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As previously noted, I have been out of town and just returned. This memo is devoted to an assortment of items sent to me during my absence.
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There are generally two sides to any issue. Here is the first (See 1 below.)
Here is the second (See 1a below.)
You Decide.
As for myself, I find the first somewhat more compelling because Hamas will be left with rocket capability that will permit them to disrupt Israeli normalcy, whatever that means, at an exorbitant future cost in both money and lives.
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Proportionality is a phrase and a concept used against Israel. I daresay it will not be used against most any other nation.
As for media and press bias, it is beyond shame. (See 2a, 2b and 2c below.)
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I have harangued for years about using American Tax Dollars to fund outrageous and disreputable U.N. agencies.
That said, I doubt this request will amount to a hill of beans! (See 3 below.)
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A very interesting perspective from an equally interesting source. (See 4 below.)
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Because of the Freedom of Information Act, this contractual agreement was obtained and has recently been posted on the Internet.
Much of the terms are standard for sought after speakers but when a former White House couple have enriched themselves, as the shameless Clintons have, I submit, it becomes a matter of questionable character. (See 5 below.)
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Back to where Obamacare is going! (See 6 below.)
And is everything else going to pot? (See 6a below.)
Again, you decide
As for what is going on in a suburb of St Louis, certainly one could think everything is going to pot.
That a bunch of outside rabble rousers have been allowed to take over that community under the pretense they give a damn about the youth who was killed and therefore, they need to destroy the livelihood of their own, is beyond credulity.
That circumstances have morphed into a debate concerning police response to thugs is another example of how the press and media turn everything on its head and into a misdirected circus in order to perpetuate stories rather than educate and inform.
No one knows the facts of what tragically took place but the opportunity to inject themselves was too tempting and so Jesse and his comedic 'Sharpie' sidekick came down for a look see and all hell broke loose.
The local police were told to stand down , the hapless governor then brought in the head of the State Patrol and when these efforts to calm the seething waters failed the State's National Guard were hauled in but only to stand by so the constitutional rights of the outside marauders would not be trampled upon.
Meanwhile, our corrupt Attorney General is coming to town to make sure everything is properly attended to Holder Style!
Once again a mockery of law and order has been allowed to consume the airwaves and the animals have been anointed to run the asylum!
For a variety of reasons, ie. government growth, PC'ism etc., we have so staturized behaviour citizens are now guilty of, what used to be, normal conduct. I am not excusing theft but there is little latitude and humor left today in intercourse between people. Everything seems to demand a harsh reaction. (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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| Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. – Ancient proverb, misattributed to Euripides Q: What is the difference between the State of Israel and a lunatic asylum? A: In a lunatic asylum, the management is supposed to be sane. – Popular joke Any alien visitor from outer space, dispassionately observing events in the country, could well be excused for concluding – completely erroneously, of course – that successive governments, and particularly the current one, are not really concerned with the long-term survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Indeed, it would be entirely understandable if our extraterrestrial traveler reached a seemingly far more plausible – but, of course, equally erroneous – conclusion that instead, they are far more focused on delaying its collapse long enough so that they do not have to bear the blame for that collapse. ‘Like a rudderless ship...’ As mistaken as our naive alien might be as to the true motivations of our esteemed elected leadership, it is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile their actions, decisions and particularly their proposals for policy with prudent, provident regard for the future of the nation. In past columns, I issued two severe indictments of this government’s policy. In “The ruinous results of restraint” (July 10), I warned: “By adhering to a policy of avoiding confrontations which Israel can win, the government risks leading it into one in which it might lose”; and urged: “It is time for a bold new offensive – before we are overtaken by events.” In “Like a rudderless ship in a stormy sea” (July 17), I remarked reproachfully that just as Hamas willfully exposes its citizens to deadly dangers in order to defend it against Israeli military attacks, so the Israeli government knowingly exposes its citizens to severe danger in order to prevent diplomatic attacks from the international community.” Both these grim prognoses are being fulfilled with alarming accuracy and alacrity. Indeed, during the first days of Operation Protective Edge, I was not aware of how depressingly apt the title “Like a rudderless ship in a stormy sea” would turn out to be. For not only does Israel increasingly appear like a rudderless vessel adrift in ominously high seas, but the captain and crew are looking increasingly clueless – not only about what to do, but where to go. A slow boat to nowhere? The conduct of the war by Israel has been a dismal failure. Unless this is remedied, and remedied rapidly, failure will degenerate into a disastrous, disruptive debacle that will shake the foundations of the nation. The final ramifications of recent events have not yet been fully fathomed. On the one hand, because of the operational restraint it opted for, Israel achieved no objective of any significance, nothing with any measure of assured durability. It clearly failed to impose a end to the rocket fire. It failed to disrupt the senior echelons of Hamas’s chain of command. It failed to cripple Hamas as a fighting force. Grave doubts remain as to how effectively the threat of tunnels has been eliminated... On the other hand, Israel has reaped all the international condemnation it hoped to avoid by exercise of that operational restraint. As restraint allowed the conflict to drag on for week after bloody week, the scenes of destruction in Gaza began to galvanize world opinion against Israel – or more precisely, gave anti-Israel activists time to galvanize it against Israel – reaching a vicious, rarely seen crescendo of hate not only against the Jewish state, but by association, against the Jews. Summing up the gloomy balance of gains and losses for Israel, including the loss of dozens of IDF soldiers, Yediot Aharonot’s Ronen Bergman made this somewhat charitable assessment in a New York Times opinion piece this week: “For Israel, this round of fighting will probably end politically more or less at the point where it began but with significant damage to Israel’s deterrence.” Deceptive optics of asymmetrical wars The assessment is charitable because, while it is probable that Israel will emerge with “significant damage to its deterrence,” it is more than likely that the political status quo ante will not be preserved. Israel will suffer considerable political losses, which, of course, will be Hamas’s political gains. It is of course easy to get misled by the deceptive optics of asymmetrical warfare. In his op-ed, soberingly titled, “How Hamas Beat Israel in Gaza” (August 10), Bergman observes: “If body counts and destroyed weaponry are the main criteria for victory, Israel is the clear winner... But counting bodies is not the most important criterion in deciding who should be declared victorious. Much more important is comparing each side’s goals before the fighting and what they have achieved. Seen in this light, Hamas won.” He explains: “Hamas started the war because it was in dire straits.... But soon enough Hamas was dictating the duration of the conflict.... Furthermore, it preserved its capability of firing rockets and missiles at most of Israel’s territory, despite the immense effort by the Israeli Air Force....” He points out that, despite Israel’s efforts “to marginalize Hamas and empower the weakened Mr. Abbas, Hamas is, for the first time in its history, on the verge of being internationally recognized as an equal party in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.” This raises chilling questions. For if your adversary, and his demands, are on an equal footing with you – if all you seek is calm, while your adversary is committed to your total annihilation, what is a reasonable compromise? That he only annihilate half of