Another Arrest In The Toronto Jewish Community For Child Sex-Abuse Today!

9:12 A.M.

Dr. Harvey Erlich

 The Toronto Police this morning arrested Harvey Erlich.  Erlich was the conductor of the Toronto Pirchei (Agudath Israel) Choir. This was the same choir with which Heshy Nussbaum was involved.

http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/newsreleases/

Nov 15, 2012, 05:00 pm Man Charged In Historical Sexual Assault Investigation, Harvey Erlich, 58, Police Believe There May Be More Victims
___________________________________________________

Danny Wool has left a new comment on your post "Another Arrest In The Toronto Jewish Community For...":

Let me be clear here. No one is talking about "commenc[ing] the destruction of a man and [I agree] more importantly, his family." I believe that a press release is forthcoming, and it is only a matter of time.

At the same time, I wish you would consider the lives that were already destroyed because of what happened, even if it was so long ago. Those scars are real.

In my yeshiva days I learned that chataim bein adam lehaveiro, Yom Kippur eino mechaper" (Yom Kippur does not atone for sins between people). As one of the victims (yes, I said it), I cannot even begin to think of forgiveness unless there is a full public confession of what happened, not just to me, but to everyone else who was victimized. I expect that from both the perpetrators yimach shemam (may their names be erased) because only then will I be able to begin the process of yimach zichram (may the memory of them and what they did be erased).

When I was in the choir we used to sing, Ivdu et Hashem besimha, bo'u lefanav birnana. These are words every Orthodox kid knows. They come from Psalms 100, and are recited every weekday as part of the morning prayer service. When I used to pray, I found them ironic. They tell us to serve God with happiness, but they always reminded me of the choir, and that always left me depressed.

As I grew older, I learned that this is what is called a trigger (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trauma_trigger). What a horrible realization that was--the very invocation to be happy, especially when serving God, actually evoked one of the most traumatic events of my life. By extension, the very act of prayer becomes a trigger--the very kind of thing that survivors learn to avoid.

To put matters into perspective, prayer was one of the things that was stolen from me by those two animals. And there was much, much more--things that can never be returned.

As for the silence from the community, shetika kehoda'a (silence is the equivalent of admission). I regard the Jewish community's silence as their admission of what happened and, by extension, of their acceptance of what happened too.

You asked, How can we know that the charges are true? There is one simple way. Ask the perpetrators. Demand that they tell you the truth, regardless of the consequences. The truth will come out anyway. They will be recognized for what they did. Maybe by admitting it now, they can, at least, begin to show the first signs of remorse.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/torontopircheichoir

Had he used a modicum of his considerable power and call the police immediately, he could have saved countless other victims, the shame and damage to Penn State, and the tragedy of his own shattered end as a president.

A Shadow Across the Soul of the University




The scandal at Penn State is a shadow across the soul of the university, a bitter reminder that the president who fails to confront corruption will ultimately fail completely, taking down countless other people as he crashes into thousands of shards and clouds of dust.


I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

(Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias)

Seems like Shelley's traveller took a detour through Happy Valley. The shards of Graham Spanier's shattered presidency at Penn State litter the collegiate landscape. Yes, he is innocent until proven guilty, but the damage is done. He allegedly failed to stop Jerry Sandusky when he had the power do to so, and the knowledge about what was going on. The evidence detailed in the Pennsylvania grand jury presentment appears damning. The charges are appalling; the abuse of children is horrifying, the cover-up outrageous.

Nobody takes a college presidency expecting to wind up indicted, let alone accused of failing to protect children from sex abuse. The ruination of Spanier's once-hailed presidency is a chilling morality tale for the rest of us who dare to take responsibility for leading a university community.

I've been a college president for 24 years, and in that span of time I've come to know many amazingly dedicated and selfless leaders, a few remarkably incompetent managers, and more than a fair share of prickly egos whose out-sized lifestyles betray the real idea of the university. The near-deification of the university presidency in some places is a big part of the problem that not only led to the catastrophe at Penn State, but that also contributes to the myriad fractures in the facade of higher education today.

