History lays the blame for World War II firmly on Adolf Hitler. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

History is the propaganda of the victors. Accordingly, Germany's Adolf Hitler has been assigned total blame for starting World War II in Europe, history's deadliest conflict in which 50 million died.

Interestingly, the 70th anniversary of World War II has reopened old wounds and ignited an ugly battle of words between Russia and its unloving neighbors, Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states. The latter two accuse Moscow of having stabbed them in the back in 1939 by becoming a partner with Nazi Germany.

The parliamentary assembly of Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe recently held the USSR and Germany `equally responsible for World War II.’ After 70 years, it’s about time.

`A flat-out lie,’ angrily retorted Russia’s president, Dimitry Medvedev. The war cost the Soviet Union 25 million dead. Russians are quite right in believing that they, not the US and British Empire, defeated Hitler’s Germany. Russians fought with incredible heroism, suffered unthinkably casualties and damage, and ground Nazi Germany into dust. The Allies played an important but comparatively far less important role in Europe against an already defeated and ruined Germany.

Underlining Moscow’s worrying rehabilitation of Stalin, Medvedev claims the Soviet dictator saved Europe from Hitler and rejects all attempts to equate him with Hitler.

But the facts say differently. Stalin was an even worse mass murderer than Hitler by a factor of three or four. Stalin was also a much cleverer strategist, war leader and diplomat than Hitler, who stumbled into a war that Germany could not possibly win and for which it was woefully unprepared.

Click here to read the rest of this article on Eric Margolis' Web site.

Businesses and Chinese computer users are up in arms about a Web filtering plan. What are the ramifications and consequences? I spoke with our regular panelist Nicholas Thompson about the story. Take a look.

A fascinating article from our panelist Nick Thompson. He first touched on this story on our air last Friday in our 'Connections of the week' segment.

Paul Collier is on his way to Lisbon to receive, jointly with Muhammed Yunus, The Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize in the amount of 70,000 Euros. It's for his book "The Bottom Billion".

Congratulations Paul!

We spoke with our panelist Shashi Tharoor about India's reaction to the recent Taliban advance in Pakistan.

We'll be focusing the next couple days on Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pres. Karzai and Pres. Zardari will both be in Washington for talks - expect us to take a macro look at the story from the Washington, Kabul, Islamabad, and New Delhi.
Our panelist Eric Margolis just sent me this article. Take a look.

PARIS – The worldly French and British who are taught history and read books are looking with wry amusement and some pity on the Americans who are now gripped by a renewed bout of Taliban terror.

About ten days ago, a bunch of lightly-armed Pashtun tribesmen rode down from the Malakand region on motorbikes and pickup trucks and briefly swaggered around Buner, only 100 km from Pakistan’s capitol, Islamabad.

Hysteria erupted in Washington. `The Taliban are coming. The Taliban are coming!’

Hillary Clinton, still struggling through foreign affairs 101, warned the scruffy Taliban tribesmen were a global threat. Pakistan’s generals dutifully followed Washington’s orders by attacking the tribal miscreants in Buner who failed to obey the American Raj. Over a hundred people were killed, almost all innocent civilians, and thousands of refuges fled the government bombing and gunfire.

It would have been helpful had the anguished Mrs. Clinton read page 30 of my book, `War at the Top of the World:’

`In the first quarter of the 20th century…two colorful figures emerged from the barren mountains of the Northwest Frontier. First, a fiery holy man with a wonderful name, the Fakir of Ipi. The old fakir rallied the Pashtun tribes against the infidel and came within a turban’s length of taking Peshawar from the British, who spent a decade chasing the elusive fakir through the mountains of Waziristan.’

`Then, a fearsome figure, the `Mad Mullah’ (as the British press branded him), who rode down from the Malakand Pass at the head of 20,000 savage horsemen, determined to put the impious city of Peshawar (the main British Imperial base) to the sword.’

Like Mrs. Clinton, the good Christian ladies of the British Peshawar garrison had a very big scare. Cries were raised that the Mad Mullah and his wicked Muslims were going to lay fire sword on Peshawar and carry off its Christian ladies upon whose white bodies would be inflicted unspeakable Islamic abominations.

