Sott.net is beginning a commemorative series of articles in view of the fact that people on this planet don't really seem to be remembering what they swore they would 'never forget'. History is repeating, it is happening NOW, and the beginnings are before our very eyes. Consider these articles our warning to humanity. We hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears.

Alfred Hitchcock was an artist. He understood the language of film like few others have or do - how to communicate on a visceral, emotional level with imagery and sound - and it shows in his psychological thrillers, like Psycho, The Birds, and Vertigo, among countless others. But he also made a film most people haven't heard about. In 1945 he was commissioned to assist in a documentary film utilizing footage taken by British, American and Russian cameramen/soldiers of the liberated concentration camps stretching across Europe in the wake of World War II. Hitchcock himself only ended up working on the film for a month, helping with the visual presentation of the footage and refusing payment, before various delays cropped up, studio executives axed the project, changed its focus, got a new director (Billy Wilder), and eventually released a shortened, totally different version entitled Death Mills.

On January 26, HBO will air a new documentary, Night Will Fall, telling the story of the original film, which sat unseen in an archive for decades, and its restoration. FRONTLINE first broadcast a restored version of the film, Memory of the Camps, in 1985. You can watch it below. (It is also available on PBS's website.)

The original purpose of the film was to show people the horrors of Nazi Germany, "as a document, to serve our collective memory". In other words, to never forget. To see the absolute horror of which 'humanity' is capable, and hopefully to learn the lesson so that it might not happen again. "Never again!" is the slogan that most immediately comes to mind when I think of the Holocaust, and it is a good sentiment, if only we would open our eyes and ears, in order to truly see what it will take to prevent another atrocity on this scale. But we can't. We are on the same road to destruction. It will happen again, and humanity won't see it coming. Well, very few will see it, and their voices will count for nothing. There were those who saw what was coming before World War II, and they were ignored, ridiculed, arrested, or killed.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Watch the film first.

The man Vladimir Putin is relying on to end the deepest currency crisis of his presidency has seen worse.

As deputy head of the central bank after the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Dmitry Tulin, then in his mid-30s, had to help organize the rollout of a dozen new currencies against the backdrop of runaway price growth across the former communist empire. Now 58, Tulin is back at Bank of Russia, this time to craft monetary policy as the ruble's biggest retreat in 17 years shakes the foundations of a shrinking economy.

The militant group Islamic State released an online video on Tuesday purporting to show two Japanese captives and threatening to kill them unless it received $200 million in ransom.

A black-clad figure with a knife, standing in a barren landscape along with two kneeling men wearing orange clothing, said the Japanese public had 72 hours to pressure their government to stop its "foolish" support for the U.S.-led coalition waging a military campaign against Islamic State.

"To the prime minister of Japan: Although you are more than 8,500 km away from the Islamic State, you willingly have volunteered to take part in this crusade," said the militant, who spoke in English.

An interesting thing happened in Washington recently, and it had nothing to do with Beltway politics, Democrats vs. Republicans, or any of the other standard fare for the middle of the week in mid-January. Rather, a relatively small, little publicized event took place at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a prominent liberal-leaning think tank in Washington.

The event, "Russia's Opposition in a Time of War and Crisis," featured prominent Russian liberal opposition parliamentarian (member of the Russian Duma) Ilya Ponomarev, a noted critic of Russian President Putin, providing a detailed presentation regarding the current political climate in Russia, and the potential for the ousting or overthrow of the Russian government. Yes, you heard that right. A Russian elected official came to the United States to give a talk about how best to effect regime change in his own country.

At this point, the question is not so much whether what Ponomarev did was improper. The much more pressing issue is whether or not, by making this presentation in Washington precisely at the moment of heightened tensions between the US and Russia, Ponomarev has committed treason. While this may seem a rather extreme characterization, it is in fact quite appropriate.

The entire presentation can be viewed here.

Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner charged in an emotional address that domestic and US interests were pushing to topple her government, and could even kill her.

Domestic business interests "are trying to bring down the government, with international (US) help," she said.

Kirchner said that on her recent visit to Pope Francis -- a fellow Argentine whose help she has sought in Argentina's ongoing debt default row -- police warned her about supposed plots against her by Islamic State activists.


"So, if something happens to me, don't look to the Mideast, look north" to the United States, Kirchner said at Government House.

Don't believe US: Kirchner

Just hours after the US embassy here warned its citizens to take extra safety precautions in Argentina, an aggravated Kirchner said "when you see what has been coming out of diplomatic offices, they had better not come in here and try to sell some tall tale about ISIS trying to track me down so they can kill me."

The project leader of the controversial film, "Gray State," along with his wife and daughter, were found dead in their home in what authorities have labeled an "apparent murder-suicide."

The bodies of David Crowley, 29, his wife Komel, 28, and their 5-year-old daughter were discovered lying in their home by a neighbor.

The Crowley family had not been seen since before Christmas, and neighbors assumed that they were on an extended vacation. Neighbor Collin Prochnow said he grew concerned when packages piled up on the couple's doorstep and he heard a dog barking inside.

When he looked in the window on the morning of January 18th, 2015, the grim discovery was made. It was reported that the bodies appeared to have been inside for weeks before being discovered. Christmas lights were still illuminated and presents were left unopened under the Christmas tree.

