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6. juni 2005
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Why didn't the allied to anything to stop or at least hamper the Nazi holocaust during World War II? In the case of the British, the answer is that they didn't believe the reports about large-scale genocide and gas chambers.
The intelligence chiefs thought that reports of the genocide of Jews in Poland, brought by two emissaries from Warsaw, lacked credibility. Their disbelief was one of the reasons why Winston Churchill was kept ignorant of the scale of the Holocaust at a time when decisive action might have been taken to try to stop the wholesale killings.
The dismissive response to the Holocaust reports in 1942 and 1943 is detailed in a remarkable publication of official intelligence records of the Second World War, sanctioned by the British and Polish governments. [...]
Roger Allen, a high-ranking Foreign Office official who worked closely with Cavendish-Bentinck during the war, “refused to believe that the Germans used gas chambers in Poland to murder people”.
At the end of August 1943, Allen wrote in a memo that he could “never understand what the advantage of a gas chamber over a simple machinegun or over starving people would be”. He said the recurring mentions of gas chambers in reports were “very general and tended to come from Jewish sources”
Obviously, British intelligence, which was generally well-informed and effective during WWII, simply could not believe these horrible reports could be true. Sometimes, however, there are no room for exaggerations, and the Nazi holocaust is one of the events that could hardly be exaggerated.
8:07:31 PM 
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The US Supreme Court has ruled that the federal authorities can prosecute sick people who receive marijuana prescriptions.
The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various illnesses.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.
The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case involving two seriously ill California women who use marijuana. The court said the prosecution of pot users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the dissent arguing that states should be permitted to write their own rules, and was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas.
Orin Kerr has the details and links. His Volokh co-blogger Randy Barnett actually argued the case to the court, alas unsuccessfully.
6:09:23 PM
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While not unexpected, this is not-so-good news from Lebanon:
Hezbollah, the armed Shiite Muslim movement, and its allies claimed a massive victory in southern Lebanon in the second stage of national elections Sunday, a vote the group says it hopes will prove its strength and send a message of defiance to the United States.
Four hours after polling stations closed, Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheik Naim Kassem, and an ally, Nabih Berri of the Shiite Amal movement, said they had won all 23 seats in this region bordering Israel.
Kassem said that in one constituency, with more than half the votes counted, a Hezbollah official, Mohammed Raad, was leading with 69,207 votes against his closest rival, Elias Abu Rizk, with 7,000 votes. In another area, with more than a third of votes counted, Berri was leading with 35,560 while his closest opponent, Riad Asaad, had 5,304 votes, Kassem said.
The silver lining in this cloud is that if Hezbollah (and its Amal allies) takes democratic responsibility, it may reform from a terrorist group to a democratic movement. Of course, what policies these nutters will want to put in place is worrying the more modern-minded Lebanese.
Ya Libnan gives the background, and adds.
Central and eastern Lebanon will vote next weekend in what promises to be the most heated round.
Hopefully it's only the rhetoric that is heated.
3:57:39 PM
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This is definately good news from Afghanistan:
A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai.
The declaration, signed by 1,000 clerics from across the country, is an endorsement of the US-backed programme of reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban movement that Karzai has been pursuing ahead of the country's first parliamentary elections, due in September.
As the article makes clear on further reading, these very conservative clerics are not exactly the kind of people we'd want to run the future Afghanistan, but denouncing the Taliban and supporting democracy is certainly an important step in the right direction.
Arthur Chrenkoff leads with this story in his 13th installment of Good news from Afghanistan. There are many signs that democracy is catching on in the country.
3:40:42 PM
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Amnesty International keeps blowing it:
Despite highly publicized charges of U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, the head of the Amnesty International USA said on Sunday the group doesn't "know for sure" that the military is running a "gulag."
Executive Director William Schulz said Amnesty, often cited worldwide for documenting human rights abuses, also did not know whether Secretary Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved severe torture methods such as beatings and starvation.
Schulz recently dubbed Rumsfeld an "apparent high-level architect of torture" in asserting he approved interrogation methods that violated international law.
"It would be fascinating to find out. I have no idea," Schulz told "Fox News Sunday."
The world certainly needs human rights organisations. When one of the leading groups flush their own credibility down the toilet in this way, proving itself deeply partisan, it is a sad day for those who suffer abuse around the world.
Arguably, it can also serve as a convenient excuse for the Bush administration not clearing up its prisoner treatment. There has been appalling examples of abuse at Belgram and of course Abu Ghraib. To what degree officials' "the gloves are off" rhetoric after 9/11 contributed to such abuses is not settled, but it's reasonable to conclude it did. The absence of commanders' accountability and discipline on the ground have done serious damage to the US' image.
That said, certain quarters are always willing, even eager, to assume the worst about the US. The incredible amount of ink wasted on discussing alleged "abuse" of a book is a case in point.
2:06:19 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.07.2005; 11:17:52.
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