* Up front, an absolutely astonishing bit of news was sent to me - the source given as the Times of London, October 17, 2000.
Journalist Roger Boyes reports from Berlin in the reparations-for-slave-labor issue in an article titled "Holocaust deal faces collapse" that
". . . (o)ut of 220,000 companies approached for a contribution, only 4,200 have signed up."
Those numbers translate to ***less than 2%*** !
"No one wants to talk about the issue - many simply dodge the subject altogether," complained Manfred Gentz, of Daimler-Chrysler, who has been trying to drum up the money.
This is the strongest indicator yet how utterly fed up the Germans are with these endless reparations extortions, and that there is finally serious resistance.
* Somebody dug up another interesting statistic for me. The Jewish Advocate of April 27, 2000 comments on a recently published book, "The Death of American Anti-Semitism," by an author named Blakeslee who examined the work of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the American Jewish Congress (AJC), and the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC).
Blakeslee concludes that anti-Semitism is not such a problem in the United States ". . . that it requires the work of multiple organizations and millions of dollars to combat it."
Here is a quote:
"In a scholarly but highly readable survey of data examining anti-Semitic attitudes and behavior, Blakeslee concludes that American Jews have never had it so good. In spite of incidents like last summer's attack on a California Jewish Community Center by a gunman, Blakeslee notes that "when you break it down ... the incidents of anti-Jewish behavior have virtually no statistical value whatsoever."
"Part of the reason that Jews perceive anti-Semitism as a much bigger problem than it is, the author suggests, is because the organizations he examined all see combating anti-Semitism as one of their reasons for being."
Perhaps that is the reason d'être for the following item:
* A few days ago, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that despite having been rebuffed,
". . . Jewish groups say they're optimistic they can find another way to get hate crimes legislation passed before Congress adjourns for this term."
Michael Lieberman, Washington counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, comments that the latest turn of events is "an unwelcome but not unexpected development." The article reports that
"Jewish groups hope the president will continue to insist that a hate crimes provision be included in this year's legislation."
Why "hate legislation" - if there isn't a problem?
* German television has busied itself again to oblige the Holocaustomaniacs. In what is described as ". . . recently discovered film footage showing how Germans orchestrated the murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust," public television ZDF is airing a six-part documentary called ''Holokaust.''
Why the odd spelling? So people will be sure to understand it was the "Krauts" who did the "holokausting"?
The work is an attempt to ''make history as gripping as a thriller for millions of viewers,'' film maker Knopp said in a recent interview. He sees it as an attempt to break ''the very tense relationship we still have to history in this country.''
* The Deutsche Presse-Agentur of October 17, 2000 reports that "Education Ministers from across Europe on Tuesday called for all schools in Europe to introduce a day devoted to remembering the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity."
We hope that this includes what's being done to Palestinians.
* The Moscow Times is telling its readers in an article titled "Stalin Shootings Haunt Belarus Villagers" ( reproduced 10/17/2000 in the Independent) that Joseph Stalin's secret police in a time span from 1937 to 1941
". . . shot an estimated 200,000 people in a field just several hundred meters from (an eye witness's ) house." [The eye witness's last name is Tolstik]
The article continues:
"Their remains now lie in mass graves under the pine trees of a forest planted after the war. They lie virtually forgotten, their names unknown, and lately the Belarussian government has begun to cast doubt on the cause and time of their deaths.
"In the late 1980s, archaeologists from the Soviet Academy of Sciences determined that the people buried in Kurapaty were killed with Soviet-made bullets fired from Soviet-manufactured guns. The Belarussian Prosecutor General's Office officially confirmed in 1995 that the remains belong to victims of the NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB."
But listen to this now:
". . . lately, Belarus has been trying to shift the blame off the NKVD and onto Nazi Germany."
The government now maintains that ". . . the mass graves are of Jews killed by the Nazis, according to Ales Belyatsky, chairman of the Minsk-based Vesna human rights group."
"The shootings began long before the war and they ended when the war started," insists eye witness Tolstik.
"They try to blame it on the Germans, but there were no Germans when the shootings took place," another witness adds.
* The stolen Enigma code machine, whose capture during World War II helped the Allies defeat Nazi Germany, has been returned by mail to a television journalist.
A mystery man who identified himself only as "The Master" sent a letter demanding a 37,500 [British currency?] ransom for its safe return. There were some negotiations regarding that ransom, but in the end, the thief/extortionist must have gotten cold feet.
The BBC reported that
"The Master," in his letters, "had claimed to be acting on behalf of a third party who unwittingly bought the machine in good faith, only to discover it was stolen."
A very threadbare story!
* Bylined by George Will, the columnist whom many see as catering to the Israelis in the guise of staunch conservatism, wrote in a syndicated article titled "Israel faces greatest Risk of its History: Nation's multiplying problems include Western media":
"Israel's position is worse than in 1973, when it was attacked by concerted Arab armies, worse than when Egypt mobilized in 1967, worse than in 1948, when Arabs rejected the U.N. partition of Palestine that Israel accepted, and sent armies to kill Israel. Israel's position is worse today because then the threats were military, manageable by an Israel confident of the legitimacy of its positions. Now just 17 months of Prime Minister Ehud Barak's diplomacy have demoralized Israel by delegitimizing all its previous principles, and destroying the absolute prerequisite for successful negotiations -- the insistence that something is non-negotiable. Even a Barak ultimatum is, inevitably, penultimate. (...) "Israel's multiplying problems include the Western media."
