Amos's River of Justice

Tag: Gaza

  • The Most Important Skill for 2025 is Ignoring Trump

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Since 2015, we’ve had good reasons for our continued participation in this one-sided conversation. I say one-sided because progressives have been the only ones actually carrying on a conversation. I believe Trump and his cronies, among others, function as a distraction and an elaborate insult to voters. Therefore, I argue that the most important skill of 2025 is ignoring Trump.

    The reason we put our hope in a conversation in the first place was the belief that America’s foreign policy had proven to be a failure and that our leaders would see the error of their ways. In addition, the climate crisis and agricultural policies were looming threats, which no one was addressing. It was obvious that we needed a course change. In other words, this was supposed to be a conversation with our leaders–at least with the leaders of the Democratic Party. But their willingness to change direction was a false hope.

    We remained in the conversation at that point because of a lasting threat from the radical right. For three election cycles, we supported the Democratic candidate for president in an effort to deny Trump the presidency. However, a funny thing happened on our way to shore up the conversation. First, Donald Trump ran for office. Then he won, twice. This made a joke of our conversation.

    Of course, it’s not only Trump and his cohorts who made a joke of the conversation. America’s determination to obliterate Gaza made a joke of it too. On October 7, 2023, a certain YouTube channel was drumming up indignation against the Palestinians. They went so far as allowing their guests to call the Palestinians sub-human animals. This was the Bulwark channel. (This is a link to the channel. The video may be hidden.) To be fair, the speakers were not the regular hosts of the channel, but in my opinion this segment left a lasting stain on the channel’s image.

    It also inspired fear, both for the Palestinians and for our progressive agenda. Pundits have drummed up indignation in the past and we know they want to lead us into another conflict. So, we continued to talk in hopes of a peaceful resolution. But that didn’t happen either. It’s almost as if American and Israeli leaders relish our dismay.

    Now, with a second Trump presidency looming, I feel I have no choice but to disconnect from American politics. Not a single thing I’ve been talking about for more than a decade remains on the table. Instead, we see an elaborate display of sheer patriarchal force. The he-men among us have drowned the conversation in testosterone. Their answer to our concerns is the caveman’s club.

    The only clue we have that they were listening at all is the realization that they have closed down everything that’s important to us. In retrospect, I have to admit that the political conversation may have been dead when we started, but Trump has finally relieved us of trying to revive it. His second presidency is the final joke. Boorishness has triumphed.

    For a more positive analysis on the political situation watch Yanis Varoufakis’s approach on DiEM25

  • Casting Doubt on Biden

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    There have been calls from the Democratic Establishment and various news pundits for Biden to drop out of the presidential race. The reason they give for casting doubt on Biden is his seeming inability to think clearly and express his thoughts when under pressure. They say this has resulted the loss of donor confidence and therefore, the loss of donations.

    The establishment’s criticism is fairly new. It differs from the public’s criticism. Many voters criticize Biden’s foreign policy in Gaza. He has lost their support because he seems unable or unwilling to stop the ongoing genocide.

    First, those of us who think Biden should not drop out need to look closely at the people who are making this call. Second, we need to reexamine the assumption that Biden could have stopped the Gaza genocide.

    Third, I’m not forgetting the concerns that Biden isn’t up to the task physically. I believe he is. I hope his performance so far is partly the result of bad advice and preparation before the debate. He has shown promise in his first term, as I will recount in this article. So, if he wants to stay in, that’s what he should do.

    First Defense of Biden: Comparing Biden and Trump

    It’s not hard to compare Biden’s approach to Trump’s approach. This should be the first and most obvious step in Biden’s defense. What we are getting instead is a long list of Democrats who have called for Biden to drop out. The New York Times published a long list of them. However, I will limit my comments to the members of the Democratic Establishment who have been telling Biden to give up.

    Biden’s Establishment Critics

    The most influential member of this club is Barack Obama. In case anyone has forgotten, Obama was instrumental in putting Biden in office and driving Bernie out of the race. The fact that he would try to control his chosen candidate at this late date is astonishing. Obama is also the guy who sold us out to the banks during the Great Recession.

