Dear Taxpayers (and others):
Sometime this year, taxpayers will again receive another ‘Economic Stimulus’ payment. This is indeed a very exciting programme, and I'll explain it by using a Question & Answer format:
Q: What is an ‘Economic Stimulus’ payment?
A: It is money that the government will send to taxpayers.
Q: Where will the government get this money?
A: From taxpayers.
Q: So the government is giving me back my own money?
A: Only a smidgen of it.
Q: What is the purpose of this payment?
A: The plan is for you to use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.
Q: But isn’t that stimulating the economy of China?
A: Shut up.
Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the U.K. economy by spending your stimulus cheque wisely:
If you spend the stimulus money at Asda or Tesco, the money will go to China, Taiwan or Sri Lanka.
If you spend it on petrol, your money will go to the Arabs.
If you purchase a computer, it will go to India, Taiwan or China.
If you purchase fruit and vegetables, it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.
If you buy an efficient car, it will go to Japan or Korea.
If you purchase useless stuff, it will go to Taiwan.
If you pay your credit cards off, or buy shares, it will go to management bonuses and they will hide it offshore.
Instead, keep the money in the UK by:
1) Spending it at car boot sales, or
2) Going to night clubs, or
3) Spending it on prostitutes, or
4) Beer or whisky or
5) Tattoos.
(These are the only UK businesses still operating in the U.K. )
Conclusion:
Be patriotic: go to a night club with a tattooed prostitute that you met at a car boot sale and drink beer and/or whisky day and night.
Yours most respectfully,
Gideon ‘George’ Osborne,
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Monday, 24 January 2011
Jewish media censorship in USA
January 17, 2011
Kevin MacDonald's Daily Show Adventure
By Kevin MacDonald
Jared Taylor just had a nice column at VDARE.com on his adventures following absolutely groundless news reports that Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner was linked to Taylor’s American Renaissance. His account says a lot about how Political Correctness is enforced in the media. Politico, having eagerly picked up the story that Loughner was linked to AR, happily agreed to run Taylor’s account of how he stood up to the smear. But his article was pulled, just after Taylor sent the following description of AR at her request to Politico Opinion Editor Allison Silver [Email her]:
“My magazine takes a conservative position on race and immigration and argues that diversity of the kind we are supposed to be celebrating is a weakness for the country, not a strength.”
Silver claimed that “there has been too much of a time lag”. Taylor comments sarcastically:
“We really do live in fast-moving times, don’t we? A story can go from ‘fascinating’ and ‘swell’ to stale news in less than 12 hours. Or even from ‘Got it, thanks!’ to stale news in a little over an hour.”
A strikingly similar thing happened to me last summer, during the Elena Kagan SCOTUS confirmation process.
I got an email from Miles Kahn, [Email him] a producer of The Daily Show, inviting me to go to New York to film an interview with Samantha Bee, one of the show’s reporters.
It was a tough decision—several people I asked said it was a bad idea. Ms. Bee is famous for skewering unwary interviewees, as in this bit on “A San Antonio good Samaritan [who] uses camera-mounted rifle technology to allow disabled hunters to shoot live exotic animals via the Internet”. And, of course, the show gets to edit the interview. (On the advice of a friend, I asked to tape the interview myself, but—perhaps significantly—Kahn refused.) Still, I eventually agreed, perhaps on the theory that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
So I flew across the country, at The Daily Show’s expense, showed up at The Daily Show studio on the far west side of Manhattan at 9:00AM for what would be a 3-hour session that would be later cut to fit the format. Ms. Bee, the “always pregnant lady”, was very pregnant with her third child at the time—probably a record for well-off White career women in New York. I was tempted to congratulate her for being a paragon of White fertility but restrained myself. Kahn sat in with us.
The ostensible reason for the interview: I had written some blogs on the Elena Kagan nomination, which was a particular obsession of mine (see here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Main theme: How can someone with absolutely no scholarly qualifications or any other relevant experience get nominated to the highest court in the land? Answer: Ethnic networking. Two other blogs dealt with the Kagan nomination as a symptom of the decline of WASP America (see here and here). This point (which had been separately albeit blandly raised in some MSM commentary) was to be the focus of the interview. It just goes to show you that you never know who is reading your stuff!
Quite a bit of the interview was on how Justice John Paul Stevens, whose retirement occasioned Kagan’s nomination, exemplifies the pathologies of WASP America: The ultimate non-ethnic actor. I thought I might as well get something out of my trip to New York, so I subsequently posted my interview notes on my Occidental Observer webzine: John Paul Stevens as Prototypical WASP Main theme: Stevens was principled to a fault, and he is naïve to think that non-Whites are as principled as he is. I wrote:
“Stevens and [David] Souter are naive. Their devotion to ideas and principle along with similar attitudes of a very large number of like-minded Whites will cast a long, deadly shadow as we head into the future. All the research shows that ethnically divided societies are prone to conflict and have less of a civic sense — for example, people in ethnically divided societies are less likely to contribute to public goods like health care. The new elite is much more likely to act out their historical grudges against the White majority than to uphold WASP ideals. Ethnicity matters.” [VDARE.com links added]
Of course, it could be said that Kagan is principled too—the principle being “Is it good for the Jews?”—but that’s a whole other ballgame.
I added another detail in my interview with Bee that somehow never got into my other writing on Kagan. After managing to get tenure at the prestigious University of Chicago Law School with almost no publications, Kagan went to work for the Clinton administration. After failing to be confirmed as a judge on the U.S. District Court of Appeals, she tried to return to her tenured position at the University of Chicago, but was rejected because of her lack of commitment to scholarship.
Kagan then got a non-tenured visiting professor position at Harvard—a very low rung on the academic totem pole (although admittedly a pretty prestigious pole). But shortly thereafter, she miraculously became dean of Harvard Law, as a result of the actions of someone whose Jewish identity and commitment have never been a secret—as New York Magazine’s Jason Zengerle put it[(Judging Kagan, May 14, 2010]: “Were it not for [Larry] Summers [who had worked with her in the Clinton Administration], she would probably be grading law-school finals right now rather than prepping for her Senate confirmation hearings.”
To paraphrase Mel Brooks’ line, it’s good to have Jewish connections.
A memorable moment in our interview of the decline of the WASPs was when I informed Bee that Ralph Lauren (ne Lifshitz) is Jewish. Apparently this was news to her and she pretended to start sobbing uncontrollably. I apologized for shattering her illusions!
After the Kagan-Stevens thing, the interview veered into unexpected territory. Kahn was busy passing questions to Bee on a whole range of topics. I talked about Jewish media influence, Bee joking “you should see what it’s like around here!” Shades of Rick Sanchez! (The Daily Show’s star, Jon Stewart, was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz).
After another note from Kahn, Bee asked me what American Jews should do. I answered that the first thing they should do is stop supporting massive non-White immigration.
Ms. Bee seemed surprised that I was not a WASP—that I grew up Catholic in a small city in Wisconsin. There seemed to be an effort to get me to say bad things about the WASPs I had known.
But my general message was that what did in the WASPs were the traits like moral idealism so characteristic of John Paul Stevens — not exactly the image that plays well in the media. I told them that I always thought that I could have become part of the WASP club myself if I had just decided to take up golf and get a job where I would make a bit more money than college professors make. In sociology-speak, the boundaries separating me from them were permeable. Indeed, one of my childhood friends was a wealthy Catholic who was well ensconced in the local country club WASP milieu.
I was asked about anti-WASP movies, the classic being Caddyshack where WASPs are depicted as snobbish, dishonest, vain, pompous, dim-witted, and sexually repressed. I forgot to mention that our local Jewish surgeon (there were maybe two Jewish families in town) was also a member of the local country club scene—but he behaved nothing like the Rodney Dangerfield character in Caddyshack.
I was also asked about my affiliation with American Third Position party. I kept reiterating the point that everyone has ethnic interests and that people who don’t have a sense of ethnic identity and interests will simply lose out to those that do—a knockdown argument if ever there was one. Bee paraphrased the argument as urging Whites to “get in the game”. Sounds like a good slogan for A3P!
I was told that the piece would run in a week or two. But nothing happened. Eventually, Kagan was officially confirmed. Not long after, Kahn sent me an email saying “I wanted to let you know that due to circumstances beyond my control, the piece featuring your interview won't be airing. I'm so sorry we weren't able to feature it, but this happens from time to time.”
Oh, well.
Of course, one never really knows why the interview wasn’t aired. Maybe it genuinely was no longer topical. But my taping in New York was in early July. Kagan was confirmed in early August. It’s hard to believe that The Daily Show normally wastes so much time. It’s daily, isn’t it?
But the suspicion must be that, as with Politico and Jared Taylor, the senior media honchos do not want discussions of race, White identity and interests, or Jewish influence in a way that gets outside the box of Political Correctness.
Lower-ranking MSM operatives apparently don’t always get this message, but they are brought up pretty sharply.
The only exceptions are Archie Bunker types who can be easily skewered. I have no doubt whatever that, if I had come across to Bee and Kahn (and their superiors) as a nut case, the interview would have been aired.
And of course, from MSM point of view, they are absolutely right. The greatest power of the MSM is the power to define the boundaries of acceptable political discussion. The ideas I was expressing must be seen as espoused only by people who are uneducated, criminal and/or mad. Hence the fervent desire to find that Jared Lee Loughner had ties to White advocacy.
Until this intellectual monopoly is broken—as the internet is to some extent doing—there will be no movement on big issues like immigration, especially legal immigration.
And anti-White organizations will continue to have the doomsday weapon: being able to end careers with charges of “racism” and “anti-Semitism” simply for writing or saying things that are well-thought out, reasonable, and factually-based—but beyond the pale.
The good news for me: it was a learning experience in how the media elite works.
And I greatly enjoyed dinner with supportive friends on the night before the interview. They can’t take that away from me.
Kevin MacDonald [email him] is professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach and a frequent contributor to The Occidental Observer. For his website, click here.
