some reviewers say “inglourious basterds” reminds them of this

Israel’s Nazi-porn problem
Andrew O’Hehir, Salon, Apr 11 2008

Stalags: Photo courtesy of Heymann Brothers Films

Taking their name from the Nazi prison camps in which they were set, Stalags were Israeli pornographic paperbacks featuring Nazi themes. As many older Israelis evidently remember, the then-new nation was afflicted by a perverse pop-culture craze in the early ’60s, at a time when nearly half the population consisted of Holocaust survivors, nationalist sentiment ran high and moral codes were extremely puritanical. Yet the newsstands in the Tel Aviv bus station sold racks of semi-pornographic pulp novels known as Stalags, whose utterly implausible, Penthouse Forum-meets-Marquis de Sade plots ventured into the most forbidden terrain imaginable. Stalags all followed essentially the same formula: An American or British WW2 pilot (generally not Jewish) is shot down behind enemy lines, where he is imprisoned, tortured and raped by an entire phalanx of sadistic, voluptuous female SS officers. His body violated but his spirit unbroken, the plucky Yank or Brit escapes in the end to rape and murder his captors.

Stalags thrived for a few years and then disappeared, banished to the memory hole as a massive cultural embarrassment. Israel’s national library appears to contain a trove of them, buried deep in the catalog software and hidden from public view. Yet as some Israelis who were children and teenagers at the time testify, the Stalags provided sexual titillation in a society that repressed it, and also the illicit thrill of accessing a dark, secret recent past their European-born parents never discussed. They offered a Stockholm-syndrome equation of evil with eros and a juvenile revenge fantasy, all rolled into one.

Given the scale of trauma that brought the State of Israel into being, and brought so many of its inhabitants over the sea, some kind of twisted and perverse fantasy reaction was inevitable. The televised Eichmann trial transfixed Israelis in the early ’60s, providing many younger people their first look at the horrific and dramatic events many of their parents had witnessed first hand. The Stalags may be understood as a dream-world, midnight version of the Eichmann revelations. This craze reflects Israel’s pseudo-pornographic relationship to the past. Many Jews and non-Jews remain fixated on salacious details of the Holocaust, such as the “Night Porter” idea that female camp inmates ensured their survival by sleeping with German officers, or that the Nazis maintained brothels of Jewish women at Auschwitz and other camps. Such things may have happened here and there, but they are not clearly attested, and in any case fade into total insignificance against the scale of the tragedy.

it sounds like the lubavitcher rebbe’s blessing has expired

Israeli mogul’s empire foundering
AP via Ynet, Aug 31 2009

Shares in Africa Israel Investments, one of Israel’s largest companies, have plummeted by one-third in two days after its diamond tycoon owner acknowledged possible problems paying off billion of dollars in company debts. The holding and investment company, in which billionaire diamond baron Lev Leviev owns a 75% stake, has lost some $1.4b since the beginning of 2008, battered in large part by soured real estate investments in the US and to a lesser extent, Russia. On Monday, the company’s shares on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange shed 13.6%, having lost 25% a day earlier over Africa Israel’s announcement it might have trouble making debt payments by 2011 and was seeking to restructure its obligations. The company’s debt currently totals some $5.5b, at a time when declining global property prices have forced Africa Israel to sharply write down the value of its assets. The steep stock drop Sunday prompted Israel’s central bank to issue a statement reassuring the Israeli public that Africa Israel’s restructuring plans would not destabilize the nation’s lenders. Africa Israel is one of the country’s largest companies, but its troubles aren’t reflected as sharply in the broader economy, which is less heavily exposed to the global real estate crisis. Last week, the Moody’s credit ratings service said Israel’s economy has largely weathered the global meltdown and the Bank of Israel raised its benchmark lending rate, an indication it saw the worst effects of recession fading. Investors found little comfort in Leviev’s upbeat and self-congratulatory outlook at a news conference Sunday, where he said:

I’m convinced that if we continue to conduct ourselves as we are doing now, then we’ll be laughing all the way.

Africa Israel’s real estate portfolio in the US includes the former NYT building, other Manhattan properties and real estate in Miami, Los Angeles and Phoenix. The company also owns property in Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. The Uzbek-born Leviev also owns one of the world’s largest diamond cutting and polishing businesses, as well as mines in Africa and Russia. A major competitor to the De Beers diamond cartel, the self-made Leviev ranked 468 on Forbes’ latest list of the world’s richest people, with a reported net worth of $1.5b. His considerable wealth and support for Jewish educational and philanthropic causes have given him access to Israeli leaders and to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. But his construction activities in the West Bank have come under fire from settlement opponents in the US and Britain. UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, stopped accepting contributions from Leviev because of an Africa Israel subsidiary’s business in the West Bank.

