RUTHFULLY YOURS

Of course it’s ribald, and it’s entertaining, too.
History, Marx famously remarked, repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. But for the eight years beginning January 20, 1993, history, in the form of the Clinton White House, seemed to skip the repetition and go straight for farce. The cast, the clashes, and the crack-ups of those years are brought together in the ribald new musical, Clinton, which is appearing in New York City as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival. It is every bit as outrageous as you might think, but, then, an Eisenhower musical would not be nearly as much fun.

Clinton opens on January 20, 1993, with the president-elect taking the oath of office. “I, William Jefferson Clinton,” he begins — then, at his shoulder, “And I, Hillary Rodham Clinton . . . ” That gag sets the tone for the rest of the show, which is constantly inquiring, Who was in charge of this circus? To dramatize the question, there are actually two Bill Clintons: William Jefferson (Karl Kenzler), whose suit and slicked-back gray hair declare “Mr. President,” the scrupulous servant of the people; and Billy (Duke LaFoon), WJ’s caddish alter ego, an incorrigible skirt chaser with a touch for political showbiz. Whenever WJ’s starchy podium performances begin to bore, Billy Clinton is there, saxophone in hand, to give the crowds the old razzle-dazzle. Back and forth the show oscillates between their two approaches, parodying the schizophrenic feeling of many observers in the ’90s: that there was a Sunday-morning Bill and a very different Saturday-night Bill.

On the rare occasion when Bill is not his own worst enemy, he is the target of two antagonists: a megalomaniacal Newt Gingrich (Tom Souhrada), whose supervillain laugh is accompanied by a grand vision of making History by returning America to the golden days when everyone was “Christian, straight, and white.” To help him in his quest are several zombie-fied members of “the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.” It is because of Newt and his minions that the scoop-hungry press begins to ask questions about Whitewater and Paula Jones, and to coax them on is Kenneth Starr (Kevin Zak), an Igor-like investigator whose show-stopping number has him stripping down to combat boots, fishnet underwear, and a leather chest harness. Why Kenneth Starr is a male dominatrix here is a mystery, but in a show this bawdy, it somehow fits.

And bawdy it is. Once Monica Lewinsky (Natalie Gallo) makes her entrance, the innuendos are unceasing, and while the jokes are, like the women in Clinton’s orbit, sometimes too easy, there is plenty of cleverer fare. Yes, much of the show is puerile and sophomoric, but it’s a musical about Bill Clinton — you don’t expect Lear. That said, one song is a bit too blunt: Lewinsky’s postcoital girl-power solo, “I’m F***ing the F***ing President, Oh Yeah.” Even Sade knew to be subtle on occasion.

The show blasts through the Clinton administration’s eight years in two hours, with tributes to many of the era’s central moments: the 1994 midterm landslide, the 1995–1996 government shutdown (resolved here with a toe-to-toe boxing match between Gingrich and the two Bills), Hillarycare, and Clinton’s linguistically agile testimony before various congressional bodies. A beanbag dressed up in a suit — Bob Dole — makes a guest appearance, as does cardboard-cutout Al Gore. “Recyclable?” WJ asks. “Good, that’s what he would have wanted.”

Something has gone wrong in our civil service. Consider some recent developments. The IRS was forced to pay the National Organization for Marriage $50,000 for leaking the group’s donor list. Tea-party organizations and donors were much more likely than others to be audited by the IRS. This misbehavior was not the work of a few rogue employees in Cincinnati. In general, the IRS stalled tea-party applications for status as 501(c)(4) groups.

Meanwhile, April Sands, an employee of the FEC, recently pleaded guilty to violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from campaigning at the office. Ms. Sands, who worked in the office charged with enforcing our election laws, recently said, “I just don’t understand how anyone but straight white men can vote Republican.” What business does such a person have in that office in the first place? Somehow the FEC managed to wipe her computer clean, weakening the case against her. Perhaps that answers our question. These cases reflect a larger pattern. Our civil service is putting a thumb on the scale of justice.