Kevin MacDonald's Daily Show Adventure
By Kevin MacDonald
Jared Taylor just had a nice column at VDARE.com on his adventures following absolutely groundless news reports that Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner was linked to Taylor’s American Renaissance. His account says a lot about how Political Correctness is enforced in the media. Politico, having eagerly picked up the story that Loughner was linked to AR, happily agreed to run Taylor’s account of how he stood up to the smear. But his article was pulled, just after Taylor sent the following description of AR at her request to Politico Opinion Editor Allison Silver [Email her]:
“My magazine takes a conservative position on race and immigration and argues that diversity of the kind we are supposed to be celebrating is a weakness for the country, not a strength.”
Silver claimed that “there has been too much of a time lag”. Taylor comments sarcastically:
“We really do live in fast-moving times, don’t we? A story can go from ‘fascinating’ and ‘swell’ to stale news in less than 12 hours. Or even from ‘Got it, thanks!’ to stale news in a little over an hour.”
A strikingly similar thing happened to me last summer, during the Elena Kagan SCOTUS confirmation process.
I got an email from Miles Kahn, [Email him] a producer of The Daily Show, inviting me to go to New York to film an interview with Samantha Bee, one of the show’s reporters.
It was a tough decision—several people I asked said it was a bad idea. Ms. Bee is famous for skewering unwary interviewees, as in this bit on “A San Antonio good Samaritan [who] uses camera-mounted rifle technology to allow disabled hunters to shoot live exotic animals via the Internet”. And, of course, the show gets to edit the interview. (On the advice of a friend, I asked to tape the interview myself, but—perhaps significantly—Kahn refused.) Still, I eventually agreed, perhaps on the theory that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
So I flew across the country, at The Daily Show’s expense, showed up at The Daily Show studio on the far west side of Manhattan at 9:00AM for what would be a 3-hour session that would be later cut to fit the format. Ms. Bee, the “always pregnant lady”, was very pregnant with her third child at the time—probably a record for well-off White career women in New York. I was tempted to congratulate her for being a paragon of White fertility but restrained myself. Kahn sat in with us.
The ostensible reason for the interview: I had written some blogs on the Elena Kagan nomination, which was a particular obsession of mine (see here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Main theme: How can someone with absolutely no scholarly qualifications or any other relevant experience get nominated to the highest court in the land? Answer: Ethnic networking. Two other blogs dealt with the Kagan nomination as a symptom of the decline of WASP America (see here and here). This point (which had been separately albeit blandly raised in some MSM commentary) was to be the focus of the interview. It just goes to show you that you never know who is reading your stuff!
Quite a bit of the interview was on how Justice John Paul Stevens, whose retirement occasioned Kagan’s nomination, exemplifies the pathologies of WASP America: The ultimate non-ethnic actor. I thought I might as well get something out of my trip to New York, so I subsequently posted my interview notes on my Occidental Observer webzine: John Paul Stevens as Prototypical WASP Main theme: Stevens was principled to a fault, and he is naïve to think that non-Whites are as principled as he is. I wrote:
“Stevens and [David] Souter are naive. Their devotion to ideas and principle along with similar attitudes of a very large number of like-minded Whites will cast a long, deadly shadow as we head into the future. All the research shows that ethnically divided societies are prone to conflict and have less of a civic sense — for example, people in ethnically divided societies are less likely to contribute to public goods like health care. The new elite is much more likely to act out their historical grudges against the White majority than to uphold WASP ideals. Ethnicity matters.” [VDARE.com links added]
Of course, it could be said that Kagan is principled too—the principle being “Is it good for the Jews?”—but that’s a whole other ballgame.
I added another detail in my interview with Bee that somehow never got into my other writing on Kagan. After managing to get tenure at the prestigious University of Chicago Law School with almost no publications, Kagan went to work for the Clinton administration. After failing to be confirmed as a judge on the U.S. District Court of Appeals, she tried to return to her tenured position at the University of Chicago, but was rejected because of her lack of commitment to scholarship.
Kagan then got a non-tenured visiting professor position at Harvard—a very low rung on the academic totem pole (although admittedly a pretty prestigious pole). But shortly thereafter, she miraculously became dean of Harvard Law, as a result of the actions of someone whose Jewish identity and commitment have never been a secret—as New York Magazine’s Jason Zengerle put it[(Judging Kagan, May 14, 2010]: “Were it not for [Larry] Summers [who had worked with her in the Clinton Administration], she would probably be grading law-school finals right now rather than prepping for her Senate confirmation hearings.”
To paraphrase Mel Brooks’ line, it’s good to have Jewish connections.
A memorable moment in our interview of the decline of the WASPs was when I informed Bee that Ralph Lauren (ne Lifshitz) is Jewish. Apparently this was news to her and she pretended to start sobbing uncontrollably. I apologized for shattering her illusions!
After the Kagan-Stevens thing, the interview veered into unexpected territory. Kahn was busy passing questions to Bee on a whole range of topics. I talked about Jewish media influence, Bee joking “you should see what it’s like around here!” Shades of Rick Sanchez! (The Daily Show’s star, Jon Stewart, was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz).
After another note from Kahn, Bee asked me what American Jews should do. I answered that the first thing they should do is stop supporting massive non-White immigration.
Ms. Bee seemed surprised that I was not a WASP—that I grew up Catholic in a small city in Wisconsin. There seemed to be an effort to get me to say bad things about the WASPs I had known.
But my general message was that what did in the WASPs were the traits like moral idealism so characteristic of John Paul Stevens — not exactly the image that plays well in the media. I told them that I always thought that I could have become part of the WASP club myself if I had just decided to take up golf and get a job where I would make a bit more money than college professors make. In sociology-speak, the boundaries separating me from them were permeable. Indeed, one of my childhood friends was a wealthy Catholic who was well ensconced in the local country club WASP milieu.
I was asked about anti-WASP movies, the classic being Caddyshack where WASPs are depicted as snobbish, dishonest, vain, pompous, dim-witted, and sexually repressed. I forgot to mention that our local Jewish surgeon (there were maybe two Jewish families in town) was also a member of the local country club scene—but he behaved nothing like the Rodney Dangerfield character in Caddyshack.
I was also asked about my affiliation with American Third Position party. I kept reiterating the point that everyone has ethnic interests and that people who don’t have a sense of ethnic identity and interests will simply lose out to those that do—a knockdown argument if ever there was one. Bee paraphrased the argument as urging Whites to “get in the game”. Sounds like a good slogan for A3P!
I was told that the piece would run in a week or two. But nothing happened. Eventually, Kagan was officially confirmed. Not long after, Kahn sent me an email saying “I wanted to let you know that due to circumstances beyond my control, the piece featuring your interview won't be airing. I'm so sorry we weren't able to feature it, but this happens from time to time.”
Oh, well.
Of course, one never really knows why the interview wasn’t aired. Maybe it genuinely was no longer topical. But my taping in New York was in early July. Kagan was confirmed in early August. It’s hard to believe that The Daily Show normally wastes so much time. It’s daily, isn’t it?
But the suspicion must be that, as with Politico and Jared Taylor, the senior media honchos do not want discussions of race, White identity and interests, or Jewish influence in a way that gets outside the box of Political Correctness.
Lower-ranking MSM operatives apparently don’t always get this message, but they are brought up pretty sharply.
The only exceptions are Archie Bunker types who can be easily skewered. I have no doubt whatever that, if I had come across to Bee and Kahn (and their superiors) as a nut case, the interview would have been aired.
And of course, from MSM point of view, they are absolutely right. The greatest power of the MSM is the power to define the boundaries of acceptable political discussion. The ideas I was expressing must be seen as espoused only by people who are uneducated, criminal and/or mad. Hence the fervent desire to find that Jared Lee Loughner had ties to White advocacy.
Until this intellectual monopoly is broken—as the internet is to some extent doing—there will be no movement on big issues like immigration, especially legal immigration.
And anti-White organizations will continue to have the doomsday weapon: being able to end careers with charges of “racism” and “anti-Semitism” simply for writing or saying things that are well-thought out, reasonable, and factually-based—but beyond the pale.
The good news for me: it was a learning experience in how the media elite works.
And I greatly enjoyed dinner with supportive friends on the night before the interview. They can’t take that away from me.
Kevin MacDonald [email him] is professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach and a frequent contributor to The Occidental Observer. For his website, click here.
Saturday, 22 January 2011
British Brainwashing Corporation a mafia of effete decadents.
Left-wing bias? It's written through the BBC's very DNA,
says Peter Sissons
Last updated at 1:55 AM on 22nd January 2011
For 20 years I was a front man at the BBC, anchoring news and currentaffairs programmes, so I reckon nobody is better placed than me to answer the question that nags at many of its viewers — is the BBC biased?
In my view, ‘bias’ is too blunt a word to describe the subtleties of the pervading culture. The better word is a ‘mindset’. At the core of the BBC, in its very DNA, is a way of thinking that is firmly of the Left.
By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The Guardian and The Independent. Producers refer to them routinely for the line to take on running stories, and for inspiration on which items to cover. In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told ‘it’s all in there’.
If you want to read one of the few copies of the Daily Mail that find their way into the BBC newsroom, they are difficult to track down, and you would be advised not to make too much of a show of reading them. Wrap them in brown paper or a copy of The Guardian, would be my advice.
I am in no doubt that the majority of BBC staff vote for political parties of the Left. But it’s impossible to do anything but guess at the numbers whose beliefs are on the Right or even Centre-Right. This is because the one thing guaranteed to damage your career prospects at the BBC is letting it be known that you are at odds with the prevailing and deep-rooted BBC attitude towards Life, the Universe, and Everything.
At any given time there is a BBC line on everything of importance, a line usually adopted in the light of which way its senior echelons believe the political wind is blowing. This line is rarely spelled out explicitly, but percolates subtly throughout the organisation.
Whatever the United Nations is associated with is good — it is heresy to question any of its activities. The EU is also a good thing, but not quite as good as the UN. Soaking the rich is good, despite well-founded economic arguments that the more you tax, the less you get. And Government spending is a good thing, although most BBC people prefer to call it investment, in line with New Labour’s terminology.
All green and environmental groups are very good things. Al Gore is a saint. George Bush was a bad thing, and thick into the bargain. Obama was not just the Democratic Party’s candidate for the White House, he was the BBC’s. Blair was good, Brown bad, but the BBC has now lost interest in both.
