Proud Grandpa and Daughter and mother of the bride.
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http://www.sjlmag.com/2016/07/abe-berkowitz-inducted-into-ala-lawyers.html (See corrected version 1 below..)
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Food for thought: One reason why Socialism is a bankrupt idea, socialists believe there should be no bottom. This implies there is neither a top. Think about it and you decide.
This reasoning justifies why Democrats believe when something fails it is because not enough money was spent. Therefore, the bigger the problem, the bigger government must be to solve the unsolvable and the more money must be spent. We are still spending money on "The War on Poverty."
Even with the vastly improved economy, I recently saw an article in the local paper about how there were still those who were not benefiting. I suspect no matter what we spend there will always be those who sadly fall outside the benefit boundaries.
You can sweep an entire floor, you can mop and vacuum but I bet there will always be some remaining dust etc. That is called reality and is not heartless.
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It is about time. Obama was very much like Sen. Church who helped destroy The CIA because he disliked the fact their undercover agents had dealings with disreputable people.. (See 2 below.)
And:
Then, there is "Hacked" Hillary. (See 2a below.)
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Down Under: Crime matters are apparently rising. (See 3 below.)
And:
How terrible: Good "Trumpian" news. (See 3a below.)
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Dick
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1)On May 6, Abe Berkowitz was inducted into the Alabama Lawyers’ Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building in Montgomery.
Berkowitz is remembered as one of Birmingham’s earliest progressive activists, promoting both economic expansion and social justice throughout his career. A child of Jewish immigrants from Russia/Lithuania, he was born in Meridian, Mississippi. The family ultimately settled in Tuscaloosa/ Birmingham, where his father ran a small retail shoe store.
Berkowitz received his law degree in 1928 before reaching the age of 21 and began practicing immediately after the Alabama Legislature removed age restrictions.
He was an outspoken opponent of the Ku Klux Klan and sought to establish equality under the law, with frequent letters to local newspapers. He supported an anti-masking bill that was aimed at the Klan, and opposed Birmingham Police Commissioner Bull Connor.
In a speech at Miles College, he recounted two incidents from 1913, when he was in first grade, that shaped him — the railroading of Leo Frank in Georgia for the murder of a girl and his father urging him to write a letter to Georgia’s governor on his behalf; and how he cried after seeing a trusted caretaker of his humiliate a young black girl who was on her way to the store by using the n-word at her.
Son Richard Berkowitz spoke at the ceremony. He said his father earned the recognition “because he was willing, along with others, to speak out when doing so was not popular, but that was who he was.”
In the midst of the city’s racial turmoil in 1962, Berkowitz was a leading member of the Birmingham Bar Committee that recommended a change in the form of Birmingham’s city government from its three-member Commission to a Mayor-Council system, organizing a surprise petition drive. The vote was successful, bouncing Connor from office.
A passionate Zionist, Berkowitz spearheaded the famous 1943 Alabama resolution that called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland , working with Rep. Sid Smyer and Sen. James Simpson.
Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, in announcing the induction during Knesset Deputy Speaker Hilik Bar’s visit to Montgomery in April, noted that “Simpson was Bull Connor’s attorney, and Simpson wrote some of the segregation resolutions. Berkowitz was on the other side — but those two could come together on the important issue of Israel.”
Berkowitz was also asked to be in the secretive Sonneborn Institute, a group of 18 Americans who met with David Ben-Gurion in New York and then fanned out across the country on clandestine efforts to aid Jewish fighters working toward Israel’s independence.
In his book “In the Shadow of Hitler: Alabama’s Jews, the Second World War and the Holocaust,” Dan Puckett notes Berkowitz organized Birmingham’s Zionists and was The Southeastern President of The ZOA.. “They raised funds and ‘collected all manner of goods from truck loads of helmets to a contribution of 3,000 forks from Isadore Mazer.’ Mark Elovitz notes that ‘the Kimerling family lent a truck with a driver to the cause. The truck was loaded with tires whose inner-tubes were stuffed with guns and pistols and shipped to New York so the ‘cargo’ would not be apprehended’.”
In 1967, Israel awarded Berkowitz the Israeli Freedom Medal “because of his services to the ZOA and Israel.”
