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Ruth King

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Honoring a Hero Who Defied the Nazis By Elise Cooper

By on May 7th, 2017

May 4-5 was Holocaust Remembrance Day, also known as Yom HaShoah. The day honors the victims of the Holocaust, and marked the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The overwhelming theme on this day is recalling the victims of this catastrophe, and insuring that such a tragedy never happens again.

President Trump said in a speech observing this day, “We know that in the end good will triumphs over evil and that as long as we refuse to close our eyes or to silence our voices, we know that justice will ultimately prevail. We will never, ever be silent in the face of evil again. It only takes one light to illuminate even the darkest space, just like it takes only truth to crush a thousand lies and one hero to change the course of history.”

A recent novel is based on the factual story of one hero who did change the course of history, fighting against the tyranny of the Nazis. Although Beneath A Scarlet Sky is a work of fiction, based upon true facts, it will make readers think about how many other extraordinary stories of heroism are untold and in the shadows, especially since this generation is dying out? Mark Sullivan chronicles the life of Pino Lella, a seventeen-year-old boy who grew into a man during the last years of World War II. Sullivan told American Thinker “I wrote it as a novel because some minor details could not be verified, but the overall heroism of Pino is true, including his survival of an avalanche while helping Jews escape. I contacted the daughter of the Nazi General who brutally used slave labors as well as his spiritual advisor. Regarding Pino, he is still living today and I was able to verify that he did indeed work as a spy and save Jewish refuges. I did the research and verification over the course of ten years and lived in Italy spending three weeks with Pino and finding other witnesses to what he told me. His name was given to a researcher by the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem.”

This inspiring story is a lesson on courage. Americans today should read it to realize that their current difficulties are nothing compared to what those suffered through the Nazi regime. Sullivan tells Lella’s story, showing man’s inhumanity to man in Italy, the forgotten front, where the Nazi war machine made the citizenship suffer and struggle.

The book begins in the summer of 1943, as the allies started bombing Milan. As in England, Italian families sent their children to the countryside to save them from possible death. But Pino was not content to lead a normal teenage life; instead, deciding to join the underground railroad of the Catholic Church and the Italian resistance to save Jewish lives. Unfortunately, despite heroic efforts nearly 20% of the Italian Jewish population was killed in the Holocaust. Readers will learn how the German SS found a list of Jews, rounded them up, put them on trains, and transported them to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Many others were machine gunned down or thrown into the lake, forced to freeze to death.

Yet, throughout the last years of World War II Pino risked his own life to save Jews. A very compelling scene tells how he led Jewish refugees across the dangerously snowy Alps to the Swiss border, having endured an avalanche that almost buried him and his rescues alive. Many of those trying to escape the grips of the Nazis did not have the physical strength; yet some how found the perseverance. Pino made the demanding climb up the mountain near Casa Alpina, many times with the refugees on his back, as he skied them to safety in icy weather.

The author noted, “I read accounts of what the Nazis actually did and confirmed a lot of what Pino told me. We cannot forget they had a long-range vision of genocide and atrocities, including hanging young boys’ head on barbed wire posts. I actually did the climb he did and made a video. After getting to the top, you cannot believe what these people went through to escape. It was a very dangerous and unforgiving setting.”

In addition to helping Jews escape, he also became a spy while the driver for General Hans Leyer, a commander in the Nazi engineering and construction group, Organization Todt. Pino’s parents, who insisted he sign up with Todt to avoid being conscripted by the Germans to fight on the Russian front, put him in this situation.

Unfortunately, very little is known about the general, until Pino came forward, because Leyer destroyed many of the documents.

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Venezuela is Starving By Juan Forero

By on May 7th, 2017

Once Latin America’s richest country, Venezuela can no longer feed its people, hobbled by the nationalization of farms as well as price and currency controls.

ARE, Venezuela— Jean Pierre Planchart, a year old, has the drawn face of an old man and a cry that is little more than a whimper. His ribs show through his skin. He weighs just 11 pounds.

His mother, Maria Planchart, tried to feed him what she could find combing through the trash—scraps of chicken or potato. She finally took him to a hospital in Caracas, where she prays a rice-milk concoction keeps her son alive.

“I watched him sleep and sleep, getting weaker, all the time losing weight,” said Ms. Planchart, 34 years old. “I never thought I’d see Venezuela like this.”

Her country was once Latin America’s richest, producing food for export. Venezuela now can’t grow enough to feed its own people in an economy hobbled by the nationalization of private farms, and price and currency controls.

