Remembering the Holocaust: Commemoration of those murdered by the Nazis

Top: Memorial plaque to those killed by the Nazis in Auschwitz, put in place in 1948 and removed in 1989. Bottom: Soviet Red Army liberates Auschwitz prisoners January 27, 1945.

Originally published on January 27, 2014 by TML Daily

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, the day in 1945 that Soviet troops liberated prisoners from the Nazis’ Auschwitz prison camp, the peace- and justice-loving people of the world join all those whose families suffered so greatly under the Holocaust, a program of systematic state-sponsored murder by the Hitlerite Nazis and their allies, the Italian fascists and Japanese militarists. The word “Holocaust” must be understood in its broadest sense as referring to the mass murder of all those who were persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and murdered by the Nazis in Germany and the countries it occupied, especially the Jews and others targeted for extinction including the Roma and many Slavs as well as political opponents, particularly communists and resistance fighters. So too the Japanese militarists carried out the Nanjing Massacre and many other atrocities in China and throughout Southeast Asia, while to this day they owe reparations to the Koreans for the crimes committed against them.

Genocide scholar condemns Israel’s ‘racist’ teaching of the Holocaust

Prof. Yair Auron’s thesis is clear: Israel prefers to avoid, repress and minimize the suffering of other peoples in the Holocaust and other circumstances, to perpetuate victimization and isolationism. Ofer Aderet in Haaretz 

A memorial to the murdered European Sinti and Roma who were persecuted as ‘Gypsies,’ designed by Dani Karavan, in Berlin, 2012 | AP

The cover of the new book by historian and genocide scholar Prof. Yair Auron features a drawing of five different-coloured patches: red for political prisoners; black for asocial and work-shy prisoners; pink for homosexuals; brown for Gypsies; and purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses. Only one colour is missing – the yellow patch for Jews. The book’s title, “The Non-Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime,” explains why.

Imbue with new life the clarion call of Never Again!

Prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp are liberated by the Red Army, January 27, 1945.

BY DOUGAL MACDONALD, January 27, 204

On January 27, 1945, the advancing Soviet Red Army entered the Nazis’ Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp, liberating more than 7,000 prisoners, most of whom were ill or dying. The prisoners were liberated as the Red Army was inflicting one defeat after another on the German troops, driving the Hitlerites steadily backward until the final demise of the Third Reich in Berlin on May 9, 1945. Recognizing the great significance of the liberation of Auschwitz, in 2005 the United Nations General Assembly officially designated January 27 as the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the many millions of people murdered by the Nazis in their bloodthirsty quest for world domination.

Diplomatic appointments linked to anti-social offensive and privatization of public assets

Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Dion made a number of diplomatic appointments on January 16, two of which are noteworthy because the appointees do not come out of the foreign service but are linked directly with the Liberal Party and to the program of privatizing public assets as well as upholding monopoly right.

Australia’s day for secrets, flags and cowards

By JOHN PILGER

On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history will be celebrated in Australia. It will be “a day for families,” say the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Flags will be dispensed at street corners and displayed on funny hats. People will say incessantly how proud they are.

January 30 Day of Action in Hamilton: Together let us stand up for the rights of all

Saturday, January 30 — 1:00 pm
Keep Stelco Producing! Steel not Steal!

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“The People vs U.S. Steel,” Hamilton Day of Action, January 29, 2011

Hamilton City Hall, 71 Main St. W.
For information: Local 1005 USW 905-547-1417
or Local 8782 USW at 519-587-2000.

Hamiltonians and workers from different sectors of the economy from different cities in Ontario are joining steelworkers and pensioners in Hamilton to make the Hamilton Day of Action on January 30 a success. The last day of action was held in Hamilton five years ago, on January 29, 2011, at a time when U.S. Steel had imposed a phoney lockout to extort concessions from steelworkers. To its credit, Local 1005 USW launched a campaign under the theme The People vs. U.S. Steel to uphold the interests of the Stelco workforce and pensioners as well as Hamilton and Canada itself.

Condemn the racism and Eurocentrism of the British prime minister

British Prime Minister David Cameron must be condemned for the outrageous comments made last week in The Times and elsewhere in which he claimed that a lack of ability to speak English was connected with what he referred to as an “alarming picture” of isolation facing some Muslim women. He even announced plans to deport some new migrants if they subsequently failed language tests two and a half years after entering Britain on a spousal visa, and announced £20m for the provision of English classes for “women who are isolated”. The Prime Minister then went on to claim that an inability to speak good English and what he called “separate development” and the “development of parallel communities” was not only responsible for “aiding men” who hold a “damaging control” over women in some communities but might also “help a young person’s slide towards radicalisation”.

