The International Committee of the Red Cross is supposedly "an independent, neutral organization ensuring humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of war and armed violence". That's what they have stated for many years despite voices protesting their bias against some groups, their affinity for others. Their vaunted claims of independence and neutrality and assisting victims of war has taken another hit with the discovery that:
The passport used by notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann to enter Argentina in 1950 has been found by accident in an archive in Buenos Aires. The passport, still in good condition, was issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. Eichmann was one of the main executors of Adolf Hitler's 'final solution', the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II.
But that fits in with the ICRC's real activities which helped many Nazis escape justice after World War ll. That was then and this is now; the bias continues. As explained on their home page, they accept three emblems: a cross, a crescent and a diamond. The cross is the symbol of Christianity, the crescent represents Islam but what is that diamond? Some members of that "independent, neutral organization" totally objected to the Jewish star that is the emblem of the Israeli equivalent, Magen Dovid Adom (Red Shield of David) thus barring them from ICRC acceptance until they devised that diamond as camouflage.
Could it be that the organization isn't as neutral, as independent as they claim? And as for their humanitarianism in war zones, the victims in Darfur haven't benefited. And the ICRC still complacently accepts, without an accompanying international outcry, the refusal of the Arab countries and their ngo deadly militias to deny them access to the three Israeli hostages kidnapped last year.
Source
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In praise of money
Perhaps the world's most misquoted Biblical verse is "money is the root of all evil". The actual words are "the love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10). But this has not stopped people from demonizing money and those who exchange and loan it. Throughout history, bankers and those involved in finance - ranging from the Medici family, the Rothschilds, to modern hedge funds - have received a generally negative press. Even a Nobel laureate in economics, former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz, has used the expression "dictatorships of international finance" to describe the malign influences he believes are exerted by Western financiers over Latin America and Africa.
Unfortunately such rhetoric encourages us to forget what may be called the miracle of money and the benefits it brings to our lives. In this instance, familiarity has not only bred contempt, but ignorance. Historians continue to debate money's origins and when money-based economies began to supersede barter-orientated systems. What is not disputed is how useful societies find money once it begins to replace barter, especially when it assumes forms such as commodity-money, fiat-money, credit-money, and fiduciary media.
One of the architects of West Germany's post-war economic recovery, the Swiss-German economist Wilhelm R"pke, once wrote that it is impossible to understand civilization's emergence without the rise of money - an event which truly merits the adjective "revolutionary." It is difficult to think, for example, of a similar instrument more capable of simultaneously fulfilling so many varied purposes. Money has, for example, macro-economic functions: it provides the framework for market allocation that we call prices; it is a causative factor in the economy; it is also a liquid asset. But money also possesses micro-economic utility. It is a medium of exchange, a store and measure of value, a means of payment, a unit of account, and a standard of deferred payment.
Perhaps one way to grasp money's crucial importance is to imagine a world without it. Most obviously, we would find ourselves faced with all of a barter-economy's limitations. Everyone would be compelled to directly exchange one or more concrete goods, such as food and tools, for other physical commodities. In barter-systems, it is easy to exchange a small number of goods without a common standard of value. The problem, as noted by the nineteenth-century economist William Stanley Jevons, is that any increase in the variety and number of commodities makes it increasingly difficult to calculate the comparative exchange-value of goods. Eventually such calculation becomes impossible, and economic growth is consequently stunted.
More here
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Some articles recently up on ICJS
ICJS is devoted to countering media antagonism to Israel -- particularly antagonism emanating from Australia's public broadcasters. It assembles articles from various sources
The Islamic Reconquest of Palestine
Lebanon a launch pad for al-Qa'ida's new phase
Correspondence from Salah Choudhury to Naomi Ragen
George Soros and the problem of self-hating Hebrews
One on one: "you want to die but don't"
Interesting Times: Which occupation
Jerusalem - 40th Anniversary of reunification
The Koranic quotations trap
The Sarkozy Victory
Worrying begins at home
Infidel
The new demographic balance in Europe and its consequences
Above: Law & Order star and former Senator Fred Thompson mingles at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington on Saturday, April 29, 2006. At right is his wife Jeri Kehn, a (former?) political media consultant at the Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, and McPherson law firm in Washington, D.C. Fred is my hope for next Prez
For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here
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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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