RUTHFULLY YOURS

“An overheard conversation between top Nazis Goering and von Ribbentrop set off the chain of events revealing to the public the existence of the Hitler-Stalin Pact’s “secret protocol,” which included evidence of Soviet war crimes committed in tandem with the Nazis. The Allies suppressed the document at the Nuremberg trials. ”

—Today is the 75th anniverary of the non-aggression pact between the Hitler and Stalin, the latter becoming (after Hitler attacked Stalin on June 22, 1941) the member of the “Big Three” known as “Uncle Joe.” In the commemorative essays discussing the twin dictators’ earlier alliance of August 23, 1939, which would be followed by Hitler and Stalin’s conquest of Poland the following month, the pact’s secret protocol that divided the nations of central and Eastern Europe between them is also mentioned. I have yet to see, however, any discussion of how that secret protocol became known to the public.

That disturbing story of near-suppression takes us past the war to the trials of the Nazi high command in Nuremberg — widely hailed the model of international justice. But what a morally rotten exercise it was, as war criminals (Soviets) sat in judgment of war criminals (Nazis) while war crimes (British and US) were occurring all around (Operation Keelhaul, the little known British-US-enabled “repatriation” from the West of millions of Soviet-claimed persons to death/the Gulag, was in full swing).

There, in a Nuremberg prison yard, a German defense lawyer by chance overheard top Nazis (von RIbbentrop and Goering) discussing the contents of the still-secret protocol, which offered evidence of Stalin’s guilt in committing “conspiracy to wage aggressive war,” one of the key charges against the German high command. With Stalin trying to blot out his alliance with Hitler from the record — with full support of his British and American allies — how did the secret protocol ever come to the world’s attention?

Here is what happened at Nuremberg, as discussed in Chapter 2 of American Betrayal, pp. 54-58.

State Dept. whoppers: Beheading wasn’t directed at the US; Islamic State isn’t ‘Islamic’

Under questioning by reporters at a news briefing about the savage beheading of American photojournalist James Foley by savages calling themselves the Islamic State, the hapless Harf maintained with a straight face that not only was the crime not directed against the United States, it wasn’t done in the name of religion either, according to CNS.

No matter what the guys who actually did the killing might think.

“I think ISIL wants to make this about the United States and our actions. And I think what the President was trying to say was that this is not about the United States and what we do,” Harf said, apparently even believing it. “This is about countries in the region coming together to fight a shared threat, and this is not about us.”

As someone once said, let this be clear.

Some Islamist animal with a knife slit the throat of an American citizen, explicity because he’s an American citizen. Then distributed a video of the barbarity called, “A message to America.” And that video concluded with a warning to the president of the United States about another hostage, Steve Joel Sotloff, that said, “The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision.”

But John Kerry’s State Department is outraged that anyone could take that to mean this was directed in any way at “the United States and what we do.”

And religion?

Most people might think a group that calls itself the Islamic State might have more than a passing belief that it operates in the name of some religion or other. Not to point fingers or anything — just to pull a religion of the air, you understand – most people might think that group was operating in the name of Islam

Whey may be the way to go. Image via Shutterstock.com.

Bodybuilders ingest buckets of whey protein powder to bulk up their
muscle mass. But researchers from Israel have found a new blood-smart
reason to eat like a “hulk” before meals.

A new study by Israeli and Swedish researchers has found that a plain
whey protein drink one half hour before breakfast could help
diabetics, or those on the verge of diabetes, prevent blood-sugar
spikes and better manage the disease.

Researchers Prof. Daniela Jakubowicz and Dr. Julio Wainstein at
Wolfson Medical Center in Holon; Prof. Oren Froy of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem; and Prof. Bo Ahrén of Lund University and
their colleagues studied a group of people who consumed whey protein
before eating a high-glucose meal.

What exactly is a garmento?Is it a cringe-making label or a badge of honor? Does the stereotypical garmento embody traditional Jewish values? Or does he (or far less often she) defy or deny them?
Why did so many Jews go into the rag trade anyway? And Sam, really, why did you make the pants so long?

Steven Fischler of Teaneck and his business partner, Joel Sucher of Hartsdale, N.Y., examine these questions — well, at least some of them — and similar ones in a documentary, “Dressing America: Tales From the Garment Center.” Created in 2009, it will be broadcast a number of times on Channel 13 and on WLIW, beginning on September 2, to mark Fashion Week in New York City.
“The film looks at two things,” Mr. Fischler said. “It talks about the Jewish immigrant roots of today’s garment industry. Some of the Jewish immigrants who came over didn’t have a lot of money, but they had the skills — certainly sewing and clothes-making was something that Jews did in Europe. They brought their skills to this country, and they helped create the billion-dollar fashion industry that we have today.”

