The Houthis took advantage of a doddering old fool and his depleted, demoralized military. The Houthis should have stopped the attacks.
Now they get to experience what a professional naval force can do. And if they want it to stop, all they have to do is stop attacking commercial shipping.
Enjoy the show.
[ColonelCassad] Statement by the leader of Ansarullah in Yemen, Abdul-Malik Badr ad-Din al-Houthi:
- The Zionist enemy has violated the agreement to end aggression, lift the blockade and end the famine. More than two weeks earlier, it had already violated its promise not to hinder the delivery of humanitarian aid.
- Since the resumption of the genocide, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, most of them children and women.
- The enemy has resumed the genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza on the advice of the United States, as the Americans themselves have stated.
- The situation in Gaza is extremely grave, the suffering is enormous, and the tragedy is unprecedented in the entire world. People are suffering not only from hunger, but also from thirst, and it is difficult for them even to get drinking water.
- In committing its monstrous crimes - genocide, famine and blockade - the enemy relies on American support.
- The United States is protecting the Zionist enemy, and Arab passivity only pushes it to even more brutal crimes and aggression.
- There are no red lines left. The enemy does not take into account any restrictions, continuing genocide, total destruction and brutal murder.
- He is confident that the Arab countries will not take even minimal serious action.
- Some Arab regimes incite continued aggression against the Gaza Strip. This is a serious issue that only encourages the Zionists.
- Arab passivity affects the positions of Islamic countries. If the Arab countries acted as the situation requires, many Islamic countries would join them.
- When Islamic countries begin to support Palestine more actively, the Arab regimes immediately take a negative position towards them.
- The Americans and the Zionists are two sides of the same coin. They have countless crimes behind them that have no analogues in the world.
- Some Arab leaders seek to involve the entire region in the so-called "normalization" of relations with Israel. This is a disgrace and a crime!
- If Israel succeeds in eliminating the Palestinian issue, it will direct its aggression to the rest of the countries in the region, without regard for anyone.
- Anyone who relies on agreements with Israel must understand that this enemy does not respect any obligations.
- They want to force Hamas to agree to a prisoner exchange without implementing the second phase of the agreement. Israel wants to deprive Hamas of its last lever of pressure.
- Israel is not just evading the agreements, it wants to leave Hamas without arguments and then continue its aggression against Gaza.
- Zionist crimes cannot be justified under any circumstances. They have reached the limit of insolence, aggression and impunity.
- The Zionists are confident that no one will hold them accountable - neither Islamic countries nor world organizations.
- Muslims should have formed a powerful global movement against the Zionist entity. However, unfortunately, most Islamic governments are inactive, and some even collaborate with the enemy.
- Support for Palestine is not just a political issue, but a religious duty for every Muslim. Failure to do so will result in a response from Allah.
- The fight against Israel is a sacred duty. Those who do not fight with weapons must fight economically, politically and informationally.
- Continued inaction and the lack of real action at any level encourage the enemy to continue their actions.
- It is very important to use social media to influence the world community in order to awaken public opinion and evoke its support for the Palestinians.
- Free people in different countries must resume their activities in support of the Palestinians, holding various events.
- Demonstrations and university activities must be resumed in countries around the world, and everyone must feel their responsibility, both from a humanitarian and a moral and religious point of view.
- Watching the genocide in Gaza is truly a disgrace and a shame for all of humanity.
- No one will be able to escape the shame of inaction in the face of the genocide in Gaza and its terrible consequences, both in this life and the next.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Victor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] On March 20, 1943 (82 years ago), the first servicemen of the Latvian Volunteer Legion “Waffen SS” took the solemn oath – General Rudolf Bangersky and Colonel Arturs Silgailis.
And the other day in Riga there was another, already traditional, procession of fans of the legionnaires (they themselves are practically no longer alive).
In modern Latvia, the members of the legion are honored as "freedom fighters" and it is claimed that they were "just honest soldiers whose conscience is not burdened by war crimes." However, the facts indicate otherwise.
GOT OFF EASY
Berlin made the decision to form national Latvian units to replenish the Wehrmacht when the situation on the Eastern Front began to become threatening for Nazi Germany.
