Review Yak

Malcolm Aitken in his essay, Hitler, the Jews and the Ballot Box, provides an analysis of the campaign by the Nazis leading up to the 1932 Reichstag election. Aitken says, The consensus varies about when and to what extent the Germans started supporting Nazi anti-Semitic persecution and murder of Jews, but it was widely accepted that the Nazis did not come into power in a country that was as viciously anti-Semitic as they were. Daniel J Goldhagen, in his 1996 book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” instead said this hatred of Jews existed pre Hitler’s ascent and that the holocaust was ultimately an expression of popular anti Semitism among  ordinary Germans.

Goldhagen reasserted racist type bigotry as just as important a reasons as the others for Germans supporting Hitler from early on. In ‘Hitler, the Jews and the Ballot Box,’ Aitken uses an analysis of the build up to the July 1932 Reichstag election six months before Hitler came into power to show that Goldhagen’s inference that the  (more…)

Jason Cook’s descent into a world of hard core drugs began at age 12. By 19 he was in prison, having started supplying drugs in order to finance his drug dependency which included Ecstasy, Cocaine and Marijuana.

When Jason was a boy his parents moved from London to Hertfordshire, with the idea of removing him from the life that he ended up living. When Jason overdosed his family finally understood that all his “friends” coming and going from the house were not visiting to spend quality time with their son. By that time it was almost a cause without hope, but miraculously, Jason found the strength and character to stick to the drug-free program that he undertook while in prison and is now living a clean life and working with the community to ensure more people don’t end up in the circus that became his life. (more…)