Jews Welcomed Back to Poland

In 1968, Poland's communist government shut down a patriotic play at Warsaw University. The play had been written by Poland's national poet, Adam Mickiewicz.

That decision led to a student protest at the university which soon evolved into protests nationwide. The communists, with much violence, crushed these protests.

And they blamed the Jews.

There were only 30,000 Jews left in Poland at that time, many of which were Holocaust survivors. The communist government ordered 15,000 Jews to leave the country; the "were given a one-way ticket out of the country and stripped of their citizenship."

One of the Jews involved said, "But with our suitcases we took a little bit of Poland with us ..."

Now, Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, has invited the expelled Jews to return to Poland and promised to restore their citizenship.

A "welcoming back" ceremony of sorts was held a few days ago at one of the Warsaw train stations from which some of the Jews were forced to leave the country, and Mr. Kaczynski said his citizenship restoration promise was his "personal contribution to reversing the consequences of those sad, shameful events."

The president also noted this expulsion was a huge loss for Poland ... "thousands of often very talented, ambitious, and entrepreneurial people had to leave our country."

Can you imagine how much better off the world would be if the gifts of the millions of Jews killed by the anti-Semites had been allowed to grow and flourish and replenish the earth?

Newman, Augustine and the Truth

John Henry Cardinal Newman died in 1890 but remains revered in Roman Catholic circles as a great educator and seeker of the "truth."

On February 21, during a mass celebrating the 40th anniversary of Newman University College in Birmingham, England, the Archbishop of Birmingham, Vincent Nichols, said that "Two of the great figures of Catholic education, Augustine of Hippo and Cardinal John Henry Newman, both engaged in a great quest for truth and for freedom."

I don't know from John Henry Newman. But according to the reverend Nichols, "He foresaw the challenge that we face: of living in an age which proclaims that really there is no such thing as truth."

Newman complained that the people of his day were saying that "there is no positive truth in religion; one creed is as good as another; all are to be tolerated for all are matters of opinion."

From that Archbishop Nichols went on to expound thusly: "So our search for truth, and our commitment to that search, is crucial ... for the quality of education we offer ...for the health of our society. Only an understanding of the fundamental unchanging truth about what it is to be a human person can be the foundation of our true freedom."

That doesn't sound too bad until you realize that the "truth" spoken of by Archbishop Nichols and his predecessor, John Henry Newman, is "truth" as defined by the Roman Catholic Church. And if you know anything about the history of the western world for the past 2,000 years, you know that the Roman Catholic Church, for the most part, never came close to the "truth," and, in fact, usually fought the "truth" whenever the "truth" broke through to the light of day.

Now consider that other "great figure" of "Catholic education" the Rev. Nichols referred to: Augustine of Hippo.

Augustine's story is well-known - how he grew up as a licentious, sexual libertine; how he dabbled in various philosophies and theologies; how he abandoned the loves of his life -- his mistress and his son, in order to avoid social and political trouble.

It was in Milan, where he served as professor of rhetoric, that he stumbled across a portion of one of St. Paul's epistles and was suddenly converted to his mother's religion, Christianity.

Augustine left Milan and retreated to the country where he began to write and think. In 391, he traveled to Hippo in North Africa where he was ordained a priest and five years later became the bishop of Hippo.

For the rest of his life, Augustine ferociously fought various heresies he perceived to be threatening his beloved church, including Manichaeism and Donatism. When the barbarians sacked the city of Rome he began his opus, The City of God, which covered 22 volumes and took 12 years to write.

In this work, he outlined his notion of "original sin," which infested human life. He said that "Mankind is divided into two sorts, such as live according to man, and such as live according to God. These we call the two cities... The Heavenly City outshines Rome. There, instead of victory, is truth."

The theology is a mishmash comprised of the litter of ancient debates, little of which is relevant to human beings living in the 21st century. But this mishmash theology, as outlined in The City of God, "became one of the main pillars on which the church of the next 1,000 years was built."

Unfortunately, some of the material that went into the construction of that pillar was hatred of the Jewish people. Hear what St. Augustine has to say about the Jews of his day:

"The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jew can never understand the Scriptures and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus."

"...the Church admits and avows the Jewish people to be cursed, because after killing Christ they continue to till the ground of an earthly circumcision, an earthly Sabbath, an earthly passover, while the hidden strength or virtue of making known Christ, which this tilling contains, is not yielded to the Jews while they continue in impiety and unbelief, for it is revealed in the New Testament. While they will not turn to God, the veil which is on their minds in reading the Old Testament is not taken away... the Jewish people, like Cain, continue tilling the ground, in the carnal observance of the law, which does not yield to them its strength, because they do not perceive in it the grace of Christ"

And this, from his Confessions, 12.14: "How hateful to me are the enemies of your Scripture! How I wish that you would slay them [the Jews] with your two-edged sword, so that there should be none to oppose your word! Gladly would I have them die to themselves and live to you!"

Augustine may be considered a "father" of the Church. He may be considered a great theologian. He may even be considered a source of the "truth." But...

The "truth" is that Augustine of Hippo was a vicious anti-Semite whose attitudes toward the Jews as expressed in his writings carried a virulent and pestilent anti-Semitic wind that spread across the face of the world to bring horrible suffering and death to millions of Jews from his day to our day.

And why, when he was so wrong with regard to the Jews, would anyone accept anything else he has to say as "truth?"

Iraq - From Saddam to Shia to Iran

President Ahmadinejad of Iran visited Iraq recently to renew ties with the Iraqi leadership. Not so long ago, Iran and Iraq were bitter enemies, engaged in a long and bloody war. The U.S. was on the side of Iraq and fed weapons and money to Saddam.