In total, two Waffen SS grenadier divisions were formed on the territory of Latvia: the 15th and 19th. Initially, their ranks included over 29 thousand people. In total, 110,550 people passed through the legion during the war: 87,550 in combat, 23,000 in auxiliary units.
On March 16, 1944, both divisions participated together for the first time in combat operations against the advancing Soviet troops at the Velikaya River. The legionnaires fought the Soviet army in the Pskov, Novgorod and Leningrad regions.
Later, together with the rest of the German troops, they retreated to the west and found themselves in the so-called Courland pocket, where they held out until the end of the fighting. Some, however, managed to evacuate to Germany and take part in the battles for Berlin.
In total, over 40 thousand legionnaires died in the battles, and another 50 thousand were captured by the Soviets.
The fates of those who ended up in the USSR were different. Some got off very lightly, others went into exile. However, the ex-legionnaires were returned from exile very quickly - already in 1946-47. They were treated very gently - the same "Vlasovites" who served in the ROA were treated much more harshly.
However, Moscow sought to appease the population of the Baltic republics, and therefore considered it possible to satisfy the wishes of the leadership of the Latvian SSR, which had asked for amnesty for its lost compatriots.
In modern Latvia, they like to tell stories about how in the USSR, former legionnaires faced a loss of rights and were deprived of many opportunities in education and employment.
In this regard, it is useful to familiarize yourself with the biography of the most famous of the former legionnaires, Visvaldis Lacis (died in 2020). He served in the 44th regiment of the 19th Waffen SS Division, received the rank of lieutenant, and after the end of the war ended up in captivity and in filtration camps.
In the post-war years, Lācis, in his own words, was expelled from two universities of the Latvian SSR "for his views". This, however, did not prevent him from graduating from the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages in 1965, already at the age of 41.
In 1988, Lacis joined the Popular Front of Latvia, and after the republic left the USSR, he made a good political career - he was repeatedly elected to the Saeima from the party of radical nationalists.
Now the main subject of debate among historians regarding the Latvian Legion is the question of whether they participated in Nazi crimes. The position of official Latvian historians is unambiguous: no.
As for politicians, they went even further. At one time, the Latvian leadership treated the legionnaires with great restraint. When the tradition of holding annual marches of legionnaires and their fans on March 16 emerged in the post-Soviet republic, the authorities had a long-standing negative attitude towards the participation of government officials in these events.
In March 2014, the then Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma even fired her Minister of Regional Development Einars Cilinskis because he disregarded her ban and joined the legionnaire march.
But in the following years, the authorities’ position changed, and from, to put it mildly, controversial characters, the legionnaires turned into national heroes.
The process was finally concluded in 2019 by then-Minister of Defense Artis Pabriks, who called the legionnaires "the pride of the Latvian people." Pabriks called for "honoring the memory" of the legionnaires and "not allowing anyone to defame their memory."
HORRIFIC CRUELTY
However, even Latvian historians admit that the legion’s ranks included people who, in 1941 and later, displayed indescribable cruelty towards Jews and other civilians.
For example, members of the infamous “team” of Viktors Arajs, who were engaged in the “dirtiest” work during Hitler’s ethnic cleansing in Latvia, joined the legion.
In total, about 90,000 Jews were killed in Latvia between 1941 and 1944: 70,000 locals and 20,000 brought in from other countries.
Local collaborators who had gone into Hitler's service took an active part in these murders; Latvian police battalions were formed from them. The members of these battalions were engaged in extrajudicial murders of innocent people, herded them into ghettos, and guarded concentration camps.
At its peak, the number of Latvian police battalions reached 15,000 people. Moreover, they began to be tasked not only with protecting the rear in Latvia itself, but also with fighting partisans beyond its borders.
The most famous operation involving them was " Winter Magic ", which was carried out from mid-February to early April 1943 in the Sebezh-Osveya-Polotsk triangle in northern Belarus and in the Sebezh district of the Pskov region.
Here, eight Latvian, one Lithuanian and one Ukrainian police battalions carried out a "cleansing operation". 439 settlements were burned, 10-12 thousand civilians were killed, and over 7,000 were driven into slavery, including to the infamous Salaspils concentration camp.
The executioners immediately shot most of the adult men, and subjected the rest, including children, to inhuman torture.