New security arrangements: Measures strengthen US profiling of Canadians

By PAULINE EASTON and ENVER VILLAMIZAR

Since the New Year, a number of news reports have raised the problem of Canadian children, some just toddlers, being on no-fly lists without any explanation as to why this is the case.[1] The federal government has responded by reiterating instructions that airlines are not to subject passengers under 18 whose names appear on a no-fly list to additional security screening.

Back to the future all over again – ‘urban winter warfare training’ of Canadian Forces in Laval, Quebec

Canadian soldiers take over the streets of Montreal following the invocation of the War Measures Act, October 1970.

Forty-five years after the proclamation of the War Measures Act and the military occupation of Quebec by the Trudeau government, 600 reservists of the Montreal Territorial Battalion Group of the 34 Canadian Brigade Group (34 CBG) are exercising this weekend in “aid of the civil power” “for the purpose of territorial defence in the event of a crisis.” Exercise QUORUM NORDIQUE 2016 (Ex QN 16) is “urban winter warfare training” in Laval.

Reservists in action in an industrial sector of Laval during exercise QUORUM NORDIQUE 2016, January 24, 2016. (Canadian Army)

Moldova – yet another imposed ‘Europe or Russia’ choice stirs conflict

One of three rallies in Moldovan capital Chisinau on Jan 16, 2016 demanding national election | Twitter

Three articles reporting on the mass protests in Moldova in recent days and months calling on the present government to convene a national election. The country is gripped by a financial corruption scandal of its economic elite and a choice in economic relations it is told it must make between the European Union or Russia.

On Putin’s interview with the German media

By ALEXANDER MERCOURIS for Russia Insider

Putin meeting with reporters from Bild-Zeitung in Sochi, January 5, 2016

Putin used Russia’s Christmas break to give an interview for the German tabloid Bild-Zeitung (see here and here).

Unusually for the Western media, the German interviewers proved to be both well-informed and intelligent and avoided cliches, giving Putin a good opportunity to explain himself concisely on a wide range of topics.

The fact the interviewers from Bild-Zeitung conducted the interview so intelligently incidentally shows that the true causes of the present tensions in international relations are well understood in Germany – including by the media there – even if they are not openly articulated.

More on the Pentagon’s falsification of the US defeat in Vietnam

Monument in Da Nang, Vietnam celebrates Vietnamese peoples’ victory in 1975.

In a $30 million disinformation program, the US Pentagon has hijacked the history of the war of aggression against Vietnam, magically transforming it into a memory to “honour” and cherish. The official commemoration will conclude in 2025, the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, when the South Vietnamese government surrendered and the last Americans ignominiously departed Saigon in that helicopter on the roof.

Word. Beyond Vietnam – A time to break silence

 Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. It was given exactly one year before his assassination. It is the least well known of Dr. King’s speeches among the masses, and it needs to be read by all. Although his great civil rights sermons have been celebrated, the Riverside speech has many echoes for our contemporary situation.

By Rev. Martin Luther King, 4 April 1967

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The Martin Luther King you don’t see on TV

From our archives. By JEFF COHEN and NORMAN SOLOMON*

It’s become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King’s birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about “the slain civil rights leader.”

The remarkable thing about this annual review of King’s life is that several years – his last years – are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

Reflections on Dr. Martin Luther King, JR

By ISAAC SANEY*

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X

The annual U.S. holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King is a time for serious contemplation of his actual legacy. The pervasive and dominant narrative freezes in place King’s politics and philosophy, transfixing his thinking to August 28 1963: the March on Washington and his “I Have A Dream Speech.” Of course, selective quotes of “I Have A Dream Speech” are deployed to render a de-radicalized version of King. The subsequent development – up to his April 4, 1968 assassination – of his views on capitalism and imperialism are ignored.

