A Lesson from the Holocaust

Today is Holocaust Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Day in Israel where time is taken to assure that the Holocaust is never forgotten. This year it falls on the 70^th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis where half-starved Jews with almost no weapons other than a few handguns and rifles stood against an entire battalion of the Nazi army and held them at bay for over a month before the entire ghetto was annihilated. This desperate final stand was a response to the planned slaughter of the Warsaw Ghetto by the Nazis which had been scheduled for the first day of Passover in order to celebrate the Jewish holiday of liberation with what the Nazis saw as a celebration of the denial of G0d and the promises to the Jewish People. Throughout the years since the Holocaust there have been many lessons drawn that mainly lead to the one singular goal, the promise Jews must revere and keep to themselves and their posterity, “Never Again!” There has always been one manner of keeping that promise which has always seemed of paramount importance which I will try to explain.

Before the horrors that were the Nazi execution of plans to conquer the world and reshape it in their own image, Germany was the leading country of the modern world with the best minds and most advanced culture. The majority of the world’s leading scientists resided there, especially in the disciplines of physics. Germany was viewed as the new renaissance with benevolent governance under the Weimar Republic. Germany was the leading republic of freedom and thought making their society the envy of many. But there was a problem with this near perfect scene that lay underneath it guaranteeing it would fail in a drastic manner. Germany was suffering under punitive laws placed on her after World War I which undercut her economic health. This eventually led to the printing of monies in order to meet payments levied against the German government. These payments along with large outlays of “investments in the future” led to runaway inflation as the German money became devalued. This led to a cycle which eventually caused unemployment and economic strife which the Nazis promised a solution and blamed it on the outside world and the plotting of those who wished to destroy the German race. Germany had also bought wholesale into the eugenics movement which had blossomed in the United States and spread through Europe. Take all these individual difficulties and social upheavals, shake well, and you do not get a happy ending.

Once in power the Nazis began to implement purity laws which were more about punishing the impure than it was about aggrandizing the pure or master race. This, of course, was not supposed to be possible in the country which a few short years earlier had been the most liberal and socially advanced nation in the history of the world. The overriding thought to many while the initial plots were being enacted by the Nazis was one of, “It cannot happen here,” Nowhere was this denial of reality stronger than in the assimilated Jews of Germany. Many of these Jews had arrived from Russia where they suffered the pogroms under the Czars and then persecution under Stalin and the Communists. Upon their arrival in Germany the Jews tried to assimilate and weave themselves into the German society attempting to be as much like their non-Jewish German neighbors as they could. Assimilation was the answer to pogroms as they happened because the Jews had lived separately from the Russian society preferring to keep amongst themselves. It was the otherness that had caused the pogroms, not the fact that they were Jews. True, there were still some religious Jewish communities which attempted to live apart from the rest of society much as exist today in areas of Europe and the United States. But the Jews in Germany had lived assimilated and integrated into the German society more so than in previous European societies. The Jews lived lives the epitome of, “It cannot happen here.” Yet somehow it happened here in a way beyond anything that had ever come before. One of the first steps taken by the Nazis was to pass laws forbidding the Jews and other undesirables from owning firearms. They went from house to house disarming those determined to be part of the “other” in German society. Yet even this disarming of the Nazis’ future victims did not alarm anybody as they accepted that this was just being done to make society safer by removing guns. It was all done for a better tomorrow and to save the children etc.

I had mentioned that many of these Jews had fled Russia and the Czarist and Communist pogroms. One would tend to believe that these Jews who were but one or at most two generations removed from experiencing the pogroms would have been more sensitive to what befell the Jews starting in Germany and spreading throughout Europe. But what about the Jews from the Russian pogroms, why did they not realize and see the warning signs? Was it because of their separateness? Unlikely as many of the Jews provided needed skills for the Russian people amongst whom they resided. But where had these Russian Jews arrived from? Many of the Russian Jews came to Russia via numerous places throughout Europe which could be traced back to a series of singular events which inevitably nudged and shoved them to Russia. For many of these Jews the previous residence had been Germany, Britain, France, Italy and lastly, Poland. In each and every one of these countries the Jews had faced persecution. One could trace these families’ history simply be tracing where they had faced persecution and managed to get out before the final cleansing and they would flee to the nearest, or sometimes the farthest, safe haven where Jews were not persecuted. This would increase the presence of the Jews in the new country which inevitably led to the next persecution as soon as disease or hard economic times gave way to finding the others who were to blame. This was the coming to fruition of the worst of all curses which were prophesized to inflict the Jewish People. The verse is well known as it is taught in every Jewish Bible study as it is one of the most frightful passages in the Torah.

