RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Winner is New York University!!

It’s a close contest, and there is a bit of 2014 left, but this year’s award for higher education hypocrisy surely must go to eight signatories of the latest anti-Israel petition to emerge from our universities. The petition itself, signed by members of the faculty of New York University, is the standard call to punish corporations that can be connected in some way to Israel’s activities in the West Bank or Gaza. What’s striking about this one is that eight of the signatories, more than ten percent of the present total, are affiliated with NYU’s satellite campus in Abu Dhabi. NYU’s Abu Dhabi outpost, “wholly bankrolled by the oil-rich Abu Dhabi government,” opened in 2010, and its permanent campus, located alongside an “idyllic resort” under development on Saadiyat Island, was completed in 2014.

So I wonder when these eight faculty members, who pompously stand on NYU’s “long and proud tradition of demanding that the university live up to its professed values,” will be renouncing their affiliation with the government of the United Arab Emirates. As Freedom House observes in its 2014 report, the UAE bans political parties, and “criticism of the government, allies [and] religion” is prohibited by law.

“If you want an accurate in-depth biography of Jabotinsky, written long before Halkin’s screed on Jabotinsky, read:“Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Ze’Ev) Jabotinsky,” Two Volume magnificent record of the founding of the state Israel, written March 1, 1996 by Shmuel Katz, Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s right hand man up until Jabotinsky’s death in 1940”

Redacted from a review by Hillel Halkin of the book: THE RECKONING By Patrick Bishop Harper, 299 pages, $26.99

Halkin’s review appeared in The Wall Street Journal December 20-21, 2014

Freedom Fighter for Zion

Avraham Stern imagined (believed) the Jewish people compelling God to be the zealous warrior-deity of the Bible once again.

In 1942, ‘The Stern Gang’ (F.F.I. Freedom Fighters for Israel) were the most wanted men (by the colonialist-building British in Palestine). Hardly anyone talks anymore about “the Stern Gang.” In Israel, the militant group has not been known by this name for decades. It is called by the name it called itself, “The Lechi” (with the “ch” as in “Bach”), an acronym for Lochamei Cherut Yisra’el, or Freedom Fighters of Israel.

The smallest and most extreme of the three fully or partly underground Jewish military organizations that began in Palestine during the last years of the British Mandate. It accomplished little in reality but much in the realm of myth-making. To this day it lives in Israeli memory as a symbol of ardent patriotism, romantic self-sacrifice and the cult of idealistic violence—and also as a form of political lunacy that would reappear in a new guise long after the group’s demise. (again Halkin’s left wing evaluation.)

White police officers encounter black miscreants and the latter come off second best. Cue protests, riots, calls for vengeance and the cold-blooded murder of two New York City policeman after a deluge of inflammatory rhetoric from the likes of Al Sharpton and, to his shame, President Obama.

What duty do we owe each other during the Festive Season and at other times? If asked, many people might respond by saying that we should respect one another. That seems fine to me; though it is not something that can be pinned down necessarily. People are likely to have different views about how it finds expression in different circumstances. However, beneath this subjectivity an objective duty is ever present. That is a duty to seek and tell the truth. Peddling lies is the antithesis of respecting others.

Eric Garner, a black man, dies at the hands of police officers in New York. A grand jury convenes and decides not to indict the cop who grabbed Mr Garner around his neck. Disgracefully, President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio jump to conclusions and make racially charged statements about the police. Inevitably, Obama’s and de Blasio’s buddy, race-hustler Al Sharpton is part of the mix.

Protests break out on the streets replete with hateful signs directed at the police. Two NYPD cops (Wenjian Lu and Rafael Ramos) are subsequently assassinated, while sitting in their squad car, by a black criminal. Apparently he was ‘deranged’, as if anybody capriciously killing others isn’t. Police officers turn their backs on de Blasio as he visits the hospital where the two cops have been pronounced dead. How these events are linked exactly is a matter of conjecture.

What we know is that in another time Obama, Holder and de Blasio would have been investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, long before being elevated to high office and given the chance to wreak havoc on American values. But, beyond that, where is the truth hiding?

Nutritional standards used by Michelle Obama’s school lunch program are worse than useless.

Do you think you know how to eat healthy? Your friendly neighborhood federal government doesn’t think you do. And they’re here to help.

Buried deep in the ObamaCare law, the gift from the Democrats to the nation that keeps on giving, chain restaurants are required to start labeling calories on all of their menu items. The law applies to vending-machine items as well. It’s proven to be a nightmare [1] for small business and franchises, adding cost (which will have to be passed on to the diner, if they choose to pay it). In the case of things like “order your own” sandwiches or pizza, it is almost impossible to implement. As with much of the poorly written misbegotten law, it is unclear whether it applies to things like food trucks, or what the penalty is for non-compliance. Despite the uncertainty, overall cost has been estimated to be half a billion dollars, which will be “eaten” by consumers.

