Spam costs $3 billion a year in wasted electricity alone

My previous blog post on the hidden costs of computing -- which pointed to a study that said that leaving computers on overnight wasted $2.8 billion of electricity a year -- was hotly contested by readers, many of whom felt the time spent rebooting their computer every morning was a far greater waste of money.
That remains open for debate, but here's a statistic that I think everyone can get behind: Spam wastes even more electricity than leaving your computer running 24/7, costing roughly $3 billion a year in wasted power alone.
McAfee calculated that sending, routing, and otherwise dealing with spam eats up a total of 33 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. As The Guardian notes, that's enough to power 2.4 million American homes and, by my math (as the average kw-hr costs about a dime), a total cost of over $3 billion.
And that doesn't even take into account money spent on spam filtering software, the loss of productivity due to users spending time deleting spam messages and finding false positives, and losses from people who get caught up in spam-based scams, either purchasing useless or undelivered products or being the victims of a spam-based crime.
The additional insights in McAfee's Carbon Footprint of Spam Report (registration required) suggest that spam transmission creates the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion gallons of gasoline each year. That's shocking.
But all is not lost: The good news is that McAfee notes that current levels of spam filtering save 135 billion killowatt-hours of electricity that would otherwise be wasted if all users and computers went unprotected from spam.
link:
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/139377 

 
Terrorist attack on the White House

That would "amaze" the world?

By ISHTIAQ MAHSUD, Associated ....
Press Writer Ishtiaq Mahsud, ....
Associated Press Writer – 49 mins ago

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, ....Pakistan.... – The commander of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility Tuesday for a deadly assault on a Pakistani police academy and said the group was planning a terrorist attack on the White House that would "amaze" the world.

Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million bounty on his head from the ..U.S..., said Monday's attack on the outskirts of the eastern city of ..Lahore.. was retaliation for ....U.S..... missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border.

"Soon we will launch an attack in ....Washington.... that will amaze everyone in the world," Mehsud told The Associated Press by phone. He provided no details.....

Mehsud has never been directly linked to any attacks outside ....Pakistan...., but attacks blamed on his network of fighters have widened in scope and ambition in recent years. The threat comes days after President Barack Obama warned that al-Qaida is actively planning attacks on the ..United States.. from secret havens in ....Pakistan........

Pakistan....'s former government and the CIA named Mehsud as the prime suspect behind the December 2007 killing of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Pakistani officials accuse him of harboring foreign fighters, including Central Asians linked to al-Qaida, and of training suicide bombers.

In his latest comments, Mehsud identified the White House as one of the targets in an interview with local Dewa Radio, a copy of which was obtained by the AP.....

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the bureau was not aware of any imminent or specific threat to the ....U.S....., despite what the Pakistani Taliban leader said.....

"He has made similar threats to the ....U.S..... in the past," said Kolko.

Mehsud also claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that killed four soldiers Monday in Bannu district and a suicide attack targeting a police station in ....Islamabad.... last week that killed one officer.

Such attacks pose a major test for the weak, year-old civilian administration of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that has been gripped with political turmoil in recent weeks.

A senior police investigator in the ....Lahore.... case, Zulfikar Hameed, said some of the men arrested in Monday's attack corroborated Mehsud's claim.

"We have got some important leads from them regarding their origin, their network, their local facilitators and things like that," he told Dawn News TV, declining to elaborate.

The gunmen who attacked the police academy killed seven police and two civilians, holding security forces at bay for about eight hours before being overpowered by Pakistani commandos. Some of the attackers wore police uniforms, and they took hostages and tossed grenades during the assault.

Earlier Tuesday, a spokesman from a little-known militant group linked to the Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility for the attack and a similar ambush-style attack against the Sri Lankan cricket team earlier this month in ....Lahore..... It was not immediately possible to reconcile the two claims.

Omar Farooq, who said he is the spokesman for Fedayeen al-Islam, said the group would carry out more attacks unless Pakistani troops withdraw from tribal areas near the Afghan border and the ....U.S..... stops its drone strikes. The group previously said it was behind the deadly September bombing of the Marriott hotel in ....Islamabad.... that killed 54 people.

Mehsud declined to comment on Fedayeen al-Islam's claim that it carried out the attack or to say whether the group is linked to his own. The Pakistani Taliban leader also said he was not deterred by the ....U.S..... bounty on his head: "I wish to die and embrace martyrdom."

