Researcher: NASA hiding climate data

The fight over global warming science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding release of the same kind of climate data that has landed a leading British center in hot water over charges it skewed its data.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.

"I assume that what is there is highly damaging," Mr. Horner said. "These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this."

The numbers matter. Under pressure in 2007, NASA recalculated its data and found that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year in its records for the contiguous 48 states. NASA later changed that data again, and now 1998 and 2006 are tied for first, with 1934 slightly cooler.

Mr. Horner, a noted global warming skeptic and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, wants a look at the data and the discussions that went into those changes. He said he's given the agency until the end of the year to comply or else he'll sue to compel the information's release.

His fight mirrors one in Europe that has sprung up over the the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in the UK after thousands of e-mails from the center were obtained and appear to show researchers shaving their data to make it conform to their expectation, and show efforts to try to drive global warming skeptics out of the conversation.

The center's chief has stepped down pending an investigation into the e-mails.

The center has also had to acknowledge in response to a freedom of information request under British law that it tossed out much of the raw data that it used to draw up the temperature models that have underpinned much of the science behind global warming.

Mr. Horner suspects the same sort of data-shaving has happened at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), another leading global warming research center.

Mark Hess, public affairs director for the Goddard Space Flight Center which runs the GISS laboratory, said they are working on Mr. Horner's request, though he couldn't say why they have taken so long.

"We're collecting the information and will respond with all the responsive relevant information to all of his requests," Mr. Hess said. "It's just a process you have to go through where you have to collect data that's responsive."

He said he was unfamiliar with the British controversy and couldn't say whether NASA was susceptible to the same challenges to its data. The White House has dismissed the British e-mails as irrelevant.

"Several thousand scientists have come to the conclusion that climate change is happening. I don't think that's anything that is, quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore," press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters this week.

But Republicans on Capitol Hill say the revelations deserve a congressional investigation. Republican leaders also sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson Wednesday telling her she should withdraw a series of EPA rules until the global warming science can be better substantiated. For now, climate scientists are rallying around the British researchers.

Michael Mann, a scientist at Penn State University who is under fire for his involvement in the British e-mail exchanges, said the e-mails' release was timed to skunk up next week's U.N. global warming summit in Copenhagen. Mr. Obama is planning to attend.

"They've taken scientists' words and phrases and quoted them out of context, completely misrepresenting what they were saying," Mr. Mann told AccuWeather.com in an interview, calling it a "manufactured controversy."

NASA's GISS was forced to update its data in 2007 after questions were raised by Steve McIntyre, who runs ClimateAudit.com.

GISS had initially listed the warmest years as 1998, 1934, 2006, 1921 and 1931. After Mr. McIntyre's questions GISS rejiggered the list and 1934 was warmest, followed by 1998, 1921, 2006 and then 1931. But since then, the list has been rewritten again so it now runs 1998, 2006, 1934, 1921, 1999.

The institute blamed a "minor data processing error" for the changes but says it doesn't make much difference since the top three years remain in a "statistical tie" either way.

Mr. Horner said he's seeking the data itself, but he also wants to see the chain of e-mails from scientists discussing the changes.

The Freedom of Information Act requires agencies to respond to requests within 20 days. Mr. Horner says he's never received an official acknowledgement of his three separate FOIA requests, but has received e-mails showing the agency is aware of them.

He said he has provided NASA with a notice of intent to sue under FOIA, but said he also hopes members of Congress get involved and demand the information be released.

NASA and CRU data are considered the backbone of much of the science that suggests the earth is warming due to manmade greenhouse gas emissions. NASA argues its data suggests this decade has been the warmest on record.

On the other hand, data from the University of Alabama-Huntsville suggests temperatures have been relatively flat for most of this decade.

Source: The Washington Times

The "Magic Bomb" Theory

This is a story about disappearing terrorists, nonexistent bags, and botched investigations, but most of all, this is a story about magic bombs.

It's Crime Scene Investigation 101. It's the basic law of physics. It's so elementary, my dear Watson, that even a dancer who was dazed from the shock of being seated directly over the spot where one of the bombs was planted in the London tube carriage two weeks ago could figure it out.

In a seemingly innocuous article in the British newspaper Cambridge Evening News, 32 year-old dance instructor Bruce Lait, in an interview from his hospital bed, said that "The policeman said 'mind that hole, that's where the bomb was'. The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train. They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag."

