Sunday, December 21, 2008

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/21/2008

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/21/2008Included in the articles below is a BBC story from Friday about the “youths” in Malmö. There’s also an article on the continuing riots in Greece.

Thanks to AA, Andy Bostom, Islam in Action, JD, KGS, Srdja Trifkovic, VH, and all the other tipsters who sent these in. Headlines and articles are below the fold.
- - - - - - - - -
USA
Climate Scientology Jihad
Is Bernard Madoff Running the Federal Government?
Obama’s Cabinet Short of Southerners
Obama Names Climate Change Experts to Posts
U.S. Foreign Policy: Grim Continuity Guaranteed
US Postal Service Goes Islamic
With Economy in Shambles, Congress Gets Raise
 
Europe and the EU
Former Tunisian Diplomat Sentenced to 8 Years by French Court
Inside Europe’s Strangest ‘Theme Park’
Labour MPs Revolt Over Brown’s Plan to Charge 27% Interest on Emergency Loans to Poor
Rioters Clash Anew With Greek Police
Swedish City Hit by Youth Riots
UK Debt Has Reached ‘Disturbing’ Level, Warns IMF Chief
UK: Young Thugs Attack Southend Mosque
 
Balkans
Fire in Bosnia Mosque Was Accident
 
North Africa
Egyptian Teacher to Stand Trial for Murdering Pupil Whose Homework Was Late
 
Israel and the Palestinians
Anti-Muslim Slogans, Stars of David Spray-Painted on Jaffa Mosque
Police Officers Injured in Training Exercise
 
Middle East
Saudi Girl’s Plea to Divorce Rejected Until Puberty
 
South Asia
Mumbai-Terror Finger Points at Pakistan Army
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
Iran Sends Warship to Fight Somali Pirates
Kenyan Government Imposes Gag Order on Obama Family
 
General
Book: Patton ‘Assassinated to Silence Criticism of Allies’

USA

Climate Scientology Jihad

Obama Names “Aggressive” Climate Scientologist as Science Advisor

by Andrew Bostom

John Holdren: Junk Science Jihadist?

According to this report, John Holdren, who is slated to become Obama’s White House Science adviser (i.e., “Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy), and expected to advocate “forceful government action” on so-called anthropogenic global warming, stated last year,

Global warming is a misnomer. It implies something gradual, something uniform, something quite possibly benign, and what we’re experiencing is none of those…There is already widespread harm … occurring from climate change. This is not just a problem for our children and our grandchildren.

We need our own fossil fuel-based energy development (coal, natural gas, oil) now until it is feasible to develop alternatives. Appointing these kinds of ideologues puts our economy and our security at risk if their advice is heeded—all based on the most spurious “science”… I have ever witnessed in my lifetime.

           — Hat tip: Andy Bostom[Return to headlines]


Is Bernard Madoff Running the Federal Government?

Business cable network CNBC is asking, in a special report, whether investment manager Bernard Madoff pulled off the “scam of the century.” But Madoff is only accused of a $50 billion heist. That’s peanuts compared to what the politicians have done to us.

On Monday, December 15, in a story that went unnoticed, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the federal government has failed another financial audit. It was the 12th year in a row that the federal government has been unable to accurately report on its fiscal condition. Frankly, nobody knows precisely where the money is going. But we know where it’s coming from — the beleaguered taxpayers.

We have all seen the film footage of Madoff leaving his New York apartment and being pushed around by a horde of photographers and cameramen trying to get a shot of him. Why aren’t the politicians being surrounded in similar fashion for destroying the financial stability of our country?

Almost every day we see a story that misses the big picture. On Thursday, President-elect Obama announced his pick to run the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Politicians are demanding to know why the agency failed to detect the Madoff fraud and what it will do in the future to uncover other fraudulent financial schemes. But what about the federal governmen’s own massive financial fraud, as documented by the GAO itself?

The GAO report was released one day before President Bush told CNN’s Candy Crowley that, in order to avoid economic collapse, he had to abandon freedom in order to save it. “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” he declared.

[…]

Unfortunately, when the President claimed “there’s a lot of blame” to go around for the financial and economic crisis, Crowley didn’t follow up by citing the Celent study finding that the claims made by Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to justify a socialist takeover of the financial industry were demonstrably false. The study suggests that the result of the bailout could be Weimar-style hyperinflation.