Treating the college president as a minor potentate is dangerous, but the illusion is pervasive and often carefully cultivated starting with the search process that treats finding the president as something akin to the Holy Grail. Then comes the contract negotiations with much attention to lavish perks --- houses, drivers, chefs, club memberships, the list goes on. But it doesn't stop there. The presidential inauguration, a grand medieval festival with presidential medallions and colorful costumes and even a mace, helps to ensure that the president's ego is sufficiently inflated to carry him or her through the challenging months and years to come.

Sensible people becoming college presidents can stay grounded even with all of that hoopla (and some of us chose to skip the hoopla years ago), but along come other, more insidious influences that can easily corrupt a once-thoughtful leader. A university is a place that does play by different rules, whose culture is heavily weighted in favor of individual autonomy and the careful cultivation of minor fiefdoms with their own rules and languages and customs, such as the athletics programs.

There's a somewhat small corporate culture in the university that the governing board is more likely to see, and against which the faculty may rail from time to time. But the more dominant culture is one of often fiercely-protected departments acting like private clubs and related interest groups. I've come to call this the "kiosks at the airport" syndrome in which many university departments act as quasi-independent entities, rejecting any notion of a more common university-wide interest other than finding convenient parking. Not only faculty, but even mid-level managers dismiss any effort at senior management oversight as the dreaded "micromanagement," which seems to be one of the worst offenses in the litany of executive sins.

The last thing a president wants to be accused of is micromanagement. Heavens! What could be worse?

Child abuse. Covering-up child abuse. Protecting the people who commit and cover-up child abuse.

When the Sandusky case first broke open in November 2011, it appeared that Spanier's worst offense was aloofness, a willful disengagement from the details. Good presidents, as some academic management theory would have it, don't need to know what goes on in the locker room. We have people for that.

If the evidence in the grand jury presentment is accurate, however, President Spanier allegedly did engage in selective micromanagement. He allegedly knew what was going on in the locker room, and he very personally and specifically approved the plan to cover it up.

All of this is in the grand jury presentment. In February 2001, Athletic Director Tim Curley wrote an email to Vice President Gary Schultz and Graham Spanier in which he retreated from reporting Sandusky's possible rape of a child to the Department of Welfare "after talking it over with Joe [Paterno] yesterday..." Instead, he wanted to talk directly to Sandusky. Spanier writes that Curley's approach is "acceptable" and "humane." His message does indicate awareness of potential future trouble: "The only downside for us is if the message isn't 'heard' and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it. But that can be assessed down the road."

Spanier now has a lot of time to assess how he could have been so wrong. He did not have the courage to stand up to Joe Paterno, that's clear, nor to his own deputies. He agreed to a "humane" solution for Jerry Sandusky but made no inquiry into justice for the children who were Sandusky's victims. Had he used a modicum of his considerable power to overrule Curley and direct him to call the police immediately, he could have saved countless other victims, the shame and damage to Penn State, and the tragedy of his own shattered end as a president.

College presidents need to have the guts to hold everyone on campus accountable, at minimum, for the highest ethical conduct and obeying the law, and to make it clear to all managers that holding people accountable is not micromanagement -- or if it is, so what?

University presidents cannot be afraid to exercise their considerable authority to insist that every department, including athletics, must follow the same rules when it comes to upholding and respecting human dignity -- whether the protection of children or the campus climate for women or hazing or fraternities that still think blackface is funny.

The real soul of a university resides in its ethical reverence for human life and dignity in all university endeavors. We have rules to protect human subject research, academic freedom and free expression, faculty on their way to promotion and tenure, students accused of misconduct, staff needing medical leave, people expecting freedom from harassment and abuse of all kinds. These rules bespeak our values, manifesting our idealistic goal to shape the best possible human community on our campus.

A president has many responsibilities but none so important as the stewardship of the climate for ethics and respect for human dignity without which the university loses its soul, becoming a mere shell for self-interested transactions among various interest groups.