The AP has spoken to Mehsud several times in the past and recognized his voice, and a request for an interview with Mehsud was submitted through his aide. The militant leader also granted phone interviews to other media organizations.....

The Pakistani Taliban has links with al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban militants who have launched attacks against ..U.S... and NATO forces in ....Afghanistan.... from a base in the border region between the two countries.

..Pakistan.. faces tremendous ....U.S..... pressure to eradicate militants from its soil and has launched several military operations in the Afghan border region. ....

The ....U.S..... has stepped up drone attacks against militants in the area, causing tension with Pakistani officials who protest they are a violation of the country's sovereignty and kill innocent civilians.

Monday's highly coordinated attack highlighted that militants in the country pose a threat far outside the border region. It prompted Interior Ministry chief ....Rehman Malik.., ..Pakistan....'s top civilian security official, to say that militant groups were "destabilizing the country."

After gunmen stormed the academy, masses of security forces surrounded the compound, exchanging fire in televised scenes reminiscent of the militant siege in the Indian city of ..Mumbai.. in November and the attack on ....Sri Lanka....'s cricket team. ....

Officials Tuesday were still trying to sort out how many attackers were involved, giving varying accounts to the media.

A senior ....Lahore.... police investigator, Zulfikar Hameed, told the AP that three of the attackers blew themselves up when commandos retook the police academy and one was shot by security forces. Hameed said it was difficult to say precisely how many militants carried out the attack and some may have escaped. ....

Tasneem Qureshi, a top official at the Interior Ministry, told an Express News TV that four attackers were in custody and "one, who was wounded, managed to escape."

Punjab police chief, Khawaja Khalid Farooq, said one of the captured militants had provided useful information and that about 50 other people in ....Lahore.... were detained overnight for questioning.

.... 

___ ....

Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad and Munir Ahmad in ..Islamabad.., Zarar Khan and Babar Dogar in ..Lahore.., and Foster Klug in ....Washington.... contributed to this report.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090331/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan’

My own thoughts about this matter:

It makes me wonder, in what way they (terrorists) are going to shock the world, again? I believe 9/11 is the most shocking event in recoding history and nothing can top it. Or can it?    

US drops 'enemy combatant' term

In a break from Bush administration policy, the US
will no longer hold terror suspects as "enemy combatants", the Justice
Department has announced.
Detainees will instead be held according to legal standards set by the international laws of war.
Under the new definition, only those who provided "substantial"
support to al-Qaeda or the Taleban will be considered detainable,
officials said.
President Barack Obama has ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
..President George W Bush had argued that his status
as commander-in-chief allowed him to hold detainees unilaterally as
"enemy combatants".
The Obama administration will, by contrast, hold prisoners
under the authority granted by Congress, when it approved the
Authorisation for the Use of Military Force "against nations,
organisations, or persons the president determines planned, authorised,
committed, or aided the September 11 attacks, or harboured such
organisations or persons" in September 2001.


..
link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7943114.stm

Doubt over German gunman warning

German police are investigating reports that an
internet warning said to be from a youth who later carried out a school
gun attack may have been fake.
The message was originally believed to have been posted by
gunman Tim Kretschmer six hours before he killed 15 people in the town
of Winnenden.
But police told the BBC they had been contacted by internet users and officials who doubted its origins.
They have filed a request for access to the website's US-based server.
..Local police spokesman Klaus Hinderer told the BBC
they had been alerted to a possible problem with the message by
internet users and official sources on Thursday afternoon.
Had enough'





..

..



..

FROM THE BBC WORLD SERVICE .. .. .. .. .. More from BBC World Service ..

..