    Another member of the establishment, Hillary Clinton, has not yet backed Bided in this fight. (She has not called for Biden to quit either.) Progressives have a history with Hillary Clinton. They haven’t forgotten that she spent two election cycles ruining Bernie’s chances. And that’s not the half of it.

    When Bill Clinton was in office, he signed NAFTA into law, destroying many manufacturing concerns and the cities that depended on them. In addition, Hillary worked on the campaign of right-wing Barry Goldwater. Both the signing of NAFTA and support for Barry Goldwater have right-wing connotations. One might conclude that Biden’s progressive record makes the Clintons nervous.

    Biden’s Accomplishments in Perspective

    According to Robert Reich, the Biden Administration has done more than any other president in the last 50 years to change the structure of power in America. Trump, on the other hand, takes all the power to himself. He surrounds himself with people who support him and lie for him no matter what he does or says. And it is no longer a surprise to anyone when no one resists him. Republicans tend to become more like Trump under pressure; and the media behaves in the same way. My question is, do we understand what we’d be giving up and what we’d be getting if Biden drops out?

    The Importance of Being Incumbent

    One of Biden’s strengths against Trump–perhaps his most important strength–is that he’s an incumbent president. History shows that an incumbent president has a stronger position than someone who has never been president.

    More importantly, Biden has already beat Trump once.

    Last but not least, Trump has his own drawbacks. His supporters’ doubts about stability of a Trump Administration are sure to grow as his campaign progresses.

    Project 2025: Donald Trump’s Albatross

    Trump has recently denied knowing anything about Project 2025. But he does know about it. His own people created it. That will be an albatross around his neck as the campaign wears on.

    We also shouldn’t forget that a large number of Republicans already prefer Biden to Trump.

    A Few of Biden’s Legislative Accomplishments: Manufacturing, Supply Chains, and Jobs

    Thanks to the President’s efforts, companies have announced nearly $300 billion in manufacturing investments in the United States. They are also bringing back supply chains from overseas. This process is creating good-paying jobs and union jobs, including jobs that don’t require a four-year degree.

    Infrastructure

    President Biden has worked across the isle to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law–an investment in our nation’s infrastructure. We are rebuilding roads, bridges, ports, and airports. We’re upgrading public transit and rail systems. We’re replacing lead pipes to provide clean water, cleaning up pollution, and providing affordable high-speed internet to every family.

    Veterans Services

    Biden also signed into law the PACT Act – the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxic exposed veterans in more than 30 years.

    Gun Safety

    His administration passed the first major piece of gun safety legislation in three decades – The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

    Reproductive Rights

    President Biden and Vice President Harris have also taken action to defend reproductive rights. Biden has signed Executive Orders to protect access to reproductive health care, including abortion and contraception, and he has safeguarded patient privacy. He has made it clear that he will fight any attack by a state or local official who attempts to interfere with women exercising their constitutional right to travel out of state for medical care.

    Clean Energy and the Protection of Land and Water

    The President has also taken executive action and signed legislation to develop clean energy at home, accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, and reduce pollution that endangers communities. And he has protected more lands and waters in his first year than any President since John F. Kennedy.

    Biden’s Foreign Policy

    Now it’s time to discuss the highly disturbing back-story of the Gaza genocide. I support the Palestinians, and I’m horrified about what’s been happening to them. In my opinion, the only thing that comes close to excusing President Biden for his part in the Gaza debacle is a sense of perspective centering around geopolitics.

    The geopolitics of Israel is not a ‘good’ or ‘true’ geopolitics, as defined by Edmund Aloysius Walsh in his book Total Power: A Footnote to History.1 What we see taking place in Gaza are the geopolitics of Herzlian Zionism. The Nazis used this geopolitics as well.

    Karl Haushofer Meets Edmund Walsh at Nuremberg

    After the Allies’ victory in World War II, Edmund Walsh served as Consultant to the U.S. Chief of Counsel Robert H. Jackson at the Nuremberg Trials.  One of his duties was to interrogate retired Imperial German Army General and former University of Munich professor Karl Haushofer. They were trying to determine if Haushofer’s academic philosophy of Geopolitik helped justify crimes against peace and the Holocaust.

