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TOKYO SEES PEACE BUT SOVIET FORCE IS STILL ATTACKING Japanese Expect an Attempt to Seize Changkufeng Zone Before Accord Is Reached ONLY ARTILLERY IS ACTIVE Some Moscow Circles Believe Litvinoff Gave Japan Way to Retreat Gracefully By The Associated Press. TOKYO, Saturday, Aug. 6.-Soviet artillery blasted at Japanese positions along the Siberian frontier last night while the Japanese Foreign Office radiated optimism that the border clash soon would be settled peaceably. “We are hopeful of a speedy settlement,” said the Foreign Office spokesman after receiving reports on Thursday’s conference between the Japanese Ambassador, Mamoru Shigemitsu, and Maxim Litvinoff, Soviet Commissar...

UNIONS IN MEXICO IN ATTACK ON JEWS Small Textile Operators Are Held Cause of Crisis Now Facing Entire Industry IMPORT CONTROL IS SEEN Government Urged to Exercise Power to Expel Aliens – Tariff Rise Aids Economic Structure By FRANK L. KLUCKHOHN Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. MEXICO CITY, June 24. – A new anti-Semitic campaign got under way in Mexico today as the official press and organized labor sought to blame small Jewish operator for the crisis in the national textile industry, which is threatening the jobs of 20,000 Mexican workers. The federation of Mexican workers (CTM) today...

THOMAS IS ROUTED AS RIOT HALTS SPEECH IN NEWARK; 400 POLICE END FIGHTING PELTED WITH EGGS Police Rescue Socialist as Angry Group Moves on Speakers’ Stand 3 ARE INJURED IN MELEE Fist Fights Are Numerous – Thomas Holds Outbreak ‘Staged’ – Had Permit Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES. NEWARK, N. J., June 4. – Chanting “We Want Americanism – Not Reds,” and following a band playing patriotic music, about fifty men, mostly war veterans, broke up a meeting in Military Park in the heart of the city tonight, at which Norman Thomas, former Socialist candidate for President, was to...

HENLEIN BREAKS OFF TALKS, RENEWING TENSION IN PRAGUE; NEW TROOP MOVES REPORTED NAZI QUITS CAPITAL Held Uncompromising - No Date Set for Him to See Hodza Again SUDETENS’ FUNERAL TODAY Big Demonstration Planned – Czechs Hear Reich Forces Are Moving in Austria Konrad Henlein, Sudeten German leader, departed from Prague yesterday, leaving his negotiations with Czech Premier Hodza hanging fire. At his Monday night talk, it was understood, he was not conciliatory and yesterday Prague’s optimism decreased, particularly when new German troop movements were reported. Berlin, smarting under a feeling of diplomatic defeat, concentrated first on getting Czechoslovakia to dissolve...

POLISH ARMY SET TO INVADE LITHUANIA UNLESS DEMANDS ARE ACCEPTED TODAY; ‘CLERICALS’ ARE ARRESTED IN VIENNA Hull Declares We Stand for Peace But Not Retreat Before ‘Anarchy’ Urging Arms to Command Respect, He Says We Will Defend Far East Rights – We Bar Alliances, Not Parallel Action Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES. WASHINGTON, March 17. – A firm foreign policy which involves no retreat in the face of disruptive events in Europe and the Far East was presented to the nation today by Secretary Hull in an address at a luncheon of the National Press Club. He strongly...

Hull’s Address Outlining Foreign Policy of the United States Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES. WASHINGTON, March 17. – The address of Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, before the National Press Club today was as follows. In the course of the daily press conferences at the Department of State I have occasion to see many of you and to touch upon day-to-day developments in our foreign relations. Such information as I am able to give you in these conferences must, of necessity, relate to specific questions and oftentimes, to isolated events. Yet upon you, representatives of the press, rests a...

BRITISH TO COURT RIBBENTROP TODAY Ready to Bargain Cautiously if Nazis will Make Genuine Concessions for Peace ROME AGENDA MAPPED Perth and Ciano Await Final Instructions for Talks to Begin Next Week By FERDINAND KUHN Jr. Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. LONDON, March 8. – Timing his visit to coincide with the start of the Anglo-Italian negotiations in Rome, Joachim von Ribbentrop, German Foreign Minister, will arrive in London tomorrow for a series of talks that will show whether or not Anglo-German negotiations are possible also in the near future. Herr von Ribbentrop will see Viscount Halifax,...