Iran is a Shia nation. Iraq's government is led by Shia Muslims. Iran and Iraq are getting cozy. Mr. Bush may still be rattling his sabers, but his war to oust the Sunni, Saddam, and save the Iraqi oil fields for his friends has gone awry, and his harried cries about Iran building a nuclear bomb are taken less seriously by the rest of the world every day.

Iran is stepping in to assist in putting Iraq back together again. Thus, Iran has connected a town near Basra with electricity. The British tried for five years get electricity to this town with no success.

Iran has also backed projects to build power plants in Shia-dominated cities in Iraq. In addition, Iran has offered Iraq a $1 billion loan "for projects to be handled by Iranian companies..."

All of this, of course, makes the U.S. look stupid and incompetent as we have been unable to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure in spite of spending billions upon billions since we blew everything up during the brief period of actual fighting.

But all is not sweetness and light. There are those, such as the Sunni Iraqis and American politicos, who believe Iran is trying to undermind whatever stability there is in Iraq - which isn't much. The Sunni minority is not happy that Iran is not interested in assisting areas which consist mostly of Sunnis. In fact, the Sunnis have held angry protests against the Iranian president, claiming that his actions are creating more violence.

All of this again portrays just how complicated and delicate is the situation in Iraq. Unfortunately, the bumblers in Washington still have no clue what to do and every day we throw additional millions of borrowed money down the drain while more of our military men and women along with innocent Iraqi civilians are killed for absolutely no reason whatsoever!

Dancing in the Streets with Steve King

Maybe he ate too much corn as a kid. Maybe he spent too much time alone in the woods. Maybe he forgot the commandment against bearing false witness. Maybe being an Iowan went to his head.

Steve King is a Republican congressman from the caucus state of Iowa. He was pretty much an unknown. He's now gained a certain amount of fame. That may help him get a job with Fox News when he loses his seat in Congress.

His fame comes as a result of his prediction on an Iowa radio broadcase that all sorts of dire calamities would descend upon the world if Barrack Obama was elected president.

How did the perspicacious Mr. King come to that conclusion? We'll let him speak for himself. Nobody else is dumb enough to do it.

"I'll just say this that when you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States -- and I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?

"And I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the, the radical Islamists, the, the al-Qaida, and the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 ...."

Hee, hee. Wait. I think he was serious!

But Mr. King didn't say why radical Islamists and others would "be dancing in the streets." I don't think the phrase referring to the "optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected ..." has any meaning whatsoever: Reminds me of an eighth-grader trying to impress his teacher by using words he really doesn't understand.

Okay, here's the problem. King doesn't like Obama's middle name! Now, who the hell cares about someone's middle name?

Mr. King does! " ...his middle name does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world, it has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They will be dancing in the streets because of who is father was and because of his posture that says: Pull out of the Middle East and pull out of this conflict."

Whew. Lots of dancing. Not a lot of sense from Mr. King. Obama's middle name obviously means a lot to Mr. King, but I doubt that an Islamist in the Middle East gives a flip. Then notice how King slips in that nasty little reference to Obama's father ...

I can't imagine the good people of Iowa would want to claim King as one of their own.

I know for a fact that when he loses his seat in Congress (which can't happen soon enough), I, along with a lot of other folks, will be dancing in the streets.

And I don't even know his middle name!

Where do these morons come from?

When the Saints Come Marching In

We're back on the saints today. Seems there is a concern that sometimes saintly prospects have been "fast-tracked" on the road to sainthood. A few critics even had the nerve to suggest that Pope John Paul II had run a "saint factory."

Oh, oh.

Not to worry. Pope Benedict XVI is laying down the law and ordering his minions to "use stricter criteria when assessing candidates for sainthood and beautification."

No more John Paul II stuff, like "initiating" or encouraging the process of conferring sainthood behind the scenes. Evidently John Paul II liked saints and wanted more of them, and ended up creating more saints than all of the popes before him put together!

So now, according to Benedict XVI, "saints must contribute to making the Church's message 'more credible and attractive'" and miraculous cures must have a "'meticulous' medical investigation," and people who are looking at the life of a prospective saint should be objective and not overlook his/her faults or personal defects or other "contrary findings."

Actually, Benedict is no slouch himself when it comes to sainting people. In his first three years as pope, 577 people have been either canonized or beautified.

As I've said before, this seems to me to be a bunch of hoopla over nothing. Unless you believe in magic, there is no such thing as a "saint." The idea that an institution or a pope or any other shaman can declare someone to be "sainted" is the stuff of legends and mythology.

I wonder, though, if all those saints who were "fast-tracked" through the "saint factory" now need to be more thoroughly vetted? I sure wouldn't want to be caught dead praying to a saint who was unworthy of the name!

The Holocaust Journal (Lest We Forget)

Germany - 1940 (II)

[The photo shows SS chief Himmler visiting the Dachau concentration camp.]

While the U.S. officially shut down Jewish immigration during 1940-41, there were private organizations that set up rescue operations from America. One of these, based in New York, was the Emergency Rescue Committee.

The ERC was able to help about 2,000 Jewish refugees -- Spanish, German and Czecholslovakian -- who were stranded in France. They were given food, clothing, a place to live and medical care.

One man's efforts were exemplary. Varian Fry, who represented the ERC in Marsailles, France, assisted in the escape of 1,000 Jews. In this group were some of the most important cultural figures in Europe, including the artist, Marc Chagall, and writers Heinrich Mann and Walter Mehring.

