I am preparing you for another nasty campaign but
I suspect this will be among the worst.
Young people do not know about Hillary and her husband
nor do they know much about The Holocaust.
History is no longer worth teaching so we learn only from
our media puppets, internet people like myself and that is what
Professor Bloom meant when he warned about the dumbing
down of America.
In my next memo I am posting an article by Dennis Prager 's fears because of what Liberal an Progressive thinking has done to our nation's character.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
and
In Looking Back, We Must Look Ahead - Why a strong Israel is more important than ever:
===
Can Israel trust anyone other than its own ability to protect itself? (See 1, 1a, 1b, 1c and 1d below.)
Israel turns 68 - Happy Birthday!
My memo is sent, and hopefully read, to/by far more Christian friends and acquaintances than Jewish.
Being Jewish, I subject you to a lot of articles about Israel etc. and my memo focus, as you know, is on The Middle East, Politics and Markets/Economics.
I do not dwell on nor allow The Holocaust to identify my own view of being Jewish as does Bernie Sanders who, in my opinion, is pathetic and should be excused for thinking he is Jewish.
However, I do have a somewhat mordant view of why "God" placed Jews on this earth. I believe it is to remind mankind they need a punching bag to expiate their darker feelings and motivations and to be reminded how far mankind is from being what we should.
My father expressed it differently. He said Jews are like people, only more so.
You decide.
As Israel celebrates 68 years,
the PA continues to deny Israel's right to exist,
and promises that all Israel will become "Palestine"
the PA continues to deny Israel's right to exist,
and promises that all Israel will become "Palestine"
by Itamar Marcus
As Israel celebrates 68 years of independence, the Palestinian Authority still actively disseminates its ideology that denies Israel's fundamental right to exist in any borders. The PA regularly proclaims and actively teaches Palestinian children that all of Israel is an illegitimate "occupation," and that Israeli cities such as Haifa, Jaffa - Tel Aviv, and Acre are all "occupied" cities. Palestinians are taught to anticipate a future without Israel when all of Israel will be part of the "State of Palestine."
Palestinian Media Watch has reported that Mahmoud Abbas himself has stated that he views Israelsince its creation as an "occupation." He also challenged Israel's right to continue to exist:
Mahmoud Abbas at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva:
"Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, don't you ask yourselves: Until when will the Israeli occupation of our land continue? After 67 years (i.e., since Israel's establishment in 1948), until when? Do you think it can continue, and that it benefits the Palestinian people?"
[Official PA TV, Oct. 28, 2015]
===
On the home front the Novant deal fell through thanks to Al Scott and his finance campaign manager. This from a dear friend and fellow memo reader:
"Gotta hold our noses and ask for a "Democrap" ballot and vote for Tony Center. Scott is a disaster!
The Chatham County Hospital Authority caused Novant Health to rescind their offer of millions for Memorial.
The Children's Hospital is on hold, several programs will be cut, the tax payers will start to pay down debt with 6% property increase, etc.
The head of the CCHA is a Mr. Waters, who is also the finance campaign manager for Al Scott. The CCHA continued to demand more and more power from Novant until they had had enough. Mr. Waters shouldn't be surprised to hear that. It is understood that Mr. Scott had a great deal of input.
Word on the street is for everyone to vote for Tony Center and not Al Scott by whatever means it takes."
I wrote several weeks ago it would be wise to lurch left and vote Center!
===
I have several liberal friends who constantly chastise me for thinking Obama's Iran Deal was a bad idea. Not only was it a bad idea and perfidious one but it also turns out, as I always thought, it was sold to the dolts in the press and media as factual.
Obama and his lackeys believe they are justified in accomplishing their mis-deeds by any manner because they are so self-righteous and know more than anyone else.
With the passing of each day we learn more and more about Obama the pathological liar who has surrounded himself with his equal and now the Democrats are offering us a female version for a continuum. (See 2 below.)
===
Another reason for Trump's rise according to Galston., and Prager despairs. You decide. (See 3 and 3a below.)
Those who know me best and who read these memos, understand I am, by nature, a pessimist. I have often said a pessimist is someone who has met too many optimists.
That said, I could turn optimistic should Trump be elected. Not because I believe he has the political talent of a Reagan but he has the common sense of Reagan and sees the world through eyes that are not blinded by political myopia.
His election would signify the nation, or those who vote for him, is prepared to turn away from the garbage we have endured as a consequence of the hair brained ideas fostered upon us by Progressive thinking which has gone a long way towards destroying our national character. (See 3b below.
But then, I read this and I am not discouraged. Newt is crafty and I knew him well when I lived in Atlanta. He is bright, articulate but comes with a lot of baggage and we need something more refreshing.
Time will tell but I have more than my finger's crossed. (See 3c below.)
===
Dry rot in academia? (Subsequent to this article, Jason Riley was re-invited.) Why? Not because the Administration took a flight to the land of courage and reality but because public pressure became embarrassing. (See 4 below.)
===
Dick
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++1) Reversing Israel on the Golan Heights
by Shoshana Bryen
Chinese Ambassador Liu Jieyi, who held the April UN Security Council presidency, announced last week that the status of the Golan Heights "remains unchanged." That is, of course, true -- like the old "Saturday Night Live" running gag, "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."
He meant it belongs to Syria, and he was responding to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet on the Golan, "The Golan Heights have been an integral part of the land of Israel since ancient times; the dozens of ancient synagogues in the area around us attest to that. And the Golan is an integral part of the state of Israel in the new era. I told [Secretary of State John Kerry] that I doubt that Syria will ever return to what it was."
That is, of course, also true and entirely unremarkable. But thus begins another round of UN condemnation of Israel resting on silly propositions. In this case:
- That Syria -- ruled by a war criminal in the midst of a civil war with other groups that include war criminals -- has a valid claim to anything; and
- That Israel is wrong because the UN is miffed.
A bit of relatively recent history is useful here.
An Israeli was raised in the Galilee sleeping every night in a bunker to avoid Syrian shelling from the Golan Heights -- Hamas and Hizb'allah are latecomers to the war crime of indiscriminately firing at civilians. As a child, he helped on the family farm. While riding the tractor, his father couldn't hear the mortars fired by the Syrians down into the fields. The child's job was to be within eyesight of the tractor along the edge of the field near some trees. When the mortars began, he would wave a large red flag to catch his father's attention, at which his father would slip off the tractor and hasten for shelter. Not exactly milking the cow.
Things changed in June 1967 when, after intensified shelling by the Syrians, the IDF captured the Golan. Israeli soldiers stood on the Heights and looked down into Israel's Jezreel Valley. Their new understanding of the dire circumstances at the bottom shocked them, and they left a marker that remains today. "From here," it reads, "You look ten feet tall."
At great cost in the lives of military personnel, Israel retained the Heights in 1973 after Syria launched an offensive on Yom Kippur.
Israel would have been within its rights to annex the Golan Heights -- in 1967 or in '73. The UN line about "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force" (ever applied only to Israel) to rational observers means the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by offensive force; otherwise defense would have no meaning. Israel acquired the Golan in defense, and retained it in defense.
It was understanding that insecure boundaries could result in additional wars -- in the case of Israel, not least because the Arab countries were/are still working to overturn the 1948 independence of Israel by force -- that the 1967 UN Resolution 242 contained the security promise to Israel of "secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."
Although Israel could have annexed the territory, it did not. In 1981, the government did end the application of military law on the Heights and institute Israeli civil law; the change in status applied to people, not to rocks. Even in its frenzy to condemn, the 1981 Security Council correctly described Israel's actual actions as less than annexation, calling it a "decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights," and said that anyhow it was "null and void and without international legal affect."
It may not have had "international legal affect" but for the 12,000 Druze living there, it had enormous economic and social affect, allowing them to live and prosper along with Jews, while Israel created its most peaceful border. Even now, during the horrific Syrian war -- complete with barrel bombs, chemical weapons, starvation, beheadings, crucifixions, and ethnic cleansing -- the Israeli side of the Golan remains so secure that Israel has been able to open its border, cautiously, to some casualties from the Syrian side for treatment in Israeli hospitals.
But still it is the Israeli part of the Golan that transfixes the UN.