    Walsh provides a timeline of the teachings that inspired Karl Haushofer. However, he begins by citing examples of what he considers to be true geopolitics.

    A Brief Timeline of Geopolitics

    Aristotle said geography was a prime consideration but not the only one. His Politics II, III, and VII talked about climate, soil, topography and the environment and geography being important in the life of a state.

    Strabo, the Greek geographer (who wrote from 63 B.C. to A.D. 21) was probably the first conscious geopolitician.

    In the Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus and Montesquieu said it was the ‘esprit des Lois’ of factors that give character to legal institution of a civilization.

    Kant said geography was the basis of history. He added that it is susceptible of exaggeration, but persuasive.

    The geopolitics of Baron Dietrich Heinrich von Bulow alarmed the monarchs of Europe. For that reason, the Russian Czar put him in a dungeon at Riga, where he ‘conveniently’ died. As an example of his method, Von Bulow had theoretically divided continental Europe into 12 viable states.

    In 1942, Professor Renner of Columbia University modified von Bulow’s project somewhat. He thought Europe would only allow nine states.

    Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 for the sake of one key city and an open port.

    The Russian historian V. O. Kluchevsky’s Course of Russian History had a geopolitical  point of view.

    Steward’s purchase of Alaska in 1867 and his interest in Greenland were evidence of politico-geographic acumen.

    Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History was a geopolitical monograph.

    Theodore Roosevelt had a practical understanding as applied to the Isthmus of Panama.

    In 1907, Homer Lea predicted the Japanese attack on the Philippines, which took place in 1941.

    According to Walsh, the first stages in the corruption of pure geographical knowledge began with Karl Ritter (1779-1859). He wanted to use geopolitics to achieve political objectives of imperialistic governments. The foundational heresy was the organic conception of the states. This led to the irrational and one-sided policies of Germany during the Nazi Regime (Walsh p. 39).

    Walsh’s Efforts to Discredit German Geopolitics

    Walsh wrote about his interviews with Karl Haushofer that took place during the Nuremberg Trials. After they had discussed Haushofer’s contribution to the policies of Nazi German and Japan, Walsh suggested that Haushofer could redeem his record by helping to discredit German geopolitics. Haushofer agreed. But this did nothing to address the use of similar ideas in Israel.

    The Geopolitics of Herzlian Zionism in Europe

    Great Britain in Palestine had already made use of these ideas. In fact, the geopolitical aspect of Herzlian Zionism in Europe involved several major empires.

    The British Empire sponsored the political project of Zionism at least from the early 1800s; the Russian Empire was the host to some five million Jews at the time; the Austro-Hungarian and German empires provided the ground for much of the cultural debate about Zionism (Pinsker’s Auto-Emancipation and Herzl’s The Jewish State were first pubished in German); and the Ottoman Empire was the sovereign of the Arab territory of Palestine. A political geography critique seems…appropriate because the rise of Herzlian Zionism was concomitant with the rise of many other politial geography and geopolitical ideas stemming from social and spatial Darwinism as expressed in Rudolph Kjellen and Friedrich Ratzel’s lebensraum, Karl Haushofer’s geopolitik, and Halford Mackinder’s heartland doctrine.

    Geopolitical Genesis p. 3

    Sir Halford Mackinder (1861 – 1947) was the pivot of Haushofer’s indoctrination. However, all of these theorists contributed to Haushofer’s work in Germany.

    Sir Halford Mackinder’s World Island of the Earth

    Mackinder had warned since 1904 that the power that controlled Eurasia could one day rule the world. The basic Mackinder doctrine was that there are three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. These three made up the great central unit of land mass, or the world island of the earth. The Western Hemisphere, including Australia, etc. are minor land units supplemental to the central unit. He suggested the world island would measure 2,500 miles by 2,500 miles, and could be the seat of world power. And, inevitably, Halford also spoke of the strategic position of Jerusalem.

    Mackinder considered Palestine a geostrategic region at the center of his Geographical Pivot of History. The following is a summary of the progression of these ideas as presented by Edmund Walsh.

