Five times. There was [the city of] Rekha. The gentleman was driving a stolen work utility van. He didn't stop. With us being trigger happy, we didn't really give this guy much of a chance. We lit him up pretty good. Then we inspected the back of the van. We found nothing. No explosives. Q: The reports said the cars were loaded with explosives. In all the incidents did you find that to be the case? A: Never. Not once. There were no secondary explosions. As a matter of fact, we lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot. Q: A demonstration? Where? A: On the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound. There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they had no weapons. And when we rolled onto the scene, there was already a tank that was parked on the side of the road. If the Iraqis wanted to do something, they could have blown up the tank. But they didn't. They wereonly holding a demonstration. Down at the end of the road, we saw some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) lined up against the wall. That put us at ease because we thought: "Wow, if they were going to blow us up, they would have done it." Q: Were the protest signs in English or Arabic? A: Both. Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out? A: Higher command. We were told to be on the lookout for the civilians because a lot of the Fedayeen and the Republican Guards had tossed away uniforms and put on civilian clothes and were mounting terrorist attacks on American soldiers. The intelligence reports that were given to us were basically known by every member of the chain of command. The rank structure that was implemented in Iraq by the chain of command was evident to every Marine in Iraq. The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S. government. Q: What kind of firepower was employed? A: M-16s, 50-cal. machine guns. Q: You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken out? A: Oh, yeah. Well, I had a "mercy" on one guy. When we rolled up, he was hiding behind a concrete pillar. I saw him and raised my weapon up, and he put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody, "Don't shoot." Half of his foot was trailing behind him. So he was running with half of his foot cut off. Q: After you lit up the demonstration, how long before the next incident? A: Probably about one or two hours. This is another thing, too. I am so glad I am talking with you, because I suppressed all of this. Q: Well, I appreciate you giving me the information, as hard as it must be to recall the painful details. A: That's all right. It's kind of therapy for me. Because it's something that I had repressed for a long time. Q: And the incident? A: There was an incident with one of the cars. We shot an individual with his hands up. He got out of the car. He was badly shot. We lit him up. I don't know who started shooting first. One of the Marines came running over to where we were and said: "You all just shot a guy with his hands up." Man, I forgot about this. Depleted uranium and cluster bombs Q: You mention machine guns. What can you tell me about cluster bombs, or depleted uranium? A: Depleted uranium. I know what it does. It's basically like leaving plutonium rods around. I'm 32 years old. I have 80 percent of my lung capacity. I ache all the time. I don't feel like a healthy 32-year-old. Q: Were you in the vicinity of of depleted uranium? A: Oh, yeah. It's everywhere. DU is everywhere on the battlefield. If you hit a tank, there's dust. Q: Did you breath any dust? A: Yeah. Q: And if DU is affecting you or our troops, it's impacting Iraqi civilians. A: Oh, yeah. They got a big wasteland problem. Q: Do Marines have any precautions about dealing with DU? A: Not that I know of. Well, if a tank gets hit, crews are detained for a little while to make sure there are no signs or symptoms. American tanks have depleted uranium on the sides, and the projectiles have DU in them. If an enemy vehicle gets hit, the area gets contaminated. Dead rounds are in the ground. The civilian populace is just now starting to learn about it. Hell, I didn't even know about DU until two years ago. You know how I found out about it? I read an article in Rolling Stone magazine. I just started inquiring about it, and I said "Holy s---!" Q: Cluster bombs are also controversial. U.N. commissions have called for a ban. Were you acquainted with cluster bombs? A: I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an ICBM. Q: What's an ICBM? A: A multi-purpose cluster bomb. Q: What happened? A: He stepped on it. We didn't get to training about clusters until about a month before I left. Q: What kind of training? A: They told us what they looked like, and not to step on them. Q: Were you in any areas where they were dropped? A: Oh, yeah. They were everywhere. Q: Dropped from the air? A: From the air as well as artillery. Q: Are they dropped far away from cities, or inside the