At a news conference earlier on Thursday, Baden-Wurttemberg's Interior Minister Heribert Rech had read out the message.
"I've had enough. I'm fed up with this horrid life... Always the same," it read.
"People are laughing at me... No-one sees my potential... I am
scared, I have weapons here, and I will go to my former school tomorrow
and then I will really do a grilling."
The message then continued: "Possibly I get away, so keep your
ears open, you will hear from me tomorrow. Just remember the name of
the place, Winnenden."
Mr Rech said a German man alerted police about the internet warning after the school shooting.
The man said his teenage son told him about the warning only
after seeing the news reports. He had not previously taken the threat
seriously, responding to Kretschmer's post with "LOL", the chatroom
shorthand for "laugh out loud".
TributesFlags were flying at half-mast across Germany on Thursday as a mark of respect for the victims of the shootings.
Students and local people have also been gathering at the
Albertville secondary school, where nine students and three teachers
were killed.
Many laid flowers, candles, CDs or letters as tributes to those who died.
One man held a sign saying: "God, where were you?"
"I don't know if I can stay at this school," said student Christin Pluengel. "Every time you enter, the memories come back."
A counselling centre has been set up near to school to help people come to terms with the killings.
Officials said Kretschmer fired more than 100 shots during Wednesday's attack on his former school.
Germany's Bild newspaper reported students as saying he had gone into one classroom three times, asking: "Aren't you all dead?"
Hans-Dieter Wagner, police director for the Esslingen area, told the news conference Kretschmer had fled the school on foot.
In the three hours after the school shooting, Kretschmer injured a passerby and shot dead an employee at a psychiatric clinic.
He then shot and killed an employee and a customer at a car showroom in a nearby town.
Officials say he still had more than 130 rounds of ammunition left when he was cornered by police and shot himself.
link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7939528.stm

NY Post cartoon seems to link Obama to dead chimp

By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK – The New York Post is standing behind a cartoon that some have interpreted as comparing President Barack Obama to a violent chimpanzee gunned down by police.
The cartoon in Wednesday's Post by Sean Delonas shows two police officers standing over the body of a bullet-riddled chimp. One of the officers says the other, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."
Civil rights activist Al Sharpton called the cartoon "troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys."
But Sharpton said the Post should clarify the point it was trying to make with the cartoon, which was playing off Monday's rampage by a pet chimpanzee in Stamford, Conn., that left a woman severely mauled. Police ended up killing the chimp.
In a statement, Post Editor-in-Chief Col Allan said: "The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist."
A story about the cartoon on the liberal-leaning Huffington Post Web site drew hundreds of reader responses, many calling the cartoon racist and insensitive.
Sam Stein, a columnist for the site, wrote that "at its most benign, the cartoon suggests that the stimulus bill was so bad, monkeys may as well have written it. Most provocatively, it compares the president to a rabid chimp. Either way, the incorporation of violence and (on a darker level) race into politics is bound to be controversial."

'Imperial Power & Counter-Power'

If one is to address the reactions to the recent election of Illinois Senator Barack Obama to the U.S. Presidency, this can perhaps be best encapsulated by the term, exultation.

For if ever a political figure rode the currents of a stellar alignment, Barack Obama did so.

The exultation was both national and global.

In my 1/2 century of life, I can recall no presidential election that elicited so profound a political -- indeed visceral! -- response.

When one considers what role the left had in such a spectacular political event, again we must look to alignments; not of stars, but of constituencies, which converged to not only elect Obama, but to also close the door to the ruinous politics of the U.S. right wing, represented by the incumbent President, George W. Bush, and his presumed political heirs, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and Alaska's Gov. Sarah Palin of the Republican Party.

While the ....U.S..... left was a constituent part of the larger constituency, it neither drove nor directed the forces that elected Obama. In many ways it was hostage to those forces.

Those forces were youth -- those between 18-28, who mobilized in ways never seen before; it was also African Americans who voted in unprecedented numbers for one they perceived as one of their own; add to this millions of women, some of whom felt, frankly, disrespected by the choice of Palin, who, though a woman, betrayed an astonishing lack of knowledge and expertise on issues, especially given the very real possibility that her running mate, sen. McCain, might not survive the rigors of office.

But one cannot ignore the significant segment of those who felt betrayed or disaffected by the hard-right tilt of the Republican Party -- which ran almost exclusively on the notion that Obama was a "socialist", who in Palin's oft-repeated quote, "pals around with terrorists."

For those beyond our shores, it may be necessary to briefly decode this language. The "socialist" tag was a kind of cleaned - up, classy version of 'communist', the ultimate slur in U.S. capitalist politics, only exceeded by the post 9/11 term "terrorist" (and by calling Obama a "pal" of terrorists, it was tantamount to calling him one).

The last reference was to the alleged friendship between Obama and William Ayers, a ..Hyde Park.. educator who, in the 1960's, was a leading member of the Weather Underground, student anti-war and anti imperialist activists, who engaged in acts against property, and who supported the Black liberation movements of the era.

In point of fact, Obama was, by no measure, a leftist.