Leviticus 26:36-38 As for those of you who are left, I will fill their hearts with anxiety in the lands of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf will frighten them, so that they will flee as one flees from the sword and fall when no one is pursuing. 37 Yes, with no one pursuing they will stumble over each other as if fleeing the sword — you will have no power to stand before your enemies. 38 And among the nations you will perish; the land of your enemies will devour you.

This history of being chased from persecution to persecution where once Jews had fled the country or province in which they were being hunted or even slaughtered as a reaction to times of trouble had one thing common to all of these troubles and persecutions, the Jews were not permitted to own weapons. Originally the laws against owning weapons were applied to entire groups or classes of societies. Only the nobles and those in their employ were permitted weapons even if one could afford such luxuries. Eventually weaponry became affordable and everybody could own them. This is when governments began the real exercise of disarming the citizenry. When the peoples under a ruler were disarmed, it was not always universal. Still, unless everybody was permitted to own weapons, the Jews were usually among those disallowed such privilege. The two most known cases were in Czarist Russia and Nazi Germany where Jews were explicitly disallowed to possess weapons and their homes and businesses searched and all weapons removed some time before the actual persecutions were begun. That is the lesson that the Holocaust and all of the similar persecutions, pogroms, purifications, inquisitions, and other oppressions throughout the ages have taught me, never allow myself to be disarmed and that if such should become the law of the land and I am not living in the Jewish homeland, move. It is that simple and I choose not to even discuss the supposed realities and niceties which always come along with those who will disarm the people before enslaving the people or worse. I forbid my continuing to reside amongst those who would disarm me. It is that simple, a lesson learned.

Beyond the Cusp

Abbas Casting Blame for Dire Economic Difficulties

Here we go once more into the financial doldrums and the Abbas dance of blame the rest of the Palestinian Authority leadership, blame Israel, blame Arab nations for not meeting their promised obligations and blame the world for not supporting the Palestinian cause with sufficient amounts of support, measured in dollars, Euros, precious metals or other forms of monetary equivalents. As has been the case since the fateful election where United States President Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice forced the inclusion of Hamas in the imminent elections for the Palestinian Parliament, Abbas has claimed he has been forced to act as a man under siege against the fates of the world. As a quick refresher, Hamas won a clear majority in the Palestinian Parliament which caused Mahmoud Abbas to cancel the upcoming Palestinian Presidential election as he faced losing to the Hamas candidate. Soon after this Hamas executed a takeover of Gaza ejecting all the members of Fatah and splitting the Palestinian government into two separate and independent entities which continue to struggle for preeminence. Since then Mahmoud Abbas has become the equivalent of Palestinian President for life as he has consistently refused to allow new elections for his position. All of the past is now once again foaming to the top and displaying the grotesque underbelly of the Palestinian governance which he represents more than anyone else. So, what are the coming events and how exactly will Mahmoud Abbas once again remain President when all else around him changes.

The initiation of the problem was a familiar one, the Palestinian Authority was out of cash and unable to meet payroll of their enormously over-bloated government which employs over half of the residents under Palestinian rule. The payroll includes both employees in the West Bank and in Gaza. When the Palestinian employees threatened to strike if they did not receive their back pay, Mahmoud Abbas made a pitiable plea to the world to honor their pledges or renew new guarantees of monetary aid to the Palestinian cause and to also save Abbas and his government. Israel gave in to pressures from various fronts and released a large amount of the collected taxes they were withholding from the Palestinians as a response to the Palestinians going around Israel and petitioning the United Nations for statehood which was a break against the agreements in the Oslo Accords which specifically forbids any path outside of direct negotiations. The United States also responded with a half billion dollars which was sent by the Obama Administration circumventing Congress which had frozen all funding for the Palestinian Authority also in response to their petition for statehood at the United Nations. The President was able to authorize the aid bypassing Congress utilizing emergency measures which enabled bypassing Congress. This was still insufficient funds to alleviate the monetary predicament the Palestinian Authority finds themselves in once again. This is the predicament which Mahmoud Abbas is facing which he will once again find some way of casting all of the blame onto others and the first leaves have already started to fall from the government tree and more are sure to follow soon.