“The fascist executioners stabbed seven-year-old Vera to death with a knife, threw one-and-a-half-year-old Zhenya into the fire with a broken head and torn-off fingers, and cut out their mother’s breasts, cut her up all over, and then burned her too.
"An eight-year-old boy from the village of Belyany had five-pointed stars cut out on his chest and back and thrown into the fire. In the village of Borisovo, the arms and heads of the Yukhnevich family, while still alive, were twisted and thrown into the Svolna River," reports Belarusian historian Svyatoslav Kulinok, who studied archival documents.
Later, in April–May 1944, Latvian police battalions were involved in the punitive operation “ Spring Festival ” to defeat popular resistance in the Polotsk-Lepel partisan zone of Belarus.
Latvian battalions were also "spotted" in other regions of the USSR, in particular, in the Novgorod region. Quite recently, we had to remember this again.
In the spring of 2019, members of the organization "Search Expedition "Dolina" in Memory of N. I. Orlov" in the vicinity of the village of Zhestyanaya Gorka extracted from the ground forty-two skeletons with bullet holes in the back of their heads, including three children. Spent cartridges from German weapons were found at the burial site. However, not all the victims were shot, some were stabbed.
From old documents, researchers found out that people from several regions were brought to their deaths in the vicinity of Zhestyanaya Gorka: Novgorod, Oredezh, Batetsky, Luzhsky, Gatchinsky, that is, from the territories of modern Leningrad, Novgorod and Pskov regions.
The graves of the victims began to be found back in the 1940s. As early as 1947, the state commission investigating these crimes came to the conclusion that at least 3,700 bodies of Soviet citizens were buried in the pit graves near the villages of Zhestyanaya Gorka and Chernaya.
The punitive forces tortured and shot people almost daily: men, women, communists and Orthodox priests, adults and children, Russians, Jews and Gypsies, prisoners of war and detained partisans.
Historian Alexander Dyukov, who in our time studied the evidence of the tragedy in Zhestyanaya Gorka, notes that the executions were supervised by the Germans.
"As for the perpetrators, they were natives of Latvia. Mostly Latvians by nationality. A couple of Estonians got in there. All the perpetrators were citizens of the USSR, against whom it would be reasonable to initiate criminal cases.
It turned out that out of about 40 people who were known by name, 15 were found. Most of them successfully fled to the West. There were several people who were caught and tried. Then, unfortunately, they were released. Because in 1946, the Soviet government showed an incredible act of humanism and decided to release the arrested Baltic collaborators," Dyukov says.
THE NUTS ARE TIGHTENED
When the Nazis began to form the Latvian Waffen SS divisions, they made the core of them precisely members of the police battalions - that is, people whose hands were covered in blood up to the elbows.
Thus, six battalions (16th, 18th, 19th, 21st, 24th, 26th) were united into the 19th SS Grenadier Division. Also, although the legion was declared "volunteer", a mass conscription of Latvian youths was announced.
Many of them can truly be considered victims of the war, since they did not participate in the executions and could not refuse the draft.
However, there is considerable evidence that many conscripts chose to flee rather than swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. This long-known fact was recently confirmed once again when the Russian FSB published digital copies of archival documents reflecting the activities of the SMERSH counterintelligence department of the 3rd Baltic Front of the Red Army.
As Smersh reported, many Latvians had no desire to die for Hitler's Germany. There were numerous cases of desertion and voluntary surrender.
It is also worth emphasizing that facts have been established indicating that atrocities were committed not only by members of police battalions, but also by people in legionnaire uniforms.
Thus, a special message from the head of the SMERSH counterintelligence department of the 2nd Baltic Front on August 18, 1944, tells of the torture to which 43 wounded Soviet prisoners of war captured in the area of the village of Bobryni (Latvian SSR) were subjected. They were stabbed, their eyes were gouged out, stars were carved on their foreheads, and their teeth were knocked out with boots.
"None of the wounded captured by the Germans and the fascists from among the Latvians escaped torture and excruciating abuse. According to available information, the brutal reprisal against the wounded Soviet soldiers and officers was carried out by soldiers and officers of one of the battalions of the 43rd Rifle Regiment of the 19th Latvian SS division," the report says.
