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Rabbis Against Peace and Stability
by Stephen Lendman
Hundreds of US rabbis (nearly 1,000 as of August 27) signed an open letter - urging Congress to reject the Iran nuclear deal, reducing chances for greater Middle East war if aproved, saying:
“We, the undersigned rabbis, write as a unified voice across religious denominations to express our concerns with the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran.”
“We have weighed the various implications of supporting - or opposing - this agreement. Together, we are deeply troubled by the proposed deal, and believe this agreement will harm the short-term and longterm interests of both the United States and our allies, particularly Israel.”
Nazis’ Gold Train Is Said to Have Been Found in Poland
Eric Zuesse
On 27 August, Polish Radio announced that two people have presented evidence that they have discovered Nazi Germany’s legendary “Gold Train,” containing art and that’s especially “laden with precious metals,” and that the pair are demanding a 10% cut of its value, for finding this nearly 200-yard-long train, in a hidden mountain tunnel in the Polish town of Walzbrych, formerly the German town of Waldenburg. Nazis had constructed the tunnel in 1943, to hide valuables from Soviet forces, in the event that Germany might lose the war.
Soviets conquered Nazi forces at Waldenburg on 8 May 1945; and, until now, this heavily armored train had not been found. On August 27th, the town announced that agreement was reached with the German citizen and the Polish citizen, who jointly claim to have made the find, agreeing to pay them their demanded 10%. The report says, “As outlined in their claim to Wałbrzych authorities, ‘the train contains valuable objects, costly industrial materials and precious metal ores’.” So, the town is now seeking assistance from the Polish government, to provide mine-detection and other help, so that the site can safely be entered by the town’s officials, in order that the train’s cargo can be itemized and estimated. According to a report in Britain’s Telegraph, Poland’s military are “cordoning off” the area.
Why the Refugee Crisis?
by Stephen Lendman
Thousands of refugees and asylum seekers head for safe havens daily - a human flood entering Europe, risking life and limb to get there. Why?
Washington bears full responsibility. Endless US direct and proxy wars force desperate people to seek safety out of harm’s way.
Numbers fleeing war and destabilized areas are greater than any time since WWII - increasing exponentially as conflicts and chaos rage in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Donbass, Somalia, South Sudan, and elsewhere. A previous article cited a UNHCR report saying 60 million people were forcibly displaced by end of 2014. Globally one in every 122 people are asylum seekers, refugees or internally displaced persons. More than half the world’s refugees are children.
US Presidential Aspirants Irresponsibly Bash Putin
by Stephen Lendman
by Putin’s advocacy for peace, stability and multi-world polarity along with opposing US imperial lawlessness makes him America’s public enemy number one - recklessly bashed at a time US/Russian cooperation is vitally needed to avoid the unthinkable, a possible devastating nuclear confrontation.
US presidential aspirants represent America’s lunatic fringe - pro-war neocons talking tough on Russia, proliferating Big Lies, ignoring good sense. Jeb Bush irresponsibly called Putin a “bully. Ultimately I think to deal with (him) you need to deal from strength,” he said.
Privatization Is at the Core of Facsism
Eric Zuesse
Privatizations are increasingly fashionable, such as in Greece, Ukraine, the U.S., and UK — and privatizations are a central feature of fascism.
The core of fascism is the idea that there is some elite, whether ‘Aryan’ or ‘chosen by God,’ or otherwise, who should run things, and that everyone else exists in order to serve that elite. Inevitably, this official elite consists of the people whom the powers-that-be assign as constituting the owners of almost everything that’s valuable. Increasingly, things become those people’s private possession — even what was formerly a public asset becomes now private. Beaches become private. Schools become private. Natural resources become private. It’s not just the art that was stolen by the Nazis and privatized to them and/or shown at museums that they control, which becomes private; it’s whatever the elite want to have, and to control: it’s all now private. That’s the fascist ideal.
The legal system accommodates the legal owners, in any fascist nation, just as the legal system accommodates the legal owners in any nation at all. And, in fascism, the legal owners are the aristocracy, which are the people who have helped bring the system into being as it now is. Typically, they are the aristocracy that already exists in the given nation, if it was formerly a democracy (aristocrats tend to hate democracy; so, they bring into being fascism to replace it), but they can also be a group that is partially new and that is also partially composed of merely the winning segment of the old aristocracy — the segment of the old aristocracy that had won the type of intra-aristocratic conflict that always exists, within any aristocracy. Whereas any aristocracy is always at war against the public, there are also competitions within any aristocracy to determine which aristocrats will be the dominant ones.