Trade unions are mostly good things, especially when they are fighting BBC managers. Quangos are also mostly good, and the reports they produce are usually handled uncritically. The Royal Family is a bore. Islam must not be offended at any price, although Christians are fair game because they do nothing about it if they are offended.
Queen Elizabeth II was not a favourite at the BBC
The increasing tendency for the BBC to interview its own reporters on air exacerbates this mindset. Instead of concentrating on interviewing the leading players in a story or spreading the net wide for a range of views, these days the BBC frequently chooses to use the time getting the thoughts of its own correspondents. It is a format intended to help clarify the facts, but which often invites the expression of opinion. When that happens, instead of hearing both sides of a story, the audience at home gets what is, in effect, the BBC’s view presented as fact.
And, inside the organisation, you challenge that collective view at your peril. In today’s BBC only those whose antennae are fully attuned to the corporation’s cultural mindset — or keep quiet about their true feelings — are going to make progress.
Moreover, making progress these days doesn’t mean just achieving the influence and prestige of a senior job with the world’s greatest broadcaster, once considered reward enough. For those breaking through into the senior ranks, there’s now big, big money and a gold-plated pension to be had.
Which is why, although there has been plenty of grumbling on the shop floor about the escalation of pay for top BBC managers in recent years, it’s muted. No one wants to wreck his or her chances of a well-paid place in the promised land. The newsroom has many talented journalists of middle rank, who know what’s wrong with the organisation, but who don’t rock the boat for fear of blowing their futures.
Not that talent alone is enough to get on at the BBC. The key to understanding its internal promotions system is that, for every person whose career is advanced on ability, two are promoted because it solves a problem for management.
If Human Resources — or Personnel, as it used to be known — advise that it’s time a woman or someone from an ethnic minority (or a combination of the two) was appointed to the job for which you, a white male, have applied, then that’s who gets it.
But whatever your talent, sex or ethnicity, there’s one sure-fire way at a BBC promotions board to ensure you don’t get the job, indeed to bring your career to a grinding halt. And that’s if, when asked which post-war politician you most admire, you reply: ‘Margaret Thatcher’.
What the BBC wants you, the public, to believe is that it has ‘independence’ woven into its fabric, running through its veins and concreted into its foundations. The reality, I discovered, was that for the BBC, independence is not a banner it carries principally on behalf of the listener or viewer. Rather, it is the name it gives to its ability to act at all times in its own best interests.
The BBC’s ability to position itself, to decide for itself on which side its bread is buttered, is what it calls its independence. It’s flexible, and acutely sensitive to which way the wind is blowing politically.
Complaints from viewers may invariably be met with the BBC’s stock response, ‘We don’t accept that, so get lost’. But complaints from ministers, though they may be rejected publicly, usually cause consternation — particularly if there is a licence fee settlement in the offing. And not just ministers, if a change of Government is thought likely.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was a BBC favourite according to Sissons
Back in October 1995, the then leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair, made his big speech at the Labour Party Conference — but on the Six O’clock News, there was every chance it would be upstaged by the verdict in the sensational OJ Simpson trial in the U.S., which was expected at the same time. Even at the conference itself delegates crowded round TV sets for the news, and it wasn’t to see a rerun of Tony.
Alastair Campbell, Blair’s press secretary, was having none of it. He faxed the BBC and ITN ‘not to lose sight of the importance to the country of Mr Blair’s speech’. He wanted it to lead the news. ITN ignored his letter. The BBC made sure the Six O’clock News complied.
That spoke volumes. Such a letter from a spin doctor would have been binned on principle by the great editors of ITN who I worked for before joining the BBC. At the BBC, the instinct, faced with such a plea from a party of the Left standing on the brink of power, was to do as requested.
All Governments work hard on influencing the news agenda, but what I found uncomfortable during my years presenting the Nine O’clock and Ten O’clock News was how blatant those attempts to pressurise the BBC became, particularly at General Election time.
The party machines all had the internal BBC telephone numbers of the editors of the major news programmes, whom they would try to bully in person, both before and after the programmes went out.
I remember a night when the editor’s phone rang after the Nine O’Clock News. It was a direct call from No:10, questioning her judgment and complaining about our political coverage that night. This wasn’t a call to the director-general, or the head of news, but to a harassed and tired editor who had been on duty for 14 hours.
‘Tell him to get stuffed,’ I advised her. She rolled her eyes, knowing better than I the row that would be caused by that.
One of the things that always puzzled me at the BBC was the lack of inspirational leadership. There were exceptions.
My favourite editor when I chaired Question Time was notable for his total loyalty to me and the rest of his team. If things went wrong, he saw it as his job to take the bullet. That was not the BBC way — the old saying ‘Deputy heads must roll’ still raises a smile, but only because of the truth it contains.
Most of the managers I had over me had status and rank, on paper. In reality, they had little talent except the dark art of surviving at the BBC and alienating those who were answerable to them. I was always struck by how few senior people there were to look up to and to learn from.
It had been very different at ITN where I began my career as a television journalist. It had a tremendous esprit de corps and bosses whom you would follow over the top when they blew the whistle. You were always aware that someone was in charge who would say the seven most important words in any newsroom: ‘Here’s what we are going to do.’
Working at ITN wasn’t always a bed of roses. I can remember fights and disagreements, strikes and setbacks. But I never felt the chronic lack of motivation that comes when you work for an organisation that is rudderless.
ITN, it must be said, had the advantage of being small. The BBC, by contrast, has become so big and complex that it is virtually unmanageable. Those at the top of one of the world’s greatest communications businesses seem to find it impossible to communicate on a personal level with those who work for them.
Many of them were once convivial colleagues, but the dead hand of the BBC knocks the stuffing out of them, and the climate of fear — fear usually of making a decision — finishes them off.
The BBC is one of our most important national institutions. It is revered around the world, and many of its products, in entertainment and drama, are unsurpassed. But at its core is news, and BBC News is an unhappy place, under-performing and directionless.
Paradoxically, it’s never had more people involved in journalist training and laying down editorial guidelines.
What it lacks is a leader whose lodestone isn’t The Guardian; who will draw a line on political correctness; who’s not afraid to hire some people who don’t fit the BBC template; who will kick backsides when merited; who will promote solely on talent; who will remind all interest groups that they don’t have an entitlement to BBC airtime; and who will do the job for the prestige and not the money.
And pigs might fly!!!! On a day-to-day basis the people who ran BBC News were rarely seen on the shop floor. If a visitor to the BBC’s huge newsroom at Television Centre were to ask who was in charge, you wouldn’t be able to point to any individual in the room.
Harassed programme editors would be summoned to editorial meetings on the management floors above, and the sentiment most often expressed when they returned was that they had wasted valuable time reading lists to each other and explaining the day’s news to the man or woman notionally at the helm.
Too many senior executives were just playing out their roles, oblivious to how irrelevant they had become to what was actually being done in the news factory below. Colleagues told me that they had not just lost respect for their highly-paid bosses, what they felt was now total contempt. What they were looking for was leadership, and all they got was management.
Developments like this increasingly disturbed and depressed me. They came to a head just before the 2009 local and European elections, when time was starting to run out for the Brown Government.
I was at Television Centre preparing to anchor the 5pm-6pm news, the centre-piece of which was to be an extended interview that I would conduct with Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman.
I did what I have always done before thousands of interviews in my 45 years as a broadcast journalist. I drew up a list of the most important current issues that I felt she needed to be asked about, drafted a few core questions, and scoured the newswires and morning papers for anything I’d missed.
Then it started — a steady stream of email messages from producers telling me what to ask. Three or four of them all wanted to have their say, and they seemed particularly twitchy about Harman being interviewed by me, unsupervised. Most seemed to be fully paid-up members of her fan club.
BBC news producers have a perfect right to try to ensure that a news presenter sticks to their agenda — it is the BBC way. But too many of them are concerned not about what will be the best thing to do journalistically, but about what will best please the news executives on the floors above. The two are not necessarily the same thing.
I managed to bat away most of the stuff suggested to me, and the way the interview might go took shape in my mind. Then, half an hour before transmission, a producer arrived with a list of questions for Harriet Harman emailed in by viewers.
This was news to me, but I had no choice in the matter because they had already been set up with captions, and it was my job simply to put them to her. After that, if there was time — and the interview was to run to no more than eight minutes — I could put some questions of my own.
I was asked what I had in mind, and I said that I was going to ask her about a row brewing in the morning papers about Gordon Brown not inviting the Queen to the 65th anniversary commemoration of D-Day. The response shocked me. I was told this was not a topic worth raising because it was ‘only a campaign being run by the Daily Mail’.
I have no doubt that if it had been the lead in The Guardian or The Independent, I would have been instructed to nail Ms Harman to the wall. I did ask the question, and she, clearly uncomfortable, promised a statement when she had found out all the facts.
But as I drove home that evening, I asked myself if I wanted to go on working for the BBC. By the time I arrived home, I’d decided to leave.
Extracted from When One Door Closes by Peter Sissons, published on February 2 by Biteback Publishing at £17.99. © Peter Sissons 2011. To order a copy at £14.99 (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720..
Comments (31)Here's what readers have had to say so far.
Very enlightening article, but it doesn't suprise me. Peter Sissions has just gone up a few notches.
- Aryan, Wales, 22/1/2011 02:38
The Guardian sells only 250 000 copies a day (and falling). Take away the bulk buying by libraries, quangos, unions, universities, charities, and BBC and the real figure is 50 000 genuine purchasers mostly in West London. Yet the Guardian has a monopoly on BBC recruitment adverts (many millions each year from licence fees) which subsidise it and drive the genuine purchases (looking at the jobs). Why will no MP and certainly not Jeremy Hunt Culture secretary challenge this ?
- Jonathan Stuart-Brown, Walsall, 22/1/2011 02:35
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349506/Left-wing-bias-Its-written-BBCs-DNA-says-Peter-Sissons.html#ixzz1BkcNQiIZ
says Peter Sissons
Last updated at 1:55 AM on 22nd January 2011
For 20 years I was a front man at the BBC, anchoring news and currentaffairs programmes, so I reckon nobody is better placed than me to answer the question that nags at many of its viewers — is the BBC biased?
