New heading format

New heading format

Readers will notice that all my blogs seem to have a bad case of the stutters today -- with each heading repeated.  It is the latest Google brainstorm.  They now demand that you have one overall heading on a blog post, not a small group of individual headings within a blog post.  Beats me!  What has been OK for years no longer is.  We now have heading incorrectness, apparently.

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How Hollywood bowed to the wishes of Hitler: 1930s studio bosses censored films on the whim of the Nazis and even funded German armament

It may not have made the final cut of Hollywood's history, but a film historian says major American film studios collaborated with Nazi Germany in the lead up to the Second World War.

From investing in German rearmament to editing out references to crimes being committed against Jews, studios including MGM, Paramount and 20th Century Fox failed to stand up to Hitler, Ben Urwand claims.

'I want to bring out a hidden episode in Hollywood history and an episode that has not been reported accurately,' the Harvard scholar said.

Although other film historians dispute his claims, Urwand believes that Hollywood studio chiefs were happy to work with Nazi censors to change or cancel productions so that they could keep access to the German film market.

From 1932, Nazi laws meant studios could have their licenses revoked if they produced films, shown in Germany or abroad, that were considered offensive to Germans.

In his book, The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler, Urwand said that Hollywood was happy to bow to Hitler's demands.

'Collaboration: it's not my word or invention. I got it from materials from both sides. It's the word that's regularly used to describe their relationship,' the 35-year-old told the Guardian.

He added that the German head of MGM spoke of the 'satisfying collaboration on both sides' to the press.

MGM also invested in German rearmament to get around currency export restrictions, the historian said.

Urwand believes that filmmakers not only wanted to continue working during the build up to the war, they also thought Hitler may win the war and wanted to safeguard the future of their businesses.

MGM, Paramount and 20th-Century Fox did not leave Germany until mid-1940. But even after Hollywood started making anti-Nazi films, it continued to erase reference to the Jews because studio chiefs, including Jewish refugees, wanted to 'avoid special pleading on their behalf'.

Urwand said studio bosses could not claim ignorance of the atrocities being carried out against the Jews because they had been forced to fire Jewish employees.

'Hollywood is collaborating and the Nazis are having the final say on several important movies that would have exposed what was going on in Germany,' he said.

He added: 'I wouldn't want what I write to be generalisable about Jews, but specific Jews in the movie business made decisions to work with Nazi leaders.'

Urwand, whose Jewish grandparents went into hiding in the war, added: 'It was [Jack] Warner who personally ordered that the word “Jew” be removed from all dialogue in the 1937 film The Life of Emile Zola"."

He told the New York Times Warner's studio was the first to invite Nazi officials to Los Angeles to suggest cuts.  Warner was also said to have taken a cruise on Hitler's old yacht in 1945, where he discussed post-war business opportunities, Urwand claims.

The historian found a letter from January 1938 in which a 20th Century Fox worker was asking Hitler about his views on films. The letter was signed 'Heil Hitler'.

Studios were also visited by a Nazi consultant, who would demand edits to films seen as being anti-German.

There are also instances of whole films being dropped, like the 1936 MGM movie It Can't Happen Here, which showed democracy winning over fascism.

The film, based on Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis's novel, was banned over 'fear of international politics' and the potential of boycotts abroad.

Nazi meddling in Hollywood has been well documented, even at the time. A headline in Newsweek in 1937 read: Long Arm of Hitler Extends to Hollywood Studio.

Urwand however, has looked at how much Hollywood bent to accommodate Hitler's wishes.

He claims that Nazi interference in the film industry began with the release of All Quiet on the Western Front in 1930, when Joseph Goebbels told protesters to set off stink bombs and release mice in the movie theaters.

Carl Laemmle, the Jewish German-American head of Universal, then agreed to cuts.

Hitler was said to have enjoyed films such as Mutiny on the Bounty and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. He also liked Mr Smith Goes to Washington, because it showed democracy in a poor light.

And while he is said to have liked Laurel and Hardy, Hitler was not keen on Charlie Chaplin's portray of him in The Great Dictator, according to the Guardian.