you? Something rotten in the State of Israel But worse, much worse is likely to come unless the rudderless ship ceases to be a slow boat to nowhere (or even worse), and sets a new, resolute course toward a defined destination: Victory over the enemy and imposition of unconditional surrender. Lamentably, the prospect of such corrective action seems increasingly remote in light of the deluge of depressing drivel, emanating from what is, increasingly inappropriately, designated Israel’s “leadership.” Minister after minister appear before the press to present his/her personal prescription for the future, with each proposal more preposterous, puerile and perilous than the next. Apparently oblivious of Albert Einstein’s designation of incessant repetition of failed efforts as indicative of insanity, each member in this disheartening procession offers up his/her own rehashed melange of measures that were tried in the past and seen to fail, resoundingly and repeatedly. Reluctant to recognize that what happened in recent weeks has definitively demonstrated that the two-state principle is not viable if a semblance of security for Israel is to be preserved, they desperately try to breathe life into the grotesque, zombie-like remains of that nefarious notion. Typically, these harebrained and hazardous suggestions comprise little more than a vague, ill-defined wishlist of measures, with no stipulation of any process that would demonstrate how or why what was once hopelessly ineffective will, miraculously, become effective. The substantive quality of these purported political blueprints is so shockingly poor that it is deeply disconcerting to think that the individuals who authored them, apparently in all seriousness, are at the nation’s helm, charged with guiding it through the menacing crises it will soon be called on to face. Leaders living in a parallel universe? Unsurprisingly, two of the loopiest “plans” (for want of a better word) came from Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid, both of whom have demonstrated conclusively that they have no grasp of political realties in the region. Indeed they have both proved so out of touch they might well be inhabiting some parallel universe. Livni, for example, extols her role in authoring UN Security Council Resolution 1701 at the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, a measure which transformed south Lebanon from a formidable Hezbollah arsenal with thousands of missiles aimed at sites in Israel into an immensely more formidable Hezbollah arsenal with tens of thousands of immensely more formidable missiles aimed at sites in Israel. Way to go, Tzipi! Given the massive rearmament of Hezbollah since the passage of 1701, it is difficult to know whether to laugh or cry when reading the portion which calls for “... the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that... there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state.” We all know how splendidly that worked out. ‘Disengagement, our last chance for normal life’ Lapid has openly admitted that he mendaciously manipulated his widely read Friday Yediot Aharonot column (see “Bennett’s buddy” – February 21, 2013) to advance unilateral disengagement from Gaza. That article became the launching pad for his political career. In it, he vigorously assailed opponents of evacuation, warning them that their opposition was likely to have deeply divisive repercussions on society. In light of events, it is staggering to read what he wrote then and realize that someone with such flawed judgment carries such heavy responsibility for the future of the nation today. In a piece titled, “To: The Opponents of disengagement,” on June 24, 2005, he blustered with typically misplaced bravado: “Have you thought what will happen if you succeed [in preventing disengagement]. Don’t you understand that if... [disengagement does not happen] we will disengage from you. We will say, “Your God is not our God, your land is not our land.” Do you suppose we will simply give up what we see as our only chance for a normal life? Have you any idea how you will live in a country in which most of its inhabitants feel they have to sacrifice their lives – day after day, terror attack after terror attack – for you?” Disengagement, “our only chance for a normal life.” Really. It would be intriguing to see you try to sell that today to the residents of Nahal Oz, Nirim and other communities along the Gaza border, who have been forced to evacuate their homes because of the ravages wrought by disengagement. Tired, worn-out formulae Desperate to avoid acknowledging that the only viable alternative consistent with Israel’s security and the ability to sustain a Jewish population in the Negev is for the IDF to overrun Gaza, capture it, kill senior leaders and begin relocating the non-belligerent population, within the framework of a generously funded international humanitarian initiative, Livni, Lapid, and other members of the Israeli government persist in regurgitating failed formulas of the past. Typically these formulae entail elements such as more financial aid to Gaza, strengthening Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), convening yet another international conference, strengthening Abu Mazen, demilitarizing Gaza, strengthening Abu Mazen, handing over the border crossings to the PA, strengthening Abu Mazen, fostering regional cooperation... and, oh yes, strengthening Abu Mazen. None of these, of course, will be anything but ineffectual – as they were in the past. Gaza has received huge amounts of foreign aid and the elected government channeled it into tunnels and rockets. Gaza is already supposed to be demilitarized, as stipulated in the Oslo Accords (just as Hezbollah was supposed to disarm as per Resolution 1701); the PA was deployed in Gaza and was summarily ejected by Hamas; regional cooperation was proposed – before the Arab Spring shattered the region – under Shimon Peres’s “New Middle East” vision and laughed out of town at Casablanca... As for Abu Mazen, everybody’s new “security blanket,” he was, of course, in control of Gaza until he was unceremoniously booted out by Hamas. Indeed, he has only maintained his current (unelected) hold over the “West Bank” because of the presence of the IDF, without which he would, in all likelihood, be unceremoniously booted out (or worse) there as well... Which part of ‘They want to kill us’ don’t they get? How long can Israeli leaders continue to advocate fatally failed formulas before we begin to question their soundness of mind and good intentions? One can only wonder which part of the simple truth “They want to kill us – not because of what we do but because of what we are” – is difficult for them to grasp and why they have so much difficulty formulating policy that reflects the truth. Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategic-israel.org) 1a) |
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Hamas is mistaken if it thinks that it can cover its military defeat over the last month with a diplomatic achievement, Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said at the opening of Sunday's cabinet meeting. Netanyahu's comments came just prior to a resumption of the indirect talks between Israel and Hamas on Sunday in Cairo. In an apparent response to Hamas' threats to engage Israel in a long war of attrition if its demands are not met, Netanyahu said that “if Hamas thinks we cannot stand for a long period, it is mistaken.” "In the turbulent and unstable Middle East, it is not enough just to have more strength, you also need determination and patience,” he said. “Hamas knows that we have a lot of power, but perhaps it thinks we do not have enough determination and patience. And it is making a big mistake there as well.” Netanyahu said that Israel is a “strong and determined” nation, whose citizens and soldiers showed “amazing resilience and fortitude” and which will stand “united and firm” until “quiet and security” is returned to the country's citizens. Netanyahu said that Hamas suffered a harsh military blow, which included the destruction of their terror tunnels system that they spent years building, the killing of “hundreds of terrorists,” the interception of thousands of rockets, and the prevention of terror attacks from the “land, sea and air.” “If Hamas thinks that by a continuation of a drizzle of rocket fire, we will make concession, it is mistaken,” Netanyahu said. “As long as the quiet is not restored, Hamas will continue to absorb very hard blows.” Netanyahu stressed that the Israeli delegation to the indirect talks in Cairo is working under “very clear directives” to stand firm on Israel's security demands. “Only if there will be a clear answer to our security needs will we agree to any understandings,” he said. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2)
International law Gaza 2014:
Proportionality
Palestinian Arabs, by their first use of armed force against Israeli civilians and non-
combatant Jews, in contravention of the United Nations Charter, constitute prima facie [Latin: on its face] evidence of an act of
aggression - aggression being defined by international law as "the most serious and dangerous
form of illegal use of force."