Plus ca change….. A century later, western imperial forces are again chasing unruly Pashtun tribesmen on the wild Northwest Frontier. Today, they’re called `terrorists’ by western media and politicians. In the 1980’s they and their fathers were hailed as `freedom fighters’ battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Pashtun (aka Pathan) frontier tribes – collectively mislabeled `Taliban’ by western media – are up in arms again because they are being bombed by US Predator drones, and attacked by the Pakistani Army, which the US rents for $1.5 billion annually(the official figure; actually, it’s a lot more), to support its widening war in Afghanistan. Pashtun civilian casualties – `collateral damage’ in Pentagonspeak – are rising fast.

The primary cause of the growing rebellion in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) is the US war in Afghanistan, which is rapidly spreading into Pakistan. Most Pakistanis see the Afghan Taliban and their own rebellious Pashtun as heroes fighting western domination, and scorn their own isolated leaders in Islamabad as working for the Yankee dollar.

Equally, the Pashtun tribes of NWFP were guaranteed total autonomy in 1947; Pakistan’s army was formally excluded from the Pashtun tribal region. Washington has pressured Islamabad into violating this basic provision of Pakistan’s constitution by sending troops and warplanes into the independent tribal region.

Even the British Imperial Raj’s most junior officer knew it was foolhardy to provoke warlike Pashtun. But Washington has done just this. Still, the Pashtun `Taliban’ have no influence outside their Northwest Frontier and are not about to take over the rest of Pakistan.

But Washington’s ham-handed tactics in Afghanistan and Pakistan are creating a bigger storm: a national revolution in Pakistan against the western-backed feudal oligarchy that has ruled it since 1947.

Pakistan is among the world’s poorest nations. Half its people are illiterate. Most subsist on $1.13 daily. The feudal landowning elite, only .5% of the population, holds over 90% of national wealth. Corruption engulfs everything. Democracy is a sham; the legal system a cruel joke.

Islamic law, however draconian, offers the only justice that cannot be bought. Growing resistance movements in Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan call for national leadership that represents Pakistan’s rather than western interests. Pakistanis are humiliated by being forced by the US and Britain to wage war against their own people under the pretext of `fighting Islamic terrorism.’

The big question in western capitals is: `are Pakistan’s nuclear weapons safe?’ Yes. For now. They are heavily guarded by crack army units and ISI, the military intelligence service, and will remain so unless the army splits in a power struggle. Pakistan’s nukes cannot be armed without special security codes.

Even so, there is growing speculation in Pakistan and here in Europe that the US, possibly in league with India and or Israel, may attempt to seize or destroy Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

My esteemed colleague and regional expert, Arnaud de Borchgrave, warns Pakistan could become another Iran. I’m not so sure. Islamic parties have never commanded much support in Pakistan. There is no powerful clergy in Sunni Pakistan, as there was in Shia Iran. Pakistan has a long way to go before becoming an Islamic republic on the Iranian model. But Pakistan is certainly headed into very dangerous waters.

As for the US-led crusade in Afghanistan and Northwest Frontier, we should recall the words of Victorian poet of the British Raj, Rudyard Kipling: `Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.’

One of our panelists Chrystia Freeland has an interesting article out in the FT today. Take a look. Chrystia will be on the show later tonight to discuss Obama and the economy. Tune in! 2000 GMT.

We're getting a few notes from our panelists on the swine-flu story.

Here's what Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group has to say:

"Fear tends to move faster than epidemiological evidence. Before we get answers to the big questions - how easy is it to transmit, how severe is the illness, why is Mexico so much worse than elsewhere - people are going to respond, with or without governmental or W.H.O. guidance. That means decreased travel to potentially infected areas, decreased consumption of pork (even though the CDC maintains that pork consumption is ok, but to be safe it should be cooked to 160 degrees), and internal slowdown of commerce (i.e. people hunkering down in Mexico City and businesses losing billions of dollars).

How is the world dealing with this? What are the international implications?