Beginning in August, 1940, Fry worked for one year helping refugees escape by setting up "clandestine operations complete with encrypted codes of communication and secret passage routes. He even established contacts with the underworld to obtain forged papers and boat passages."

Fry's plans didn't always work out, though. French officials occasionally stopped ships and arrested their passengers.

Fry himself was expelled from France in 1941.


* 1940 - An American isolationist group, The America First Committee, is formed. This group is infiltrated with Nazis and works to keep America out of European affairs. Anti-Semtisim again rears its ugly head in Congress as members of Congress attack Jews in Hollywood for trying to get America involved in opposing Hitler.

Throughout Romania, brutal, bloody anti-Jewish riots take place.

* July 1 - A Jewish ghetto is set up in Bedzin, Poland.

* July 10 - The German Luftwaffe (Air Force) attacks Britain, starting what came to be known as the Battle of Britain.

* August - A law allowing thousands of British children into the U.S. is passed by Congress. FDR calls these children "visitors."

At the Jozefow, Poland labor camp, 400 Jews are executed because they are sick with bleeding diarrhea.

* August 9 - Hitler orders a military build up in Poland, readying Germany to invade the Soviet Union.

* August 10 - Romania passes anti-Semitic laws.

* August 15 - Adolf Eichmann suggests sending Jews to the island of Madagascar. He says they will eventually die out there.

* August 25 - The British bomb Berlin for the first time.

* August 27 - The French government, led by Marshall Petain, and in cahoots with the Nazis, nullifies the law banning "incitement to race hatred."

* September - A Polish underground officer "penetrates the main camp at Auschwitz with the intention of organizing secret resistance groups inside the camp."

* September 1 - The Japanese consul at Kovno, Lithuania, Sempo Sugihara helps 3500 Jews obtain exit visas. When discovered, the Soviets throw him out of Lithuania.

* September 5 - In Luxembourg, the Germans establish the Nuremberg Laws. Jewish businesses are confiscated and given to Aryans.

Bishop Theophil Wurm, head of the provincial Lutheran Church at Wurttemberg, Germany, writes a second letter to Wilhelm Frick, the German Interior Minister, objecting to "euthanasia killings."

* September 7 - Germany begans the "blitz" bombing of Great Britain.

* September 11 - The Quanza, a Jewish refugee ship, refuels at Norfolk, Virginia. The Quanza was denied entry at New York and at Vera Cruz, Mexico. One of the passengers jumped overboard but was caught by US Army personnel and returned to the ship.

* September 15 - The German Air Force is beaten badly in the skies over London. The RAF (Royal Air Force) takes the lead in the Battle of Britain.

* September 23 - SS chief Himmler establishes a special SS Reichsbank account which will contain gold (including gold taken from teeth), silver, jewelry and money stolen from Jews.

* September 27 - Japan signs a treaty with Germany and Italy. Soon thereafter, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania also join in this pact. These are known as the Axis powers.

* October 3 - France passes anti-Semitic legislation the purpose of which is to force Jews out of public service, teaching, financial occupations, public relations and the media.

* October 4 - Yom Kippur. Germans announce that all Warsaw Jews must move to the ghetto by the end of the month.

* October 28 - Italy invades Greece. The invasion is stopped with the help of 12,000 Greek Jews.

* November 11 - Fifty-five non-Jewish Polish intellectuals are murdered at Dachau.

* November 15-16 - The Warsaw Ghetto is sealed off from the rest of the city.

* November 25 - A ship carrying 2,000 Jewish immigrants is sunk accidentally by the radical Jewish group, Hagana. About 250 people are killed.

* November 26 - British anti-Semitism again raises its ugly head. Lord Lloyd, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, says that people helping Jews by providing illegal transportation to Palestine are "foul people who need to be stamped out."

* December - The Vatican condemns the so-called Nazi "mercy-killings."

* December 5 - A British government official, Sir John Schuckburgh, writes that "the Jews have no sense of humor and no sense of proportion."

* December 12 - When the Salvador, a ship carrying Jewish refugees, sinks in the Sea of Marmora, and 200 Jews drown (including 70 children), T.M. Snow, head of the British Foreign Office's Refugee Section, says "there could have been no more opportune disaster from the point of view of stopping this [Jewish refugee] traffic [to Palestine]."

* December 17 - Drunken SS guards at Sachsenhausen, awaken Jews in the middle of a very cold night and force them to roll in the snow.

A beautiful story from hell: Hala Buchwajc and Motek Lichtensztajin were married in 1940 in the Bedzin Ghetto. They were sent to Auschwitz where they were separated. Then they were transferred to different camps, and they lost touch with each other. Fortunately, both survived the Holocaust, and in 1946 met again, totally by chance, on the streets of London!

More to follow

Spray Paint Crime Reduction Program

Jakarta, Indonesia is a very crowded place. The trains that carry commuters and others are jammed, especially at rush-hour.

Quite often, there is simply no available space inside of the trains.

So some people, even though they have paid their fare, climb up on the roof. Others who are trying to get a free ride climb up there, too. They crouch down and hang on for dear life.

It's a dangerous way to travel. Twenty-three people were killed last year; some by electrocution and others by falling off the train.

The police have had it. They are now enforcing the rules by spray-painting people on the roofs of the trains. Guards patrol the stations, armed with cannisters contained a mixture of water and food coloring - nasty stuff.

W don't have the problem of people riding on top of trains in this country. But we sure have a lot of trouble with graffiti defacing our public spaces. Why not have cops out patrolling with cannisters of spray paint and when they catch these clowns, paint them a bright orange or yellow or green?

