SMARTEST PRESIDENT EVER STRIKES AGAIN

SMARTEST PRESIDENT EVER STRIKES AGAIN

Poland seeks apology for Obama Holocaust Commnets

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski called it a matter of "ignorance and incompetence."




WASHINGTON — The White House said President Barack Obama misspoke on Tuesday when he referred to a "Polish death camp" while honoring a Polish war hero.

The president's remark had drawn immediate complaints from Poles who said Obama should have called it a "German death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland," to distinguish the perpetrators from the location. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski called it a matter of "ignorance and incompetence."

Obama made the comment while awarding the Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II. Karski died in 2000.

During an East Room ceremony honoring 13 Medal of Freedom recipients, Obama said that Karski "served as a courier for the Polish resistance during the darkest days of World War II. Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself. Jan took that information to President Franklin Roosevelt, giving one of the first accounts of the Holocaust and imploring to the world to take action."

Sikorski tweeted that the White House would apologize for "this outrageous error" and that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk would address the matter on Wednesday.

"It's a pity that such a dignified ceremony was overshadowed by ignorance and incompetence."

Alex Storozynski, president of the Kosciuszko Foundation, said Obama's comment "shocked the Poles present at the White House and those watching on C-SPAN. ... Karski would have cringed if he heard this."

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said: "The president misspoke. He was referring to Nazi death camps in Poland. We regret this misstatement, which should not detract from the clear intention to honor Mr. Karski and those brave citizens who stood on the side of human dignity in the face of tyranny."

Anxious to quell the controversy, the White House also noted that the president had visited the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial while in Poland and that he has repeatedly discussed the bravery of Poles during World War II.

The Polish Embassy in Washington, on its website, has a "how-to guide" on concentration camps that states that references to Polish death camps are "factually incorrect slurs" that should be corrected.

The Associated Press Stylebook states that when referring to "World War II camps in countries occupied by Nazi Germany, do not use phrases like Polish death camps that confuse the location and the perpetrators. Use instead, for example, death camps in Nazi-occupied Poland."

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Ukraine 'Death Match' film hits nerve before Euro 2012

A Russian film released on the eve of Ukraine's hosting of Euro 2012 tells the stirring story of the notorious "Match of Death" played between Soviet footballers and Nazi occupiers in Kiev during World War II.

But the film has reopened still raw wounds in Ukraine and has been accused of anti-Ukrainian bias for its depiction of some locals willingly collaborating with the invading German forces.

The film, "Match," is set in the occupied Ukrainian capital in 1941 and 1942. It is based on the true story of a team of Soviet footballers who played a series of matches against the Nazis 70 years ago.

It shows the Soviet players irking the occupiers with victory after victory. The Nazis then arrange a showpiece game in a swastika-covered stadium to prove their superiority.

Under pressure to lose for propaganda purposes, the Soviet side, called Start, refuses to throw the match and wins it, knowing it will lead to their deaths.

-- "I can't decide for everyone, but my vote is for victory," says the goalkeeper hero, Nikolai Ranevich, in the dressing room at half-time.
-- "But they'll kill us," objects a teammate.
-- "That's a minus, but we'll get over it," he says deadpan.

Shortly after the match, later dubbed the "Match of Death," the Nazis arrested winning team members and sent them to a concentration camp where a number of them were shot.

The sweeping patriotic drama went on release in Russia and Ukraine on May 1, in time for Victory Day celebrations on May 9 and Ukraine's controversial hosting of the Euro 2012 football championship in June.

The film was 70 percent financed by a Kremlin fund set up to promote patriotic cinema and stars one of the country's most popular actors, Sergei Bezrukov, as Ranevich.

Its posters in Russia include a message wishing the national side good luck in the Euro 2012 competition.

"We should show this film to our football team," Bezrukov told journalists after training for the role with former Russia goalkeeper Sergei Ovchninnikov.
But it has angered some Ukrainians with its unflattering depiction of local collaborators enthusiastically welcoming the Nazis and carrying out their orders.
"Let them do the shooting!" a Nazi commander orders local police wearing armbands in the yellow-and-blue colours of the Ukrainian national flag.
And flower-garlanded women hand the traditional welcome of bread and salt to Nazi troops as the new city mayor hangs up a portrait of Hitler.

After delays and protests by nationalist groups, Ukraine's cinema agency finally allowed the release of the film for viewers over 18.

The film's dramatic version of events is also matter of debate, with some historians agreeing that the players were not necessarily pressured to fix the match and were later shot for different reasons.