Steinitz: Africa Israel won’t broadly affect economy
JPost, Aug 31 2009

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz on Monday morning commented on Africa Israel Investments’ Sunday announcement that it was seeking to restructure 21b shekels of debt. Speaking to Army Radio for the first time since the announcement, Steinitz said that the government was not planning to bail out Israeli diamond mogul Lev Leviev, or to get involved in any way. He said that the 25% decline in shares, though troubling, would not have a “wide-scale effect on the economy.” Africa Israel dropped 17.61 shekels, to 51.49 shekels, in Tel Aviv on Sunday, its biggest decline in more than five months. Yuval Ben-Ze’ev, an analyst at Clal Finance Investment, said:

Africa Israel has shocked the Israeli capital market. The company’s shareholders and bondholders will be hurt, as well as its banks, though the latter to a lesser degree.

The company has paid off 3.3b shekels in loans since Jan 2008, and still has 7.5b shekels to pay, it said Sunday in a statement. Yehud-based Africa Israel wants to reach a restructuring agreement that is “fair for all the parties involved,” Chief Executive Officer Izzy Cohen said, declining to give details on the terms under discussion. Cohen said Sunday at a press conference in Tel Aviv:

It has become extremely difficult to get new loans and refinance our debt. We still haven’t seen a recovery in the markets in the US and Russia. We are still very much negatively affected by the world crisis.

The yield on the company’s notes due in 2014 jumped by 8.4% to 27% on Sunday, pushing the price of the 4.8% securities down by 15.63 shekels, to 48.13 shekels. Leviev, who chairs the company, said at the press briefing:

We are sure we can end this crisis smoothly. Given the conditions in the economy, this was the most responsible step.

Leviev, 53, made his money as owner of the world’s largest cutter and polisher of diamonds and was No. 468 on Forbes’s list of the world’s richest people published in March, with a net worth of $1.5b. The decline in Manhattan property prices has particularly hurt Africa Israel, which bought the former NYT building for $525m in 2007 and other commercial real estate. Asked by a reporter Sunday what the company’s biggest mistake had been, Leviev replied it was the US investments. Africa Israel’s announcement prompted a slide in bank stocks. Bank Leumi Le-Israel, the country’s largest lender, dropped 3.5% to 2.98 shekels, the biggest decline since Jun 25. Bank Hapoalim, the second-largest bank, fell 3.4% to 12.41 shekels, the biggest fall since Jun 15. The Tel Aviv Banking Index slumped 3.3%. Lior Rabinovitz, an analyst at Israel Brokerage & Investments in Tel Aviv, said by telephone:

This injects the market with uncertainty over some of the bank debt. The banks will probably have to set more provisions for bad debt from Africa Israel.

In a calming note, Israel’s central bank said Sunday that there was “no worry” about the nation’s lenders as a result of Africa Israel’s restructuring plans. The banking system, as well as individual banks, are “stable,” it said. The Israel Securities Authority said it stepped up supervision of Africa Israel during the past year and asked the company to provide more information than usual in its quarterly report. Meanwhile, Moody’s Midroog on Sunday put Africa Israel on a watch list with negative implications for a likely downgrade. Africa Israel also said its second-quarter loss widened to 1.32b shekels from 91m shekels a year ago. The loss was mainly a result of a drop in the value of property under construction and an increase in financing costs, it said. The company’s shares plummeted 91% last year as a decline in global property prices drove the value of its assets down, prompting concern it may be forced to default. Since the start of 2009, Africa Israel has focused on selling assets, including a stake in New York’s historic Clock Tower building, and buying back bonds to increase liquidity. Moti Berliner, an analyst at Meitav Investment House in Tel Aviv, said:

The company’s assets are not yielding enough to pay back their debt so they’re now facing up to the facts. They will be able to reorganize their debt because it is in the interest of the bondholders to see the company survive, but there will be a higher cost.

japan win: “is it good for the jews?” i certainly hope it isn’t

Will the Japanese Obama put pressure on Israel?
Ben-Ami Shillony, Haaretz, Aug 31 2009

The immediate consequence of the opposition’s sweeping victory in Japan’s elections yesterday will be psychological. It will create an atmosphere of optimism that could strengthen the economy. Such optimism will be fleeting if it is not followed by concrete results. The victorious Democratic Party, headed by Yukio Hatoyama, has never before governed in Japan. It is seeking to be perceived as a center-left party. Hatoyama has declared that his government will raise child allowances, expand welfare services and abolish highway tolls. He plans to fund these programs by shutting down “wasteful” projects, such as unnecessary highways and bridges. These “wasteful” projects were designed to stimulate the Japanese economy, and eliminating them will harm various sectors and slow the country’s recovery from recession. The Democratic Party’s plan to eliminate the employment of temporary industry workers, which would benefit employees but hurt industry, is expected to cause similar problems.

