ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                                     July
2008                                      
                                                                    No 397  

Fredrick Töben: Looking for a Barrister – and the Captain Cook Salute!

On 11 June 2008, during my first directions hearing before new judge, Justice Lander, at the FCA Adelaide, in an oral court order, His Honour advised me that I would not be permitted to call Justice Alan Goldberg. I needed this man because in 1984 he wrote a letter to former State Minister of Education, Mrs Joyce Steele, warning her in no uncertain terms to withdraw her endorsement of Mr John Bennett’s publication, Your Rights. His use of the terms 'neo-Nazi',  ‘Nazi Holocaust’ and ‘anti-Semitic racism’ is interesting because any clear definition of these terms is, of course, rejected by those who use them.

This act is indicative of the politics that flows into anything Jewish, especially anything to do with the Jewish Holocaust-Shoah and the Zionist State of Israel.  

That the whole matter is brought into court through the application of the Racial Discrimination Act - RDA - is itself a political act. Nothing more illustrates this fact than the fact that in August 2007 the government suspended the RDA in order to enable the Commonwealth Government to intervene in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities with programs designed to improve their wretched physical and mental wellbeing.

Further, court-appointed Barrister Larissa Detmold felt I had rejected her when prior to this hearing I stated to her in a letter that I would expect her to accept my non-compromising stance on this matter which her predecessor felt no judge, in this case Justice Michael Moore, would wish concede: haul a brother-judge before the court.

Justice Alan Goldberg has thus gained legal protection, and that is sad because he would have been an ideal witness to give evidence on my behalf, in presenting the political dimension of this whole matter that began not in December 2006 when Mr Jones took out the Notice of Motion against me, nor on 17 September 2002 when Justice Branson handed down her Court Order, but in 1996 when Mr Jones, acting on the promptings of Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Los Angeles, he began the action before the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

The problem I face is finding a barrister who fearlessly will defend me before Justice Lander. For this purpose I began a brief trip to make contact with supporters in an effort to find a barrister who would, pro bono, take on the job of mounting an effective defence. Soon after the directions Peter Hartung of Australia Free Press saw me off at Adelaide Airport.

Needless to say I did not find any barrister who would pro-bono do the legal work necessary for mounting an effective defence. That there is also general supporter financial fatigue indicates that this somewhat final battle will not be a fair one. Never mind – afterwards I can then blame those that bend to Jewish pressure.

My first stop:

1. Canberra

A brief visit to Parliament House indicated to me that there is no hidden tunneling beneath the structure, as per rumour of the 1980s.

While in Canberra I also attended some of the sessions of the 11-12 June 2008 conference on Climate Change held at the Australian National University. Essentially this attending group of self-styled ‘scientists and humanists’ is scathing and quite un-scientific about anyone who refuses to believe in the climate change theory. The term ‘climate change deniers’ was liberally used – to the point where it was painfully obvious to me that these ‘ true believers’ are not behaving like scientists ought to but just like ‘Holocaust-Shoah’ believers who fall apart when they meet Revisionists who refuse to believe in the Jewish Holocaust-Shoah.

2. Brisbane:

For some time now I wished to re-connect to Mr Glen Ivory who, for whatever reason, disappeared from the Revisionist scene sometime during the early 2000. Glenn was one of our first supporters who donated $1,000,- with which we were able to acquire our first computer for Adelaide Institute – that was sometime during 1995.

Now Glenn has drawn our attention to a unique exhibit in the Brisbane Museum: an original World War One German tank called ‘Mephisto’.

 

Who knew that Germans had tanks in World War One? I didn't!

3. Cairns:

Here the wild-north of Australia begins in earnest, meaning that anyone who lives in this region of Australia needs to have a lot of inner resources to sustain themselves in order to survive the stresses and strains that climate, among other things, imposes upon residents.  

An imposing Captain Cook gives a worthy salute to Cairns residents, but Cooktown, where he came ashore after his ship hit a reef, is about a four-hours drive from Cairns.  

 

4. Cooktown:

The four-hour drive from Cairns to Cooktown passed quickly on account of good conversation and scenery that varied from tropical rainforest to savannah on the Atherton Tablelands. We passed by Dimboolah, where Revisionist Colleen Kirney lived for a number of years before moving on a little to Home Hill.

L-R: Half way between Cairns and Cooktown. Driving through Black Mountain – Kalkajaka – National Park. Although the rocks look black they are grey because a film of lichens grows on the exposed surface.

Together with long-time Adelaide Institute correspondent John Bird on the lookout hill where Captain Cook is celebrated. John still saw active service in World War Two, which about a dozen war medals confirm. After war’s end he spent most of his time in Papua where he raised two families before moving to Cooktown about 25 years ago. He is a fountain of knowledge about Papua, New Guinea and Irian Jaia, especially the time before/during/after independence.

L-R: Cooktown’s original lighthouse made of corrugated iron sheets; The Centennial Monument to Captain James Cook coming ashore to make repairs to his ship, Endeavour.  

5. Ayers Rock/Uluru

From Cairns, Queensland, via Ayers Rock/Uluru, Northern Territory, to Perth, Western Australia - a two-hour delay on account of a computer failing at a critical moment before take-off, and there’s a weekend before the Qantas engineers are going on a rolling strike next week. The flight-time without delays? - about 5 hours+.