In the Spring of 2008 issue of The Black Scholar, African-American studies professor, Charles P. Henry makes the point explicitly, citing both Obama's own words, as well as a political biography of him in the New York Times Magazine. (1)

Obama's quoted remarks are instructive:
The Democrats have been stuck in the arguments of Vietnam,
which means that either you're a 'Scoop' Jackson Democrat or you're suspicious of any military action. And that's just not my framework .(2)

Obama's choices were illustrative of two poles of the Democratic Party: Sen. Henry 'Scoop' ....Jackson.... was so pro-war that he was called the "Senator from Boeing". (3) ; Hayden by contrast, was a student anti-war activist, and member of S.D.S. (Students for a Democratic Society). (Interestingly, Obama never referred to himself as a Jesse Jackson Democrat either).

This leads us to the next query on the role of the ....U.S..... anti-war movement; in a word, it is moribund.

This, paradoxically, can be traced to the massive demonstrations of Spring 2003 in protest of the imminent Iraq War. For millions of people, this was their first, and last experience of mass action. Sadly, the lesson they learned was of their impotence, not their power, for Bush promptly ignored the protests, rattled the sabers of war, and launched Operation Shock and Awe.

For many people, unused to popular protests, this short-term failure to stop the war blinded them to the rarity that such mass protests represented: never had the nation seen such mass protests before the war was begun. At this stage, the people were a Counter-Power, but they stopped far too soon.

To further analyze the question of whether the election of Obama represents a leftist surge, or if the anti-war movement is in its ascendancy we need only recall that Obama is neither a leftist nor is he anti-war. The early stages of his electoral campaign were explicitly against the Iraq War. As he ran in the later stages, his sound bites announced a troop withdrawal in ....Iraq.... was necessary to buttress ....U.S..... forces in ....Afghanistan..... Indeed, given the events occurring as these words are written, there will probably be more U.S. anti-war protests against the Israeli blitzkrieg on Gaza in the next 2 weeks, than there was against the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan in the last two years.

That, I think, succinctly states the case of where we are.

But where we are need not determine where we can go. For people move by inches and by leaps. This was, undoubtedly, a giant step in ....U.S..... history. This was not a day ever envisioned by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln or even John F. Kennedy.

Yet, one of Black America's most revered historians, Vincent Harding, (author of the classic, There is a River), spoke for far more than himself when he said, "So my hopes are very much focused on him, but not on him alone. I see the energy that's been built up over these two years of campaigns, and I see the possibility that we could gather ourselves together and begin to ask, in a very powerful way, not what should Barack Obama be doing next, but where do we go from here? What is our role as committed, progressive citizens to move to the next stages?"

Harding, a close confidante of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ended his comments on the Obama election with this fitting suggestion: "Maybe a democracy needs community organizers more than it needs commanders."(4)

Maybe so.

It appears Dr. Harding is suggesting that instead of empire, we need a republic, for if history teaches us anything, it is that the two realities are un- reconcilable. In the days of ancient ....Rome...., the advent of empire spelled the end of the republic.

In 193 C. E., an African seized the throne of ....Rome..... Emperor Septimius Severus extended ....Rome....'s power, and strengthened its empire. His sons succeeded him, and exceeded him in cruelty and brutality.

They didn't bring change -- they brought continuity.

Will this empire be any different?

Danke! Aus die Todeszelle,
Hier Sprecht Mumia Abu-Jamal.

.. ..

The Politics of the Present

If the media is any measure, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is the most corrupt Chicagoan since the infamous Al Capone.

His visage beams from every cable and news channel, the latest prey of the horde of hunters who inhabit the media safaris.

They are on the prowl for a juicy quote, hopefully enriched by an expletive.

But what did he do besides rant on the phone, and curse like a prison guard?

Does anyone think that the private phone conversations of any politician in America is substantially different?

And what is American politics but ambition and gain? Nearly two centuries ago, that great French visionary, Alexis de Tocqueville observed, "Than politics the American citizen knows no higher profession -- for it is the most lucrative" (Democracy in America (1835).

Statements, standing alone, are not crimes, no matter how shocking or objectionable. Unless an offer is made, and accepted -- that is, unless there is an overt act in furtherance thereof -- there is no crime.

In fact, the recent court filings may've preempted the actual crime!

Blagojevich may, or may not, resign, but if so, it'll be not because he committed a crime, but a blunder.

Few of us can bear the scrutiny of our private conversations with our friends, our erstwhile allies, or our spouses, made public.

It is a measure of our present political hour that a high government official, like a governor, can be wiretapped so easily, essentially on a whim.