Meanwhile, over in the public-school cafeterias, food is being wasted, and money is being lost by the school districts [2], because kids refuse to purchase or eat what Michelle Obama thinks is good for them. The goal of her Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, passed in 2010, was to wage war on childhood obesity. But unsurprisingly, the children, obese and otherwise, find the high-fiber, low-fat, low-salt fare unappetizing, and when they don’t brown bag to avoid having to buy it, they throw much of it away. Worse, and particularly insanely, the law makes no distinction between different kids’ dietary needs, and completely fails to take into account physical activity — the football player gets as many (or few) calories as the chess champ.

Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley and the “Meshugga Muslim” Jihad Against the Police (Addended) http://p.ost.im/j56PFN via @andrewbostom

Addendum: Investigative reporting by Chuck Ross at The Daily Caller has uncovered another lead that merits investigation: a Feb. 28, 2013 video Brinsley posted of Masjid At Taqwa, in Brooklyn, N.Y., entitled “Time to pray in Brooklyn.”

The video depicts Brinsley approaching the mosque as its call to prayer echoes in the background. Ross hones in on a relevant—and alarming—court document filed by senior counsel Peter G. Farrell, The City of New York Law Department. Dated Sept. 10, 2013, it elucidates the activities of Masjid At Taqwa affiliates, which included: specific anti-police activities; illegal gun operations; links to past jihad terrorism plots; fund-raising activities for jihad terror organizations; and practice, during paintball training exercises, to become “jihad assassins.”

The NYPD’s investigation of certain individuals associated with Plaintiff Masjid At Taqwa was based upon information about their lengthy history of suspected criminal activity, some of it terroristic in nature. This information includes but is not limited to: illegal weapons trafficking by members of the mosque’s security team and the mosque caretaker both within the mosque and at the store adjacent; illegal weapons trafficking by certain attendees of the mosque; allegations that the mosque ran a “gun club”; and allegations that the assistant Imam had earmarked portions of over $200,000 raised in the mosque to a number of US Government designated terrorist organizations.

Certain individuals associated with Masjid At Taqwa have historical ties to [jihad] terrorism. The mosque’s Imam, Siraj Wahhaj, was named by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York as an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to bomb a number of New York City landmarks in the mid-1990s (the “Landmarks Plot”). Omar Abdel Rahman, known as the “Blind Sheikh,” who is serving a life sentence in federal prison for his role in the Landmarks Plot, lectured at Masjid At Taqwa. Wahhaj testified as a character witness for Abdel Rahman during Abdel Rahman’s terrorism trial. Wahhaj also testified as a character witness for Clement Hampton El, a Masjid At Taqwa attendee who was convicted as one of the Blind Sheikh’s coconspirators in the Landmarks Plot.

Members of the mosque’s security team have instructed individuals on how to disarm police officers and have led martial arts classes involving individuals convicted on terrorism charges. Since at least 2003, Masjid At Taqwa members have participated in and sponsored paintball exercises and survival training outside New York City, activities which have been carried out for training purposes by violent extremists in multiple terrorism cases in the United States and abroad-such as the “Virginia Jihad” case, the Fort Dix plot, the 717 attacks in London, and the UK fertilizer bomb plot (“Operation Awakening”). On one of these outings, the leader of Masjid At Taqwa’s security team instructed the members of his paintball team to “form up, jihad assassins” and called them his ‘Jihad warriors”. Farooque Ahmed, who is currently incarcerated after pleading guilty to terrorism charges in connection with a plot to bomb the Washington, DC metro, promoted and participated in at least one of these trips.

Order lIana Mercer’s brilliant polemical work, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”

“Described by a critic as “one of those rare movies you can say is perfect in every way,” “A Christmas Story,” directed by Bob Clark, debuted in 1983.

Set in the 1940s, the film depicts a series of family vignettes through the eyes of 9-year-old Ralphie Parker, who yearns for that gift of all gifts: the Daisy Red Ryder BB gun.

This was boyhood before “bang-bang you’re dead” was banned; family life prior to “One Dad Two Dads Brown Dad Blue Dads,” and Christmas before Saint Nicholas was denounced for his whiteness and “merry Christmas” condemned for its exclusiveness.

If children could choose the family into which they were born, most would opt for the kind depicted in “A Christmas Story,” where mom is a happy homemaker, dad a devoted working stiff, and between them, they have zero repertoire of progressive psychobabble to rub together.

Although clearly adored, Ralphie is not encouraged to share his feelings at every turn. Nor is he, in the spirit of gender-neutral parenting, circa 2014, urged to act out like a girl if he’s feeling … girlie. Instead, Ralphie is taught restraint and self-control. And horrors: The little boy even has his mouth washed out with soap and water for uttering the “F” expletive. “My personal preference was for Lux,” reveals Ralphie, “but I found Palmolive had a nice piquant after-dinner flavor – heady but with just a touch of mellow smoothness.” Ralphie is, of course, guilt-tripped with stories about starving Biafrans when he refuses to finish his food.

