Featured Articles

The Picower Madoff settlement: A $7.2 Billion Whitewash

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On Friday the astonishing news broke that the estate of Jeffrey M. Picower had agreed to cough up $7.2 billion to the liquidator of the Bernard Madoff fraud and the Federal Government. (See Zachary A. Goldfarb, “Madoff investor’s widow to return money,” The Washington Post, Dec. 18, 2010.)

This news was astonishing because the amount — including a $2.2 Million payment to the Feds — was said to be “the largest single forfeiture in American judicial history.” It represents a considerable 35% of the amount thought to have been paid into the Madoff Ponzi scheme, raising the prospect of material compensation to some of the victims. And also because the Picower lawyer had been freely telling the press earlier this year he expected to settle for only $2 billion. All apparently was not well on the Picower legal front in 2010.

What was not astonishing was the rush to present what was in fact proof that Picower was a huge looter of the Madoff victims as evidence of noblesse oblige on the part of his widow, and to cover up what actually happened. CNN reports that

Picower withdrew $7.8 billion from Madoff’s investment firm since the 1970s, even though he only deposited $619 million, according to the trustee. Read more

2010 TOO Fundraising Appeal: Tax-Deductible Contributions Now Possible

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There have been several changes at TOO. The new look seems to be working out with most people. We are certainly grateful to Matt Parrott and his anonymous helpers who have uploaded the hundreds of old TOO files to the new site.

Another major change is that donations to TOO are now tax deductible through the Charles Martel Society, the same organization that sponsors The Occidental Quarterly. TOO and TOQ remain separate entities (even though I am editor of both TOQ and TOO). However, money donated to TOO is now routed into a separate account at the CMS.

The ability of American donors to write off their contributions should be a breakthrough in our ability to securely fund TOO.  We have certainly achieved quite a bit on a relative shoestring but we need additional funds to consolidate and expand. To a considerable extent, our success has depended on the good will of our contributors. Several of our stalwarts are providing material gratis, and others (including those involved in the website redesign) are underpaid in terms of their situation in life and need for income. Whereas there are hundreds of well-paid professional ethnic activists working for our enemies, White advocacy is all about personal self-sacrifice and enlightened self-interest of people who understand the importance of our project for the long term prospects of our people. Read more

In the 1930s: Chapter 19 of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s “200 Years Together”

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The project of translating Alexandr Solzhenitisyn’s 200 Years Together into English continues apace. The 18,000-word Chapter 19, “In the 1930s” is now available (see here). The decade of the 1930s was tragic almost beyond description. The main idea advanced by Solzhenitsyn is that all segments of Soviet society suffered, including Jews who had been members of the elite. However, the suffering of Jews pales in comparison to the suffering of the Ukrainian and Russian farmers undergoing forced collectivization. Moreover, Jews were never targeted as Jews, and in general Jews remained vastly overrepresented in elite positions throughout the period, even after the purges.

Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the culpability of the West. The brutal process of industrialization was carried out with the cooperation of Western merchants and bankers eager to do business with the Soviet Union. Such commercial cooperation had been prohibited under the Czars because Jewish activist organizations had pressured governments not to do business with Russia because of its treatment of Jews — much as there are now sanctions against trading with Iran because of the concerns of the Israel Lobby. As we also see today, financial and commercial interests were not concerned with ideological commitment to capitalism or with human rights but simply sought to expand their profits.  Trade was allowed because there was the perception in the West that “Soviet power would not oppress the Jews, but on the contrary, that many of them would remain at the levers of power.” Read more

Smells Like White Guilt: Christian Lander’s Whiter Shades of Pale

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Christian Lander: Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast, from Seattle’s Sweaters to Maine’s Microbrews; New York: Random House, 2010

I saw Christian Lander in San Francisco on Tuesday, December 2nd, speaking to a tiny sweater-clad audience at a small independent bookstore in the Marina District. Lander told the story of the amazing success of his blog Stuff White People Like which in about six months grew from a private joke to a New York Times bestselling book (with a reported $300,000 advance). (See Christopher Donovan’s review of the Stuff White People Like book.)

In his talk, Lander made it very clear that he is not talking about all White people, but just “the right kind of White people,” as opposed to “the wrong kind of White people.”