“Celent’s report is exhibit A in a trial for putting Paulson in jail,” is how one person responded to my column on the study. This feeling can only grow as awareness spreads through the alternative media about the looting of the taxpayers. It is time for talk radio to make this into the number one issue as we enter a new year. We are increasingly facing a federal government that is acting in a lawless fashion.

[…]

Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital points out that “The Social Security Administration runs its “trust funds” with precisely the same methods used by Madoff and Ponzi. As money is collected from current workers, the funds are then dispersed to those already receiving benefits. None of the funds collected are actually invested, so no investment returns are ever generated. Those currently paying into the system are expected to receive their returns based on the “contribution” made by future workers.”

He adds, “The United States Government runs its own balance sheet based on the Ponzi principal as well. Our national debt always grows and never shrinks. As existing debt matures, proceeds are repaid by issuing new debt. Interest payments on existing debt are also made by selling new debt to investors. The whole scheme depends on an ever growing supply of new lenders, or the willingness of existing lenders, to continue to roll over maturing notes. Of course, as was the case with Madoff, if enough of our creditors want their money back, the music stops playing.”

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]


Obama’s Cabinet Short of Southerners

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There are Democrats and Republicans, liberals and moderates, Hispanics and Asians, whites and blacks, Northerners and Westerners.

But one group was arguably missing when President-elect Barack Obama rounded out his 15-member Cabinet Friday — Southerners.

The only Southern appointment came when he named former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk U.S. trade representative, a lower-level post. Nobody else from below the Mason-Dixon Line made the cut, not even from the newly blue states of North Carolina, Virginia or Florida.

“Obama scored a tremendous advance for Democrats in winning the three large Southern states and ignored them,” says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “I’m just stunned. It was the one grouping completely ignored.”

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]


Obama Names Climate Change Experts to Posts

He tapped John Holdren, a physicist from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, to be his science adviser; named Harold Varmus and Eric Lander to round out the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology; and said he will nominate Jane Lubchenco to be administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Mr. Obama signed off his radio address by wishing “happy holidays everybody..”

As a professor and head of various science groups, Mr. Holdren has called for boosted spending on science and for faster action to combat global warming.

“We are not talking anymore about what climate models say might happen in the future,” he told the British Broadcasting Corp. in 2006 “We are experiencing dangerous human disruption of the global climate and we’re going to experience more.”

Mr. Holdren has weighed in on other issues, including calling on the U.S. to issue a “no first use” policy for nuclear weapons and to take nuclear retaliation off the table as a response to chemical or biological attacks.

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]


U.S. Foreign Policy: Grim Continuity Guaranteed

by Srdja Trifkovic

Barack Obama’s selection of Joseph Biden as his Vice President, Hillary Clinton’s appointment to State, Robert Gates’ retention at the Pentagon, and the selection of General James Jones as head of the National Security Council point to the President-elect’s willful blindness to the collapsing economic foundation of the American hyperpower. His key appointees all share a vision — a grand strategy of sorts — that guarantees an unwelcome continuity of this country’s foreign and security policies in the next four years.

That vision is deeply flawed. What America needs is a new grand strategy. Limited in objectives and indirect in approach, it should seek security and freedom for the United States in a stable model of global co-existence that does not threaten the security or deny the legitimate interests of other players. As a Chicago Tribune commentator noted recently,

in the case of foreign policy, the American people and the world should get the “change” they were promised because the foreign policy challenges are not unprecedented. The problems are known. What works is known. And it is not the policy of the Clinton administration hawks… The new Obama team seems caught up in the facile calls for force: Vice President-elect Joe Biden is proud of demanding force in Bosnia, Kosovo and Darfur. Sen. Hillary Clinton supported the Iraq War. The candidate for UN ambassador, Susan Rice, is an outspoken hawk.

If the Obama administration was serious about the rhetoric of “change” in world affairs, it could start by withdrawing all U.S. troops from Europe and the Far East in the next four years. Some 150,000 American soldiers who are still based in Germany, South Korea, and Japan are not needed, and their continued presence is a hindrance to greater stability in both regions.