SARS changed the way we look at these events. International attention to this issue is high but the communication and leadership challenges remain. Calderon was criticized early for not being forthcoming with swine flu outbreak information in mid-March when human cases first appeared. Since then, his response has been pretty robust, and the president of Mexico has considerable powers in clamping down during public health emergencies. However, U.S. coordination with Mexico appears to still be slow and the U.S. CDC appears to have little useful information on the situation in Mexico. Travel warnings now seem to be coming from many countries, hurting Mexico's tourism which accounts for 8% of Mexico's GDP (3rd behind oil and remittances). And travel restrictions will make that considerably worse. This issue is moving very fast and in the absence of overwhelmingly good news, the default at this point is bad news for Mexico's economy and nerve-wracking for the world."

Ian will be on the show tonight to make some more macro observations for us. He's also the author of this report - take a look, it's very interesting, with lots of "Connect" angles.

We also got an e-mail from our panelist Eric Margolis, a veteran journalist, and now a veteran Connects blogger too.

"Having gone through the SARS epidemic, in which Toronto was an epicenter, I'm watching this new swine flu epidemic with some alarm.

As with SARS, my view is that all airline connections between Mexico and the rest of the world should be shut down. The incubation period is only 2-3 days, so departing passengers should be held in a comfortable quarantine and receive medical checks before being allowed to fly onward.

SARS was spread by airline passengers. Here in Toronto, it was one elderly lady who flew in from Hong Kong, where she caught SARS from leaky sewage in her building. She spread the virus to nurses and then the general public. Britain and Europe should declare a travel emergency before swine flu establishes a beachhead.

I also suspect that Mexico City's filthy air and high altitude may have played an important role in making the flu lethal. Mexico's standards for raising pork are horrible. Not as bad as China's, but still grim.

So far, Tamiflu and Relenza, the two anti-flu medications still work. But we can expect the virus to mutate quickly and become resistant within weeks.

Muslim and Jewish strictures against pigs, and Hindu ones against eating meat, continue to make sense."

Eric was on our air last week discussing the Obama administrations deliberations on whether to press torture charges against former Bush administration officials. Here's Eric's article on the topic, titled "America's Shame".

Your thoughts? Fire away below.

Our Connect the World panelist Chrystia Freeland made some interesting comments on the protectionism debate on the show last night. Take a look. Chrystia is the U.S. Managing Editor of the Financial Times.

Take a look at our special 'Connect the World' panelists on the right. They're our interdisciplinary, 'big thinkers' who've been making some interesting connections and comments on our main stories.

Eric Margolis was on-air last night discussing the use of torture to combat terror - we'll be linking video to that interview soon.

I got a few e-mails from other panelists too:

Shashi Tharoor wrote in on Sri Lanka, our lead story last night:

"The key issue in Sri Lanka is not the well-deserved victory of the Government over a terrorist group, but the well-being of the Tamil populace - the civilians trapped in LTTE territory right now, and the future of the Tamil people in a post-war Sri Lanka. Colombo must fulfil its earlier promises of autonomy and devolution so the Tamil people feel they have a honoured place in their own land, and the spectre of another militant Tamil movement need never rise again."

Eric Margolis weighed in: "This tragedy will not end until the victorious Sinhalese majority assures cultural and political rights of both Tamils and Muslims." He goes on to make a connection with India: "Sri Lanka's government has to keep its eye on India's Tamil Nadu state and its 66 million ethnic Tamil who are following the agony of their Sri Lankan Tamil cousins with dismay and anger."

And on Monday, Nick Thompson connected two of our top stories of the day - Sri Lanka, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments at the Geneva anti-racism conference - "The LTTE were the inventors of the suicide belt and have long used suicide attacks, up through, apparently, the events today. No matter what happens to them, one of their main tactics will remain-and will continue to be at the center of the conflict between Israel, the West, and parts of the Muslim World."

And finally, Oxford University Professor Paul Collier wrote in on South Africa's elections. "Given the dominance of the ANC, South Africa's real election was the ANC leadership struggle between Mbeki and Zuma. The key issue is now whether Zuma will adopt economic populism – and the acid test will be the power retained by Trevor Manuel."

South Africans are at the polls as I write this note. Paul Collier will be with us on air, making some very interesting connections with the situation in Zimbabwe. And that's all I'm going to say right now - join us at 20.00 GMT for details, and many other big story connections for the day!