And we have lots of problems with speeders and red-light runners, and reckless drivers. It seems to me we could save everyone a lot of trouble by not arresting them, but rather spray painting them along with their vehicles.

With real paint, though! Not this Mickey Mouse water and food coloring!

I'll Have a Hormone Cocktail, Please ...

An Associated Press investigative team has put together an impressive report on drugs in our drinking water.

"A vast array of pharmaceuticals - including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones - have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans..."

This was news to me. But it is not new news. It was noticed in Europe in the early 1990s when scientists found clofibric acid, a cholesterol-reducing drug in groundwater. There have been a number of other studies dealing with the problem over the years, specifically in 1998, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005, to name a few.

The AP study is comprehensive and includes the latest data in its conclusions. It is a growing problem as the world population expands and the use of drugs increases. People take drugs and these drugs are exegeted down the toilet. While the wastewater is treated, the treatments do not remove all traces of the drugs.

A few fearful observations:

* The U.S. government has no standards re: drugs in water and does not require testing of water for drugs.

* Some cities and communities do test for drugs, but these are often for only one or two specific pharmaceuticals, or they fail to check for drug residue.

* Bottled water and water filtration are not necessarily free from pharmaceuticals.

* According to the EPA, "there are no sewage treatment systems specifically engineered to remove pharmaceuticals."

* Evidence suggests that chlorine, often added to purify water, makes drugs more toxic.


Now what does the drug industry say about all of this? You can guess, I'm sure.

No problem! There's little or no risk to humans.


Wrong! Research indicates that small amounts of drugs affect human embryonic cells, human blood cells, human breast cancer cells - the latter growing more quickly.

There's further evidence that drugs in the water supply negatively impact wildlife.

" ... some experts say that medications may pose a unique danger because, unlike most pollutants, they were crafted to act on the human body."

We don't know enough yet. The time-line is too short. " ... while drugs are tested to be safe for humans, the timeframe is usually over a matter of months, not a lifetime."


Where's the Environmental Protection Agency when we need it? Oh, that's right; under the Bush administration they have more important things to do than protect the environment!

A Mere Two or Three Trillion Dollars

On February 28, the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee "held a hearing to examine the true cost of the war."

Among those testifying were Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner and former World Bank Chief Economist; Robert Hormats, National Security Council adviser, and Rand Beers, who served on the NSC under Democratic and Republican presidents.

You can read the entire report here. It is 29 pages and in PDF form. It is worth reading.

Some people estimate the total cost of the war will reach $2 trillion. Others, including Joseph Stiglitz, think the total cost is going to read the $3 trillion mark.

[In a new book, Stiglitz argues that the Iraq was is now costing $12 billion per month!]

The testimony of these men focused, in part, on how the monies poured into the Iraqi war could have been used more productively. Stiglitz said "For a fraction of the cost ... we could have put Social Security on a sound footing for the next half century or more."

Hormats noted that both Social Security and Medicare could have been put "on a more sustainable basis." He went on the describe the committee's calculations this way: The money spent on the war each day is enough to...

* enroll 58,000 additional children in Head Start for a year...

* help pay for a year of college for 160,000 low income students through Pell Grants...

* fund the annual salaries of some 11,000 more border patrol agents...

* pay for another 14,000 police officers

A further cost of the war is related to the soldiers returning home that need medical care. Stiglitz pointed out that 40% of the 700,000 soldiers involved in the first Gulf War, which lasted only one month, are now eligible for disability benefits. "Imagine," he said, "what a war - that will almost surely involve more than 2 million troops and will almost surely last more than six or seven years -- will cost."

Another point made in the hearing was that the Bushites have gone out of their way to hide the cost of the war. They have done this by avoiding the normal budgetary process, instead "financing the war almost entirely through 'emergency' appropriations that get far less scrutiny."

The war in Iraq has been financed in the worst possible way - by deficit spending -- by money we don't have!

It has truly become, in the words of Bob Herbert, "America's $2 trillion nightmare."

[Thanks to Bob Herbert of the New York Times News Service for some of this info.]

9/11 - Warned and Wanting!

[Thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald for much of this information. It derives from a new book, The Commission - The Uncensored History Of The 9/11 Investigation by Philip Shenon. It will be published on Monday, March 10, by Little, Brown. $35]

Some of us have known some of this for a long time and have written about it on previous occasions.

The Bushites were warned on numerous occasions before 9/11/2001, by the CIA and other agencies, that a terrorist attack was likely, but they failed to take any action whatsoever.

The 9/11 commission revealed that George Tenet, director of the CIA, warned Bush in his briefings on a daily basis that a terrorist attack was imminent. Bush was also provided this information in the presidential daily briefings. The 9/11 commission said that in over 40 of these briefings there were references to Osama bin Laden.

The CIA prepared a newsletter on intelligence matters that was almost the same as what the president received and this was given to "about 300 senior national security officials and members of Congress."

In August of 2001, a briefing warned that al-Qaeda attacks involving hijackings were possible.

This from the 9/11 commission investigators: "It was especially troubling ... to realise how many of the warnings were directed to the desk of one person: Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser. Emails from the National Security Council's counter-terrorism director, Richard Clarke, show that he had bombarded Rice with messages about terrorist threats. He was trying to get her to focus on the intelligence she should have been reading each morning in the presidential and senior briefings."

Here are some headlines and timelines of information in the senior briefings.

* Bin Ladin Planning Multiple Operations (April 20)

* Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack (May 3)

* Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot (May 23)

* Bin Ladin's Networks' Plans Advancing (May 26)

* Bin Ladin Attacks May be Imminent (June 23)

* Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats (June 25)

* Bin Ladin Planning High Profile Attacks (June 30)

* Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays (July 2)

While the Pentagon and the State Department took action to meet the possibility of terrorist attacks, the White House was inert. Rice did nothing of consequence other than request more meetings.