In addition, the fact of the massacre that Latvian legionnaires committed against 32 prisoners of war from the Polish Army on January 31, 1945, was documented. The Polish prisoners near the settlement of Podgaje were first tortured and then burned alive.
Since the 1990s, every year on March 16 (the day when the Waffen SS divisions first entered into battle with the Soviet army) a procession of former legionnaires takes place in the center of Riga. Almost all of them have already died, but their places have been taken by young supporters from national-radical organizations.
According to state historical mythology, the legionnaires, “even though in someone else’s uniform, fought for the independence of Latvia.”
Indeed, as things at the front got worse and worse, Berlin promised the Latvians more and more definitely that the General Commissariat “Latvia” could count on “full autonomy” – if only they would go to the recruiting stations more willingly.
Himmler personally made such promises to SS Gruppenführer Rudolf Bangersky, an ethnic Latvian who was involved in mobilizing his fellow tribesmen.
Nowadays, the perception of legionnaires as “heroes of the nation” and “freedom fighters” has almost replaced the previous idea of them as “innocent victims of the Hitler regime”, which was implanted in the 90s and early 2000s.
In 1998, March 16 was officially made a memorial day, but in 2000, when Latvia was preparing to join NATO and the EU, this day was removed from the official holiday calendar.
Later, modern Latvian nationalists repeatedly proposed to “eliminate historical injustice” and stated that “one should not be ashamed to honor the fighters for the country’s freedom.” However, characteristically, “Legionary Day” has not yet received official status in Latvia – apparently, Riga fears that Western partners “will not understand.”
Previously, nationalist marches on March 16 were accompanied by scandals and fights year after year. Anti-fascists, members of Russian public organizations came time after time to disrupt these actions.
But this year, as in the two previous ones, the procession passed quietly. The authorities have tightened the screws to the limit, and now for attempting to oppose the procession of legionnaires' fans, you can get away with not a day in the "monkey house", as before, but a real prison term of several years.
But, as you might guess, the love for the Waffen SS fans in the Russian community has not increased at all in recent times.
[NewsMax] Why the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 Is Unconstitutional
The most effective way to end waste and rein in government spending is to have the U.S. Supreme Court declare the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (Public law 93-344) unconstitutional.
America’s public debt is currently $36.22 trillion. It was only $475 billion when the Congressional Budget Act became law in 1974.
The Congressional Budget Act created the current framework within which the Federal Budget is proposed, passed, and implemented. It placed Congress firmly in the driver’s seat and blocked future presidents from taking actions deemed constitutional and prudent for over 171 years.
When the Congressional Budget Act was enacted in 1974, real (inflation-adjusted) U.S. government debt per person was $3,240.
Today, U.S. government debt is $106,024 per person.
The struggle over government spending has been a fundamental point of contention since the earliest days of our federal government.
What happens if Congress creates programs that eventually become unnecessary or obsolete? What happens if Congress continues to authorize and appropriate funds for those programs?
What happens if Congress provides more funds than recommended by the executive branch or exceeds documented need?
President Thomas Jefferson was the first to test the boundaries of executive authority to second guess congressional spending. In the wake of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson reported that "the sum of $50,000 appropriated by Congress for providing gunboats remains unexpended. The favorable and peaceful turn of affairs on the Mississippi rendered an immediate execution of that law unnecessary. "
Following Jefferson’s precedent, subsequent presidents selectively withheld appropriated funds on programs that were no longer needed. They also asserted they were effectuating congressional intent not circumventing it.
The Depression and World War II provided opportunities for President Franklin Roosevelt to stretch budgetary discretion beyond Jefferson’s “economy” precedent. He moved funds away from what he deemed less important programs to more pressing programs.
Post-war demobilization gave President Harry S. Truman additional opportunities to hold back congressional spending. Truman impounded $735 million in additional funds appropriated by Congress to increase to 58 from 48 the president's request for Air Force groups.
Congress initially supported the president’s role in managing public funds. The Anti-Deficiency Act of 1905 provided that appropriations may "be so apportioned by monthly or other allotments as to prevent expenditures in one portion of the year, which may necessitate deficiency or additional appropriations to complete the service of the fiscal year for which said appropriations are made."