Read that last part again, very slowly, and let it sink in. "The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train." "They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag."

And the British authorities on the crime scene missed that, and just assumed that it was a carry-on bomb? C'mon, how many times have you seen that bad TV show where the eccentric detective figures out that the crime was an "inside job" because the glass was outside the broken window, not inside where it should have been. I repeat: Crime Scene Investigation 101. Basic physics.

While describing the scene, Lait said about he and his dance partner Crystal Main, "Out of that whole carriage, I think Crystal and I were the only ones who were not seriously injured, and I think we were nearest the bomb."

He went on to describe those sitting closest to him and Main when the bomb went off. "I remember an Asian guy, there was a white guy with tracksuit trousers and a baseball cap, and there were two old ladies sitting opposite me." He described the woman whose body was lying on top of him when he regained consciousness as a "middle-aged woman who had blonde curly hair, was dressed in black, and could have been a businesswoman."

Again, play close attention here. "We were nearest the bomb." An Asian guy, a white guy, two old ladies, and a blond businesswoman......and two dancers.

So.....if the bomb was in a bag carried on by the terrorist, how could two dancers be "nearest the bomb"? And why didn't the person who was the closest eyewitness see the bomber, or even ANYONE, sitting where the bomb went off? Why was the metal pushed upwards if the bomb was inside of the train carriage?

Let's put this in perspective, piece by piece:

"The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train."

"I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag."

"We were nearest the bomb."

An Asian guy, a white guy, two old ladies, and a blond businesswoman......and two dancers.

Here we go again. Another terrorist event with more questions than answers, questions that the major media (yet again) aren't even asking.

Hell, I'll even take a stab at answering them:

The metal was pushed upwards because THE BOMB WAS UNDERNEATH THE TRAIN.

Lait didn't remember seeing anyone, or a bag that could be holding a bomb, near the point of detonation because there was no bomber sitting there, there was no bag. THE BOMB WAS UNDERNEATH THE TRAIN.

An Asian guy, a white guy, two old ladies, and a blond businesswoman......and two dancers. There was no Islamic radical, no Mideastern terrorist sitting in that carriage. THE BOMB WAS UNDERNEATH THE TRAIN.

Dance partners Bruce Lait and Crystal Main were nearest the bomb.....again, no Islamic radical, no Mideastern terrorist sitting in that carriage. THE BOMB WAS UNDERNEATH THE TRAIN.

We were praised by some, and criticized by others, for posting an article by Jeff Buckley (entitled "London Calling") the day after the first London bombings two weeks ago that questioned the motives behind the bombings, and that asked readers to view the inevitable "official government response" with a healthy grain of skepticism.

Here's how Jeff so aptly put it:

"So, when you see the headlines dominated by this story and the mounting evidence of lies, deception, and treason being forever pushed to the back burner, be sure to ask yourself, 'Who benefits from this?' Before you throw your support behind administrations that only have doublespeak, deceit, and death to show for their efforts, be sure to ask yourself, 'Who benefits from this?' And, before you allow yourself to be steamrolled and swept away by the inevitable surge of jingoistic retaliatory euphoria, be sure to ask yourself, 'Who benefits from this?'"

"Who benefits from this?"

So here we are, barely two weeks (and another "symbolic" bombing episode) later, and the voices of the Far Right are busy spinning this as yet another excuse for the war in Iraq.....even though the suspected terrorists are Pakistanis. (Sound familiar? The 9/11 terrorists were mostly from Saudi Arabia, so...."Let's bomb Iraq!")

"Who benefits from this?"

Here we are barely two weeks later, and the disciples of doublespeak are busy blaming a group of suicide bombers with carry-on bags, even though those who died are the most unlikely group of "suicide bombers" ever to commit an act of terrorism.

"Who benefits from this?"

Here we are barely two weeks later, and Bush and Company is using the London bombings to.....successfully.....push through the renewal of the Patriot Act. "Screw the Constitution, they're bombing us!"

The official spinmeisters are either ignoring the signs that something is just not right here, or dismissing those of us who are questioning the official response as the usual bunch of fringe conspiracy theorists.

Well guess what? If we don't keep asking the hard questions, and demanding honest, straightforward answers to those questions, then no one will. They've deceived us a million times before, and if honest Americans....and Englanders....don't continue to hold our public officials accountable for their actions and demand the truth, then they will continue to spoon feed us lie after lie after lie....until we eventually all suffocate under the weight of mass deception. And THAT'S the Faulking Truth.