In my view, ‘bias’ is too blunt a word to describe the subtleties of the pervading culture. The better word is a ‘mindset’. At the core of the BBC, in its very DNA, is a way of thinking that is firmly of the Left.
By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The Guardian and The Independent. Producers refer to them routinely for the line to take on running stories, and for inspiration on which items to cover. In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told ‘it’s all in there’.
If you want to read one of the few copies of the Daily Mail that find their way into the BBC newsroom, they are difficult to track down, and you would be advised not to make too much of a show of reading them. Wrap them in brown paper or a copy of The Guardian, would be my advice.
I am in no doubt that the majority of BBC staff vote for political parties of the Left. But it’s impossible to do anything but guess at the numbers whose beliefs are on the Right or even Centre-Right. This is because the one thing guaranteed to damage your career prospects at the BBC is letting it be known that you are at odds with the prevailing and deep-rooted BBC attitude towards Life, the Universe, and Everything.
At any given time there is a BBC line on everything of importance, a line usually adopted in the light of which way its senior echelons believe the political wind is blowing. This line is rarely spelled out explicitly, but percolates subtly throughout the organisation.
Whatever the United Nations is associated with is good — it is heresy to question any of its activities. The EU is also a good thing, but not quite as good as the UN. Soaking the rich is good, despite well-founded economic arguments that the more you tax, the less you get. And Government spending is a good thing, although most BBC people prefer to call it investment, in line with New Labour’s terminology.
All green and environmental groups are very good things. Al Gore is a saint. George Bush was a bad thing, and thick into the bargain. Obama was not just the Democratic Party’s candidate for the White House, he was the BBC’s. Blair was good, Brown bad, but the BBC has now lost interest in both.
Trade unions are mostly good things, especially when they are fighting BBC managers. Quangos are also mostly good, and the reports they produce are usually handled uncritically. The Royal Family is a bore. Islam must not be offended at any price, although Christians are fair game because they do nothing about it if they are offended.
Queen Elizabeth II was not a favourite at the BBC
The increasing tendency for the BBC to interview its own reporters on air exacerbates this mindset. Instead of concentrating on interviewing the leading players in a story or spreading the net wide for a range of views, these days the BBC frequently chooses to use the time getting the thoughts of its own correspondents. It is a format intended to help clarify the facts, but which often invites the expression of opinion. When that happens, instead of hearing both sides of a story, the audience at home gets what is, in effect, the BBC’s view presented as fact.
And, inside the organisation, you challenge that collective view at your peril. In today’s BBC only those whose antennae are fully attuned to the corporation’s cultural mindset — or keep quiet about their true feelings — are going to make progress.
Moreover, making progress these days doesn’t mean just achieving the influence and prestige of a senior job with the world’s greatest broadcaster, once considered reward enough. For those breaking through into the senior ranks, there’s now big, big money and a gold-plated pension to be had.
Which is why, although there has been plenty of grumbling on the shop floor about the escalation of pay for top BBC managers in recent years, it’s muted. No one wants to wreck his or her chances of a well-paid place in the promised land. The newsroom has many talented journalists of middle rank, who know what’s wrong with the organisation, but who don’t rock the boat for fear of blowing their futures.
Not that talent alone is enough to get on at the BBC. The key to understanding its internal promotions system is that, for every person whose career is advanced on ability, two are promoted because it solves a problem for management.
If Human Resources — or Personnel, as it used to be known — advise that it’s time a woman or someone from an ethnic minority (or a combination of the two) was appointed to the job for which you, a white male, have applied, then that’s who gets it.
But whatever your talent, sex or ethnicity, there’s one sure-fire way at a BBC promotions board to ensure you don’t get the job, indeed to bring your career to a grinding halt. And that’s if, when asked which post-war politician you most admire, you reply: ‘Margaret Thatcher’.
What the BBC wants you, the public, to believe is that it has ‘independence’ woven into its fabric, running through its veins and concreted into its foundations. The reality, I discovered, was that for the BBC, independence is not a banner it carries principally on behalf of the listener or viewer. Rather, it is the name it gives to its ability to act at all times in its own best interests.
The BBC’s ability to position itself, to decide for itself on which side its bread is buttered, is what it calls its independence. It’s flexible, and acutely sensitive to which way the wind is blowing politically.
Complaints from viewers may invariably be met with the BBC’s stock response, ‘We don’t accept that, so get lost’. But complaints from ministers, though they may be rejected publicly, usually cause consternation — particularly if there is a licence fee settlement in the offing. And not just ministers, if a change of Government is thought likely.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was a BBC favourite according to Sissons
Back in October 1995, the then leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair, made his big speech at the Labour Party Conference — but on the Six O’clock News, there was every chance it would be upstaged by the verdict in the sensational OJ Simpson trial in the U.S., which was expected at the same time. Even at the conference itself delegates crowded round TV sets for the news, and it wasn’t to see a rerun of Tony.
Alastair Campbell, Blair’s press secretary, was having none of it. He faxed the BBC and ITN ‘not to lose sight of the importance to the country of Mr Blair’s speech’. He wanted it to lead the news. ITN ignored his letter. The BBC made sure the Six O’clock News complied.
That spoke volumes. Such a letter from a spin doctor would have been binned on principle by the great editors of ITN who I worked for before joining the BBC. At the BBC, the instinct, faced with such a plea from a party of the Left standing on the brink of power, was to do as requested.
All Governments work hard on influencing the news agenda, but what I found uncomfortable during my years presenting the Nine O’clock and Ten O’clock News was how blatant those attempts to pressurise the BBC became, particularly at General Election time.
The party machines all had the internal BBC telephone numbers of the editors of the major news programmes, whom they would try to bully in person, both before and after the programmes went out.
I remember a night when the editor’s phone rang after the Nine O’Clock News. It was a direct call from No:10, questioning her judgment and complaining about our political coverage that night. This wasn’t a call to the director-general, or the head of news, but to a harassed and tired editor who had been on duty for 14 hours.
‘Tell him to get stuffed,’ I advised her. She rolled her eyes, knowing better than I the row that would be caused by that.
One of the things that always puzzled me at the BBC was the lack of inspirational leadership. There were exceptions.
My favourite editor when I chaired Question Time was notable for his total loyalty to me and the rest of his team. If things went wrong, he saw it as his job to take the bullet. That was not the BBC way — the old saying ‘Deputy heads must roll’ still raises a smile, but only because of the truth it contains.
Most of the managers I had over me had status and rank, on paper. In reality, they had little talent except the dark art of surviving at the BBC and alienating those who were answerable to them. I was always struck by how few senior people there were to look up to and to learn from.
It had been very different at ITN where I began my career as a television journalist. It had a tremendous esprit de corps and bosses whom you would follow over the top when they blew the whistle. You were always aware that someone was in charge who would say the seven most important words in any newsroom: ‘Here’s what we are going to do.’
Working at ITN wasn’t always a bed of roses. I can remember fights and disagreements, strikes and setbacks. But I never felt the chronic lack of motivation that comes when you work for an organisation that is rudderless.
ITN, it must be said, had the advantage of being small. The BBC, by contrast, has become so big and complex that it is virtually unmanageable. Those at the top of one of the world’s greatest communications businesses seem to find it impossible to communicate on a personal level with those who work for them.
Many of them were once convivial colleagues, but the dead hand of the BBC knocks the stuffing out of them, and the climate of fear — fear usually of making a decision — finishes them off.
The BBC is one of our most important national institutions. It is revered around the world, and many of its products, in entertainment and drama, are unsurpassed. But at its core is news, and BBC News is an unhappy place, under-performing and directionless.
Paradoxically, it’s never had more people involved in journalist training and laying down editorial guidelines.
What it lacks is a leader whose lodestone isn’t The Guardian; who will draw a line on political correctness; who’s not afraid to hire some people who don’t fit the BBC template; who will kick backsides when merited; who will promote solely on talent; who will remind all interest groups that they don’t have an entitlement to BBC airtime; and who will do the job for the prestige and not the money.
And pigs might fly!!!! On a day-to-day basis the people who ran BBC News were rarely seen on the shop floor. If a visitor to the BBC’s huge newsroom at Television Centre were to ask who was in charge, you wouldn’t be able to point to any individual in the room.
Harassed programme editors would be summoned to editorial meetings on the management floors above, and the sentiment most often expressed when they returned was that they had wasted valuable time reading lists to each other and explaining the day’s news to the man or woman notionally at the helm.
Too many senior executives were just playing out their roles, oblivious to how irrelevant they had become to what was actually being done in the news factory below. Colleagues told me that they had not just lost respect for their highly-paid bosses, what they felt was now total contempt. What they were looking for was leadership, and all they got was management.
Developments like this increasingly disturbed and depressed me. They came to a head just before the 2009 local and European elections, when time was starting to run out for the Brown Government.
I was at Television Centre preparing to anchor the 5pm-6pm news, the centre-piece of which was to be an extended interview that I would conduct with Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman.
I did what I have always done before thousands of interviews in my 45 years as a broadcast journalist. I drew up a list of the most important current issues that I felt she needed to be asked about, drafted a few core questions, and scoured the newswires and morning papers for anything I’d missed.
Then it started — a steady stream of email messages from producers telling me what to ask. Three or four of them all wanted to have their say, and they seemed particularly twitchy about Harman being interviewed by me, unsupervised. Most seemed to be fully paid-up members of her fan club.
BBC news producers have a perfect right to try to ensure that a news presenter sticks to their agenda — it is the BBC way. But too many of them are concerned not about what will be the best thing to do journalistically, but about what will best please the news executives on the floors above. The two are not necessarily the same thing.
I managed to bat away most of the stuff suggested to me, and the way the interview might go took shape in my mind. Then, half an hour before transmission, a producer arrived with a list of questions for Harriet Harman emailed in by viewers.
This was news to me, but I had no choice in the matter because they had already been set up with captions, and it was my job simply to put them to her. After that, if there was time — and the interview was to run to no more than eight minutes — I could put some questions of my own.
I was asked what I had in mind, and I said that I was going to ask her about a row brewing in the morning papers about Gordon Brown not inviting the Queen to the 65th anniversary commemoration of D-Day. The response shocked me. I was told this was not a topic worth raising because it was ‘only a campaign being run by the Daily Mail’.