The threat to Europe’s security does not come from Russia or from a fresh bout of instability in the Balkans. The real threat to Europe’s security and to her survival comes from Islam, from the deluge of utterly unassimilable Third World immigrants, and from collapsing birthrates…

           — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic[Return to headlines]


US Postal Service Goes Islamic

While our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are risking their lives on a daily basis to try and bring some form of a “moderate”Islam into power, our government run postal service has bowed down to Islam.

While our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are risking their lives on a daily basis to try and bring some form of a “moderate”Islam into power, our government run postal service has bowed down to Islam.

           — Hat tip: Islam in Action[Return to headlines]


With Economy in Shambles, Congress Gets Raise

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]

Europe and the EU

Former Tunisian Diplomat Sentenced to 8 Years by French Court

Khaled Ben Said, an ex-vice-consul in Strasbourg, was convicted of having ordered acts of torture and barbary upon fellow countrywoman Zulaikha Gharbi when a police superintendent in the Tunisian city of Jendouba 12 years ago, and sentenced to 8 years imprisonment by a criminal court in this same Strasbourg, by the way the seat of the European Court of Human Rights.

The Tunisian diplomat was tried in absence, since he fled from France in 2001, after hearing that a complaint had been lodged against him by Ms. Gharbi, whose husband is a political refugee in France as a member of Tunisian banned islamic party Ennahda.

The trial went on account of universal competence, a mechanism allowing legal proceedings against the authors of alleged serious crimes, whatever place they were committed and whatever authors’ or victims’ nationality. This procedure stems from a 1984 UN convention against torture which was introduced into French legislation in 1994.

It is the second time in France that a sentence has been delivered on these grounds. In 2005, a Mauritanian serviceman was sentenced to 10 years for acts of torture perpetrated in his own country. […]

           — Hat tip: VH[Return to headlines]


Inside Europe’s Strangest ‘Theme Park’

A secret underground base offers a terrifyingly realistic reminder of Soviet occupation

[Comments from JD: Providing an honest reminder of Communism is a good idea..]

A pistol-wielding guard, his snarling alsatian, a blinding spotlight in my face… why did I spend £25 to be tortured in this freezing KGB bunker?

As a snarling alsatian growls at my heels, straining at its leash, the fierce KGB interrogator barks in harsh Russian for me to face the wall for a terrifying search.

Once cleared, I am herded with the rest of this ragtag band of “dissenters” to salute the Soviet red flag, our threadbare gulag-issue jackets offering scant protection against the biting Baltic chill.

We are told to stop thinking “because the party will do that for you”, while anyone who shows disrespect is forced to the ground and compelled to do punishing press-ups until they fall into line.

[…]

It is hard to see how this place has become a tourist attraction, but Survival Drama In A Soviet Bunker, as the experience is known, has become popular with everyone from stag parties to corporate outings, prompting accusations that this is nothing more than a cynical “gulag theme park”.

But fun it isn’t. Ruta says this is a “social project” to recreate life under Soviet rule in 1984 with a serious point to make.

Many Lithuanians still harbour a strange nostalgia for the dark days of Soviet occupation, choosing to remember the free health service and high levels of employment while burying memories of the tyranny that sent tens of thousands to death or exile in Siberia.

These tunnels, 15ft underground, were dug in 1983 and used to house emergency TV and radio studios in case of Nato attack. They were later used as a Soviet base during Lithuania’s successful struggle for independence in 1991, but have lain empty ever since.

Now Ruta, 52, is using them to ensure no one forgets the unpleasant truth of that era.

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]


Labour MPs Revolt Over Brown’s Plan to Charge 27% Interest on Emergency Loans to Poor

Gordon Brown and his Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell were last night accused of behaving “like loan sharks” over plans to slap punishingly high interest rates on vital loans to the poor.

In an astonishing move, rebel Labour MPs joined forces with David Cameron’s Tories to accuse the Government of penalising hundreds of thousands of families on benefits who get interest-free cash advances to cover the cost of unforeseen crises.

More than one million individual loans worth over £600million were paid out from the Government’s social fund last year to hard-up people — many of them disabled — who struggled to afford to repair a broken boiler or cope with some other domestic emergency.