    Friedrich Ratzel’s Organic Theory of the State

    Friedrich Ratzel (1844 – 1904) taught that states might be subject to the natural processes of growth and decay. A state’s capacity for expansion determines its survival or culture. Space is not only the vehicle of power; it is power.  

    Rudolph Kjellen on the Geopolitical Rivalry Between Germany and England

    Rudolph Kjellen (1864 – 1922) developed Ratzel’s idea. He said conflict was a geopolitical consequence of growing rivalry between Germany and England. Kjellen coined the word, geopolitics. 

    James Fairgrieve’s ‘Heartland‘

    James Fairgrieve (1870 – 1953) contributed the term ‘Heartland’.  

    Karl Haushofer’s Indoctrination of the German People

    Karl Haushofer (1869 – 1946) borrowed from all of the foregoing works. After WWI he strove to reeducate Germans to think in terms of continents. In his opinion, “Germans have been too much under the influence of lex lata (the law as it exists).” Haushofer’s influence on his countrymen and women was far-reaching and long-lasting. For twenty years, he fantacized the people of Germany by the sacred words Lebensraum and Autarchy. They imagined an immense and viral continental power rendered impregnable against the sea power of England, who was now decrepit. In this way, they were led to expect a pan-regionalism in Central Europe with Germany the central fortress of political and economic influence. And demands for a rectification of frontiers were based on ponderous arguments from anthropology, ethnology and invocations of Nietzsche’s superman. 

    The Result: The Poisoning of the Global Worldview

    It gradually becomes clear that we’re not just talking about a few influential men who developed these ideas and made war. Apparently, ideology can poison the worldview of entire peoples. And, in spite of the efforts of Walsh and many other capable men, the poisoning did not cease at the end of World War II.

    Enter the Self-Proclaimed Enemies of the United States

    An impressive number of very determined and energetic people refused to accept Germany’s defeat in World War II. For them, that’s all World War II was–a defeat. And it was temporary. These people never give up. This is what the United States has been dealing with since 1945.

    People in the United States and Europe criticized the Nuremberg process.2 It’s not surprising that in the intervening years, the U.S. has often strayed off track. Criticism of the Nuremberg Trials progressed to the re-militarization of Germany as a bulwark against Communism. The demands of the U.S. military combined with efforts of certain individuals and organizations managed to ruin the war crimes process.

    What Does This Say About the 2024 Election?

    World War II did not put class rivalries to rest. Since that time, a corrupted form of geopolitics has been an obstacle to peace. Modern Palestine is now at the center of the storm. We should expect President Biden to work for peace in Palestine, but that would require a recovery of ‘true’ geopolitics. Currently, Biden’s seeming inability to protect the Palestinians is the result of a corrupt global consensus. This is not a reason to vote for some other American.

    1. Edmund Walsh, Total Power: A Footnote to History, The University of Michigan, 1948 ↩︎
    2. Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, Autonomedia, Brooklyn, NY, 1999, p. Chapter 26. ↩︎

  • From Lahaina to Biblical Madness in Palestine

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    The fire in Lahaina on the Island of Maui was similar in some ways to what we have seen in Gaza, but on a much smaller scale. Was Lahaina a buildup to the genocide in Gaza? In this article I compare the fire in Lahaina to biblical madness in Palestine.

    We’ve almost forgotten Lahaina today because of the carnage taking place in Palestine. But Lahaina’s tragedy is ongoing. I will argue that there are similarities between Lahaina and Gaza.

    After the Lahaina fire, the coyness of city leaders was suspicious. Those who took part in subsequent press conferences seemed almost proud of the insulting and incomplete answers they gave to the press. Housing for the survivors of the Lahaina fire is still in short supply. And many residents are being evicted from the housing they have. Others have already relocated to other states. The callousness of those responsible and the preventable deaths of family members are also comparable to Gaza. Last but not least is the high dollar value of the land involved in the fire. But Gaza has an additional characteristic.