Therefore, the rule of Proportionality in this case of continuous aggression needs to be
met by Israeli acts that will induce the aggressors to comply with its international
obligations. Israel’s countermeasures need not be the exact equivalent of the breaching act.
Judge Schwebel, the former president of the International Court of Justice is quoted as saying:
"In the case of action taken for the specific purpose of halting and repelling an armed
attack, this does not mean that the action should be more or less commensurate with
the attack."
2a) THE MEDIA'S ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS is BEYOND SHAME
Illustrative of the Western media’s anti-Israel bias, the Philadelphia Inquirer (our sole hometown daily
broadsheet), ran ten photos last week depicting attacks and damage in Gaza, and none depicting the effects of thousands of Hamas rockets on Israeli civilians.
Excerpts of Inquirer photo captions include: “Smoke from an Israeli strike rises over the Gaza Strip”;
“Used artillery shells litter the ground (next to an Israeli tank)”; “Smoke and fire rise from an Israeli air strike over Gaza City”; and “Two boys survey rubble from a damaged apartment building in Gaza City”. This of course came with such A1 headlines as “GAZA EXPLODES.”
Missing were captions such as these: “House in Be’er Sheva destroyed by a Grad rocket launched from
Gaza”; “Children in Tel Aviv flee during a heavy rocket attack launched from Gaza”; and “Family surprised by a rocket attack launched from the Gaza Strip”.
This rocketing is not new. Years ago, the Inquirer’s foreign affairs columnist told readers about the
schoolyard game little Israeli kids play in the endlessly-rocket-battered town of Sderot: “They shout ‘Color Red! Color Red!’ And then they go hide.”
But even if the Inquirer ran some photos of Israeli victims, it still wouldn’t have been balanced reporting.
The IDF made unprecedented efforts to try to minimize harm to civilians – from whose midst Hamas fired rockets at Israel.But Hamas’ very targets are Israeli civilians. Israel didn’t deploy Iron Dome as a battlefield weapon, but to shoot down rockets aimed at civilians in cities. That hardly any Israeli civilians were killed wasn’t because Hamas wasn’t trying to kill them.
Beyond aiming rockets at Israeli civilians, Hamas was digging a plethora of under-border tunnels to murder
and kidnap Israeli civilians, with a mega-terror plot intended for the Jewish high holidays. It was in an effort to destroy this massive nightmarish network of tunnels that Israel sent its IDF into Gaza.
Here are some revealing statistics that the media fails to report on Operation Protective Edge, let alone
acknowledge: According to the IDF blog, in the three weeks leading up to July 8, Gaza terrorists fired 250
rockets capable of reaching Israel’s largest population centers and endangering 3.5 million Israelis. More than half-a-million Israelis had less than 60 seconds to find shelter after hearing a rocket siren – tens of thousands had only 15 seconds. During the war, there were 3,360 rockets fired from Gaza: 2,303 hit Israel, 115 hit populated areas in
Israel, 475 landed Gaza, and 584 were intercepted by the Iron Dome. Thirty-two offensive tunnels were
destroyed, many dug deep and encroaching into Israel, lined with weapons, handcuffs, and tranquilizers (for kidnapping) and fortified with concrete and cement. The IDF struck 4,762 terror targets: 1,678 rocket launching facilities, 191 weapons facilities, and 977 command centers. Many of these were in and around civilian residences, hospitals, schools, UN facilities, and mosques, and were precision, surgical strikes. More than 750 terrorists were killed – a
statistic rarely seen or mentioned in the media when reporting on the total number (approximately 1,800)
killed in Gaza, making it appear these were all civilians.
Most telling of all: despite Hamas’ incessant attacks, including on the Kerem Shalom border crossing, th
IDFcontinued to transfer thousand of supply trucks into Gaza during the conflict from July 8 to August 5, including 1,856 trucks carrying 40,550 tons of supplies; 37,178 tons of foods; 1,694 tons of humanitarian goods; and 1,029 tons of medicine and medical supplies. Moreover, Israel continued to supply power to Gaza even after a Hamas rocket hit a power station in Israel that was supplying it power. What other country on earth would provide such power and supplies to a sworn enemy that started a war against it?
The recently captured Hamas manual on urban warfare provided proof that Hamas has a sick, twisted
ideology that uses civilians as human shields, and tries to exploit the knowledge that the IDF would minimize its attacks knowing civilians were present. Hamas exploited its civilian infrastructure and abused its civilians for terrorist purposes, constituting substantial war crimes. Yet Israel’s inescapable response to intolerable rocket and under-border tunnels last week was crisis front-page news. Outrages in Iraq and elsewhere struggled for the same coverage.
Western Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel must do more than deplore the despicable double-
standard with which the Western media vilifies Israel. We must strongly contest the underlying vast historical misperception, as President Obama unfortunately voiced it at Cairo, of the “Palestinians’ displacement by Israel’s founding.”
Israel wasn’t “founded” in 1948, but has been the Jewish homeland, including through uninterrupted
physicalpresence, for three millennia. We must affirmatively make that Jewish homeland case to the world.
Lee Bender is co-president and Jerome Verlin co-vice president of the Greater Philadelphia District of the
Zionist Organization of America. They are the authors of “Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From
A-to-Z (Pavilion Press 2013).
2b)Random Thoughts
I don't know why we are spending our hard-earned money paying taxes to
support a criminal justice system, when issues of guilt and innocence are being
determined on television -- and even punishment is being meted out by CNN's
showing the home and address of the policeman accused in the Ferguson,
Missouri shooting.
One of the big differences between Democrats and Republicans is that we at least
know what the Democrats stand for, whether we agree with it or not. But, for
Republicans, we have to guess.
It is amazing how many otherwise sane people want Israel to become the first
nation in history to respond to military attacks by restricting what they do, so
that it is "proportionate" to the damage inflicted by the attacks.
Amid all the things being said on all sides about the massive, illegal influx of
children from countries in Central America, we have yet to hear some American
parent saying, "I don't owe it to anybody to have my child exposed to diseases
brought into this country, no matter what problems exist in other countries!"
Two headlines in the August 10th New York Times speak volumes about Barack
Obama. The top headline reads: "Iraq Strikes May Last Months, Obama Says."
A secondary headline reads: "No Ground Force Will Be Sent, He Repeats." Time
was when enemy spies had to risk their lives to acquire such information. Now all
they have to do is read the headlines.
It is amazing how many people think they are doing blacks a favor by exempting
them from standards that others are expected to meet.
If you want to know who was the greatest baseball player of all time, please check
out the pitcher who led the American League with the lowest earned run average
in 1916. He was the only ballplayer who could do it all, including stealing home.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was a hawk compared to Barack
Obama. At least Chamberlain was building up his country's military forces while
trying to appease Hitler. Obama is cutting back on our military forces while our
enemies around the world are expanding theirs.