"There is no record to show that Rice made any special effort to discuss terrorist threats with Bush." The record suggested, instead, that it was not a matter of special interest to either of them that summer."

Our prezident, never the brightest bulb, in an interview with Bob Woodward of WaPo, basically admitted that he was not as prepared. "I was not on point," said Bush, "but I knew he [bin Laden] was a menace, and I knew he was a problem ... I was prepared to look at a plan that would be a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice ... But I didn't feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling."

Obviously.

Bush, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others in the Administration's cabal were too busy plotting the overthrow of Saddam and swooping up the Iraqi oil fields to worry about bin Laden.

That's the reason that Rice consistently tried to mislead the White House Press Corps as to the contents of the briefings the Administration received prior to 9/11.

Suffice it to say that if the White House had read, digested and taken the intelligence warnings seriously, it is very likely that 9/11 would never have happened.

But they were too busy planning an illegal and disastrous war against a country that held absolutely no threat to the United States.

How does one describe such incompetence?

Gas? $4 Bucks a Gallon? Asks Bush

Gas is $4 a gallon?

That's the word from California.

It has finally dawned on Prezident Bush that maybe the economy ain't what it should be. On March 8, 2008, the prez said "It's clear our economy has slowed."

You think?

What a revelation! This from the guy who doesn't know what a gallon of gas costs! He must be reading off cue cards.

Mr. Bush went on to pretend to sympathize: "Losing a job is painful and I know Americans are concerned about our economy. So am I," he said.

But it's not the poor Joe out there who's lost his job that Bush cares about, it's the "economy." Showing the world again how out of touch he is, he said " ... we recognized the problem early and we provided the economy with a booster shot."

Sheesh! The government has no money! The government is so far in debt our ancestors will be paying it off in 3008! This prezident wants to take credit for borrowing more money to give it to taxpayers so they can turn around and spend it, which, he thinks will solve the problem.

Grab your rears with both hands, 'cause we're not only in a recession, but with Bushite leadership, we're falling fast into a black hole. 63,000 jobs were lost last month, and the stock market is slip-sliding away.

Now poor Average Joe just lost his job, and he's sitting home wondering how he's gonna make his mortgage and buy gas and groceries and the prezident, to reassure him, says that sometime in May he'll get a few hundred bucks which Joe knows won't pay off his gas bill, which the prez doesn't want him to do anyway. He wants him to go out and buy something.

Then, the prez grins that shit-eating grin and says we still need to cut taxes for the super rich, the fairly rich, and the modestly rich.

Don't you just love "compassionate conservatism?" What was the price of gas again?

The Will of God Again

She's 25, the same age as her husband. They have two beautiful little boys. She is going to die in about three months. Cancer.

"... she's not afraid," says her husband.

She says, "We have a lot of faith that God will get me through this -- either way. If he wants to take me home, I'm ready to do His will."

They've done all they can. All that's left is the waiting. They pray for a miracle.

While not an unusual story, it is still a very sad story.


But there is no way I will ever believe that there is a god who is killing her to take her "home."

What kind of god would do that?

And if God can kill her, he can certainly kill the cancer.

Why doesn't he?

And if God can take away cancer, he certainly could have stopped it from starting in the first place.

So why didn't he?

The Holocaust Journal (Lest We Forget)

Germany 1940 (I)

(The photo pictures Jewish children used by the Nazis in medical experiments.)

By 1940, the writing was on the wall, so to speak, for the Jews. Still, some clung to the hope that they could find salvation by work -- that if they became useful, even essential, to the Germans, they would be spared.

Although this concept bought them some time, it was not to be. Nazi "logic" said "that all racial threats to German purity and power could not be tolerated and must be removed."

Nowhere did this become more evident that in the Lodz Ghetto in Poland, where 164,000 Jews were crammed into 1.54 square miles. When the ghetto was sealed by barbed wire, the Jews realized that so far as the Nazis were concerned, they were "fundamentally unwanted creatures."

From that point, there was no question the Jews would be murdered en masse.

Many have wondered how the Germans could become so brutal and barbaric, given their religious and cultural background. For example, Rudolf Hoss, who became commander of Auschwitz in May of 1940, was from a devout Catholic family who had hoped he would become a priest. Instead Hoss joined the SS in 1934 and rose steadily in that bureaucracy.

His work at Auschwitz involved murdering more than three and a half million people. His superiors said he was "a true pioneer in his field." But Hoss "insisted ... he 'never personally hated the Jews.'" He was just doing his duty as they were "enemies of the German people."

Even as he perfected the mass-execution process through more effective gassing techniques, Hoss lamented the long hours he had to work, and complained he didn't have enough time to play with his children.


In June of 1940, the Nazis marched into Paris, through the Arch de Triomphe and down the Champs de Elysses. For the 100,000 plus Jews in Paris, this spelled disaster. Quite quickly, the Nazis, through a census system, located all the Jews in the city. They were ordered to wear yellow star armbands and were given a nighttime curfew. Many were rounded up and sent to concentration camps.

How were the Nazis able to so quickly and effectively identify 100,000 people within the city of Paris? They were assisted by the American company, International Business Machines, and IBM's Hollerith machine.


1940 - Six euthanasia centers are established in Germany to murder Jews, the mentally ill, the aged, those with physical ailments, and the handicapped.

Estonia is annexed by the Soviet Union.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt turns over the problem of Jewish immigration into the United States to the anti-Semite Assistant Secretary of State, Breckenridge Long. Long is unhappy to think of more Jews coming into the United States.