One could not do better to make Israel's case than to cite Moshe Arens -- retired Israeli diplomat, Defense Minister, and aeronautical engineer. "According to the second law of thermodynamics there are no reversible processes in nature. Nothing can return exactly to its original state. This law may not hold in international relations, but the exceptions are few and far between."
Syria is unlikely to return to its "original state" which, in fact, was only its state determined by colonials and held for a few decades in the middle of the 20th Century. The UN, however, may believe it has a better chance of reversing the laws of thermodynamics than of bringing the war of Syrians and others parties to an end.
1. The Holocaust began in January 1933 when Hitler came to power and technically ended on May 8, 1945 (VE Day).i
2. Between 1933 and 1945, more than 11 million men, women, and children were murdered in the Holocaust. Approximately six million of these were Jews.f
3. Over 1.1 million children died during the Holocaust.c
4. Young children were particularly targeted by the Nazis to be murdered during the Holocaust. They posed a unique threat because if they lived, they would grow up to parent a new generation of Jews. Many children suffocated in the crowded cattle cars on the way to the camps. Those who survived were immediately taken to the gas chambers.e
5. The majority of people who were deported to labor and death camps were transported in cattle wagons. These wagons did not have water, food, a toilet, or ventilation. Sometimes there were not enough cars for a major transport, so victims waited at a switching yard, often with standing room only, for several days. The longest transport of the war took 18 days. When the transport doors were open, everyone was already dead.b
6. The most intensive Holocaust killing took place in September 1941 at the Babi Yar Ravine just outside of Kiev, Ukraine, where more than 33,000 Jews were killed in just two days. Jews were forced to undress and walk to the ravine’s edge. When German troops shot them, they fell into the abyss. The Nazis then pushed the wall of the ravine over, burying the dead and the living. Police grabbed children and threw them into the ravine as well.a
7. Carbon monoxide was originally used in gas chambers. Later, the insecticide Zyklon B was developed to kill inmates. Once the inmates were in the chamber, the doors were screwed shut and pellets of Zyklong B were dropped into vents in the side of the walls, releasing toxic gas. SS doctor Joann Kremmler reported that victims would scream and fight for their lives. Victims were found half-squatting in the standing room only chambers, with blood coming out their ears and foam out of their mouths.b
8. In 1946, two partners in a leading pest control company, Tesch and Stabenow (Testa), were tried before a British military court on charges of genocide. It was argued that the accused must have realized that the massive supply of Zyklon B they provided to concentration camps was far above the quantity required for delousing. They were convicted and hanged.e
9. Over one million people were murdered at the Auschwitz complex, more than at any other place. The Auschwitz complex included three large camps: Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz.b
10. Prisoners, mainly Jews, called Sonderkommando were forced to bury corpses or burn them in ovens. Because the Nazis did not want eyewitnesses, most Sonderkommandos were regularly gassed, and fewer than 20 of the several thousand survived. Some Sonderkommandos buried their testimony in jars before their deaths. Ironically, the Sonderkommandos were dependent on continued shipment of Jews to the concentration camps for staying alive.e
11. The “Final Solution” was constructed during the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. Fourteen high-ranking Nazis met in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, and presented a program to deport all Jews to Poland where the SS would kill them.f
12. Kristallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass” occurred throughout Germany and Austria on November 9, 1938, when the Nazis viciously attacked Jewish communities. The Nazis destroyed, looted, and burned over 1,000 synagogues and destroyed over 7,000 businesses. They also ruined Jewish hospitals, schools, cemeteries, and homes. When it was over, 96 Jews were dead and 30,000 arrested.e
13. In the initial stages of the destruction of European Jews, the Nazis forced Jews into ghettos and instigated a policy of planned, indirect annihilation by denying them the basic means of survival. In the Warsaw ghetto in Poland, the largest ghetto, about 1% of the population died each month.f
14. An estimated 1/3 of all Jewish people alive at that time were murdered in the Holocaust.e
15. In his memoirs, Rudolph Hess described the process of tricking the Jews into entering the gas chambers. To avoid panic, they were told they had to undress to be washed and disinfected. The Nazi guards used a “Special Detachment Team” (other Jewish prisoners) to help keep an air of calm and to assist those who were reluctant to undress. Children often cried, but after members of the Special Detachment team comforted them, they entered the gas chambers, playing or joking with one another, often still carrying their toys.b
16. The word “Holocaust” is from the Greek holo “whole” + kaustos “burnt.” It refers to an animal sacrifice in which the entire animal is burned. It is also known as the Shoah, which is Hebrew for “destruction.” The terms “Shoah” and “Final Solution” always refer to the Nazi extermination of the Jews and “the Holocaust” refers to the overall genocide caused by the Nazis, while the general term “holocaust” can refer to the mass killing of any group by any government.e
17. The term “holocaust” became a household word in America when in 1978 NBC television aired the miniseries titled Holocaust. However, Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel called the miniseries, “untrue and offensive.” Wiesel objected to what he thought were historical inaccuracies, German and Jewish stereotypes, “too much drama and not enough documentary.” He also argued that television was an inappropriate medium to portray the Holocaust.e
18. Approximately 220,000-500,000 Romanies (Gypsies) were killed during the Holocaust.a
19. Unlike other genocides in which victims are often able to escape death by converting to another religion, those of Jewish descent could be spared only if their grandparents had converted to Christianity before January 18, 1871 (the founding of the German Empire).e
20. Of the nine million Jews who lived in Europe before the Holocaust, an estimated 2/3 were murdered. Millions of others, including those who were disabled, political and religious opponents to Hitler, Romanies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals, were also murdered.j
21. Those who survived Dr. Josef Mengele’s experiments were almost always murdered and dissected. Many children were maimed or paralyzed and hundreds died. He was known by children as “Onkel Mengele” and would bring them candy and toys before personally killing them. He later died in a drowning accident in Brazil in 1979.e
22. Twins fascinated Nazi doctor Josef Mengele (known as the “Angel of Death”). According to one witness, he sewed together a set of twins named Guido and Ina, who were about 4 years old, from the back in an attempt to create Siamese twins. Their parents were able to get some morphine and kill them to end their suffering.e
23. Hitler introduced the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which made it illegal for Germans to marry or have sex with Jews. It also deprived Jews of their German citizenship and most of their civil rights.f
24. The 1940 Nazi pseudo-documentary The Eternal Jew attempted to justify the extermination of Jews from Europe. The movie claimed that Jews were genetically destined to be wandering cultural parasites.f
25. On November 11, 1938, Germany enacted the “Regulations Against Jews’ Possession of Weapons,” which made it illegal for Jews to carry firearms or other weapons.f
26. Gas in the chambers during the Holocaust entered the lower layers of air first and then rose slowly toward the ceiling, which forced victims to trample one another in an attempt to breathe. Stronger victims were often found on top of the pile of bodies.e
27. Muselmann (German for “Muslim”) was slang for concentration camp victims who gave up any hope of survival. They would squat with their legs tucked in an “Oriental” fashion, with their shoulders curved and their head dropped and overcome by despair. Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi stated that if he could “enclose all the evil of our time in one image, I would choose this image.”g
28. Hitler was able to build a network of over 1,000 concentration camps in several ways. First, he established a legal basis for acts of brutal inhumanity by creating the Enabling Act, which allowed him to do whatever he wanted. Second, he used propaganda and media to dehumanize Jewish people and, finally, he used a system of brutality to terrorize the people into submission.e
29. Approximately 100,000 Jews died during “death marches.”j
30. The first concentration camp was Dachau. The first arrivals to Dachau were political opponents of Hitler who were placed there in protective custody, including communists, socialists, and political Catholics. Later, it was used as an extermination camp for Jews.b
31. The soldiers who patrolled and operated concentration camps were known as Totenkopfverbande, or “Death’s Head” detachments. They wore skull-and-crossbones insignias on their uniforms to reflect their namesake.e