I have no doubt that if it had been the lead in The Guardian or The Independent, I would have been instructed to nail Ms Harman to the wall. I did ask the question, and she, clearly uncomfortable, promised a statement when she had found out all the facts.
But as I drove home that evening, I asked myself if I wanted to go on working for the BBC. By the time I arrived home, I’d decided to leave.
Extracted from When One Door Closes by Peter Sissons, published on February 2 by Biteback Publishing at £17.99. © Peter Sissons 2011. To order a copy at £14.99 (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720..
Comments (31)Here's what readers have had to say so far.
Very enlightening article, but it doesn't suprise me. Peter Sissions has just gone up a few notches.
- Aryan, Wales, 22/1/2011 02:38
The Guardian sells only 250 000 copies a day (and falling). Take away the bulk buying by libraries, quangos, unions, universities, charities, and BBC and the real figure is 50 000 genuine purchasers mostly in West London. Yet the Guardian has a monopoly on BBC recruitment adverts (many millions each year from licence fees) which subsidise it and drive the genuine purchases (looking at the jobs). Why will no MP and certainly not Jeremy Hunt Culture secretary challenge this ?
- Jonathan Stuart-Brown, Walsall, 22/1/2011 02:35
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349506/Left-wing-bias-Its-written-BBCs-DNA-says-Peter-Sissons.html#ixzz1BkcNQiIZ
Jews working the suckers again
If ever you’ve got half an hour to spare and feel like peering deeply into “intergenerationally transmitted” persecution mania, then this is the ‘must read’ for you.
This kind of psycho-babble has been deployed in the defence of Jews arrested, charged and convicted of ‘hate-crime’ hoaxes perpetrated “to alert the world to on-going anti-semitism....” (In regard to that kind of activity, check out the work of the non-political American academic Laird Wilcox at: http://www.lairdwilcox.com/ .)
Meanwhile, go to:
http://www.baycrest.org/If_Not_Now/Volume7/default_11222.asp
Baycrest - Vol 7, Winter 2007.
Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma
from Holocaust Survivors to their Children
by Diane Harvery, Toronto
Introduction
The Holocaust had and still has a deep effect on the children of survivors. “They grew up in the shadow of psychic conflicts stemming from bereavement, mourning, guilt feelings and anxiety, which often resulted in overprotection and over expectation.”
(Wardi, 1992, p.x)
During their childhood, children of Holocaust survivors or 2nd generation survivors, as they have come to be known, have been the unwitting recipients of their parent’s trauma. Survivor parents have unconsciously transmitted onto their children much of their own traumas, as well as investing them with all their memories and hopes.
The study of transgenerational transmission of the Holocaust trauma is full of complexities. It becomes almost impossible to precisely understand what kind of parents, having experienced what kinds of trauma, at what age, and in which context, will transmit what kinds of message, in what ways, to what kinds of children, and with what consequences (Gottschalk, 2003). There are common sensitivities that all 2nd generation survivors feel including: the desire to protect their parents; feelings of mourning and loss; not wanting to be a burden to their parents; heightened sensitivity to suffering people in general; and, prevalent feelings of guilt and anxiety.
This kind of psycho-babble has been deployed in the defence of Jews arrested, charged and convicted of ‘hate-crime’ hoaxes perpetrated “to alert the world to on-going anti-semitism....” (In regard to that kind of activity, check out the work of the non-political American academic Laird Wilcox at: http://www.lairdwilcox.com/ .)
Meanwhile, go to:
http://www.baycrest.org/If_Not_Now/Volume7/default_11222.asp
Baycrest - Vol 7, Winter 2007.
Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma
from Holocaust Survivors to their Children
by Diane Harvery, Toronto
Introduction
The Holocaust had and still has a deep effect on the children of survivors. “They grew up in the shadow of psychic conflicts stemming from bereavement, mourning, guilt feelings and anxiety, which often resulted in overprotection and over expectation.”
(Wardi, 1992, p.x)
During their childhood, children of Holocaust survivors or 2nd generation survivors, as they have come to be known, have been the unwitting recipients of their parent’s trauma. Survivor parents have unconsciously transmitted onto their children much of their own traumas, as well as investing them with all their memories and hopes.
The study of transgenerational transmission of the Holocaust trauma is full of complexities. It becomes almost impossible to precisely understand what kind of parents, having experienced what kinds of trauma, at what age, and in which context, will transmit what kinds of message, in what ways, to what kinds of children, and with what consequences (Gottschalk, 2003). There are common sensitivities that all 2nd generation survivors feel including: the desire to protect their parents; feelings of mourning and loss; not wanting to be a burden to their parents; heightened sensitivity to suffering people in general; and, prevalent feelings of guilt and anxiety.
Friday, 21 January 2011
Churchill A Corrupt Drunk
AN OBSESSION THAT CAUSED MILLIONS TO DIE IN WORLD WAR II
Documentary hails Judeophiliac Churchill
Documentary hails Churchill as Zionists' greatest ally
By MARTIN KNELMAN
The Toronto Star Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Documentary on Churchill and Jews aired on Jan. 17.
TORONTO — Millions of people credit Winston Churchill, Britain’s
inspiring wartime prime minister during its darkest hours, with
saving the world from Hitler.
But was Churchill also — as we’ve rarely heard — the greatest
ally the Jewish people have ever had?
The answer is a passionate yes, according to Barry Avrich,
whose compelling documentary — An Unlikely Obsession:
Churchill and the Jews — will have its premiere at 10 p.m.
Monday on the Vision channel.
“When I was first approached about making a film based a book
by Martin Gilbert,” Avrich recalls, “I said ‘No, I’m the wrong guy
for this project.’ But then I read the book, and I met Gilbert, and
I undertook some research on my own. I pored over the material,
trying to connect the dots. What I discovered is powerful stuff.
By then I was hooked. I knew what a great subject this was,
and I had to make the film.”
Avrich runs a major Toronto marketing firm but moonlights
directing, producing and writing movies. Typically he does one
film a year. But the past year has been far from typical. For the
second year in a row, he made a screen version of a Stratford
Shakespeare Festival production; The Tempest, already a hit
in HD at Canadian cinemas, will be released in the U.S. in May.
And next month TIFF’s Bell Lightbox will present the premiere
of Unauthorized, Avrich’s titillating portrait of Hollywood mogul
Harvey Weinstein. His next project: a documentary about
veteran comedian David Steinberg, featuring a concert
performance.
Jewish celebrities acclaim Sir Winston
The proposal to make the Churchill film had come from Michael
Levine, the Toronto entertainment lawyer, agent and occasional
producer. Gilbert, a renowned British scholar and author, was one
of Levine’s clients.
Gilbert had spent 20 years writing the official 10-volume biography
of Churchill. He had also written many books on Jewish subjects.
In his book about Churchill and the Jews, Gilbert argued that it
was largely thanks to decades of support from Churchill (going
back to World War I) that the state of Israel was born in 1948.
One of Churchill’s old friends described him as being “too fond of
Jews.” And it has also been said that Sir Winston’s strong support
for creating a Jewish homeland did not always win him friends.
But is Alan Dershowitz, the celebrated Harvard law professor,
exaggerating a tad when he claims that there really ought to
be a huge statue of Sir Winston in Jerusalem? If he’s right, then
Churchill ought to loom as large in the story of Israel’s birth as
those legendary Zionist prophets Theodor Herzl and Chaim
Weizmann.
Dershowitz is one of many intellectual celebrities who appear on
screen. Yes, it’s a talking heads film of the traditional variety,
but what an array of heads! Among those who pop in and out
of the frame, offering insights into Churchill’s and his obsession
with the Jewish dream of establishing a homeland, are fallen
media tycoon Conrad Black (doing his first TV interview since
being released from jail), historian Margaret MacMillan (author
of Paris 1919); and, of course, Sir Martin Gilbert. Z
Took inspiration from Old Testament tales
The off-screen narrator is that man with the golden voice,
Gordon Pinsent.
The starry commentators tell the story of how at a time of
casual anti-Semitism at the highest social and political levels
of post-Victorian British society, Churchill took inspiration from
Old Testament tales, aspiring to become a latter-day Moses.
Denouncing pogroms in Russia even while British voters wondered
what events so far away had to do with them, Churchill hob-
nobbed with influential Jewish leaders and articulated the view
that the foundations of modern civilization and ethics came out
of Jewish history — for which he felt the rest of the world should
show its gratitude.
Not all historians agree with Gilbert. Some claim Churchill’s main
motive was to extend the power of the British Empire, and that
at some points he sacrificed Jewish interests in an effort to
protect access to Arab oil.
“Churchill’s support for a Jewish homeland may have wavered
now and then over the years,” Avrich says. “But mostly he was
giving the cause huge support when no other world leader was
doing so. Not Franklin Roosevelt in the U.S. and certainly not
William Lyon Mackenzie King in Canada.”
http://www.thestar.com/article/920129--documentary-hails-churchill-as-zionists-greatest-ally
Documentary hails Judeophiliac Churchill
Documentary hails Churchill as Zionists' greatest ally
By MARTIN KNELMAN
The Toronto Star Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Documentary on Churchill and Jews aired on Jan. 17.
TORONTO — Millions of people credit Winston Churchill, Britain’s
inspiring wartime prime minister during its darkest hours, with
saving the world from Hitler.
But was Churchill also — as we’ve rarely heard — the greatest
ally the Jewish people have ever had?
The answer is a passionate yes, according to Barry Avrich,
whose compelling documentary — An Unlikely Obsession:
Churchill and the Jews — will have its premiere at 10 p.m.
Monday on the Vision channel.
“When I was first approached about making a film based a book
by Martin Gilbert,” Avrich recalls, “I said ‘No, I’m the wrong guy
for this project.’ But then I read the book, and I met Gilbert, and
I undertook some research on my own. I pored over the material,
trying to connect the dots. What I discovered is powerful stuff.
By then I was hooked. I knew what a great subject this was,
and I had to make the film.”
Avrich runs a major Toronto marketing firm but moonlights
directing, producing and writing movies. Typically he does one
film a year. But the past year has been far from typical. For the
second year in a row, he made a screen version of a Stratford
Shakespeare Festival production; The Tempest, already a hit
in HD at Canadian cinemas, will be released in the U.S. in May.