I'll bet there are 49 state governors who are suddenly more circumspect on the line.

Does anyone really think that politicians aren't in it for money and power?

Name the American president who, upon leaving the White House, didn't make a pile? (The possible exception may be Jimmy Carter). Clinton cleaned up like a vacuum cleaner; Bush I went on a global 'Gimme' tour. Bush II is getting ready to cash in.

How many wars have been declared, not for democracy or for 'weapons of mass destruction', but for corporate advantage, and attainment of great wealth.

Blagojevich may be an S.O.B. [Son of a Bitch] but he's an all-American S.O.B., with his like in every legislature, and most government offices in the land.

He's the American way.

{col. writ. 12/13/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

Link: http://prisonradio.org/politics_of_present.htm

Hitler won his war having left Nazi roots in the West

It is a historical fact that Hitler's Germany has lost the Second World War. But is it, really?

It may be dangerous to even question the defeat of the Nazis, since at the very least one runs the risk of being declared insane and locked up. After all, we have here a historical fact, whose "factuality" is so absolutely lapidary and evident as to be the cornerstone of the very world we are living in.

 In 1945 absolute evil, incorporated by Adolf Hitler, was defeated by absolute good, represented by the forces of liberal democracy, led by the United States. Entire generations in "the West" have been instructed by their governments, their teachers, and by scholars and journalists what to think of World War II. The number of Hollywood films elaborating on all facets of the epic struggle between the United States and Germany is so great as to defy counting. For scope and intensity few propaganda campaigns can rival the US post-war offensive to persuade the world to accept its skewed version of history. Its results are impressive indeed: nobody in "the West" today will admit the undeniable fact that it was actually the Red Army that defeated Hitler in the most bitterly fought campaign in history. It can hardly even be discussed in an academic environment: its mere suggestion will cause contemptuous smiles and a loss of intellectual prestige.  

Now that the true character of the US political system is increasingly apparent to the whole world, now that the parasitical nature of its economic system is causing ever greater numbers of victims, now that the lies that underpin the US domination of world politics are finally being exposed, the time has come to take a serious look at what the "US victory over the Nazis" has brought us.

Let us therefore consider some of Hitler's policies and compare them to present-day political practice in the US:

 When Hitler came to power in 1933, many German banks had already been brought under government control in an effort to reduce the effects of the world economic crisis. Through government control of the banks, the Nazis continued to influence many key economic decisions.

The response of the Bush II administration to the credit crisis has been exactly the same, namely to nationalize the key banks.

 The Nazi economy was a war economy in that the production of armaments and the needs of the armed forces determined economic activity.

Under the administration of Bush II, the US defense budget has grown 75% and is about as big as the combined defense budget of the rest of the world. More than at any time since the 1950s, the US has a war economy. Moreover, war remains just about the only field of human endeavor in which the US still holds some competitive edge.

Hitler brought preventive and colonial war home to Europe, after it had been practiced in Africa, Asia and Latin America by the great colonial powers. Hitler used fake evidence to justify his wars and provoked them by creating false-flag incidents. Incidentally, at the Nuremberg Trials, the very act of starting a war was judged the original war crime, the crime that cleared the path for all the other war crimes.

-- Bush II has started two wars in true Nazi fashion: no one has ever seen any proof that the Afghanistan government was responsible for the destruction of the WTC towers at New York on that fateful September 11, 2001. But the US administration has invaded and occupied Afghanistan and installed a puppet government. Bush II used fabricated evidence to justify a war against Iraq, invaded and occupied that country and according to recent estimates has killed a million Iraqi civilians.

Domestically, the Nazi regime began a rigorous program of Gleichschaltung (synchronization, coordination), destined to bring all non-government organizations under state supervision, ensuring they would faithfully help fulfill official policies. Thus, the press and the education system were gleichgeschaltet, synchronized.

 Today, non-government organizations in the US may not yet be completely gleichgeschaltet, but in actual fact, the educational system has long been synchronized, not to mention the media.

 All government policies were supported by a vast propaganda effort, ranging from the local newspaper all the way op to national radio and the Berlin UFA studios, the Nazi Hollywood.

 The US "old" media (radio, tv, newspapers) have long since lost their independence. Widely esteemed icons of supposed quality and reliability, such as the New York Times, are little more than government mouthpieces. Hollywood regularly turns out films that support or at most seemingly discuss US policies. True criticism has no place and gets no funding.