Thomas Jefferson described the ideal this way in 1776: “Let mercy be the character of the lawgiver, but let the judge be a mere machine.” Justice is blind. The law applies equally to all, regardless of their religious or political beliefs, their wealth or poverty, or their race. Moreover, it applies to government and the governed equally. Judges make this clear in their oath to “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.” That principle applies across government. Jefferson continued: “The mercies of the law will be dispensed equally & impartially to every description of men; those of the judge, or of the executive power, will be the eccentric impulses of whimsical, capricious designing man.” The law can hardly be said to rule when it is applied or enforced in a biased manner, or when government employees exempt themselves from its reach.

How did we get here? With the rise of the Second Party System in 19th-century America came the spoils system, replacing the quasi-aristocratic republican old-boys’ network that had upheld the ideal of the gentleman as public servant. After a deranged office seeker assassinated President Garfield, the United States began to embrace the ideal of a non-partisan and professional civil service. Government employees began to be hired for their professional competence, determined by tests, rather than for party connections. Once hired, these government workers would be given civil-service protections — tenure as a security against partisan pressure. The goal was also to ensure that citizens voted for a candidate because he would pursue good policies, not because their idiot brother-in-law would get a job if their guy won.

Today we have the worst of both worlds: a tenured and partisan civil service. Government employees have civil-service protection and are seldom fired, only for the most egregious of crimes. Yet they lean to one party. From 1989 to 2012, two-thirds of donations from IRS employees, for example, went to Democrats. Even so, our civil servants seem to think that they are politically neutral. Hence the em

Gaza-Israel: it doesn’t add up

English version of an article written in French

Israel, they say, harumph, has the right to defend itself, but… But not entirely. Both sides are asked to act with restraint. Not exactly both. Because the conflict is lopsided: 37 then 58, 102, and now more than 200 Palestinians killed. The vast majority, according to Palestinian sources, are civilians. Women, children and the elderly, to say nothing of the thousands of wounded. On the other side, zilch. That’s it, the stage is set, the lethal narrative has wheels and it’s going to be fueled daily, automatically, unapologetically.

How might Hamas act with restraint? Its goal is to kill all the Jews and occupy all the territory from the Jordan to the sea. Whereas the Israelis want zero dead, zero wounded, and the pursuit of a productive life in an intact nation. So what would restraint amount to? Hamas would kill half the Jewish Israelis? There is no justification for this cooking-the-books vision of a confrontation with worldwide ramifications: The frontier between civilization and savagery runs along the Gaza-Israel border.

The Israeli army could crush Hamas in the space of 24 hours, simply by disregarding the fate of civilians caught in the interstices of a war machine built instead of a decent place for living creatures. Israel doesn’t use its power that way.

If the heroic Iron Dome were struck with a malediction and all eight batteries suddenly went dead, if ever Hamas got the upper hand, the rockets launched from Gaza could quickly balance the books. Would that be okay? 200 victims on each side. A draw? The competing teams shake hands and go home happy to have played a good game? No. Hamas would pursue its genocidal enterprise without the slightest restraint. What would they say then? The president of the United States, his secretary of state, European leaders, the General Secretary of the United Nations, journalists and readers eager to comment on the “conflict.” If ever Israel became weak like the helpless people of Iraq or Nigeria, what would public opinion say? Sorry, guys. It turns out you should have hit the enemy with all your might. Contemporary public opinion has taken a strong stand on that old-fashioned genocide, the Shoah. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out: it was a terrible tragedy that is sincerely regretted Or almost.

Thirty-seven killed on the Palestinian side in the first days of the operation and nothing on the opposite team, how dare they? Genocide, dixit Mahmoud Abbas. From then on, every day has its lot of tribulations, the toll is rung up at the end of each newscast on channels all over the world, the proportion of civilians increases from many, to more than half, to almost all. Where do these figures come from? Palestinian sources. Who can verify them? Don’t bother. Every confrontation involving Israel uses the same accounting methods. A man who launches a rocket–from someone’s patio– aimed at civilians in Israel becomes, if hit by the counter-attack, a civilian. While all Israelis, all Jews, including the three students assassinated in June, are soldiers.