However, rival historian Tom Doherty claims that U.S. commerce department files show that rather than working with the Nazis, MGM had been advised to invest in armaments to get around currency being blocked.

'I don't see sinister, greedy monsters. I see people trying to cope with this bizarre anomaly and negotiate in a way that made sense to them,' the author of Hollywood and HItler: 1933-1939, said.

Others have highlighted how the same studio heads who complied with Nazi censorship also paid for a spy ring.

'The moguls who have been castigated for putting business ahead of Jewish identity and loyalty were in fact working behind the scenes to help Jews,' Steven Ross, of the University of Southern California, said.

SOURCE

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If you've got money, exit U.S. citizenship while you can

James R. Mellon is a very, very wealthy man as you might expect of someone who is a heir to the famous Mellon family. James Mellon is now a citizen of the world, never spending enough time in any one tax farm to become legally required to pay them any income tax. But he does this without the US citizenship imposed on him at birth. In 1977 after the shock of realizing that the US would hound him for income taxes no matter where in the world he went or for how long, Mellon gave up his US citizenship after becoming a citizen of the British Virgin Islands. This is exactly the sort of thing we have been recommending at TDV and making possible with TDV Passports.

The US is the most aggressive tax farmer among the tax farm nation-states infecting the planet. The US authorities will follow US citizens and permanent residents (tax livestock) to the ends of the earth for the rest of their lives in order to collect their extortion money.

Giving up US citizenship was just the first of Mellon's theft-prevention tactics. After that he set up various companies -- all legally -- to shield his assets even more. This is the kind of thing that TDV Offshore can help you do, too. Recently a massive leak of offshore banking files gave Mellon some negative exposure, not that he particularly cares. While the collectivists of the world are outraged at how much of "their" infrastructure money is being hidden from their redistributionist governments, Mellon says, "I do not care what people think. I am interested only, whether what I am doing is legal. And what I do, was and is legal."

Of course, he is right. It should not matter what the thieves and tax-lovers of the world think about what you do. As long as it's legal, you should employ every single strategy to keep as much of the money you rightfully earn safe from government theft as you possibly can. Heck, even if its not legal. Although to keep ourselves out of being fed through a tube at Guantanamo Bay we don't offer any PT solutions that are illegal.

The USSA government has taken notice of the trends, and is planning to do something about it. It will start with making it harder to give up citizenship, taking as much as possible from those who choose to leave.  Just listen to Hawaiian governor, Neil Ambercrombie (Communist - Hawaii), describe expatriates: "Benedict Arnolds who would sell out their citizenship, sell out their country in order to maintain their wealth". The knives are sharpening and it will culminate in no one being able to leave at all. Edward Snowden was not the first and will not be the last to have his passport revoked.  And, that wall along the Mexican border that the Senate is considering? Its true purpose will be revealed in the coming years. It's not to keep Mexicans out - funny that people think that is what it is for, especially since there are now more Mexicans fleeing the US than going there according to the Washington Post. Also, the Senate is considering legislation to retroactively punish permanent expatriates who gave up their US slave cards in the last ten years.

That's how bad it is. They are willing to punish people for things that weren't even crimes at the time. There is no reasoning with criminals this vindictive and with the capacity for such violence. The best you can hope to do is get out of their way. Tune in to TDV for ways to protect yourself from them, but your first line of defense is to divorce yourself from their corrupt regime. Even if they come after permanent expats retroactively, renouncing that citizenship will still leave you in a much better situation than remaining a citizen within the empire or in any of the crumbling Western nation states.

And the best news is that the PT lifestyle is not for just billionaires and millionaires anymore.  Offshore companies in tax-free jurisdictions have now become a cheap commodity and cheap airfare and the internet have made almost anyone who wants to be mobile able to do it.

We recently met and interviewed (in the TDV subscriber letter) a young web designer from Holland who had enough of it and came to Acapulco, Mexico.  He opened an offshore company through TDV Offshore and now, fully legally, has double the income he used to have.  Plus, he lives in a freer place on the beach with his 100mb ($60/month) internet connection and says it was the best decision of his life.