Berkowitz also helped establish the Birmingham Bar Association Aid Trust, which set up a fund for lawyers in distress and for which he served as a trustee for more than 30 years.
Richard Berkowitz said his father, who died in 1985, “would be saddened to see how we have regressed in terms of black-white relationships, and the radicalization of campus life, because dad was a great admirer of Hugo Black ‘s views on free speech.” Berkowitz helped Black’s son move to Miami where he continued to be a prominent labor attorney.
Also inducted were Reuben Chapman, Martin Leigh Harrison, Holland McTyeire Smith and Frank Edward Spain. Each inductee must have been deceased at least two years at the time of their selection. The first class was inducted in 2004; there are now 55 members.
“Each of these inductees has played a pivotal role in the history and legacy that we as attorneys leave behind,” said Alabama State Bar President Lee H. Copeland of Copeland, Franco, Screws & Gill of Montgomery. “It’s an honor to pay tribute to their lives and the work they did.”
Son Richard Berkowitz spoke at the ceremony. He said his father earned the recognition “because he was willing, along with others, to speak out when doing so was not popular, but that was who he was.”
In the midst of the city’s racial turmoil in 1962, Berkowitz was a leading member of the Birmingham Bar Committee that recommended a change in the form of Birmingham’s city government from its three-member Commission to a Mayor-Council system, organizing a surprise petition drive. The vote was successful, bouncing Connor from office.
A passionate Zionist, Berkowitz spearheaded the famous 1943 Alabama resolution that called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland , working with Rep. Sid Smyer and Sen. James Simpson.
Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, in announcing the induction during Knesset Deputy Speaker Hilik Bar’s visit to Montgomery in April, noted that “Simpson was Bull Connor’s attorney, and Simpson wrote some of the segregation resolutions. Berkowitz was on the other side — but those two could come together on the important issue of Israel.”
Berkowitz was also asked to be in the secretive Sonneborn Institute, a group of 18 Americans who met with David Ben-Gurion in New York and then fanned out across the country on clandestine efforts to aid Jewish fighters working toward Israel’s independence.
In his book “In the Shadow of Hitler: Alabama’s Jews, the Second World War and the Holocaust,” Dan Puckett notes Berkowitz organized Birmingham’s Zionists and was The Southeastern President of The ZOA.. “They raised funds and ‘collected all manner of goods from truck loads of helmets to a contribution of 3,000 forks from Isadore Mazer.’ Mark Elovitz notes that ‘the Kimerling family lent a truck with a driver to the cause. The truck was loaded with tires whose inner-tubes were stuffed with guns and pistols and shipped to New York so the ‘cargo’ would not be apprehended’.”
In 1967, Israel awarded Berkowitz the Israeli Freedom Medal “because of his services to the ZOA and Israel.”
Berkowitz also helped establish the Birmingham Bar Association Aid Trust, which set up a fund for lawyers in distress and for which he served as a trustee for more than 30 years.
Richard Berkowitz said his father, who died in 1985, “would be saddened to see how we have regressed in terms of black-white relationships, and the radicalization of campus life, because dad was a great admirer of Hugo Black ‘s views on free speech.” Berkowitz helped Black’s son move to Miami where he continued to be a prominent labor attorney.
Also inducted were Reuben Chapman, Martin Leigh Harrison, Holland McTyeire Smith and Frank Edward Spain. Each inductee must have been deceased at least two years at the time of their selection. The first class was inducted in 2004; there are now 55 members.
“Each of these inductees has played a pivotal role in the history and legacy that we as attorneys leave behind,” said Alabama State Bar President Lee H. Copeland of Copeland, Franco, Screws & Gill of Montgomery. “It’s an honor to pay tribute to their lives and the work they did.”
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2) America Goes on the CyberoffensiveU.S. government hackers will now have greater latitude to deter and answer attacks.
By Dave Weinstein
For the military—especially U.S. Cyber Command, which has long desired more freedom to maneuver—this is welcome news. Other agencies, especially those with sensitive intelligence and diplomatic equities at stake, are surely less enthusiastic about the prospect of turning up the temperature in the cyberwars.