Here we are approaching the geological heart/centre of the Australian continent, Ayers Rock-Uluru …

 

...the Olgas, top right, runway lower-left; 

left-turn ready for landing on that runway ahead, above right…

almost at ground level just before touch-down

 that’s Ayers Rock/Uluru Airport

…and after a brief stop it’s off again to continue the flight to Perth, Western Australia

 

6. Perth:

The heartland of the Wild West where men and women can really earn lots of money and therewith pay off their mortgages within a matter of years instead of decades. Where is the money? In the mining industry. All sorts of labour is needed. For example, those with managerial skills can earn up to half a million dollars a year – but you have to pass the test of suitability, of being a team-player - and that’s done by employment agencies who soon discover if your character lends itself to trouble-free periods of work. Many middle management government employees from all sectors have taken off into the bush or on to the rigs on the high seas. A few years of this weeks on-weeks off type of work soon fills the bank account, that is, if you do not squander the money on pleasurable pursuits. Some individuals retire just after 50 years of age worth a comfortable few millions. If interested, make contact with the employment agency Skilled Engineering.

A new rail service links Perth with the southern coastal towns up to Mandurah – and it’s cheap for Senior Citizens!

The new and the old - glittering glass structures of the modern mineral boom starkly contrast with old mining money architecture that at the turn of the 19th century made Perth and its mineral wealth especially at Kalgoorlie-Coolgardie a focal point of world trade.


In Perth there also lives 86-year-old Charles Zentai whom that despicable hate-filled and intellectually dishonest Dr Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem has branded a war criminal – and it looks as if Australia is bending to Jewish pressure in August when a magistrate will have to decide if the Hungarian extradition request should be complied with.

Accused 'Nazi' denied legal aid

Paige Taylor, The Australian, June 14, 2008

ACCUSED Nazi-era war criminal Charles Zentai has been refused legal aid for a historic extradition hearing and is closer than ever to losing his home over mounting legal costs.

Mr Zentai's lawyers learned yesterday that the pensioner must pay for his own lawyer at the three-day hearing in the Perth Magistrates Court from August 18-20. Commonwealth prosecutors will argue at that hearing on behalf of Hungary that Mr Zentai should be sent to Budapest to face trial for the 1944 murder of Jewish teenager Peter Balazs, who was caught living in the city on false papers.

Mr Zentai's only asset is a modest home unit, and in April costs estimated to be more than $200,000 were awarded against him by the High Court. The retired mental health nurse cannot afford to pay those costs.

He has less than $40,000 after spending more than $100,000 on lawyers for the action, which was a technical challenge to the authority of magistrates to preside over his extradition hearing. He lost, and could become the first accused war criminal to be extradited from Australia.

If the 86-year-old is ordered to be extradited, he also intends to appeal that decision and will lobby Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus, who has the power to cancel any extradition on grounds including ill health and advanced age.

Mr Zentai admits taking part in patrols as a 23-year-old warrant officer in the Hitler-aligned Hungarian army in 1944, but denies he was the one who plucked 18-year-old Balazs from a tram and took him to the Arena Utca barracks.

He also denies taking part in the fatal beating of Balazs, after which the body of the young resistance-movement member was covered with hay and taken by horse and cart to the Danube River, where it was weighted and thrown in.

After the war, Mr Zentai's fellow soldiers Bela Mader and Lajor Nagy were convicted in the Budapest People's Court for their part in the murder.

He was implicated by six witnesses at Nagy's 1947 trial but had already left Hungary for Germany, where he worked as a driver and farmhand. An extradition request sent to US officials in Germany in 1948 came to nothing and in 1950 Mr Zentai, his young bride Rose and their baby Tomas sailed to Australia as refugees.

Efraim Zuroff, of the Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said it was understandable that people would develop sympathy for an elderly man who had led a good life in Australia for almost 60 years. "But ... it's essential to remember the victim was a teenager who had his whole life ahead of him," Dr Zuroff said.

Fredrick Töben comments:

Obsessive hate-monger and blood-hound Dr Efraim Zuroff closer to victory! I, too, was refused Legal Aid when in 1996 the action Jeremy Jones v Fredrick Töben began in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission began in 1996 – and since then have had to rely on supporters funding a limited legal response. The Australian Director of Public Prosecutor’s office is under Jewish influence  and the “fear of the Jews” is great - So, what’s new?


At Perth Airport

A meeting at Perth Airport – a former student of mine from Que Que, Rhodesia 1977 – it’s a small world!

 

Qantas Jumbo Business Class stairways to heaven and some creature comforts for just a handful of travellers while below it was packed full without any spare seats. Owing to a strong Westerly wind, it was only a two-and-a-half hour flight from Perth to Melbourne, while the aircraft’s earlier Sydney-Perth flight took just under five hours. - and how is all this paid for? Frequent Flyers makes it possible!

______________________________________________________ 

Fredrick Töben reviews:

James O’Brien: Hoover’s Millions and how He Made Them

Hesperian Press 2005 ISBN 085905 340 7, Victoria Park 6979, Western Australia

www.hesperianpress.com, books@hesperianpress.com 

Mention the name Hoover and you may think of a vacuum cleaner or of J Edgar Hoover the homosexual head of the FBI who, among others, viciously prosecuted/persecuted homosexuals, or you may recall Herbert C Hoover who was the President of the USA.

In the above biography, first published in 1932, then suppressed, and now re-published by a Western Australian boutique publisher, Hesperian Press – which specialises in specific Western Australian history – author James O’Brien attempts to set the record straight on the person who was US president from 1928 to 1932. The author’s Foreword sets the tone of the enterprise that promises to bring some balance into the public image of Herbert Hoover:  

“ Herbert Hoover’s history shows that he is both morally and legally unfit to hold the great office of president of our country. Morally, because he has never been engaged in any honest business, profession, or vocation during his long life. Legally, because he obtained the great office of president by fraud and deceit by hiding his past record; and fraud of the worst kind because the men who had been sending forth propaganda as to his great ability as an engineer, his great business record, his great work in the Belgium relief had been hired by himself to put out this fictitious propaganda which this book shows is all fraud. And a title obtained to anything whether goods, lands or office by fraud and deceit is null and void in Law and Equity.”