And next month TIFF’s Bell Lightbox will present the premiere
of Unauthorized, Avrich’s titillating portrait of Hollywood mogul
Harvey Weinstein. His next project: a documentary about
veteran comedian David Steinberg, featuring a concert
performance.
Jewish celebrities acclaim Sir Winston
The proposal to make the Churchill film had come from Michael
Levine, the Toronto entertainment lawyer, agent and occasional
producer. Gilbert, a renowned British scholar and author, was one
of Levine’s clients.
Gilbert had spent 20 years writing the official 10-volume biography
of Churchill. He had also written many books on Jewish subjects.
In his book about Churchill and the Jews, Gilbert argued that it
was largely thanks to decades of support from Churchill (going
back to World War I) that the state of Israel was born in 1948.
One of Churchill’s old friends described him as being “too fond of
Jews.” And it has also been said that Sir Winston’s strong support
for creating a Jewish homeland did not always win him friends.
But is Alan Dershowitz, the celebrated Harvard law professor,
exaggerating a tad when he claims that there really ought to
be a huge statue of Sir Winston in Jerusalem? If he’s right, then
Churchill ought to loom as large in the story of Israel’s birth as
those legendary Zionist prophets Theodor Herzl and Chaim
Weizmann.
Dershowitz is one of many intellectual celebrities who appear on
screen. Yes, it’s a talking heads film of the traditional variety,
but what an array of heads! Among those who pop in and out
of the frame, offering insights into Churchill’s and his obsession
with the Jewish dream of establishing a homeland, are fallen
media tycoon Conrad Black (doing his first TV interview since
being released from jail), historian Margaret MacMillan (author
of Paris 1919); and, of course, Sir Martin Gilbert. Z
Took inspiration from Old Testament tales
The off-screen narrator is that man with the golden voice,
Gordon Pinsent.
The starry commentators tell the story of how at a time of
casual anti-Semitism at the highest social and political levels
of post-Victorian British society, Churchill took inspiration from
Old Testament tales, aspiring to become a latter-day Moses.
Denouncing pogroms in Russia even while British voters wondered
what events so far away had to do with them, Churchill hob-
nobbed with influential Jewish leaders and articulated the view
that the foundations of modern civilization and ethics came out
of Jewish history — for which he felt the rest of the world should
show its gratitude.
Not all historians agree with Gilbert. Some claim Churchill’s main
motive was to extend the power of the British Empire, and that
at some points he sacrificed Jewish interests in an effort to
protect access to Arab oil.
“Churchill’s support for a Jewish homeland may have wavered
now and then over the years,” Avrich says. “But mostly he was
giving the cause huge support when no other world leader was
doing so. Not Franklin Roosevelt in the U.S. and certainly not
William Lyon Mackenzie King in Canada.”
http://www.thestar.com/article/920129--documentary-hails-churchill-as-zionists-greatest-ally
Thursday, 20 January 2011
BOOK BURNING IN SPAIN
Google translation from Spanish with some further amendments to make it intelligible:-
This Morning, Pedro Varela was taken by police [from prison] to his bookshop [in Barcelona] to witness the seizure of the twelve remaining copies of the book - "Mein Kampf". The order came from the Prosecution "reactivated" by the German state of Bavaria, which owns all rights for publishing and distribution of Adolf Hitler's book until 2015. This is a poor excuse considering that the first edition of this book was published 86 years ago in Spain in 1937. So far no one had claimed any rights. What a coincidence!
They also confiscated all the computers in the library where they were files for billing, customer lists and layouts all types of books ready for printing.
After an half an hour search of the property Pedro Varela's was taken away by police car and returned to his cell.
So we can see the imprisonment of the bookseller is not enough for them - they seek to prevent the continuation of the bookshop at all costs
The bookshop supporters are completely disheartened, as without the computers no work can be done. We ask all the support and encouragement possible for those who still believe in freedom of expression.
Our indignation should be transformed into solidarity and courage to endure with dignity these attacks which seek to undermine our morale.
No one can talk about democracy now...
Thank you all in advance [for your support].
http://libertadpedrovarela.over-blog.com/article-secuestro-en-la-libreria-europa-hoy-65270911.html
This Morning, Pedro Varela was taken by police [from prison] to his bookshop [in Barcelona] to witness the seizure of the twelve remaining copies of the book - "Mein Kampf". The order came from the Prosecution "reactivated" by the German state of Bavaria, which owns all rights for publishing and distribution of Adolf Hitler's book until 2015. This is a poor excuse considering that the first edition of this book was published 86 years ago in Spain in 1937. So far no one had claimed any rights. What a coincidence!
They also confiscated all the computers in the library where they were files for billing, customer lists and layouts all types of books ready for printing.
After an half an hour search of the property Pedro Varela's was taken away by police car and returned to his cell.
So we can see the imprisonment of the bookseller is not enough for them - they seek to prevent the continuation of the bookshop at all costs
The bookshop supporters are completely disheartened, as without the computers no work can be done. We ask all the support and encouragement possible for those who still believe in freedom of expression.
Our indignation should be transformed into solidarity and courage to endure with dignity these attacks which seek to undermine our morale.
No one can talk about democracy now...
Thank you all in advance [for your support].
http://libertadpedrovarela.over-blog.com/article-secuestro-en-la-libreria-europa-hoy-65270911.html
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
How Chamberlain and Halifax lied the UK into WWII
Sunday, 16 January 2011 17:02
How Chamberlain and Halifax lied the UK into WWII
(SOURCE: www.kreuz.net/article.12507.html) (Babelfish translation)
On 1 September 1939 - on the day of the German invasion in Poland - the French minister of foreign affairs Georges Étienne Bonnet († 1973) came closer to the Italian government.
He asked it for a proposal for mediation to end the war between Germany and Poland.
On 2 September 1939 the Italian Duce Benito Mussolini († 1945) presented a conference proposal to the powers.
It planned that the German troops remain standing, where they are straight.
Afterwards an international conference should be called up. The French government agreed.
On 2 September 1939 Adolf Hitler († 1945) explained itself ready to stop its troops until on 3 September 1939 at 12.00 o'clock.
Afterwards Germany would have to give up its Poland campaign, since the momentum would have been lost.
But the British Prime Minister Arthur Neville Chamberlain († 1940) rejected the conference proposal.
The offer went to it and his minister of foreign affairs Edward Frederick Lindley Wood Halifax († 1959) not far enough.
They demanded that the German troops do not only remain standing, but to turn around should.
That was a demand, which had not been ever placed in war history.
The British intention consisted of further-driving Hitler and the way to block any new negotiations
Because of the resistance of the British the French minister of foreign affairs Georges Bonnet († 1973) tried to move Poland in the single-handed attempt to agree the conference.
But British Ambassador Howard knowing pool of broadcasting corporations († 1955) advised Poland against.
Mussolinis proposal had to be approved by the French parliament.
Therein the British minister of foreign affairs Halifax saw his chance to bring the proposal to case and save the war - before the French cabinet could decide for the peace.
Halifax telephoned to the Italian minister of foreign affairs Gian Galeazzo Ciano († 1944).
In the discussion it, not only, maintained the British but also the French government demands that the German troops would have not to be only stopped but withdrawn.
The einfältige Ciano believed him, and Mussolini withdrew its peace proposal hastily.
Ciano kabelte this on 2 September 1939 to Italian Ambassador Bernardo Attolico († 1942) to Berlin.
When the French minister of foreign affairs Bonnet in a discussion break experienced that the Italians would have withdrawn their proposal, it was dismayed.
It stood now suddenly without basis for negotiation there. Hasty it called Ciano.
But this did not see a way to take up the proposal for mediation again.
The war continued.
How Chamberlain and Halifax lied the UK into WWII
(SOURCE: www.kreuz.net/article.12507.html) (Babelfish translation)
On 1 September 1939 - on the day of the German invasion in Poland - the French minister of foreign affairs Georges Étienne Bonnet († 1973) came closer to the Italian government.
He asked it for a proposal for mediation to end the war between Germany and Poland.
On 2 September 1939 the Italian Duce Benito Mussolini († 1945) presented a conference proposal to the powers.
It planned that the German troops remain standing, where they are straight.
Afterwards an international conference should be called up. The French government agreed.
On 2 September 1939 Adolf Hitler († 1945) explained itself ready to stop its troops until on 3 September 1939 at 12.00 o'clock.
Afterwards Germany would have to give up its Poland campaign, since the momentum would have been lost.
But the British Prime Minister Arthur Neville Chamberlain († 1940) rejected the conference proposal.
The offer went to it and his minister of foreign affairs Edward Frederick Lindley Wood Halifax († 1959) not far enough.
They demanded that the German troops do not only remain standing, but to turn around should.
That was a demand, which had not been ever placed in war history.
The British intention consisted of further-driving Hitler and the way to block any new negotiations
Because of the resistance of the British the French minister of foreign affairs Georges Bonnet († 1973) tried to move Poland in the single-handed attempt to agree the conference.
But British Ambassador Howard knowing pool of broadcasting corporations († 1955) advised Poland against.
Mussolinis proposal had to be approved by the French parliament.
Therein the British minister of foreign affairs Halifax saw his chance to bring the proposal to case and save the war - before the French cabinet could decide for the peace.
Halifax telephoned to the Italian minister of foreign affairs Gian Galeazzo Ciano († 1944).
In the discussion it, not only, maintained the British but also the French government demands that the German troops would have not to be only stopped but withdrawn.
The einfältige Ciano believed him, and Mussolini withdrew its peace proposal hastily.
Ciano kabelte this on 2 September 1939 to Italian Ambassador Bernardo Attolico († 1942) to Berlin.
When the French minister of foreign affairs Bonnet in a discussion break experienced that the Italians would have withdrawn their proposal, it was dismayed.
It stood now suddenly without basis for negotiation there. Hasty it called Ciano.
But this did not see a way to take up the proposal for mediation again.
The war continued.
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Annual Martin Luther King Day History Quiz
Annual Martin Luther King Day History Quiz
Due to discrimination and anti-Black bias, many Americans don't know enough about this great man. Try these quiz and you can see how little the schools, news media and establishment have told you about the only American with his own holiday.
