"Panetta orders new inquiry into Marine snipers’ photo; Controversy over logo resembling Nazi symbol" by Julie Watson and Lolita C. Baldor | Associated Press, February 11, 2012
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the Marine Corps yesterday to reinvestigate and take appropriate action against the Marine snipers who posed with a logo resembling a notorious Nazi symbol.
I know it is tough to take, but the truth is we are behaving just like them around the world.
The millions dead and torture camps testify to that.
The top Marine officer apologized for the incident and ordered his commanders to look into the use of such symbols by snipers and reconnaissance Marines and make sure they are educated on how inappropriate such actions are.
The rapid-fire announcements came on the heels of demands from a leading Jewish organization and others for President Obama to order an investigation into the incident and to hold the troops accountable....
Yes, everyone must bow down before Jewish sensitivity.
I'm sure I'll be labeled an anti-Semite for that one.
An initial Marine investigation concluded that the troops not be disciplined because there was no malicious intent. The Marines mistakenly believed the “SS’’ in the shape of white lightning bolts on the blue flag were a nod to sniper scouts - not members of Adolf Hitler’s special unit that killed millions of Jews, Catholics, gypsies, and others, said Major Gabrielle Chapin, a spokeswoman at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
How sad that our best and brightest are so ignorant of history.
But the furor over the photo - which was taken in September 2010 in Afghanistan - grew as Jewish leaders and others questioned whether it was an innocent mistake....
Marine Corps Commandant James Amos contacted Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, to assure him that the Corps will not tolerate the use of Nazi imagery.
No, we will just act like them around the planet.
The Marines, said Foxman, have made it clear that they are taking steps to ensure that all the troops are aware of why Nazi imagery has no place in the armed services....
The photo, taken in the Sangin district of Helmand province, shows 10 Marines posed with sniper rifles in front of an American flag above a dark blue flag with the “SS’’ letters.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of Los Angeles’s Simon Wiesenthal Center, who had called for Obama and Panetta to investigate the incident, said he welcomed yesterday’s development.
“I’m happy to hear that at the highest echelons of the United States government, this is being taken seriously,’’ Hier said....
Okay, you're happy, good, now go away.
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Related: Marines won't discipline unit pictured with Nazi-era symbol
Also see: The New Nazis
Germany 1940 and Israel 2009
Those from long ago:
"German immunity in Nazi cases upheld" February 04, 2012
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The UN’s highest court confirmed yesterday that Germany has legal immunity from being sued in foreign courts by victims of World War II Nazi atrocities.
Must be the same given to EUSrael in this century.
The International Court of Justice said that Italy’s Supreme Court violated Germany’s sovereignty in 2008 by judging that an Italian civilian, Luigi Ferrini, was entitled to reparations for his deportation to Germany in 1944 to work as a slave laborer in the armaments industry.
Germany had argued that the Italian ruling threw into doubt a restitution system put in place after the Nazis’ defeat that has seen Germany pay tens of billions of dollars in reparations since the 1950s.
The 15-judge world court said in a 12-3 ruling that the Italian case violated Germany’s long-standing immunity, which has been recognized in international law, from being sued in national courts.
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They were and did party, right?
"Vienna’s gala balls off cultural list" Associated Press, January 20, 2012
VIENNA - A committee reporting to the UN’s culture organization struck Vienna’s many balls from its list of Austria’s noteworthy traditions yesterday amid an uproar over one of the annual champagne-laced galas that critics say attracts neo-Nazis from across Europe.
The decision by the Austrian UNESCO Commission was welcomed by those who oppose the one often-criticized ball, staged in part by dueling fraternities, including far-right alumni who display saber scars on their cheeks as badges of honor. But the committee also outraged supporters who reject labeling that event as a magnet for backers of Nazi ideology.
Martin Graf, a leading member of the rightist Freedom Party, slammed critics of the event, known as the WKR-Ball for its German acronym. He said they are trying to “publicly pillory and vilify . . . all those who do not share their ideologically distorted opinion.’’ Party chief Heinz-Christian Strache called the committee’s decision a result of “mobbing from the extreme left.’’
The decision is symbolic and has no bearing on whether future balls can be held. But the fact that the committee’s decision was due in part to public pressure reflected a path being traveled by Austria, which has moved from a postwar portrayal of being Nazi Germany’s first victim to acknowledging that it was Hitler’s willing partner. Anti-Semitism remains among some members of the older generation today, but most young Austrians reject Nazi ideology and condemn the part their parents might have played in the Holocaust....
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I think I'll skip the ball, thanks.
"Germany reflects on infamous conference" January 21, 2012
BERLIN - The German president has marked the 70th anniversary of a conference in which plans were coordinated for the genocide of European Jews with the message that Germany must never forget its responsibility for the Holocaust.
President Christian Wulff said yesterday that so much time has passed since the Jan. 20, 1942, Wannsee Conference - at which senior Nazis and bureaucrats coordinated plans for the Holocaust - that it has become increasingly hard to fathom how genocide became the country’s official policy.