It is evident that O’Brien attempts to set a high moral standard, and in order to be balanced in his work he even communicated with a Hoover supporter, Senator Borah, US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and informed Borah about his critical re-appraisal of Hoover’s character. In a letter dated July 29, 1929 from Senator Borah to O’Brien we read:

“I am in receipt of your letter under date of July 26th. As I gather from your letter, you have some facts which you deem of much importance and I gather also from your letter you propose to make these facts public. I think if you have the facts and you deem them important to the public, you are doing your duty in making them public. Very respectfully, WM. E. BORAH.

Well, after the Bill Clinton presidency, surely one may say with certainty that nothing would surprise the American people anymore about the ‘moral turpitude’ of their various presidents.  Would any US citizen today blush when reading O’Brien’s 456-page book that deals with the life of one of their pre-World War Two presidents?

If we turn to the final page in this un-indexed book, page 456, then it’s clearly a moral worry that is motivating O’Brien, much as any concerned citizen would and should still nurture when it comes to evaluating the character of their political representatives. It is significant that he uses public record – court case material to tell the story of Hoover’s life.

On this final page O’Brien offers an example of political corruption/censorship, which enables us to understand why in the ‘free and democratic western world’ and elsewhere the political climate has become so pervasively cynical, even nihilistic, and where consumerism/hedonism offers an easy way out of  what essentially is a celebration of immorality/self-destruction:

The New York Herald, January 14, 1932.

“BELGIUM REGRETS ITEMS ABOUT U.S. IN PRESS”, attack on Mr Hoover repudiated by foreign office and in a dispatch from Paris the Tribune states:

News from Paris censored.

PARIS, Jan. 13 (UP). – Leon Noel, director of the French Surete Generale (secret police), admitted at a luncheon of the Anglo-American Press Association today that censorship was being exercised over news transmitted from Paris. ‘The censorship machinery established under the old law is enforced,’ he said. ‘not to curb legitimate news, but to control it and prevent distribution of reports which might be harmful to international relations.”

Then these two sentences end O’Brien’s book:

“We see that friend Laval, President of the Council of Ministers of France, must have had a pleasant time when he visited Mr Hoover in Washington a few months ago. He is now suppressing the truth about Mr Hoover.”

Why, you may ask, would a small Australian book publisher bother to re-publish a book of such nature? In his Introduction to the book Peter Bridge says why. He found that George Nash’s 1988 multi-volumed biography of Hoover does not make any reference to O’Brien’s book.

Nor have any of Australia’s ‘court historians’, who have written about Hoover’s business activities in Australia, made mention of Hoover’s role in Western Australian mining history and capital manipulation that brought about the hiring of cheap untrained foreign labour for the mines.

Bridge concludes that:

“Globalists and free traders will denounce the republication of this book. They echo Hoover’s economic policies and his hatred for the Australian worker.”

Bridge also quotes from The Sun, Kalgoorlie, which in 1905 published a telling verse:

“The curse of Bewick-Moreing dark upon the mulga hangs,

They starve the mines, they sweat the men and grease the head serangs,

From Esperance to Murchison is in their vampire grip,

It’s like a trip to foreign parts to do the Outback Trip.”

***

Let’s briefly focus on some of the interesting matters raised in this 28-chapter book, and find out what Hoover was up to in Western Australia.

When on 13 May 1897 Herbert Hoover arrived on the S.S. Victoria at Albany, Western Australia, he “with the other passengers were put in the quarantine shed for 5 days”.

This reminds me of the nonsense written about how Germans are supposed to have treated the people destined for the concentration camps upon their arrival, especially at Auschwitz-Birkenau: Selection at the railway siding/ramp – to the right for death-inducing hard slave labour, and to the left, immediate gassing.

The quarantine station used by Australian authorities in the Sydney area can still be viewed www.adelaideinstitute.org/ , and it resembles that of those found at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other such camps, with large de-fumigation ovens and shower facilities. The procedure to which individuals were subjected to would have been much like that found at Albany and what Herbert Hoover would have had to endure in 1897.

The official version of Hoover’s 18 months stay in Western Australia lists him having discovered and managed the Sons of Gwalia mine. O’Brien states that Hoover “Discovered nothing at all”, but was rather good at writing manipulative-false reports that caused the stock of various mines to rise.

Likewise during his stay in China where Hoover ventured after his employer, Bewick, Moreing & Co, expanded its mineral operations into China. O’Brien details other foreign involvement in the Chinese mineral boom and noted, among others, German and Belgian citizens protecting their mineral concessions. The climate was ripe for “I Ho Ch’wan” – “The Harmony of Fists Society”, i.e. “Boxers”, to drive the ‘foreign devils into the sea’.

It was after this 15 June-15 July 1900 ‘Boxer rebellion’ that Hoover was regarded a hero, something not supported by any documentary evidence: “…whilst in Rasmussen’s History of Tientsin, the name of every man and woman who took part in the defense of Tientsin, except the soldiers and marines, is mentioned; even nursemaids and a Chinese policeman. The name of HOOVER is conspicuous by its absence”.

This factual matter reminds me how until the 1988 second Zündel Toronto Holocaust Trial historians claimed there were two written Hitler Orders that started the extermination process of European Jewry. Under cross-examination, Professor Raul Hilberg had to admit that the two written orders he mentioned in his book, The Destruction of European Jews, did not exist.

But just like in the above Hoover case this lack of documentation has not prevented historians from claiming the extermination was a fact, without an order. The claim is made that the German bureaucrats involved in such a huge enterprise knew what the Führer wanted done, i.e. a wink and a nudge started the process, without leaving any evidence behind!

In London Hoover continued to represent Chinese company interests but his fraudulent dealings and stock manipulations caught up with him, and local Chinese pulled down the British flag and hoisted their own dragon flag. In 1907 on the Stock Exchange the Zinc Corporation was called the ‘Stink Corporation’.