My country, Venezuela, is on the verge of social and economic collapse. This slow-motion disaster, nearly 15 years in the making, was not initiated by falling oil prices or by mounting debts. It was set in motion by the authoritarian government’s hostility toward human rights and the rule of law and the institutions that protect them.

I know this on an all-too personal level. I am writing from a military prison, where I have been held since February as a result of speaking out against the government’s actions. I am one of scores of political prisoners in my country who are locked away because of their words and ideas.

This unjust incarceration has given me a firsthand view of the pervasive abuses—legal, mental and physical—perpetrated by the ruling elite in my country. It has not been a good experience, but it has been an enlightening one.

My isolation also has given me time to think and reflect on the larger crisis facing my country. It has never been clearer to me that Venezuela’s road to ruin was paved years ago by a movement to dismantle basic human rights and freedoms in the name of an illusory vision of achieving greater good for the masses through the centralization of power.

Last year’s election of Hasan Rouhani as president of Iran was supposed to inaugurate an era of moderation for the Islamic Republic. Try telling that to the family of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian.
Mr. Rezaian, the Post’s Tehran correspondent and a U.S. citizen, was arrested with his wife Yeganeh Salehi in late July and held in solitary confinement, in a bed-less cell, in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison. Iranian authorities have given no reason for his arrest other than to say it is “security” related. Ms. Salehi, an Iranian journalist, was released on bail in October but there is no end in sight for Mr. Rezaian, who is also reported to be in ill-health.

Mr. Rezaian is far from the first Western reporter cruelly treated by Iranian authorities. Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was beaten to death in Evin in 2003. Freelance reporter Roxanna Saberi was held in Evin for more than three months in early 2009. Maziar Bahari, a Canadian reporter for Newsweek, was imprisoned and tortured in Evin later that year, during the post-election uprising known as the Green Revolution. His story is now the subject of Jon Stewart ’s movie “Rosewater.”

Mr. Rezaian’s imprisonment is a reminder of how little has changed in Iran under its new leadership. Apologists for Mr. Rouhani have argued that there’s only so much the president can do; that Mr. Rezaian is a pawn in a power struggle between the regime’s moderates and hardliners. But that would hardly explain why Mr. Rouhani appointed as his Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, previously known for being deputy intelligence minister when thousands of political prisoners were killed in the late 1980s.

Because of the deinstitutionalization movement there are no asylums for the mentally ill or criminally insane individuals who are tossed into jails with minor offenders….rsk
Mr. Rubin, a former U.S. Treasury secretary, is co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Turner is president and director of the Vera Institute of Justice.
About one of every 100 U.S. adults is in prison. That’s five to 10 times higher than in Western Europe.

One of us is a former Treasury secretary, the other directs a criminal-justice institute. But we’ve reached the same conclusions. America’s overreliance on incarceration is exacting excessive costs on individuals and communities, as well as on the national economy. Sentences are too long, and parole and probation policies too inflexible. There is too little rehabilitation in prison and inadequate support for life after prison.

Crime itself has a terrible human cost and a serious economic cost. But appropriate punishment for those who are a risk to public safety shouldn’t obscure the vast deficiencies in the criminal-justice system that impose a significant drag on the economy.

The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly one of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is five to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies, according to a groundbreaking, 464-page report released this year by the National Academy of Sciences. America puts people in prison for crimes that other nations don’t, mostly minor drug offenses, and keeps them in prison much longer. Yet these long sentences have had at best a marginal impact on crime reduction.

This is not only a serious humanitarian and social issue, but one with profound economic and fiscal consequences. In an increasingly competitive global economy, equipping Americans for the modern workforce is an economic imperative. Excessive incarceration harms productivity. People in prison are people who aren’t working. And without effective rehabilitation, many are ill-equipped to work after release.

The Double-Dipping Legal Scam

House Speaker John Boehner says asbestos legal reform is a priority in the New Year, and it can’t come soon enough. Based on the details emerging from federal bankruptcy court, asbestos litigation fraud has reached new heights.

Garlock Sealing Technologies is a maker of gaskets that since its bankruptcy in 2010 has become a symbol of the corrupt practices of the plaintiffs bar. Lawyers demanded $1.3 billion in payouts from Garlock for mesothelioma patients until federal Judge George Hodges reviewed evidence showing that many of the claims were a sham. The judge in January slashed the company’s liability to $125 million and slammed the trial bar for “misrepresenting” the facts.
Then in October he moved to unseal that evidence, and now we’re getting a glimpse of what has become a widespread tort-bar con. Court documents show the ugly specifics of “double-dipping”—in which lawyers sue a company and claim its products caused their clients’ disease, even as they file claims with asbestos trusts blaming other products for the harm. This lets them get double or multiple payouts for a single illness, with a huge cut for the lawyers each time.

Garlock unveiled how this worked in at least 15 different cases that it had previously settled or lost after Judge Hodges allowed for belated discovery. In a case called Torres, the plaintiff claimed the only asbestos he handled was in Garlock gaskets, even as he told multiple trusts that he regularly handled raw asbestos.