__________________________________________________________________________
The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 25 December 2001
Vol. 5, Number 106 (#634)
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Action Alerts:
01) Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, "Class Action Suit
Against the New York City Police Department," 21 Dec 01
Web Sites of Interest:
02) Nazi Forced Labor In Hungary: A Database
News On Fascist Crimes:
03) Sharyn Obsatz (Pres Enterprise), "Inland woman, men accused of hate
crime," 23 Dec 01
04) Sandra Stokley (Press-Enterprise), "White supremacist arrested in
attack," 25 Dec 01
05) AP, "Calif. Student Arrested in Assault," 24 Dec 01
The Bombing of Pul-e-Khumri
06) BBC, "US says warplanes hit Taleban convoy," 21 Dec 01
07) Seumas Milne ([London] Guardian), "The Innocent Dead in a Coward's
War: Estimates Suggest US Bombs Have Killed at Least 3,767
Civilians," 20 Dec 01
08) Reuters, "Locals Reject U.S. Account of Afghan Convoy Attack," 22
Dec 01
09) David Filipov (Boston Globe), "Another Deadly, Errant US Attack is
Alleged ," 24 Dec 01
Book/Movie Reviews:
10) Edwin Black (Forward), "Ford Faces the Past," 14 Dec 01
Rightwing Quote of the Week:
11) "Dyttohed" [sic], "How To Straighten Out America," 22 Dec 01
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ACTION ALERTS:
01) Class Action Suit Against the New York City Police Department
Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund
21 Dec 01
If you were arrested at a political protest any time after February 1, 1999
and you were "put through the system" (kept overnight at Central Booking)
for a minor charge, you may be eligible to join a class-action lawsuit
seeking damages from the NYPD. The NYPD adopted a policy on that date
mandating that people arrested at political demonstrations be held
overnight in jail for charges that would normally result in only a few
hours' detention and a desk appearance ticket.
The more eligible people who sign on to this lawsuit, the better -- a large
judgment against the City should deter it from repeating such an outrageous
and unconstitutional policy in the future. Plus think of all the activism
one could underwrite with any monetary proceeds ....
The attorney handling this lawsuit is Alan Levine at the Puerto Rican Legal
Defense and Education Fund. To join the suit, contact him at Alan Levine
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, giving details of the arrest(s) you believe may
qualify for inclusion.
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WEB SITES OF INTEREST:
02) Hungarian Labor Battalions
<http://www.hadifogoly.adatbanyaszat.hu>
There is a new searchable database which is the fruit of a joint venture
between Hungarian and Russian army historians. It targets the soldier, and
those in the forced labor battalions, who perished in WWII on the Soviet
front and in prison. Some 24,700 names are already in the database and upon
completion there will be over 600,000 names.
The server is fast, but the database is in Hungarian. To use the database,
click "keresés" and then input the surname of interest. The engine searches
two different databases - the Hungarian and the Russian, so, if something
comes up that was not requested, it may be attributable to the
transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet.
-- Judy Cohen, editor
survivor-witness,
<www.womenandtheholocaust.org>
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NEWS ON FASCIST CRIMES
03) Inland woman, men accused of hate crime
Sharyn Obsatz (Pres Enterprise)
23 Dec 01
LAKE ELSINORE - Two Winchester men and a Lake Elsinore woman were arrested
Saturday morning, accused of slinging racist slurs at a black store clerk
and beating two customers they perceived to be gay.
The men, 19 and 22, and the 20-year-old woman face assault and hate-crime
charges, Riverside County sheriff's investigators said.
Authorities said one of the men hit one of the male customers on the head
with a metal trash can cover during the attack outside the Circle K
convenience store on Grand Avenue in Lakeland Village.
"That's like a nightmare . . . It's just sickening," Circle K clerk Becky
Hill said Saturday afternoon after hearing about the verbal assault.
The men and the woman arrived at the market just before 2 a.m. Saturday,
according to a sheriff's report. Authorities said the men made defamatory
remarks about patrons outside whom they perceived to be gay, knocked over a
display as they left the store and refused a request to clean it up.