Maria Planchart has had to go through trash to find food for her one-year-old son, Jean Pierre. She is among a growing number of Venezuelans suffering from hunger and malnutrition. Photo: Miguel Gutiérrez for The Wall Street Journal

Venezuela has the world’s highest inflation—estimated by the International Monetary Fund to reach 720% this year—making it nearly impossible for families to make ends meet. Since 2013, the economy has shrunk 27%, according to local investment bank Torino Capital; imports of food have plunged 70%.

Hordes of people, many with children in tow, rummage through garbage, an uncommon sight a year ago. People in the countryside pick farms clean at night, stealing everything from fruits hanging on trees to pumpkins on the ground, adding to the misery of farmers hurt by shortages of seed and fertilizer. Looters target food stores. Families padlock their refrigerators.

Three in four Venezuelans said they had lost weight last year, an average of 19 pounds, according to the National Poll of Living Conditions, an annual study by social scientists. People here, in a mix of rage and humor, call it the Maduro diet after President Nicolás Maduro.

For more than a month, Venezuelans have protested against the increasingly authoritarian government of Mr. Maduro; by Friday, more than 35 people had been reported killed in the unrest. The country’s Food Ministry, the president’s office, the Communications Ministry and the Foreign Ministry didn’t return calls or emails requesting comment for this article.

“Here, for the government, there are no malnourished children,” said Livia Machado, a physician and child malnutrition expert. “The reality is this is an epidemic, and everyone should be paying attention to this.”

Dr. Machado and her team of doctors are seeing a dramatic increase in emaciated infants brought to the Domingo Luciani Hospital in Caracas, where they work.

The problem is no better in towns like Yare, south of Caracas, where the government’s leftist movement was long popular. “To eat,” said Sergio Jesus Sorjas, 11 years old, “I sometimes go to the butcher and I say, ‘Sir, do you have any bones you can give me?’ ”

The boy receives nutritional formula or a traditional Venezuelan corncake from the parish priest. Sergio said he hasn’t tasted meat in months: “Sometimes, I don’t eat at all.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hamas Names New Leader Ismail Haniyeh replaces longtime leader Khaled Mashaal By Rory Jones and Abu Bakr Bashir

By on May 7th, 2017

Hamas on Saturday named Ismail Haniyeh as head of the Islamist movement’s political arm, a long-expected leadership change that puts the Palestinian at the helm of the group that controls Gaza Strip but is facing increasing isolation from its regional supporters.

The Islamist movement said Mr. Haniyeh, 54, will replace Khaled Meshaal, who steps down after a decade in power and just days after he issued a revised set of principles that softened the group’s stance against Israel.

Hamas dropped a longstanding call for Israel’s destruction and accepted the notion of a Palestinian state based on Israeli borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The group, however, said it would continue not to recognize Israel’s right to exist and would eventually seek to control all of historic Palestine, making up Israeli territory, the West Bank and Gaza.

The changes in its principles, dismissed by Israel as cosmetic, appeared aimed at appeasing Arab states that have increasingly isolated the group in recent years. Hamas also renounced its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group considered a terrorist organization by Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Hamas’ diplomatic isolation comes as West Bank-based Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is trying to squeeze the group financially to force it to allow his administration back into Gaza. Mr. Abbas has cut salaries to Gazan-based Authority employees and said it won’t pay for the strip’s electricity, supplied by Israel. CONTINUE AT SITE

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AMAZING ISRAEL- 69 YEARS YOUNG BY MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on May 7th, 2017

69 Years Young http://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/2017/04/69-years-young.html

Despite its phenomenal success, the Modern Jewish State is still in its relative infancy. Its prospects depend largely on whether the next generation of Israelis can emulate and build upon the achievements of its predecessors. Based on what our youngsters have accomplished during the last 12 months, however, the future is very bright.

Israeli high school students regularly win International awards. This year, two Israelis won medals at the annual International Chemistry Olympiad in Tbilisi, Georgia. Israeli children won four medals at the Physics Olympiad in Zurich and six medals at the Mathematical Olympiad in Hong Kong.

An initiative by Israel’s Education Ministry has resulted in the addition of roboticsinto the curricula of some 300 Israeli elementary schools. This should allow more Israeli schools to continue the success of Israel’s Rothschild-HaShomron High School in Binyamina, which won through to the International finals of the FIRST Robotics Competition in Shanghai and finished second of the 57 competing countries.