 Any form of opposition was speedily and ruthlessly eliminated, forcing only a handful of courageous Germans to take their activities underground.

 Today, the internet is the only place where any documented criticism of government policies is to be found.

 Hitler's Nazi regime created a whole new vocabulary, made up notably of a bewildering series of acronyms and neologisms denoting certain government policies, such as Volksdeutsche, ethnic German. Foreigners who dared resist the Nazi occupation of their country were branded terrorists and savagely persecuted.

-- In the US the love of acronyms may exceed that of the Nazis. During the US and NATO aggression against Yugoslavia and Serbia beginning in the 1990s, the Nazi term Volksdeutsche was resuscitated and transformed. Now it became "ethnic Albanian," "ethnic Croat," "ethnic Serb," and so on and so forth: the Nazis would have immediately felt at home. As for "terrorists", they come in as varied a garb in the US vocabulary as under the Nazis. Any Afghani or Iraqi who resists the US occupation of his country is a mere terrorist. Everyday speech is closely supervised by millions of citizens. Acting as an unpaid thought police, they see to it that no one strays beyond the confines of political correctness.

- Hitler being a fanatical non-smoker, a long-time vegetarian and loathing alcohol, he would tolerate no smoking in his presence and initiated a national anti-smoking campaign, the first ever.

 Beginning in the US, a totalitarian anti-smoking campaign has spread around the world, changing sociability in all public places.

In order to supervise the population and oversee the correct application of government orders on the daily and local levels, an elaborate state security system was created, with several competing security agencies.

 The US has created a system of domestic security worthy of the most brutal dictatorship. There are at least 16 different intelligence and security services, employing unknown numbers of people, probably hundreds of thousands. There is also a nascent Gestapo called Ministry of Homeland Security. Today, no one can hide major secrets from the US government. It knows exactly what every individual US citizen spends and on what, it knows who he writes his e-mails to and what he writes, it knows what items he looks up on the internet and thus pretends to know his fears, insecurities, fantasies, everything. The government listens in on phone calls and has the means of tracking down the whereabouts of every US citizen using a cell phone.

Although not originally a Nazi symbol, the German armed forces were equipped with a distinctive steel helmet that covered the neck and the ears. The Hollywood image of the bad German is indissolubly linked to this helmet. Even Darth Vader, the personification of evil in the Star Wars series, wore a stylized version of the German Helmet. Since the 1980s, however, the US armed forces have been reequipped with a kevlar helmet that has an uncanny resemblance to the helmet worn by the Wehrmacht and the SS, thus its nickname "Fritz helmet." Hence, not only has the US been acting like the Hitler regime, but even the soldiers it sent into other countries to invade, occupy, kill and pillage look like Nazi soldiers.

This summary list of "Western" analogies to the Nazi regime is quite disturbing. It suggests there is no essential difference between the US and the Nazi regime. Most US citizens today certainly do not think they live in a repressive state. Most citizens of Nazi Germany would have felt the same. Indeed, why should they not? After all, those who bore the brunt of the system's brutalities were not Germans but above all, foreigners in faraway places. Likewise, US violence is mostly directed outward, to places like Korea, VietNam, Cuba, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

There is, however, one crucial difference between the US and the Nazis: the systematic persecution and mass killing of entire groups of people such as Jews, Gypsies, communists, homosexuals and the mentally retarded. Although the US has been killing millions of innocent men, women and children in Asia, Latin America and Africa, it cannot be said that the killings took place in a systematic way or that these were committed in specially built "death camps."

How come the US today has so much in common with Nazi Germany? Why have all post-war US administrations emphasized the differences with Nazi Germany? Why did the US fight Nazi Germany at all?

These questions are disturbing, but the answers are even more so.

I believe the resemblance of today's US to Nazi Germany results from the fact that like Nazi Germany, the US considers itself a country blessed with divine protection and with a permission granted by heaven, to ignore any and all accepted principles of civilized behavior between states. Underlying it all, a sense of frustration, jealousy and anger. The Nazis focused their hatred on the Jews, whom they held responsible for an international conspiracy that caused Germany to lose the First World War. The 1919 Versailles peace treaty humiliated and damaged Germany in ways no great power had ever experienced before.