cities? A: They are used everywhere. Now if you talked to a Marine artillery officer, he would give you the runaround, the politically correct answer. But for an average grunt, they're everywhere. Q: Including inside the towns and cities? A: Yes, if you were going into a city, you knew there were going to be ICBMs. Q: Cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons. They are not precise. They don't injure buildings, or hurt tanks. Only people and living things. There are a lot of undetonated duds and they go off after the battles are over. A: Once the round leaves the tube, the cluster bomb has a mind of its own. There's always human error. I'm going to tell you: The armed forces are in a tight spot over there. It's starting to leak out about the civilian casualties that are taking place. The Iraqis know. I keep hearing reports from my Marine buddies inside that there were 200-something civilians killed in Fallujah. The military is scrambling right now to keep the raps on that. My understanding is Fallujah is just littered with civilian bodies. Embedded reporters Q: How are the embedded reporters responding? A: I had embedded reporters in my unit, not my platoon. One we had was a South African reporter. He was scared s---less. We had an incident where one of them wanted to go home. Q: Why? A: It was when we started going into Baghdad. When he started seeing the civilian casualties, he started wigging out a little bit. It didn't start until we got on the outskirts of Baghdad and started taking civilian casualties. Q: I would like to go back to the first incident, when the survivor asked why did you kill his brother. Was that the incident that pushed you over the edge, as you put it? A: Oh, yeah. Later on I found out that was a typical day. I talked with my commanding officer after the incident. He came up to me and says: "Are you OK?" I said: "No, today is not a good day. We killed a bunch of civilians." He goes: "No, today was a good day." And when he said that, I said "Oh, my goodness, what the hell am I into?" Q: Your feelings changed during the invasion. What was your state of mind before the invasion? A: I was like every other troop. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing. Q: What changed you? A: The civilian casualties taking place. That was what made the difference. That was when I changed. Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated the evidence for war affect the troops? A: Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it. Showdown with superiors Q: I understand that all the incidents – killing civilians at checkpoints, itchy fingers at the rally - weigh on you. What happened with your commanding officers? How did you deal with them? A: There was an incident. It was right after the fall of Baghdad, when we went back down south. On the outskirts of Karbala, we had a morning meeting on the battle plan. I was not in a good mindset. All these things were going through my head - about what we were doing over there. About some of the things my troops were asking. I was holding it all inside. My lieutenant and I got into a conversation. The conversation was striking me wrong. And I lashed out. I looked at him and told him: "You know, I honestly feel that what we're doing is wrong over here. We're committing genocide." He asked me something and I said that with the killing of civilians and the depleted uranium we're leaving over here, we're not going to have to worry about terrorists. He didn't like that. He got up and stormed off. And I knew right then and there that my career was over. I was talking to my commanding officer. Q: What happened then? A: After I talked to the top commander, I was kind of scurried away. I was basically put on house arrest. I didn't talk to other troops. I didn't want to hurt them. I didn't want to jeopardize them. I want to help people. I felt strongly about it. I had to say something. When I was sent back to stateside, I went in front of the sergeant major. He's in charge of 3,500-plus Marines. "Sir," I told him, "I don't want your money. I don't want your benefits. What you did was wrong." It was just a personal conviction with me. I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the U.S. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie.   ----- Original Message ----- From: henry balfour To: Cindyslynnl@aol.com ; caosec@canberra.mfa.gov.il ; Embassy Israeli Sent: Sunday, May 16, 2004 12:49 PM Subject: not quite accurate.... <snip> Only someone who is anti-Semitic constantly refers to Jews as Zionists. <snip> This statement is completely untrue - it should read: "Only someone who is ignorant constantly refers to Jews as Zionists." The failure here is in the differentiation between Jews and Zionists - they are not the same. Jews are a people born to or choosing the Jewish faith, who may live in Israel or may live in any other country of the world. They may be genetically linked to ancient Hebrew bloodlines, or they may be converts from any other genetic stock. They may be Orthodox (as in strictly observant of Judaic religious practices) or they may be secular Jews ( as in many of the Sharon government - who are only nominally (politically convenient) Orthodox). Zionists are not necessarily Jews, although the majority surely are. Zionists are proponents, some could claim and justify calling them 'fanatics', for the establishment of a mythical State of Israel in the Middle East called Zion. In the early years this fanaticism was entirely religious in nature, and still had some ethics and honour: i.e. even the leadership were able to distinguish acts of evil when they were carried out, but they justified these acts as necessary to the founding of the State of Zion. <snip> "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?" - David Ben Gurion, the founding Prime Minister of Israel. <snip> In the recent past there has been a swing to fanatical fascism in Israeli affairs, and this is the root of the soubriquet "Zionist" as a pejorative. When you complain that all references to "zionists" are anti-Semitic you are mistaken. Many Jews, both inside Israel and in the rest of the world, are committed anti-Zionists, and they are shamed and angry by the way Zionists have hijacked the Jewish religion in the cause of their fascism. It is an irony of the use of the term "anti-Semite" that Arabs of the Middle East are themselves Semites in many cases, and could therefore fall on either side of the insult - as can Zionists - who themselves can frequently be termed 'anti-Semite' for hating Arabs. One of the nastiest Zionists habits I can cite, is their willingness to vilify people of their own race with the term "Self-Hating Jew" - once you sit and think about this for a few minutes you can clearly see how psychotically disturbed Zionists really are. Clearly we cannot use the term anti-Semite anymore as the semantic and cultural meanings are just not understood by the majority of people. I constantly refer to "Zionists" (when I am dealing *with* Zionists). There is usually no ambiguity between the terms "Jew" and "Zionist"... it is only a question of the individuals politics that make the distinction. I despise Zionists for their theft of the ancient honour of the Jews, for the manipulation of the Jewish world community for political ends, for their descent into a fascism every bit as nasty as the fascists in Germany who they claim to be opposing.... On the other hand, I enjoy and appreciate the cultural and academic benefits which World Jewry has gifted this world. Individuals are good and bad, but racial groups cannot be so easily defined this way.... Jews have 'tendencies' just like any other 'race' - some of these tendencies are fabulous, some are not. I, and I hope you, are mature enough to know and live with this ambiguity...... As we ourselves have the same type of strengths and weaknesses we can hardly be justified in vilifying other groups, can we? Zionism, however, is not a racial grouping, it is a political grouping - and as we know, political groupings very often can be seen to be evil, or dangerous, or depraved. Zionism is bordering on all of these adjectives. I strongly resent and oppose Zionism, but I am not an "anti-Semite (and I don't recognise this definition anyway) Sincerely, Henry Balfour (yes, it is 'that' family.) Sydney, Australia p.s. Why is it that most e-mail written by the average American is littered with grammar and spelling errors? Do they not have spell checkers in Microsoft products over there? A White Holocaust in South Africa? http://www.stopboergenocide.com   ----- Original Message -----From: Alain J To: Adelaide Institute Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 3:56 PM Subject: Responding to: "Outcomes-based" teaching cf "Syllabus-based", etc. ----- Original Message -----From: "Peter Myers" myers@cyberone.com.au Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2004 8:13 AM Subject: "Outcomes-based" teaching cf "Syllabus-based"   Peter: The New Left imposes "Outcomes-based" teaching methods, in which school teachers are required to prepare a lesson-plan for each lesson, showing what students will learn in it. These goals are the "Outcomes". Alain: I taught at high school level back in the days when every classroom in the State of Victoria (Australia) was meant to go through the same bit of the course, using the same pages of the textbook(s), at pretty much the same pace. Even then, we had to do lesson plans as part of our teacher training. A good thing, too! Those teachers who continued to use lesson plans tended to continue to engage the students. The lazy teachers effectively allowed the textbooks - which were often appalling - to usurp their own classroom role as educators. Peter: The old method used in schools was "Syllabus-based", in which the course was based on one or more textbooks, and there was