O’Brien puts it thus: “Yes, the shareholders of this mine paid dearly for their belief that this stock huxtering, stock promoting and manipulating firm of Hoover-Moreing and Company knew something about mining engineering and mine management.

And so it continues: In Nigeria with tin mines, in Burma and gold mines, in India, Nicaragua,New Zealand, Klondyke-Canada,    and of course back in Australia-Western Australia-Victoria-New South Wales. Of course, there was also oil in California and Russia.

In the penultimate chapter O’Brien spells it out in clear tables: ‘False Reports made by Hoover on different Mines’.

The final chapter is headed: ‘The Doctor of Sick Mines OR Bringing the Dead to Life’, where the first paragraph spells it out again that Hoover was good at what to this day seems a solid business practice/virtue: manipulating stocks, thereby defrauding gullible investors of their money.

The New York Times, September 30, 1931, says that James F Burke “Pictures Hoover as Doctor At the Side of Sick Business.” The word Doctor has several meanings; “1, to repair – to heal. 2, to alter with a view to deceive. 3, a physician. 4, a Leech. Hence, figuratively, one who draws upon or appropriates or filches the substance or wealth of others.” [Original punctuation retained]

Is this a fitting epitaph for Herbert Hoover, US President from 1928 to 1932?

__________________________

7. Melbourne: My old hunting ground before my personal Al Nakbar in the Orwellian Year of 1984.

I conclude my quick pre-trial fling around Australia in Melbourne attending a conference held at Trinity College, University of Melbourne 30 June – 3 July 2008: From the Middle East to Asia Pacific: Arc of Conflict or Dialogue of Cultures and Religions’? This is the seventh annual conference of Globalisation for the Common Good. An Interfaith Perspective.

The deciding factor of my attending this conference was the fact that a sizeable Iranian contingent also attended, thanks to the Australian Federal Government making this possible by picking up their travelling costs.

I'll keep the reporting on this conference brief -

Here's the Program

Monday 30 June:

 

 

 

___________________________________

"When a man can think of no other way but imprisonment to rid himself of a verbal opponent, it’s because he has no arguments."

Announcement by Vincent Reynouard – June 20, 2008

 On June 19, 2008, section 61 of the Brussels criminal court found Siegfried Verbeke and me guilty of "disputing crimes against humanity", sentencing us to a year’s imprisonment and ordering us to pay 25,000 euros in fines, damages and various costs... Moreover, it ordered the immediate arrest of Siegfried Verbeke and perhaps of myself as well (a friend of ours who attended the hearing says no, but the press reports state the opposite and we haven’t been able to get an answer from the Clerk’s Office). 

Unsurprisingly, the court had rejected all our arguments, notably the one invoking article 150 of the Belgian Constitution to request a trial in the Court of Assizes, thus before a jury.

It’s plain to see that in the last three years anti-revisionist oppression has greatly worsened. The times when revisionist activists received suspended sentences are over: today, apart from the huge fines, actual imprisonment is always decided. I think especially of Sylvia Stolz, Ernst Zündel and Germar Rudolf, heroic people now languishing in German jails.

I think also of Georges Theil in France, of Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, René-Louis Berclaz and Jürgen Graf for Switzerland.

Historical revisionism belongs to no-one. Its findings are the fruit of traditional methods of inquiry where scientific expertise assists in the appraisal of testimonies and in documentary research. They will be obvious to any honest individual, whether on the political left or right, believer or atheist...

But it goes without saying that its implications extend well beyond the historical scope of its outset. The stakes involved, gigantic ones, are political and even theological. If some refuse to see this – because of blindness, cowardice or mistaken strategy – , our adversaries, at their end, have understood quite well. They know that a sudden bursting through of the historical truth about the period 1914-1946 would call into question the world order founded at Nuremberg in 1945-1946.

This is why, in the face of people whom they constantly present as a small sect of cranks denying the obvious, they have special laws passed in Europe and resolutions adopted at the UN. The flagrant discrepancy between their contemptuous talk, on the one hand, and their actions, on the other hand, gives them the lie. To paraphrase the French wartime orator Philippe Henriot, I’ll say: "When a man can think of no other way but imprisonment to rid himself of a verbal opponent, it’s because he has no arguments. When a man is reduced to making up stupid lies, it’s because the truth is against him."

The way ahead, therefore, is all laid out for us: we must continue to repeat the truth, the whole truth, including the truth about what’s at stake in this struggle. Far from being merely a sterile quarrel between devotees of the past cut off from present-day realities, the fight for historical truth is, on the contrary, the continuation, on the intellectual level, of the war whose armed phase ended in 1945 with the defeat of the Axis forces. And it’s clear that this conflict, having begun not on September 3, 1939 but on January 30, 1933, is the modern form of the eternal struggle between Light and Darkness. In the 20th century, National Socialist Germany embodied – doubtless imperfectly but successfully all the same – the very last attempt to return to a well-ordered society, that is, a society respecting the natural order.

This is the reason why, even after the 3rd Reich was completely crushed militarily, the war continued, and has continued up to today. Our opponents in this never-ending fight have a weapon of mass destruction: the alleged "Holocaust". Since 1945, this lie has prevented any dispassionate debate on National Socialism and, more generally, on societies that respect natural order. "We know where that led! ..." is how people constantly respond to those who, against the “Rights of Man” and their natural offspring: the unleashing of all selfish inclinations, dare speak of order, the Common Good, wholesomeness, moral standards, safeguarding the genetic heritage, the birth rate, rights of kinship ...