Obama’s crocodile tears – an African proverb

A picture of Obama

NEWS ITEM: “From every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from their lives from the bullet of a gun. Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad,” he managed. “And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.” He wiped a tear as it fell down over his cheekbone. As the president wept at the White House, gun investors were crying out for joy on Wall Street.  As has happened like clockwork anytime Obama goes near gun control, gun stocks shot through the roof on Tuesday, even as the broader market struggled through a brutal day of trading… In the three years since Sandy Hook, Smith & Wesson’s stock has leaped 213 per cent, Sturm Ruger’s nearly 39 per cent. – Vanity Fair

A picture of Obama sincerely crying

“Gun manufacturers have done very well during my presidency.” – Barack Obama, CNN Town Hall on gun control at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, January 7. 2016

The USA was the largest arms exporter for the period 2009-2013, accounting for 29 per cent of world deliveries. – Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

As of January 2015, the United States maintained a stockpile of approximately 4760 nuclear warheads. This included approximately 2080 deployed nuclear warheads, consisting of roughly 1900 strategic and 180 non-strategic warheads. In addition to this deployed arsenal, about 2680 warheads were held in reserve. Another roughly 2500 retired warheads were scheduled for dismantlement, giving a total inventory of approximately 7260 warheads. – SIPRI

A proverb from Africa may shed some light on this strange tale of the tears of the chieftain of U.S. imperialism.

* * *

IN THE OLD DAYS, when the animals could talk, Crocodile was king of the water creatures. One year, there was a drought, and the water in the river ran dry. Crocodile sent Otter to scout for a new home, and two days later, he returned to say there was a deeper river on the far side of the farmer’s fields.

When he heard this, Crocodile called upon Tortoise and Alligator, and he explained they must go see Lion, king of the land creatures.

“The veldt is dry,” he said, “and it will be a difficult journey, but we must make peace with the Lion and all his subjects, or we will die. They must help us cross the land to reach the other river.”

Tortoise and Alligator set off at once to see Lion. They carried along a peace treaty Crocodile had composed. When they arrived, they handed Lion the treaty.

NATO’s nuclear ‘debate’

Throughout the aggressive U.S.-led NATO, member states are engaged in encircling and engaging in criminal warmongering against Russia, as documented by  this report from Germany on just how the deployment of nuclear arms against Russia is being justified. Justin Trudeau is no less extremist than Stephen Harper in decrying “Russian aggression.” Canadian Forces are participating in NATO exercises on the borders of Russia that attempt to encircle Russia with a nuclear shield. In Warsaw on June 9, Harper announced that Canadian Armed Forces personnel would be joining a NATO command centre being set up in Szczecin, Poland as part of the efforts to encircle and isolate Russia.

New York Times: Tool of US nuclear disinformation

Alamagordo atomic test, July 15, 1945 | Jack Abbey

The New York Times’ longtime nuclear power reporter, Matthew Wald, has announced that he’s been hired as the senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the chief lobbying arm of the nuclear industry. Investigative reporter Karl Grossman wrote a piece a few years ago on the ties between the Times and the nuclear power establishment that go back to the dawn of the Atomic Age. 

US nuclear blackmail: Imposition of irrationality and war on Korea and the world

PHILIP FERNANDEZ

The Anglo-American anti-communist hysteria against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)’s announcement on January 6 that it has successfully tested a hydrogen bomb is aimed at covering up the crimes being committed by the Anglo-American system of states around the world against other countries in violation of their right to be.

What mechanisms exist for DPRK to defend itself under the circumstances of threats from the U.S. imperialists, Japan and others? Smaller nations are subject to the whims and machinations of the big powers at the UN Security Council.

Declassified US nuclear target list shows reckless disposition toward nuclear annihilation

The U.S. National Security Archive[1] recently released a declassified report on the U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, produced in June 1956. The report is a telling reminder of the depths of depravity and irrationality of the U.S. imperialists, who with their doctrine Might Makes Right, are willing to annihilate humanity in the name of containing communism and establishing global hegemony, aims which they continue to pursue today. What they achieved was the imposition of their irrationality on the world, based on the assumption that everyone else surely shared their depravity. These declassified documents are a sobering reminder that it is the U.S. which is the main culprit for nuclear proliferation and the major threat to peace and humanity in the world today.

Excerpts from the National Security Archive’s Electronic Briefing Book No. 538 on the SAC report are posted below.

Genocidal health conditions of Indigenous peoples

The CBC in August 2015 reported the results of a study from Statistics Canada showing risk of avoidable death for First Nations peoples twice that (in some cases five times that) of non-natives. On January 15th, 2016, it featured a plea by the Ontario First Nations Regional Chief, Isadore Day, that Canadians deal with the fact of inadequate health care for aboriginal peoples.