The new government will attempt to forge a more independent foreign policy, involving closer ties with China and other Asian countries and more independence from the US. Hatoyama has said he will end Japan’s participation in anti-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan; Japan was involved in refueling US ships in the Indian Ocean. Ending Japanese support for Western military operations in Afghanistan could cause tension with the US, and reduce US support for Japan in its confrontation with North Korea. It could also hurt US-bound exports, which are essential for the Japanese economy’s recovery. Toyota recently reported a 20% drop in worldwide car sales, while Mitsubishi’s car sales were down 45%. Withdrawing from US guardianship could also change Japanese policy toward Israel. Until now, Japan limited its support for the Palestinians to aiding economic projects, in keeping with US requests. The Hatoyama government is likely to take a more pro-Arab stance, such as by recognizing Hamas and making tougher demands of Israel, such as calling for an end to construction in the settlements. Such a position would be similar to the line taken by some European governments, and will not necessarily lead to a confrontation with the US. The Obama administration may actually be pleased.

This January, the Israeli ambassador in Tokyo, Nissim Ben-Shitrit, participated in a Democratic Party convention. At the end of the convention, he met with Hatoyama. The party’s Web site stated that Hatoyama expressed his deep concern over the Palestinian victims of Israel’s Cast Lead operation in the Gaza Strip, and added that he hoped Israel would change its policies toward the Arab world, like US foreign policy had changed with the election of Obama. Hatoyama called himself the Japanese Obama in his election campaign, and said he would bring hoped-for change. When it comes to Israel, Obama and Hatoyama may coordinate efforts in ways Israel hasn’t expected.

thugs, frauds, and stooges: the usual US mix

Wizards and wives drive Afghan election
M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, Sep 1 2009

Dr Abdullah Abdullah, the “modern face” of Afghanistan, is a rare finished product to emerge out of the jihad of the 1980s: a handsome, nattily attired, English-speaking mujahideen spokesman who could evocatively bring to the Western drawing rooms the danger and the thrill of the Hindu Kush. Slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud wouldn’t think of losing him as his media manager and interpreter. Anyone who shook Abdullah’s soft hands will at once discover he never held a Kalashnikov, although he would speak with great elan about the life and times of the mujahideen. That places Abdullah in a unique position to claim mujahideen pedigree, yet avoid being branded a “warlord”. There could be no better “mujahid” than him today to propagate the US campaign against Karzai. If Abdullah succeeds in deconstructing Karzai’s alliance with the mujahideen “warlords” and forces the obdurate president into a runoff, that will surely be his finest hour. However, Abdullah has a fight on his hands. Karzai, who is popularly known among Afghans as the “wizard” for his skills to politically outmaneuver opponents, won’t abdicate. With official figures from 35% of the polling stations now in, AP has Karzai leading with 46.2% of the votes and Abdullah with 31.4%. Karzai must win over half the votes to avoid a run-off. As days pass, the standoff gets messier and messier. The denouement, which can only come when the final vote count is released on Sep 17, is certain to leave a lot of debris.

So far, Karzai has had the last laugh. Contrary to the prognosis by US experts that the presidential elections would sharpen the Afghan ethnic divide and that a Karzai election would throw up a “backlash” in the Pashtun-majority areas, nothing of the sort is happening. The Pashtuns have rejected Ashraf Ghani, former World Bank official and the US’s favorite candidate. Despite being a blue-blooded Ahmadzai, one of the biggest tribes in eastern Afghanistan, the returns from Nangarhar show Pashtuns disfavor Ghani, though there exists probably an anti-Karzai Pashtun sentiment waiting to be tapped. In other words, Americans played the ethnic Pashtun card and it didn’t work. The US now will have to insert Ghani laterally into the power structure in a regime headed by Abdullah. But any such surgical strike necessitates a runoff, whereas Karzai is coasting toward victory.

What complicated the US plan was that the “wizard” fared far better than Washington estimated in the non-Pashtun regions where Abdullah was thought to have an “edge” by virtue of being half-Tajik. Karzai literally caught Washington unawares by getting Rashid Dostum to return from Turkey in the nick of time to garner his 10% Uzbek vote bank for Karzai, which proved decisive. (Dostum has since returned to Turkey so that the US cannot make an issue of his presence to vilify Karzai.) Again, the “wizard” was spot-on when he drafted Tajik leader Mohammed Fahim and Hazara Shi’ite leader Karim Khalili as his vice presidential nominees. Available results from northern and central provinces (Takhar, Badakhshan, Kunduz, Baghlan, Balkh, Jowzjan, Sar-e-Pol, Bamyan, Parwan and Kabul) indicate Abdullah trailing Karzai by 10%. Abdullah’s performance has been outstanding only in his native Panjshir province, where he secured 87% of the vote, and in nearby Parwan province, where he polled 63%.