Source: FaulkingTruth.Com

Met police chief willing to release Blair Peach report

The report on the controversial death of the anti-racist campaigner Blair Peach should finally be published more than 30 years after he died in a demonstration in west London. The commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Sir Paul Stephenson, agreed today that it should be made public after an unanimous call to do so by the Metropolitan Police Authority.

The decision was welcomed by Peach's family and partner, although no date has been set for the release of the report, which looked into allegations that Peach died at the hands of the police. The organisation Inquest, which has campaigned on the issue, expressed concerns that key details might be redacted.

Celia Stubbs, who was Peach's partner, said: "I'm totally bowled over, I was really cynical about it and I really didn't expect a result like this today." She said she felt that recent publicity given to the case by the Guardian, in which it was likened to the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 demonstrations on 1 April, had been a factor in the decision.

Jenny Jones, an MPA member, proposed a motion calling on the police to publish the full report, written by the former commander John Cass, before the end of the year. The report has remained secret despite requests for disclosure by Blair's family and friends, and an attempt by them last year to have access to it under freedom of information laws. Inquest has also written to Stephenson supporting the family's call for disclosure of the report, but had no response until today.

Jones told a meeting of the MPA, chaired by London's mayor, Boris Johnson, and with Stephenson in attendance, that the Met had declined to publish the report, suggesting that this was partly for the sake of the family. "It is embarrassing keeping it secret," said Jones. After other members voiced their support for publication, the mayor said it was clear that everyone was in favour of such a move.

"My starting point is a desire to publish," said Stephenson, saying that he aimed to do so "as soon as I possibly can". He said legal advice would have to be taken, but he was committed to such a course. "The reasons [not to publish] would have to be overwhelming not to do so."

Philip Peach, Blair's brother, who was at the meeting, welcomed the decision but said it would now be necessary to see how much of it was released. "I could never understand why it wasn't disclosed originally," he said.

Deborah Coles, co-director of Inquest, said: "The whole basis on which the Cass report has been withheld from the Peach family for 30 years has been widely discredited and yet the secrecy continues. Ian Tomlinson's death at the G20 protest and the similarities between the two cases makes the need to disclose this report even more urgent, and is in both the family and public interest." She said a key issue would be whether the report was published in its entirety.

It was partly as a result of the response to Peach's death and the way it was investigated that Inquest was set up in 1981. "Sadly, the need for the organisation remains as urgent today," said Coles. "Non-disclosure of evidence has been one of the most problematic issues following deaths in custody and has seriously undermined family and public confidence in the police complaints system."

Peach, a teacher and an anti-racist campaigner from New Zealand, died from a blow to the head at a demonstration against the National Front in Southall, west London, in April 1979. Cass was reported to have recommended the prosecution of police officers, but no charges were ever brought.

• This article was amended on 26 June 2009. The original reported the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Sir Paul Stephenson, as saying that the case for publication of the report on Blair Peach's death was "overwhelming". This has been corrected.

Source: The Guardian

E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."

The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message (PDF) to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward...and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."

The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be an independent review process inside a federal agency--and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document.

Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, said in a telephone interview on Friday that his boss, McGartland, was being pressured himself. "It was his view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else," Carlin said. "That was obviously coming from higher levels."

E-mail messages released this week show that Carlin was ordered not to "have any direct communication" with anyone outside his small group at EPA on the topic of climate change, and was informed that his report would not be shared with the agency group working on the topic.

"I was told for probably the first time in I don't know how many years exactly what I was to work on," said Carlin, a 38-year veteran of the EPA. "And it was not to work on climate change." One e-mail orders him to update a grants database instead.

For its part, the EPA sent an e-mailed statement saying: "Claims that this individual's opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This Administration and this EPA Administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency, and science-based decision making. These principles were reflected throughout the development of the proposed endangerment finding, a process in which a broad array of voices were heard and an inter-agency review was conducted." (The endangerment finding is the EPA's decision that carbon dioxide endangers the public health and welfare.)

Carlin has an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a PhD in economics from MIT. His Web site lists papers about the environment and public policy dating back to 1964, spanning topics from pollution control to environmentally-responsible energy pricing.

After reviewing the scientific literature that the EPA is relying on, Carlin said, he concluded that it was at least three years out of date and did not reflect the latest research. "My personal view is that there is not currently any reason to regulate (carbon dioxide)," he said. "There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They're not going up, and if anything they're going down."