The US has traditionally focused its feelings of frustration and repressed anger on Europe in general and France in particular. Despite all its efforts to be superior to Europe, even to be an "anti-Europe," the US even today is still lagging far behind in the most important field: quality of life. The sense of being an exceptional country with a special mission has always been more deeply engrained in US popular culture than in Germany, where it began in the 1870s and ended in 1945. In the US, the sense of being a special country, a country with a mission, predates even its independence. When in 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers founded a colony in Massachusetts, they did so in the firm conviction of being blessed by God. Their subsequent savage persecution and annihilation of the original inhabitants was also justified by invoking divine blessing. By the time the US proclaimed its independence, most colonists were convinced to be living in "God's own country".

Whereas the US had defeated Japan almost singlehandedly in the Second World War, the victory over Germany, in which it mainly participated as a purveyor of weaponry and a destroyer of cities and art treasures, was much more significant from any point of view. Germany, technologically by far the most advanced country in the world was, of course, the real enemy. Its defeat meant at the same time the definitive elimination of Europe as a major actor on the world stage. This is why the US propaganda industry has made such an effort to present the victory over Germany as an accomplishment of the US, though admittedly with some help from their British friends. The logical concomitant of this falsification of history was to present the war in Europe as a struggle between absolute evil and absolute good. Hence also the insistence on the differences between the US and Nazi Germany.

As for the true reasons why the US waged war against the Nazis, these had more to do with imperial designs than anything else. Here was a splendid chance for securing the long-awaited dominance of Europe. It was only the Soviet Union that prevented the spread of US rule over the entire continent, at least until its own dissolution in 1991.

But once Germany had been defeated, how was the US to rule the world? From where should it get inspiration, ideas and technology?

Since 1898, the US had acquired considerable expertise in colonial rule through the administration of its own colonies (Puerto Rico and the Philippines), protectorates (Cuba and Nicaragua) and the bullying of assorted small Caribbean and Latin American states. However, it had no experience whatsoever ruling highly developed European states. It could only militarily occupy two of them, namely Germany and Austria, but in order to keep dominating the others, the countries until recently occupied by the Nazis, a different approach was needed.

Under the circumstances, to look for guidance at the German occupation of Europe was not such a bad idea. After all, Nazi rule in occupied Europe, though it occasionally met with stiff resistance, was by no means entirely impopular. Millions of Europeans enthusiastically supported the persecution, deportation and annihilation of the Jews, hundreds of thousands of Europeans joined the SS and fought the Red Army.

In its early phase, the Nazi occupation of Europe was sustained mainly by psychological factors. Dazzled by the shock and awe of the Nazi armed forces, most Europeans were too disoriented to even think of resistance and tended to accept the occupation of their countries. The Nazis had considerable success in acquiring a base of popular support by focusing public fears and anger on the Bolsheviks, since many Europeans resented the Nazis, but feared the communists even more.

After 1945, the US continued the Nazi propaganda campaign against communism and thus started the Cold War against the Soviet Union. While spreading the most outlandish and outrageous lies about the Soviet Union, the US began cajoling, pressuring and blackmailing European politicians. Presenting the Marshall Plan as a unique humanitarian program US propagandists, taking their cues from the Nazi propaganda minsiter Josef Goebbels, began to flood the continent with a incessant avalanche of disinformation that has not stopped since.

If Nazi ideas and political practice inspired the US, so did Nazi technology. Almost every post-war US weapons system has been inspired by Nazi examples or prototypes, ranging from anti-aircraft guided missiles, through flying saucers to stealth technology. Even the much-vaunted US exploit of sending a man to the moon would have been unthinkable without Nazi rocket technology.

To first defeat an enemy who has been consistently depicted as absolute evil and to subsequently use this very same enemy as a source of inspiration obviously gives rise to considerable psychological problems. The inspiration has been so strong that today the US in so many respect resembles its enemy of yore.

Hence the web, or rather the thick carpet of lies the US has been weaving with respect to World War II and the Nazis.

If tomorrow Hitler would rise from the grave and look at the world, he would be a happy man, but also a confused man. He would look at the US and see a country that had adopted so many facets of Nazi Germany. Why then, he would wonder, had the US fought his Nazi Germany? He would think he had won the war after all.

I am afraid Hitler would be right. He has indeed won the war.

In 2001 just after the destruction of the WTC towers in New York, Jean-Marie Colombani, editor-in-chief of the prestigious French newspaper Le Monde wrote in an editorial "we are all Americans."

I am afraid, we in "the West" have all become Nazis now.

Link: http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/106802-0/