Karzai’s mandate needs to be seen as cross-ethnic, as Abdullah too had fielded an ethnic Hazara, Charagh Ali Charagh, and an ethnic Pashtun, Humayoon Wasefi, as his running mates. It is obvious that Fahim swung huge Tajik support for Karzai, while Khalili (and Mohammed Mohaqiq) won Hazara support for Karzai, even as Dostum delivered Uzbek votes. (In the 2004 election, Dostum polled 11% of the vote as a candidate.) Thus, all-in-all, Karzai’s spider-like web of alliances with “warlords” in the northern, northwestern and central provinces proved no match for Abdullah. Evidently, what toppled the US apple cart was Washington’s over-estimation of the “Pashtun base” of Ghani and the “Tajik base” of Abdullah. Some heads should roll in Holbrooke’s team. The US erred in assuming that with his urbane World Bank background, Ghani would prove irresistible to alienated Pashtuns. On the contrary, Pashtuns resent well-heeled Afghans who stay away to pursue careers in Western capitals and in any case, they reject anyone they think is being imposed on them by Washington. Jeffrey Stern, whose dispatch from Jalalabad appeared in Slate magazine, wrote:

His [Ghani's] reputation as an academic, technocrat and reformer is close to sterling, but his international appeal plays to a narrative Afghans are programmed to reject. In a country that has been a stepping-stone for empires and a chessboard for foreign interests, politicians with external ties are to be watched closely. On the streets of Kabul, I have variously heard Ghani dismissed as “not Afghan”; a “foreigner”; and, most charitably, “an intellectual, yes, but not presidential”. By default, his extended furlogh in the West has relegated him to the political purgatory Afghans devise colorful names to describe: Zana-e-Bush, literally “Bush’s wives”; or sag-shuyan, “dog washers,” for the lowly vocations the privileged classes surely filled while overseas.

Again, Abdullah effectively capitalized on his association with Massoud (“Lion of the Panjshir”), but that’s his optimal performance. Abdullah hasn’t offered any program, nor has he a record to prove he can do better than Karzai or is capable of the political reach to get a pan-Afghan mandate to lead his country.

Unlike Ghani, however, Abdullah’s Afghan-ness may be hard to question. Most important, Abdullah’s appeal among Panjshiris is proven. True, Mohammed Atta, the “warlord”-governor of Balkh (who is a rival of Dostum) supports Abdullah. Therefore, if somehow all “anti-Karzai” votes coalesce around him, and if Dostum can be forced to stay away, all is not lost and Abdullah can still give Karzai a run for his money in a runoff. At least, that’s what Holbrooke and his team think. However, for that to happen, a runoff is needed. As things stand, the results are still expected from western and southern Afghanistan. Abdullah will fare poorly in these regions. Ismail Khan, the legendary “warlord” known as the “amir” of western Afghanistan, backs Karzai to the hilt. As regards southern provinces, they are Karzai’s native turf. And the Kandahari tribes are notoriously parochial.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Washington has reached the conclusion that the only way left to stop Karzai from snatching victory will be by making the election process controversial. Washington has abruptly backed away from what Obama hailed as “this historic election”. The emphasis is on running down the election process and to “delegitimize” the result. Every word spoken by Abdullah goes to build up a case to annul the election result. The US is pinning hopes on the so-called Election Complaints Commission, which is stacked with its nominees, to decide “how substantive the election fraud was,” to quote the NYT. The ECC is a body appointed by the UN, but that’s a fig leaf, just as the US-led foreign troops in Afghanistan operate under UN mandate. Given the ECC’s composition, it will not disregard Abdullah’s complaints.

A flashpoint could arise within the coming fortnight when the Independent Election Commission, an Afghan body, might declare Karzai as the outright winner and the ECC, which is dominated by the US, annuls the result on account of Abdullah’s allegations. The US intention is to supersede the IEC and conduct the runoff under the supervision of the “international community” and the UN; that is, return to the 2004 mode and proceed to declare that “democracy” won in Afghanistan, while fixing the election result to ensure the Abdullah-Ghani tandem comes to power. This is smart thinking. The bottom line is that the Obama administration cannot brook a Karzai victory. It is a moot point whether or not Karzai gave a dressing down to Holbrooke and the latter walked out of last week’s presidential lunch in Kabul. When the two sides floated different versions – with Kabul sources maintaining Karzai put Holbrooke on the mat and Washington clarifying “no one shouted, no one walked out” – what emerges is that the Obama-Karzai dalliance is all but over. Helene Cooper of the NYT wrote:

Whatever the case [of the lunch], the atmosphere may now have become so poisoned between the United States and Mr Karzai that the Obama administration will be hampered no matter what course it takes.