“Therefore it is important and a national task to keep the memory alive,’’ he told an audience at a villa on Berlin’s Wannsee Lake, where the conference was held.
The villa is now a museum, memorial, and education site focused on the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II.
That's how many?
Related: THE HOLOCAUST AND THE FOUR MILLION VARIANT
What? It's all been a at best a distortion and at worst a lie?
The history that was taught me and that I once loved to study is false?
The conference was once thought to be the point at which the Nazis chose to stop deporting and randomly killing Jews, instead deciding to industrialize their murder. But most historians now agree that the decision was made some months earlier by Adolf Hitler, even though no written order from him has ever been found.
Hmmmmmmmmm!
Hundreds of thousands of Jews had been murdered by the time the 15 civil servants, SS, and party officials met at Wannsee. It is now believed by many that Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Security Service and Security Police head, called the meeting to make sure everybody knew what Hitler wanted done and to establish SS oversight of the process.
“This place and the name ‘Wannsee’ has become a symbol for the bureaucratically organized decision between life worth living and life not worth living, for state-organized extermination, for the planned and official systematic killing of Europe’s Jews,’’ Wulff said.
“This place became a place of cold cruelty, a trigger for carrying out systematic genocide, a place of German shame.’’
Dieter Graumann, president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, warned in an op-ed piece in the top-selling Bild newspaper yesterday that “there are still people who pay homage to the insane doctrine of the Third Reich,’’ pointing out that the far-right National Democratic Party has seats in two state legislatures, though it remains marginalized at the national level.
Yes, and they usually work for western intelligence agencies.
“Anti-Semitism and xenophobia still poison too many people today,’’ he wrote. “A day like this shows us where the intoxication of racism can lead, with all the consequences.’’
Have you seen Palestine lately?
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The fawning at the feet of the Jews didn't save Wulff:
"Paper says Wulff tried to stop loan story" January 03, 2012
BERLIN - A German newspaper said yesterday that the country’s president complained to its editor about its plans to report on a private loan he received and threatened legal action, deepening an affair that has raised mounting questions over the head of state’s authority and judgment.
The daily Bild reported for the first time on Dec. 13 that President Christian Wulff received a $650,000 private loan from the wife of a wealthy businessman and friend, apparently at below market rates, in 2008. At the time, he was governor of Lower Saxony state.
Months before he became president in 2010, regional opposition lawmakers asked Wulff if he had business relations with longtime friend Egon Geerkens, a former jeweler and investor. He said he had not, failing to mention the loan from Geerkens’s wife.
Critics have said Wulff must do more to explain the loan - and also have faulted his handling of the story. After days of silence in which he communicated mostly through his lawyers, Wulff made a public statement Dec. 22 apologizing for not disclosing the loan in 2010.
That appeared to calm matters, but yesterday, another newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, reported that Wulff had called Bild editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann to try to halt the Dec. 13 report on the loan. Bild confirmed the account.
Bild reported that Wulff used the loan to buy a house.
Prosecutors have said they see no evidence of a criminal offense regarding the loan and will not investigate, but critics have questioned Wulff’s integrity and judgment.
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"Embattled German president resigns" New York Times, February 18, 2012
BERLIN - Germany’s beleaguered president, Christian Wulff, announced his resignation yesterday after prosecutors asked Parliament to strip him of his immunity from prosecution over accusations of improper ties to businessmen.
Wulff told reporters at Bellevue Palace, his official residence here, that he was stepping down because Germany needed a president who enjoyed the full trust of the people.
‘’Events of the past days and weeks have shown that this trust, and with it my ability to work effectively, have been persistently impaired,’’ he said.
The resulting scandal has become an ever-greater distraction for Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government in the midst of the euro crisis.
Merkel, speaking at a news conference in the chancellery, said that her conservative bloc would hold discussions with the opposition Social Democrats and Greens in an effort to put forward “a joint candidate’’ to replace Wulff as president.
Merkel will also meet with coalition leaders over the weekend to try to settle on a successor, German media reported.
In the meantime, Wulff said in his resignation announcement, Horst Seehofer, the head of the Bundesrat upper house, would assume the role of acting president....
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Back to the party:
"Auschwitz survivor in Poland dies on anniversary of liberation" Associated Press, January 28, 2012
WARSAW - Meanwhile, Austrians gathered in memory of the 2 million Jews slain in Adolf Hitler’s Auschwitz camp condemned plans to hold a ball of extreme rightists later yesterday, saying the timing of the event transformed it into a macabre dance on Holocaust victims’ graves.
Related: Auschwitz Museum Director Reveals 'Gas Chamber' Hoax
What?
Ball organizers said the fact that their event coincided this year with the 67th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation was coincidental and denied suggestions that those attending were extremists.
But opponents criticized both the day chosen to hold the WKR ball and the political views of those attending, suggesting it regularly attracts elements from the neo-Nazi fringe.
In other gestures of remembrance, Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg apologized for his nation’s role in arresting and deporting Jews after the Nazi Germany invasion. During the war, 772 Norwegian Jews and Jewish refugees were deported to Germany. Only 34 survived.