Carlin's report listed a number of recent developments he said the EPA did not consider, including that global temperatures have declined for 11 years; that new research predicts Atlantic hurricanes will be unaffected; that there's "little evidence" that Greenland is shedding ice at expected levels; and that solar radiation has the largest single effect on the earth's temperature.

If there is a need for the government to lower planetary temperatures, Carlin believes, other mechanisms would be cheaper and more effective than regulation of carbon dioxide. One paper he wrote says managing sea level rise or reducing solar radiation reaching the earth would be more cost-effective alternatives.

The EPA's possible suppression of Carlin's report, which lists the EPA's John Davidson as a co-author, could endanger any carbon dioxide regulations if they are eventually challenged in court.

"The big question is: there is this general rule that when an agency puts something out for public evidence and comment, it's supposed to have the evidence supporting it and the evidence the other way," said Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., that has been skeptical of new laws or regulations relating to global warming.

Kazman's group obtained the documents--both CEI and Carlin say he was not the source--and released the e-mails on Tuesday and the report on Friday. As a result of the disclosure, CEI has asked the EPA to reopen the comment period on the greenhouse gas regulatory proceeding, which ended on Tuesday.

The EPA also said in its statement: "The individual in question is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue. Nevertheless, the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists, and information from that report was submitted by his manager to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. In fact, some ideas from that document are included and addressed in the endangerment finding."

That appears to conflict with an e-mail from McGartland in March, who said to Carlin: "I decided not to forward your comments... I can see only one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." He also wrote to Carlin: "Please do not have any direct communication with anyone outside of (our group) on endangerment. There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc."

One reason why the process might have been highly charged politically is the unusual speed of the regulatory process. Lisa Jackson, the new EPA administrator, had said that she wanted her agency to reach a decision about regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act by April 2--the second anniversary of a related U.S. Supreme Court decision.

"All this goes back to a decision at a higher level that this was very urgent to get out, if possible, yesterday," Carlin said. "In the case of an ordinary regulation, these things normally take a year or two. In this case, it was a few weeks to get it out for public comment." (Carlin said that he and other EPA staff members who were asked to respond to a draft only had four and a half days to do so.)

In the last few days, Republicans have begun to raise questions about the report and e-mail messages, but it was insufficient to derail the so-called cap and trade bill from being approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Rep. Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce committee, invoked Carlin's report in a floor speech during the debate on Friday. "The science is not there to back it up," Barton said. "An EPA report that has been suppressed...raises grave doubts about the endangerment finding. If you don't have an endangerment finding, you don't need this bill. We don't need this bill. And for some reason, the EPA saw fit not to include that in its decision."

"I'm sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the senior Republican on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said in a statement. "But the EPA is supposed to reach its findings based on evidence, not on political goals. The repression of this important study casts doubts on the EPA's finding, and frankly, on other analysis the EPA has conducted on climate issues."

The revelations could prove embarrassing to Jackson, the EPA administrator, who said in January: "I will ensure the EPA's efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency." Similarly, President Barack Obama claimed that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over... To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy. It is contrary to our way of life."

"All this talk from the president and (EPA administrator) Lisa Jackson about integrity, transparency, and increased EPA protection for whistleblowers--you've got a bouquet of ironies here," said Kazman, the CEI attorney.

Source: Cnet News

Israeli firms accused of profiting from the Holocaust

“My grandfather died because he was a Jew, and it is shameful that other Jews are exploiting his death… We need to wake people up about this." – David Hillinger, grandson of Auschwitz victim

Israel’s second largest bank will be forced to defend itself in court in the coming weeks over claims it is withholding tens of millions of dollars in “lost” accounts belonging to Jews who died in the Nazi death camps.

Bank Leumi has denied it holds any such funds despite a parliamentary committee revealing in 2004 that the bank owes at least 75 million US dollars to the families of several thousand Holocaust victims.

Analysts said the bank’s role is only the tip of an iceberg in which Israeli companies and state bodies could be found to have withheld billions of dollars invested by Holocaust victims in the country – dwarfing the high-profile reparations payouts from such European countries as Switzerland.

“All I want is justice,” said David Hillinger, 73, whose grandfather, Aaron, died in Auschwitz, a Nazi camp in Poland. Lawyers are demanding reparations of 100,000 dollars for Bank Leumi accounts held by his father and grandfather.