How did we go from winning the war in Iraq to losing overnight? Was this decided by the same committee that changed "Peking" to "Beijing"? These word changes are a fortiori evidence that liberals are part of a conspiracy. On what date did "horrible" and "actress" vanish from the English language to be replaced with "horrific" and "actor"? Who decided that? (Meanwhile, I'm still writing "Puff Daddy" in my nightly dream journal when everybody else has started calling him "Diddy.") When did "B.C." (before Christ) and "A.D." (anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") get replaced with "BCE" (before...

Our source must remain covert, but we have gained access to a series of e-mails between James A. Baker III and Lee A. Hamilton, co-chairmen of the Iraq Study Group. (Actually, the ISG designates them as "co-chairs," but even a cursory look shows neither of them to be furniture.) The messages' content sheds an interesting light on the ISG's 79 recommendations. We submit these messages below, without comment: Dear Jim: I've looked at the draft of the ISG recommendations. Do you think anybody will notice there aren't really 79, and that a bunch of them repeat or extend other recommendations?...

How did we go from winning the war in Iraq to losing overnight? Was this decided by the same committee that changed "Peking" to "Beijing"? These word changes are a fortiori evidence that liberals are part of a conspiracy. On what date did "horrible" and "actress" vanish from the English language to be replaced with "horrific" and "actor"? Who decided that? (Meanwhile, I'm still writing "Puff Daddy" in my nightly dream journal when everybody else has started calling him "Diddy.") When did "B.C." (before Christ) and "A.D." (anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") get replaced with "BCE" (before...

President Bush says the Iraq Study Group report “did a good job of showing what is possible.” Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said, “It offers a strong way forward.” The New York Post called it the work of “surrender monkeys.” There is no shortage of opinions. Here are a dozen worth considering.

Well, the ISG -- the Illustrious Seniors' Group -- has released its 79-point plan. How unprecedented is it? Well, it seems Iraq is to come under something called the "Iraq International Support Group." If only Neville Chamberlain had thought to propose a "support group" for Czechoslovakia, he might still be in office. Or guest-hosting for Oprah. But, alas, such flashes of originality are few and far between in what's otherwise a testament to conventional wisdom. How conventional is the ISG's conventional wisdom? Try page 49: "RECOMMENDATION 5: The Support Group should consist of Iraq and all the states bordering Iraq,...

Steady condemnation from conservatives for the Iraq Study Group report may be providing some cover to the Bush administration as it completes its own review of strategy in Iraq, apparently with little enthusiasm for the panel's prescription of U.S. troop withdrawal and dialogue with Syria and Iran. The criticism of the panel, co-chaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), has burst forth from the leading institutions of the right: the National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard; conservative talk radio; and scholars at some of...

Top Democrats in Congress left a White House meeting with President Bush on Friday frustrated over what they perceived as his reluctance to embrace major recommendations from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. "I just didn't feel there today, the president in his words or his demeanor, that he is going to do anything right away to change things drastically," Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, D-Nev., said following the Oval Office meeting. "He is tepid in what he talks about doing. Someone has to get the message to this man that there have to be significant changes." Bush has been cool...

Column One: Jews Wake Up! Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 8, 2006 When the history of our times is written, this week will be remembered as the week that Washington decided to let the Islamic Republic of Iran go nuclear. Hopefully it will also be remembered as the moment the Jews arose and refused to allow Iran to go nuclear. With the publication of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group chaired by former US secretary of state James Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the debate about the war in Iraq changed. From a war for victory...

Former White House advisers to George H.W. Bush are keenly disappointed and concerned about the current President Bush's initial reaction to the report by the Iraq Study Group. They consider him rather dismissive of the group's conclusions, issued yesterday, which include the view that current Iraq policy is failing. The group recommends a variety of important changes, such as assigning U.S. troops to play more of an advisory and training role and less of a combat role. The ISG also recommends that the United States withdraw most of its combat brigades by early 2008 and that the administration increase diplomatic...

