FYI from BATR

Fredrick Toben, the director of the Adelaide Institute in Australia, believes that Israel was created based on the Holocaust myth. On December 19, the Mehr News Agency conducted an interview with Toben to ask why Western countries were so outraged when Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a myth. Following is the text of the interview:

Though it has had scant attention from the mainstream media, a bipartisan effort to squelch an independent counsel's final report on Clinton-era abuse of the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department has gotten the attention of Web activists and commentators, causing a growing call for the release of the document that is said to including damning evidence against the 42nd president and his administration.

As Given by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton, and Comptroller Dov Zakheim, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC, Monday, July 16, 2001.

Proponents of keeping our soldiers in Iraq repeatedly offer the same rationale for their viewpoint. Here, their most often cited reasons are refuted.

Senator Byrd on Monday expressed his strong concerns about possible violations of the Constitution in the Bush Administration's admitted practice of spying on American citizens:

Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country’s law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution.

Editor's note: The following is the text of a speech given to the Perdana Global Peace Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Dec. 16, 2005.

He has a brand-new article in the New Yorker called "Up in the Air: Where Is the Iraq War Headed Next?" Welcome to the show, Mr. Hersh.

Podcasting is a method of publishing serialized audio programs via the Internet. It allows "subscribers," using appropriate software, to automatically download new episodes as they become available. Subscribing to the Review of the News podcast is free.

This is the text of the lecture to be given by Harold Pinter when he receives the 2005 Nobel prize for literature on Saturday. Forbidden by doctors from going to Stockholm to receive the £720,000 prize, the ailing playwright and poet has delivered his speech by video.

Editors' Note: It was twenty-five years ago today that John Lennon was murdered outside the Dakota building on Central Park West in New York City. We doubt many CounterPunchers have read the following 1971 interview with Lennon done by CounterPunchers Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn. It's a lot more interesting that the interminable Q and A with Lennon done by Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner. Tariq and Robin allowed Lennon to talk and spurred him on when he showed signs of flagging. Lennon recounts about how he and George Harrison bucked their handlers and went on record against the Vietnam War, discusses class politics in an engaging manner, defends country and western music and the blues, suggests Dylan's best songs stem from revolutionary Irish and Scottish ballads and dissects his three versions of "Revolution". The interview ran in The Red Mole, a Trotskyist sheet put out by the British arm of the Fourth International. As you'll see, those were different days. The interview is included in Tariq Ali's Streetfighting Years, recently published by Verso. AC / JSC

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

The topic was Israel and Palestine After Disengagement: Where Do We Go From Here? Chomsky consistently stayed on topic, whereas Dershowitz hardly referred to it, except at the end when directed to it by a question. What's the debate penalty for ignoring the topic?

These pin-heads running around going, “Get out of Iraq now” don’t know what they are talking about. These are the same people before Hitler invaded in WWII that were saying, “He’s not such a bad guy.” They don’t get it.

The Bronze Age to the End of the Qajar Period

Interview: Could administration officials be called to account?
Jeremy Brecher, Jill Cutler, and Brendan Smith

A video has surfaced on the Internet showing private security contractors working for Aegis Defense Services "Victory" Group firing indiscriminately at Iraqi civilian motorists in Baghdad.