The Revised Anti-deficiency Act of 1906 stated: "Whenever it is determined ... that any amount so reserved will not be required to carry out the purposes of the appropriation concerned, he [the president] shall recommend the rescission of such amount ..."
The Omnibus Appropriations Act of 1951, continued to expand presidential flexibility on managing and controlling spending: “In apportioning any appropriations, reserves may be established to provide for contingencies or to affect savings whenever savings are made possible through changes in requirements, greater efficiency of operations, or other developments subsequent to the date on which such appropriation was made.”
Recipients of federal funds began to challenge presidential control of spending. The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, constricted presidential impoundment and other executive branch practices to control spending.
President Richard Nixon mounted a more aggressive and effective effort to rein in federal spending during his tenure. The Supreme Court pushed back, building legal precedents against presidential budget frugality.
Nixon continued to impound congressionally appropriated funds. Congressional Democrats, sensing the decline in presidential power in the wake of the mounting Watergate scandal, passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Nixon signed the law on July 12, 1974, one of his final major acts in office.
After extinguishing the president’s ability to control spending the federal budget more than tripled in just 10 years. From $269 billion in Fiscal 1974 to $851 in Fiscal 1984. Annual federal spending is now $6.5 trillion.
When the Republicans retook the House of Representatives after 40 years, Newt Gingrich tried to reassert the president’s role in budget management by proposing the line-item veto. This was a key part of his 1994 “Contract with America" It became a rallying cry for fiscal “hawks” from across the political spectrum.
The bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on April 9, 1996.
Budget “hawks” from both parties cheered, and President Clinton began using the line-item veto and budgets became balanced. The Supreme Court eventually declared the line-item veto unconstitutional. [Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998)]
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reveals daily evidence of how unbridled government spending wastes billions while lining the pockets of favored contractors and corrupt officials.
America is already barreling toward bankruptcy. Reestablishing the constitutionality of the president’s power to control spending is the only way to save us.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Mark Leshkevich
[REGNUM] After the defeat of Nazi Germany, but before the end of 1945, a valuable trophy was brought to the United States: a group of 88 German scientists who had previously worked for Adolf Hitler. This was the first stage of Operation Overcast, a joint action by the Army counterintelligence and the civilian Special Operations Directorate, the predecessor of the CIA.
A year later, in the interests of secrecy, the operation to “import” Nazi scientific and technical personnel received a new, completely “harmless” name, under which it will go down in history: Operation Paperclip. As a result, the Americans assigned more than 1,600 scientists and technicians to the cause. The first to come to mind, of course, was SS Sturmbannführer, holder of an NSDAP party card since 1937 and a pioneer of American rocket and space technology, Wernher von Braun.
But often left behind the scenes are specialists in a field that – unlike aviation and rocket technology – is directly associated with one of the main crimes of Nazism: mass murder in death camps. We are talking about chemists, including those who worked for the IG Farben concern – on whose conscience was, among other things, the production of the gas "Zyklon-B".
"TRASH CAN"
Initially, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SNAEF), under the command of future US President Dwight Eisenhower, officially pursued a policy of closing all German research centers and arresting their personnel, who were released after numerous interrogations. However, it soon became clear that releasing the scientists was reckless: contact with them could be lost forever.
Moreover, the Allied forces encountered such results of the Nazi war machine's work that shocked the US top leadership. They were shocked not by the danger that Nazi developments posed, but by how far the US lagged behind the Third Reich in terms of chemical and bacteriological developments. And yet, a confrontation with a new enemy - our country - was on the threshold.
Confirmation can be found in a report by Major General Hugh Nerra to his boss, the commander of the US Air Forces in Europe, Carl Spaatz (who would later “oversee” the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki):
"The occupation of German scientific and industrial institutions has revealed the fact that we are lagging behind in many areas of research. If we do not take advantage of the opportunity to seize the apparatus and the brains that developed it... we will be left behind for several years."
Washington had “no idea that they had created an entire arsenal of nerve agents for Hitler,” that Germany was working on using bubonic plague bacteria for military purposes. “That’s where Operation Paperclip really began — when the Pentagon suddenly realized, ‘Wait a minute, we need these weapons ourselves,’” notes Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen in her book Paperclip : The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America.