 SOURCE

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American Liberals Embrace Fatherless (And Motherless) Families

With the Supreme Court giving a major boost to gay marriage, liberals face fewer impediments to their relentless push for fatherless (and motherless) families.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. In a speech for Father’s Day 2008, Barack Obama was emphatic in championing fatherhood: “We know the statistics -- that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”

Obama added: “Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives … family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation.” If “we are honest with ourselves,” said Obama, “we’ll admit that … too many fathers” are missing -- they are “missing from too many lives and too many homes.”

Obama summed up: “We need fathers.”

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, as a conservative, I don’t know a single conservative who would disagree with any of this -- alas, a rare moment of complete agreement with Barack Obama. For that matter, I don’t know any liberals who would disagree.

So, if that's the case, why are President Obama and liberals suddenly pushing unrelentingly for fatherless families -- or, more specifically, for a new form of American family that is fatherless?

The answer, of course, is gay marriage. With their sudden embrace of gay marriage, a massive shift not only within America, American culture, and human civilization, but also within the Democratic Party, liberals/progressives nationwide are -- whether they realize it or not -- simultaneously advocating a redefinition of family that embraces fatherless families. Think about it: married female-female parents will be households without dads.

In so doing, liberals are shattering a rare, precious consensus that they had nurtured with conservatives. There are few things that liberals and conservatives agree upon, but one of them was the crucial importance of children being raised in a home with a dad and a mom.

In his 1984 Father’s Day proclamation, President Ronald Reagan described fathers as “beacons” of “strength and well-being,” of “leadership and direction.” They give their children guidance and teach them “integrity, truth, and humility.” “Every father rises to his tallest stature as he selflessly cares for his family, his wife, and his children,” said Reagan.

Liberals from Walter Mondale and Daniel Patrick Moynihan to the pages of The New Republic and New York Times emphatically agreed with Reagan. A decade later, such sentiments were consistently reinforced by Democratic President Bill Clinton, who understood the toll delivered by fatherless homes. Groups like the National Fatherhood Initiative popped up, creating wonderful ad campaigns reminding Americans of something that societies long deemed indispensable: kids need dads. Sons need dads. Daughters need dads. Families need dads.

That principle remains unchanged. What has changed, however, is liberals' fierce acceptance and advancement of gay marriage. In this rapid push, they are jettisoning the national consensus on fathers, demanding a form of parenting that excludes fathers. As for those who disagree with their new paradigm, they are derided as cruel, thoughtless bigots, with no possible legitimate reason for their unenlightened position.

Actually, what today’s liberals are advocating is far more radical than that. They are pushing not only for fatherless families but also, conversely, for motherless families. Think about it: married male-male parents (the other half of gay marriage) will be households without moms.

Everyone reading my words knows that mothers are utterly irreplaceable. That’s a statement of the obvious. I’m incapable of doing what my wife does. Fathers raising kids without their mother because of divorce, death, or some other unfortunate circumstance, know what I’m talking about. Why would anyone, let alone a country or culture, want to open the door for a reconstitution of “parenthood” and “family” that, by literal definition, excludes mothers?

To be sure, we know why liberals are doing this. Again, they are doing this in the name of gay rights.

But supporting gay rights and the right of gay people not to be discriminated against should not automatically mean supporting the literal redefinition of marriage. Why must tolerance mean the redefinition of something as ancient and stable as marriage between one man and one woman?

The original push for gay rights was about stopping discrimination. Gays should not be persecuted, denied benefits, fired because of their sexual orientation. We all support that. But like with many other things, liberals in their zeal for whatever new “rights” are pushing too far, without pausing to carefully consider the impact. Their furious dash to redefine marriage in the name of gay rights has innumerable consequences that they have not begun to try to contemplate; that includes a new marriage/parenthood paradigm that repudiates their onetime insistence on father-based families, and even mother-based families.

Liberals always appeal to our emotions regarding children: What about the children? Well, yes, what about the children?

As Barack Obama said in 2008, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that children need fathers. Yes, if we’re honest. They need fathers, and mothers.

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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