[…]

Chris Grayling, who called on the Government to scrap the plan. “This is beyond outrageous,” he said. “It’s nothing more than James Purnell and Gordon Brown re-inventing themselves as loan sharks.

“That any Government would even consider imposing swingeing interest rates on unemployed people in the middle of a recession is just extraordinary. It’s a sign that this Government is utterly out of touch with what is really going on in Britain.”

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]


Rioters Clash Anew With Greek Police

ATHENS (AP) — Hundreds of rioters battled police in central Athens on Saturday, fire-bombing a credit reporting agency and attacking the city’s Christmas tree two weeks after the police shooting of a teenager set off Greece’s worst unrest in decades.

Saturday’s violence followed a memorial gathering at 9 p.m. where 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos died Dec. 6, in the Athens neighborhood of Exarchia. […]

Saturday’s clashes dashed the hopes of the government and police that protest fatigue would set in as Christmas neared.. Saturday evening, masked men broke into the building housing the offices of Tiresias SA, a company that keeps records of delinquent debtors and cardholders, and firebombed the company’s offices. The fire was extinguished but the company’s offices were destroyed, witnesses said.

At around 4 p.m. Saturday, about 150 youth attacked the Christmas tree at Syntagma Square in central Athens, hanging trash bags from its branches before clashing with riot police. The square was cleared within two hours. At least three news photographers were injured by police batons. The tree survived the attack.

The original Christmas tree was burned to the ground Dec. 8, during the worst night of rioting.

In Thessaloniki, a group of self-styled anarchists occupied a movie theater in the city’s main square and threw cakes and candy at Mayor Vassilis Papageorgopoulos and one of his deputies. The mayor was attending an open-air Christmas event near the theater, distributing the sweets to children with sickle-cell anemia when the rioters disrupted the event. Later, a group emerged from the theater and attacked a Nativity scene, throwing away the Christ figure.

The Christmas tree protest had been advertised as part of a day of events in Greece and around the world to commemorate Grigoropoulos’ shooting.

Police said about 1,000 people turned out for a demonstration in Hamburg, Germany. Bottles were thrown at police during and after the protest, and four officers were lightly injured; nine people were detained.. A further demonstration by about 250 people near the Greek consulate passed without incidents, a police statement said.

           — Hat tip: VH[Return to headlines]


Swedish City Hit by Youth Riots

Dozens of youths have rioted in the southern Swedish city of Malmo for a second consecutive night, setting cars on fire and clashing with police.

“We’ve had a very difficult evening,” a police spokeswoman told the AFP news agency late on Thursday.

“There have been fires burning since this afternoon… extensive damage to public property, and… stone-throwing and bomb threats against police.”

She said the trouble was linked to the closure of an Islamic centre.

The owner of the building, in an immigrant neighbourhood, had decided not to renew the centre’s lease. The centre, which included a mosque, had to move out.

But some youths squatted in the premises, until they were evicted by police earlier this week.

Once police left the premises, the youths returned, setting fires in the area. They then clashed with police.

“The origin of the riots is the occupation of the building. But that’s not really the reason now, now other troublemakers have just joined in, taking advantage of the situation,” police spokeswoman Ewa-Gun Westford told AFP.

           — Hat tip: AA[Return to headlines]


UK Debt Has Reached ‘Disturbing’ Level, Warns IMF Chief

Debt in Britain has reached a ‘disturbing’ level, warns the head of the International Monetary Fund.

But Dominique Strauss-Kahn argued that more Government borrowing was the lesser of two evils during the economic downturn.

He said that more spending by governments was necessary to stimulate economic growth anf forecast that 2009 would be ‘a really bad year’.

He told BBC Radio 4: ‘I’m specially concerned by the fact that our forecast, already very dark… will be even darker if not enough fiscal stimulus is implemented.’

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]


UK: Young Thugs Attack Southend Mosque

A MUSLIM leader fears for the safety of his family, after attacks on a mosque and his flat next door.

The gang of teenagers have repeatedly targeted the Essex Jamme Masjid mosque, in Chelmsford Avenue, Southend, which was converted from a church earlier this year.

Imam Mahmudul Hasan said he had been left shocked and scared after teenagers also smashed the front door windows at his home.