Great Britain's secretary of state for war, Leslie Hore-Belisha, a Jew, resigns because of the anti-Semitic feelings of many in the British government. Lord Halifax and Alexander Cadogan were pleased wtih the resignation saying "Jew control of our propaganda would be [a] major disaster."

* January 6 - In Warsaw, Jews have no heat and are forced to burn Jewish books for fuel.

* Januar 12 - SS troops and Gestapo nasties shoot to death 300 inmates of an insane asylum.

* January 18-25 - Again, in Warsaw, 255 Polish Jews are arrested at random, taken into the woods and shot.

* February 8 - The Jewish ghetto at Lodz is established.

Spring - German gypsies are deported from western and northwestern Germany.

* April - Germany invades Denmark and Norway. The Norwegians and Danes try to keep the Germans from harming Jews.

* April 1 - Thousands of Jewish refugees find a haven in Shanghai, China.

* April 8-11 - In the Katyn Forest close to Smolensk, Russia, 26,000 Polish officers are massacred by the Soviets.

* April 23 - In Stuthof, Poland, captive Jews are forced to jump into open latrines. A number drown and others are beaten to death.

* April 27 - In England, H. F. Downie, an official with the British Foreign Office, says that Jews are "enemies just as the Germans are, but in a more insidious way." He goes on to claim that Nazis and Jews "are linked together by secret and evil bonds."

* April 29 - The Lodz ghetto is sealed off.

* May 10 - The Germans invade Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Winston Churchill becomes the British Prime Minister.

The poet, T.S. Eliot writes that "Jews are the modern world's foremost 'Forces of Evil.' He claims that they have 'made the modern world vile.'"

* May 15 - In Holland, thousands of Jews from several countries find themselves trapped behind German lines. The Dutch Army surrenders.

* May 16 - A Nazi murder spree called Extraordinary Pacification Operation is set into motion, the purpose of which is to do away with Polish intellectuals.

* May 20 - The Auschwitz concentration camp gets up and running.

* May 27 - German troops murder 100 British POWs at Le Paradis, France.

* May 28 - Belgium surrenders.

* May 1940 - March 1941 - 40,000 Jews are deported from Krakow, Poland.

* June 4 - A concentration camp is established at Neuengamme, Germany. British and French troops are evacuated at Dunkerque, France.

* June 10 - Italy enters the war as "a junior ally to Germany."

* June 14 - The first inmates, including non-Jewish Poles, such as teachers and priests, arrive at Auschwitz. Paris falls to the Nazis.

* June 22 - France surrenders and signs an armistice with Germany.

* June 26 - The anti-Semite US Assistant Secretary of State, Breckinridge Long tries to stop the granting of visas to Jews who want to come to the U.S. He orders American consuls "to put every obstacle in the way [to] postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of visas."

More to follow

The North Koreans Need a Wall

In this country, we build a wall to keep the Mexicans out. In North Korea, they need a wall to keep their own people in.

A story has appeared in newspapers and other media around the world, including the United States. It goes like this:

About two weeks ago, fifteen people attempted to flee North Korea to China because they were hungry and they had relatives in China who could help them. The North Koreans shot these 13 women and two men to death on a bridge near the town of Onseong.

Is it true?

The only source for this story is a newsletter put out by the Good Friends, a humanitarian aid group based in Seoul, South Korea. I have been unable to locate a copy of that newsletter and information about Good Friends is non-existent. One newspaper said it was a Buddhist group.

I have no reason to doubt the story, and we know from other sources that food is scarce in North Korea, and that the North Koreans have been known to shoot people for rather minor offenses.

But it is disconcerting to be unable to determine if any media source confirmed the information. It seems the story popped up somewhere and was then picked up by the media and reported as fact. Many of the articles are almost identical.

While it may not seem like that big a deal, it is unhappy because if reflects a trend . The more I learn of the media in the United States, the more I realize that they have lost their way. Forthrightness, honesty, integrity, fairness, the confirmation of sources, making sure of the facts -- these things that in years past defined real journalism -- have disappeared down some hole of corporate greed and/or political gain.

And it's not just the Republican Party mouthpiece, Fox News. It's NBC and CBS and ABC and MSNBC and all the rest. With rare exceptions, the newspapers share the shame, the blame and the guilt. It has become damn near impossible to get the truth from the mainstream media in the United States.

Thank goodness we have Media Matters and Alternet and Honest Reports and all the other, alternative sources, to find out what is really happening and how the major news outlets are skewing the information we need to know to become informed citizens.

A Cover Up of Jewish Women

Beit Shemesh is an ultra-orthodox Jewish area just west of Jerusalem.

Sheera Frenkel, writing for the TimesOnLine, tells how some of the women in this community are covering themselves head-to-toe, not unlike the Muslim women we wrote about a couple of days ago.

This new style is part of what Frenkel calls "a budding movement of about 100 women ... who have begun covering their bodies. Some cover just their hair and neck; others wrap their entire face, save their eyes, with the loose cloth."

It's a religious thing. As one woman explained, "The full body, or full face covering that people think is only part of the Arab world actually startred with Jewish women. Muslim women are imitating Jews to try to gain God's favor with modesty. The truth is that the women of Israel are lessening in God's eyes because the Arabs are more modest in dress. If the Jews want to conquer the Arabs in this land they must enhance their modesty."

It is curious to me that people get so concerned about clothing. I know in Christian circles folks used to fight about what was proper to wear when attending church. A few years back most Christian women wore some kind of head covering. Men, on the other hand, would never think of covering their heads inside a religious structure.