Isn’t the main problem with the Iraq Study Group that it’s just majorly lame? Almost anybody could crank out this kind of generalized boilerplate (“We were told by a general/a translator/my taxi driver/my Ukrainian hooker…”), and most of us could do it without a budget of gazillions of dollars and an Annie Leibovitz photo session. Of course, Syria “should” do this and Iran “should” do that and, if they were Sandra Day O’Connor, I’m sure they would. But they’re not. And the only specific strategic proposal is a linkage between Iraq and a “renewed and sustained commitment” to a “comprehensive...

The "bipartisan" Iraq panel has recommended that Iran and Syria can help stabilize Iraq. You know, the way Germany and Russia helped stabilize Poland in '39. Now that Democrats have won the House, they can concentrate on losing the war. Despite all the phony conservative Democrats who got elected as gun-totin' hawks, the Democrats will uniformly vote to dismantle every aspect of the war on terrorism. They've started a runaway train and can't stop it now. The Democratic base is at a fever pitch with visions of storm troopers listening to their phone calls and ruthlessly torturing innocent accountants at...

RUSH: We will start with the Iraq surrender group, big press conference today chaired by Lee Hamilton and James Baker. I think one of the best ways to share with you my thoughts on this is to read to you an e-mail I got from an Air Force friend of mine, a veteran in Iraq watching this this morning. "Hey, Rush, I'm climbing out of my skin here, watching the Iraq surrender group unfold on TV, but they're missing the point. Iraq is not the problem. The hatred our enemy has for us, that's the problem. Iraq is only a...

A reference to Palestinians' "right of return" in the report issued by the high-level Iraq Study Group broke a diplomatic taboo which sparked immediate concern in Israel and surprise among Middle East policy experts. The reference was buried deep inside a 160-page report that urged US President George W. Bush to renew efforts to revive Israel-Palestinian peace talks as part of a region-wide bid to end the chaos in Iraq. "This report is worrisome for Israel particularly because, for the first time, it mentions the question of the 'right of return' for the Palestinian refugees of 1948," said a senior...

Nearly four years after U.S. military forces toppled the Saddam Hussein regime, the United States faces a “grave and deteriorating” situation in Iraq and the Middle East, according to the bipartisan commission headed by the commission’s co-chairmen, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, and former Rep. Lee Hamilton. The report painted a grim picture of the situation in Iraq and delivered 79 recommended actions. “There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved,” the report says. The commissioners warn that if the situation continues to deteriorate, there is a risk of a “slide...

Live on cable now...

The White House has been examining a proposal by James Baker to launch a Middle East peace effort without Israel. The peace effort would begin with a U.S.-organized conference, dubbed Madrid-2, and contain such U.S. adversaries as Iran and Syria. Officials said Madrid-2 would be promoted as a forum to discuss Iraq's future, but actually focus on Arab demands for Israel to withdraw from territories captured in the 1967 war. They said Israel would not be invited to the conference. “As Baker sees this, the conference would provide a unique opportunity for the United States to strike a deal without...

“It is 1938; Iran is Germany; and it is racing to acquire nuclear weapons.” Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly punctuated his speech in Los Angeles earlier this month with that sentence. It was an effective rhetorical device, conveying both a sense of threat and a sense of urgency. But 1938 may be relevant in more ways than as a rhetorical device. Revisiting that year, through Winston Churchill’s compelling account in “The Gathering Storm,” is an instructive exercise, and one the Iraq Study Group might consider as it completes its deliberations. February 20, 1938: Churchill spent the entire night without sleep, “consumed by...

In his upcoming book about the horrors of the 20th century, "The War of the World," the British historian Niall Ferguson has a chapter called "The Pity of Peace." It is about 1938, when World War II loomed, and Britain -- especially and importantly Britain -- did precious little to stop it. The warnings of Churchill -- "believe me, it may be the last chance . . ." -- were ignored, and the government under Neville Chamberlain obstinately pursued a policy that forever after made the word appeasement one of the most odious in history. Somehow, though, it looks like...