The Sunday Times commented that the “fiery” lunch meeting “appears to have plunged American-Afghan relations to a post-Taliban low”. The newspaper reported that Holbrooke would be meeting his British, French and German counterparts in Paris on Wednesday and according to an unnamed French official, “Holbrooke wanted a run-off in order to chasten Karzai and show him his power was limited.” But time is running out. The top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. McChrystal, is expected to deliver his assessment of the Afghan situation to Obama some time this week. McChrystal is laying the groundwork for a request for more US troops. Meanwhile, the continuing political stalemate in Kabul means the Afghan government is not on board for such a crucial phase of the war.

Ironically, it was left to Lord “Paddy” Ashdown, who almost took up Holbrooke’s job as the point-person for the Western alliance in Kabul, to point out in an interview with the BBC on Friday that any American effort to “delegitimize” the Afghan elections means that the “capacity of our effort to win back the Pashtun tribes from the Taliban is lessened. And the people who are likely to benefit the most will be the Taliban themselves.” Ashdown added:

The bottom line of our failure in Afghanistan, and we must be prepared to look failure in the face now, did not lie in the inadequacies of Karzai. It lies in our complete inability in the international community to get our act together and to speak with a single voice; to have a clear plan … and a clear set of priorities. If we want to put a finger at the failure in Afghanistan, then we should point at ourselves [rather] than at President Karzai.

Karzai insists he is the rightful winner of the Afghan presidential elections and he isn’t prepared to face a runoff to satisfy American demands. And the mujahideen “warlords” are backing Karzai. In such a situation, if the Obama administration forces the issue, the great danger is that an altogether new political dynamic will emerge, compounding the already existing challenge of a full-fledged insurgency. Most certainly, an Abdullah-Ghani tandem cannot hold Afghanistan together. The two “technocrats” may be good in their respective fields of expertise – media management and developmental economics. But they are not men of destiny who can lead from the barricades when the enemy is at the gates. The Obama administration must show the sagacity to cooperate with Karzai’s strategy to involve the conventional power groups since no one else has the power today to control the Afghan system and preside over the fragmented polity and at the same time carry on with the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Dangerous times lie ahead. The Obama administration should know that assuming Holbrooke has his way to “chasten” Karzai, the Afghan president would be worth nothing. The Afghans will nickname Abdullah and Ghani as Zana-e-Obama – “Obama’s wives” – and how does that help McChrystal’s war strategy?

i’m sorry this review is by a white supremacist, cos it’s funny

Inglourious Basterds
Trevor Lynch, Occidental Quarterly, Aug 25 2009

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds [sic, sic] has been hyped as WW2 action movie-cum-sadistic gorefest. In reality, it is a self-indulgent snorefest. I thought I would need a gin and tonic before I went in, but it turns out what I needed was a cup of coffee. Yes, there is some gore and sadism, but frankly I found myself hoping for more of it. Anything, really, to relieve the sheer boredom. This is Quentin Tarantino’s worst movie, and that is saying a lot, given how bad Kill Bill, vol. I is. Pulp Fiction was Tarantino’s Citizen Kane, and it has been The Magnificent Ambersons ever since. If you find this review entertaining, let me assure you that it is far more entertaining than the movie itself. Nothing here should be interpreted as encouragement for you to waste your time and money on this preposterous and dull film.

Inglourious Basterds is about a team of American terrorists, consisting of seven Jews led by a gentile, Aldo “the Apache” Raine (played by Brad Pitt), who hails from Tennessee and claims to be part American Indian. The character is clearly based on Tarantino himself, since he too has an Italian name, hails from Tennessee, and claims to be part Cherokee. The mission of the Basterds is to terrify the Nazis by killing them in the most sadistic manner possible and mutilating their corpses. The dead are scalped. The survivors have swastikas carved in their foreheads.

Holocaust narratives are filled with tales of thousands of Jews herded to their doom by relative handfuls of Germans and their collaborators. Although this sheep-like behavior seems rather unlike the hyper-aggressive and unruly Jews of my acquaintance, most people accept it at face value and then wonder: What was wrong with these people? Why didn’t they fight back? Tarantino has asked the same question: “When you watch all the different Nazi movies, all the TV movies, it’s sad, but isn’t it also frustrating? Did everybody walk into the boxcar? Didn’t somebody do something?” Inglourious Basterds is his answer. During WW2, the Jews needed the leadership of someone like Aldo the Apache, a mostly white man with a bit of red savage mixed in, just like the people who have churned out six million holocaust flicks need to take direction from Quentin Tarantino. With Tarantino in charge, the war would have had a very different end, and Inglourious Basterds shows us how. Should Jews be insulted by this premise? Of course they should. But the movie itself is far more insulting still. Indeed, this is probably the most anti-Semitic movie ever released by Hollywood. Tarantino’s Jewish characters are one-dimensional, inhuman monsters. The Jewish Basterds are all as ugly as Der Sturmer cartoons. They have virtually no lines in the entire movie. All they do is skulk around, waiting for Aldo the Apache’s commands to murder and torture Germans.