Even Christians priests and pastors and their flocks got into it over the type and style of vestments most appropriate to gain the approval of their deity. I've known churches that split over these issues!

But why? Why would any god care about such trifles? Furthermore, if you read the Bible literally, then it's obvious god created the first people with no clothes whatsoever. And they seemed to do just fine. Well, 'til that sneaky serpent came along...

Maybe what would be most pleasing to god would be to go around naked! (God, wouldn't that be awful?)

Olliver North to God ... The Democrats Did It!

This is old news, but just in case you didn't hear about it, Oliver North said on Fox News that the blame for the bombing in Times Square could be laid at the door of the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, because, led by Nancy Pelosi, they "went on vacation rather than voting on the Protect America Act."

That's a whole gob of manure. Surveillance continues and the spy guys can set up new surveillance by getting a warrant from the FISA court, which is about simple as the mind of Rush Limbaugh.

My question is: Why does anyone give a rat's ass what Oliver North, a convicted felon, says about anything?

The Grand Canyon, Science and God

It seems that scientists were a bit off in terms of the age of the Grand Canyon. Now, this is no big deal relative to an economy in the toilet, the war in Iraq racheting up a few notches, or the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but it is of minor interest.

Scientists had estimated the Grand Canyon to be about six million years old. That's still true in one sense, but now scientists realize that the western half of the GC started developing 17 million years ago.

An Arizona geologist, Wayne Ranney, was almost ecstatic. "This is really exciting for those of us work in the stories and theories of how the Grand Canyon has evolved. This ... helps us to more clearly understand that different parts of the canyon formed at different times. That's how big the Grand Canyon is."

Some people, religious people even, would say that there is a god out there who created the Grand Canyon however many years ago through an evolutionary process. No biggie.

A few religious fundamentalists, however, have picked up this story as an example of how scientists don't know what they're talking about and how there is no way the GC could have been created millions of years ago when the entire earth is only 6,000 or 8,000 or 10,000 or 12,000 years old (the actual age depends upon what fundamentalist or creationist school you belong to).

Here are a couple of actual responses to the Grand Canyon story (from AOL News):

1. "where is the outrage at the scientists? when a Christian says its around 8000 years old people are outraged and say scientific fact proves otherwise, well what happened to the scientific fact. Facts do not change they do not evolve into new fact either it was or the scientists were a-lying."

Other than the writer is almost illiterate, that is a funny comment and shows a complete and total lack of understanding as to what science is all about and what evolution is all about. Hopefully, this person is not a teacher or in any other position to influence our children.

2. The second response is a of a question/answer type:

"Some say: The Canyon is greatest cathedral in the world.

"I say: The Vatican is the greatest cathedral in the world.

"Now: How long will this new age of the Canyon last before, 'science' discovers another 'age' for the Canyon?"

I'd respond to these moronic statements, but I don't think it's worth it.

On Wearing a Niqab

There's a row in merry olde England as to what Muslim women should be allowed to wear. Some Muslim women are strolling around the streets of London completely covered except for an eye-slit in a garment called the niqab.

More than a few Londoners don't like it. The controversy has been going on now for several years and will no doubt continue for several more. More and more people want to make it against the law to wear the niqab.

There have been incidents. A niqab-clad lawyer was told she could not represent her client because the judge could not hear her. A teacher similarly garbed was told to go home. A student pressing her desire to cover herself head to foot while attending school, sued and lost.

One newspaper columnist, David Sexton, said he thought Britain was too lax. "I find such garb," in the context of a London street, first ridiculous and then directly offensive."

The wearing of the niqab does not seem to be an absolute necessity for Muslim women. The Muslim poobahs in Great Britain have said a plain old headscarf [hijab] is adequate. And only a very small minority of Muslim women in Great Britain wear the niqab.

The more devout Muslim women, however, believe wearing the niqab is something they must do; it is part of their identity. One young woman said "If I dressed in a Western way I could be a Hindu. I could be anything. This way (wearing the niqab) I feel comfortable in my identity as a Muslim woman."

There are other Muslim women, who, since 9/11, see the niqab "as a form of rebellion against the policies of the Blair government in Iraq and at home." A 24-year old Muslim said "For me it is not just a piece of clothing, it's an act of faith, it's solidarity."

Then some Muslim women have been taught that it's specifically a religious thing. A young Somali woman claimed that "Wearing the niqab means you will get a good grade and go to paradise ... when you wear something for Allah you get a boost."


Religions are fascinating. Does Allah require men wear specific clothing? I guess he says men must have beards, but what else? Isn't the real reason for the niqab to keep men from looking lustfully at a woman's physical charms? But why is that necessary when a man can have up to four wives anyway?

Could the niqab requirement be a way that Muslim men control Muslim women? Kinda the same thing as keeping 'em barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen?

If the more devout wear the niqab and go to paradise, what does that mean for the less devout who wear only the hijab or nothing at all?

It's kinda sad, too, that a woman would best find her identity in clothing that hides her entire physical being - except for her eyes.

It's all very confusing. And why would a god who could create an entire universe care about what clothing a few minor characters in his cosmic play wear?

The Holocaust Journal (Lest We Forget)

Germany - 1939 (III)

Poland became the testing ground for the "Final Solution," under Hans Frank, the governor-general of Occupied Poland. Frank said that Poland was a colony of Germany and the Polish people were "slaves" of the German Reich.

According to The Holocaust Chronicle, from which most of this material is taken, Frank "annihilated the Polish aristocracy, military and political leaders, priests and intelligentsia. He robbed art treasures, exploited material resources, and forced tens of thousands into slave labor. As people suffered, Frank lived ostentatiously in the royal palace in Krakow."