Sheriff's deputies say the men punched the patrons outside while the woman
began aiming racial slurs and threats at the female clerk, who was calling
police.
The three fled, but officers stopped their car nearby, according to the
sheriff's report.
The investigation is continuing. Anyone with information is asked to call
the sheriff's Lake Elsinore station at (909) 245-3300.
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04) White supremacist arrested in attack
Sandra Stokley (Press-Enterprise)
25 Dec 01
RIVERSIDE - An admitted white supremacist was arrested Monday after he
allegedly screamed racial slurs at a black man and then attacked him near
Fairmount Park, police said.
Robert Clyde, 36, of Riverside was booked into Robert Presley Detention
Center on suspicion of making terrorist threats, battery and a hate crime,
said Sgt. Frank Assumma.
Assumma said officers responding to a report of a stabbing at Fairmount
Park at 11:40 a.m. found Clyde suffering from cuts to his face and head, a
split lip and several loose teeth.
Witnesses and the victim, whose name was not available, told police that
Clyde walked up to the black man at the corner of Main and Russell streets
and yelled racial epithets before physically assaulting him, Assumma said.
The victim, using a large bolt he carries for protection, fought back and
injured Clyde, who ran off.
"He (Clyde) got the worst end of it," Assumma said.
Assumma described Clyde and the victim as homeless.
Assumma said Clyde was uncooperative during questioning but acknowledged to
police officers that he is a member of the American Front Skinheads, a
white supremacist group.
Clyde also wears several white supremacist tattoos, including a swastika
and the letters "SWP" on his left arm.
Clyde was taken to Riverside Community Hospital for treatment of his
injuries before being taken to jail. Assumma said the victim was not
arrested.
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05) Calif. Student Arrested in Assault
AP
24 Dec 01
IRVINE, Calif. -- A college sophomore is accused of sexually assaulting a
15-year-old girl he met on the Internet and carving swastikas on her face,
police said.
Brian Dance, 20, a student at the University of California, Irvine, was
booked on charges of torture, rape by a foreign object and robbery. He was
being held at the Orange County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.
Dance allegedly met the girl in an online chat room and picked her up
Thursday afternoon at an Orange County mall. Police said he took her to a
university parking lot, forced her into the back seat of his car, covered
her eyes with duct tape and beat her for more than two hours with his
hands and a belt.
The girl was sexually assaulted, robbed and had swastikas carved into her
cheek and forehead with a knife, police said. She was treated and released
early Friday from a nearby hospital, Sgt. Tom Little said.
The girl told police a female friend also was communicating with the
suspect in an online chat room, Little said. A detective had the victim's
friend act as a decoy and arrange a meeting with the suspect at the same
mall.
The 15-year-old identified Dance as her attacker when he arrived, and he
was arrested without incident, authorities said. Police said they found
duct tape in his pocket and a knife they believed was used in the attack.
Dance is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday.
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THE BOMBING OF PUL-E-KHUMRI
06) US says warplanes hit Taleban convoy
BBC
21 Dec 01
The US says it is certain that a convoy of vehicles attacked by its
warplanes in eastern Afghanistan was carrying leaders of the Taleban, and
not tribal elders as some reports had suggested.
Major Brad Lowell, a spokesman for US Central Command, said officials
looked into the claims and were sure the targeted convoy was composed of
Taleban leaders.
"We've checked all means possible and confirmed this was a military
convoy," he said.
Major Lowell said the convoy heading for the capital, Kabul, for
Saturday's inauguration of the new interim administration, was far
north of the air attack.
Training camp area
The strikes destroyed a convoy of 10 to 12 vehicles near the town of Khost
southwest of the mountainous Tora Bora region, and the compound from which
they left, said Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff in Washington.
In 1998 the US tried to destroy the al-Qaeda camps there with
Tomahawk cruise missiles in an attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden, who
they blame for the twin bombings of its embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania.
