It is not known that one of America's most successful technology companies was complicit in helping Nazi leader Adolph Hitler build a more efficient killing machine before and during World War II, one author charges.

Edwin Black, who's groundbreaking work, "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" (Crown Books, 2001, and Three Rivers Press, 2002), has just re-released this powerful book of a decade ago in paperback. In the original version, Black says Hitler's Nazi regime developed an "alliance" with IBM that helped the 20th century's most notorious dictator "to accelerate and in many ways automate key aspects of his persecution of Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others the Nazis considered enemies."

Black says, based on his research, the alliance, which he says was engineered by IBM's president, Thomas J. Watson saw the transfer of technology that enabled Hitler to create the world's most sophisticated killing apparatus. It involved the use of special IBM punch cards which were developed and utilized by the Nazi regime to help "organize and manage the initial identification and social expulsion of Jews and others, the confiscation of their property, their ghettoization, their deportation, and, ultimately, even their extermination."

He went onto say the technology was provided through a special wartime Polish subsidiary that reported to IBM New York, "mainly to its headquarters at 590 Madison Avenue." During the war years, and even after reports surfaced that Hitler's Nazi Germany was engaged in mass extermination of Jews and other undesirables, "not a single sentence written by IBM personnel has been discovered in any of the documents questioning the morality of automating the Third Reich," Black wrote.

Ron Paul May Have Secretly Won The Iowa Caucuses. - Ron Paul may have officially come in third tonight, but if the campaign's caucus strategy went off as planned, then Paul may actually be the real winner of the first Republican voting contest. That's because Paul's massive organizational push in Iowa focused on both winning votes, and also on making sure that Paul supporters stuck around after the vote to make sure they were selected as county delegates — the first step towards being elected as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. That's because Iowa's Republican caucuses are non-binding — they are technically just a straw poll, so once selected, delegates are free to vote for whichever presidential candidate they choose.

North Korean doctors treating then-leader Kim Jong-Il following his stroke in 2008 were sent to the United States for training, a South Korean doctor said Thursday. - Pyongyang's ambassador to the United Nations had asked the MD Anderson Cancer Center -- based in Houston and part of the University of Texas -- to train three North Korean doctors, Lee Byung-Hoon told AFP. "The chief of the centre contacted the US government after being asked to secretly meet the North's ambassador, and got approval to accept them as exchange scholars," said Lee, an adviser to the Korean Medical Association. He cited unidentified medics at the US centre for his information. The communist North habitually lambasts the United States as "warmongers" and the "imperialist enemy."

The Israeli government has launched a program to pay students to promote the Israeli agenda on Facebook and internet chatrooms. - Students participating in the program will receive a two thousand dollar stipend from the Jewish Agency, part of the Israeli government, to spend five hours a week online promoting talking points provided by the Israeli government. According to the National Union of Israeli Students, which is a partner in the program, it is aimed at quote “deepening and expanding hasbara activities of students”. Hasbara is the Hebrew word for propaganda. Critics say that the information provided to student participants in the program does not make any distinction between anti-Jewish statements and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’s policies. Instead, program organizers say that all criticism of Israel constitutes ‘anti-Semitism’ and should be combated using cyber-warfare and propaganda. To that end, they will be sending hundreds of self-proclaimed ‘student missionaries’ to colleges around the world to promote the online propaganda program and to encourage students to support the Israeli government’s agenda. To be eligible for the program, students must have lived in Israel for three years and consider themselves active Zionists, as well as having served in the Israeli military.

Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period (29 December 2011 – 04 January 2012)

Shooting: During the reporting period, IOF killed a Palestinian resistance activist and wounded a civilian in the Gaza Strip. Another civilian was wounded in the West Bank. In the Gaza Strip, on 30 December 2012, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at two Palestinian resistance activists in Juhor al-Dik village, south of Gaza City. An activist was killed by shrapnel throughout the body. On 31 December 2012, a Palestinian civilian was wounded when Israeli soldiers positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel fired at him. During the reporting period, Israeli gunboats fired at Palestinian fishing boats in the Gaza Strip. Israeli naval troops also arrested 3 fishermen, but released two of them later. On 29 December 2012, Israeli warplanes bombarded a plot in the northern Gaza Strip, but no casualties were reported. In the West Bank, during the reporting period, IOF used excessive force to disperse peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to Israeli settlement activities and the construction of the annexation wall in the West Bank. As a result, a Palestinian civilian was wounded. Dozens of Palestinian civilians and international human rights defenders suffered from tear gas inhalation. Incursions: During the reporting period, IOF conducted at least 53 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, during which they arrested 29 Palestinian civilians, including 6 children. Restrictions on Movement: Israel had continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.

Twelve Jewish extremists involved in "price tag" arson attacks on Palestinians in recent weeks have escaped jail time, but will instead be barred from the West Bank for up to a year, Israel's military revealed in a statement on Tuesday. - Referring to the men as "activists," the statement said that one man has been banned for one year, while the others will not be able to enter the occupied Palestinian territory for varied periods between three and nine months. Israel's military said these men were suspected of involvement in violence targeting Palestinians and Israeli forces, and described the orders issued as a "preventative measure to remove the threat by the activists in the area." Israeli media reports said the settlers named in the orders lived at four Jewish enclaves built in the territory Israel captured in a 1967 war which Palestinians seek for a state.

PIC: Hundreds of Jewish settlers storm Salfit village
IMEMC: Israeli settlers suspected of torching Palestinian vehicles in Bethlehem area
AWIP: Jewish settlers have carried out over 100 attacks on Palestinians in 2011

From a 2009 US/Israel defense drill

The Israeli military is gearing up together with U.S. forces for a major missile defense exercise, the Israeli military announced Thursday, as tension between Iran and the international community escalates.

The drill is called "Austere Challenge 12" and is designed to improve defense systems and cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli forces. It follows a 10-day Iranian naval exercise near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Israel's military said the drill with the U.S. was planned long ago and is not tied to recent events. Both Israeli and U.S. officials said the exercise would be the largest-ever joint drill by the two countries. The Iranian war games came as the West was adopting new sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program, charging it is making weapons. Iran insists its program is peaceful. Israel [says she] considers Iran a strategic threat because of its nuclear and missile programs and support of violent groups in Lebanon and Gaza, as well as frequent references by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Israel's destruction.

AWIP: Thousands of US soldiers to be deployed in Israel for drill
AWIP: Push by Zionist top officials in Washington and Tel Aviv to devise anti-Iran scenarios

Is it time that the Cape Province rethinks its attachment to the Republic of South Africa? - With the ANC failing dismally to control it's own, and cadre deployment being the cause for the entire bankruptcy of more and more government departments, from the very top all the way down to the lowest levels. And now the call by it's non-government alliance partners to nationalize and scrap the provinces. Especially now with members of the ANC Alliance now calling for the total abolishment of South Africa's provinces is it not also the best opportunity for citezens of the provinces to rethink the union of the republic and call for self governance.

Since 2010 a group of self-confessed pirates have tried to get their beliefs recognized as an official religion in Sweden. After their request was denied several times, the Church of Kopimism – which holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred symbols – is now approved by the authorities as an official religion. The Church hopes that its official status will remove the legal stigma that surrounds file-sharing.