    Likewise, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been flippant and callous in his statements to the press. However, his use of Old Testament references to justify his cruelty sets Gaza apart from Lahaina. Netanyahu’s attitude has been even more smug, conceited, high-handed and pitiless than the leaders of Lahaina.

    Humor and restraint are nowhere to be found in Palestine. The behavior of Israel is heavy-handed, cruel, and ugly. And the suffering and death levied on Gaza’s people is ghastly and final. If those responsible are waiting for congratulations, they’ll wait for eternity.

    Netanyahu’s behavior does not translate as power. Nor is his behavior compatible with religious belief. It merely demonstrates childish, ignorant pride, and delusions of invincibility.

  • Why No one Denies Anything to Netanyahu

    Reading Time: 4 minutes
    Why No One Denies Anything to Netanyahu
    Dolphin-class Submarine

    In a Neutrality Studies interview, Professor Dr. Dr. H.C. Wolfgang Streeck explains why no one denies anything to Netanyahu. They fear he might use nuclear weapons on his neighbors. This interview was based on an article Dr. Streeck wrote on this subject in December of 2023.

    If Streeck is correct, this explains President Biden’s unwavering support of Israel’s brutality during an election year. It also suggests why Biden’s support of Israel is not unique among American leaders, including Donald Trump. Nor is it unique to the United States. Aside from South Africa no government has done anything to stop Netanyahu.

    None of this is Biden’s fault. It’s not even the fault of the United States. That might sound strange. Lately, everything seems like the fault of the United States. But the most likely culprits have escaped notice. The United States did not create the overarching threat of nuclear weapons in Israeli hands. France was the first country to supply Israel with the ability to make nuclear weapons. Germany has contributed to Israel’s expansion and nuclear arsenal since World War II. The Israelis now have a ‘tripod’, which means submarines, missiles, and fighter jets. Their huge fleet of fighter planes is capable of going to Tehran and back without refueling, and while carrying a nuclear payload. And their Dolphin-class submarines are capable of being fitted with nuclear warheads.

    The nuclear arsenal of Israel is not just playing a part in the strategic decisions of Israel, but in the behavior of its neighbors. It is estimated that Israel has about 400 nuclear warheads of different kinds. By some estmates, Israel has the most technologically sophisticated nuclear arsenal, just behind or on par with the US.

    And it gets worse. The Israelis haven’t admitted they have nuclear weapons. This means there are no inspections and no formal nuclear policies. That’s serious enough, but when you consider that Israel’s neighbors in the the Middle East don’t have nuclear weapons at all, you begin to understand why Netanyahu feels so free to butcher the Palestinians. Israel’s neighbors in the Middle East offer no deterrence to Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

    How did this happen? France’s contribution took place before the Unite States entered the world stage. Germany’s contributions have been taking place since World War II. After the war the Germans were being supervised by the United States. However, they did some things on their own initiative.

    Streeck blames Germany’s courting of Israel on an absence of an identity, its dependence on the United States, and its pariah status. For these reasons, the Germans thought it was important to have some kind of good relations with Israel. After 1949, there was a conversation about reparations between Germany and Israel’s David Ben-Gurion. They discussed what Germany could do as compensation for the Holocaust. Ben-Gurion was quite clear that he needed support for expansion in Palestine, and Germany gave him that support. More recently, Germany has supplied Israel with six Dolphin-class submarines capable of being fitted with nuclear warheads. That’s how Streeck explains it anyway.

    I would put it this way: Germany made an alliance with Jews who happen to live in the most strategic location in the Middle East. Out of guilt. Never mind that every conqueror in the modern age has had designs on that place, incuding Hitler. But back to the interview.

    The fact that the Israeli government can pursue the strategy they are now pursuing has something to do with their confidence that if American public policy weakens US support, they have their own tools. So, there is a sort of intelligence feedback loop. The Americans are aware that if they don’t support Israeli policy in relation to Palestine, the Israelis will do it themselves. Then Israel might do things that are out of the control of the United States.