32. As Jews fled Europe under Hitler’s rule, representatives from 32 countries met in Evian, France, in 1938 to discuss the growing refugee crisis in Europe. Representatives from Great Britain said it had no room to accommodate Jewish refugees. The Australians said, “We don’t have a racial problem and we don’t want to import one.” Canada said of the Jews that “none was too many.” Holland and Demark offered temporary asylum, but only for a few refugees. Only the Dominican Republic offered to take 100,000 Jews, but their relief agencies were so overwhelmed that only a few Jews could take advantage of the offer. A German foreign officer wrote a letter essentially saying that, in light of such responses, the world could not blame them [the Nazis] for not wanting the Jews.e
33. Einsatzgruppen (“task forces”) were mobile killing vans, which were regular trucks with the exhaust pipes redirected into the cargo area. Jews were herded into these trucks, sometimes 90 at a time. The Einsatzgruppen killed over 1.2 million Jews.i
34. During the Holocaust, Nazi Germany became a genocide state, a government dedicated to the annihilation of the Jews. Every arm of the government played a role. Parish churches provided the birth records of the Jews. The Finance Ministry took Jewish wealth and property. Universities researched more efficient ways to murder. And government transportation bureaus paid for the trains that carried the Jews to their death.j
35. There were several types of concentration camps during the Holocaust, including transit camps, prisoner of war camps, and police detention camps. Six camps served as the main killing centers, all in Poland: Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno, Auschwitz/Birkenau, and Majdanek. The last two were also slave labor camps.b
36. More than 870,000 Jews were killed at Treblinka with a staff of just 150 people. There were fewer than 100 known survivors of Treblinka.e
37. At Birkenau (Auschwitz II) alone over 1.1 million Jews were murdered in addition to 20,000 Poles, 19,000 Gypsies, and 12,000 Russian prisoners of war.b
38. At the entrance to each death camp, there was a process of Selektion or Selection. Pregnant women, small children, the sick or handicapped, and the elderly were immediately condemned to death.b
39. Concentration camp laborers were forced to run in front of SS officers to show that they still had strength. The SS officers directed the runners into one of two lines. One line went to the gas chambers. The other went back to the barracks. The runners did not know which line went where.e
40. During the Holocaust, the most respected German corporations used slave labor, including BMW, Daimler-Benz (Mercedes-Benz), Messerschmitt, and Krupp. Though they were not forced to use slaves, they nevertheless used them as “good business practice.” Additionally, I.G. Farben, a German chemical industry conglomerate, invested more than 700 million Reich marks (German dollars) to build a huge petrochemical plant at Auschwitz III, which was staffed by human slaves.e
41. Auschwitz was the largest and highly organized death camp in history. It was actually three camps: a concentration camp, a death camp, and a slave labor camp. It was 19 square miles, guarded by 6,000 men, and was located in the Polish town of Oswiecim. It was opened June 1940 and initially held 728 Polish prisoners. By 1945, more than 1.25 million people had been killed there and 100,000 worked as slave laborers.b
42. At Auschwitz, thousands of prisoners were sterilized using radiation. Additionally, children of African-German origin and the mentally or physically handicapped were surgically sterilized, often brutally.b
43. Signs on the entrance to the gas chambers read: “Baths and disinfecting rooms.” Other notices read: “Cleanliness brings freedom!” It took 20 minutes to kill everyone in the chamber. The chambers at Auschwitz/Birkenau could kill 6,000 people a day.b
44. When Soviet troops entered Birkenau on January 18, 1945, they found 358,000 men’s suits, 837,000 women’ outfits, and 15,400 pounds of human hair packed into paper bags. The Nazis were saving them in warehouses for future use.e
45. The Nazis would process Holocaust victims’ hair into felt and thread. Hair was also used to make socks for submarine crews, ignition mechanisms in bombs, ropes and cords for ships, and stuffing for mattresses. Camp commanders were required to submit monthly reports on the amount of hair collected.e
46. British troops liberating Bergen-Belsen found that the Nazis had experimented using human skin for lampshades.e
47. Six million is the minimum number of Jews killed by the Nazis. Thousands of infants and babies were killed before their births could be recorded.e
48. The first instance of mass murder by gas under Hitler’s rule occurred on November 15, 1939, at the Owinksi psychiatric hospital near Poznan. The 1,100 victims, including 78 children, were Polish mental patients, and the gas used was carbon monoxide.e
49. The first mass gassing of Jews took place in the Chelmno extermination camp.e
50. To further the façade of “cleanliness,” SS men dressed as doctors pretended to “examine” the victims before they were unknowingly gassed. The real purpose of the procedure was to mark victims who had gold teeth in their mouths so their corpses could be set aside after gassing.i
51. Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) was the Nazi minister of propaganda and, prior to 1933, head of the Nazi organization in Berlin. He committed suicide along with his wife and six children in Berlin during the last week of the war.j
52. Heinrich Himmler was the Nazi leader more directly involved than any other officer during the Holocaust. He established Dachau, the first concentration camp in Germany, and the extermination camps in Eastern Europe. Himmler was captured by the British at the end of the war, but he committed suicide before he could be brought to trial.j
53. Those who deny the Holocaust argue that the Nazi concept of a Final Solution always meant only the emigration of the Jews, not their extermination. The Jews “missing” from Europe after 1945 are assumed to have resurfaced in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere as illegal immigrants. For many deniers or “revisionists,” the Holocaust was invented by the Jews to serve their own financial and political ends.e
54. More than half of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were women. Most women with small children were immediately sent to the gas chambers as children were nearly useless to the Nazis and the commotion that separating the women and children might have caused would have jeopardized the efficiency of the killing process. Women were also singled out for experiments in contraception and fertility. Additionally, mothers with babies and other children too young to control their crying had trouble finding hideouts during round-ups to avoid being sent to the camps.e
55. In one infamous concentration camp experiment, newborn babies were taken away from nursing mothers to see how long they could survive without feeding.e
56. After concentration camps were liberated, thousands of people who had been starved, beaten, and worked to exhaustion died within their first week of freedom. In Dachau, the daily death rate in the days following liberation was 200, and in Bergen-Belsen it was 300. Some Jews who were liberated from concentration camps died from overeating sweets and chocolate provided by friendly soldiers.e
57. Bergen-Belson was the first camp to be liberated by Western Allied officers on April 15, 1945. Originally designed to house 10,000 prisoners, by the last weeks of the war, it held 41,000.b
58. Adolf Eichmann (1906-62) was an SS officer who directed the implementation of the Final Solution. At the end of war, he escaped to South America, but in 1960, the Israeli secret service captured him in Argentina and secretly removed him to Israel. In 1961, he was tried and convicted of crimes against humanity. He was hanged in 1962.e
59. One observer in 1959 noticed that the dirt at the Treblinka concentration camp was not brown but gray. As he felt the dirt trickle through his fingers, he realized the earth was “coarse and sharp and filled with the fragments of human bone.”e
60. At Dachau, the Nazis researched ways to stop a bullet wound from bleeding out. They would administer chemicals such as polygala-10 to prisoners and then shoot various parts of their bodies. The prisoners usually died from their injuries within a few moments.e
61. Porrajmos is the Romany term for the Holocaust and means “devouring.”e
62. More than half a million people visit the site of the former concentration camp Auschwitz every year.b
63. Material published in 2001 alleged that IBM, the American computer company, had developed punch card technology to make selection of Holocaust victims more efficient. A Romany organization planned to sue IBM for its role. The case was later dropped.e
64. Between 1945 and 1985, approximately 5,000 convicted Nazi war criminals were executed and 10,000 were imprisoned.j
65. The Holocaust gave new urgency to the Jewish quest for a homeland in the Middle East. The Yishuv, or Jewish community in Palestine, stood ready to take them, but the British who governed the region restricted immigration to keep peace with the local Arabs. On November 29, 1947, Resolution 181 was enforced. It called for the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, and developed a plan for ending British rule.j
66. In August 1945, the Allied powers created the International War Crimes Tribunal, which included judges from the U.S., Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France. Never before in history had the losers of a nation at war been held to answer for their crimes before an international court.a
67. After the Holocaust, the U.N. formed the Commission of Human Rights in June 1946. In December 1948, the Commission approved two historic agreements: the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.j