The Pentagon says AC-130 gunships and fighter jets launched from US
aircraft carriers carried out the attack on Friday.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), which is generally
sympathetic to the Taleban, had earlier reported that 65 people were killed
in the attack.
The agency quoted Sayed Yaqeen, an official of the Paktia tribal
council, as saying several Afghan elders, tribal chiefs and
commanders were among the victims.
Cave-busting bomb
It is also being reported that more than 20 civilians were killed
when US aircraft bombed the village of Sarkando in the same province.
A number of others were reportedly wounded in the attack in which the
village was said to have been destroyed.
Mr Rumsfeld has said that significant numbers of coalition troops
will be sent into the Tora Bora cave complex as the search for Bin
Laden, the man suspected of masterminding the 11 September terror
attacks on the US, continues.
Anti-Taleban Afghan forces took the complex last week and have so far taken
the lead in neutralising pockets of resistance and hunting for evidence.
Meanwhile, the US is sending a new bomb to Afghanistan that uses a
delayed, high-pressure explosion to suck the air out of caves and
tunnels.
Under Secretary of Defence Edward Aldridge said the laser-guided
"thermobaric" bomb, recently tested in Nevada, "is something we
clearly have a need for in Afghanistan and they're on their way over
there".
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07) The Innocent Dead in a Coward's War: Estimates Suggest US Bombs Have
Killed at Least 3,767 Civilians
Seumas Milne ([London] Guardian)
20 Dec 01
The price in blood that has already been paid for America's war against
terror is only now starting to become clear. Not by Britain or the US, nor
even so far by the al-Qaida and Taliban leaders held responsible for the
September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
It has instead been paid by ordinary Afghans, who had nothing whatever to
do with the atrocities, didn't elect the Taliban theocrats who ruled over
them and had no say in the decision to give house room to Bin Laden and his
friends. The Pentagon has been characteristically coy about how many people
it believes have died under the missiles it has showered on Afghanistan.
Acutely sensitive to the impact on international support for the war,
spokespeople have usually batted away reports of civilian casualties with a
casual "these cannot be independently confirmed", or sometimes simply
denied the deaths occurred at all. The US media have been particularly
helpful. Seven weeks into the bombing campaign, the Los Angeles Times only
felt able to hazard the guess that "at least dozens of civilians" had been
killed.
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08) Locals Reject U.S. Account of Afghan Convoy Attack
Reuters
22 Dec 01
ASMANI KILAI -- Local Afghans contested U.S. assertions that its planes had
attacked a convoy of al Qaeda leaders, telling Reuters at the scene on
Saturday the dozens of dead were innocent villagers and tribal elders.
Residents of Asmani Kilai in eastern Paktia province said the strikes,
lasting seven hours from Thursday night into Friday, killed 50 to 60 people
and destroyed 15 vehicles from a convoy of tribal elders bound for Kabul
for the inauguration on Saturday of the interim government led by Hamid
Karzai.
About 10 houses and a mosque were also destroyed and several villagers not
with the convoy were also killed, they said.
Earlier reports said 65 people were killed.
"The people who got hit were going to congratulate Karzai on the
transfer of power," villager Khodai Noor told Reuters Television in the
first account of the bombing from the scene.
"There are no members of al Qaeda or supporters of bin Laden here," he
added, suggesting a local warlord might deliberately have misinformed U.S.
forces about the convoy to settle a score.
A further 15 people were wounded and had been taken to a hospital six hours
drive away near the border with Pakistan, the villagers said. The bodies of
those killed were swiftly removed in line with Islamic custom for burial by
relatives, they said.
Villagers say the convoy had set out for the Afghan capital from the town
of Khost with tribal elders were not carrying weapons.
The village, in the Ozi district of Paktia province, sits on barren
hills and its houses were reduced to rubble.
Six wrecked cars, their bodywork riddled with bullets and shrapnel,
stood on the track. Shrapnel and the remains of spent ordnance littered the
dirt.
The villagers said more vehicles had been hit further along the route in
air strikes they said occurred between 9.00 p.m. on Thursday and 4.00 a.m.
on Friday.