The allegations against Bank Leumi surfaced more than a decade ago following research by Yossi Katz, an Israeli historian.

He uncovered bank correspondence in the immediate wake of the World War II in which it cited “commercial secrecy” as grounds for refusing to divulge the names of account holders who had been killed in the Holocaust.

“I was shocked,” said Dr Katz, from Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “My first reaction was: ‘My God, this isn’t Switzerland!’ ”

In 1998, following widespread censure, Swiss banks agreed to pay 1.25 billion dollars in reparations after they there were accused of having profited from the dormant accounts of Holocaust victims.

Dr Katz’s revelations led to the establishment of a parliamentary committee in 2000 to investigate the behaviour of Israel’s banks. Its report came to light belatedly in 2004 after Bank Leumi put pressure on the government to prevent publication.

Investigators found thousands of dormant accounts belonging to Holocaust victims in several banks, though the lion’s share were located at Bank Leumi. Obstructions from Leumi meant many other account holders had probably not been identified, the investigators warned.

The parliamentary committee originally estimated the accounts it had located to be worth more than 160m dollars, using the valuation formula applied to the Swiss banks. But under pressure from Leumi and the government, it later reduced the figure by more than half.

A restitution company was created in 2006 to search for account holders and return the assets to their families.

Meital Noy, a spokeswoman for the company, said it had been forced to begin legal proceedings this week after Bank Leumi had continued to claim that its findings were “baseless”.

The bank paid 5m dollars two years ago in what it says was a “goodwill gesture”. Ms Noy called the payment “a joke”. She said 3,500 families, most of them in Israel, were seeking reparations from Bank Leumi.

The bank was further embarrassed by revelations in 2007 that one per cent of its shares – worth about 80m dollars – belonged to tens of thousands of Jews killed during the Holocaust.

Mr Hillinger, who was born in Belgium in 1936 and spent the World War II hiding in southern France, today lives in Petah Tikva in central Israel.

He said before the outbreak of war his father and grandfather had invested money in the Anglo-Palestine Bank, the forerunner of Leumi, in the hope it would gain them a visa to what was then British-ruled Palestine.

Although his parents escaped the death camps, his grandparents were sent to Auschwitz and died in the gas chambers shortly after arrival.

Mr Hillinger said he had only learnt of the outstanding debt from Bank Leumi after his father, Moses, died in 1996. Papers showed the bank had paid his father “a pittance” in 1952 when he closed his account and that it had never returned his grandfather’s money.

When he wrote to Bank Leumi in 1998, it denied his grandfather had ever opened an account.

“My grandfather died because he was a Jew, and it is shameful that other Jews are exploiting his death,” he said. “We need to wake people up about this.”

A quarter of a million Holocaust survivors are reported to be in Israel, with one-third of them living in poverty, according to welfare organizations.

Shraga Elam, an Israeli investigative journalist based in Zurich, said after the war many Israelis showed little sympathy for the European Jewish refugees who arrived in Israel.

“David Ben Gurion [Israel’s first prime minister] notoriously called them ‘human dust’, and I remember as children we referred to them as sabonim, the Hebrew word for soap,” he said, in reference to the rumoured Nazi practice of making soap from Jewish corpses.

“In fact, I can’t think of any place in the world where [Holocaust] survivors are as badly treated as they are in Israel,” Mr Elam said.

He said Bank Leumi’s “lost” accounts were only a small fraction of Holocaust assets held by Israeli companies and the Israeli state that should have been returned. The total could be as much as 20bn dollars.

He said European Jews had invested heavily in Palestine in the pre-war years, buying land, shares and insurance policies and opening bank accounts. During the World War II Britain seized most of these assets as enemy property because the owners were living in Nazi-occupied lands.

In 1950 Britain repaid some 1.4 million dollars to the new state of Israel, which was supposed to make reparations to the original owners.

However, little effort was made to trace them or, in the case of those who died in the Holocaust, their heirs. Instead, the Israeli government is believed to have used the funds to settle new immigrants in Israel.

“These are huge assets, including real estate in some of the most desirable parts of Israel,” Mr Elam said.

Last year the Israeli media reported an investigation showing that the Finance Ministry destroyed its real estate files in the 1950s, apparently to conceal the extent of the state’s holding of Holocaust assets.

The case against Bank Leumi may end the generally muted criticism inside Israel of the banks’ role. Officials and even the families themselves have been concerned about the damage the case might do to Israel’s image as the guardian of Jewish interests.