68. When an injured and dying former SS man asked Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal for forgiveness for his role in wiping out the entire Jewish population in a small Ukrainian town, Wiesenthal answered with silence rather than forgiveness. Haunted by the experience, Wiesenthal asked religious leaders, human rights activists, and others to comment on his choice. He collected their response and his own essay in The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, which is now a classic of Holocaust literature.j
69. Holocaust survivor Yehuda Bacon, who spent his early teens in concentration camps, recounted that he burst out laughing during the first funeral procession he saw after liberation. “People are crazy,” he said. “For one person they make a casket and play solemn music? A few weeks ago I saw thousands of bodies piled up to be burnt like so much junk.”j
70. After WWII, the Allies grappled with whether to hold only the Nazi leaders accountable for the Holocaust or the whole German nation.a
71. After the war, squads of militant Jews spread over Europe and attempted to track down and execute SS officers in hiding. A Lithuanian Jew named Abba Kovner (1918-1987) formed the Avengers, a group of former ghetto fighters and partisans. They sought revenge not just against the Nazis but the entire German nation.a
72. After the war, the Allies felt that the German people should know the crimes committed during the Holocaust. Many citizens were forced to view bodies found at the concentration camps.j
73. During the de-Nazification of Germany after the war, the three Western powers (U.S., Great Britain, Russia), sentenced over 3.4 million former Nazis to some type of punishment. They also revoked race laws and other repressive measures, disbanded Nazi organizations, and eliminated “racial science” instruction from school.e
74. German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967) acknowledged guilt for the Holocaust and agreed to pay damages to individual Holocaust survivors. Over time, thousands of survivors qualified, and in 1954 the West German government paid out $6 million in pensions. By 1961, the total was up $100 million. The agreement made it clear that reparations did not lesson German guilt or repay Jewish suffering.e
75. On Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, sirens all over Israel sound at 10 a.m. for two minutes.a
76. The 1991 film The Eighty-First Blow is a film about the disbelief and even hostility that many Holocaust survivors encountered after the Holocaust.e
77. The Nazis sent 10,000-15,000 homosexuals to concentration camps where they were forced to wear pink triangles. The Nazis also carried out pseudo-research to find out if homosexuality was inherited by injecting them with male hormones. They offered homosexuals their freedom if they would agree to be castrated or submit themselves to sexual abuse and prostitution. Under these conditions, an estimated 6,000-9,000 homosexual inmates died in the camps.e
78. The Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem (Hebrew for “Memorial [or Hand] and Name,” taken from the Biblical verse Isaiah 56:5), the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, includes the names of over 10,000 people who risked their lives to save the Jews during the Holocaust. In Hebrew, these heroes are called Hasidei Umot Haolam, or the “Righteous among Nations of the World.”j
79. Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate the death camps. On July 23, 1944, they liberated Majdanek. Most of the world initially refused to believe the Soviet reports of the horrors they found there.a
80. General Eisenhower ordered every citizen of the German town of Gotha to tour the concentration camp Ohrdruf (a subcamp of Buchenwald). After the mayor of the town and his wife did so, they went home and hanged themselves.d
81. When General Eisenhower learned about the Ohrdruf concentration camp, he ordered every American soldier in the area who was not on the front lines to visit the camp. He said that if they did not know what they were fighting for, now they would know “what they were fighting against.”d
82. At some concentration camps, selected prisoners were used for medical experimentation, including exposing the body to various conditions such as high altitude, freezing temperatures, and extreme atmospheric pressure. Others underwent experiments with diseases such as hepatitis, tuberculosis, and malaria.b
83. While most Holocaust deniers, or “revisionists,” acknowledge that the Jews suffered during WWII, they disagree with the features that made the Holocaust a unique event in human history by denying that (1) the Holocaust was an efficient and organized program of genocide, (2) that six million Jews were murdered, and (3) that the Final Solution was a plan for the complete destruction of the Jews.e
84. On December 17, 1942, the Western Allies publicly denounced the massacre of the Jewish people, but they failed to do anything about it.e
85. The 1985 film Shoah by Claude Lanzmann is nine hours long and consists entirely of interviews with people who witnessed the Holocaust first hand.e
86. In letters and documents discussing the Holocaust, the Nazis never used words as “extermination” or “killing.” Instead, they used code words such as “final solution,” “evacuation,” or “special treatment.”e
87. Though he was offered sanctuary on the “Aryan side,” Polish teacher Janusz Korczak voluntarily left with the children from his orphanage when they were deported to extermination camps. It is believed that he died in August 1942 at the Treblinka concentration camp.e
88. Victims at some concentration camps were injected with the bacterium that produces gas gangrene so Nazi doctors could research the effectiveness of sulfanilamide in preventing infection and mortification. Several women prisoners died or were severely burned as a result of infections caused by the treatment of high doses of sulfanilamide.e
89. Many Jewish children who were hidden in Christian families during the Holocaust were unaware of their Jewish heritage and remained with their foster parents. Some children became so close to their foster parents that they did not want to leave to rejoin their other surviving family members.e
90. To refute Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s claim that the Holocaust never happened, prominent Muslims joined Jews and Christians at the former concentration camp Auschwitz in February 2011 to honor Jewish Holocaust victims.h
References
a Altman, Linda Jacobs. 2004. Impact of the Holocaust. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishing, Inc.
b Byers, Ann. 1998. The Holocaust Camps. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishing, Inc.
c Hayes, Peter. 1999. Lessons and Legacies: Memory, Memorialization, and Denial. Vol III. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Publishing Press.
d “Ike and the Death Camps.” Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission. 2004. Accessed: May 25, 2011.
e Laqueur, Walter, ed. 2001. The Holocaust Encyclopedia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
f Levy, Pat. 2001. The Holocaust Causes. Austin, TX: Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers.
g “Muselman.” Jewish Virtual Library. 2010. Accessed: June 14, 2011.
h “Muslims Honor Jewish Holocaust Victims at Auschwitz.” Reuters. February 1, 2011. Accessed: May 25, 2011.
i Willoughby, Susan. 2001. The Holocaust. Chicago, IL: Heinemann Library.
j Wood, Angela Gluck. 2007. Holocaust: The Events and Their Impact on Real People. New York, NY: DK Publishing, Inc.
a Altman, Linda Jacobs. 2004. Impact of the Holocaust. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishing, Inc.
b Byers, Ann. 1998. The Holocaust Camps. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishing, Inc.
c Hayes, Peter. 1999. Lessons and Legacies: Memory, Memorialization, and Denial. Vol III. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Publishing Press.
d “Ike and the Death Camps.” Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission. 2004. Accessed: May 25, 2011.
e Laqueur, Walter, ed. 2001. The Holocaust Encyclopedia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
f Levy, Pat. 2001. The Holocaust Causes. Austin, TX: Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers.
g “Muselman.” Jewish Virtual Library. 2010. Accessed: June 14, 2011.
h “Muslims Honor Jewish Holocaust Victims at Auschwitz.” Reuters. February 1, 2011. Accessed: May 25, 2011.
i Willoughby, Susan. 2001. The Holocaust. Chicago, IL: Heinemann Library.
j Wood, Angela Gluck. 2007. Holocaust: The Events and Their Impact on Real People. New York, NY: DK Publishing, Inc.
Viva Sarah Press
African and Asian farmers come to Israel’s Arava desert to learn how to transform farming in their own communities back home.
Israeli farmers are renowned for making the desert bloom. They’re also proving that this desolate area is fertile ground for a new crop of agriculturalists and agronomists.
Midway between the Dead Sea and Eilat, in the heart of the Arava desert, the Arava International Center for Agricultural Training (AICAT) is growing entrepreneurs.
AICAT, located in Sapir, has hosted over 10,000 undergraduates from across Asia and Africa at its 10-month agriculture work-study program over the past 20-plus years.
Students from Nepal, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Ethiopia, South Sudan, East Timor, Thailand and Indonesia come in August of every year.
“They come at plantation time and grow with the plants,” Hanni Arnon, AICAT director, tells ISRAEL21c. “Here – where there are very harsh conditions, geographic isolation, extreme weather, arid soil and a shortage of water — they learn the importance of human capacity. If you want it, you can make a change. We teach that a difficulty is a challenge and you need to find a solution.”
Students come from many countries to learn Israeli agricultural techniques at AICAT. Photo: courtesy
Students learn through hands-on experience about Israel’s modern approaches to all aspects of agriculture.
