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Tidbits - July 2, 2015 - Condition of Black Life - Our Real Problem with Race; Take Down Your Flag; Black Churches Being Burned; Greek Referendum; Columbia Divests From Prisons; more...

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Reader Comments: The Condition of Black Life...Our Real Problem with Race; Take Down Your Flag 140+ artists post videos; Black Churches Being Burned; Greek Referendum; Columbia Divests From Prisons; Naomi Oreskes and Changing Climate; World War II Chemical Experiments Tested Troops By Race; Iran Nuclear Deal; About George Soros and the Ukraine...More Comments; Donate to Rebuild the Churches Fund; Announcement - Art Exhibit of Boycott Posters - Tacoma - July 2-16

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My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past

Charles S. Weinblatt New York Journal of Books
In these days of heightened discussion about "race" and racism, it is useful to keep reminding ourselves about the contingency of racial categories. Jennifer Teege is a German author who is the daughter of a Nigerian father and German mother. In her search for origins, she found that her grandfather was an officer in the SS who ran a World War II concentration camp. Charles S. Weinblatt reviews this harrowing tale of cross-racial family discovery.

Tidbits - February 19, 2015 - Vietnam War, Chapel Hill Murders, Radical Change, Adjunct Profs, Coal Miners, Water, and more...

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Reader Comments - Vietnam - What Really Happened?; Chapel Hill Murders - Honor Their Memory; Chocolate, Mayan civilization; Ukraine; How Radical Change Occurs; Adjunct Profs; Teacher Unions; West Virginia Coal and Blood; Public Pensions; Water Privatization; Save the Postal Service; Timbuktu; UMass Backs Down on Iranian Student Ban; Artistic Expression; Support the Greek People; Announcements; Today in History - FDR Signs Order for Internment of Japanese Americans

Surviving the Nazis, Only to Be Jailed by America

Eric Lichtblau New York Times - Sunday Review
Today the U.S. government treats immigrants from Latin America the way liberated Jews were treated after World War II. Then a presidential aid reported: "we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops." Our nation of immigrants treats modern immigrants with arrest and detention; and modern immigrant (concentration) camps.

In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis

By Eric Lichtblau New York Times
U.S. agencies directly or indirectly hired numerous ex-Nazi police officials and East European collaborators who were manifestly guilty of war crimes. Information was readily available that these were compromised men. The wide use of Nazi spies grew out of a Cold War mentality and McCarthyism. Mr. Hoover, the longtime F.B.I. director, and Mr. Dulles, the C.I.A. director.believed "moderate" Nazis might "be useful" to America, records show.

The Hushed-Up Hitler Factor in Ukraine and the Neo-Nazi Brigade Fighting Pro-Russian Separatists

Dovid Katz and Tom Parfitt
Kiev throws paramilitaries - some openly neo-Nazi - into the front of the battle with rebels. Whether it is hero-worship of Hungary's Miklós Horthy, leaders of Croatia's Hitlerist Ustasha, the Nazis' Waffen SS divisions in Latvia and Estonia, or the likes of Ukraine's Bandera and his OUN and UPA, and the Waffen SS, it seeks to honor eastern European collaborators with Hitler and the Holocaust by repackaging these rightists, a reality shielded from the U.S. public.

Civil Rights Champion Yuri Kochiyama Dies at 93

Japanese-American activist and Malcolm X Ally, Yuri Kochiyama, has died at the age of 93. She spent two years in an internment camp and helped win reparations for Japanese-Americans. She was with Malcolm X when he was assassinated. She inspired generations. Tributes from 18 Million Rising and the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA; links to some of her writings and interviews.

The Last Lost Cause, Review of Fear Itself

Jeremy K. Kessler Jacobin Magazine - Issue 10
Book Review - In Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time, by Ira Katznelson. Was the mid-century dominance of southern Democrats essential to the defeat of Hitler and the triumph of American democracy?
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