This week’s Shire Network News is up. I’ve contributed another On Second Thought, which I’ll put up in a day or two. Podcast listeners get dibs.

It’s a bit of a potpourri, with a little help from some more friends, like Admiral Ackbar and John Worfin.

It’s not quite coming home, but Carnival of the Cats #135 is at Catcall, my readerblog at the Houston Chronicle’s website.

So who is the Catmodel of the week this week?

It’s the Lady In Red, regal park resident and a feature over at Elms in the Yard.

Dear Mr. Karen,

I have received an unsolicited e-mail from your desk that I, with(out) your kind permission will partially quote here:

FROM THE DESK OF
JOHN KAREN.
Manager,Credit and Foreign Bills of Coutts and Co.
LONDON UK.

My name is JOHN KAREN the Manager,Credit and Foreign Bills of Coutts and Co. Iam writing in respect of a foreign customer of our bank with account number-708-14-256-112 whose name is Mr. Sheikh Yassin an Israeli citizen who was killed during the Israeli and the Palestinians war in middle east crisis after Hizbollah Guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed up to seven Israelis in violence on either side of the Lebanese on 18 July 2006.

Since the demise of this customer, i personally has watched with keen interest for someone who will claim his money all has proved abortive as no one has come to claim his funds of US$15.5M (Fifteen Million Five Hundred Thoudsand United States Dollars) which has been in our bank since the middle east crisis.

Mr. Karen, I am grateful for your confidence and your proposal to partake of the above mentioned funds. There are two main reasons that prevent me from undertaking the mission you have so trustingly put in my hands:

• I am still awfully busy with a similar operation involving much higher amounts of money in Benin. What with the issues re my looming conversion to Islam, second marriage and many other, lesser problems, my hands are tied.
• The funds you describe belong by rights to the IAF (Israeli Air Force), they being the natural inheritors of the late Sheikh. You can write to IAF via this site, and I can assure you of a very warm and considerate reception.

I hope my advice will prove useful and will resolve the financial conundrum you and your esteemed bank seem to have encountered.

Oh, and a technical detail: the Hon. Sheikh Yassin expired, with some assistance from IAF, much earlier than your message indicated. Since, according to Mr. Yassin’s ideological heir, Ismail Haniyeh, the above mentioned assistance from IAF provided “the moment Sheikh Yassin dreamed about“, you can rest assured that my reference to IAF is indeed correct.

With best wishes,

SnoopyTheGoon.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?

This story is almost too precious for words: The Nazis forced Jews in concentration camps to forge British pound notes, with which they hoped to undermine the British economy. After the war, where did some of that forged money wind up? It went to buy Holocaust survivors’ way into the British Mandate of Palestine, and to purchase weapons for the nascent Israeli army.

MORE than £130m worth of British banknotes forged by the Nazis was used by the Jewish underground to help establish the State of Israel.

Wads of notes, which the Germans had forged by concentration camp inmates, ended up being used after the Second World War to pay for the transport of Jews to then British-occupied Palestine, and to buy weapons for the embryonic Israeli armed forces.

[...] The notes were produced by a team of forgers and printing experts gathered from among Jewish concentration camp inmates. In the book, Krueger’s Men, Lawrence Malkin reveals how some of the cash ended up in the hands of the Jewish underground at the end of the Second World War.

The Nazis laundered millions of pounds through a series of schemes including using business figures in occupied Europe who had concealed their Jewish origins. One of these businessman was Yaakov Levy, a successful jeweller and art expert in pre-war Germany.

In the weeks following the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Levy got supplies to Jewish refugees in Northern Italy who were fleeing south in hope of travelling to Israel. He also handed out large wads each containing about £50,000 of fake cash to organisers looking to help Jewish Holocaust survivors get from Europe to Israel.

In his book, which draws on new information from UK, US, German and Israeli archives, Malkin wrote: “The Jewish underground wanted van Harten’s [Levy's] money and did not care whether it was counterfeit or real. They passed the bogus pounds to supply Holocaust survivors and help the Brichah [Jewish escape organisation] smuggle more refugees to Palestine. On the international arms market, they used the money to buy weapons for Jews arming themselves against the British and then the Arabs.”

That is absolutely effing hilarious. Forged British pounds—millions and millions of them—were used to found the state of Israel.

Now there’s a book I’d like to read.