Arnon says many of the visitors’ farming families still rely on luck and prayers. “Students learn here that to farm properly and be prosperous, you need to plan. It’s not about planting randomly and hoping it grows. You need plans, research, drip irrigation, pest control and water management,” she says.
“A plant is a plant. It doesn’t matter if you grow a tomato here or somewhere in Asia or Africa. It still needs good soil, water, sun and pest control. We’re teaching that you need to plan, use the right methods, and research.”
Food security for the world
In 1994, Israeli farming communities began hiring Thai farmhands. The newcomers were amazed to see a desert in bloom and started asking how the magic happens.
“Nearly 25 percent of the world’s population lives in poverty and we have the knowhow to help. We realized there was an opportunity to create a school and share our knowledge of high-tech farming practices,” says Arnon.
Established with the mission of bringing in students from underdeveloped regions, AICAT operates within the Central Arava Regional Council and has partnerships with the KKL-JNF, Partnership2Gether, MASHAV and CINADCO-The Center for International Agricultural Development Cooperation within the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
“We never imagined that we’d go on to become an international school with over 1,000 students per year,” says Arnon. The majority of students (70%) are male.
“Because of JNF and AICAT, we’re getting the knowledge and experience we need to rebuild our country,” said Binod Ghimire, an AICAT student from Nepal.
AICAT students learning from an Israeli farmer. Photo: courtesy
Each participant is assigned to an area farmer for the school year. “The farmers become their mentors, their inspiration, their family away from home,” says Arnon.
The students earn a salary while learning information they can later apply in their home communities.
“They arrive as students but they go back as entrepreneurs,” Arnon says. “Farmers and farming lands are diminishing but the world is growing. We need more farmers and entrepreneurial farmers especially. An entrepreneur is someone who looks at the land and finds solutions that will be good for all the community.”
Arnon notes that even small projects can be entrepreneurial. One Thai student persuaded his parents to install a water pump and farm a section of land that had never been used before. “To pump water, for us, isn’t innovative. We’ve been doing it for years. But for them, it is,” she says.
AICAT helps with business plans and keeps in touch with its alumni. Word-of-mouth recommendations – as well as successes in international locales – have created more demand than AICAT can accommodate.
Inspiring ambassadors
In 2014, AICAT introduced an 18-month-long international master’s degree in plant sciences with an emphasis on food safety and security, in cooperation with the Manna Center Program for Food Safety and Security at Tel Aviv University.
This year’s 21 students, each with a first degree from their home countries, are from Vietnam, Myanmar, Nepal, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Nigeria.
“They go home with pride in their profession,” says Arnon.
“You see students coming from developing countries with primitive farming methods and when they come here and see the innovations in agriculture, their eyes sparkle with wonder. They say the Israeli farmers inspire them,” she says.
The program includes sightseeing trips as well as field trips around the Arava to see agri-tech companies and methods in action. The annual Arava Open Day – at which some 200 companies and organizations show the latest agricultural innovations — is always a highlight.
“This unique study program has opened my eyes to different cultures and different points of view,” writes an AICAT student from Myanmar on Facebook. “The peppers we brought [on our visit to Mount Hermon] were a symbol of our love and appreciation for AICAT for making all this happen. It’s what AICAT represents — agriculture without borders!”
AICAT students have fun at Mount Hermon. Photo: Facebook
“Israel’s desert landscape proves that if you have the will and the right methods, a farm can grow and succeed anywhere,” says Arnon.
AICAT instructors try to impart a sense of tikkun olam (the Jewish value of repairing the world) on their students. “We are inspiring our students to make a difference in their own communities,” says Arnon.
One group of Nepali students now at AICAT plans to create a farming community at home. And a group of Thai students wants to set up a moshav (collective farm) in their university at home.
“They’re calling it Arava Farm,” Arnon says with pride.
1c)
On celebrating Independence Day
By Isi Liebler
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Independence Day fly over off Tel Aviv coast
Last week, we commemorated the genocidal murder of 6 million Jews – the most barbaric episode in our 2,000
years of exile which was sporadically interspersed with discrimination, persecution, expulsion and pogroms.
Today, the nation mourns those who sacrificed their lives in the course of the creation and ongoing defense of our
Jewish state.
Against this somber background, tomorrow we will celebrate the 68th anniversary of the establishment of the State
of Israel.
This period evokes mixed feelings.
Our prayers for peace with our neighbors and our desperate hope that our children and grandchildren shall not be
obliged to fight wars, remain but a dream with no respite on the horizon.
Moreover, those who believed that after Auschwitz, anti-Semites would represent an extinct species, were
deluded and are dismayed at the upsurge of mankind’s most enduring hatred. Prior to the creation of the State of Israel, anti-Semites accused Jews of being the source of all the evils confronting mankind. Today hatred of the Jew as an individual has been transcended by global hatred of the Jewish state, which is widely perceived as the prime source of global instability, the greatest threat to peace and one of the most oppressive countries in the world. This warped view is promoted at a time when the Dark Ages of barbarism have returned to the region, with millions being killed, displaced and denied human rights.
Moreover, even Western countries – especially Europe whose soil was soaked with Jewish blood during the
Holocaust – once again stand by and either abstain or even formally support efforts to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state. It is somewhat like a déjà vu of the world’s indifference to the Nazi extermination of the Jewish people.
But, on Independence Day, while fully conscious of the evil surrounding us, we must resist the whining of the
prophets of doom in our ranks.
We should celebrate that we are the most blessed Jewish generation in 2,000 years.
Jewish youngsters today graduating from schools and universities have no appreciation of the fear and insecurity
that dominated the lives of Jews before the creation of the state empowered us.
As we follow the chilling anti-Semitic tsunami in Europe, including recent expressions in the British Labour Party,
and observe European Jews once again being transformed into pariahs, we are angered rather than fearful. That is because a Jewish state guarantees that today Jews threatened with murder or oppression have a haven.
We should celebrate the fact that Israel has created the most powerful military force in the region. Our tiny state is
one of the top 10 world military powers, with the ability to deter and defend itself against the combined forces of all our adversaries. Could Holocaust survivors, Jews oppressed in Arab countries, or Soviet Jews facing anti- Semitism 70 years ago, have even remotely dreamed that their descendants would enjoy the status we have achieved in an empowered Israel? That alone provides boundless grounds for rejoicing. Furthermore, we have cause to celebrate the ingathering of our exiles, ranging from broken survivors of concentration camps to Ethiopian Jews – and the extraordinary success in which these Jews from all corners of the world and different levels of society have been molded into a vibrant nation.
Our political system is frequently condemned as dysfunctional and only a small percentage of our more talented
citizens are tempted to enter into professional politics. Yet, the fact remains that despite being the only country in the world whose existence is constantly challenged, and facing ongoing terrorism and wars, we have succeeded in retaining one of the most democratic systems in the world.
Indeed, our freedom of expression and robust press has frequently been condemned for being over indulgent in
providing platforms for elements promoting our enemies. We rightfully grant full equality to Arab Israelis, notwithstanding that their radical parliamentary representatives support our enemies and demonize their own state.
Our legal system, despite its weaknesses and the controversy over the excessive interventionist power of the
High Court, ensures that all Israelis are treated with equality. Indeed the fact that a president, prime minister and senior cabinet ministers were indicted, convicted and imprisoned, highlights the proper functioning of our legal system. This, too, is an aspect of life in which we should take pride and celebrate.
We are blessed to have one of the most robust economies in the world and we must rejoice in the fact that we
have more new high-tech initiatives and startups per capita than any other nation. Not to mention that over the past decade, our own desalination processes have overcome an endemic drought condition and, despite prevarications, we will in future become a gas exporting nation.
Beyond this, we can take pride in our vibrant cultural and religious life. This is a Jewish state that pulsates in
accordance with the Jewish calendar, catering for religiously observant as well as secular streams. There is also positive evidence that more of the ultra-Orthodox are serving in the army and entering the workforce and there is gradual and steady progress of their integration into mainstream society. By and large, aside from the excessive influence of the ultra-Orthodox establishment and the Chief Rabbinate, there is a broad spiritual awakening and greater understanding between the various sectors of Israeli society.