In 2003 Ram Caspi, Bank Leumi’s lawyer, used such an argument before the parliamentary committee, warning its members that the US media “will say the Israeli banks also hide money, not just the Swiss”.

Organizations that led the campaign for reparations from European banks, such as the Jewish Claims Conference and the World Jewish Restitution Organization, have also downplayed the role of the Israeli banks.

by Jonathon Cook

“My grandfather died because he was a Jew, and it is shameful that other Jews are exploiting his death… We need to wake people up about this." – David Hillinger, grandson of Auschwitz victim

Israel’s second largest bank will be forced to defend itself in court in the coming weeks over claims it is withholding tens of millions of dollars in “lost” accounts belonging to Jews who died in the Nazi death camps.

Bank Leumi has denied it holds any such funds despite a parliamentary committee revealing in 2004 that the bank owes at least 75 million US dollars to the families of several thousand Holocaust victims.

Analysts said the bank’s role is only the tip of an iceberg in which Israeli companies and state bodies could be found to have withheld billions of dollars invested by Holocaust victims in the country – dwarfing the high-profile reparations payouts from such European countries as Switzerland.

“All I want is justice,” said David Hillinger, 73, whose grandfather, Aaron, died in Auschwitz, a Nazi camp in Poland. Lawyers are demanding reparations of 100,000 dollars for Bank Leumi accounts held by his father and grandfather.

The allegations against Bank Leumi surfaced more than a decade ago following research by Yossi Katz, an Israeli historian.

He uncovered bank correspondence in the immediate wake of the World War II in which it cited “commercial secrecy” as grounds for refusing to divulge the names of account holders who had been killed in the Holocaust.

“I was shocked,” said Dr Katz, from Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “My first reaction was: ‘My God, this isn’t Switzerland!’ ”

In 1998, following widespread censure, Swiss banks agreed to pay 1.25 billion dollars in reparations after they there were accused of having profited from the dormant accounts of Holocaust victims.

Dr Katz’s revelations led to the establishment of a parliamentary committee in 2000 to investigate the behaviour of Israel’s banks. Its report came to light belatedly in 2004 after Bank Leumi put pressure on the government to prevent publication.

Investigators found thousands of dormant accounts belonging to Holocaust victims in several banks, though the lion’s share were located at Bank Leumi. Obstructions from Leumi meant many other account holders had probably not been identified, the investigators warned.

The parliamentary committee originally estimated the accounts it had located to be worth more than 160m dollars, using the valuation formula applied to the Swiss banks. But under pressure from Leumi and the government, it later reduced the figure by more than half.

A restitution company was created in 2006 to search for account holders and return the assets to their families.

Meital Noy, a spokeswoman for the company, said it had been forced to begin legal proceedings this week after Bank Leumi had continued to claim that its findings were “baseless”.

The bank paid 5m dollars two years ago in what it says was a “goodwill gesture”. Ms Noy called the payment “a joke”. She said 3,500 families, most of them in Israel, were seeking reparations from Bank Leumi.

The bank was further embarrassed by revelations in 2007 that one per cent of its shares – worth about 80m dollars – belonged to tens of thousands of Jews killed during the Holocaust.

Mr Hillinger, who was born in Belgium in 1936 and spent the World War II hiding in southern France, today lives in Petah Tikva in central Israel.

He said before the outbreak of war his father and grandfather had invested money in the Anglo-Palestine Bank, the forerunner of Leumi, in the hope it would gain them a visa to what was then British-ruled Palestine.

Although his parents escaped the death camps, his grandparents were sent to Auschwitz and died in the gas chambers shortly after arrival.

Mr Hillinger said he had only learnt of the outstanding debt from Bank Leumi after his father, Moses, died in 1996. Papers showed the bank had paid his father “a pittance” in 1952 when he closed his account and that it had never returned his grandfather’s money.

When he wrote to Bank Leumi in 1998, it denied his grandfather had ever opened an account.

“My grandfather died because he was a Jew, and it is shameful that other Jews are exploiting his death,” he said. “We need to wake people up about this.”

A quarter of a million Holocaust survivors are reported to be in Israel, with one-third of them living in poverty, according to welfare organizations.

Shraga Elam, an Israeli investigative journalist based in Zurich, said after the war many Israelis showed little sympathy for the European Jewish refugees who arrived in Israel.