The scandal at Penn State is a shadow across the soul of the university, a bitter reminder that the president who fails to confront corruption will ultimately fail completely, taking down countless other people as he crashes into thousands of shards and clouds of dust.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patricia-mcguire/graham-spanier-charged_b_2072944.html

Down and Under Priest reveals system of child sexual abuse and cover-up

A former priest in Australia has come forward with information about a "system of cover-ups" within the Catholic Church to hide the sexual abuse of children.

Former priest Kevin Lee appeared on the Australian news program Lateline on Friday, November 9. On the program, Lee said he “saw a system of cover-ups, a system of blind-eye turning and just ignorance of the fact that it (the sexual abuse of children) was happening.”

Lee said: “"I became aware that some of the other priests were actually paedophiles and were not necessarily becoming priests because they wanted to help people, but because they were paedophiles who wanted the opportunity."

On Thursday, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox told Lateline that the Catholic Church in Australia is involved in cover-ups and pedophile priests have destroyed evidence to avoid prosecution. Fox claims that his investigations into the sexual abuse of children by clergy had been hampered by interference from within the police force and by the Catholic Church.

In response to the recent allegations concerning the rape and sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, and the cover-up of those crimes, on Saturday, November 10, New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell ordered a special commission of inquiry into claims of a police cover-up of church sex abuse.

http://www.examiner.com/article/catholic-church-priest-reveals-system-of-child-sexual-abuse-and-cover-up

Australia to launch national investigation of child sex abuse - More Catholic Priests Down & Under!

Australia is launching a federal investigation into sexual abuse of children, Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced Monday. The decision came after a string of accusations surrounding the Roman Catholic Church outraged Australians and spurred regional inquiries.

The royal commission will center on institutional responses to allegations of such “insidious, evil acts,” Gillard said, scrutinizing religious and government institutions, schools and other organizations.

“I believe we must do everything we can to make sure that what has happened in the past is never allowed to happen again,” the prime minister said.

Government officials had faced growing pressure to take action after a veteran police detective in the state of New South Wales wrote a public letter accusing the church of covering up abuse, silencing victims and thwarting police investigations.

“Many police are frustrated by this sinister behavior, which will continue until someone stops it. You have the power to do that, Mr. Premier,” Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox wrote in his open letter to the leader of New South Wales. “The whole system needs to be exposed; the clergy covering up these crimes must to be brought to justice and the network protecting pedophile priests dismantled.”

Responding to his plea, New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell earlier announced a special commission to delve into the issue, but only in the Newcastle area. Similar allegations are also being investigated in neighboring Victoria state, where the church recently revealed at least 620 children had been abused by clergy since the 1930s.

Fox argued local investigations weren’t enough because alleged abusers were often moved. Gillard showed “intestinal fortitude” by deciding to investigate nationally, he told the Australian newspaper.

"For a prime minister to come out and say, 'We believe you, there is something very wrong out there, we are going to sit up and listen,' it's just amazing," he said.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said it welcomed the investigation and was horrified by such crimes but said “talk of a systemic problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is ill-founded and inconsistent with the facts.” Major changes have been made since “failures” decades earlier, it said.

"Public opinion remains unconvinced that the Catholic Church has dealt adequately with sexual abuse. Ongoing and at times one-sided media coverage has deepened this uncertainty. … I believe the air should be cleared and the truth uncovered,” Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell said in a statement released Monday.

Gillard said more details of the royal commission would be determined in the following weeks.

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-australia-child-sex-abuse-investigation-20121112,0,4286907.story

Why Your Child Must Be Believed - And The Adult Must Be Suspect

Complaint Ignored for Decades Is Heard at Last in BBC Abuse

At least six former students have told the British news media that Mr. Savile assaulted them in places that included his Rolls-Royce and the school’s dormitories, and in London on school-approved “treats.” ‘If he gets the chance, he’ll touch you up. He’ll put his hand up your skirt, his hand up your shirt, he’ll pinch your bum, he’ll stick his tongue down your throat.’ ” Finally, the day before ITV, a British television network, broadcast the documentary that exposed the allegations against Mr. Savile, The Sun went ahead with an article about Ms. Cogger. But she is still haunted by what happened, and by the years of having to bear it alone. “They pimped us out,” she said of the teachers at Duncroft. “He was a big, powerful man with a big voice, and we had no voices.”