Much of that history is shown through old photographs and film snippets, and excerpts from both English- and Yiddish-language movies.
“The other aspect is a little bit of a slice of life,” he said. “There are some recurrent characters, who have been in the industry for a long time, and reflect the golden age of the garment industry, before everything got outsourced — when people didn’t have 90-page contracts but cut deals on a handshake.
“Of course,” he added, “the garment center was much smaller then; much more of a small town than it is today.”

The garment center wasn’t all Jewish, he added; like many of the New York City neighborhoods where its workers lived, it also was Italian. “But it had a very large and strong Jewish aspect,” and much of the documentary focuses on it.
Not only did some Jews come to New York with sewing skills — as they came to Paterson — they also brought an entrepreneurial orientation and a quick-witted willingness to take chances.
“The garment center in New York City really is women’s wear,” Mr. Fischler said. “Men’s wear is mainly in the Midwest, particularly in Chicago, with big companies like Hart Schaffner and Marx.” That’s because men’s styles change slowly — the lapel might wax and wane — so it is far easier and safer to produce large numbers of basic items, and to charge more for them. “But women’s fashion changes every year, and it affects the nature of the business. Women’s fashion companies were much smaller and more highly specialized, and it was a more difficult business.
“If you picked the right dress, you made a lot of money. If you picked the wrong one — if, say, you went for a long skirt in a year when the style was short — you were going to go bankrupt.” Bankruptcy is never pleasant, but it looms less for someone who already has left home, crossed a continent using his wits and then steamed across an ocean in stomach-turning steerage, started a new life from scratch, and learned that it is almost always possible to start all over yet again.

Israel’s recent defensive war against Hamas and other Islamist factions in Gaza has generated a wave of criticism against Israel, which, in truth, is simply old-fashioned and persistent, anti-Semitism disguised as political argument. A means to determine the difference was actually created more than a decade ago by Israeli political leader

Natan Sharansky, who dubbed his method, the “3D Test.”
A co-founder of the Soviet refusenik movement in the mid-1970s – mostly Soviet Jews denied permission to emigrate to escape the USSR’s institutionalized anti-Semitism – Sharansky was no stranger to anti-Semitic persecution himself. He spent nine years in a Soviet gulag before he was released thanks to the efforts of President Ronald Reagan.

Thus attuned to blatant anti-Semitism, Sharansky observed that, with the existence of modern-day Israel, hostility against Jews was masked and projected onto the Jewish state. He called it the “new anti-Semitism” and created his “3D” conceptual tool to differentiate prejudice against the Jewish people from valid disapproval of Israeli policies and actions.

The 3Ds are demonization, delegitimization, and double standards. The tool has been accepted by the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency and the U.S. Department of State. Applied against past and current events, all three elements, or “Ds,” clearly show anti-Semitism in play on the world stage.

The Dole: New data on federal public assistance programs show we’ve reached an ignominious milestone: More than 100 million Americans are getting some form of “means-tested” welfare assistance.

The Census Bureau found 51 million on food stamps at the end of 2012 and 83 million on Medicaid, with tens of millions of households getting both. Another 4 million were on unemployment insurance.

The percentage of American households on welfare has reached 35%. If we include other forms of government assistance such as Medicare and Social Security, almost half of all households are getting a check or other form of government assistance. The tipping point is getting closer and closer.

So much is shocking and dismaying about these numbers. How is it that the number of recipients and the price tag for many of these programs kept skyrocketing though the recession officially ended in 2009? Normally, you’d expect welfare caseloads to fall in a recovery as the unemployment rate dips, but this time welfare participation keeps expanding.

Perhaps this is because this administration and many Democrats in Congress, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, have told Americans that welfare benefits are a stimulus to the economy (sic). Apparently, the left believes that if every family were on food stamps, the economy would return to its glory days.

The feds have also created outreach programs — including radio and TV ads in multiple languages — to encourage people to sign up for the dole because, as one ad put it, this “helps the local community.”

The new statistics also highlight how limited work requirements are for welfare benefits. In 1996 when a Republican Congress and President Bill Clinton enacted landmark welfare reform laws, the old-fashioned cash welfare assistance (AFDC) was replaced with a time-limited assistance program (TANF) that required work for benefits.