           — Hat tip: VH[Return to headlines]

Balkans

Fire in Bosnia Mosque Was Accident

A fire that razed a mosque on the Bosnian Muslim holiday of Bayram was an accident and not a deliberate attack, authorities said.

Citing the results of the two week-long investigation, the office of the regional prosecutor in Trebinje said on Friday that the fire in the Fazlagica Kula mosque was caused by a faulty electrical insulation which started the fire near the mosque’s roof.

The mosque, which is located in the eastern part of Republika Srpska, was razed on the eve of the Bayram holiday. Most Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) religious and political leaders strongly condemned the incident, viewing it as a deliberate attack on Bosniak returnees to the Serb-dominated entity.

Bosnian Serb officials pledged to identify the cause of the fire and eventual perpetrators as soon as possible, but some Bosniak officials have already complained the investigation was too slow and too superficial.

The mosque and the whole village of Fazlagica Kula were completely destroyed during the 1992-95 war. The mosque and several houses were reconstructed over the past few years after a few dozen villagers returned.

           — Hat tip: VH[Return to headlines]

North Africa

Egyptian Teacher to Stand Trial for Murdering Pupil Whose Homework Was Late

Haitham Nabeel Abdelhamid, 23, is accused of beating Islam Badr Ibrahim with a ruler before taking him outside the class and hitting him savagely in the stomach.

The boy then collapsed in a faint and was taken to hospital — but he died of heart failure.

The attack, which took place in October at the Saad Othman primary school near the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, caused national outrage in a country where people are already sceptical about the state.

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]

Israel and the Palestinians

Anti-Muslim Slogans, Stars of David Spray-Painted on Jaffa Mosque

Anti-Muslim slogans were spray-painted on the doors of a mosque near the Jaffa Port overnight Monday.

Amongst the graffiti were phrases such as “Mohammed is a pig,” “A good Arab is a dead Arab,” and “Kahane was right,” a reference to slain right-wing activist Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Stars of David were also spray painted on the front of the mosque.

           — Hat tip: VH[Return to headlines]


Police Officers Injured in Training Exercise

Over 50 police officers were wounded on Thursday during a massive riot control training exercise at the Tze’elim base in the Negev.

Several were injured in a car accident, which occurred when one of the officers fell asleep at the wheel of a transport vehicle during the exercise, causing it to crash. One police officer was seriously injured and a second one suffered moderate wounds. The accident was blamed on fatigue due to the fact that the officers had been training intensively since Wednesday night.

Most of the others were injured while “riot controlling” each other during a mock riot.

Some 7,000 police officers participated in the exercise — the largest in police history — to learn to disperse crowds and deal with riots. The training exercise, dubbed “Stormy Waters”, began on Wednesday night and ended early Thursday afternoon.

Police are training for the possible riots in Arab communities similar to the riots in Akko two months ago. They fear riots could break out in cities with large Arab populations such as Yafo (Jaffa) and Ramle.

Days of rioting in Akko erupted after an Arab drove through a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur with music blasting from his car. Police were on alert in mixed Jewish/Arab cities throughout the country, concerned over reports that Arabs planned to riot in solidarity with their ‘brethren’ in Akko.

Due to the training exercise a police staff shortage is expected throughout Israel. Police have raised their alert level so that they will be able to respond if anything should happen during the exercise.

           — Hat tip: VH[Return to headlines]

Middle East

Saudi Girl’s Plea to Divorce Rejected Until Puberty

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty, a lawyer involved told AFP.

“The judge has dismissed the plea—filed by the mother—because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty,” lawyer Abdullah Jtili told AFP in a telephone interview after Saturday’s court decision.

The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl’s divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 220 kilometers (135 miles) north Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.

“She doesn’t know yet that she has been married,” Jtili said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.

Consummating the marriage

Relatives who did not wish to be named told AFP that the marriage had not yet been consummated, and that the girl continued to live with her mother. They said that the father had set a verbal condition by which the marriage is not consummated for another 10 years, when the girl turns 18.

The father had agreed to marry off his daughter for an advance dowry of 30,000 riyals ($8,000), as he was apparently facing financial problems, they said.

The father was in court and he remained adamant in favor of the marriage, they added.

Lawyer Jtili said he was going to appeal the verdict at the court of cassation, the supreme court in the kingdom which applies Islamic Sharia law in its courts.