The first leaf that fell came as Nabil Qassis quit as Finance Minister responding to refutation to proposed austerity measures he had proposed to address financial situation. Nabil Qassis is a former president of the Bir Zeit University near Ramallah who joined the government in May 2012, who gave notice while President Abbas was out of the territories on March 2 that he was resigning. When members of the Parliament began to protest the financial situation and as a reaction to the resignation of Nabil Qassis, President Abbas responded upon his returning to Ramallah saying, “I am angrier than all of you at the government… but I don’t want to say more than that now. Just wait for three days.” It was further reported by an unnamed government official that, “Abbas informed (Salam) Fayyad that if Nabil Qassis did not return to the finance ministry… Abbas would dismiss his government and form a new one.” So, here we are on the verge of yet once again President Mahmoud Abbas placing all the blame upon everybody but himself and holding another round of elections while refusing to stand for election himself. The Palestinian authority seems to lurch from one catastrophe to the next with the solution always being either the Prime Minister or other high office holders resigning or being forced from office or the Parliament being disbanded and new elections held but one thing remains unchanged, President Mahmoud Abbas remains the sole survivor who never need face the people and receive their support to remain as President of the Palestinian Authority.

This is not the sole situation for which President Mahmoud Abbas appears to be more of a dictatorial President for Life than the rightfully elected leader the Palestinian people. The repeated attempts at managing a reunification of the two sectors of the Palestinian leadership bringing Hamas and Fatah together again in unified governance for the Palestinian Authority and its peoples which has been another example of Abbas intransigence. Every attempt at reunification has appeared to have reached an accord with all of the particulars smoothed out and the only remaining item being a general election for a new Parliament, the choosing of a new Prime Minister, and holding election for the office of President. That final little item, the election for President, has been the tripping point each and every time as Mahmoud Abbas refuses to stand for election. He is convinced that he would not have a prayers chance in…, well; he would have no chance of surviving the election and retaining the office of the President. This has caused the agreements to suddenly collapse and disintegrate as soon as the time comes for picking the date for the elections, especially and precisely the elections for the next President. Mahmoud Abbas is for too enamored with being the President of the Palestinian Authority and consistently refuses to risk being voted out of office. Perhaps his fears are completely founded. Perhaps his fears go beyond that of losing the office and are more about losing something far more dear and important to him; his life. It is his fear of death that I believe drives him to avoid having new elections for the office of President of the Palestinian Authority. The problem is that Mahmoud Abbas’s fear for his life will very likely forestall any progression for Palestinian governance until he finally accepts leaving the Presidency which will likely take the exact same path as his predecessor.

Beyond the Cusp

A War the United States Will Not be Able to Run From

The media, our representatives in the Federal Government, the President with the full backing of his Cabinet and the vast majority of Americans all believe that the battles for Afghanistan and Iraq have been won; and now that the troops are finishing up any untied strings and heading home for good. Nothing could be further from the truth and there is only one place to pin the blame, President Obama and Congress. They will likely claim that they are simply responding to the wishes and desires of the American people, and that holds a fair amount of validity. The problem is that Congress and the President are elected to serve the people, defend the Constitution from all threats foreign and domestic, to act as the adults in their relationship with the citizenry and to treat the people with respect by telling them the truth along with advise as to what choices are available along with a predicted result for each and after educating the citizenry the country can, as a whole, come to an educated consensus. Thus far none of these discussions have taken place and it is as much the blame of the mainstream media as it is the President, his administration and the members of Congress. The impression that has been put forth is a picture of Iraq and of Afghanistan each with a steady government that the United States have greatly aided and who is indebted to the United States and its military and will be one of the closest allies which the United States can rely upon in the future. If only that was even ten percent of the truth.

 

Let us begin with Iraq and open up some eyes to what is coming. The Iraqi Shiites can hardly wait for the last American to exit their country. They have already demanded and forced the United States military to sequester their personnel onto one of two main base locations, one in Baghdad in what was called the Green Zone where the government offices and the sprawling complex which is the United States Embassy and the rest isolated out at Camp Liberty in the middle of the desert miles from any town or other habitation. The American forces have to clear any operational moves or simple troop movements with their Iraqi advisors, though I am tempted to refer to these advisors as overlords as their decisions are usually final. Iraq has already aligned with Iran and is allowing Iran to supply Bashir Assad in Syria overland crossing central Iraq thus aiding Assad in his slaughtering of his own people as well as jihadists who have joined the battle against Assad in the name of al-Qaeda and/or the Muslim Brotherhood. Despite what the public back in the United States has been fed about Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, he was the most ardent of the Shiite candidates and was all but hand-picked by the true leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