"When Israeli soldiers pulled a wounded policeman away from St. Stephens Gate in Jerusalem,' writes Will, "Palestinians, taught from Holocaust-denying and anti-Semitic textbooks, publications and broadcasts that the Palestinian Authority falsely promised to eliminate, chanted "Slaughter the Jews.'' Thousands of Jordanians marched in Amman chanting "Death to the Jews.''
* The Australian Canberra Times of October 14. 2000 ran a couple of very interesting comments in an article headlined "Holocaust's new religion adds fire to old conflicts", and I quote:
". . . if there is a force for evil in the world, one might fairly suggest on the evidence that it resides within the general heading of religion.
"But the key to the struggle between Palestinian and Jew is more recently fashioned. It derives not so much from ancient perceptions of a chosen people as from a devotion to, and an obsession with, its most terrible consequence - the Holocaust.
"They will not readily admit it, but for Israelis, the murder of six million Jews in the Nazi death camps is the real motivating force behind today's conflict. To them, the Holocaust is not a historical episode. It is a mantra of shame and outrage that rises to consciousness anew every day.
"If you doubt this, consider how often you have heard the story told and retold from every imaginable point of view. The literature, the documentaries, the feature films and the television series that centre on the Holocaust are almost beyond measuring. And there is no sign whatever of any diminution of the flow."
* An Associated Press Release smarms in its first few paragraphs (10/17/2000) :
"The Anti-Defamation League has devised an online guide to hate symbols, logos and tattoos to help parents and teachers identify warning signs in their communities.
"The ADL list includes the Confederate Flag, which ADL acknowledges is considered a symbol of pride for many Southerners. But the organization said it included the flag as a symbol of white domination over blacks."
* The ADL has sent out a call for people to send them "hate symbols." I checked the page - and you should, too. You find it at www.adl.org
The ADL wants readers "to report new sightings." A reader was intrigued: "They seem to be missing the Israeli flag and the JDL symbol. I suggest everyone start e-mailing them Jewish hate symbols."
* The very word "British" is being revised. Robert Barr of the Associated Press opens an interesting article with these words:
"Britishness'' and ``Englishness'' are racially coded terms with a whites-only connotation, an independent commission said Wednesday in a report that called for a rethinking of the nation's self-image.
"The report stirred up a flurry of controversy and denunciation: One legislator denounced it as "garbage," and a leading newspaper said it "twisted history just as Stalin and Hitler did".
* You are going to find this strange, but House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) issued a statement on 10/19/2000 ". . . pulling the Armenian Genocide resolution (HR 596) from the agenda of the House of Representatives for the remainder of the 106th Congress, thus killing the resolution.
In his statement, the Speaker cited "national security concerns" brought forth by President Clinton relating to the ongoing Middle East Peace process."
For the still clueless, there cannot be a "second Holocaust" - even if it happened in 1915, and not to Jews but to 1.5 million Armenians who were being massacred by Ottoman Turks.
* We have a new term for the struggle of Freedom of Speech on the net - "terrestrial laws". The Sydney Morning Herald of October 19, 2000 reports that
"A DECISION last week by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commissioner, Kathleen McEvoy, sets a precedent which will alter the way the Internet is used as a means of political expression. For the first time in this country, so-called terrestrial laws (as opposed to the lawless nature of cyberspace) have been used against a Web site owner publishing racist material."
The website under attack belongs to Dr. Fredrick Toben, of the Adelaide Institute, who has been ordered to remove "offensive" material from his historical revisionist Web site and to apologize for his Holocaust-denial statements.
The article goes on to say:
"For years, Australia's Toben, along with England's David Irving, Canada's Fred (sic) Zundel and many others, have been the conductors of a rapidly growing orchestra of revisionists whose purpose has been to deny the experiences of millions of Holocaust survivors. Their thesis is that the Holocaust didn't happen, that millions were not murdered by the Nazis, that the concentration camps were not death camps and that thousands of Jewish and other deaths in World War II were due to overcrowding and typhus."
The paper got that one half-right!
This article, which is dripping with censorship venom, was penned by Alan Gold, president of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Unit.
Offers have already poured in from several countries to create "mirror sites" as happened during the "Zundelsite/Blue Ribbons War", but Dr. Toben reports that, so far, his ISP has refused to be intimidated.
* And, finally: It's not a bird. It's not a bee. It's not a plane. It is another Holocaust memorial, this time in Vienna, Austria.
It is a giant concrete slab, described as having been unveiled "to a fresh round of controversy" (Sunday Telegraph 22nd October 2000)
Rita Koch, a historian and Jewish author, objected: "There are a lot of People in the Jewish community who are very unhappy about the whole thing. Of course it's great to have a memorial after all this time but why does it have to be a giant concrete slab like this?"
And Arno Klecan, a lawyer whose home is adjacent to the square, said: "It's unsafe because it will make this area a target for antiSemitic groups."
The monument's name? "Nameless Library". It depicts shelves of books with their spines turned to the inside. Go figure!