The Israeli Jewish identity is still evolving, but at a time when assimilation and intermarriage are having a
devastating impact on the number of Diaspora Jews, Israel guarantees the continuity of the Jewish people. This, too, is something to celebrate.
Finally, we should rejoice that, aside from parochial politics, the nation is today more united than it has been since
the great divide over the Oslo Accords. Whether one supports or opposes Benjamin Netanyahu as leader, it is clear that the reason for the failure in peace negotiations is due to the Palestinian determination to bring about an end to Jewish sovereignty. We should be celebrating that today, aside from the extreme Left and Right, there is a consensus on these issues with the major Zionist political parties in accord that our objective is to separate ourselves from the Palestinians, but that for security reasons, we cannot move forward until a genuine peace partner emerges from their ranks.
So as we celebrate 68 years of statehood, we should dismiss the doomsayers and rejoice at our extraordinary achievements. If we review the progress we have made since 1967 – despite misgivings about retaining the
status quo – we have every reason to celebrate this Independence Day. That in recent years Israelis have consistently polled as one of the happiest nations in the world, speaks for itself.
We pray that, with the help of the Almighty, we will continue to flourish and grow even stronger and ultimately
realize our dreams for peace with our neighbors.
Chag sameach.
1d)
Will Clinton Back Obama on Israel? |
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2)How the Iran deal was sold- through lies
Obama's Foreign Policy Guru Boasts of How the Administration Lied to Sell the Iran Deal
Ben Rhodes and the blob.
It’s hardly any wonder that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has a "mind meld" with his boss, the president. According to a David Samuels New York Times Magazine article to be published Sunday and already posted to the website, Rhodes, like Barack Obama, is contemptuous of "the American foreign-policy establishment." What Obama calls the "Washington playbook" dictating the sorts of responses available to American policymakers, Rhodes calls the "Blob."The Blob includes "editors and reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker," etc. It also encompasses, according to Rhodes, Obama's former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and the administration's first defense secretary Robert Gates. Presumably Leon Panetta, former Pentagon chief and CIA director, who goes on the record to criticize Rhodes and the president, is also part of the Blob, alongside "other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East." In other words, the emotion driving the administration's foreign policy is contempt—contempt for allies, colleagues, and the generations of American policymakers who built the post-WWII international order, ensuring relative global stability, and peace and prosperity at home.
Samuels's profile is an amazing piece of writing about the Holden Caulfield of American foreign policy. He's a sentimental adolescent with literary talent (Rhodes published one short story before his mother's connections won him a job in the world of foreign policy), and high self-regard, who thinks that everyone else is a phony.
Those readers who found Jeffrey Goldberg's picture of Obama in his March Atlantic profile refreshing for the president's willingness to insult American allies publicly will be similarly cheered here by Rhodes's boast of deceiving American citizens, lawmakers, and allies over the Iran deal.
Conversely, those who believe Obama risked American interests to take a cheap shot at allies from the pedestal of the Oval Office will be appalled to see Rhodes dancing in the end zone to celebrate the well-packaged misdirections and even lies—what Rhodes and others call a "narrative"—that won Obama his signature foreign policy initiative.
"Like Obama," writes Samuels: Rhodes is a storyteller who uses a writer's tools to advance an agenda that is packaged as politics but is often quite personal. He is adept at constructing overarching plotlines with heroes and villains, their conflicts and motivations supported by flurries of carefully chosen adjectives, quotations and leaks from named and unnamed senior officials. He is the master shaper and retailer of Obama's foreign-policy narratives, at a time when the killer wave of social media has washed away the sand castles of the traditional press.
As Rhodes admits, it's not that hard to shape the narrative. "All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus," Rhodes said. "Now they don't. They call us to explain to them what's happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That's a sea change. They literally know nothing."
In Rhodes's "narrative" about the Iran deal, negotiations started when the ostensibly moderate Hassan Rouhani was elected president, providing an opening for the administration to reach out in friendship. In reality, as Samuels gets administration officials to admit, negotiations began when "hardliner" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was still president. It was Rhodes who framed the Iran deal as a choice between peace and war, and it was Rhodes who set up a messaging unit to sell the deal that created an "echo chamber" in the press. "[Al Monitor reporter] Laura Rozen was my RSS feed," says Tanya Somanader, the 31-year-old who managed @TheIranDeal twitter feed. "She would just find everything and retweet it."
"In the spring of last year," Samuels writes:legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. "We created an echo chamber," [Rhodes] admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheer leading for the deal. "They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say."
When I suggested that all this dark metafictional play seemed a bit removed from rational debate over America's future role in the world, Rhodes nodded. "In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this," he said. "We had test drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the tactics that worked." He is proud of the way he sold the Iran deal. "We drove them crazy," he said of the deal's opponents.
It's not clear whether or not Panetta supported the deal, but he admits he was wrong about Obama's willingness to take all measures to stop Iran from getting a bomb.
As secretary of defense, he tells me, one of his most important jobs was keeping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, from launching a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. "They were both interested in the answer to the question, 'Is the president serious?' " Panetta recalls. "And you know my view, talking with the president, was: If brought to the point where we had evidence that they're developing an atomic weapon, I think the president is serious that he is not going to allow that to happen."
Panetta stops.
"But would you make that same assessment now?" I ask him.
"Would I make that same assessment now?" he asks. "Probably not."
Rhodes tells Samuels that Don DeLillo is his favorite novelist. "That's the only person I can think of who has confronted these questions of, you know, the individual who finds himself negotiating both vast currents of history and a very specific kind of power dynamics," he tells Samuels. "And that's what it's like to work in the U.S. foreign-policy apparatus in 2016."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++So that's it. For the last seven years the American public has been living through a postmodern narrative crafted by an extremely gifted and unspeakably cynical political operative whose job is to wage digital information campaigns designed to dismantle a several-decade old security architecture while lying about the nature of the Iranian regime. No wonder Americans feel less safe—they are.
3)
How Obama’s Economy Spawned Trump
The president had no second act, as millions of Americans are all too painfully aware.
President Obama’s remarkable interview last week with the New York Times ’s Andrew Ross Sorkin shows why historians are likely to assign Mr. Obama a share of responsibility for the rise of Donald Trump.
To be sure, the president was dealt a tough hand in 2009, and he played it brilliantly at first. His much-criticized Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, did what was necessary to pull the U.S. financial system back from the brink. Under intense pressure, the president’s team crafted a package of steps that saved the American automobile industry. The Obama administration’s stimulus package, despite its defects, helped slow a steep economic decline, which at its worst was destroying 800,000 jobs monthly.
Mr. Obama has every right to claim credit for preventing a second Great Depression that would have taken down the entire global economy.
This was a great first act. Unfortunately, there was no Act 2 and, as Mr. Sorkin reports, Mr. Obama knows it. The president laments, for example, “our failure in 2012, 2013, 2014, to initiate a massive infrastructure project” means that “there were folks who we could have helped and put back to work and entire communities that could have prospered that ended up taking a lot longer to recovery.”
The only problem with the president’s lament is its chronology. The failure occurred much earlier, in 2009 and 2010, when Mr. Obama still enjoyed the support of a Democratic-led Congress he needed to move boldly. Despite campaigning for a national infrastructure bank in 2008, he didn’t insist on including it in the 2009 stimulus bill. He didn’t even publicly raise the matter until September 2010, when the midterm election was looming and the chance of enacting new legislation was effectively nil.
This was part of a broader strategic decision to move from his initial focus on averting economic disaster to other concerns—notably, the Affordable Care Act and carbon cap-and-trade legislation. Whatever balance of benefits and opportunity costs the focus on health care may have entailed, the months the House spent in 2009 on an environmental bill that never had a chance in the Senate were a total loss. The exodus of white working-class voters from the Democratic Party contributed to this loss of focus on core economic concerns.
When Republicans regained control of the House in November 2010, the moment for an infrastructure bank and an Act 2 economic plan had passed. The result: an economic recovery that was much slower than it had to be.
President Obama insists—rightly—that the U.S. has done much better than most other advanced economies. Unemployment has come down further than in Europe, and GDP has risen faster.