Against all the cowards with their claims of prudence, concern with efficiency, realism and whatever else; against all the pretentious twits whose lives are nothing but a series of intervals between assorted betrayals, we should repeat Christ’s own teaching: “let your Yes be Yes, and your No be No, for all else comes of evil.” No, the German homicidal gas chambers never existed. Yes, "the Holocaust" is a myth. For my part, I add: yes, Hitler embodied the hope of Europe in the face of the ruinous ideals of 1789; yes, we must take up the best of what National Socialism comprised in order finally to surpass it and forge a doctrine that will be able to save our Old Continent.

Some will condemn my actions for the fact that I have seven children. They are wrong: if I act as I do, it’s first of all for my children, to ensure a better future for them. However, our civilisation will not be saved by any sparing of efforts in the most vital struggles, which are (as is only logical) also the most dangerous, for when engaged they threaten the very worst for the opponent, and so provoke his most violent reactions. But, as Chesnelong said: "When evil is the most daring, good must be the most courageous." 

Vincent Reynouard, father of seven children.  

                                         

Siegfried Verbeke in Brüssel Justice Palace,         Vincent Reynouard – Archive Photo

____________ 

 

Negationismus: ein Jahr Gefängnis für Verbeke und Reynouard

19/06/2008 15:32

Die Brüsseler Strafkammer hat Donnerstag nachmittag Siegfried Verbeke und den Franzosen Vincent Reynouard wegen Negationismus [frz. Wortschöpfung für das Bestreiten des Holocaust] zu einem Jahr Gefängnis ohne Bewährung verurteilt. Die beiden Männer hatten Broschüren, Flugblätter und Pamphlete verteilt, in denen sie den Umfang, ja sogar die Existenz selbst des Holocausts kleinredeten. Die Angeklagten sind bereits früher für ähnliche Straftaten verurteilt worden. Unter anderem wird ihnen auch noch eine Strafzahlung von ca. 25.000 Euro auferlegt. Das Gericht ordnete ihre umgehende Verhaftung. - aus dem Französischen übersetzt von alexandervL@gmx.net , Le Vif ist ein belgisches, französischsprachiges Magazin: http://www.levif.be/belga/generale/78-6-53822/negationnisme--un-an-de-prison-pour-verbeke-et-reynouard.html

__________________________

Irish MEPs' outburst smacks of Euro-loving self-deception

In her next defence of Europe, will Avril Doyle remind the UKIP of 1798? Will Brian Crowley lecture them on Terence MacSwiney?

Do you know, I never, ever thought for a single second in the merry whirligig that has been my journalistic career that I would find myself writing repeatedly about the European Parliament, and moreover, not merely without compulsion, but even loving it! It's a funny old world. Actually, it's a funny old Euro-world.

The truly wonderful thing about professional Europhiles is that they do not register what they're actually saying; nor do they possess any sense of the ridiculous, which of course enables them to say what they say. In their cosmos, wherein all argument must lead down the one path to Rome (or in this case, Lisbon), they permit no counter-argument, also known to European history as "heresy".

On Wednesday, members of the UK Independence Party in the European Parliament donned green t-shirts to congratulate the electorate of Ireland for voting 'No' to Lisbon. Avril Doyle MEP, quivering with indignation, promptly denounced UKIP as a motley collection of Britons. Did she actually hear herself when she thricefold sneered at the national origins of UKIP?

Did she understand the import of her observation about how different Irish history would have been if the British had respected the Irish? And then of course, Brian Crowley threw in his three ha'pworth by declaring that the UKIP were insulting the Irish flag by wearing green.

There we have it. The default position taken by Irish MEPs supporting the Lisbon Treaty, when confronted by British opponents, wasn't to resort to some non-national, multi-ethnic, single, undivided, pan-Europeanism. No, indeed not. Instead, they reverted to a wrap-the-green-flag-around-me, Brit-bashing, self-pitying, lip-quivering hibernianism. Because, you see, this term "European" apparently only applies to Europeans whom Europhiles approve of: however, if they're dissenting Europeans, why, they're not Europeans at all, but from the country of their birth, and are therefore responsible for all its sins. And not merely are they therefore not European, but their accusers (for the moment anyway) cease to be European too, and reverting to their pre-EU national identity, may freely indulge in pre-EU national stereotyping.

So, in her next defence of Europe, if the boys in green turn out to be red, white and blue underneath, are we going to hear Avril Doyle remind UKIP of the "British" atrocities in Wexford in 1798? Is Brian Crowley going to tell everyone about Tomas MacCurtain and Terence MacSwiney? Perhaps they could sing a denunciatory duet about UKIP's part in the Famine or as Black and Tans, though offering a reassurance to Europhile British MEPs that they're all right, because they are good Europeans. And good Europeans believe in the purifying grace that comes from Europhilia, a virtue which applies to all fellow-Europeans, provided they are not Eurosceptics -- for whom no term of abuse is unacceptable. Because, if the Eurosceptics triumph, then we are bound to have another Auschwitz!

Ah yes, Auschwitz, the Calvary of this new religion of Europhilism. The avoidance of more such extermination-camps is a prime theological justification for the EU.

Yet few people -- even the most depraved Eurosceptics -- would assent to the notion that massacres are good things: for we all have our particular horrors to commemorate -- Cromwell at Drogheda, the Sicilian Vespers or the St Bartholomew Day Massacres. And all of these slaughters were considered virtuous by their perpetrators, for they were done in the name of a unifying religion, rather like Europhilism.

However, it is logic and history at their most debased to say that without a united Europe, we will have another Auschwitz: because the Holocaust occurred when, thanks to Mr Hitler, Europe was actually united -- and the Eurosceptics of that time are today hailed as Resistance heroes. Yes, I know it's not like with like, but once you start playing the Auschwitz card, that's what you get. [-emph.added]

As it happens, the new creed of Europhilism didn't even make it through The Last Supper of Lisbon without Irish MEPs reaching for the dessert of nationalist sour grapes and draining the bitter dregs of historical grievance. So maybe, the next time the UKIP hurts their lickle-ickle sensibilities, our MEPs should storm out of the European Parliament, bravely bawling 'Kevin Barry', and 'A Nation Once Again'. Because, unlike the poisonously jingoistic UKIP, they're such very good and tolerant Europeans: Up The Republic!