    I was worried before watching this interview by suggestions for electoral stategy in the US. There are journalists who say we can’t vote for Joe Biden because of his part in the genocide of Gaza. Some say outright that Trump is a better choice. It’s hard to explain these comments from reasonable people. We know that President Donald Trump helped Netanyahu’s reelection chances. He did this by recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heighs. Israel illegally seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, and since then every American administration has considered it ‘occupied’ territory. But not Trump. Trump also moved the US embassy to Jerusalem against the wishes of the Palestinians. And, since October 7, candidate Trump has assured Israel of his support.

    I agree that the US should support Israel when it is attacked by Hamas, but electing an eratic character like Trump is not the solution. Trump is no more concerned about the Palestinians than Netanyahu.

    Another thing to consider is whether this attack on Gaza is part of a strategy to elect Trump. If Netanyahu prefers Trump to Biden, which I think he does, humiliating Biden would be a good way to help Trump. And if Streeck is right, there’s nothing Biden can do about it.

    If you’re waiting for my suggestion of who you should vote for, you may have missed the point of this article. I predict that Netanyahu will continue to pound the Palestinians until the election. And if that’s what he wants to do, no one will stop him.

  • Did the Germans Win the War?

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    The book, Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile1, paints a disturbing but convincing picture. It’s convincing because it explains the way the world behaves. Did the Germans win the war?

    I’m not just referring to the claim that Martin Bormann lived out his days as a free man in Argentina. Or that after the war, he took the wealth looted from defeated countries with him to Argentina. And it’s not just that he took that loot out of Germany with the knowledge and approval of Germany’s industrial leaders. It’s also that Bormann was carrying out well-laid plans to help German industrialists and bankers take control of the global economy. And it can be argued that the world is living with the consequences.

    Our curiosity has been put to sleep by the horror of the Holocaust

    The Holocaust is the event that stands out in the last century. It’s a horror story you can never get out of your head. And because it’s so prominent in the collective imagination, it masquerades as the entire purpose of World War II. After all, what other explanation is needed? We know about Nazi racism, European anti-Semitism, and the Nazi belief that the German race had to be purified. We also know that everywhere the Germans went, they arrested and deported the Jews. What Manning’s book does is awake the natural curiosity that has been put to sleep by the real horror of the Holocaust. The underlying purpose of the war was theft in the service of supremacy.

    1938: The Jews are required to register their wealth

    The boldfaced robbery of German Jews is the first important fact of World War II. Anti-Semitism justified it, but the same pattern has been repeated in wars that don’t involve anti-Semitism. In 1938, a Nazi Law Forced Jews to Register Their Wealth—Making It Easier to Steal. This was shortly after Nazi Germany annexed Austria. At that time, Hitler’s government issued a decree requiring all Jews in both Germany and Austria to register any property or assets valued at more than 5,000 Reichsmarks. This amounted to around $2,000 in American currency of the period, or $34,000 today. All types of property were included: furniture, paintings, life insurance, stocks. Aryanization was the name for the state-sanctioned theft that followed, and it totaled about 7 billion Reichsmarks. This process was made more painful by the fact that Germany’s Jews had already been methodically removed from public life, civil service, and business.

    The Jews were robbed even when they decided to leave. This is further evidence that theft was the underlying purpose.

    For those Jews with the means to leave the country, legally emigrating meant relinquishing 50 percent of one’s monetary assets, and then exchanging the rest of the remaining Reichsmarks for the currency of whatever country would be the final destination. “By late 1938, they were allowing Jews to keep only 8 percent of what their Reichsmarks were worth in the foreign country,” Hayes says—which only made it harder to find a safe haven, since the Jewish refugees couldn’t take any of their savings with them.

    Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian Magazine

    1939: The Jews are robbed of intellectual property

    One thing you can say about the Nazis is they were thorough. They even robbed the Jews of intellectual property.

    A 1939 executive order required all Jewish men to add ‘Israel’ as a second name and women to add ‘Sara.’ This made it easier for Nazi officials to deny intellectual property registrations and renewals to Jewish applicants, cutting them off from the IP system… 

    In some instances, works by Jewish authors were nearly completely reproduced and distributed by others without their consent. One example of an Aryanized work is Alice Urbach’s So kocht man in Wien!, a Viennese cookbook. Urbach was forced to transfer the rights to her book, which was then republished with new authorial credit to “Rudolf Rösch.” The new work kept most of the original texts and photographs of her cooking demonstrations but removed elements celebrating Vienna’s diversity. 