Israel’s leadership in the hi-tech revolution is being sustained by several programs. First Israel is producing educational curricula in science and technology, with a special emphasis on cyber-security. Meanwhile, ORT’s Israel Sci-Tech Schools are receiving international recognition for their network of institutions that focus on the education of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Finally, Israeli technical skills are being introduced very early, as Sagy Bar of the Rashi Foundation (a philanthropic group managing Israel’s new cyber education center) said, “… first grade they learn the letters, then how to read and how to write. We are building the next level of knowledge – how to code”.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/K8gdtrBkwSM?rel=0

Educational opportunities for Israeli schoolchildren are literally “out of this world”. Israeli pupils were the only high school students to build a satellite for the European Union’s QB50 Thermosphere research program. Their Cubesat (nano-satellite)Duchifat-2 is currently on board the International Space Station and will be placed into orbit in June. Israeli kids can soar to great educational heights at an even younger age. For example, pupils from Yigal Alon elementary school sent a meteorological balloon up 15 miles and used two GoPro type cameras, flight data recorder, locator and radio transmitter to collect images and complete flight data. Finally, last year, the Ramon Space Lab program ran as a pilot in 12 Israeli middle schools and this year it has been launched in 100 more.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/kodHJqN0uNk?rel=0

Educational success in Israel is not limited to its Jewish population. For the second year in a row, the Galilee Druze town of Beit Jann achieved the highest rate (99%) of students passing the high school matriculation exam. The Arab village of Abu al-Hija, outside Karmiel, came in second. Meanwhile, three students from the Israeli-Arab Bustan El-Marj Sci-Tech High School (part of the ORT Sci-Tech network mentioned above) won 3rd prize at Israel’s Young Engineers’ Conference. But top of the class (and Israel’s highest achieving pupil) is Mohammed Zeidan, from theArab community of Kafr Manda in northern Israel. He scored 800 on Israeli’s Psychometric Entrance Test, the maximum possible score, and now plans to study electrical engineering at Israel’s prestige Technion Institute.

For those kids that are not so lucky, Israel recently allocated half a billion shekels ($130 million) to the budget for after-school informal education for children from lower socio-economic backgrounds. And Israeli children of Ethiopian origin graduating from high school are narrowing the educational gap with 89% taking the matriculation tests compared with the national average of 94%. The disadvantaged are also supported by charities such as Colel Chabad which recently awarded 100 orphans with academic scholarships to pay for tutoring, music lessons, summer camps and therapies to help them succeed both in school and socially. But there are many children with special needs, and Israel is there for them too. Take Ilanot for example – a Jerusalem school attended daily by 70 children aged six to twenty-one with physical and cognitive disabilities. The school provides students with knowledge to improve motor function and help independence to increase their quality of life.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/46Ah9NKNcmo?rel=0

Israel’s children will grow up to continue the task of improving relations between all of Israel’s inhabitants and seeking peace with Israel’s neighbors. They will hopefully include some of those currently studying at the multi-cultural, multi-ethnicTabeetha school in Jaffa. They will also include many of the 2,300 Jewish, Muslim, Bedouin and Druze children from 152 Israeli schools who come together regularly through their love of soccer.

Israel reaches out to Jewish children everywhere. The Naale/Elite Academy brings Jewish teenage girls from around the world for a free high school matriculation program in top Israeli religious educational institutions all over Israel. Naale is fully subsidized and supervised by the Israeli Ministry of Education.

Finally, InterNations’ Family Life Index in 2016 reported that of the world’s 41 best countries to raise a family, Israel was 4th on the list, behind Austria, Finland and Sweden. The 2017 list has recently been published and Israel has risen to third. Good childcare and education options were major factors.

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Macron and Le Pen Face Off in French Election Pitting Vision of Globalization Against Nationalism Runoff vote comes after establishment parties were knocked out in first round By William Horobin

By on May 7th, 2017

PARIS—The French headed to the polls Sunday for the deciding round of a presidential election that has sidelined mainstream parties and redrawn French politics as a contest between globalists and nationalists.

After candidates from the parties that long governed France were knocked out in the first round on April 23, the runoff pits Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigration National Front, against Emmanuel Macron, a political neophyte who founded his pro-European Union party, En Marche, barely a year ago.

Polls predict Mr. Macron will win the vote with a 20-percentage-point margin, a result that would come as a relief to defenders of the EU after a long streak of advances by nationalist leaders on the continent.

Even if she loses with 40%, however, Ms. Le Pen could still seek to build on her results—expected to be the best for a far-right presidential candidate in modern French history—to become a powerful opposition leader, and further promote her protectionist ideas.