Listen. This kind of fissiparous, self-pitying, exceptionalism knows no bounds. Once one particular Euro-tribe uses a Euro-forum to remind everyone of the injustices it has endured, then the queue for the grievance-podium begins. Ask the component parts of former Yugoslavia. Ask any European state with a contested boundary or bloody history -- and there are lots. For look! Here come the Germans of Schleswig-Holstein, waving their banners saying that they too are good Europeans, just like the Irish, but the Danes were beastly to them in the 1880s -- can they please be governed from Berlin? Mama Mia! Similar echoes from the Germans of Alsace Lorraine about the French? Gott in Himmel! Likewise from the Tyrol? Mon Dieu! And sooner or later, what self-pitying noises will we hear, once again, from the drumlins of Tyrone and the Fews of South Armagh?

kmyers@independent.ie

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/irish-meps-outburst-smacks-of-euroloving-self.htmlption-1415898.html

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BBC NEWS

Nazi suspect 'ready for justice'

A Croatian man suspected of war crimes for his role during World War II has said he is ready to face justice as his conscience is clear.

Milivoj Asner, now 95, was a senior member of the country's pro-Nazi Ustasha regime during the war.

Campaigners say Mr Asner, who lives in Austria, is the fourth most-wanted living Nazi war crimes suspect.

He told Croatian television that he had ordered the deportation of Jews and Serbs, but not to Croatian death camps.

"I am ready to come to Croatia. My conscience is clear, I could appear before a court tomorrow," Mr Asner said in the interview.

"I am deeply convinced that if the court is just and if judges are honest people, they have to clear me of all charges," he added.

Fragile health

He fled to Klagenfurt, Austria after being tracked down in Croatia in 2005, where he is wanted on suspicion of organising the persecution of Serb, Jewish and Roma people during the war.

"Nothing ever happened to whoever was a loyal citizen of the Croatian state," said the wartime police chief.

"For others, my theory was: You are not a Croat, you hate Croatia, okay, then please go back to you homeland."

The Croatian television reporter who conducted the interview said Mr Asner appeared senile and was only temporarily lucid.

Mr Asner was recently filmed mingling with European championship soccer fans in his home town, prompting the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre to urge Austria to extradite him.

Austria has in the past refused to hand over Mr Asner to the Croatian authorities, saying his mental health is too fragile to allow him to stand trial.

Jewish groups have accused Austria, which was annexed by Hitler in 1938 and supplied his Third Reich with many top officials, of a lack of political will to track down Nazi criminals.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/7465394.stm
Published: 2008/06/20 11:13:07 GMT, © BBC MMVIII  

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Spanish court asked to charge 4 alleged Nazis

MADRID, Spain (AP) — A human rights group has asked a Spanish court to indict four alleged former Nazi concentration camp guards and seek their extradition from the United States over the deaths of Spanish citizens, a lawyer said Tuesday.

The Brussels-based rights organization, Equipo Nizkor, names the suspects as John Demjanjuk, a retired, 88-yr-old auto worker in Ohio who is also being sought by Germany; Anton Tittjung, Josias Kumpf and Johann Leprich.

All four face deportation from the United States but no country will take them in, the group said.

The group said it is acting under Spain's principle of universal jurisdiction. This states that war crimes, crimes against humanity, terrorism, torture and other heinous offenses can be prosecuted in Spain even if they are alleged to have been committed abroad.

Spanish judges have used the principle to go after the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and figures from the Argentine 'dirty war' of the 1970s and 80s, among other people.

In this case, Equipo Nizkor lawyer Gloria Trinidad said, the fact that thousands of Spanish citizens died in Nazi camps where the four suspects allegedly worked is another reason — although not a necessary one — for Spain's National Court to charge them.

The group's complaint says the suspects served as guards in the concentration camps at Flossenberg and Sachsenhausen, in Germany, and Mauthausen, in Nazi-occupied Austria.

Spaniards who ended up at these and other Nazi camps were mainly people from the leftist Republican side in the Spanish Civil War who fled to France and were captured while fighting German troops.

At Mauthausen alone, for instance, more than 7,000 Spaniards were incarcerated and at least 4,300 of them were killed, Equipo Nizkor said. It said this figure came from documents submitted to several courts, mainly the one that oversaw the Nuremberg trials that followed World War II.

The new lawsuit was filed at Spain's National Court on June 19.

The next step is for a prosecutor to issue a nonbinding recommendation on whether the court should agree to study the case. Then the court itself has to decide whether to accept the case and consider filing charges, Trinidad said. She said the process could take months. http://www.nysun.com/national/holocaust-survivors-bill-to-be-toned-down/80617/

Holocaust Survivors Bill To Be Toned Down

By RUSSELL BERMAN, Staff Reporter of the Sun, June 25, 2008

WASHINGTON — A key House panel plans to scale back a bill that would allow Holocaust survivors to sue European insurers for unpaid claims and force the companies to publish the names of all policyholders during the Nazi era.

The measure, known as the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act, has divided some in the Jewish community, pitting survivors who believe the companies haven't paid enough against leaders who say the legislation threatens years of official negotiations for restitution and would undermine American credibility.

Sponsored by two Florida lawmakers, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, and Rep. Robert Wexler, a Democrat, the original bill would allow Holocaust survivors or their heirs to sue European insurers in American courts, and it would require companies to create a registry of policyholders with the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In a statement last month, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen said Holocaust victims had "waited too long for fair and honest treatment by life insurance companies."