As the National Education Association meets in Orlando this year, I've been reminded of an old newspaper I picked up a few years ago that describes the NEA convention in 1938. Here's how it was written up by the Associated Press for the York Gazette and Daily June 30, 1938: LEGION HEAD NOT ALLOWED TO SPEAK TO NEA CONVENTION Doherty Sought Permission To Answer Criticsm Of His Organization............... (By the Associated Press) New York June 29--A night gathering of the National Education Association came to an abrupt close at Madison Square Garden tonight when its president refused permission to Daniel...

The pummeling rains of two weeks ago made Donna Gustin Crippen feel as if she were 8 years old and it was 1938 again — when rain fell in feet, not inches, and her neighbors were swept to their deaths. She remembers all too well the "Great Flood of 1938," when unexpectedly powerful rains caused thousands of square miles of Southern California to revert to an inland sea. --- The Los Angeles, Santa Clara, San Gabriel, Rio Hondo and Santa Ana rivers flowed out of control. San Fernando Valley ranches flooded, as did roads there and elsewhere, forcing the postponement...

Spain’s ‘Munich’ Remembered James Humes Tuesday, Mar. 23, 2004 Evil had flaunted its ugly face. Words of hate and threats of destruction had spewed from it. So people in fear of the monster sought to mollify it. Europe and England were afraid that if they met it head on, they would be the next targets of terror and victims of violence. The time was 1938, and the monster was Adolph Hitler, who was threatening war, unless he was given a piece of Czechoslovakia. The peoples of Europe and their leaders had already witnessed the Nazi wickedness: the marching of storm...

3/11 Europe's Second Munich? March 11, 2004, was easily the greatest victory for terrorism since 9/11 itself. It was a victory not simply because so many innocents were murdered in cold blood - going about their business in a free and democratic society. We know how thrilled the Jihadist terrorists are when they can murder in large numbers - as they have now done in Iraq and Morocco and Bali and New York. It was a victory because it also succeeded in provoking the one response terrorists long for and feed upon. Faced with mass murder, the Spanish electorate voted...

(April 18) 'Demolishing the homes of Arab civilians... Shooting handcuffed prisoners... Forcing local Arabs to test areas where mines may have been planted..." These sound like the sort of accusations made by British and other European officials concerning Israel's recent actions in Jenin. In fact, they are descriptions from official British documents concerning the methods used by the British authorities to combat Palestinian Arab terrorism in Jenin and elsewhere in 1938. The documents were declassified by London in 1989. They provide details of the British Mandatory government's response to the assassination of a British district commissioner by a Palestinian Arab...

For neo-conservative and other right-wing US hawks, Madrid has suddenly become Munich in 1938 and Spain's Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. In an extraordinarily unanimous campaign, newspaper columnists and television commentators are flooding the media with cries of "appeasement," the dreaded epithet with which Chamberlain was permanently tagged after his meeting in Munich with Adolf Hitler, which permitted the Nazis to slice off a major chunk of Czechoslovakia. In the hawks' view, the electoral defeat of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's People's Party in the wake of last Thursday's bombings, followed by...

Hitler at Home on the Internet By TOM ZELLER The predominant color scheme of Hitler's "bright, airy chalet" was "a light jade green." Chairs and tables of braided cane graced the sun parlor, and the Führer, "a droll raconteur," decorated his entrance hall with "cactus plants in majolica pots." Such are the precious and chilling observations in an irony-free 1938 article in Homes & Gardens, a British magazine, on Hitler's mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps. A bit of arcana, to be sure, but one that has dropped squarely into the current debate over the Internet and intellectual property. This...

<p>A fawning 1938 article by Homes & Gardens magazine about Hitler's Bavarian mountain retreat remains widely available on the Web, even after the discoverer and original poster of the article took it off his site when the magazine demanded its removal.</p>

<p>Granted, there is upheaval in the world and there are battles where a great deal is at stake -- life itself. All the more precious, then, the minor skirmishes on the home front that mean a great deal in a small way and remind us of how lucky we are to feel innocent hatreds, from summer to summer, at the ballpark.</p>