Medical authorities who are trying to reassure us that safeguards will prevent the
spread of Ebola in the United States may be unconvincing to those of us who
remember how they lied about whether AIDS could be transmitted by blood
transfusions. They may be telling the truth this time, but credibility is one of those things that are far easier to maintain than to repair.
Too many people in Washington are full of themselves, among other things that
they are full of.
However common it may be in politics to "split the difference" when making decisions, it is unconscionable to send American troops into a war zone in numbers too small to defend themselves. The smug and smirking contempt of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, when he began testifying before a Congressional committee in the IRS scandal investigation, told us all we needed to know, even if we never get the information that was supposedly "lost" when Lois Lerner's computer supposedly crashed.
Ted Williams' great career was interrupted twice by military service -- once during World War II and again when he returned to the Marine Corps during the Korean war. What sports star today would voluntarily interrupt a Hall of Fame career to go fight for America, after having already served in the military?
Despite TV pundits who say that public opinion polls show Barack Obama is in trouble, the president is not in the slightest trouble. He is doing whatever he feels like doing, regardless of the Constitution and regardless of how many people don't like it, because he is virtually impeachment-proof. The country is in huge trouble and real danger because of his policies, but he is not.
One of the most frustrating aspects of watching television news programs that feature debates is the guests who sidestep any question that gets to the heart of the issue at hand, and just go off on a tangent, repeating their standard talking points. That's usually a good time to change the channel or turn off the TV.
If politics were like sports, we could ask Israel to trade us Benjamin Netanyahu for Barack Obama. Of course, we would have to throw in trillions of dollars to get Israel to agree to the deal, but it would be money well spent.
2c) Don’t set a double standard for Israel on norms of war
Natan Sharansky is chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel and was deputy prime minister of Israel from 2001 to 2003.
The pictures of destruction and mourning in Gaza that have filled media around the world for the past several weeks have been very painful and sad to view. One would be hard-pressed to find an Israeli who does not sympathize with the suffering of Gaza’s victims.
Yet there are also few Israelis who feel we are responsible for this suffering. For us, the tragedy of Gaza is inseparable from the tragedy of the entire Middle East. Over the past three years, in countries around our tiny state, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed in the most horrific ways. This wave of terror recognizes no official borders. The only border at which the savagery stops is Israel’s.
Hamas and Hezbollah are doing their best to change this. So what protects us? The United Nations or human rights groups? No. Only the military power of the Israel Defense Forces. In response to our enemies’ relentless campaigns, the army is constantly developing new ways to defend us. One new weapon, Iron Dome, has in the past few weeksprotected civilians from almost 3,000 missiles.
But while Israelis have developed missile shields to protect children, Hamas has been using children as shields to protect missiles. This perverse strategy is the brainchild of a society that hails death. For Hamas, using living shields serves the double function of increasing the number of martyrs and galvanizing a free world that values life to pressure Israel to stop fighting.
The sad irony, then, is that while the world can do so little to stop the terror in Syria or Sudan, it can do a lot to press Israel to stop defending itself. We ask ourselves, is this hypocrisy? Is this a betrayal by the free world whose values we are defending? And in response, Israel hears from the international community, “Of course you are judged differently. You insist that you are part of the free world, so we hold you to a higher standard than neighboring countries, where wanton destruction of human life is the norm.”
I strongly agree with this argument.
Israel, like any other free country, should be held to a higher moral standard than its unfree neighbors. As the war against terror becomes increasingly global, it is imperative that all free countries develop and uphold common norms in our military conduct against armies of terror. Israel, with its decades-long experience, can contribute much to this effort.
For example, 12 years ago, during the Second Intifada, I was a member of the Israeli security cabinet when the army first decided to use aviation to target terrorist leaders. In nearly every cabinet meeting, Israel’s attorney general insisted that our targets must be chosen not on the basis of crimes already committed, but solely in light of proof that they were planning new terrorist acts. In other words, no matter how much death and destruction someone had caused, a targeted killing could be justified only by documented intentions to carry out another attack. A serious case had to be prepared for each assassination attempt, and therefore the number of such operations could be counted on one hand. Now that targeted killings are practically the norm — when the United States uses drones for this purpose all over the world — I would hope others are as scrupulous as Israel has been.
Around the same time, we in the cabinet also discussed the importance of using weapons that minimize civilian deaths, even if this meant decreasing an operation’s chance of success. Many operations were modified or canceled because of this. Today, Israel goes even further. Before the IDF bombs an area in Gaza, residents are alerted by radio, e-mail, phone and text message telling them to leave. The Israeli army also uses small warning missiles to let civilians know that a real missile will soon be fired. Do other free countries go to similar lengths?
In 1999, when NATO launched its offensive against the criminal Milosevic regime in Yugoslavia, hundreds of civilians were killed in the bombings. Many more civilians were killed when U.S. warplanes hunted down Saddam Hussein’s family and supporters, and later al-Qaeda terrorists. They were killed in cafes, cinemas and even a wedding procession.
Let me be clear. I believe that it was the free world’s obligation to fight against the Milosevic regime, which carried out ethnic cleansing in the heart of Europe. I believe it is the obligation of the United States and free countries to lead an uncompromising struggle against terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. But the obligation of the IDF to protect Israeli citizens from thousands of missiles and from underground terrorist infiltrations is just as sacred. In view of the developing global war between the free world and terror, it is time that leading military experts from Israel, the United States, Britain and other countries, along with international lawyers and politicians, compare their experiences and agree about the standards according to which the free world can defend itself.
But once these standards are accepted, they should be applied to every free country. Otherwise, stop calling it a higher standard and call it by its real name: a double standard.
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3)
Why Are Jews Powerful by Dr. Farrukh Saleem, the Pakistani Executive Director of the
Center for Research and Security Studies, a think tank established in 2007, and an Islamabad based freelance columnist.
There are only 14 million Jews in the world; seven million in the Americas , five million in Asia, two
million in Europe and 100,000 in Africa . For every single Jew in the world there are 100 Muslims. Yet, Jews are
more than a hundred times more powerful than all the Muslims put together.
Ever wondered why?
Jesus of Nazareth was Jewish. Albert Einstein, the most influential scientist of all time and TIME magazine's 'Person of the Century' , was a Jew. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis was a Jew. So were Karl Marx, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman. Here are a few other Jews whose intellectual output has enriched the whole humanity: Benjamin Rubin gave humanity the vaccinating needle . Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine . Albert Sabin developed theimproved live polio vaccine . Gertrude Elion gave us a leukemia fighting drug . Baruch Blumberg developed the vaccination for Hepatitis B. Paul Ehrlich discovered a treatment for syphilis . Elie Metchnikoff won a Nobel Prize in infectious diseases . Bernard Katz won a Nobel Prize inneuromuscular transmission . Andrew Schally won a Nobel in endocrinology . Aaron Beck founded Cognitive Therapy. Gregory Pincus developed the firstoral
contraceptive pill .
George Wald won a Nobel for our understanding of the human eye .
Stanley
Cohen won a Nobel in embryology . Willem Kolff came up with thekidney dialysis machine. Over the past 105 years, 14 million Jews have won 15-dozen Nobel Prizes while only three Nobel Prizes have been won by 1.4 billion Muslims (other than Peace Prizes).