LONDON — No one listened to Deborah Cogger’s story. Not her teachers, who dismissed it as no big deal. Not her social worker, who accused her of making it up. Not the newspapers she called decades later, which said it was too explosive to publish. Deborah Cogger was a teenager in reform school where, she says, Jimmy Savile molested her and others.

It was not until this fall, nearly 40 years after she left a reform school in Surrey, England, that Ms. Cogger finally got anyone to believe her account of how she and other girls there were routinely molested by one of Britain’s most powerful celebrities, the eccentric, cigar-chomping television host Jimmy Savile.

“If you moaned about it, you were told not to say those awful things about Jimmy — ‘Oh, that’s just Jimmy, that’s his way; he loves you girls,’ ” said Ms. Cogger, 52. If you said he had touched your breasts, she added, “they’d say, ‘Don’t be wicked, he would never do that.’ ”

The revelation last month that Mr. Savile, who died last year, was most likely a child sex abuser with perhaps hundreds of victims has profoundly shocked a country that now acknowledges that all the signs were there, if anyone had cared to see them.

The disclosures have spurred a broad criminal inquiry involving numerous police departments and caused institutions, including schools, hospitals and the BBC, to investigate their ties to Mr. Savile. The disclosures have also provoked a crisis of management and responsibility inside the BBC and forced Prime Minister David Cameron to order two new inquiries into the handling of a sexual abuse scandal in Wales several years ago.

Hundreds of people have reported their own experiences to abuse hot lines. In addition, profound senses of discomfort and guilt were felt among those who knew, hired, admired, watched, welcomed, solicited charity from or cheerfully put young people in the path of Mr. Savile. And on Saturday, the chief executive of the BBC, George Entwistle, became the latest casualty, resigning after an uproar over a BBC program on the Wales scandal that wrongly implicated a former Conservative Party politician.

The disclosures have also highlighted how much Britain’s attitude toward sexual abuse has changed since Mr. Savile’s heyday, in the 1970s and ’80s, a time when it was not uncommon for women to be groped and harassed at work, and when show business celebrities openly leered at, if not preyed on, the teenage girls who idolized them.

“There was a massive cultural difference then,” said Donald Findlater, director of Stop It Now, which works to prevent child sex abuse. “We hadn’t really properly discovered child abuse yet.”

But, along with increasingly strict legislation, attitudes have swung drastically in the other direction — to a fault, some believe. In Britain, police background checks are now required of anyone working with children, including parents who volunteer in schools. Teachers are advised not to be alone with students and to be wary of touching them.

Some playgrounds refuse admission to adults without children. Some schools forbid parents to photograph sports events or plays, lest the pictures end up in the wrong places. In 2000, a tabloid antipedophile campaign led to vigilante attacks in which, at one point, a crowd confused the words pedophile and pediatrician and vandalized the home of an innocent doctor.

Given the current climate, it is hard to believe that Mr. Savile could have gotten away with so much for so long, even in a society burdened by collective, willful blindness. But the account of Ms. Cogger shows how for victims, the abuse was compounded by the realization that anyone who complained would be ignored, scoffed at or punished.

Ms. Cogger is not the only one from the reform school, the Duncroft Approved School for Girls, to have come forward with a tale of what Mr. Savile did and how he got away with it. At least six former students have told the British news media that Mr. Savile assaulted them in places that included his Rolls-Royce and the school’s dormitories, and in London on school-approved “treats.”

“Jimmy treated Duncroft like a pedophile sweet shop,” one former student, Toni Townsend, told The Daily Mirror.

In 2007, the Surrey police investigated Mr. Savile’s conduct at Duncroft, even detaining and questioning him. But he was never charged.