The Primacy Of Jewish Genes
By Gilad Atzmon
The Guardian reported this week that a study of Holocaust survivors revealed that the Jewish trauma is passed on to its children's genes. The conclusion from a research team at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital led by Rachel Yehuda stems from the genetic study of 32 Jewish men and women who had either been interned in a Nazi concentration camp, witnessed or experienced torture or who had had to hide during the second world war.
Unlike The Guardian, that published a dry report of this 'scientific revelation', I am puzzled. What is the meaning of this scientific news? Does it suggest that the kids of Holocaust survivors are better adapted to the next holocaust or does it suggest alternatively that the heirs of Shoah survivors have inherited the trauma and are now entitled to German reparation money until the end of time?
Right-Wing DC Court of Appeals Upholds Unconstitutional Surveillance
by Stephen Lendman
Virtually unrestricted data mining tramples on Fourth Amendment rights brazenly. In December 2013, Federal District Court of the District of Columbia Judge Richard Leon ruled NSA spying unconstitutional, saying:
“The threshold issue is whether plaintiffs have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the Government indiscriminately collects their telephone metadata along with the metadata of hundreds of millions of other citizens without any particularized suspicion of wrongdoing, retains all of that metadata for five years, and then queries, analyzes, and investigates that data without prior judicial approval of the investigative targets."
"I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary' invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval." "Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment."
Washington Intends Breaching Iran Nuclear Deal
by Stephen Lendman
The dawn of a new era in US/Iranian relations didn’t arrive on July 14 in Vienna - with consummation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOC). Far from it.
Washington’s deal-making history is deplorable - a record of betrayal, consistently breaching agreements since the beginning of the republic, proving its word isn’t its bond.
On Friday, Obama’s Treasury sanctions czar, Adam Szubin, arrived in Israel - to reassure its regime of continued US hardline anti-Iranian policy, ready to impose new “severe financial penalties for its (nonexistent) sponsorship of terrorism and support of military proxies,” according to The New York Times.
He’ll reassure Israeli officials about Washington’s “continued efforts to target Iran’s (nonexistent) malign activities” - intending “intensif(ied) sanctions (to) ensur(e) they bite even deeper,” he explained.
Washington agreeing in Vienna to remove Iranian sanctions was a Big Fat Lie. In return for ending some (on Iran’s nuclear program), new ones apparently will be imposed offsetting them, the usual US dirty game, pledging one thing, doing another with disturbing regularity.
Wall Street Rally: Hold the Cheers
by Stephen Lendman
Days of market turbulence likely haven’t ended. They’ve been more severe than any time since late 2008/early 2009.
Hindsight may show upswing days were classic dead-cat bounces - a combination of short-covering and market manipulation.
An August 26 Wall Street Journal article should give investors pause - headlined “Margin Calls Bite Investors, Banks,” saying:
“Loans backed by investment portfolios have become a booming business for Wall Street brokerages. Now the bill is coming due - for both the banks and their clients.”
Bank of America and other lenders are issuing margin calls. Investors either have to put up more money to cover portfolio losses or sell holdings underlying their loans.
Why and How All Large Estates Should Be Taxed to Death
Eric Zuesse
All non-taxation of estates at death is feudal; it’s systematic continuation of feudalism, into our own era.
Here’s a good example to show this: U.S. National Public Radio’s (NPR’s) reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, headlined on August 25th, “For Brazil's 1 Percenters, The Land Stays In The Family Forever,” and she reported that, in that country, the aristocracy own half of the land, and that whenever a building on their land is sold, 2.5% of the sale price must go to the land’s owner, the heir-aristocrat, in a perpetual tithing-system to the hereditary Portuguese aristocracy (including the Roman Catholic Church), who have descended from the Portuguese colonizers to whom Portugal’s king had granted the land 515 years ago, in payment for their having conquered the native Indians and stolen their land for the king. The king didn’t give them all of what these conquistadors had stolen for him, but only what he felt they deserved for their services, of theft from the people who had previously owned the land, or lived on it. (Among the receiving aristocracy was the Roman Catholic Church, for its services assisting these thefts, by approving them — declaring them to reflect God’s will.)
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