    In the field of medicine, Dr. Josef Löbel’s Knaurs Gesundheitslexikon was a health encyclopedia that, after the Otto Liebmann publishing house was taken over by a Nazi publisher, was republished by the author Herbert Volkmann under the pseudonym “Peter Hiron.” Volkmann even added new sections on race, homosexuality, and prison psychology. He similarly usurped authorship for Dr. Walter Guttman’s Medizinische Terminologie and its ongoing publications.

    Library of Congress Blogs, The Seizure of Jewish Intellectual Property Ahead of World War II

    The Holocaust as a distraction from Germany’s need for Jewish wealth

    The Jews of Austria, Poland and Eastern Europe were also methodically robbed. Much of the stolen wealth went to generous social programs back home in Germany. But most of it funded the Nazi war machine. If Hannah Arendt knew about this when she wrote about the Eichmann trial, ‘the banality of evil,’ was a perfect description of what happened.

    In hindsight, we shouldn’t be surprised that World War II was all about annexing and looting defeated countries. That’s what war has always been about. It is highly disturbing that Germany looted its own citizens, but it was terribly logical considering the need for war funding. I’m arguing that the Holocaust has erased our common-sense understanding of war. The theft or recovery of wealth is war’s basic motivation.

    The troubling nature of capitalism is not Germany’s fault

    Paul Manning’s claim that the theft never stopped is the most disturbing part. His story suggests that the industrialists who funded the Nazi Party won the war. It may be more correct to say the German economy won the war. In this light, it is tempting to blame the current state of Western capitalism on the German takeover. But the troubling nature of capitalism is not Germany’s fault.

    Woodrow Wilson revealed the nature of capitalism in 1920. Professor David Harvey quoted Wilson in his video on Class Nation and Nationalism. This is Harvey’s summation: ‘Relations between nations are connected together by the fact that every capitalist wants a market and wants to spread market exchange all over the world. Therefore that market process must be protected by that nation-state in relation to other nation-states in battering down the walls between them.’

    Putting the Holocaust in its place opens the way to enquire about what was happening in Germany before World War I. The history books say that Germany’s punishment after the Great War that led to World War II. This punishment was an indirect consequence of liberalism.

    Two faces of liberalism

    Liberalism enabled the use of economic sanctions and blockade. Nations could be controlled by economic warfare because they had become tied together in the system of market exchange. However, this represents a surrender to temptation by the powerful states. It was not liberalism’s original mandate. There are two faces of liberalism.

    In the 19th century, the prevailing doctrine of free trade liberalism protected global trade from wartime measures. It shielded countries such as Germany from efforts to target their foreign dependence. Germany’s industries depended on foreign minerals such as manganese, which it paid for through a global financial system centered on London. Through this mechanism, Germany was able to obtain resources that it did not itself possess. But that changed during the Great War.

    The other face of the liberal order: sanctions, and the Great War

    So the important question becomes, how did the Great War start? First, German unification upset the balance of power in Europe in 1871. Then Germany proceeded to form an alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy. This represented a new threat to the existing order, and it was reinforced by the ambition of its leader, Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Kaiser had plans to build a battle fleet to rival Britain’s. He eventually switched his spending from the navy to the army, but his relationship with Britain never recovered.

    Naturally, Britain negotiated agreements with France and Russia. This led to fear of encirclement on the part of Germany. Tensions escalated when Germany tried to oppose a French takeover of Morocco and Britain supported France. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the final straw. Finally, the enmeshment of these countries in the liberal global economy increased the pressure on Germany by allowing the use of economic warfare.

    The modern history of the economic weapon

    The modern history of the economic weapon began during World War I. Britain and France tried to isolate Germany and its allies from the global economy. They sought to starve their economies of resources and their citizens of food, even though the suffering caused by this tactic was well understood. It was considered a regrettable necessity: 300,000-400,000 people in Central Europe died of starvation or illness thanks to blockade, while 500,000 perished in the Ottoman Empire. Germany, for its part, used U-boats to cripple transatlantic shipping.