“Marine Le Pen at 40% across France in a presidential election would already be colossal,” said Jérôme Fourquet, an analyst at polling agency IFOP.
Macron vs. Le Pen in the PollsFrench poll respondents have favored Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen sinceFebruary when asked whom they’d favor if the two ended up in a runoff, as they now have.

The two candidates are offering to steer France in polar-opposite directions. Ms. Le Pen pledges to extricate the country from the EU and the euro, shutting borders to immigrants and cheap imports she says harm the domestic economy. Mr. Macron says France should embrace the EU and not fear globalization, vowing unpopular overhauls of labor laws to make the country more competitive. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Israel Is Still at War By Prof. Efraim Inbar

By on May 7th, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israel just celebrated its sixty-ninth anniversary. Its citizens can be proud of its many impressive achievements, and particularly the building of a very strong military that has withstood many tests. Yet acceptance by all its neighbors has not been attained. Israel is still at war.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-still-war/

After several military defeats, the largest and strongest Arab state, Egypt, signed a historic peace treaty with Israel in 1979. The defection of Egypt from the anti-Israel Arab alliance largely neutralized the option of a large-scale conventional attack on Israel, improving Israel’s overall strategic position.

Yet Cairo refrained from developing normal relations with the Jewish state. A “cold peace” evolved, underscoring the countries’ common strategic interests but also the reluctance of Egypt to participate in reconciling the two peoples.

Jordan followed suit in 1994, largely emulating the Egyptian precedent. Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel also reflected common strategic interests – but was commonly referred to by Jordanians as the “King’s peace,” indicating a disinclination for people-to-people interactions with the Jews west of the Jordan River.

The inhibitions in the Arab world against accepting Israel should not be a surprise. Muslims seem to have good theological reasons for rejecting the existence of a Jewish state. Moreover, the education system in the Arab countries has inculcated anti-Semitic messages and hatred toward Israel for decades. Unfortunately, the dissemination of negative images of Jews and Israel has hardly changed in Arab schools and media.

This is also why the euphoria of the 1990s elicited by the “peace process” with the Palestinians, and propagated by the “peace camp”, was unwarranted. Indeed, the peace negotiations failed miserably. The process did, however, allow the Palestinian national movement a foothold in the West Bank and Gaza. As a large part of the Arab world is in deep socio-political crisis and another fears the Iranian threat, it is the Palestinian national movement and the Islamists that carry on the struggle against the Zionists.

The Palestinians are at the forefront of the war on Israel, despite their lack of tanks and airplanes. They use terror, and pay the terrorists captured by Israel as well as their families. The use of force against Jews is applauded, and killed perpetrators are awarded the status of martyrs. They use missiles against Israel’s civilian population. The limits on their firepower are the result of Israeli efforts to cut off their supply of armaments.

The Palestinian national movement denies the historic links of the Jews to the Land of Israel, and particularly Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority (PA) demanded of the UK that it apologize for the 1917 Balfour declaration, which recognized Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel. There are endless examples in Palestinian schools and media to sustain the conclusion that the Palestinians are not ready to make peace.

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France: Emmanuel Macron, Useful Idiot of Islamism by Yves Mamou

By on May 7th, 2017

Emmanuel Macron, a “Useful Infidel,” is not a supporter of terrorism or Islamism. It is worse: he does not even see the threat.

Louizi’s article gave names and dates, explaining how Macron’s political movement has largely been infiltrated by Muslim Brotherhood militants.

Is Macron an open promoter of Islamism in France? It is more politically correct to say that he is a “globalist” and an “open promoter of multiculturalism”. As such, he does not consider Islamism a national threat because the French nation, or, as he has said, French culture, does not really exist.

During the cold war with the Soviet Union, they were called “Useful Idiots”. These people were not members of the Communist Party, but they worked for, spoke in favor of and supported the ideas of Lenin and Stalin. In the 21st century, Communism is finally dead but Islamism has grown and is replacing it as a global threat.

Like Communism, Islamism — or Islamic totalitarianism — has been collecting its “Useful Infidels” the same way Communism collected its Useful Idiots. There is, however, an important difference: under the Soviet Union, Useful Idiots were intellectuals. Now, Useful Infidels are politicians, and one of them may be elected president of France today.

Emmanuel Macron (Image source: European External Action Service)

Emmanuel Macron, Useful Infidel, is not a supporter of terrorism or Islamism. It is worse: he does not even see the threat. In the wake of the gruesome attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris, Macron said that French society must assume a “share of responsibility” in the “soil in which jihadism thrives.”