The most prominent of the Basterds is played by Eli Roth, just another degenerate Jewish director of repulsive horror films. Roth plays the “Bear Jew,” who beats Germans to death with a baseball bat. He is the funniest thing in the entire movie, with his pouting, prissy mouth, drag queen makeup, and shiny brilliantined coiffure. Roth’s large, hairy body (anyone can take steroids) looks menacing until one hears his high, hysteria-edged voice. There was laughter in the audience every time this castrated gorilla opened his mouth on screen. Too shallow to realize that he was playing a monstrous buffoon, Roth really got into the role, praising Inglourious Basterds as “kosher porn” (is there any other kind?). He really gets off on fantasies of killing Nazis: “It’s almost a deep sexual satisfaction of wanting to beat Nazis to death, an orgasmic feeling. My character gets to beat Nazis to death. That’s something I could watch all day. My parents are very strong about Holocaust education.” They sound like lovely people, and I am sure they are really proud of what a successful boy Eli turned out to be.

Other Jews were equally smitten: Tarantino’s producer, Lawrence Bender, told Tarantino, “As your producing partner, I thank you, and as a member of the Jewish tribe, I thank you, motherfucker, because this movie is a fucking Jewish wet dream.” Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the film’s executive producers, also reportedly enjoyed the film’s theme of Jewish revenge. Tarantino also reported received uniformly positive reactions from his Jewish friends: “The Jewish males that I’ve known since I’ve been writing the film and telling them about it, they’ve just been, ‘Man, I can’t fucking wait for this fucking movie!’” he told me. “And they tell their dads, and they’re like, ‘I want to see that movie!’” If all these Jews have no objection to their tribe being portrayed as one-dimensional vengeful sadists, who am I to complain? Perhaps the shoe fits.

The most prominent Jewish character in the movie is the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Shoshanna (played by Mélanie Laurent), the daughter of a Jewish dairy farmer (that got the first laugh of the movie). Her family is massacred in 1941 by the SS, and somehow she turns up a few years later with an assumed French identity running a movie theater in Paris with her Negro lover. (Apparently her full name is supposed to be “Shoshanna Dreyfus”. Subtle or what? – RB). When her theater is chosen to premiere a new German movie in the presence of Hitler, Goebbels, Goring, Borman, and other leading Nazis, she plans to bolt the doors and burn the place down as an act of revenge.

Shoshanna is a character of reptilian inhumanity. A young German, Frederick Zoeller (played by Daniel Brühl) is obviously smitten with her. A film enthusiast, he tries to strike up a conversation about movies. The contrast could not be clearer. He is warm, sincere, and polite. He sees her as a fellow human being and a fellow film-enthusiast. She sees him only as a racial enemy. She takes no interest in him until she discovers that he is both a film star and a war hero, which she thinks she can use to her advantage. (He does not reveal these things to her initially, for he does not merely wish to impress her, but to befriend her.) Her only flash of human emotion comes at the end of a scene in which she meets the SS man, Standartenführer Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), who murdered her family, but it just heightens the impression that she is a cold-blooded master of deception and intrigue. Shoshanna’s inhumanity is heightened by comparison to Uma Thurman’s revenge-driven character “The Bride” in the Kill Bill movies. The difference is not just a matter of who played the role (although Tarantino decided that as well) but of how the actresses were directed. Hans Landa claims that he is effective at hunting Jews because he knows how they think. The meaning of this is made clear at the end of the film, when he turns out to be a traitor.

The Allies do not come off much better than the Jews. Aldo the Apache is the only American. He is a loud-mouthed, sadistic, duplicitous jackass with a hillbilly accent. Brad Pitt plays him for laughs, and he is genuinely funny. There are three Britons: the handsome German Michael Fassbender as film-critic Lt. Archie Hicox, Mike Myers as General Ed Fenech, and the wreck of Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill. The first two come off as effete wankers, and Churchill might as well be Jabba the Hutt.