    Economic and financial sanctions continued as a way to reinforce the authority of the League of Nations during the interwar period. However, the economic weapon was now claimed to be a weapon of peace. Powerful nations realized they could employ sanctions without any declaration of war. They also told themselves it could be used as an alternative to war. But sanctioned states took different lessons from this treatment.

    What the Nazis learned about liberalism from sanctions and blockade

    The Nazi leadership saw the threat of foreign sanctions as further justifying its hegemonic ambitions—the more territory it influenced or controlled, the less vulnerable it would be to the Jews and Bolsheviks, whom it believed, or claimed to believe, were orchestrating the international campaign against Germany. The Nazi’s behavior can be largely explained by this liberal tactic of sanctions and blockade.

    Just as they were a century ago, the crucial dilemmas of sanctions are the dilemmas of liberalism. Is the world better off when countries are interdependent with each other than when they hold themselves aloof? How far do you go in cutting countries out of the world economy when they turn to conquest, or look to spread illiberalism? Is the economic weapon really so much better than the military one?

    International economic coercion is the dark shadow cast by the global liberal economy. Sanctions would not be nearly so effective in a world where liberalism had not won. Isolation from global trade and finance are painful precisely because they are so intertwined with the workings of national markets. In a world of complex supply chains spanning dozens of countries, and global financial systems that are woven into the warp and woof of local banking relations, it is impossible to tell where the domestic economy ends and the international economy begins.

    lawfaremedia.org, The Modern History of Economic Sanctions

    The Jewish case compared to the Balkans

    Now let’s return to the Jewish case, as compared to the Balkans. Similar to the Jewish experience in Nazi Germany, widespread economic violence was committed during the 1990s Balkan wars. The plunder obtained in this way financed and sustained armed groups, ensuring that the conflicts could continue. However, in most of the cases presented at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, the focus is on violations of civic and political rights. Only a few cases deal with violations of economic rights.

    As a consequence of this prosecutorial approach, the underlying war criminal networks that supported the war – war profiteers, organised crime gangs, illegal smugglers of gasoline, people, weapons and so on – remained invisible, even though their connections to political parties and elites that emerged during and after the conflict are well-known facts.

    Elma Demir, UN Court Archives reveal the political economy of the Balkan Wars

    The Jewish case as compared to Gaza

    Again, there are similarities in the Jewish case compared to Gaza. Israeli soldiers have looted millions in money and gold from Gaza since the war started.

    Gaza’s government media office said it had received “dozens of reports from residents of the Gaza Strip on the issue of stolen money, gold, and artefacts” over a period of 92 days, which ran from 7 October to Saturday.

    The office said the items were valued at 90 million shekels ($24 million) and were “seized by the Israeli occupation army”, The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister site al-Araby al-Jadeed reported.

    Israeli soldiers have boasted of the items they have looted in videos posted to social media.

    The media office said the thefts occurred in various ways, with thefts at checkpoints of bags containing valuable belongings, and raids on the homes of people who were asked to evacuate.

    The New Arab

    It is estimated that the Israeli Army may have looted possessions worth tens of millions of dollars in addition to taking personal belongings from Palestinian citizens.

    Israel is the servant of the global liberal order

    The policies of Israel today are blamed on Netanyahu’s right-wing government. But this government has controlled Palestine for 20 years. The identity of Netanyahu and his cabinet is irrelevant. They could be almost anyone. Their Jewishness is a necessary convenience. But, to the extent that he is really Jewish, Netanyahu must be tortured by the knowledge that the Mossad was commanded to stop its Nazi-hunting after the arrest of Adolf Eichmann.

    According to Paul Manning, the Mossad was threatened with a loss of financing if they continued to search for Nazis. This illustrates the extent to which Israel is the servant of the global liberal order.

    1. Paul Manning, Martin Boumann: Nazi in Exile, Lyle Stuart Inc. Secaucus, NJ, 1981 ↩︎
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