Testing, testing, testing…

The horror of 298 innocents, oblivious to the warfare 33,000 feet below them, blown out of the sky by criminally negligent fanatics supported by Russian Vladimir Putin, forebodes greater catastrophes.

The incident is a part of a worldwide scene wherein Pres. Barack Hussein Obama’s strategy of withdrawal from what he — and a large part of the apolitical war-weary American people – sees as overreaching worldwide projection of U.S. power.

But Obama’s clumsy retreat has led to a continuing welter of probes by opponents – and even allies — of Pax Americana. Whatever the merit of arguments about a declining U.S., its power and influence on the rest of the contemporary world remains enormous. Obama’s withdrawal creates an international and regional power vacuum, setting up the kind of ambiguities that throughout history has led to misperceptions, and, often, major wars.

The classic example, often cited if by simplistic interpretation of a very complex episode, is Dean Acheson’s speech to the National Press Club on January 12, 1950. In what was considered a seminal statement, the secretary of state did not include the KoreanPeninsula in a statement of the all-important United States “defense perimeter”. Its omission was widely interpreted as a signal that Washington would not defend South Korea, a product of the division of the Peninsular at the 38th parallel at the end of a 50-year-Japanese Occupation on Tokyo’s World War II surrender.

With concentration on the postwar Soviet takeover of Eastern and Central Europe, the U.S. had absent-mindedly occupied the Peninsular with only a vague understanding of its potential threat to highly industrialized if decimated Japan. Into that vacuum, the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin, riding the full thrust of the developing Cold War, instigated his puppets, the well disciplined army led by Kim Il Sung, a former Soviet officer, to attack the South with the intention of reunifying the country as another Moscow satellite. The U.S. responded, if lamely in the beginning, but in force, and initially was victorious in threatening a complete reversal of the two superpowers’ goals.

But Mao Tse-tung, frightened by the prospect of a reunited Korea, an American ally on Communist China’s most important northeastern land frontier, hurled tens of thousands of former surrendered Nationalist troops as cannon fodder into the combat. Pres. Harry Truman, engaged on other European and Middle Eastern “fronts”, denied Gen. Douglas Macarthur his “all-out” strategy for a military victory even were it to bring on possible direct and perhaps nuclear conflict with Beijing, and the war ended in stalemate. “The Forgotten War” cost five million lives – including almost 40,000 U.S. soldiers — devastated the Peninsular, and left a festering international problem.

Today, looking around the world, there are too many places where just such complex unsolved geopolitical nodules present the same sort of potential.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/kerry-heads-to-cairo-for-ceasefire-bid-as-israel-names-soldiers-killed-in-gaza/
French minister slams ‘anti-Semitic’ Gaza protests

France’s interior minister slams “intolerable” acts of anti-Semitism after a rally against Israel’s Gaza offensive descended into violence, pitting an angry pro-Palestinian crowd against local Jewish businesses.

“When you head for the synagogue, when you burn a corner shop because it is Jewish-owned, you are committing an anti-Semitic act,” Bernard Cazeneuve tells reporters outside the Sarcelles synagogue.
Protesters clash with riot police in Sarcelles, a suburb north of Paris, on July 20, 2014, during a demonstration to denounce Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and show their support for the Palestinian people. (photo credit: AFP/Omar Bouyacoub)

Protesters clash with riot police in Sarcelles, a suburb north of Paris, on July 20, 2014, during a demonstration to denounce Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and show their support for the Palestinian people. (photo credit: AFP/Omar Bouyacoub)

In the Paris suburb sometimes nicknamed “little Jerusalem” for its large community of Sephardic Jews, the rally on Sunday descended into chaos when dozens of youth — some masked — set fire to bins and lit firecrackers and smoke bombs.

Eighteen people were arrested after looters wrecked shops, including a kosher foodstore and a funeral home as protesters shouted: “Fuck Israel!”