All of this is in strong contrast to the portrayal of the Germans, even the German traitors. First of all, they are mostly quite good-looking and sexy. (As P. J. O’Rourke said: “Nobody has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually revished by someone dressed as a liberal.”) Second, they are dignified, charming, and polite with strangers; warm, playful, and fun-loving among friends. Even though the Germans are supposed to be the bad guys, they are the only people in the film with whom most white people can readily identify themselves. This means that white audiences can only feel revulsion at the sadistic Jews who murder them. Hitler, of course, is portrayed as a monster. He first appears wearing a cape, which is appropriate, since he is played as nothing more than a comic book villain. (Martin Wuttke is surely the ugliest Hitler ever.) Goebbels, although he is portrayed as somewhat arrogant (like a film director, perhaps), comes off overall as warm, sincere, playful, and even a bit lovable(!). Tarantino has obviously immersed himself in German films of the era, and it is clear that he has some admiration for what Goebbels accomplished. (In a scene set in England, it is stated as plain fact that Jews run Hollywood, and Goebbels is given credit for giving them a run for their money.) The true star of the film is Christoph Waltz, whose portrayal of Hans Landa is absolutely riveting. He is such a magnificent character that Tarantino had to turn him into a traitor in the end, otherwise he would be the true hero of the film as well. The other star is Daniel Brühl who plays Frederick Zoeller, the young war hero who becomes smitten with Shoshanna. His character is the most likable and most tragic of the film.

Now let’s examine the climax of the movie. I have no qualms about giving it away, since I don’t want any of you to see it anyway. Shoshanna hosts the premiere. Hitler and all the top Nazis come to the theater. She splices her face into the fourth reel of the film. Once the fourth reel is playing, her Negro lover bars the doors to the theater. Suddenly, Shoshanna’s face appears on the screen: “This is the face of Jewish vengeance!” she screams, while the Negro sets the building on fire. The kindling he uses are movies printed on highly flammable nitrite film. (Jews use movies — and Negroes — to create mass death and destruction in this country too.) Meanwhile, two of the Jewish Basterds (including the preposterous Eli Roth), who have infiltrated the theater without knowing of Shoshanna’s plot, run amok with machine guns, killing Hitler and Goebbels and other Nazis. The theater then explodes. Everybody dies, Jews and Germans alike. Götterdämmerung. The climax of Inglourious Basterds is obviously based on the Oscar night massacre in neo-Nazi Harold Covington’s novel The Brigade. If you don’t believe me, read the novel for yourself. The symbolism and the message could not be clearer: Jews use movies and movie theaters as tools to destroy their enemies. And since the white people in the audience can most readily identify with the Germans, the message gets through: the Jewish movie business is a tool of hatred and vengeance directed against all white people.

Why would Quentin Tarantino make a movie about WW2 in which Germans are portrayed as attractive human beings, Americans are portrayed as sadistic buffoons, Englishmen are portrayed as effete wankers, and Jews are portrayed as cold-blooded, inhuman mass murderers? Why would Quentin Tarantino borrow plot elements from neo-Nazi Harold Covington’s The Brigade to craft a climax for his movie? Why would he use that climax to expose the true anti-white agenda of Hollywood? Is Quentin Tarantino a Nazi-sympathizer? Of course not. Nothing could be further from the truth. Quentin Tarantino is simply a nihilist with an unfailing instinct for finding and desecrating anything sacred. In Pulp Fiction — his one great movie, and his most sincere — Tarantino showed a profound grasp of the spiritual meaning of the duel to the death over honor, symbolized by the Samurai sword. In Kill Bill, vol. I, he made a giant joke of it. In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has taken the one truly sacred myth in modern Jew-dominated America — especially in modern Hollywood — namely WW2 and the holocaust, and he has desecrated it by inverting all of its core value judgments and reversing its stereotypes. In the process, he has exposed the true anti-white agenda of Hollywood. Why? Just because he can. The fact that Quentin Tarantino could desecrate the holocaust, expose Hollywood’s agenda, and sell it back to Hollywood’s Jews is a testament to his twisted genius and their shallowness and moral imbecility.

I wish Inglourious Basterds were a better movie, since I think that many white people would benefit from seeing it. Yes, the explicit message is that it is good for Jews and their hillbilly dupes to sadistically murder Germans (and any other enemies of the Jews, for that matter). But the largely white audience with which I saw the film did not seem terribly comfortable with this message. Yes, they found Brad Pitt funny. He really was funny. But the sadism directed at Germans did not amuse. In the last scene of the film, where Aldo the Apache graphically carves a swastika in the forehead of Hans Landa and pronounces it “my masterpiece” — pathetically enough, this is probably Tarantino’s view of the film — there was no laughter. For the subliminal message was coming through loud and clear: we are all Germans now, and every time we turn our eyes to a movie screen we are seeing the face of Jewish vengeance.

manas US airbase in kyrgyzstan: on again, off again

US troops ordered out of Kyrgyzstan after Russia deal
Adrian Blomfield, Telegraph via Global Research, Aug 30 2009
(I can’t find the original of this on the Telegraph site – RB)

Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the president of Kyrgyzstan, announced he was ordering the eviction of troops from the Manas Air Base near the capital city Bishkek shortly after receiving a multi-billion dollar bailout from the Russian government. Frantic Pentagon officials initially attempted to deny there were plans afoot to force the US out of its last Central Asian outpost before issuing a plea to the Kyrgyz government to change its mind. Geoff Morell, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters:

We very much appreciate the support the Kyrgyz have given us in the use of that base and we hope to continue using it.