Five prominent Jewish organizations wrote lawmakers of their opposition to the bill, including the Anti-Defamation League, B'nai B'rith International, and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. They noted that the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, established and recognized by the federal government in 1998, had already succeeded in securing more than $300 million in insurance claims, in addition to more funds for home care and other social service benefits for survivors worldwide.

The House Financial Services Committee will consider the bill today, and the panel's Democratic chairman, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, plans to scrap the registry requirement and limit the lawsuits that survivors can bring, House aides told The New York Sun yesterday.

The aides said that although several Jewish groups praised the changes, they remained opposed to the bill.

A Holocaust survivor who is treasurer of the Claims Conference, Roman Kent, said in an interview that advocates of the bill were well-intentioned but misguided. "They thought — and many of them still think — that what they are doing is good for the survivors. This I think is absolutely wrong," he said. Supporters of the bill had overstated the potential for additional unpaid claims, he said, and opening the gates for lawsuits that would leave survivors mired in years of expensive litigation. The legal standards for restitution would be much higher than those agreed upon during official negotiations with the insurers.

The bill, Mr. Kent said, "would do tremendous damage to 99.9% of survivors." http://www.nysun.com/national/holocaust-survivors-bill-to-be-toned-down/80617/

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Patrick J. Buchanan: Was the Holocaust Inevitable? June 20, 2008

“What Would Winston Do?”

So asks Newsweek’s cover, which features a full-length photo of the prime minister his people voted the greatest Briton of them all. Quite a tribute, when one realizes Churchill’s career coincides with the collapse of the British empire and the fall of his nation from world pre-eminence to third-rate power.

That the Newsweek cover was sparked by my book “Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War” seems apparent, as one of the three essays, by Christopher Hitchens, was a scathing review. Though in places complimentary, Hitchens charmingly concludes: This book “stinks.”

Understandable. No Brit can easily concede my central thesis: The Brits kicked away their empire. Through colossal blunders, Britain twice declared war on a Germany that had not attacked her and did not want war with her, fought for 10 bloody years and lost it all.

Unable to face the truth, Hitchens seeks solace in old myths.

We had to stop Prussian militarism in 1914, says Hitchens. “The Kaiser’s policy shows that Germany was looking for a chance for war all over the globe.” Nonsense. If the Kaiser were looking for a war he would have found it.  But in 1914, he had been in power for 25 years, was deep into middle age but had never fought a war nor seen a battle. From Waterloo to World War I, Prussia fought three wars, all in one seven-year period, 1864 to 1871. Out of these wars, she acquired two duchies, Schleswig and Holstein, and two provinces, Alsace and Lorraine.

By 1914, Germany had not fought a war in two generations. Does that sound like a nation out to conquer the world?

As for the Kaiser’s bellicose support for the Boers, his igniting the Agadir crisis in 1905, his building of a great fleet, his seeking of colonies in Africa, he was only aping the British, whose approbation and friendship he desperately sought all his life and was ever denied.

In every crisis the Kaiser blundered into, including his foolish “blank cheque” to Austria after Serb assassins murdered the heir to the Austrian throne, the Kaiser backed down or was trying to back away when war erupted. Even Churchill, who before 1914 was charging the Kaiser with seeking “the dominion of the world,” conceded, “History should … acquit William II of having plotted and planned the World War.”

What of World War II? Surely, it was necessary to declare war to stop Adolf Hitler from conquering the world and conducting the Holocaust.

Yet consider. Before Britain declared war on him, Hitler never demanded return of any lands lost at Versailles to the West. Northern Schleswig had gone to Denmark in 1919, Eupen and Malmedy had gone to Belgium, Alsace and Lorraine to France.

Why did Hitler not demand these lands back? Because he sought an alliance, or at least friendship, with Great Britain and knew any move on France would mean war with Britain — a war he never wanted.

If Hitler were out to conquer the world, why did he not build a great fleet? Why did he not demand the French fleet when France surrendered?  Germany had to give up its High Seas Fleet in 1918. Why did he build his own Maginot Line, the Western Wall, in the Rhineland, if he meant all along to invade France? If he wanted war with the West, why did he offer peace after Poland and offer to end the war, again, after Dunkirk?

That Hitler was a rabid anti-Semite is undeniable. “Mein Kampf” is saturated in anti-Semitism. The Nuremberg Laws confirm it. But for the six years before Britain declared war, there was no Holocaust, and for two years after the war began, there was no Holocaust. Not until midwinter 1942 was the Wannsee Conference held, where the Final Solution was on the table.

That conference was not convened until Hitler had been halted in Russia, was at war with America and sensed doom was inevitable. Then the trains began to roll. And why did Hitler invade Russia? This writer quotes Hitler 10 times as saying that only by knocking out Russia could he convince Britain it could not win and must end the war.

Hitchens mocks this view, invoking the Hitler-madman theory: “Could we have a better definition of derangement and megalomania than the case of a dictator who overrules his own generals and invades Russia in wintertime …?”

Christopher, Hitler invaded Russia on June 22. The Holocaust was not a cause of the war, but a consequence of the war. No war, no Holocaust.

Britain went to war with Germany to save Poland. She did not save Poland. She did lose the empire. And Josef Stalin, whose victims outnumbered those of Hitler 1,000 to one as of September 1939, and who joined Hitler in the rape of Poland, wound up with all of Poland, and all the Christian nations from the Urals to the Elbe.

The British Empire fought, bled and died, and made Eastern and Central Europe safe for Stalinism. No wonder Winston Churchill was so melancholy in old age. No wonder Christopher rails against the book. As T.S. Eliot observed, “Mankind cannot bear much reality.”

http://buchanan.org/blog/2008/06/pjb-was-the-holocaust-inevitable/

Fredrick Töben comments: Buchanan does not mention the 40+ peace offers made by Hitler in an effort to stop the inevitable war, just as the Anglo-American-Zionists rejected all attempts to stop their initiated war with Iraq in March 2003.  