“We have never seen such an outpouring of hatred and violence in Sarcelles,” says the mayor Francois Pupponi. “This morning people are stunned, and the Jewish community is afraid.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/kerry-heads-to-cairo-for-ceasefire-bid-as-israel-names-soldiers-killed-in-gaza/
Israel suffers casualties as IDF thwarts tunnel attacks, killing at least 10 infiltrators from Gaza; army names seventh soldier slain Sunday; over 20 Palestinians said to die overnight strikes; UN calls for ceasefire
The Times of Israel is liveblogging events as they unfold through Monday, the 14th day of Operation Protective Edge. The UN Security Council called for an immediate truce in Gaza Monday morning after an emergency meeting held at the request of Jordan. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Israel’s actions in the Hamas stronghold of Shejaiya were “atrocious.” The IDF announced Sunday evening that 13 Golani Brigade soldiers died overnight in fighting in Gaza, raising the Israeli army death toll to 18. The soldiers were killed in heavy combat in Shejaiya, which also left over 70 Palestinians dead, Gaza Health Ministry officials said. Israel said the neighborhood is a Hamas stronghold, and that the army had warned residents to evacuate it.
Iron Dome downs 4 rockets over Tel Aviv, Ashdod

The Iron Dome intercepts two missiles over Tel Aviv, and two over Ashdod.
Sirens in Beit Shemesh, Lod
11:42
Sirens in Tel Aviv, Rishon Lezion, Shfela region
11:40
Sirens in Ashdod, Ashkelon, Kiryat Malachi, Yavne
Fighting resumes in Shejaiya

The Israel Air Force and Golani unit strike targets in Shejaiya, as heavy combat continues, the Walla news website reports.
10:54
Watch: IDF thwarts tunnel attack

The IDF releases footage of one of two attempted infiltrations earlier today that were successfully foiled by Israeli forces.

At ALEH Negev in Ofakim, residents have severe disabilities and most cannot walk. When the sirens sound, it’s up to their staff to keep them safe

In Ofakim, a sand-choked, barren community minutes from the Gaza border, residents have just 30 seconds when they hear a red-alert siren to run and find cover. For able-bodied members of this impoverished community, that’s precious little time.

But what about those who can’t run?

At ALEH Negev, a state-of-the-art rehabilitative village for Israeli citizens with severe disabilities, it’s a serious question. Most of the residents at ALEH Negev, which gleams like a spaceship in the middle of Ofakim’s brown desert, are wheelchair-bound and cannot walk on their own. Many cannot speak, use their limbs or practice motor functions without assistance.

ALEH Negev is the largest of Israel’s four ALEH campuses, all of which serve the special-needs. There are 133 residents living here, ranging from young adults to 50-year-olds, with round-the-clock care provided by 150 trained staff members. Over the past week, as rocket fire from Gaza pounded Israel from north to south and border cities like Ofakim observed the brunt of the nonstop fire, daily routines here like physical therapy and arts and crafts were shattered by sirens and stress. When a red-alert siren rings in a place like ALEH, its threat has special fangs.

“The residents here really react to the staff,” says Masada Sekely, the village’s director. “If the staff is calm and knows how to handle the situation, then the residents are too. They work on feedback, and all their emotions come from the staff that works with them. We are actually more focused on keeping our staff strong than the residents.”

ALEH Negev’s full name is ALEH Negev-Nachalat Eran, and chaired by Maj. Gen. (res) Doron Almog, one of the most celebrated figures in the history of the Israel Defense Forces. In 1976, Almog helped lead the famed Israeli hostage rescue at Entebbe and for years after, as head of the IDF’s Southern Command, foiled countless attempts to launch terror attacks in Israel.

Almog bears a difficult and definitive family legacy, having lost his brother Eran, a tank commander, during the Yom Kippur War, as well as his son, also named Eran, to Castleman’s disease.

With deep angst, Hamas is watching their rocket-launching platforms, weapons caches, and terror tunnels fall ‘one after another,’ IDF spokesman says.

The IDF has discovered an “underground city” in Gaza filled with explosives, IDF Spokesman Brigadier-General Moti Almoz said Sunday.

He spoke to Channel 10 following the discovery of at least 36 terror tunnels in Gaza. Many of the tunnels were filled with rockets, explosives and other weapons.