Duncroft, which closed in the 1980s — it is now a luxury apartment complex — was a privately run boarding school, operating under state control, for academically promising but unruly girls. Ms. Cogger was sent there in 1974, when she was 14.

Her childhood was chaotic. When she was 12, she explained in several telephone interviews, she overheard a shocking family secret: the woman she thought was her mother was actually her aunt. Ms. Cogger’s real mother, one of 13 children at home, had given birth at 15 and relinquished the baby to her older sister.

The disclosure sent her into a dark period. “I just kept running away,” Ms. Cogger said. “They put me in Duncroft because no one wanted me.....”

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/world/europe/long-ago-jimmy-savile-abuse-complaint-is-heeded.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

The most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo – for the incumbent President and for a divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility. And fewer people voted. As I write, with almost all the votes counted, President Obama has won fewer votes than John McCain won in 2008, and more than ten million off his own 2008 total.

But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle.

Romney lost because he didn’t get enough votes to win.

That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney lost because the conservative virtues – the traditional American virtues – of liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and aspirations to moral greatness – no longer inspire or animate a majority of the electorate. The notion of the “Reagan Democrat” is one cliché that should be permanently retired.

Ronald Reagan himself could not win an election in today’s America.

The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against free stuff. Every businessman knows this; that is why the “loss leader” or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obama’s America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who – courtesy of Obama – receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote; so too those who anticipate “free” health care, who expect the government to pay their mortgages, who look for the government to give them jobs. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.

Imagine two restaurants side by side. One sells its customers fine cuisine at a reasonable price, and the other offers a free buffet, all-you-can-eat as long as supplies last. Few – including me – could resist the attraction of the free food. Now imagine that the second restaurant stays in business because the first restaurant is forced to provide it with the food for the free buffet, and we have the current economy, until, at least, the first restaurant decides to go out of business. (Then, the government takes over the provision of free food to its patrons.)

The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation (by the amoral Obama team) of the secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of winning an election in which “47% of the people” start off against him because they pay no taxes and just receive money – “free stuff” – from the government. Almost half of the population has no skin in the game – they don’t care about high taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from the Chinese. They just want the free stuff that comes their way at someone else’s expense. In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and does not bode well for the future.

It is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.

That engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that the electorate is dumb – ignorant, and uninformed. Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter, because most other voters – the clear majority – are unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw populism. That is the indelicate way of saying that too many people vote with their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away their cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the rich. Obama could get away with saying that “Romney wants the rich to play by a different set of rules” – without ever defining what those different rules were; with saying that the “rich should pay their fair share” – without ever defining what a “fair share” is; with saying that Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to “fend for themselves” – without even acknowledging that all these government programs are going bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit spending. Obama could get away with it because he knew he was talking to dunces waving signs and squealing at any sight of him.

During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson: “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!” Stevenson called back: “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!” Truer words were never spoken.

Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be taken away. He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to Mexico (even if they came from Cuba or Honduras), and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the current immigration laws. He could espouse the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and unions – in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone. He could do and say all these things because he knew his voters were dolts.

One might reasonably object that not every Obama supporter could be unintelligent. But they must then rationally explain how the Obama agenda can be paid for, aside from racking up multi-trillion dollar deficits. “Taxing the rich” does not yield even 10% of what is required – so what is the answer, i.e., an intelligent answer?

Obama also knows that the electorate has changed – that whites will soon be a minority in America (they’re already a minority in California) and that the new immigrants to the US are primarily from the Third World and do not share the traditional American values that attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a different world, and a different America. Obama is part of that different America, knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he won.

Obama also proved again that negative advertising works, invective sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his “negative ads” were simple facts, never personal abuse – facts about high unemployment, lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not embrace the devil’s bargain of making unsustainable promises, and by talking as the adult and not the adolescent. Obama has spent the last six years campaigning; even his governance has been focused on payoffs to his favored interest groups. The permanent campaign also won again, to the detriment of American life.

It turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan – people of substance, depth and ideas – to compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy – of class warfare – never reaching out to Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling together a winning majority from these minority groups. Conservative ideas failed to take root and states that seemed winnable, and amenable to traditional American values, have simply disappeared from the map. If an Obama could not be defeated – with his record and his vision of America, in which free stuff seduces voters – it is hard to envision any change in the future. The road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy – those very economies that are collapsing today in Europe – is paved.

A second cliché that should be retired is that America is a center-right country. It clearly is not. It is a divided country with peculiar voting patterns, and an appetite for free stuff. Studies will invariably show that Republicans in Congress received more total votes than Democrats in Congress, but that means little. The House of Representatives is not truly representative of the country. That people would vote for a Republican Congressmen or Senator and then Obama for President would tend to reinforce point two above: the empty-headedness of the electorate. Americans revile Congress but love their individual Congressmen. Go figure.

The mass media’s complicity in Obama’s re-election cannot be denied. One example suffices. In 2004, CBS News forged a letter in order to imply that President Bush did not fulfill his Air National Guard service during the Vietnam War, all to impugn Bush and impair his re-election prospects. In 2012, President Obama insisted – famously – during the second debate that he had stated all along that the Arab attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi was “terror” (a lie that Romney fumbled and failed to exploit). Yet, CBS News sat on a tape of an interview with Obama in which Obama specifically avoided and rejected the claim of terrorism – on the day after the attack – clinging to the canard about the video. (This snippet of a “60 Minutes” interview was not revealed - until two days ago!) In effect, CBS News fabricated evidence in order to harm a Republican president, and suppressed evidence in order to help a Democratic president. Simply shameful, as was the media’s disregard of any scandal or story that could have jeopardized the Obama re-election.

One of the more irritating aspects of this campaign was its limited focus, odd in light of the billions of dollars spent. Only a few states were contested, a strategy that Romney adopted, and that clearly failed. The Democrat begins any race with a substantial advantage. The liberal states – like the bankrupt California and Illinois – and other states with large concentrations of minority voters as well as an extensive welfare apparatus, like New York, New Jersey and others – give any Democratic candidate an almost insurmountable edge in electoral votes. In New Jersey, for example, it literally does not pay for a conservative to vote. It is not worth the fuel expended driving to the polls. As some economists have pointed out generally, and it resonates here even more, the odds are greater that a voter will be killed in a traffic accident on his way to the polls than that his vote will make a difference in the election. It is an irrational act. That most states are uncompetitive means that people are not amenable to new ideas, or new thinking, or even having an open mind. If that does not change, and it is hard to see how it can change, then the die is cast. America is not what it was, and will never be again.

For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile to Israel. They voted to secure Obama’s future at America’s expense and at Israel’s expense – in effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu by a wide margin. A dangerous time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable that the US will take any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli initiative. That Obama’s top aide Valerie Jarrett (i.e., Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett) spent last week in Teheran is not a good sign. The US will preach the importance of negotiations up until the production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon – and then state that the world must learn to live with this new reality. As Obama has committed himself to abolishing America’s nuclear arsenal, it is more likely that that unfortunate circumstance will occur than that he will succeed in obstructing Iran’s plans.

Obama’s victory could weaken Netanyahu’s re-election prospects, because Israelis live with an unreasonable – and somewhat pathetic – fear of American opinion and realize that Obama despises Netanyahu. A Likud defeat – or a diminution of its margin of victory – is more probable now than yesterday. That would not be the worst thing. Netanyahu, in fact, has never distinguished himself by having a strong political or moral backbone, and would be the first to cave to the American pressure to surrender more territory to the enemy and acquiesce to a second (or third, if you count Jordan) Palestinian state. A new US Secretary of State named John Kerry, for example (he of the Jewish father) would not augur well. Netanyahu remains the best of markedly poor alternatives. Thus, the likeliest outcome of the upcoming Israeli elections is a center-left government that will force itself to make more concessions and weaken Israel – an Oslo III.

But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire, nor is there is an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The most powerful empires in history all crumbled – from the Greeks and the Romans to the British and the Soviets. None of the collapses were easily foreseen, and yet they were predictable in retrospect.