1) Name the judge who has sealed King's FBI surveillance file until the year 2027.
A) The Honorable John Lewis Smith, Jr.
2) According to whose 1989 biography did King spend his last night on earth in an adulterous liaison?
A) Reverend Ralph Abernathy. And the Walls Came Tumbling Down
3) According to whose 1989 biography did King spend his last morning on earth physically beating a woman?
A) Reverend Ralph Abernathy. And the Walls Came Tumbling Down
4) Who was the U.S. Attorney General who ordered the FBI to wiretap King?
A) Robert F. Kennedy
5) Who was the Assistant Director of the FBI who wrote a letter to Sen. John P. East (R-NC) describing King's conduct of "orgiastic and adulterous escapades, some of which indicated that King could be bestial in his sexual abuse of women."
A) Charles D. Brennan
6) Who called King a "hypocrite preacher."
A) President Lyndon B. Johnson
7) What U.S. newspaper reported that King had plagiarized his doctoral thesis at Boston University.
A) The Wall Street Journal
8) Whom did King plagiarize in more than 50 complete sentences in his doctoral thesis?
A) Dr. Jack Boozer
9) What institution concluded that King had plagiarized his doctoral thesis?
A) Boston University in 1991.
10) Who was the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities who purposely suppressed knowledge of King's plagiarism of his doctoral thesis?
A) Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Richard Cheney
11) What was Martin Luther King's real name?
A) Michael King, Jr. In 1935 his father, Michael King, declared to his congregation that he wound henceforth be known as Martin Luther King and his son would be known as Martin Luther King, Jr.
12) In his first public sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1947 who did King plagiarize?
A) Harry Emerson Fosdick
13) Name the man who served as King's personal secretary from 1955 to 1960, had joined the Young Communists League at New York City College in 1936, went to prison for draft evasion in 1944, and in 1953 was sentenced to 60 days in jail in California "lewd vagrancy and homosexual perversion."
A) Bayard Rustin
14) According to whom had King "privately described himself as a Marxist."
A) His biographer, David J. Garrow
15) Who edited King's book Stride Toward Freedom?
A) Communist Stanley Levison
16) Who made the following speech?
That's exactly what we mean--
from every mountain side,
let freedom ring.
Not only from the Green Mountains
and White Mountains of Vermont
and New Hampshire;
not only from the Catskills
of New York;
but from the Ozarks
in Arkansas,
from Stone Mountain
in Georgia,
from the Blue Ridge Mountains
of Virginia
--let it ring not only for the minorities of the United States,
but for the disinherited of all the earth--from every mountainside,
LET FREEDOM RING!
A) Archibald Carey, 1952. Snopes.com and other apologists see no similarities between this speech of 1952 and the famed King address entitled "I Have a Dream."
No questions correct means you are exactly the kind of citizen your masters desire.
1-3 questions correct means you could be dangerous.
4-6 questions correct means you need electro-convulsive therapy.
7-10 questions correct means you are a hater.
11 or more questions correct means you are a terrorist. Turn yourself in now for re-education and your life will be spared.
Happy slain civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!
Due to discrimination and anti-Black bias, many Americans don't know enough about this great man. Try these quiz and you can see how little the schools, news media and establishment have told you about the only American with his own holiday.
1) Name the judge who has sealed King's FBI surveillance file until the year 2027.
A) The Honorable John Lewis Smith, Jr.
2) According to whose 1989 biography did King spend his last night on earth in an adulterous liaison?
A) Reverend Ralph Abernathy. And the Walls Came Tumbling Down
3) According to whose 1989 biography did King spend his last morning on earth physically beating a woman?
A) Reverend Ralph Abernathy. And the Walls Came Tumbling Down
4) Who was the U.S. Attorney General who ordered the FBI to wiretap King?
A) Robert F. Kennedy
5) Who was the Assistant Director of the FBI who wrote a letter to Sen. John P. East (R-NC) describing King's conduct of "orgiastic and adulterous escapades, some of which indicated that King could be bestial in his sexual abuse of women."
A) Charles D. Brennan
6) Who called King a "hypocrite preacher."
A) President Lyndon B. Johnson
7) What U.S. newspaper reported that King had plagiarized his doctoral thesis at Boston University.
A) The Wall Street Journal
8) Whom did King plagiarize in more than 50 complete sentences in his doctoral thesis?
A) Dr. Jack Boozer
9) What institution concluded that King had plagiarized his doctoral thesis?
A) Boston University in 1991.
10) Who was the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities who purposely suppressed knowledge of King's plagiarism of his doctoral thesis?
A) Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Richard Cheney
11) What was Martin Luther King's real name?
A) Michael King, Jr. In 1935 his father, Michael King, declared to his congregation that he wound henceforth be known as Martin Luther King and his son would be known as Martin Luther King, Jr.
12) In his first public sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1947 who did King plagiarize?
A) Harry Emerson Fosdick
13) Name the man who served as King's personal secretary from 1955 to 1960, had joined the Young Communists League at New York City College in 1936, went to prison for draft evasion in 1944, and in 1953 was sentenced to 60 days in jail in California "lewd vagrancy and homosexual perversion."
A) Bayard Rustin
14) According to whom had King "privately described himself as a Marxist."
A) His biographer, David J. Garrow
15) Who edited King's book Stride Toward Freedom?
A) Communist Stanley Levison
16) Who made the following speech?
That's exactly what we mean--
from every mountain side,
let freedom ring.
Not only from the Green Mountains
and White Mountains of Vermont
and New Hampshire;
not only from the Catskills
of New York;
but from the Ozarks
in Arkansas,
from Stone Mountain
in Georgia,
from the Blue Ridge Mountains
of Virginia
--let it ring not only for the minorities of the United States,
but for the disinherited of all the earth--from every mountainside,
LET FREEDOM RING!
A) Archibald Carey, 1952. Snopes.com and other apologists see no similarities between this speech of 1952 and the famed King address entitled "I Have a Dream."
No questions correct means you are exactly the kind of citizen your masters desire.
1-3 questions correct means you could be dangerous.
4-6 questions correct means you need electro-convulsive therapy.
7-10 questions correct means you are a hater.
11 or more questions correct means you are a terrorist. Turn yourself in now for re-education and your life will be spared.
Happy slain civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
Washington’s Secret Plan to Have Zionist Billionaire Chodorkowski Seize Power in Russia
Washington’s Secret Plan to Have Zionist Billionaire Chodorkowski Seize Power in Russia
By F. William Engdahl
Translated by J M Damon
The abbreviated version of the original German message is posted on several websites including
****************
The guilty verdict in the trial of the former Russian oil oligarch Michail Chodorkowski has been widely criticized by columnists such as Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer
It is significant that the Establishment media have kept quiet about the real reason why Putin arranged for the conviction of the former head of YUKOS, the largest Russian oil conglomerate.
The real threat and crime of Michail Chodorkowski consisted of playing a key role in an operation conducted by Western secret services that was designed to destabilize and destroy Russia from within.
Chodorkowski’s verdict is mild in comparison to what can be expected by defendants in the USA or UK who are accused of high treason.
Let us take a closer look at the rise and fall of Michail Chodorkowski.
In October of 2003, he was arrested in Siberia as he was leaving his private jet.
At that time he was accused of tax evasion.
At age 40 he had become the richest man in Russia, with a fortune of around 15 billion dollars.
He had acquired this fortune during the lawless Jelzin era, when he came into control of national resources by questionable means:
Through an auction conducted by one of his own banks, he had paid a paltry 309 million dollars for the YUKOS oil concern.
Within a year Yukos’s value was estimated at 45 billion dollars, and this “appreciation in value” was most certainly not due to his congenial management style.
Michail Chodorkowski’s background includes events and circumstances that are even more sinister than his acquisition of YUKOS, however.
In a court trial in the USA in 1998 he was acquitted of using his bank to launder money in conjunction with the Bank of New York.
The trial revealed that even then, he had underground connections and very influential friends in the USA.
Several months later Edmund Safra, the head of the Bank of New York, was killed in his apartment in Monaco, apparently murdered by members of the “Russian Mafia” that he had swindled in the course of money laundering.
At this time Chodorkowski was forming close ties with the West, using the billions he had swindled from the Russian people to develop contacts and make influential friends.
Following the example of George Soros’s so-called “Open Society,” he founded a corresponding society called the “Open Russia Foundation.”
He offered seats on the management board to Henry Kissinger and Jacob Rothschild as well as others in the most powerful circles in Washington.
He was invited into the advisory committee of the Carlyle Group of financial investors, which is known for its extreme secrecy, and he took part in meetings of the directorate with other advisors such as George H. W. Bush and James Baker III.
Together, with assistance of the government in Washington, they concocted the nefarious plan that did not succeed...
By F. William Engdahl
Translated by J M Damon
The abbreviated version of the original German message is posted on several websites including
****************
The guilty verdict in the trial of the former Russian oil oligarch Michail Chodorkowski has been widely criticized by columnists such as Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer
It is significant that the Establishment media have kept quiet about the real reason why Putin arranged for the conviction of the former head of YUKOS, the largest Russian oil conglomerate.
The real threat and crime of Michail Chodorkowski consisted of playing a key role in an operation conducted by Western secret services that was designed to destabilize and destroy Russia from within.
Chodorkowski’s verdict is mild in comparison to what can be expected by defendants in the USA or UK who are accused of high treason.
Let us take a closer look at the rise and fall of Michail Chodorkowski.
In October of 2003, he was arrested in Siberia as he was leaving his private jet.
At that time he was accused of tax evasion.
At age 40 he had become the richest man in Russia, with a fortune of around 15 billion dollars.
He had acquired this fortune during the lawless Jelzin era, when he came into control of national resources by questionable means:
Through an auction conducted by one of his own banks, he had paid a paltry 309 million dollars for the YUKOS oil concern.
Within a year Yukos’s value was estimated at 45 billion dollars, and this “appreciation in value” was most certainly not due to his congenial management style.
Michail Chodorkowski’s background includes events and circumstances that are even more sinister than his acquisition of YUKOS, however.