But most Americans are not comparing the U.S. performance with that of other countries. They are comparing it with previous recoveries in this country, and they are evaluating it in light of their own circumstances. They are painfully aware that their household income is still lower than it was at the end of the Clinton administration and that the jobs many of them have gotten during the recovery pay much less than the jobs they lost during the recession.
People intuit what economists have shown: that the share of overall income growth going to average Americans has been lower in recent years than in any prior economic recovery. They don’t understand why this is happening, but they do expect their leaders to acknowledge it and do something about it.
This is why Mr. Obama is wrong to suggest that his central problem has been an inability to communicate his economic success more effectively. As the old line goes, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” The people have given their answer in the form of the Bernie Sanders insurgency and the Republicans’ stunning turn to Donald Trump.
It will fall to President Obama’s Democratic successor to enact the long-deferred Act 2 of the recovery.
In the long run, this means boosting productivity growth and labor-force participation as well as adopting full employment as the explicit goal of economic policy.
In the short term, it means inducing corporations to share more of their profits with employees, tearing down the barriers to small business formation, compensating hard-hit workers and communities for the losses they have endured, and at long last creating an infrastructure bank that gets private capital off the sidelines and into the fight to rebuild America.
Along with these measures, the metric for success must be broadened. The monthly wage report should have the prominence now reserved for the breathlessly reported jobs numbers. Annual growth in median household incomes should occupy the foreground now dominated by the gross domestic product.
Washington is now on notice: The status quo cannot stand. If policy makers don’t focus relentlessly on the well-being of average families, Donald Trump’s rise has dramatized the menacing alternative—a return to the economic nationalism that disfigured the 1930s and to the “America First” foreign policy that nearly handed over Europe to the fascists.
3a)
Prager: A Dark Time in America
Every distinctive value on which America was founded is in jeopardy.
As of tonight (5/3), we may know if Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential candidate. And, barring unforeseeable events, it is certain that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Those are two reasons -- of many, unfortunately -- why, other than the first years of the Civil War, when the survival of the United States as one country was in jeopardy, there has never been a darker time in American history.
The various major wars -- the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam wars -- were worse in terms of American lives lost.
The Great Depression was worse in economic terms.
There were more riots during the Vietnam War era.
But at no other time has there been as much pessimism -- valid pessimism, moreover -- about America's future as there is today.
Among the reasons are:
Every distinctive value on which America was founded is in jeopardy.
According to a Pew Research Center study, more and more young Americans do not believe in freedom of speech for what they deem hate speech. Forty percent of respondents ages 18 to 34 agreed that offensive statements should be outlawed.
According to a series of Harvard University polls, about 47 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 believe that food, shelter and health care "are a right that government should provide to those unable to afford them." That means that nearly half our young believe they have a legitimate claim on the labor and earnings of others for life's basic necessities.
More than half of 18- to 29-year-old Americans do not support capitalism, the source of the prosperity they enjoy, and the only economic system that has ever lifted mass numbers of people out of poverty.
When young Americans see pictures of the Founding Fathers, they do not see the great men that most Americans have seen throughout American history; they see white males who were affluent (now derisively labeled "privileged") and owned slaves.
The belief that certain fundamental rights are God-based -- a view held by every American founder and nearly all Americans throughout its history -- is reviled outside of conservative religious circles, and held by fewer and fewer Americans today.
The view that male and female are distinctive identities -- one of the few unquestioned foundational views of every society in history -- is being obliterated. Simply saying that one believes (all things being equal) a child does best starting out life with a married father and mother will ensure they'll be considered a "hater."
The ideas that America should be a melting pot, or that all Americans should identify as American, are now unutterable in educated company. In fact, many college campuses do not have an American flag on their campus because some students regard it as offensive and representational of imperialism and capitalism.
In addition, virtually every major institution is in decay or disarray.
Religious institutions, which, for most of American history, have been the most important institutions in everyday American life, are being rendered irrelevant. And a larger number of Americans, many more than ever before, do not identify with any religion.
The traditional family has become nothing more than one of many options open to Americans. For the first time in American history there are more unmarried women than married women. The number of adults age 34 and under who have never been married is nearing 50 percent. In recent years, data showed just 20 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 are wedded, compared to nearly 60 percent in 1960. Additionally, more than 40 percent of American births are to unmarried women. Among Hispanic women the percent is over 53, and among black women the rate is over 71 percent.
Universities (outside the natural sciences and mathematics), are intellectual frauds. In terms of ability to think clearly, they actually make most students dumber than before they entered college. As Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens wrote recently, "American academia is, by and large, idiotic."
National, state and city governments have no doubt largely engaged in Ponzi-scheme-like practices, racking up levels of debt that will crush the economy of the country sooner or later.
The size of the federal government, and its far-reaching meddling in and control over Americans' lives, is the very thing America was founded to avoid.
The arts are as fraudulent as academia. Artistic standards have been destroyed. In music, art and architecture, nonsense and ugliness have replaced the pursuit of meaning, edification and beauty. The scatological have replaced the noble.
And now there's Clinton and Trump. Nothing more clearly exemplifies the dark time in which we are living than this political version of Sophie's choice.
I will not end on a happy note because there isn't one; but neither will I despair.
One doesn't fight only when one is optimistic. One fights because it is the right thing to do, and because America remains, as Lincoln said, "the last best hope of earth."
3b)No punishment for 16 West Point cadets in black power photo
Associated Press
Sixteen black West Point cadets who posed with raised fists for a pre-graduation picture that sparked debates on race and proper behavior in uniform won’t be punished for the gesture, the U.S. Military Academy said Tuesday.
The decision, less than two weeks before the 16 female seniors are poised to graduate, found they didn’t violate any U.S. Department of Defense rules limiting political activity.
An internal inquiry “found that the cadets did not pre-plan or set out to make a political statement,” West Point’s superintendent, Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen Jr., said in a letter to the student body.
But, he said, they showed “a lapse of awareness in how symbols and gestures can be misinterpreted and cause division” and they will get some instruction on that.
The fists-up image, which circulated online, led some observers to question whether the women were expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew out of protests over police killings of unarmed black men.
But the inquiry found the picture, one of multiple photos the women made in keeping with an informal campus tradition, captured a spur-of-the-moment gesture intended to demonstrate unity and pride in graduating, Caslen wrote. Groups of cadets often take Old Corps pictures in traditional dress uniforms to echo historical portraits.
A raised fist has symbolized political resistance for generations, from Nelson Mandela upon his release from prison in 1990 to Democratic Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on the presidential campaign trail this year. It was used by black power advocates in the 1960s, including by two American sprinters during a medal ceremony at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, and more recently by activists for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Some observers suggested the women were improperly identifying with the movement while in uniform.
Defenders said the women were simply celebrating their forthcoming graduation, something closer in spirit to a team lifting helmets to celebrate a win or Beyonce raising her fist at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show.
“Their frame of reference is: ‘Right now, we’re getting ready to graduate in three weeks. I’m standing here with my sisters,'” Mary Tobin, a 2003 West Point graduate and mentor who spoke to the students after the photo was taken in late April, said this past weekend.
Some critics of West Point’s inquiry said the black women, who represent less than 2 percent of the graduating class, were being held to a different standard than other cadets.
“Will there ever be a time when black women can unapologetically show that they are strong proud and supportive of one another without their action being interpreted as an act of militant defiance?” Essence magazine editor-in-chief Vanessa De Luca asked in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week.
Indeed, Caslen noted that other cadets have used clenched fists to show support for a team or pride at serving their country. So did he, along with hundreds of West Point staffers and graduates on the night before last year’s Army-Navy football game, he added.
The decision was politically fraught for West Point, which has been making a push to increase the number of women in the Long Gray Line. About 80 percent of cadets are men and about 70 percent are white.
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Associated Press writer Michael Hill in Albany contributed to this report.
3c) Newt Gingrich Tops Trump's VP List
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is now the leading candidate to be tapped by Donald Trump as his running mate, a close confidante of Trump tells Newsmax.
On Tuesday, Trump told the AP that he has whittled down his choices to 5 or 6 names.
"I have a list of people that I would like," Trump revealed in his interview Tuesday.