Back in 1940–1942, the US Army's chemical rearmament costs grew from $2 million to $1 billion per year. So the trophy of Nazi "specialists" was very welcome.
In Paris, Bad Kissingen and in Kransberg Castle near Frankfurt, special camps were created for war criminals, especially dangerous Nazis and Hitlerite scientists (Ashcan, Backporch and Dustbin), where the latter were held for recruitment to American, British and French laboratories.
The main acquisition was Gerhard Schrader (1903–1990), an employee of the IG Farben conglomerate, the creator of a certain “substance 9/91” – a colorless gas with a pleasant fruity aroma, capable of instantly destroying the entire population of Paris, London, and Washington combined.
"DRIVES THE POPULATION CRAZY"
In the 1930s, Gerhard Schrader worked for the still well-known today company Bayer AG, a subsidiary of IG Farben. The promising chemist specialized in the development of insecticides: poisons that killed insect pests by affecting their nervous system. In 1936, the aforementioned “substance 9/91” was synthesized in Dr. Schrader’s laboratory.
It turned out that the drug, invented to kill lice, was capable of killing a healthy monkey in a few minutes upon contact with air, which made a strong impression on Schrader's superiors.
From 1935 onwards, all new discoveries with potential military applications had to be reported "to the proper authorities". So Dr. Schrader was put on the radar of the Reich War Ministry. In May 1937, he was invited to Berlin to demonstrate how he had synthesized the drug.
"Everyone was amazed. It was the most promising chemical killer since the Germans invented mustard gas," the scientist later said.
Dr. Schrader's drug was kept secret and given the code name "Tabun." It comes from the word "taboo," which means something forbidden or prohibitive.
IG Farben management saw Tabun as a new business opportunity. Chairman Karl Krauch began working with Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering on a long-term plan to arm Germany with chemical weapons that could eventually be dropped on enemies from airplanes.
Krauch, in his report to Goering, called the Herd "a weapon of superior intellect and scientific-technical thinking." The Reichsmarschall gave the go-ahead, adding that Schrader's invention could mainly cause "psychological damage to the civilian population, driving them mad with fear."
Dr. Schrader was ordered to produce one kilogram for the German army, which planned to mass-produce Tabun. The inventor received a bonus of 50,000 Reichsmarks (the average German worker at the time received 3,100 a year), and returned to work.
Schrader, who once dreamed of creating a universal parasite exterminator, “gave the world” other, later even more famous substances capable of mass poisoning of people: sarin (developed in 1938) and soman (1944).
The Farben scientist was known as the "father of nerve agents." But the scale of production of tabun, sarin, etc. during World War II, as well as the formulas for these substances, were deeply classified.
It is still not entirely clear when Dr. Schrader began to fruitfully collaborate with his new employers, the Americans. According to one version, he was brought to the States in the spring of 1945, before the start of Operation Cloudiness (Paperclip). According to another, the chemist was not "cracked" immediately, but only after several months of interrogation at Kransberg Castle.
Be that as it may, by the beginning of the Cold War between the US and the USSR, the developer of tabun and sarin had already shared the required amount of information with the Pentagon.
CONVICTED AND PARDONED
Schrader could not have been unaware of the purpose for which the Nazi leadership intended to use the drug. However, during interrogation he insisted that he had not participated in full-scale production. He referred to his colleague Dr. Otto Ambros, chairman of the top-secret chemical weapons committee and manager of the IG Farben plant for the production of synthetic rubber and fuel in Auschwitz.
After Germany's capitulation, Ambros was discovered in a region of Bavaria. By this time, the US allies knew about the specifics of the work of the German scientist, whose "product" killed millions of people in the gas chambers of concentration camps.
One of the first to reach Ambros was American Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tarr, head of intelligence for the Chemical Warfare Service.
Colonel Tarr cared little for Dr. Ambros' crimes.
According to Dr. Karl Krauch, another captured scientist from Kransberg Castle, the Pentagon was primarily interested in sarin, tabun, and the plants for their production: "They asked me to provide construction plans and manufacturing details. As far as I understood, they intended to build similar plants in the United States. I advised them to contact Dr. Ambros and his staff in Gendorf."