"Why is this tyranny happening to us?" asked Haji Khyal Khan, who said five
members of his family had been killed.
Locals picked through the rubble of their homes retrieving what
possessions they could, including a tattered carpet.
"There were no terrorists. They destroyed a whole village and we've lost
everything," said villager Agha Mohammad.
But Abdullah Jan, a spokesman for the shura (council) of the Nayazain tribe
in Khost, said: "There was no Talib nor any al Qaeda fighter in our convoy.
Why was it bombed?"
- - - - -
07) Another Deadly, Errant US Attack is Alleged
David Filipov (Boston Globe)
24 Dec 01
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, Dec 24--The allegation that US bombers hit a
column of tribal elders on their way to the inauguration of Afghanistan's
new government Saturday was not the first time US forces have been accused
of - and have denied - attacking the wrong people.
Residents of Pul-e-Khumri, a strategic crossroads town in northern
Afghanistan, awoke 10 days ago to the sound of warplanes roaring across the
sky.
That seemed strange. The Taliban had been driven out a month earlier, and
Pul-e-Khumri had been in the hands of the US-backed Northern Alliance ever
since.
So why would the Americans want to attack?
From accounts of the people who live here, dozens of people died,
including 15 civilians, before the inhabitants of Pul-e-Khumri got an
answer.
A former governor named Sayed Jaffar had marched his troops on the town in
an effort to retake power from the Northern Alliance. And somehow, it
seemed, US airstrikes had been called in to support Jaffar's attack.
The Northern Alliance alleges that Jaffar succeeded in duping the Americans
into believing Al Qaeda soldiers were holed up in the town. The Pentagon
denies airstrikes ever took place.
But people here insist they saw American planes attack. As a result, in
their eyes, the US forces have been transformed from liberators into
troublemakers.
If nothing else, the story of Pul-e-Khumri illustrates how tricky it will
be for the interim Afghan government to keep the peace in a war-ravaged
land of ambitious warlords and heavily armed militias, where heavy fighting
can break out at any time.
Assuming the locals saw what they insist they saw, Pul-e-Khumri also
provides a warning to would-be international peacekeepers about how easy it
is to be deceived and manipulated in Afghanistan's minefield of shifting
allegiances, ethnic distrust, and tribal rivalries.
This could be a particularly important lesson for the United States, whose
pursuit of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden has led to strikes against other
wrong targets, fueling Afghanistan's already high sensitivity about foreign
troops.
The bombing here apparently began several weeks after the Taliban fled Pul-
e-Khumri, located at the crossroads of two main highways 130 miles north of
Kabul, the capital. Residents started finding leaflets outside their homes
from Jaffar, who had ruled as the town's governor until 1996, when the
Taliban drove him out.
The leaflets exhorted townspeople to take up arms and oust the governor
installed by the Northern Alliance, Maulovi Zia Hollaq. The Americans, the
leaflets said, "are with us."
The leaflets played on ethnic and religious tensions already seething in
Pul-e-Khumri. The town is populated by Tajiks, Hazaras, Pashtuns, and
Uzbeks. Hollaq is a Tajik and a Sunni Muslim; Jaffar is a leader of the
Ismaili tribe of the Hazaras, a Shi'ite Muslim people. The Pashtuns mainly
supported the Taliban, but joined the Northern Alliance when the militia
fled.
What happened next is a matter of dispute.
Townspeople say Jaffar managed to convince US special forces troops in the
area that Pul-e-Khumri was a nest of Al Qaeda fighters, prompting the
Americans to call in an air raid. Other reports have suggested that the
warplanes prevented Jaffar's militia from attacking Pul-e-Khumri.
Whatever the case, residents here say it is beyond doubt that US planes
bombed Northern Alliance military positions on Mount Kishlaq-e-Bamba, which
overlooks the town, killing four alliance soldiers and destroying a tank.