Why are Jews so powerful?
Stanley Mezor invented the first micro-processing ch ip.
Leo Szilard developed the first nuclear
chain reactor ;
Peter Schultz, optical fibre cable ;
Charles Adler, traffic lights ;
Benno Strauss,
Stainless steel ; Isador Kisee, sound movies ; Emile Berliner, telephone microphone ; Charles Ginsburg, videotape recorder .
Famous financiers in the business world who belong to Jewish faith include
Ralph Lauren (Polo),
Levis Strauss (Levi's Jeans), Howard Schultz (Starbuck's) , Sergey Brin (Google), Michael Dell
(Dell Computers),
Larry Ellison (Oracle),
Donna Karan (DKNY),
Irv Robbins (Baskins &; Robbin)
and Bill Rosenberg (Dunkin Donuts).
Richard Levin, President of Yale University, is a Jew. So are Henry Kissinger (American secretary
of state),Alan Greenspan (Fed chairman under Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush), Joseph Lieberman (US Senator), Madeleine Albright (American secretary of state), Casper Weinberger (American secretary of defense), Maxim Litvinov ( USSR foreign Minister), David Marshal (Singapore 's first chief minister), Issac Isaacs (governor-general of Australia ), Benjamin Disrael (British statesman and author), Yevgeny Primakov (Russian PM), Barry Goldwater (US Senator), Jorge Sampaio (president of Portugal ), John Deutsch (CIA director), Herb Gray (Canadian deputy PM), Pierre Mendes (French PM), Michael Howard (British home secretary), Bruno Kreisky (chancellor of Austria ) and Robert Rubin (American secretary of treasury).
In the media, famous Jews include Wolf Blitzer (CNN), Barbara Walters (ABC News), Eugene
Meyer (Washington Post), Henry Grunwald (editor-in-chief Time), Katherine Graham (publisher of The Washington Post), Joseph Lelyveld (Executive editor, The New York Times), and Max Frankel (New York Times).
The most beneficent philanthropist in the history of the world is George Soros, a Jew, who has so far
donated a colossal $4 billion most of which has gone as aid to scientists and universities around
the world.
Second to George Soros is Walter Annenberg, another Jew, who has built a hundred
libraries by donating an estimated $2 billion. At the Olympics, Mark Spitz set a record of sorts by winning seven gold medals; Lenny Krayzelburg is a three-time Olympic gold medalist. Spitz, Krayzelburg and Boris Becker (Tennis) are all Jewish. Did you know that Harrison Ford, George Burns, Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson, Sandra Bullock, Billy Crystal, Woody Allen, Paul Newman, Peter Sellers, Dustin Hoffman,
Michael Douglas, Ben Kingsley, Kirk Douglas, Goldie Hawn, Cary Grant, William Shatner, Jerry
Lewis and Peter Falk are all Jewish? As a matter of fact, Hollywood itself was founded by a Jew. Among directors and producers, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Oliver Stone, Aaron Spelling ( Beverly Hills 90210), Neil Simon (The Odd Couple), Andrew Vaina (Rambo 1/2/3), Michael Man (Starsky and Hutch), Milos Forman (One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest), Douglas Fairbanks (The Thief of Baghdad ) and Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) are all Jewish.
So, why are Jews so powerful?
Answer : EDUCATION
Why are Muslims so powerless?
There are an estimated 1,476,233,470 Muslims on the face
of the planet: one billion in Asia, 400 million in Africa, 44 million in Europe and six million in the Americas . Every fifth human being is a Muslim; for every single Hindu there are two Muslims, for every Buddhist there are two Muslims and for every Jew there are one hundred Muslims. Ever wondered why Muslims are so powerless? Here is why: There are 57 member-countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), and all of them put together have around 500 universities; one university for every three million Muslims.The United States has 5,758 universities and India has 8,407. In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an 'Academic Rankingof World Universities' , and intriguingly, not one university from Muslim-majority states was in the top-500. As per data collected by the UNDP, literacy in the Christian world stands at nearly 90 per cent and 15 Christian-majority states have a literacy rate of 100 per cent. A Muslim-majority state, as a sharp contrast, has an average literacy rate of around 40 per cent and there is no Muslim-majority state with a literacy rate of 100 per cent. Some 98 per cent of the 'literates' in the Christian world had completed
primary school, while less than 50 per cent of the 'literates' in the Muslim world did the same.
Around 40 per cent of the 'literates' in the Christian world attended university while no more than two per cent of the 'literates' in the Muslim world did the same. Muslim-majority countries have 230 scientists per one million Muslims. The US has 4,000 scientists per million and Japan has 5,000 per million. In the entire Arab world, the total number of full-time researchers is 35,000 and there are only 50 technicians per one million Arabs. (in the Christian world there are up to 1,000 technicians per one million). Furthermore, the Muslim world spends 0.2 per cent of its GDP on research and development, while the Christian world spends around five per cent of its GDP.
Conclusion: The Muslim world lacks the capacity to produce knowledge!
Daily newspapers
per 1,000 people and number of book titles per million are two indicators of whether knowledge is being diffused in a society. In Pakistan , there are 23 daily newspapers per 1,000 Pakistanis while the same ratio in Singapore is 360. In the UK , the number of book titles per million stands at 2,000 while the same in Egypt is 20. Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to diffuse knowledge. Exports of high technology products as a percentage of total exports are an important indicator of knowledge application. Pakistan 's export of high technology products as a percentage of total exports stands at one per cent. The same for Saudi Arabia is 0.3 per cent; Kuwait , Morocco , and Algeria are all at 0.3 per cent, while Singapore is at 58 per cent.
Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to apply knowledge.
Why are Muslims powerless?
Because we aren't producing knowledge,
.....Because we aren't diffusing knowledge.,
.....
Because we aren't applying knowledge.
And, the future belongs to knowledge-based societies .
Interestingly, the combined annual GDP of 57 OIC-countries is under $2 trillion.
America , just by
herself, produces goods and services worth $12 trillion;
China $8 trillion,
Japan $3.8 trillion and
Germany $2.4 trillion (purchasing power parity basis).
Oil rich Saudi Arabia , UAE, Kuwait and
Qatar collectively produce goods and services (mostly oil) worth $500 billion;
Spain alone
produces goods and services worth over $1 trillion, Catholic Poland $489 billion and
Buddhist Thailand $545 billiion. (Muslim GDP as a percentage of world GDP is fast declining).
So, why are Muslims so powerless?
Answer: Lack of education .
All we do is shout to
Allah the whole day !!! and blame everyone else for our multiple failures!!!!!
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5) High fashion, expense for Hillary travel
By LAURA MYERS
Hillary Rodham Clinton likes to travel in style.
She insists on staying in the “presidential suite” of luxury hotels that she chooses anywhere in
the world, including Las Vegas.
She usually requires those who pay her six-figure fees for speeches to also provide a private jet for
transportation — only a $39 million, 16-passenger Gulfstream G450 or larger will do.