“David Ben Gurion [Israel’s first prime minister] notoriously called them ‘human dust’, and I remember as children we referred to them as sabonim, the Hebrew word for soap,” he said, in reference to the rumoured Nazi practice of making soap from Jewish corpses.

“In fact, I can’t think of any place in the world where [Holocaust] survivors are as badly treated as they are in Israel,” Mr Elam said.

He said Bank Leumi’s “lost” accounts were only a small fraction of Holocaust assets held by Israeli companies and the Israeli state that should have been returned. The total could be as much as 20bn dollars.

He said European Jews had invested heavily in Palestine in the pre-war years, buying land, shares and insurance policies and opening bank accounts. During the World War II Britain seized most of these assets as enemy property because the owners were living in Nazi-occupied lands.

In 1950 Britain repaid some 1.4 million dollars to the new state of Israel, which was supposed to make reparations to the original owners.

However, little effort was made to trace them or, in the case of those who died in the Holocaust, their heirs. Instead, the Israeli government is believed to have used the funds to settle new immigrants in Israel.

“These are huge assets, including real estate in some of the most desirable parts of Israel,” Mr Elam said.

Last year the Israeli media reported an investigation showing that the Finance Ministry destroyed its real estate files in the 1950s, apparently to conceal the extent of the state’s holding of Holocaust assets.

The case against Bank Leumi may end the generally muted criticism inside Israel of the banks’ role. Officials and even the families themselves have been concerned about the damage the case might do to Israel’s image as the guardian of Jewish interests.

In 2003 Ram Caspi, Bank Leumi’s lawyer, used such an argument before the parliamentary committee, warning its members that the US media “will say the Israeli banks also hide money, not just the Swiss”.

Organizations that led the campaign for reparations from European banks, such as the Jewish Claims Conference and the World Jewish Restitution Organization, have also downplayed the role of the Israeli banks.

Source: Redress Information and Analysis

Shocking Book Details New Info On Israeli Attack on USS Liberty

This much we do know: On June 8, 1967, during the Six Day War, Israel surprisingly launched a deadly attack upon a lightly armed American spy ship cruising off the coast of Egypt, Israel’s enemy at the time. When the attack ended, 34 of the USS Liberty’s crew were dead and 171 others were injured, many of them critically.

Here’s what we don’t know, and may never know: why the Israelis decided to mount the attack. The Liberty was clearly marked, flying the American flag and behaving in a completely benign manner. Moreover, it bore almost no resemblance to the much smaller Egyptian freighter some Israelis said they thought they were attacking. Israel’s explanations ranged from lame to downright unbelievable.

Nor will we ever know, for certain, why the United States government’s response was so uneven, unless we simply credit those who believe that the pro-Israel lobby in Washington is so all-powerful that American politicians felt too vulnerable to risk its wrath.

We do know that the attack on the Liberty came when the war in Vietnam was going badly and President Lyndon B. Johnson was almost paralyzed by a fear of failure.

James Scott’s father was the damage control officer aboard the Liberty, so he had exceptional access to the inside story of the attack. But he didn’t simply rely on tales told around the family dining table. He conducted prodigious research to document every aspect of the story, a story that only briefly made headlines before fading into historic obscurity.

Unfortunately, the lessons that should have been learned from the Liberty episode didn’t prevent the United States from putting another spy ship, the USS Pueblo, at risk. Seven months after the Liberty was attacked, the Pueblo was captured by the North Koreans in international waters and held hostage, with its crew, for almost a year.

As a former newspaper reporter, Scott knows how to dig for facts, and his book resonates with the results of his relentless search for the truth. Unfortunately, it would appear that the Israeli government was either unwilling or (for reasons that defy logic) unable to conduct its own investigation in such a way that the findings would be credible.

In fairness, Israel did apologize for the attack, but its inability, or its refusal, to provide a plausible explanation for it remains an insult to the victims and their families, not to mention the United States government (which didn’t exactly cover itself with glory in its own investigation).

Anyone reading Scott’s account of the encounter that occurred 42 years ago may be infuriated by the diplomatic and military blunders (or deceit) on both sides, and yet the most compelling passages of his narrative are those that describe the horrors of the attack and the dreadful consequences for those aboard the Liberty. It is high time someone drew our attention to this tragedy, and Scott has done it in magnificent fashion.

By Al Hutchinson of The Tampa Tribune

Source: American Free Press

What Is A Bank President Doing On The Warren Commission

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