 

Even as the troops from the United States and their allies were pulling out from their station points in Iraq in preparation to return home, the Shiite leadership of the government began a cleansing of the Sunni influences within the government wherever they were able. This has caused great amounts of friction and building animosity which is what has led to the drastic increases in terror attacks mostly in central Iraq. These ambushes will only increase and there is a possibility that the Sunni Muslims in Iraq will ally with the Kurds in the north and either begin an endless struggle for dominance against the Shiite loyalists in the south or possibly declare their independence. Whichever direction they should decide to move, once all the foreign forces have left or dwindled to the point of inability to influence or prevent fighting, then a war of some degree will break out and continue with no end in sight. This could become a winner take all take no prisoners blood feud and will not be pretty.

 

The last item about Iraq is that the leadership of the United States has misplayed their hand so pathetically by abandoning the only real friends they had won in Iraq, the Sunni and many of the Kurds, simply in order to get out as fast as possible and damn the consequences. Thus the result was a power vacuum which left a shaky balance between the three sects within Iraq with the Kurds relatively safely entrenched in the north and the Shiite in control in the center and south with the Sunni mostly in the center and at the mercy of the Shiite except in a few towns and cities closest to the Kurdish provinces. The result was a purge of the Sunni by the Shiite with Iranian backing followed by the Shiites seeking vindictive reprisals over the years of suffering they had suffered under the Sunni rule of Saddam Hussein. This is what will lead to a vicious civil war and possible bloodbath. The Sunni in Iraq, if any should survive, will never forgive the United States, who they trusted and joined making the surge a success, for abandoning them leaving them at the mercy of their historic rivals. The result is that every sector of Iraqi society now despises the United States because each one perceives that the United States deceived them and treated them poorly. We are leaving Iraq feeling greater animosity towards the United States than when the United States arrived or any time since. Iraq has resulted in a failure.

 

In Afghanistan we have played the political game poorly and what makes matters worse, we got caught at the game. Afghani President Hamid Karzai was an ally of the Americans who now feels betrayed after he became aware that the government of the United States had opened up negotiations with the Taliban without consulting or informing Karzai. He immediately opened his own dialogue with them and soon the situation became exactly what one would expect, the Taliban began playing the American and Karzai off of one another. This only served to deepen the rift that was forming between the two countries. Then there were a number of accidents and the beginning of the drone war operations all of which resulted in injured and murdered Afghani civilians. The United States admitted to a few civilian casualties and held the position that the greater majority of those killed were al-Qaeda and other jihadists and terrorists. Karzai saw the picture far differently and his protests only grew angrier and louder as the bodies piled up and the United States appeared not to care and refused to change their method of engagement. This eventually came to a head and President Karzai forced a curtailment of the drone war and a rewriting of the Rules of Engagement (ROE) for United States and allied troops which served to make these troops operations extremely difficult and eventually resulted in numerous additional casualties and deaths as troops were often denied air or artillery support under the new ROE. Another change was the demand that the United States and allied troops not carry their arms when within the wire back at major camps and bases. This is what has allowed for what is known as Green on Blue attacks. Green on Blue attacks are where Afghani police or military, who are trained by the United States and their allies, shoot often killing their American or allied counterparts. These shootings usually happen within the compounds of the major bases where the American and allied troops are disarmed by regulations and are unable to defend themselves. There has been no explanation provided by the Afghan government and seemingly no investigations or steps have been taken to address these disastrous and often fatal attacks. Needless to point out that these attacks are but a symptom of the animosity felt towards the United States and allied presence in Afghanistan. Afghanistan will return to the tribal and fractional confrontations and hostilities as soon as the United States and allied troops depart. There is a distinct possibility, maybe even inevitability, that the Taliban will once again rise to power and the terror training bases reopen returning to business as usual which spawned 9/11. Needless to point out but Afghanistan will end up being a complete disaster.