Mr. Prochnow told KARE-11 News that he "Never heard any yelling, never heard any screaming, a husband and wife fight or anything like that."

The Western-backed Kiev junta army has reignited its war against the people of Eastern Ukraine. Several areas of Donbass and Luhansk have experienced heavy indiscriminate shelling and bombing from Kiev war planes. Dozens of civilians have been killed.

Translated by Daphne Lawless

He worked there from 1992 to 2001, before walking out, angered by "the dictatorial behaviour and corrupt promotion practices" of a certain Philippe Val [former CH editor - trans.] Since then, Olivier Cyran has been an observer from a distance, outside the walls, of the evolution of Charlie Hebdo and its growing obsession with Islam. He went over this long-term drift on the occasion of an opinion piece in Le Monde, signed by Charb [Stéphane Charbonnier, one of the cartoonists murdered in January 2015 - trans.] and Fabrice Nicolino.

Postscript 11 January 2015: to all those who think that this article was validation in advance of the shameful terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo (that they were asking for it), the editorial team of Article 11 would like to give a hearty middle finger to such vultures. To make things absolutely clear, please see this text.

*

Dear Charb and Fabrice Nicolino,

"We hope that those who claim, and will claim tomorrow, that Charlie is racist, will at least have the courage to say it out loud and under their real name. We'll know how to respond." Reading this rant at the end of your opinion piece in Le Monde[1], as if to say "come say it to our face if you're a real man", I felt something rising within me, like a craving to go back to fighting in the school playground. Yet it wasn't me being called out. Which upright citizens you hope to convince, moreover, is a mystery. For a good long while, many people have been saying "out loud" and "under their real name" what they think about your magazine and the effluent flowing out of it, without any one of you being bothered to answer them or to shake their little fists.

And so Le Monde has charitably opened their laundry service to you, for an express steam-cleaning of your rumpled honour. To hear you talk, it was urgent: you couldn't even go out in Paris without a taxi driver treating you like racists and leaving you helpless on the footpath. I understand your annoyance, but why did you have to go give yourself another black eye in a different publication than your own? Don't Charlie Hebdo, its website and its publishing house give you space to express yourself to your heart's content? You invoke "Charlie's" glorious heritage of the 60s and 70s, when it was political censorship and not haunting disrepute that gave your magazine something to worry about. But I doubt that, at the time, writers like Cavanna or Choron would have asked for help from the posh press to make themselves respectable.

Commentators in France and elsewhere have taken the recent terrorist attacks in Paris as an occasion to reflect more broadly about Muslims in France. Many read the attacks as a sign of French Muslims' refusal to integrate. They've asked whether Muslims can be fully secular and expressed doubt as whether one can be both Muslim and French.

Even as we try to make sense of what happened, however, we should be wary of myths about French secularism (laïcité) and French citizenship being spun in the aftermath of the attacks.

France understands itself and is often accepted as a preeminent secular nation that fully separates church and state and restricts religion to the private sphere.

The reality is more complicated, as more than 10 years of research on this issue have taught me.

In 1905, a major law officially separated church and state in France, though it did not go into effect in the northeastern region of Alsace-Moselle, which was under Prussian rule at the time. Even when Alsace-Moselle was reintegrated into France, however, it remained exempt from the 1905 law, and Catholicism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Judaism are still officially recognized religions in the region. As a result, religious education in one of those religions is obligatory for public-school students and the regional government pays the salaries of clergy of the four recognized religions.

Other exceptions to the separation of church and state

The 1905 law itself contains a number of exceptions. For instance, though it forbids government financing of new religious buildings, it allows the government to pay maintenance costs for religious edifices built before 1905 - most of them Catholic churches. Thanks to later laws, the state also subsidizes private religious schools, most of them Catholic, some of them Jewish. And there exist other traces of Catholicism within the education system, like a public school calendar organized around Catholic holy days and public school cafeterias that serve fish on Fridays.

However, when Muslim French request the kind of accommodations offered to other religious communities in France, for example, state-funded Muslim schools, a school calendar that incorporates Muslim holy days, and the official recognition of Islam in Alsace-Moselle, they are reminded that France is a secular country where proper citizenship requires separating religion from public life.

There are two big opposing political memes touching on Zionism in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. One is that Europe is unsafe for Jews. This idea is the very basis of Zionism. Our site will be chronicling the upsurge in this belief because it is an important news story: more and more Zionists are expressing it. (Abe Foxman: "if France doesn't heal itself, ultimately, the Jews will leave." Commentary: Muslims pose the threat of another Holocaust: "Jews in France - and, given certain trends, elsewhere in Europe, from Great Britain to Scandinavia - have to consider their literal survival.")

The other meme is a bit quieter, but it's out there: Israel is losing legitimacy in the eyes of the world because it discriminates on a religious basis and occupies Palestine and is causing problems for the west. The country's claim to be a Jewish democracy is an anachronism in our age, and one that sticks out like a sore thumb in the wake of Gaza. The people who express fears about the Jewish place in Europe tend to deny that Israel's actions have anything to do with European or Muslim attitudes about Jews. But even these advocates are painfully aware of Israel's delegitimization.