Call for long overdue public inquiry into Canada’s largest paramilitary operation at Ts’Peten (Gustafsen Lake)

Urgent need for Canada to establish just relations with Indigenous Peoples. WOLVERINE

Photo from Ts’Peten, 1995, with Wolverine (centre).

On December 30, Wolverine from the Secwepemc nation wrote a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reiterating the call for a public inquiry into the brutal assault of the RCMP and Canadian armed forces in 1985 on the sacred Sundance lands at Ts’Peten in southern British Columbia.

Stand as one in defence of the rights of all!

Join Locals 1005 and 8782 USW to Make the Hamilton Day of Action on January 30 a Success!

By ROLF GERSTENBERGER

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Keep Stelco Producing! Steel not Steal! “The People vs U.S. Steel,” Hamilton Day of Action, January 29, 2011. Saturday, January 30 — 1:00 pm Hamilton City Hall, 71 Main St. W. For information: Local 1005 USW 905-547-1417 or Local 8782 USW at 519-587-2000.

 

The situation at U.S. Steel/Stelco needs the people’s intervention. When the people stand as one for a just cause it makes a difference. U.S. Steel has attacked not just active and retired steelworkers and salaried employees but also the Ontario and municipal governments, suppliers, contractors, our collective economy and social fabric. It has assaulted the rights of all and the common good.

A very Canadian coup in Haiti: Top 10 ways Canada aided the 2004 coup and its reign of terror

Canadian troops deployed in Port-au-Prince on the day of the coup. A Canadian military helicopter flies over the Presidential Palace as the coup unfolds.

By RICHARD SANDERS*

Things went from bad to worse after Canada’s Liberal government helped plan and carry out the 2004 regime change that illegally ousted President Aristide’s democratically-elected government. Canada then helped empower and entrench an illegal coup-installed puppet regime that launched a reign of terror in which thousands of prodemocracy supporters were executed, jailed without charge, driven into hiding, or exiled. This Canadian-financed dictatorship, propped up by UN-sanctioned occupation forces, was applauded by corporations greedy to profit from “reconstruction” contracts, the privatisation of public services, and the wage-slavery of Haitian sweatshops.

Canada has a lot to answer for. Here are 10 ways in which our government contributed to this major travesty of justice in Haiti:

212th Anniversary of the Haitian Revolution: Haitians defend historic victory for rights and liberty

“Combat de Vertières” by Patrick Noze, oil on canvas, from Haitian Art in the Diaspora. The Battle of Vertières was the decisive conflict of the Haitian revolution, fought in November 1803.

January 1, 2016 marked the 212th anniversary of the Haitian Revolution. Beginning in 1791, the organized resistance of the enslaved peoples of the French colony of Saint-Domingue took hold and eventually overthrew both slavery and colonial rule. The revolutionaries led by Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines fought off successive European powers — the French, Spanish and British — to proudly establish their independent republic, Haiti, in 1804.

Sighting. Cuban artists on terrorism in Paris

Ramses Morales Izquierdo 

All out for democratic renewal and an anti-war government!

In 2016 Organizing Work Will Be the Key to Our Victory

Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), January 1, 2016

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Today, as the year 2015 has come to an end and we usher in the New Year, people all over the world are yearning for a human society; a society where all human beings can flourish and the barbarities of the present conditions are a thing of the past. On this occasion, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) greets its members and supporters and all the workers, youth, students and seniors who battled so hard during 2015 to defeat the Harper dictatorship and war government. The aim of the broad masses of the people was and continues to be to end the anti-social offensive and nation-wrecking which are destroying the lives of the peoples at home and abroad. In this regard, great efforts were made to organize for people’s empowerment. This work will continue throughout 2016, as the communist and workers’ movement makes the building of Committees for Democratic Renewal and People’s Empowerment a priority.

As 2015 comes to a close, the utter barbarity of bourgeois civil society reveals itself more and more. While the problems facing the economy and the anachronistic constitutional and political arrangements are no fault of the people, the ruling elite have launched a brutal anti-social offensive. This offensive seeks to dispossess the peoples of everything that belongs to them by right at home while wars of aggression and occupation are launched against the peoples of other countries to effect regime change and covet what belongs to them by right. The destruction of productive forces on a mass scale is creating grave dangers for the world’s people and the natural environment as well.

Both at home and abroad what do we see? Do we see what we think is there, or shall we lift the veil of enforced ignorance by raising our concerns and sorting out what is happening in a manner that sorts out the problems in favour of humankind?