In Turkey, state television Thursday broadcast the French documentary “Shoah,’’ about the mass murder of Jews by the German Nazi regime. It was the first time the film has been broadcast on public television in a primarily Muslim country.
Germany’s Parliament also gathered yesterday for a special session to recall the Holocaust.
I'm glad to see German leaders working on today's problems, what with the E.U. economic system collapsing in front of their eyes like a WTC tower on 9/11.
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"Ruling stirs a last-ditch push to find aging Nazis" December 15, 2011|By David Rising, Associated Press
BERLIN - The Simon Wiesenthal Center yesterday launched an 11th-hour drive to find and prosecute Nazi war criminals while they are still alive, saying a new legal precedent in Germany could make it possible to bring dozens of suspects to trial.
Related: Wiesenthal the Weasel
Efraim Zuroff, the center’s top Nazi-hunter, told reporters in Berlin that “Operation Last Chance II’’ would provide up to $32,900 in reward money for information that leads to the investigation and prosecution of war criminals.
“Whatever can be done has to be done very promptly and as quickly as possible because time is running out,’’ Zuroff said.
So when are you guys going to track down Bush, Bliar, and the array of Israeli war criminals?
The effort comes after German prosecutors said in October that the successful conviction of former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk had set a precedent that allowed them to reopen hundreds of dormant investigations.
Demjanjuk, 91, was convicted in May of thousands of counts of accessory to murder after a Munich court found he served as a death camp guard - the first time a suspect had been found guilty without evidence of a specific crime....
Related: Germany Long Ago
Sure seems like it.
“What this conviction does is set a legal precedent that should pave the way for the prosecution of many people who were, on a daily basis over a prolonged period of time, involved in mass murder, but who had been ignored,’’ Zuroff said.
Like the people I referred to, right?
Zuroff said he did not know how many were still alive - the youngest would now be in their 80s - but that he guessed conservatively there could be 80 or more....
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"Nazi war criminal seeks citizenship" Associated Press, January 07, 2012
TOLEDO, Ohio - Convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk wants a federal judge to reconsider a decision denying his bid to regain his US citizenship.
US District Judge Dan Aaron Polster rejected the retired autoworker’s citizenship claim just over two weeks ago, saying Demjanjuk lied about where he was during World War II.
Demjanjuk’s attorney asked the judge Thursday to reconsider the citizenship request, saying he had not seen all the newly discovered documents that could help his cause.
Demjanjuk, who is in his 90s, has been in poor health for years and has been in and out of a hospital since his conviction.
His lawyers argued that the government failed to disclose important evidence, including a 1985 secret FBI report uncovered by the Associated Press that indicates the FBI believed a Nazi ID card purportedly showing that he served as a death camp guard was a Soviet-made fake.
Related: Forget Germany
Yes, but WHO REALLY CARES about TRUTH when a CERTAIN POLITICAL AGENDA and CERTAIN POINT of VIEW must be PROMOTED?
Demjanjuk has denied serving as a guard at any Nazi camp and is free on bail.
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At least the $hakedown was $ucce$$ful:
"Germany will pay pensions to 16,000 more Holocaust victims" December 06, 2011|By Verena Dobnik, Associated Press
NEW YORK - After a year of tough negotiations, Germany has agreed to pay pensions to about 16,000 additional Holocaust victims worldwide - mostly survivors who were once starving children in Nazi ghettos or were forced to live in hiding for fear of death.
The agreement announced yesterday between the New York-based Claims Conference and the German government is “not about money, it’s about Germany’s acknowledgment of these people’s suffering,’’ said Greg Schneider, the conference’s executive vice president....
PFFFFT!
I know from watching the sports shows that anytime someone claims it is not about the money, it is about the money!
The Germans established more than 1,000 ghettos for Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated the “Final Solution,’’ a plan to murder all European Jews. Some ghettos existed for only a few days, others for months or years, before residents were shot in mass graves or deported to death camps. More than 400,000 lived in Poland’s Warsaw ghetto, and hundreds of thousands were squeezed into similar enclaves in Eastern European cities like Vilnius, Lodz, Minsk, and Odessa - starved and often battling deadly illnesses while forced to work.
The last phrase hints at the truth, doesn't it?
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"Jewish group lauds Germany in Duke case" December 01, 2011|Associated Press
BERLIN - An American Jewish group is applauding German police for taking former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke into custody before he could address a far-right gathering.
Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, said yesterday that the move “sends an important signal that firm action against those who advocate hate must remain central to Germany’s moral and legal agenda.’’
Cologne police say Duke, 61, was taken into custody Friday before his speech for breaking a travel ban to many European nations, including Germany.
They say that the US resident was released and forced to leave the country and that they do not know where he is now.
Duke’s website called the incident “thuggish communist-style oppression to suppress the right wing.’’
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Duke is far from perfect, but he has come a long way since the KKK days the Zionist press continues to harp upon.
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