Cyber policy is shaped by a trade-off between deterrence on the one hand and intelligence collection and diplomatic standing on the other. A relaxed cyber engagement policy increases U.S. deterrence capabilities—if you hit us, we can hit back. But it could also endanger existing spy operations. Robert Chesney, a University of Texas legal scholar, has observed that if the National Security Agency “is in a target system and reaping important intelligence, an offensive operation that imperils that collection may or may not be in the country’s net national interest.” If the military goes on a cyberoffensive, it could also undermine the standing of U.S. diplomats when they call for international norms supporting a free and open internet.
During the Bush and Obama administrations, advocates of intelligence and diplomatic priorities enjoyed greater institutional clout in Washington and better access to the president. But in the Trump White House, the military has significant access to the West Wing, while the intelligence and diplomatic corps are at odds with the president. The days of sacrificing deterrence to other interests in cyberspace seem numbered.
These conflicts are not new or unique to cyberspace. What the Pentagon calls “intelligence gain/loss” considerations are applicable to all domains. Dropping a bomb on a terrorist camp may disrupt one plot, but it may also kill the terrorist group’s courier who is under surveillance. Is a tactical military win worth risking a strategic intelligence asset and possible damage to U.S. diplomatic interests?
Consider the 2017 Russian cyberattack that became known as NotPetya. What started as a targeted operation against organizations in Ukraine quickly spun out of control. It metastasized into a global campaign that struck some of the world’s largest corporations, including the American drug manufacturer Merck, the Danish shipping giant Maersk and even the Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft. The cyberweapon—part of which was allegedly developed by and later stolen from the NSA—traveled well beyond Russia’s intended targets.
If the U.S. launched malware at Russia, would the Kremlin stop hacking the emails of American political candidates and remove their “implants” in our critical infrastructure? Or would the code be reverse-engineered and used against the U.S. after the operation burned American intelligence sources? Fear of the latter has resulted in a very conservative approach to engaging adversaries in cyberspace.
For the U.S. cyber arsenal to serve as an effective deterrent, leaders must be willing to sacrifice intelligence and diplomatic interests for military ones when circumstances warrant it. But the best use of the cyber arsenal is not necessarily in response to cyberattacks. Fighting cyber with cyber may expose America’s own digital defenses. It also perpetuates the norm that hostilities are confined to either the physical or virtual domain. If the U.S. and other digitally dense and dependent nations do not reserve the right to respond to cyberattacks with conventional means, we will be beholden to perpetrators of asymmetric cyberwarfare. Stability in cyberspace depends on a universal definition of force that encompasses cyberwarfare.
America’s use of cyberweapons should be reserved for two scenarios. The first is offensive. Cyberweapons are an effective first-strike capability when conventional conflict is imminent or has already commenced. No one has demonstrated this better than the Russians, who launched distributed denial of service attacks in concert with ground assets during their invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014. The U.S. should prioritize integrating digital weapons with its conventional arsenal.
The second is defensive. Cyberoperators enjoy levels of stealth and speed unrivaled by conventional weapons systems to prevent or repel attacks, be they on the battlefield or in cyberspace. The U.S. should not hesitate to disable infrastructure that is facilitating the digital invasion of our sovereignty. To minimize the harm to U.S. diplomatic legitimacy from defensive cyberoperations, America must secure international partnerships that support them.
Despite the challenges and risks of operating militarily in this new domain, the status quo is simply unacceptable. Just ask Adm. Mike Rogers, former commander of U.S. Cyber Command. When pressed shortly before his departure from office in February by the Senate Armed Services Committee about America’s weak response to Russia’s election meddling, he said: “I haven’t been granted any, you know, additional authorities.”
So long as the U.S. Cyber Command has its hands tied, adversaries do not perceive sufficient costs from attacking in cyberspace. Meanwhile, international norms against strong countermeasures favor countries with the least to lose. The U.S. must be prepared to defend its digital sovereignty with all the tools at its disposal.
Mr. Weinstein is a cybersecurity policy fellow at New America, vice president of Threat Research at Claroty, and a former operations planner at U.S. Cyber Command.