Pat Buchanan: Resurrecting Appeasement

By Daniel Mandel, FrontPageMagazine.com | 6/26/2008


The arch-conservative Patrick Buchanan has never found an isolationist cause, other than the anti-anti-communist one, that he didn't like. First he penned A Republic, Not an Empire to make the case for American active disengagement from the world's woes but, apparently unheeded, this hasn't sufficed. Accordingly, in his latest tome, Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, he has targeted the biggest objection to his preferred course of action – the disastrous consequences of appeasing Nazi Germany in the 1930s. His argument is simple and tries to get out from under: appeasement of Hitler wasn't the culprit – the Allied victors of World War One were.

Buchanan asks: "How did Munich lead to World War II?" and answers – it didn't. Instead, he says, the war-causing event was the Allies' violation of the principle of self-determination by creating Czechoslovakia, which, as he put it in a recent column, absorbed "3 million Germans, 3 million Slovaks, 800,000 Hungarians, 150,000 Poles and 500,000 Ruthenians."

What Buchanan doesn't mention is that there was no way to provide viable self-determination for some groups without creating new minorities, as Europe's populations were deeply entangled. Nor does he disclose that the Munich agreement incorporated 800,000 Czechs into the Third Reich, whose right to self-determination Buchanan lacks the audacity to claim was in any way inferior to that of Germans in Czechoslovakia. These are gaping omissions in an argument claiming that the Allies violated the principle of self-determination. Nor does Buchanan argue for any alternative principle the Allies should have followed.

These omissions enable a disingenuous argument. They convey the false impression that self-determination was a sound, rather than problematic, idea and that it was dishonored by the Allies rather than imperfectly implemented by them. This in turn allows Buchanan to insinuate that the problems of inter-war Europe were the creation of the Allies, rather than inherent in the situation. 

Thus, Buchanan presents Nazi demands in 1938 and 1939 as being simply instances of Germans justly seeking self-determination. That in turn entails another omission: failing to mention why applying the principle of self-determination to create Czechoslovakia proved so disruptive that a world war was risked in 1938. After all, many peoples have their minorities in other lands. That is no necessary tragedy. The tragedy is to be everywhere a minority. Yet in 1938, the overwhelming majority of Germans enjoyed self-determination, embodied in the largest, most powerful state in the heart of Europe. Yet even this proved insufficient. Why? Buchanan doesn't say.

The answer is this: the Nazi supremacist policy of conquest and enslavement that anyone who cared to know at the time could have discovered meant that either the Allies would have to concede all Hitler demanded, or war would result. But the appeasers didn't want to know it then and Buchanan, who knows it now, simply strikes it from the record – while belittling the most prominent figure who did understand from the beginning, Winston Churchill. Like the appeasers, Buchanan detaches shards of legitimacy from totalitarian claims – much like present day appeasers of Islamist aggression.

Unfortunately for Buchanan, the historical record is not amenable to this sort of engineering. Issues of self-determination led to world war not because, as Buchanan argues, Britain and France took an imprudent interest in standing by Poland's refusal to disgorge itself of German-populated territories, but because the dynamic aggressiveness of Nazi Germany made a stand at some point imperative.

It was painfully clear by 1939 that Germany did not simply want the Paris peace settlement redrawn as if Germany had not lost: it wanted it rewritten as if Germany had won. In that distinction lies the world of difference between legitimate claims that can be arbitrated, and consuming appetites that cannot be, if I may for once use the word, appeased.

Buchanan tactfully says nothing about why Britain found itself in 1938 at Munich with the unenviable dilemma of either conceding Hitler's demands or going to war with Germany when "she had no draft, no Spitfires, no divisions ready to be sent to France." Yet the reason for precisely this dilemma and these near-fatal deficiencies was years of appeasement – precisely the policy Buchanan is at pains to resurrect.

A refusal to arm and maintain necessary forces to keep the peace; a refusal to reverse Hitler's violation of the peace when he remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936 – something that could have been accomplished easily with available forces when Hitler's armies were as yet too weak and small to face determined opposition; a refusal to make common cause with the Soviets to counter Hitler – all these and more found Britain so fatefully unprepared for the crisis when it came. But Buchanan fixates on Munich, divorced of its historical and moral context, his unctuous tone notwithstanding.

Moreover, however woefully unprepared was Britain for war in 1938, it was in arguably better shape for the supreme test than a year later when it did go to war. True, the Royal Air Force won a year's reprieve in which to build up its strength, which proved hugely important, but the failure to stand firm at Munich was also militarily disastrous. It deprived Britain and France of a Czech ally who, rendered defenseless, was dismembered by Hitler six months later, along with its excellent army of 40 divisions. This freed up 30 German divisions for service elsewhere, handed to Hitler the resources of the Czech arms industry, economy and territories, and brought about the collapse of France's eastern alliances. 

In short, abdication at Munich led to the ill-considered and unenforceable guarantee to Poland, which Buchanan deplores – he merely fails to explain that his preferred appeasement policy brought Britain to that very pass.

By its unpreparedness, Britain nearly forfeited its existence, not merely its empire, and had to fight for its life in a monumental war that could have been headed off earlier at much lesser cost by a combination of prudence and moral clarity. Those searching for either will not find it in Buchanan's book. People who neither wish to confront aggression nor inquire into the evil that animates it are the first to find spuriously altruistic reasons for so doing – a truism that can stand as an epitaph for Patrick Buchanan.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jse-A_EE-YAYvrcZ-qAWXYrAnPtgD91GD9V00

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