“Someone, on the pretext that he has a beard or a name we could believe is Muslim, is four times less likely to have a job than another who is non-Muslim,” he added. Coming from the direction of Syria and armed with a Kalashnikov and a belt of explosives would, according to him, be a gesture of spite from the long-term unemployed?

Macron comes close to accusing the French of being racists and “Islamophobes”. “We have a share of responsibility,” he warned, “because this totalitarianism feeds on the mistrust that we have allowed to settle in society…. and if tomorrow we do not take care, it will divide them even more “.

Consequently, Macron said, French society “must change and be more open.” More open to what? To Islam, of course.

On April 20, 2017, after an Islamist terrorist killed one police officer and wounded two others in Paris, Macron said: “I am not going to invent an anti-terrorist program in one night”. After two years of continuous terrorist attacks on French territory, the presidential candidate said he had not taken the country’s security problems into account?

Moreover, on April 6, during the presidential campaign, professor Barbara Lefebvre, who has authored books on Islamism, revealed to the audience of the France2 television programL’Emission Politique, the presence on Macron’s campaign team of Mohamed Saou. It was Saou, apparently, a departmental manager of Macron’s political movement, “En Marche” (“Forward”), who promoted on Twitter the classic Islamist statement: “I am not Charlie”.

Sensing a potential scandal, Macron dismissed Saou, but on April 14, invited onto Beur FM, a Muslim French radio station, Macron was caught saying on a “hot mic” (believing himself off the air): “He [Saou] did a couple things a little bit radical. But anyway, Mohamed is a good guy, a very good guy”.

“Very good”, presumably, because Mohamed Saou was working to rally Muslim voters to Macron.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Remedial ISIS Tutorial Steers Jihadists Toward Heavier, Deadlier Truck Attacks By Bridget Johnson

By on May 6th, 2017

The Islamic State just published a remedial step-by-step pictorial for lone jihadists on how to use a heavy vehicle to kill, walking would-be terrorists through how to acquire a vehicle and which targets to strike.

ISIS’ monthly Rumiyah magazine, which publishes online in 10 languages including English, last covered vehicle attacks in their November issue “Just Terror Tactics” segment, using Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who plowed a cargo truck through a crowd of Bastille Day revelers in Nice, France, last summer, as their key example.

In that article, ISIS encouraged shying away from budget sedans and “off-roaders, SUVs, and four-wheel drive vehicles” that “lack the necessary attributes required for causing a blood bath” as “smaller vehicles lack the weight and wheel span required for crushing many victims.” They recommended trucks with double wheels for “giving victims less of a chance to escape being crushed by the vehicle’s tires.” Long semi trucks were discouraged because of the possibility of jack-knifing.

The terror group encouraged jihadists to find a vehicle with a “metal outer frame which are usually found in older cars, as the stronger outer frame allows for more damage to be caused when the vehicle is slammed into crowds, contrary to newer cars that are usually made of plastics and other weaker materials.” A picture of a U-Haul truck was shown with the caption “an affordable weapon.” A picture of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was shown with the words “an excellent target.”

Shortly after the article was published, a ram-and-stab attack by Ohio State student Abdul Razak Ali Artan on a sidewalk full of students and faculty caused several injuries, but no fatalities. He used a silver sedan in the attack.

In December, Anis Amri hijacked a Polish semi truck and killed the driver, then plowed the big rig into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 11.

This March, Khalid Masood rented the Hyundai Tuscon he used to run over five pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before crashing into the palace fence and stabbing a police officer. Last month, Rakhmot Akilov stole a beer truck and drove it down a busy Stockholm shopping street, killing four.

Eager to build on those attacks no matter the IQ of the jihadist, ISIS this week published the how-to with pictures — trying to steer terrorists toward vehicles more like Berlin and Stockholm.

“The ideal vehicle,” says the page, has a “slightly raised chassis and bumper,” is a “double-wheeled, load-bearing truck” that “large in size, heavy in weight” and is “fast in speed or rate of acceleration.”

Then comes the very remedial lesson on where to get the attack vehicle (“kafir” means disbeliever, while “murtadd” means apostate Muslim): CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

No, the FBI Was Not a Trump Partisan The Democrats’ latest canard ignores difference between criminal and intelligence investigations. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on May 6th, 2017

There is nothing more inequitable than treating two fundamentally different things as if they were the same. This should be the retort to the media-Democrat complex’s latest “we wuz robbed” 2016 election narrative: The claim that the FBI became a rogue partisan, publicizing the investigation of Hillary Clinton while keeping mum on the investigation of Donald Trump.