“Hamas planned these tunnels for years, and planned to use them to kidnap soldiers. [Now] they see the tunnels collapsing one after the other,” Almoz declared.

Hamas “built an underground city full of bombs, meant to evade the IDF and to use in serious terrorist attacks,” he added.

Almoz said that the IDF has reached “significant achievements” in Operation Protective Edge, the defensive operation that began after Hamas launched amajor rocket assault on Israeli cities.

The operation expanded on Saturday night, he said. “We are continuing to work deep in the territory, with the goal of destroying Hamas’ capabilities,” he stated.

While the operation has been successful to date, “it’s impossible to hit 100% of the tunnels and to prevent 100% of the rocket fire,” he warned.

The rocket assault from Gaza has grown significantly weaker since the operation began, he noted. However, he called to “not talk about the bottom line yet.”

“We need to wait a few days to see if this is a trend. Only when the operation is over can we confirm success in destroying tunnels and frustrating Hamas – two strategic goals that we are making major progress on,” Almoz concluded.

Dr. Ari Babaknia discusses his new book, “Humanity, NOT” — and when silence is not an option.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/the-holocaust-and-mans-indifference-on-the-glazov-gang/

This Week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Dr. Ari Babaknia, an Iranian-born doctor who wrote and published a 4-volume book in Farsi “The Holocaust” (which in English is “Humanity, NOT”). He came on the show to discuss “Humanity, NOT,” which takes an in-depth look, in words and images, at the captured emotions of the victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and survivors of the Holocaust, told in their own words.

Dr. Babaknia focuses on the evil of genocide and when silence is not an option:

This is a revised version of an article that first appeared in Palestinian Manipulation of the International Community1
• The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is today one of the largest UN programs. It remains the only UN agency whose area of operation is not global but regional, and that deals with a single group of people. The vast, quasi-governmental machinery into which UNRWA has evolved has made itself susceptible to political manipulation, in particular by extremist groups, in a way that might overshadow its humanitarian accomplishments. The Agency has become an active agent in reaching out to international actors and audiences, and a powerful tool within the anti-Israel propaganda campaign.
• The educational services provided by UNRWA, particularly in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, propagate a non-peaceful point of view, upholding a political vision of a continued struggle against a delegitimized Israel. The Agency’s significant influence on Palestinian educational activities, as well as the fact that more than half of its general budget is dedicated to education, highlight UNRWA’s problematic educational role in the Middle East conflict.
• The acceptance by UNRWA’s leadership of the mission to enhance the political rights of Palestinians has become a key trend characterizing the Agency’s activity. UNRWA’s so-called “protection mandate” has allowed the Agency to become a fierce advocate for Palestinians in its dealings with Israel, although it remains nearly silent when Arab governments in host countries violate or restrict Palestinian civil rights.
• UNRWA is regularly involved in political speeches and public pronouncements. The unfettered freedom of speech enjoyed by UNRWA’s leadership defies the fundamental norms of objectivity and neutrality to which UN officials are obliged as international civil servants. In large part, this is the outcome of the fact that UNRWA lacks outside controls over its chief executive, who receives hardly any political guidance from any of the relevant international bodies that are in a position to provide direction.
• UNRWA has entrenched the idea of “return,” as well as its misconception as a legal right. Also, it has generated an exponential increase in the number of Palestinian refugees. As was stated recently in a report presented to the US Senate Appropriations Committee, UNWRA’s practice in this regard is artificial and misleading, and undermines any possibility of resolving the refugee issue in future peace negotiations.
• In July 2014, some 20 rockets were found in a school in Gaza, operated by UNRWA.
• Within the last few years there has been a growing awareness within international political, diplomatic, and academic circles regarding UNRWA’s policies. It testifies to the fact that UNRWA’s position as a stabilizing, “peace servicing” factor in the region and as a guardian of refugee interests is no longer taken for granted. It also reflects the growing quest for accountability and an acknowledgement of the responsibility of donor countries to scrutinize UNRWA’s policies to ensure the strict application of their tax-payers’ money toward relief and humanitarian causes.