But Bakiyev, speaking after talks with Russian President Medvedev in Moscow, sounded categorical in his decision, saying:

Kyrgyzstan will close the US military base in Manas after Washington refused to negotiate better compensation.

An eviction decree was presented to parliament, which will go through the formality of approving it in the next few days. The collapse of a deal with the Kyrgyz government to continue using Manas, an ex-Soviet base that has been used by US forces since late 2001, is a blow to the Obama administration. Gen. Petraeus visited Bishkek last month with an offer to raise the annual rent the US pays for Manas from £55m to £104m. But shortly after Petraeus announced he had received assurances from the Kyrgyz government that Russia had no intention of forcing the US out of Manas, Medvedev arrived in Bishkek. Although Russia pays just £14m/yr for use of a base next door to Manas, Medvedev offered a £1.4b loan, as well as £238m in write-offs and grants.

more bizarre road signs from the telegraph’s collection

(st petersburg, russia)

(johannesburg, south africa)

(near st david, wales)

wonders of israeli democracy

Women protest gender-segregated buses
Roy Elman, Ynet, Aug 30 2009

The protest against gender-segregated bus lines stepped up. Dozens of protesters, mainly women, rode en masse on buses labeled ‘mehadrin lines’ in Jerusalem in which women must sit at the back of bus out for modesty reasons. Under the banner “Free transportation day – putting an end to discrimination in public spaces,” the protesters flocked early in the morning on Sunday to ‘mehadrin line’ bus stops. When the buses arrived, they sat in the men’s section at the front of the bus. The protesters, among them members of city council Laura Wharton and Rachel Azaria, wore red bracelets on their wrists as a sign of their protest and distributed to the passengers information booklets against the controversial separation between the sexes. Ella (Academia without Harassment) Spokesperson Shiran Dadon said:

We are acting as responsibly as possible. We instructed all our male and female activists to act respectfully and to dress appropriately. We instructed all of our activists not to sit next to bachelor yeshiva students and for men not to sit next to women out of respect of their desire not to come in physical contact with the opposite sex. We are not fighting against the haredi community or against Jewish religion, but against the scheme ‘to hide’ women under the robe of ‘modesty.’ We act with the most possible sensitivity, but also with the necessary determination in order to fight against the severe physical and verbal shows of violence that women are subjected to on these bus lines on a daily basis.

Contrary to expectations, the protest did not provoke a violent response from the haredi public. Except a few shouts and threatening glares, no ultra-Orthodox passenger tried to forcibly block the women from sitting at the front of the bus. On one of the buses, a haredi passenger approached the driver to complain about the women sitting in the men’s section of the bus, asking that the driver instruct her to move to the back. The driver ignored the request and kept on driving. The ‘mehadrin lines’ started running a number of years ago in response to demands made by the haredi population. The Egged bus company responded to the request and has ever since operated a number of such lines in Jerusalem. The bus lines very quickly became a new source of friction between seculars and haredim. In recent months, there have been an increasing number of reports of violence against secular people, mostly women, who rode on the ‘mehadrin lines’ and refused to sit at the back of the bus. The fight against ‘mehadrin lines’ was initiated some two years ago when the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center petitioned the Supreme Court to shut down the lines. Public protest against the lines has recently been renewed following the convening of a special committee within the Transportation Ministry slated to discuss legalizing segregated bus lines.

netanyahu gets kinky

Netanyahu: Teach ‘strict discipline‘ in upcoming school year
Or Kashti, Barak Ravid, Haaretz, Aug 31 2009

The 2009-10 school year is on track to open without hitch tomorrow, except for a few local strikes. The biggest, at least for now, is planned by parents in Petah Tikva, over the enrollment of Ethiopian students. Netanyahu told a cabinet discussion on the upcoming school year Sunday that school discipline must be strengthened, saying:

The era of permissiveness is over, and we need to move to strict discipline.

The prime minister said there was also a need to put more emphasis on achievement and on educating toward the values of Zionism and Jewish tradition (but they are mutually exclusive – RB), a statement that jibes with the program recently presented by his education minister, Gideon Sa’ar (Likud).

deutsch nepal: u.r. blackhouse

Live @ Sochi Club, St. Petersburg, Russia, 10.05.2009

It doesn’t get much more underground than this.