They say that Jaffar's troops, which numbered somewhere between 500 and
2,000, then attacked. The fighting reportedly was heavy but brief -
Northern Alliance forces poured in from surrounding areas, quickly driving
out Jaffar's men.
A surrender deal collapsed when Jaffar fled the area. Fifteen alliance
soldiers, 14 of Jaffar's troops, and 15 civilians died, according to
Mohammad Yasin, a doctor at a local hospital.
"People didn't know know why the Americans were bombing the government
forces," he said. "Jaffar wanted people to think the Americans were on his
side, and it worked."
Northern Alliance commanders and local officials initially accused the
United States of supporting Jaffar. But they subsequently decided that the
Americans, preoccupied with their pursuit of Al Qaeda, had been fooled.
"Sayed Jaffar tricked them into thinking that there is Al Qaeda in Pul-e-
Khumri," said Haidar, an official in the regional government who goes by
one name. "We were very angry at the Americans."
It could not be determined whether Jaffar indeed had access to US troops.
Local commanders said his hastily abandoned base outside town bore numerous
signs that American forces had been present - supplies, military rations,
and a US military jeep that had been covered in a parachute. Townspeople
said American special forces had been with the warlord for some time prior
to his assault.
Haidar said a helicopter had landed and taken off after the fighting waned,
probably leaving with the US troops.
However it unfolded, people who described the bombing said it had left
residents here increasingly wary of outsiders - even ones who came to
Afghanistan for a purpose locals supported.
That attitude is not hard to find in this country, which has a long history
of foreign invaders. After US warplanes and special forces had helped him
drive Al Qaeda fighters from their stronghold in eastern Afghanistan, an
alliance commander named Abdul Khan said to an American visitor:
"Thank you very much. When you leave Afghanistan, please take your troops
with you."
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BOOK/MOVIE REVIEWS:
10) Ford Faces the Past
Edwin Black (Forward)
14 Dec 01
Ford Motor Company has just announced the results of a three-year internal
study of its own Nazi-era and slave labor history, including the deep
association of its founder, Henry Ford, with Adolf Hitler. The giant
automaker has archived the study for public inspection, donated $4 million
to Holocaust and genocide programs, and apologized to humanity.
In doing so, Ford has set an example for American corporate accountability
in owning up to corporate America's extensive involvement in the Holocaust
and Germany's war against the world.
But beyond the headlines, a closer examination of Ford's mea culpa reveals
what it is — and what it is not.
Ford's massive examination covers the company's 12-year relationship with
the Third Reich, from the rise of Hitler in 1933, through the persecution
years of the 1930s, past the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and into the
period from late 1941 to 1945, when the United States was at war with
Germany.
The probe was extensive, involving a reported 98,000 documents located in
some 30 public and private archival repositories in the United States,
Germany and the United Kingdom. The probe also utilized some 45
researchers, historians and translators. Ford's research feat shows how
massive such corporate investigations need be, well beyond the resources of
even four or five historians.
It was an undertaking reminiscent of the recent investigation of IBM's ties
to the Holocaust, which coordinated the efforts of some 100 researchers at
50 archives in seven countries to assemble the evidence behind the best-
seller "IBM and the Holocaust."
Ford is the first major American corporation to undertake such a self-
revelation, and should be commended for its efforts. Ford began the process
in 1998 when several dozen American corporations, Ford included, learned
they would become the targets of lawsuits seeking claims over their
Holocaust activities. (Company sources deny the recent disclosure had
anything to do with a recent independent book by Neil Baldwin, "Henry Ford
and the Jews," detailing Henry Ford's involvement with the Hitler regime.)
Unlike the efforts of some other corporate colluders, Ford did not donate
just a few marginal documents from one or two archival files, or claim the
documents could not be located. Ford donated many thousands of square feet
and a database to go with it.
This is big. Remember, Ford is in a special category. Henry Ford was not
just a businessman out for money. He was arguably America's most rabid
anti-Semite, Hitler's idol, and a strong ally of the Nazi movement in the
United States.