And she doesn’t travel alone, relying on an entourage of a couple of “travel aides,” and a couple of
advance staffers who check out her speech site in the days leading up to her appearance, much like a White House trip, according to her contract and supporting documents concerning her Oct. 13 speech at a University of Nevada, Las Vegas Foundation fundraiser. The documents were obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal through the state public records law.
CENTER OF ATTENTION
Clinton, a former first lady, U.S. senator from New York and U.S. secretary of state, is expected
to run for president in 2016. Her lifestyles of the rich and famous ways and comments that she made about her wealth during a recent book tour have fueled criticism that she’s out of touch with average Americans. The Democratic contender said she pays taxes, unlike some people who are “truly well off.” She also said she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, were “dead broke” when they left the White House in
2001. In the past eight years alone, the couple has earned more than $100 million, much of it from
speaking fees, according to Politico.
In fact, the former president spoke at the 2012 UNLV Foundation dinner, taking home a $250,000
fee. His spouse will get $225,000 to speak at the annual dinner. The size of Hillary Clinton’s fee has come under fire from critics who question the large expense in an era when students are hard- pressed to cover tuition and leave school saddled with massive debt.
But Clinton’s $225,000 is something of a cut-rate. Documents obtained by the newspaper show
that she initially asked for $300,000 and reveal that she insists on controlling every detail of the private event, large and small, to ensure that she will be the center of attention.
“It is agreed that Speaker will be the only person on the stage during her remarks,” according to
the May 13 contract the Harry Walker Agency signed for Clinton’s keynote address at the Bellagio.
According to her standard speaking contract, Clinton will remain at the event no longer than 90
minutes; will pose for no more than 50 photos with no more than 100 people; and won’t allow any press coverage or video- or audio-taping of her speech.
The only record allowed will be made by a stenographer whose transcription will be given only to
Clinton. The stenographer’s $1,250 bill, however, will go to the UNLV Foundation.
The foundation, meanwhile, is prohibited from advertising the event on radio, TV or billboards. Mail
and website ads are allowed, although Clinton staffers must approve in writing any promotional material. One unhappy UNLV Foundation official in an email complained of “meddling” after Clinton’s agency edited a description of the annual dinner to “dumb it down.”
And Clinton’s demand for approval of all website material before it hits the Internet prompted a
UNLV Web designer to grouse in an email that it seems “assbackwards in my mind.”
The foundation complied with Clinton’s wishes, however.
POLITICS IN PLAY
While big-name speakers such as the Clintons have been proven moneymakers, the foundation
took a pass on a Hillary appearance in 2013 because Bill had appeared the previous year and the organization didn’t want to come off as favoring Democrats.
“We need to be careful not to appear partisan,” said a Feb. 18, 2013, email from the UNLV
Foundation to the Harry Walker Agency.
Later, in a Jan. 31, 2014, email, UNLV suggested that Hillary Clinton might want to be interviewed
by former TV broadcaster Tom Brokaw, who was supposed to speak in 2013 but fell ill and had to be replaced by talk show host Charlie Rose.
“It would temper any criticism by uber conservative donors that we’re giving her a campaign stop,
particularly in light of the fact the BC was here 2 years prior,” reads an email from Tori Klein of the
UNLV Foundation to Beth Gargano, a Harry Walker Agency representative.
But Clinton, who has had a rocky relationship with the press, had already vetoed media interviews.
Ironically, uber-conservative donor Sheldon Adelson, the chairman and chief executive officer of the Las
Vegas Sands Corp. who donated an estimated $150 million to GOP campaigns and causes in
2012, will be honored at the UNLV Foundation dinner. His company helped UNLV raise millions of dollars this year and committed $7 million toward construction of a hotel college building and a proposed Center for Professional and Leadership Studies, the foundation said.
BIG NAMES
The annual dinner, one of Las Vegas’ biggest fundraising events, attracts powerful donors. The top
givers this year, who purchased the most expensive $20,000 tables, are a who’s who of Nevada business and politics. They include:Bank of America; Barnes & Noble College; Barrick Gold; the Bennett Family Foundation; Cashman Equipment Co.; the Engelstad Family; Kell and Nancy Houssels; Konami Gaming Inc.; Dana and GregoryLee; Mr. and Mrs. Hae Un Lee of Lee’s Discount Liquor; Joyce Mack; The Mendenhall Family; MGM Resorts International; NV Energy; PR Partners; the Wells Fargo Foundation; and Michael and Renee Yackira.
Clinton’s contract allows her to invite up to 20 guests, including her staff, and have them sit
together to be able to join the photo line.
None of the photos can be made public.
“The Sponsor is also required to communicate to the photo line attendees that the photo is for
private, personal use only and that the photo cannot be used in any way to imply any kind of endorsement of an entity, individual, product or service,” the contract says.
“Any use of the photo that suggests or implies any such endorsement is forbidden.”
UNLV did win one major concession in contract talks that stretched more than a year: The Harry
Walker Agency Inc. agreed to a $225,000 fee, down from Clinton’s standard $300,000.
Clinton’s fee usually includes expenses such as travel by private jet, other transportation, hotel
rooms, phone charges, a TelePrompter, if needed, and all meals and “incidentals” for her and her staff.
“We can bring the fee down (because of the fact that a major portion of the $300K is for the jet),”
an agency representative wrote in a May 23, 2013, email to a UNLV Foundation official.
“I believe the $225,000 ALL INCLUSIVE plus stenographer fee should do it,” the agency said in a
follow-up May 31, 2013, email after the university negotiated the discount and asked for confirmation.
Presumably, Clinton will have to pay for her own jet to Las Vegas, presidential suite and other
costs she normally charges to events, unless some private donor picks up the tab.
According to a May 31, 2013 email, Clinton’s standard contract usually includes:
■ Round-trip transportation on a chartered private jet “e.g., a Gulfstream 450 or larger jet,” plus
round-trip
business class travel for two advance staffers who will arrive up to three days in advance.
■ Hotel accommodations selected by Clinton’s staff and including “a presidential suite for
Secretary Clinton and up to three (3) adjoining or contiguous single rooms for her travel aides and up to two (2) additional single rooms for the advance staff.”
■ A $500 travel stipend to cover out-of-pocket costs for Clinton’s lead travel aide.
■ Meals and incidentals for Clinton, her travel aides and advance staff, as well as all phone charges.
■ Final approval of all moderators or introducers.
BIG MONEYMAKER
The UNLV Foundation expects up to 1,000 people for the dinner, which is expected to turn a
healthy profit.
By early July, the organization had already sold out its top $20,000 tables with the $10,000,
$5,000 and $3,000 tables going fast.Individual tickets also are on sale for $200 each.
UNLV student leaders have sent a letter to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation,
which collects the $225,000 fee, asking that Hillary Clinton donate all or part of the money back to the university. They’ve received no reply.
UNLV Foundation leaders have defended paying such a high fee to Clinton, arguing that the dinner
will make a profit and that her presence is both a big draw and an honor.