2a) Details of Clinton's Server Chinese Hack Get Worse
A Chinese state-owned company successfully hacked Hillary Clinton's server, even getting a copy of every email in real-time – a bombshell President Trump is demanding answers for. (Fox News)
The Daily Caller reported that the firm operating in the D.C. area wrote code that was then embedded in the server and generated a “courtesy copy” for almost all her emails -- which was then forwarded to the Chinese company.
The code reportedly was discovered in 2015 by the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG), which then warned FBI officials of the intrusion.
A source briefed on the matter confirmed to Fox News the details of the Caller’s reporting, and said that the ICIG was so concerned by the revelation that officials drove over to the FBI to inform agents -- including anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok -- of the development after it was discovered via the emails' metadata.
The source told Fox News the hack was from a Chinese company, describing it as a front for Chinese intelligence.
The report piqued the attention of President Trump who warned that the FBI and DOJ should act decisively or "their credibility will be forever gone."
Read more at http://americanactionnews.com/articles/details-of-clinton-s-server-chinese-hack-get-worse#hfEWlZwTBmUUy4K3.99
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3) Here's a thought to warm some of your hearts ... From Ed Chenel, a police officer in Australia
Hi Yanks, I thought you all would like to see the real figures from Down Under. It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.
The first year results are now in:
* Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent ..
* Australia-wide, assaults are up 9.6 percent ...
* Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)!
* Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent ..
* Australia-wide, assaults are up 9.6 percent ...
* Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)!
In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns!
While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed. There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly, while the resident is at home.
Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in 'successfully ridding Australian society of guns ...'
You won't see this on the American evening news or hear your governor or members of the State Assembly disseminating this information.
The Australian experience speaks for itself. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.
Take note Americans, before it's too late!
3a) Dr. Simpson (PhD) lectured today at UNC on the current economic indicators. Simpson is a retired economist from the Fed.
He said that the current economy is in great shape by just about every measure. He explained that Trump did several things that got it moving much faster than it had been moving. Demand for goods and services is so high that businesses cannot hire enough workers which scares the Fed. A scarcity of workers and increased jobs in manufacturing are why wages are increasing faster than inflation for the first time in more than a decade. That increase in wages scares the Fed that higher inflation will follow it.So what did Trump do?1. start with the 1.5% growth to GDP that Obama left for Trump.2. then the tax cut for the middle class increases discretionary spending enough to increase demand so that GDP grows by another 2.5% (consumer spending is 70% of GDP).3. the accelerated depreciation schedule for long term assets and the repatriation of funds increases business spending enough so that GDP grows by another 1.5%.4. the lower tax rate for corporations increases manufacturing and use of USA made components in the USA rather than products and components from off shore so that GDP increases by another 1%.5. the reduction of rules, regulations, and executive orders creates a business friendly environment so that businesses hire and spend more... another 1% to GDP.Since the federal government did not decrease its spending to pay for the decreased taxes, there is no impact on GDP by government spending.All totalled, that is an increase to GDP of at least 7.5%.He said that the impact to GDP by import/export tariffs is miniscule. Individual companies might feel some pain, but overall, other companies will benefit so that tariffs are a non-event on the total economy. Not even measurable. A decrease to the trade deficit would increase GDP proportionally as the deficit decreases and USA supplied products displace foreign made products. (600 billion reduction to the trade deficit is another potential 3% increase to GDP). He explained that every dollar of imports reduces the USA GDP.While the Fed looks at direction of prices on the stock markets, it also understands that it affects those prices by its actions of interest rate manipulation. Higher interest rates reduces stock prices, while lower interest rates increases stock prices. Printing more money does the same and so does purchasing bonds.The only draw back to achieving 7.5% growth to GDP today is the lack of workers and the actions of the Fed.A lack of workers impacts product supply and impacts eventual demand for products. He pointed to the low birth rate for such a prolonged time and to the retirements of baby boomers without enough citizens to replace them. He then went on to say that the use of immigration to offset the low birth rate has proved to be much more of a burden in government costs than the benefits from increased workers and tax revenues.The Fed has been deliberately increasing interest rates and reducing the money supply to cool off the economy. Trump is pushing one way and the Fed is pushing the other way.Wow. because of the actions of Trump, the economy would be growing at 7.5% if not for the low birth rate for the last 40 years and the actions of the Fed. Wow!!!!
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