But the name that keeps cropping up as his favorite is Gingrich, a Trump confidante tells Newsmax.
Trump has tapped former presidential contender Ben Carson to help pick his running mate. Carson said Tuesday that he is stepping down from that post to focus on the Thursday meeting between Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump also announced this week that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will head his transition team.
Trump is said to favor Gingrich for several reasons.
First, Trump recognizes he is a Washington neophyte and sees in Gingrich someone who can school him in the legislative process and “make nice” with Capitol Hill.
Trump admitted to the AP he wants a running mate who can help him "with legislation, getting things through."
As Speaker, Gingrich successfully got Bill Clinton to sign legislation abolishing welfare, while agreeing to budget constraints that led to the first balanced budgets in a generation.
Trump has other reasons he is leaning toward Gingrich. He is said to personally like him. Rubio, Newsmax reported, has already been eliminated though he lobbied through surrogates for the job. Rubio has denied doing so.
Trump also finds Ohio Gov. John Kasich “kind of quirky” and not someone he resonates with, the confidante said.
Trump is apparently discarding the traditional approach of picking a running mate to provide geographic or ideological balance to his ticket. Instead he wants someone he “can live with for eight years,” the Trump source said.
This concept of a “simpatico ticket,” while rare, occurred when then-Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas turned to then-Sen. Al Gore of nearby Tennessee to run with him in his successful 1992 bid for president.
Though Gingrich did not endorse Trump, the Fox News commentator was an early defender of Trump in the GOP primary.
In addition, they pointed out, Gingrich helped organize a key meeting of Washington insiders for Trump that included former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, R.-LA, and Heritage Foundation President and former Sen. Jim DeMint, R.-S.C.
“Donald values loyalty,” the source said, and Gingrich has been loyal.
Trump told the AP that he also is looking for a candidate who has held office and been under the public microscope.
"For the most part, they've been vetted over the last 20 years," he explained to the AP.
Gingrich has had such vetting, and survived a bitter, though unsuccessful run for president in 2012 against Mitt Romney.
Gingrich is also considered one of the best communicators in the party, and Trump is placing great emphasis on who can go toe-to-toe against Hillary Clinton’s running mate in upcoming debates.
Trump’s camp also is also said to be worried that his move to the center, already underway, may alienate conservative voters.
Gingrich remains a popular “Reaganite” – and could re-assure these voters if Trump takes positions not in line with party orthodoxy, the source said.
Newsmax queried Gingrich if he has been in discussions with the Trump campaign about the VP slot.
He offered a terse email reply: "No."
On Tuesday, Trump told the AP that he has whittled down his choices to 5 or 6 names.
"I have a list of people that I would like," Trump revealed in his interview Tuesday.
But the name that keeps cropping up as his favorite is Gingrich, a Trump confidante tells Newsmax.
Trump has tapped former presidential contender Ben Carson to help pick his running mate. Carson said Tuesday that he is stepping down from that post to focus on the Thursday meeting between Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump also announced this week that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will head his transition team.
Trump is said to favor Gingrich for several reasons.
First, Trump recognizes he is a Washington neophyte and sees in Gingrich someone who can school him in the legislative process and “make nice” with Capitol Hill.
Trump admitted to the AP he wants a running mate who can help him "with legislation, getting things through."
As Speaker, Gingrich successfully got Bill Clinton to sign legislation abolishing welfare, while agreeing to budget constraints that led to the first balanced budgets in a generation.
Trump has other reasons he is leaning toward Gingrich. He is said to personally like him. Rubio, Newsmax reported, has already been eliminated though he lobbied through surrogates for the job. Rubio has denied doing so.
Trump also finds Ohio Gov. John Kasich “kind of quirky” and not someone he resonates with, the confidante said.
Trump is apparently discarding the traditional approach of picking a running mate to provide geographic or ideological balance to his ticket. Instead he wants someone he “can live with for eight years,” the Trump source said.
This concept of a “simpatico ticket,” while rare, occurred when then-Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas turned to then-Sen. Al Gore of nearby Tennessee to run with him in his successful 1992 bid for president.
Though Gingrich did not endorse Trump, the Fox News commentator was an early defender of Trump in the GOP primary.
In addition, they pointed out, Gingrich helped organize a key meeting of Washington insiders for Trump that included former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, R.-LA, and Heritage Foundation President and former Sen. Jim DeMint, R.-S.C.
“Donald values loyalty,” the source said, and Gingrich has been loyal.
Trump told the AP that he also is looking for a candidate who has held office and been under the public microscope.
"For the most part, they've been vetted over the last 20 years," he explained to the AP.
Gingrich has had such vetting, and survived a bitter, though unsuccessful run for president in 2012 against Mitt Romney.
Gingrich is also considered one of the best communicators in the party, and Trump is placing great emphasis on who can go toe-to-toe against Hillary Clinton’s running mate in upcoming debates.
Trump’s camp also is also said to be worried that his move to the center, already underway, may alienate conservative voters.
Gingrich remains a popular “Reaganite” – and could re-assure these voters if Trump takes positions not in line with party orthodoxy, the source said.
Newsmax queried Gingrich if he has been in discussions with the Trump campaign about the VP slot.
He offered a terse email reply: "No."
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4) Dry Rot in Academia
By Thomas Sowell
Jason Riley has now joined the long and distinguished list of people invited -- and then disinvited -- to give a talk on a college campus, in this case Virginia Tech.
Mr. Riley is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and, perhaps most relevantly, author of a very insightful book titled "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed."
In short, Jason Riley's views on race are different from the views that prevail on most college campuses. At one time, 50 years ago or earlier, exposing students to a different viewpoint was considered to be a valuable part of their education. But that was before academia -- and the education system in general -- became virtually a monopoly of the political left.
Today one can literally go from kindergarten to becoming a graduate student seeking a Ph.D., without ever hearing a vision of the world that conflicts with the vision of the left.
Conservative critics who object on grounds that the views of the left are wrong miss the point. Regardless of whose views become a monopoly, education suffers. John Stuart Mill understood this back in the middle of the 19th century.
As a young Marxist in college during the 1950s heyday of the anti-Communist crusade led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, I had more freedom to express my views in class, without fear of retaliation, than conservative students have on many campuses today.
After being invited by conservative students to give talks at various colleges, Jason Riley has then been surprised at how little those conservative students have said during the question and answer periods after these talks. But a Wellesley student explained: "You get to leave when you're done. We have to live with these people until we graduate."
Even liberal professors can be adversely affected by the narrow group think that prevails. Without an opposition to keep them on their toes, they can develop sloppy habits of dismissing or even demonizing differing viewpoints, instead of practicing and teaching their students how to come to grips with opposing beliefs.
A well-known Harvard professor, for example, recently referred to Justice Clarence Thomas by remarking: "He'll say he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. I say I was in the right place at the right time."
It so happens that I first met Clarence Thomas back in 1978, when he was a young lawyer in Missouri. In all these years, I have never heard him say anything even resembling what has been blithely attributed to him by this Harvard professor.
On the contrary, Justice Thomas has attributed his good fortune to his grandfather who raised him, especially in his autobiography, "My Grandfather's Son."
When he was sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court, he brought the nuns who had taught him in school, down in Georgia, to the ceremony in Washington, at his own expense, to let them know that what they had done for him was appreciated, and had not been in vain.
There is no reason why ourHarvard professor has to agree with Justice Thomas' judicial philosophy or his social views. But, as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once put it: "You're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts."
It was much the same story when a faculty member at the University of California at Santa Barbara referred to economist Walter Williams as someone "committed to the welfare of the top few."
It so happens that I have known Walter Williams since 1969. In all those years, I have never once known him to express the slightest concern for the welfare of rich people. But what I have seen repeatedly has been his expressing his concern for people who are poor, both in words and in deeds.
As an economist, Professor Williams knows that high tax rates on investors chase investments -- and American jobs -- overseas, where American working people cannot get those jobs. But, whether the academic in Santa Barbara agrees or disagrees with that analysis, it is no good for him, or for his students, to dismiss opposing views by misrepresenting them.
These are just a few samples of the intellectual and moral dry rot on the many campuses across the country where the group think of the left substitutes for education.
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