no need for teachers to prepare lesson-plans because the textbooks contained the material anyway; this method is still used in the universities. Since each student had a textbook, students could catch up or go ahead on their own. Alain: Of course this method isn't "still used in universities" - well, at least not in proper universities in Australia. There is a reading list provided to students (usually much more than "one or more textbooks"), and these texts are then discussed in lectures, tutorials and seminars. Sometimes totally conflicting views are presented through the reading list, and the task of the academic is to guide the students in coming to their own independent assessments of the value of the source material. It is a sad fact that some academics hide behind this process in order to promote their own views. (I could give names and addresses!) But it is also true that some of them are objective and stick to their aims of "drawing out" the students' understanding, which is the notion at the heart of "education" - Latin "educare". (Again, I could give names and addresses.) There will always be the odd bad egg in any workforce. But if the stated goal of education is to enable students to think for themselves, most educators will at least pay lip-service to this goal. On the other hand, if the purpose is simply to cover a particular textbook, that is a recipe for group-think. Peter: It's a no-brainer. The standards in Syllabus-based teaching are much higher; Alain: No, they're much lower in the form of teaching envisaged by Peter. A teacher who uses rational curriculum planning, with some way of assessing how far the students have progressed, is always going to be on his/her toes. Someone who just follows the prescribed textbook has abdicated the role of teacher and is just a functionary of the system - effectively an underpaid propagandist. Peter: it's easier for the teacher; Alain: The teacher should be the servant and custodian of the children in his/her intellectual charge. I doubt that any serious parent cares about what's "easier for the teacher"! Peter: and there isn't the same imposition of political correctness on the student. Alain: But to make kids follow some textbook imposed on the educational system by a government that pays teachers' salaries is a guaranteed recipe for imposing political correctness. The alternative is to encourage the kids to become bold free-thinkers who understand logic and who can evaluate the evidence for themselves. Peter: The older way used whole-class methods, whereas the new way splits up the class into encounter groups of 5 or 6 which are supposed to reach consensus decisions on topics, and then report back to the class as a whole. Alain: Another good thing! Instead of treating all the kids in the class as being more or less identical and interchangeable, and therefore using "lock-step" pedagogy, the intelligent and responsible teacher will try to use whatever method helps all the individual students to learn to think and evaluate and decide for themselves. They all have different abilities, and also different levels of ability, and the genuine teacher's challenge is to unlock the potential in every white kid. Peter: This is a "bottom-up" method, reversing the "teacher-directed" method of the old way, just as in China's Cultural Revolution the students gave political instruction to their former teachers. Alain: Rubbish! The attempt to genuinely educate students or pupils (meaning to draw them out) is always "teacher-directed". The Chinese "Cultural Revolution" was the result of vile propaganda imposed on the peasant students by the Communist central government. And the cadres didn't usually give "political instruction to their former teachers" - mostly, they just killed them! Peter: But this method imposes pressures to conform to the majority view among the students. It stifles the independent scholar. Alain: This statement couldn't be more wrong-headed. Either we educate white kids, making them independent thinkers; or we subject them to the tyranny of the "sacred" text. In East Germany the old litany may have been something like: "Glorious Marx wrote this book. Read it and digest it." In China it may have been: "Blessed and beloved comrade Chairman Mao wrote this book. Etc". In America it might have been: "Susan Sonntag wrote this revelation from heaven. Etc". In Canada it might be: "Some Jew wrote a book claiming that millions of his family were killed by Germans. Etc." In Australia under the previous government it would have been: "Professor Manning Clark and Dr Henry Reynolds wrote these books about how ashamed we should be for being White Australians. Read them and digest them - and feel guilty for the rest of your lives!" Peter: The East Asian countries use the old methods we in the West have thrown away. Alain: I hope so. Those methods are a recipe for destroying the intellectual capital of the next generation.