Arranged marriages involving pre-adolescents are occasionally reported in the Arabian Peninsula, including in Saudi Arabia.

In Yemen in April, another girl aged eight was granted a divorce after her unemployed father forced her to marry a man of 28, who forced the child to have sex with him.

           — Hat tip: KGS[Return to headlines]

South Asia

Mumbai-Terror Finger Points at Pakistan Army

The Centre is now viewing the Mumbai attacks as the direct handiwork of Pakistan’s military that trained and armed the militants and planned the strike in detail, top government sources are saying.

This is a shift from India’s initial response when foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee led the government in drawing a distinction at two levels — first, between the government in Islamabad and rabid “elements in Pakistan” and, second, between the civilian administration led by Asif Zardari and the military led by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

India’s security establishment has also begun a series of high-level meetings to review the state of defence preparedness. There are concerns that the military’s inventory is wanting. In one of the meetings today, defence minister A.K. Antony authorised a fast-track procurement of equipment for the coast guard.

The nuanced change in Delhi’s views follows the interrogation of gunman Mohammed Ajmal, an analysis of the attack by ballistics specialists in the military and the conclusion that the attackers were trained professionally.

Mukherjee today said the attack was planned meticulously and that Ajmal had given a “chilling account” of who his handlers and trainers were. “This was cold and calculated murder. One of the terrorists, who has been captured alive, has given us a chilling account of his handlers. A few months earlier, the Indian embassy in Kabul was the target of a terrorist attack. The impunity with which these attacks are carried out is possible only because the safety of the handlers has been assured,” he said.

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]

Sub-Saharan Africa

Iran Sends Warship to Fight Somali Pirates

TEHRAN, Dec 20, 2008 (AFP) — An Iranian warship has entered the Gulf of Aden to protect Iranian vessels against pirates off the coast of Somalia, state radio said on Saturday.

“After travelling more than 4,000 maritime miles … an Iranian warship entered the Gulf of Aden to protect Iranian ships against pirates,” the radio said, without further details.

Iran said last month it was negotiating with pirates who seized a ship it had chartered but that it was ready to use force to free the vessel.

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]


Kenyan Government Imposes Gag Order on Obama Family

The Kenyan government has barred unapproved contacts between the media and President-elect Barack Obama’s extended family.

Family members will be required to receive permission from the government before making any public statements about their famous relative, according to the Nairobi Star.

“We are doing this because we want to ensure better flow of information,” Athman Said, an under-secretary in the Ministry of Heritage, told the Obama family in Kogelo.

“The government has decided that you should inform its officers who will be based here if you want to address the media.”

Journalists wishing to speak with the family must first be approved by the government.

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]

General

Book: Patton ‘Assassinated to Silence Criticism of Allies’

The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives.

The death of General Patton in December 1945, is one of the enduring mysteries of the war era. Although he had suffered serious injuries in a car crash in Manheim, he was thought to be recovering and was on the verge of flying home.

But after a decade-long investigation, military historian Robert Wilcox claims that OSS head General “Wild Bill” Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to silence Patton, who gloried in the nickname “Old Blood and Guts”.

His book, “Target Patton”, contains interviews with Mr Bazata, who died in 1999, and extracts from his diaries, detailing how he staged the car crash by getting a troop truck to plough into Patton’s Cadillac and then shot the general with a low-velocity projectile, which broke his neck while his fellow passengers escaped without a scratch.

Mr Bazata also suggested that when Patton began to recover from his injuries, US officials turned a blind eye as agents of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, poisoned the general.

[…]

The scenario sounds far fetched but Mr Wilcox has assembled a compelling case that US officials had something to hide. At least five documents relating to the car accident have been removed from US archives.

The driver of the truck was whisked away to London before he could be questioned and no autopsy was performed on Patton’s body.

           — Hat tip: JD[Return to headlines]

1 comments:

Vlad Z. said...

We see the press spinning as usual in this article.

Ahh, 'young thugs' ie: European natives disturbed at the takeover of their society by foreigners.

"Alientated Youth" minority immigrants acting horribly.

Do I detect a bit of a double standard, here?

Do the mulitculti promoters really believe they can replace the native-born, demote us to second class in our own homelands, promote every group above us, and not see violent resistance?