The foundation has raised more than $1 billion for the university over the years.
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6)
Where ObamaCare Is GoingThe government single-payer model that liberals aspire to for the U.S. is increasinglyin trouble around the world.
By
SCOTT W. ATLAS
The liberal attraction to making government the sole source of health-care insurance
has not abated even as the deficiencies in ObamaCare, a halfway move toward the
single-payer model, have become increasingly evident. The question is whether growing signs of single-payer trouble overseas will be enough to discourage this country's
flirtation with socialized medicine.
The Obama administration showed its hand long ago with the nomination of Tom
Daschle, an advocate for Britain's socialized National Health Service, as secretary of
Health and Human Services in 2009. (Mr. Daschle withdrew amid criticism for
nonpayment of taxes.) The White House installed another outspoken NHS fan, Donald Berwick, as an interim appointee (2010-11) to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
This summer, the Commonwealth Fund—a private foundation focused on health care
that is a favorite of progressive policy types—issued a report ranking the NHS as the
best medical system among those in 11 of the world's most advanced nations, including Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden. Coming in last: U.S. health care.
Getty Images/Ikon Images
Yet the Commonwealth rankings are contradicted by objective data about
access and medical-care quality in peer-reviewed academic journals. For instance, Americans diagnosed with heart disease receive treatment with medications significantly more frequently than patients
in Western Europe, according to Kenneth Thorpe in Health Affairs in 2007. In Lancet Oncology in that same year, Arduino Verdecchia published data demonstrating that American cancer patients have survival rates for all major cancers better than those in Western Europe and far better than in the U.K.
Similar examples concerning the deadliest and most significant diseases abound in medical journals. One may ask why the Commonwealth Fund's health-care rankings published in June don't reflect that reality. Theanswer lies in the report's methodology, which relied heavily on subjective surveys about "perceptions and experiences of patients and physicians."
Yet even as the single-payer system remains the ideal for many on the left, it's worth examining how Britain's NHS, established in 1948, is faring. The answer: badly. NHS England—a government body that receives about £100 billion a year from the
Department of Health to run England's health-care system—reported this month that its hospital waiting lists soared to their highest point since 2006, with 3.2 million patients waiting for treatment after diagnosis. NHS England figures for July 2013 show that
508,555 people in London alone were waiting for operations or other treatments—the highest total for at least five years.
Even cancer patients have to wait: According to a June report by NHS England, more
than 15% of patients referred by their general practitioner for "urgent" treatment after
being diagnosed with suspected cancer waited more than 62 days—two full months—to begin their first definitive treatment.
In response the British government has enlisted private care for help, including most recently through the Health and Social Care Act 2012. In May last year, the Nuffield Trust, an independent research and policy institute, along with the Institute for Fiscal Studies,
the U.K.'s leading independent microeconomic research institute, issued a report on
NHS-funded private care. The report showed that over the past decade the NHS,
desperate to reduce its ever-expanding rolls, has increasingly sent patients to private
care. The share of NHS-funded hip and knee replacements by private doctors increased to 19% in 2011-12, from a negligible amount in 2003-04.
In 2006-07, according to the report, the NHS spent £5.6 billion on private care outside its system. This increased by 55% to £8.7 billion in 2011-12, including a 76% rise in
spending on nonprimary care, going to £8.3 billion from £4.7 billion, despite significant reductions in spending on private care attributed to the financial crisis.
Britons who can afford to avoid the NHS are eager to do so. Even with a slight decrease due to the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, about six million British citizens buy private health insurance and about 250,000 choose to pay for private treatment out-of-pocket each year—though NHS insurance costs $3,500 annually for every British man, woman and child.
The socialized-medicine model is struggling elsewhere in Europe as well. Even in
Sweden, often heralded as the paradigm of a successful welfare state, months-long
wait times for treatment routinely available in the U.S. have been widely documented.
To fix the problem, the Swedish government has aggressively introduced private-market forces into health care to improve access, quality and choices. Municipal governments have increased spending on private-care contracts by 50% in the past decade,
according to Näringslivets Ekonomifakta, part of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, a Swedish employers' association.
Swedish primary-care clinics and nursing facilities are increasingly run by the private
sector or receive substantial public funding. Widespread private competition has also
been introduced into pharmacies to tear down the previous government monopoly over
all prescription and non-prescription drugs. Though Swedish economist Per Bylund calculates that the average Swedish family already pays nearly $20,000 annually in
taxes toward health care, about 12% of working adults bought private insurance in 2013, a number that has increased by 67% in five years, according to the trade organization Insurance Sweden. Almost 600,000 Swedes now use private insurance, though they are "guaranteed" public health care.
The recent Veterans Affairs scandal, following the disastrous ObamaCare rollout, was a red flag about problems of nationalized health. Now concrete evidence is coming in from other countries that have tried it for decades. The reality is that the key goals for health-
care reform—reducing spending, expanding access to affordable coverage, preserving personal choice and portability of coverage, promoting competition in insurance markets, and maintaining excellence in medicine—do not require government to directly provide insurance or health care.
Dr. Atlas is a physician and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
6a) What is happening to American is destroying our future generations all promoted by Progressives and Libertarians...
OPINIONLegal Pot Is a Public Health MenacePublic opinion is moving in favor of marijuana, even as medical research raises fresh alarms.
By
WILLIAM J. BENNETT And
ROBERT A. WHITE
The great irony, or misfortune, of the national debate over marijuana is that while almost
all the science and research is going in one direction—pointing out the dangers of marijuana use—public opinion seems to be going in favor of broad legalization.
For example, last week a new study in the journal Current Addiction Reports found that regular pot use (defined as once a week) among teenagers and young adults led to cognitive decline, poor attention and memory, and decreased IQ. On Aug. 9, the
American Psychological Association reported that at its annual convention the
ramifications of marijuana legalization was much discussed, with Krista Lisdahl,
director of the imaging and neuropsychology lab at the University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee, saying: "It needs to be emphasized that regular cannabis use, which we consider once a week, is not safe and may result in addiction and neurocognitive
damage, especially in youth."
The Maggie's Farm recreational-marijuana store in Manitou Springs, Colo. Jerilee Bennett/Associated Press
Since few marijuana users limit
themselves to use once a week, the
actual harm is much worse for developing brains. The APA noted that young people who become addicted to marijuana lose
an average of six IQ points by adulthood.
A long line of studies have found similar results—in 2012, a decades-long study of more than 1,000 New Zealanders who frequently smoked pot in adolescence pegged the IQ loss at eight points.
Yet in recent weeks and months, much media coverage of the marijuana issue has
either tacitly or explicitly supported legalization. A CCN/ORC International survey in
January found that a record 55% of Americans support marijuana legalization.
The disconnect between science and public opinion is so great that in a March
WSJ/NBC News poll, Americans ranked sugar as more harmful than marijuana. The misinformation campaign appears to be succeeding.