So this is more than a case of simple trading with the enemy. The new
documents reveal the Holocaust-era operations of a company that in the
1920s adopted anti-Semitism as its de facto company policy and proved it by
corporate publication and distribution of "The International Jew" and the
infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
At the same time, look more closely. True, the company has published its
own exhaustive summary of its findings and released 98,000 documents.
However, its announcement came December 6, at a time when the world was
focused on events in both Afghanistan and Israel, and therefore received
scant notice in the media.
Moreover, are these documents really available for immediate public and
independent scrutiny? Ford has donated them to its own Benson Ford Research
Center for complete public access — but then will close the archive on
December 22, just two weeks after the announcement, until March 2002.
Ford will control all the spin and analysis on its initial revelation and
endure its few days of bad press. By March 2002, when the archive reopens,
the furor will be over, and any attempt to see these documents will be "old
news" confined to scholarly journals coming out in 2003.
Nonetheless, eventually all of Ford's records will be available for
independent scrutiny. Even now, company sources have made clear their
intention to cooperate with independent journalists and researchers both
when the archive is closed and when it re-opens.
That is good. Prior examinations of records contained in corporate archives
have contained leads about the actions of other American companies in
league with Hitler. Since many of the companies corresponded and acted in
concert, the new Ford documentation will be a trove for investigators.
Hence, for Ford and for Holocaust history, it is a win-win. Ford has done
the right thing. It has shown corporate America that it's a good idea to
come clean about the Holocaust. Ford has acknowledged its terrible past,
apologized and opened its archives. Now it's time for others, including
IBM, to do the same.
Indeed, asked whether IBM and other companies should do as Ford has done, a
Ford spokesman issued the following statement: "We choose to lead by
example."
Edwin Black is the author of "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance
between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" and "The
Transfer Agreement," a book which detailed Ford's legacy of anti-Jewish and
Nazi involvement.
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RIGHTWING QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
For those who believe that fascism is only a thing of the past
From: "Dyttohed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Newsgroups: alt.activism et al
Subject: How To Straighten Out America
Date: 22 Dec 01
Several ways to straighten out America
Immediate closing of our borders.
The end of ALL foreign aid. This money will be spent here to educate our
own people, provide job training, feed our homeless, retool our factories,
provide jobs for all, provide housing, hope and to give all a true chance
at the American dream.
Give an ultimatum to the drug producing countries of the world. You have 30
days to stop the export of death from your shores to America. If you do
not, a state of war will exist between our countries and we WILL use the
full power of our military to wipe out the drug producing fields. No
reparations will be paid.
Mandatory two year military or National service for all youths both male
and female to assist in the rebuilding and regentrification plan.
Accountability by our elected officials. If they do not implement the will
of the people they should face criminal charges including the death
penalty.
Automatic death penalty for any public offical found guilty of corruption
or crimes against the people.
All major decisions regarding policy should be decided by referendum.
An amnesty program for all current criminals at large. Today is day one. If
you did it, no matter what, you got away with it. This would include
everything from shoplifting to murder. After today, all criminal penalties
on the books would be tripled. This would hopefully eliminate the backlog
of cases in the courts and the cases police are trying to solve. Everyone
starts off fresh with clemency. After day one all convicted criminals face
triple the penalty. Hopefully this will give incentive for criminals to go
straight.
Criminal charges reinstituted for homosexual conduct. Teachers held
accountable for their students progress. No more pushing children through
the system without properly educating them.
Prisions should be removed to offshore penal colonies where the inmates
work, farm and do for themselves. Otherwise they starve.
Expulsion of all illegal aliens.
Expulsion of any person or group not willing to abide by the law and the
will of the people. Let them build their own country somewhere else. There
is no need for gas chambers or genocide. Expulsion will do nicely.
A rebirth of the old ideas and ideals. We need to lead by example.
Otherwise we do not deserve to lead. Who will step forward and lead?
* * * * *
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only.
__________________________________________________________________________
FASCISM:
We have no ethical right to forgive, no historical right to forget.
(No permission required for noncommercial reproduction)
- - - - -
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