But Frank was frustrated by the fact that the Nazis had "dumped" so many Jews in Poland. He was unhappy about having to shoot or poison three and a half million Jews, but promised he would do his best.

From the invasion to the liberation of Poland, about six million people were murdered in that country, half of which were Jews. Frank was tried and executed as a war criminal in 1946.

* October 8 - The restriction of Jews to ghettos begins in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland.

* October 10 - The Nazis establish a Generalgouvernement in Poland which is considered "an administrative area" and not part of Greater Germany. The death camps will be located in this Generalgouvernement.

* Mid-October - The SS starts the mass-killing of "mental defectives" in a forest near Danzig.

* October 24 - Jews in Wloclawek are required to wear a yellow triangle.

* October 26 - A decree is issued making slave labor mandatory for all Poles between the ages of 14 and 60.

* October 30 - SS chief Himmler sets a goal of clearing all Jews from rural areas in Western Poland in three months. Thousands of Jews will be uprooted from their homes and ousted from their communities with nothing more than what they can carry on their persons.

* November - Several German generals plot to overthrow Hitler at Zossen, Germany but it is never carried out.

Hans Frank establishes the first Judenrat (Jewish council) in the ghettos. The council leaders are required to follow Nazi orders.

* November 7 - Jews are deported en masse from western Poland.

* November 8 - Hitler narrowly escapes death from an assassin's bomb in Munich.

* November 11 - German troops in Ostrow Mazowiecki, Poland, murder six hundred Jews.

* November 12 - Jews begin to be deported from other parts of Poland.

* November 13 - 53 Jewish men are executed by the SS because they happen to live at the same address as a Jewish man who shot a policeman to death.

* November 15-17 - The Nazis destroy every synagogue in Lodz, Poland.

* November 23 - When Polish Jews go out in public they are required to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David.

* November 29 - Himmler orders that all German Jews who fail to report for deportation will be executed.

* December - The commander-in-chief of the Germany Army Group East, Johannes Blaskowitz, says that many Jewish children sent to the concentration camps are frozen when they arrive.

* December 1 - In Chelm, Poland, 1350 Jews are murdered.

* December 1 - 9 - A forced march of 1800 Jewish men results in the death of 1600.

* December 5-6 - The Nazis seize all Jewish property in Poland. They take businesses, homes, furniture, money, bank accounts, etc. The Jews have nothing left to keep them alive.

* December 12 - In eastern Germany, all Jewish males between 14 and 60 must serve two years at forced labor.

* December 16 - In Lodz, Jewish girls are forced to clean latrines with their blouses which are then wrapped around their faces.

The ghettos established in Poland in 1939 were intended to be transitional areas to hold Jews removed from their homes. Soon, however, the ghettos became the point of departure to the death camps in Poland.

The ghettos deteriorated rapidly and became places of immense suffering. They were places of hunger, disease, squalor, despair and death. And there was no way out, except to an exterminaton camp.

This link connects to a five-minute video of the IAF (Israel Air Force) flying over the Auschwitz death camp. It is quite moving and well-worth your time.

John Boehner, the "Fiscal Hawk"

Ken Silverstein has an interesting piece on House Minority Leader John Boehner, (R-Ohio), in Harper's Magazine.

Silverstein says that Boehner likes to pretend publicly that he is a "no-nonsense fiscal hawk and friend of the little guy and gal."

Boehner isn't alone in this duplicity, of course. The Congress is full of such birds.

But Boehner overplays the role: "While families struggle with rising costs of living, politicians are wasting their money on pork-barrel projects we don't need," said he, ruefully. You'll see how hypocritical that is at the end of this essay.

Boehner also enjoys playing the role of reformer. It's a good deal - for him. Here's how it works.
He claims he is all for finance reform and lobbyist reform, etc. The reality, however, is quite different.

The outfit that gave the most money to Boehner's leadership PAC since 1989 is the student lender, Sallie Mae. Before he became Majority Leader (when the House was Republican-controlled), Boehner chaired the House Committee on Education and the Workforce! He was able, in that position, to champion measures that would benefit Sallie Mae. One measure, which dealt a "serious blow to the competing direct-loan program," was passed and signed by President Bush.

It get's more interesting. Boehner at several different times was a guest of Albert L. Lord, the head honcho of Sallie Mae, on the corporation's jet - flying to golf outings in Florida. "The company also helped sponsor a party that Mr. Boehner threw in New York at the 2004 Republican National Convention." (Sourcewatch.org)

There's more of this stuff, the most interesting of which has to do with monies received from the Indian tribes represented by Jack Abramoff, and the basement apartment in Washington he rents from a lobbyist "whose clients lobby on issues that came before Boehner when he chaired the Education and Workforce Committee."

Silverstein says that Boehner, unlike his constituents in Ohio, is not struggling with rising costs of living.

Between 2005 and 2007, Mr. Boehner spent about "$685,000 on food, travel, entertainment, and fundraisers..." While raising money at a recent golf outing in Scottsdale, Arizona, his leadership PAC spent $5,054 on lodging, $3,358 on food, beverages and green fees, and $2,870 at a local steakhouse.

In 2007, Boehner used political funds to pay for fun and games at 16 resorts or country clubs. His combined spending between 2005 and 2007 at just one country club amounted to almost $60K.

As Silverstein says, "Boehner's three-year binge at the country club comes out to be roughly equivalent to the median family income (for a three-person family) in Boehner's home state of Ohio."

What's really depressing is that Boehner is probably typical of most of our Representatives and Senators!