Salem-News.com History articles

70th Anniversary of of the Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau

Survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland were liberated by the Soviet Red Army after more than 1 million people were killed.

(SAN FRANCISCO) - We have seen newsreels of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps at the end of WW II and a number of movies depicting the horrors of the Holocaust. However, newsreels and movies did not really prepare us for an actual visit to the site of the largest mass murder in history.

As many as 1.5 million were murdered at Auschwitz, mainly Polish Jews, but also Soviet prisoners-of-war, Gypsies, Czechs, Yugoslavs, French, Austrians, and Germans.

Plaque Dedicated to USS Liberty is Specific with Historical Fact

34 U.S. servicemen were killed and 73 wounded by the Israeli military in a horrific attack, with no provocation.

(MANISTEE, Michigan) - The USS Liberty plaque was preliminary dedicated by a small group of veterans at Veterans Memorial Park Manistee, MI on October 10, 2014.
The plaque questions the honesty of the American and Israeli governments and hopes it will inform the public as to what happened the day of the attack.

Especially outstanding is the leadership of the Manistee City council which had the courage to place the plaque in open public display and would not let the wording be softened.

Antique Typewriters on the Come Back!

I still have a manual Smith Corona typewriter and I don’t know how I ever had the strength in my fingers to produce anything on that machine.

(EUGENE, Ore. ) - Hang onto your old typewriters because they are coming back. After whistle blower Edward Snowden leaked information about the NSA’s massive spying program, computer users worldwide were faced with the dilemma of knowing that everything they did on the Internet was an open book and being monitored by the US government.

Assuming American leaders are capable of being embarrassed, most embarrassing for Obama was when Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel learned that the US government had been tapping her cell phone conversations for six years.

The Diane Downs` Case Was No Small Sacrifice

The Diane Downs case is a notorious piece of Oregon crime history. But was justice served? Not by today's standards.

(British Columbia) - On May 19, 1983, Elizabeth Diane Downs and her three small children were shot on a country road near Springfield, Oregon. Her 7-year old daughter Cheryl died, but her 3-year old son Danny and her 8-year old daughter Christie survived.

Within three weeks, Diane had lost custody of her remaining wounded children and had become the number one suspect in the eyes of the police department and District Attorney’s office. I came across some very interesting information about the Diane Downs case because Rule attended the trial and also wrote a book about the case called Small Sacrifices.

Proxy Wars

Today we have a new crop of Messianic warriors who have taken on the mission in the name of western democracy.

(LONDON) - The Messianic warriors are at work again. Their mission is not to spread the word of God, though that is their cover, but to serve their own God; the God of Mammon, greed and avarice.

This is not new. It’s been an ongoing process since the advent of the Industrial Revolution when the British ruled the world and the English firmly believed that God was an Anglo Saxon. It was the Empire on which the sun never set or, as some said, the blood never dried.’

After 4 Years in Coma Mavi Marmara Victim Passes Away

The death toll has now reached 10. Ten humanitarians killed in international waters.

(ISTANBUL, Turkey) - Mavi Marmara activist Uğur Süleyman Söylemez, who was heavily injured by the Israeli attack on May 31, 2010 and was left in a coma for four years, has passed away today at 51 years of age.

Mavi Marmara was on its way to bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza in May 2010, when Israeli soldiers attacked the ship in international waters leaving 9 dead and 30 wounded. The death toll has now reached 10 after Söylemez died in a hospital where he was receiving treatment.

Iran Review`s Exclusive Interview with Shahir Shahidsaless

Here the former diplomat gives an insider’s history of the troubled relationship between Iran and the US

(TEHRAN) - Iran and the six world powers have been discussing ways to iron out differences and start drafting a final deal that would end the West’s dispute with Iran over the country’s nuclear energy program. The two sides wrapped up their fourth round of nuclear talks in Vienna on Friday May 16, 2014.

Iran says there has been no tangible progress on drafting the text of a comprehensive nuclear deal. However, President Hassan Rouhani has expressed optimism that the nuclear negotiations with the Sextet of world powers will result in a final agreement.

A Farewell To Hemingway

A bi-polar critique: across the river and into the trees...

(DAYTONA BEACH, FL) - We all grew up in a culture that doted on Ernest Hemingway. Even before I cleared English 101, my father was a Hemingway fan, praising his crisp, simple diction, his avoidance of adverbs and verbose construction, his nouveau Parisian cool, his he-man take on guns, women and courage.

And if you liked Hemingway, you had to ignore the fact that as a person he was almost a total jerk. He was a bully, a braggart and - in the English vernacular - a cad. He loved to put on the boxing gloves with someone smaller and less adept, such as Scott Fitzgerald, and beat the crap out of him. He left his first wife and his son, still a baby, compulsively when he met his second, and more beautiful paramour.

Everybody`s Got Afghanistan Wrong

We find here a story of a bumbling oblivious and uncomprehending foreign occupation torturing and murdering a lot of its own strongest allies, shipping some of them off to Gitmo -- even shipping to Gitmo young boys whose only offense had been being the sexual assault victims of U.S. allies.

(WASHINGTON DC) - This goes deeper than the usual war lies.

We've had plenty of those. We weren't told the Taliban was willing to turn bin Laden over to a neutral nation to stand trial. We weren't told the Taliban was a reluctant tolerator of al Qaeda, and a completely distinct group. We weren't told the 911 attacks had also been planned in Germany and Maryland and various other places not marked for bombing.

The First Casualty of War is Truth: April 25, 2014 was the 99th Anniversary of the Disastrous Battle of Gallipoli

Gallipoli was just another example of the many shameful episodes in the history of warfare that were lied about or unreported by the war correspondents, military leaders and politicians...

(DULUTH, MN) - A number of years ago I read portions of a book entitled The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker by Phillip Knightley.

Knightley points out in that book that in order to start (and then perpetuate) a war, a nation’s leaders have to lie...