This theme was hammered by Democrats in the questioning of FBI director James Comey during Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. It was, moreover, the leitmotiv of the New York Times’ 8,000-word report on the FBI’s handling of the two investigations — the losing side’s best shot at writing the definitive history.

It is also dumb as a doornail.

Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal, based on mountainous evidence of law-breaking, resulted in a criminal investigation. The suspicion that associates of Donald Trump have troubling ties to Kremlin insiders, based on comparatively sparse evidence, has resulted in a foreign-intelligence investigation. The two types of inquiry are fundamentally different — dissimilar in their objectives, their processes, and their presumptions about secrecy and disclosure. The only similarity is that each is called an “FBI investigation.” To contend that this makes them equivalents, suitable for similar treatment, is akin to saying red and blue must be the same thing because each is a color.

A criminal investigation is launched when investigators have a good-faith basis to believe one or more penal laws may have been violated. It is an inquiry that targets a particular person (or persons in the case of concerted criminal activity). Once investigators are convinced that a crime has been committed by the suspect, the objective of the investigation is to build a case fit for prosecution in a court of law — i.e., to amass sufficient evidence to prove the essential elements of the statutory offense beyond a reasonable doubt. The investigators fully anticipate making a formal public charge against the suspect (i.e., an indictment), which will be followed by a public trial — the presentation of witness testimony and tangible evidence in a judicial proceeding open to the media and other spectators.

For commonsense reasons, various aspects of criminal investigations are secret. Search warrants and wiretaps would not be very useful if police had to notify the suspect in advance of their raids and surveillances. It would be very difficult to get the cooperation of witnesses or compel the production of relevant documents if grand jury proceedings were conducted in public. Most significantly, the suspect is presumed innocent. To publicize investigative information before a person has an opportunity to test its credibility under due-process rules would undermine the presumption and brand the person a criminal.

Nevertheless, even amid the secrecy, an expectation of publicity hovers over every criminal investigation. Because resources are finite and crime is plentiful, police agencies rarely waste their time on unprovable cases. It is anticipated that charges will be filed, and that eventually everything will be revealed: Affidavits supporting warrants will be unsealed and provided to defense counsel; there will also be discovery of the evidence to be presented at trial, the grand-jury testimony of the witnesses, investigative reports detailing surveillances and witness interviews, and any potentially exculpatory information in the prosecution’s files.

All of this is disclosed because of what a criminal investigation, in essence, is: an effort by the government to deprive a person of his constitutional right to liberty. We permit this only under the strictures of due process — a trial of the accused before a jury of his peers in which he enjoys the assistance of counsel, the right to confront witnesses, and an opportunity to present any defense he may have. Because the whole point is to assure the society that the government has met its burden of proof before a person’s liberty is removed, the proceedings must be public.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Another day, another capitulation to the threat of force on a University of California campus By Thomas Lifson

By on May 6th, 2017

It’s so normal now for universities to surrender when confronted with the fear of force coming from the left that what follows is only local story on Channel 8 in Salinas:

Students protesting what they believe is a “hostile climate” toward black students at the University of California Santa Cruz were locked inside an administrative building for three days until they scored a sweeping victory Thursday.

Members of the university’s African/Black Student Alliance organization took over Kerr Hall Tuesday, locked all of the doors, covered the windows with slogan-filled posters, and vowed to not leave until their demands were met.

“If the university fails us, there will be no business as usual,” A/BSA told the university’s newspaper.

That’s a pretty explicit threat of disruption by force.

But don’t worry: a heroic surrender was on the way.

Despite fearing for his safety, Chancellor George Blumenthal sat down at a negotiating table with 10 protesters at 4 p.m. Thursday.

Blumenthal declined to meet protesters inside Kerr Hall because he had received threats. Instead, the meeting was moved to the biology building, and Blumenthal agreed to meet all four of the group’s demands.

The student’s primary demand was over the Rosa Parks African-themed house, as well as combating racism at the university.

As far as the Rosa Parks residence house, some of what was demanded could have been discussed and probably achieved with much less trouble. They wanted control of the lounge. Fine. Just ask. They wanted the university to repaint the house in their own bright colors. How about offering to repaint it yourselves, instead of demanding that the university spend a lot of money hiring people to do it? You’ll get it done the way you want it, and self-reliance is a virtue that even Kwanzaa pays lip service to.

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