In a court trial in the USA in 1998 he was acquitted of using his bank to launder money in conjunction with the Bank of New York.
The trial revealed that even then, he had underground connections and very influential friends in the USA.
Several months later Edmund Safra, the head of the Bank of New York, was killed in his apartment in Monaco, apparently murdered by members of the “Russian Mafia” that he had swindled in the course of money laundering.
At this time Chodorkowski was forming close ties with the West, using the billions he had swindled from the Russian people to develop contacts and make influential friends.
Following the example of George Soros’s so-called “Open Society,” he founded a corresponding society called the “Open Russia Foundation.”
He offered seats on the management board to Henry Kissinger and Jacob Rothschild as well as others in the most powerful circles in Washington.
He was invited into the advisory committee of the Carlyle Group of financial investors, which is known for its extreme secrecy, and he took part in meetings of the directorate with other advisors such as George H. W. Bush and James Baker III.
Together, with assistance of the government in Washington, they concocted the nefarious plan that did not succeed...
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
German Archeologists Uncover Keltic Treasure
German Archeologists Uncover Keltic Treasure
Rare Discovery of Intact Tomb
Spiegel Online Wednesday, 29 December 2010
STUTTGART — Archeologists in Germany have discovered a
2,600-year-old Keltic tomb containing ornate jewelry of gold
and amber. They say the grave is unusually well preserved
and should provide important insights into early Keltic culture.
German archeologists have unearthed a 2,600-year-old Keltic
tomb containing a treasure of jewelry made of gold, amber
and bronze.
The subterranean chamber measuring four by five meters was
uncovered near the prehistoric Heuneburg hill fort near the town
of Herbertingen in southwestern Germany. Its contents, including
the oak floor of the room, are unusually well preserved.
The find is a "milestone for the reconstruction of the social history
of the Kelts," archeologist Dirk Krausse, the director of the dig,
said on Tuesday.
The intact oak should allow archeologists to ascertain the precise
age of the tomb through tree-ring dating. This is rarely possible
with Keltic finds because the Kelts left behind no writings and
their buildings, usually made from wood and clay, have long since
crumbled away.
A Vital Trading Center
Krausse said the artifacts found suggest that a woman from the
Heuneburg aristocracy was buried there, but added that laboratory
tests will need to be conducted to be certain. Only a small part
of the chamber has so far been examined.
The entire room, weighing some 80 tons, was lifted by two cranes
onto a flatbed truck and taken to a research facility in Ludwigsburg
on Tuesday. The results of the analysis will be presented in June
2011, researchers said.
Heuneburg is regarded as one of the most important Keltic
settlements and was a vital trading center during the period between
620 and 480 BC. Intensive excavation has taken place at the site
since 1950. Other tombs found at Heuneburg over the decades had
already been plundered.
The tomb and the objects are to go on show in an exhibition in
Stuttgart in 2012.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,736942,00.html
RELATED STORY:
Mapping Ancient Germania:
Berlin Researchers Crack the Ptolemy Code
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,720513,00.html
Rare Discovery of Intact Tomb
Spiegel Online Wednesday, 29 December 2010
STUTTGART — Archeologists in Germany have discovered a
2,600-year-old Keltic tomb containing ornate jewelry of gold
and amber. They say the grave is unusually well preserved
and should provide important insights into early Keltic culture.
German archeologists have unearthed a 2,600-year-old Keltic
tomb containing a treasure of jewelry made of gold, amber
and bronze.
The subterranean chamber measuring four by five meters was
uncovered near the prehistoric Heuneburg hill fort near the town
of Herbertingen in southwestern Germany. Its contents, including
the oak floor of the room, are unusually well preserved.
The find is a "milestone for the reconstruction of the social history
of the Kelts," archeologist Dirk Krausse, the director of the dig,
said on Tuesday.
The intact oak should allow archeologists to ascertain the precise
age of the tomb through tree-ring dating. This is rarely possible
with Keltic finds because the Kelts left behind no writings and
their buildings, usually made from wood and clay, have long since
crumbled away.
A Vital Trading Center
Krausse said the artifacts found suggest that a woman from the
Heuneburg aristocracy was buried there, but added that laboratory
tests will need to be conducted to be certain. Only a small part
of the chamber has so far been examined.
The entire room, weighing some 80 tons, was lifted by two cranes
onto a flatbed truck and taken to a research facility in Ludwigsburg
on Tuesday. The results of the analysis will be presented in June
2011, researchers said.
Heuneburg is regarded as one of the most important Keltic
settlements and was a vital trading center during the period between
620 and 480 BC. Intensive excavation has taken place at the site
since 1950. Other tombs found at Heuneburg over the decades had
already been plundered.
The tomb and the objects are to go on show in an exhibition in
Stuttgart in 2012.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,736942,00.html
RELATED STORY:
Mapping Ancient Germania:
Berlin Researchers Crack the Ptolemy Code
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,720513,00.html
Gilad Atzmon: Milton Friedman’s ‘Capitalism and the Jews’ Revisited
Monday, January 3, 2011
Given the severity and uncertainty of the economic crisis we are all experiencing, I suggest we look once more at the work of Milton Friedman, the leading economist and a staunch advocate of hard capitalism.
During the 1960s -80s Friedman was regarded by many academics, politicians and world leaders as the most important post- World War Two economist. Friedman was chief economic advisor to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Menachem Begin. He also went on record advising the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet.
It is far from surprising to note that more and more commentators have realised in recent years that it was Friedman’s ideology and advocacy of free enterprise, zero governmental intervention and privatisation that has led to the current financial turmoil. It was Milton Friedman’s philosophy that also contributed to the transformation of the West into a service economy.
But Friedman wasn’t just an economist: he was also a devout Zionist and a very proud Jew. Friedman was interested in the role of the Jews in world finance and politics. He also attempted to analyse and understand the attitude of Jews towards wealth. In 1972 Friedman spoke to The Mont Pelerin Society about “Capitalism and the Jews”. In 1978 he repeated the same talk, addressing Jewish students at the Chicago University’s Hillel institute.
I'd suggest that Friedman deserves our immediate attention, since he contributed to the rise of an ideology and school of thought that bears some responsibility for the rearrangement (some might say dismantling ) of the West's economy.
Click to read more ...
Given the severity and uncertainty of the economic crisis we are all experiencing, I suggest we look once more at the work of Milton Friedman, the leading economist and a staunch advocate of hard capitalism.
During the 1960s -80s Friedman was regarded by many academics, politicians and world leaders as the most important post- World War Two economist. Friedman was chief economic advisor to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Menachem Begin. He also went on record advising the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet.
It is far from surprising to note that more and more commentators have realised in recent years that it was Friedman’s ideology and advocacy of free enterprise, zero governmental intervention and privatisation that has led to the current financial turmoil. It was Milton Friedman’s philosophy that also contributed to the transformation of the West into a service economy.
But Friedman wasn’t just an economist: he was also a devout Zionist and a very proud Jew. Friedman was interested in the role of the Jews in world finance and politics. He also attempted to analyse and understand the attitude of Jews towards wealth. In 1972 Friedman spoke to The Mont Pelerin Society about “Capitalism and the Jews”. In 1978 he repeated the same talk, addressing Jewish students at the Chicago University’s Hillel institute.
I'd suggest that Friedman deserves our immediate attention, since he contributed to the rise of an ideology and school of thought that bears some responsibility for the rearrangement (some might say dismantling ) of the West's economy.
Click to read more ...
Gilad Atzmon: Milton Friedman’s ‘Capitalism and the Jews’ Revisited
Monday, January 3, 2011
Given the severity and uncertainty of the economic crisis we are all experiencing, I suggest we look once more at the work of Milton Friedman, the leading economist and a staunch advocate of hard capitalism.
During the 1960s -80s Friedman was regarded by many academics, politicians and world leaders as the most important post- World War Two economist. Friedman was chief economic advisor to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Menachem Begin. He also went on record advising the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet.
It is far from surprising to note that more and more commentators have realised in recent years that it was Friedman’s ideology and advocacy of free enterprise, zero governmental intervention and privatisation that has led to the current financial turmoil. It was Milton Friedman’s philosophy that also contributed to the transformation of the West into a service economy.
But Friedman wasn’t just an economist: he was also a devout Zionist and a very proud Jew. Friedman was interested in the role of the Jews in world finance and politics. He also attempted to analyse and understand the attitude of Jews towards wealth. In 1972 Friedman spoke to The Mont Pelerin Society about “Capitalism and the Jews”. In 1978 he repeated the same talk, addressing Jewish students at the Chicago University’s Hillel institute.
I'd suggest that Friedman deserves our immediate attention, since he contributed to the rise of an ideology and school of thought that bears some responsibility for the rearrangement (some might say dismantling ) of the West's economy.
Click to read more ...
Given the severity and uncertainty of the economic crisis we are all experiencing, I suggest we look once more at the work of Milton Friedman, the leading economist and a staunch advocate of hard capitalism.
During the 1960s -80s Friedman was regarded by many academics, politicians and world leaders as the most important post- World War Two economist. Friedman was chief economic advisor to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Menachem Begin. He also went on record advising the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet.
It is far from surprising to note that more and more commentators have realised in recent years that it was Friedman’s ideology and advocacy of free enterprise, zero governmental intervention and privatisation that has led to the current financial turmoil. It was Milton Friedman’s philosophy that also contributed to the transformation of the West into a service economy.
But Friedman wasn’t just an economist: he was also a devout Zionist and a very proud Jew. Friedman was interested in the role of the Jews in world finance and politics. He also attempted to analyse and understand the attitude of Jews towards wealth. In 1972 Friedman spoke to The Mont Pelerin Society about “Capitalism and the Jews”. In 1978 he repeated the same talk, addressing Jewish students at the Chicago University’s Hillel institute.
I'd suggest that Friedman deserves our immediate attention, since he contributed to the rise of an ideology and school of thought that bears some responsibility for the rearrangement (some might say dismantling ) of the West's economy.
Click to read more ...
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Jews Reveal Their Plans For The World
Jews Reveal Their Plans For The World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBISPUMxblo
--
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare;
it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
~Seneca
`
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBISPUMxblo
--
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare;
it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
~Seneca
`
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