 

Then there is the Arab Spring, or as we here at BTC have called it since very early on, the Arab Winter. As was pointed out here, the people being supported by the United States fall into three categories, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda aligned terrorists, other terrorists who possibly are aligned with Iran. President Obama may make grand speeches about the democracy revolutions and the youth with the use of social media bringing a change to these Muslim countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and possibly Syria, but that is a pipe dream. Yes, there were many youth who demonstrated for hope and change and they received change without any hope. The beneficiaries of the revolutions spreading across the Arab world thus far have been the Muslim Brotherhood with a definitive victory in Egypt where they now control the Presidency, are on their way to control of both houses of the Parliament, have taken over the majority of the courts, and have replaced almost all of the higher officers in the military. The sole grand accomplishment in Egypt was to replace a military backed dictatorship where regular election frauds were held with a Muslim Brotherhood military backed dictatorship where regular election frauds will be held in the future. In Tunisia the Islamists have gained the majority of the Parliament but have been blunted to some extent and who will win out has yet to be decided. Libya has dissolved into a fractional state where different tribes now control their own parts of the country and terrorist groups roam freely and are carrying their revolution into the neighboring countries. The most closely covered has been in Mali where French forces are assisting the Mali government forces in containing the terrorists in the north of the country. Nigeria is another front which has had numerous assaults by Islamist terrorists, mostly from the Boko Haram terror group. The Boko Haram terrorist fighters have bombed and burned numerous churches in the north and into the center of the country often during services killing and maiming numerous Christians as well as torching neighborhoods and stores owned by Christians. The situation threatens to devolve into a civil war in Nigeria as the violence builds just as it has already become in Mali.

 

The final front is Iran and their aligned forces which include Bashir Assad in Syria, Hezballah which rules Lebanon by overt military threat, Hamas in Gaza, the IRGC and affiliated terror units which operate worldwide including a large base in the tri-state area of South America on the borders of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina shared borders meet. Iran also has made allies with Venezuela and Nicaragua while also wooing additional South and Central American countries including Brazil, Peru, Argentina and others. Iran is also suspected of working towards attaining nuclear weapons. Iran has apparently made an agreement with North Korea under which the two countries share rocket and nuclear research and design information. Many believe the two have been working to perfect a special type of nuclear weaponry which is quite different than the normally perceived nuclear ballistic weapons which are largely destructive due to their explosive properties. The kind of weapon Iran and North Korea are researching is a low yield high Gama burst device which has an explosive component of only one to twelve kilotons but discharges an enormous Gama ray burst which causes a massive EMP pulse which can be destructive to unshielded electronic devices and networks such as power grids and communications systems which would include television, radio, phone, internet, and electronic generation systems. Such a devise, it has been suggested, could theoretically be so destructive that one warhead detonated over the Kansas City to St Louis areas would take out almost all electronic equipment and power from the East Coast to the Rocky Mountains and possibly all the way to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The other advantage of such a weapon is it does not require any hardened heat shield as it does not need to reenter very far into the atmosphere before being detonated and thus is far lighter allowing for a more powerful device to be placed atop a launch vehicle.

 

The truth is that between the economic time bomb which is the European Union and the budgetary and debt problems plaguing the United States when combined with the problems spreading through the Middle East and North Africa and throwing in the axis being built between North Korea and the areas of Iranian influence there are more than sufficient potentials for serious problems and likely scenarios which result in confrontations which could easily explode with little or no notice that one might believe that governments have not been exactly truthful as they peddle the idea that all is going to be just fine. President Obama has on many an occasion claimed that the United States does not have a spending problem. If President Obama means that the United States has no problem spending, then he has been truthful; otherwise he has been misleading the American public. The claims that the Arab Spring will result in Western style liberal democracies throughout the Arab world is wishful dreaming at best and foolish lies which can only end poorly at worst. The claims that Europe and the United States are experiencing an economic recovery and the end of their financial woes is just around the corner are simply a misrepresentation of reality. The stock market is showing gains simply in proportion to the rate of increase in the money supply from the three sets of Quantitative Easing with a simple delay built in as the stock market is almost always a lagging indicator of such forms of stimulus. The actual value of the majority of stocks has not changed very much but is only representing the soon to be realized inflation which will balance the stock gains out through higher prices across the board. Behind almost every rosy picture the media and politicians are attempting to sell is a large amount of fertilizer. We live in what the Chinese might call interesting times, and to them interesting times is a form of curse. Perhaps that is the one piece of truth, we are in interesting times and China just launched their first aircraft carrier on their way to having a blue water navy comparable to that of the United States, and President Obama’s cuts to the military, the Navy in particular, is making their task all the easier.

 

Beyond the Cusp