Indeed a German probe that closed in 2005 concluded there was no evidence the men were shot because of their playing the match, a fact mentioned in the film's final titles with a heavy dose of irony.

"It all happened," said producer Dmitry Kulikov, a history graduate, at a press screening.
"There is no legend. These are facts. And yes -- there are different interpretations."

The film ends with a dark screen and a brief subtitle that the men only enjoyed "seven happy days" after their victory.

One player died under interrogation. The others were taken to the Syrets Nazi concentration camp outside Kiev. Three were shot including goalkeeper Mykola Trusevich, the prototype of Bezrukov's hero. Five others survived.

Kulikov said the film deliberately did not show what happened to the players, instead focusing on their choice to beat the Nazi side at all costs -- which he is convinced was a heroic one.

"Actually this is the main event -- not how they (the Nazis) later took revenge on them. Of course they had a choice," he insisted.

The powerful story featured in a 1962 Soviet film called "Third Time."
It also famously inspired the 1981 US film "Escape to Victory" which starred Sylvester Stallone in the goalkeeper role and moved the action to a German camp for Allied prisoners of war.

The film has had mediocre reviews in Russia, however, with critics accusing it of trivialising events.

The film "uses the most primitive emotional cliches," wrote the Kommersant business daily.

"The historical plot is very strong and serious ... but 'Match' is just another pot-boiler with white-teethed and well-groomed media-friendly actors, dressed up in overly glamorous outfits," wrote Nezavisimaya Gazeta. SOURCE:

NYPD "Stop and Frisks" Hit All-Time High

City police officers stopped and questioned 684,330 people on the street last year.

"Welcome to Berlin circa 1935."










The number of so-called "stop and frisks" is rising.



City police officers stopped and questioned 684,330 people on the street last year, a record since the XXPD began yearly tallies of the tactic in 2002 and a 14 percent increase over 2010.



It couldn't be determined how many people were patted down during the encounters, according to the Wall Street Journal.



Typically, half of the potential suspects who are stopped are frisked or searched.



Of those stopped last year, about 12 percent were arrested or received summonses. The rest were not charged.



Civil-rights advocates claim the practice unfairly targets innocent blacks and other people of color, and that many stops are made without proper cause.



The department calls the tactic an essential crime-fighting tool.

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German lawmaker shocked to be on neo-Nazi list

"Chancellor Angela Merkel has called the existence of the National Socialist Underground cell a disgrace."

BERLIN - A German Jewish lawmaker spoke on Friday of the "nightmarish" discovery his name was on a hit-list found in a neo-Nazi hideout, as Germany struggled to come to terms with news a right-wing trio had been killing immigrants.

Jerzy Montag, a Polish-born member of parliament for the Greens, told Reuters he assumed he been put on the neo-Nazi list because of his criticism of right-wing extremism and his work supporting minority groups in Germany and Israel.

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"It's a nightmarish feeling," said Montag, who has been a member of the Bundestag in Berlin since 2002.

"I try not to think about why I was on their list because it's not going to help me now. But it doesn't feel good."

Germans have been shocked this week by news three neo-Nazis had been killingimmigrant shopkeepers for years and police had failed to connect the murders to the right-wing extremists.

Two of the neo-Nazis committed suicide earlier this month after a botched bank robbery and a third is believed to have set their flat on fire. The three went underground after a bungled attempt to arrest them in 1998.

Police found Montag's name on a computer stick recovered from the rubble which contained a hit-list of 88 people - "88" is a neo-Nazi rallying cry for "Heil Hitler" because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has called the existence of the National Socialist Underground cell a disgrace. Its members are suspected of killing at least nineimmigrants, eight Turks and a Greek, and a police woman, between 2000 and 2007.

"I'm assuming the right-wing terrorism is made up of more than these three people," said Montag, who is often on German talk shows and speaks with a Polish accent. "I think this whole issue of right-wing extremism is going to stay on the agenda."

Nazi history makes right-wing militancy a sensitive subject
Germany's Nazi past makes right-wing militancy a particularly sensitive subject, yet experts have long warned of extremism among disenchanted young people in eastern regions of the country where unemployment is high and job prospects poor.

"I'm not at all surprised that right-wing extremists are killing people," said Bernd Wagner, an expert on the far-right who set up an organization to help extremists start new lives away from neo-Nazis.

"It's still shocking to me that this group has operated in this violent way for such a long time. It's scary. I'm not happy about politicians who remain silent at a time like this." SOURCE:

A History of the Roman Church State

A History of the Roman Church State