Here's the truth. The marijuana of today is simply not the same drug it was in the 1960s, '70s, or '80s, much less the 1930s. It is often at least five times stronger, with the levels of the psychoactive ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, averaging about
15% in the marijuana at dispensaries found in the states that have legalized pot for "medicinal" or, in the case of Colorado, recreational use. Often the THC level is 20% or higher.
With increased THC levels come increased health risks. Since Colorado legalized recreational use earlier this year, two deaths in the state have already been linked to marijuana. In both cases it was consumed in edible form, which can result in the user taking in even more THC than when smoking pot. "One man jumped to his death after consuming a large amount of marijuana contained in a cookie," the Associated Press reported in April, "and in the other case, a man allegedly shot and killed his wife after
eating marijuana candy." Reports are coming out of Colorado in what amounts to a
parade of horribles from more intoxicated driving to more emergency hospital admissions due to marijuana exposure and overdose.
Over the past 10 years, study after study has shown the damaging effect of marijuana
on the teenage brain. Northwestern School of Medicine researchers reported in the Schizophrenia Bulletin in December that teens who smoked marijuana daily for about
three years showed abnormal brain-structure changes. Marijuana use has clearly been linked to teen psychosis as well as decreases in IQ and permanent brain damage.
The response of those who support legalization: Teenagers can be kept away from marijuana. Yet given the dismal record regarding age-restricted use of tobacco and
alcohol, success with barring teens from using legalized marijuana would be a first.
The reason such a large number of teens use alcohol and tobacco is precisely because those are legal products. The reason more are now using marijuana is because of its changing legal status—from something that was dangerous and forbidden to a product
that is now considered "medicinal," and in the states of Colorado and Washington recreational. Until recently, the illegality of marijuana, and the stigma of lawbreaking, had kept its use below that of tobacco and alcohol.
Legality is the mother of availability, and availability, as former Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph A. Califano Jr. put it in his 2008 book on substance abuse,
"High Society," is the mother of use. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration, currently 2.7 million Americans age 12 and older meet
the clinical criteria for marijuana dependence, or addiction.
Mark A.R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Los
Angeles, has estimated that legalization can be expected to increase marijuana consumption by four to six times. Today's 2.7 million marijuana dependents (addicts)
would thus expand to as many as 16.2 million with nationwide legalization. That should alarm any parent, teacher or policy maker.
There are two conversations about marijuana taking place in this country: One, we fear,
is based on an obsolete perception of marijuana as a relatively harmless, low-THC product. The other takes seriously the science of the new marijuana and its effect on
teens, whose adulthood will be marred by the irreversible damage to their brains when young.
Supporters of marijuana legalization insist that times are changing and policy should too. But they are the ones stuck in the past—and charting a dangerous future for too many Americans.
Mr. Bennett is a former secretary of education (1985-88) and was the first director of the National Drug Control Policy (1989-90). Mr. White is an attorney in Princeton, N.J.
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7)
Of Ferguson and FallujahObama's foreign policy is disastrously reactive—like the police response in Ferguson, Mo.
By
Bret Stephens
Bill Bratton has no doubt as to what went wrong with policing in the U.S. in the bad old days of the 1970s and '80s. "The biggest mistake," he insists, was too much "focus on response to crime and not enough focus on trying to prevent it."
In a lengthy Monday morning interview with The Wall Street Journal, New York's top cop refuses to be drawn into second-guessing his colleagues in Ferguson, Mo. When I ask about the seeming militarization of police forces in the U.S., he replies that each community "equips its police based on the needs for its city." If people can lawfully own Kalashnikov-style weapons, the cops inevitably are going to go one better.
What Mr. Bratton mainly wants to underscore is that crime in the Big Apple continues to plumb historic lows, never mind recent tabloid headlines. He wants to underscore, also, the reason for it: broken-windows policing methods. Such is his belief in broken windows that he comes to the meeting flanked by the man who helped come up with the idea: George Kelling, the legendary criminologist.
Broken windows stresses that endemic criminality is not primarily a function of the usual "root causes"—poverty, racism, bad schools, broken families and so on. The real problem is disorder itself.
Business owners protect their grocery store in Ferguson, Mo. Getty Images
"Disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence," Mr. Kelling observed in a seminal 1982 Atlantic article, co-written with the late James Q. Wilson. The mere appearance of disorder—graffiti, broken windows, an abandoned car, drug dealers or prostitutes openly plying their trades—creates a sense that nobody's looking, nobody cares, nobody is in charge. Bad guys respond to these environmental cues by acting badly. Good people stay off the street, bolt their doors, move out.
Ferguson is hardly the most dangerous neighborhood in St. Louis County; rates of violent crime are just below the national median, and far below those of East St. Louis, probably the most violent neighborhood in America.
But there is disorder in Ferguson. The city has 190 crimes per square mile, compared with a national median of 39.3. If you live in Ferguson, you are nearly twice as likely to have your car stolen, get mugged, or have your house broken into, than if you live in Averageville, U.S.A. Before last week, the biggest story out of Ferguson was the case of a woman who had opened a strip club/brothel in the basement of her home. Her 16-year-old son had the job of tending bar.
This was the environment in which police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed teenager Michael Brown. Whatever the exact circumstances of Brown's death, everything else about the case suggests a town where broken-windows policing was not being done, or at least not done well. A sense of insecurity and disorder. A police force badly out of step with the community it ostensibly serves. Reactive law enforcement.
At the Journal, Mr. Bratton made a point of emphasizing the nine principles of policing laid down in the 19th century by Sir Robert Peel, founder of London's Metropolitan Police. Principle No. 9: "The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it." By this standard, policing in Ferguson has been a total failure.
Which brings me to Fallujah.
Last October I wrote a column with the headline "Iraq Tips Toward the Abyss." It was prompted by the news that 7,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed over the previous 10 months alone.
"Americans may think they've changed the channel on Iraq, but the grisly show goes on," I wrote. "Pay attention before it gets worse." The world yawned and the Obama administration did nothing.
In January came the news that a group called the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham had retaken Fallujah, just 40 or so miles west of Baghdad, a city that U.S. Marines had liberated a decade earlier at a major cost in lives. The media ran a few stories about the heartache of the battle's veterans. President Obama said nothing.
In July, ISIS took Mosul and seized six divisions worth of U.S. supplied Iraqi military equipment. For once, President Obama took public notice but waited another month before doing anything, ostensibly because he disapproved of the leadership in Baghdad. That was around the time Kurdistan nearly fell to ISIS and the Yazidis were nearly wiped out.
This is a case study of allowing neighborhoods to decay and disorder to fester; of doing things reactively, not preventively. Where would we be in Iraq today if Mr. Obama hadn't simply walked and looked away for the past three years?
The answer to disorder is to provide order. To engage community leaders. To enforce norms. To reassure good citizens that their security is being looked after and it's not every man for himself. To maintain a visible presence that deters would-be lawbreakers from committing criminal acts. To prevent bad people from acting badly, and to punish them swiftly when they do.
This is how a successful police force like the NYPD works. And it's how a competent foreign policy should operate. Bill Bratton knows his job—which is more than can be said of the keystone cops in Ferguson, or at the White House.
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