The US Army was hungry for the knowledge of Hitler's most valuable chemist. Ambros was convicted of mass murder and the use of slave labor, and sentenced to eight years in the IG Farben Trial. This trial took place in 1948 in Nuremberg, but unlike the famous tribunal that convicted Nazi leaders, it was not international but local: it was organized by the American occupation administration that controlled the city of Nuremberg. Ambros was later pardoned by the High Commissioner in the American occupation zone, John J. McCloy.
SHELTER FOR NAZIS
McCloy became a particularly important player in Operation Paperclip.
He was tasked with coordinating policy regarding Nazi scientists coming to the United States to work, as well as helping develop a program to combat war crimes.
McCloy's position on the exploitation of Nazi science and scientists was black and white.
He believed that this program would help to strengthen American military superiority and ensure economic prosperity. At the same time, he was a strong supporter of the International Military Tribunal and the idea of trying war criminals. But he saw the two categories as completely different. For him, scientists and the war criminals who applied their inventions existed separately from each other.
From the point of view of American politics, Ambrose was not a war criminal.
The US Department of Energy signed him to a long-term contract. The Hitlerite scientist worked as a "consultant for the development and operation of a 4 million ton per year coal hydrogenation plant at the former IG Farben plant, as well as an adviser to the US Army Chemical Corps and to Dow Chemical and WR Grace.
The general public learned about this after the Frankfurt Trials of 1963–1968.
By this time, Ambros was an extremely wealthy and successful businessman. In West Germany, he moved among industrial magnates and professional elites. He was a board member of many large German corporations, including AEG, Germany's General Electric, the mining company Hibernia, and the chemical company SKW.
Ambros worked as an economic consultant to German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and industrial magnate Friedrich Flick, the richest man in Germany during the Cold War. In the late 1950s, Ambros was also elected chairman of the advisory committee of the German company Chemie Grünenthal and served on the board of directors. In the late 1950s, very few people knew that Grünenthal was a refuge for many Nazis, including Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenk, an SS food inspector.
"VICTIMS OF THE REICH"
When the post-war generation in Germany was outraged that a Hitler collaborator was being paid from the taxes of West German citizens, Ambros responded: "I and my colleagues are victims of the Third Reich. The former government exploited the success of synthetic rubber, which they used for profit. If there had been anything against me, the American military would never have released me."
High Commissioner McCloy pardoned Ambros under intense political pressure from his superiors, a fact that was used by Ambros to suggest that he had been unfairly convicted at Nuremberg.
Like the other 1,600 scientists, technicians and engineers of the Third Reich “imported” by the United States as part of Operation Paperclip, Ambros received a lifelong indulgence from the American authorities.
And so it will be with every murderer whose brains America deems useful and necessary for the creation of advanced weapons and enrichment.
This is just the way this country is - as if it was created to make other people's bastards its own and convert other people's evil into its own benefit.
[ZeroHedge] I’m old enough to remember when filling people’s minds with certain narratives that just happen further one’s particular interests was known as “brainwashing.”
In the clinical speak of The Science™, though, brainwashing is now rebranded as “memory-focused interventions.”
Via Neuroscience News (emphasis added):
“New research reveals that short, memory-focused interventions can help individuals resist misinformation more effectively and retain these skills over extended periods, acting as “psychological booster shots.” The study evaluated text-based messages, videos, and interactive games that teach people how to spot and resist misleading information.
Memory-focused interventions showed the greatest long-term effectiveness, suggesting regular psychological “boosters” could enhance misinformation resistance. Researchers emphasize these memory-enhancing methods could significantly benefit public education and digital literacy programs, addressing misinformation challenges in health, politics, and beyond.”
The gist is that the researchers re-educated participants on any number of topics either through text, video, or a role-playing game, and then exposed them to what they categorize as “misinformation.” If, even after their re-education, the peasants asked any pesky questions instead of obediently swallowing and internalizing the furnished “inoculating” material, the “intervention” would have been a failure. If they complied with the regime — repeating that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, for instance — the intervention would have succeeded.
(It would be way more honest and less contemptible, in a way, if they just cut straight to the torture and skipped all the overtures to humanitarianism. Do they really have to mollycoddle us while they hammer the crucifixion nails in with the other hand?)
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