The right kind of White people are urban, college-educated, and from upper-middle and upper-class backgrounds. And, most importantly, they are liberal. Read more

Steven Spielberg: Body Snatcher–A Review of the Miniseries “Band of Brothers”

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Band of Brothers, the 2001 TV miniseries, was produced  by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

Episode 9 was directed by David Frankel and written by John Orloff.

Based on the 1992 book by Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers. E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle Nest, Simon and Schuster (reviewed edition by Pocket Books, 2001).

In ten episodes, Band of Brothers depicts how E (“Easy”) Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, trained in America and England and then fought from D-Day through to the end of the European phase of WWII. It is a technically strong and gripping production. The battle scenes are among the most realistic I have seen, though one must allow for the demands of the cinematic medium — emphasis of a few individuals and spatial compression of combat groups. I am reminded of the grim and gritty street battle sequences in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. This review looks at the ninth episode, which does not depict military conflict but is itself something of a black operation in the culture wars.

As our own Edmund Connelly has repeatedly demonstrated, Jewish interests have frequently been pushed by American television and Hollywood films in various ways, often as a backdrop to stories unrelated to ethnicity, like the omnipresent upper class Anglo twit and the Black genius technical expert. The 9th episode of Band of Brothers, titled “Why We Fight”, represents an unprecedented level of ambition — to claim America’s WWII sacrifices as motivated by the desire to save Jews from Nazi persecution, to make America’s sacrifice in WWII all about the Jews, not about Americans doing their duty in a tragic internecine conflict. Read more

Courting the Jews on the European “Far Right”

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The Guardian’s definition of “far right”, and mine, differ considerably, which is the reason why I have not rushed to its website to read a two-page article published a few of days ago about “the threat of the far right in Europe” which, I am told, made no mention of the BNP or the state of race relations in Britain.

Guardian caption: A Roma family leaves a camp in northern France. Far-right groups across Europe are nurturing an anti-immigrant backlash.

The Financial Times simultaneously published a similar one-page survey, but this included a brief post-script item about the failure of the BNP to mobilise the full potential of anti-immigration sentiment persisting amongst the British electorate. It begins as follows:

In a pub garden in Birkenhead, a blighted post-industrial suburb in England’s north-west, Nick Griffin told the Financial Times that his party had a “once in a lifetime” chance to escape its white supremacist roots and emerge as an alternative for millions scorned by the London elite.

Less than 18 months later – following this year’s disastrous national election campaign, a savage internal power struggle and a court battle with the country’s equality watchdog that threatens to bankrupt the party – his dream is over.

The impression I have gained in recent years is that the only “far right” parties in Europe who have been able (allowed) to flutter near to the flame of power are those that have been able to convince the Establishment, the media and Jewry that they are most definitely not anti-Jewish, not “racist”, not against all coloured immigration (but only against the immigration of Muslims!) and not against the multi-racial society (just so long as it doesn’t include Muslims!) The Jobbik Party in Hungary may be the only notable exception to this. Read more

Jakob Friedrich Fries and the Intellectual Origins of Anti-Judaism in Europe

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German philosopher Jakob Friedrich Fries (1775-1843) was born at Barby in Saxony and studied theology with the Moravians in the German town of Niesky, which was then heavily populated by Czech refugees fleeing Catholic persecution from their former homeland of Bohemia. Fries then traveled to Jena and Leipzig to study philosophy. In 1806 he became professor of philosophy and mathematics at Heidelberg. Although his development in psychological theory led him away from the Moravian approach, he always respected the Moravians as bearers of a symbol of a higher spiritual truth. The Moravian Brethren were heavily influenced by the Czech philosopher, heretic and martyr Jan Hus. However, they entered a period of decadence when at a special Communion Service held at Berthelsdorf on August 13, 172, they revived their ancient Church, which was so successful that John and Charles Wesley, the famous founders of the Christina Methodist movement, were eventually converted.

It was from the exiled Moravians that German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher and especially the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe drew a great deal of inspiration. However, the philosopher and the poet were alienated from the Moravians because they could not accept the doctrine of the substitutionary sufferings of Jesus Christ. Read more