The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that decline. Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations. The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come. Across the world, America under Bush was feared but not respected. Under Obama, America is neither feared nor respected. Radical Islam has had a banner four years under Obama, and its prospects for future growth look excellent. The “Occupy” riots across this country in the last two years were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead – years of unrest sparked by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow pace of redistribution.

Two bright sides: Notwithstanding the election results, I arose this morning, went to shul, davened and learned Torah afterwards. That is our reality, and that trumps all other events. Our relationship with G-d matters more than our relationship with any politician, R or D. And, notwithstanding the problems in Israel, it is time for Jews to go home, to Israel. We have about a decade, perhaps 15 years, to leave with dignity and without stress. Thinking that it will always be because it always was has been a repetitive and deadly Jewish mistake. America was always the land from which “positive” aliya came – Jews leaving on their own, and not fleeing a dire situation. But that can also change. The increased aliya in the last few years is partly attributable to young people fleeing the high cost of Jewish living in America. Those costs will only increase in the coming years. We should draw the appropriate conclusions.

If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back.

http://rabbipruzansky.com/2012/11/07/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-american-empire/

"....Making Sure The Police Are Involved In These Investigations..."

Cameron orders two more inquiries into alleged north Wales sex abuse ring --- PM to establish urgent probe into conduct of Waterhouse inquiry as senior Tories are accused of being part of paedophile ring

The Guardian, Monday 5 November 2012 15.24 EST

David Cameron orders an investigation into child abuse allegations linked to a senior Thatcher-era Conservative Link to this video David Cameron battled to stay ahead of the swirl of allegations about child sex abuse in the UK, including the potential involvement of a close ally of Lady Thatcher, by announcing two further urgent inquiries into an alleged paedophile ring in north Wales in the 1970s and 1980s.

Faced by claims that senior Conservative politicians and other establishment figures may have been involved in the scandal – and a subsequent cover-up – Cameron announced he would establish an urgent investigation by a senior independent figure into the conduct of the official Waterhouse inquiry into the child sex abuse ring, which was held between 1996 and 2000.

The prime minister is on an official visit to the Middle East. His spokesman in London said a separate inquiry was also expected to be held into the way the North Wales police had handled complaints at the time. That inquiry is likely to be conducted by the National Crime Agency.

Up to five different inquiries are now under way, or imminent, looking into various aspects of child abuse. But ministers feel they must be seen to be taking the allegations seriously, especially since the government has condemned the BBC for failing to be alert to allegations of child abuse by Jimmy Savile.

There is also a concern in government circles that victims' allegations about abuse were not taken seriously in the past, and that there must be a clear signal from the top of government that any culture of complacency is changing.

Speaking in Abu Dhabi, Cameron said: "Child abuse is an absolutely hateful and abhorrent crime … These allegations are truly dreadful and they mustn't be left hanging in the air, so I'm taking action today.

"I'm going to be asking a senior independent figure to lead an urgent investigation into whether the original inquiry was properly constituted and properly did its job and to report urgently to the government."

Cameron also called on anyone who knows anything about the allegations of abuse to contact the police.

Cameron and the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, rushed to act as the media threatened to identify the senior Tory figure close to Lady Thatcher alleged to have been involved in the child abuse.

The government said they were acting largely due to the allegations made by the BBC Newsnight programme on Friday night, and not due to the campaign launched by the Labour MP Tom Watson.

Nevertheless Watson also urged the government to act after one of the alleged victims, Steve Messham, said that the Waterhouse inquiry of 2000 had only covered a fraction of the assaults.

Messham will meet the Welsh secretary, David Jones, on Tuesday.

On Newsnight, Messham said he had been abused by the senior Tory and said the claims had been "swept under the carpet". According to reports at the weekend, as many as three victims have named the Tory grandee as one of their abusers. Newsnight said at least one other victim of abuse in the homes said he was abused by the politician.

In an extraordinary letter to the prime minister, Watson praised Cameron for acting swiftly, but then made a series of further allegations about the extent of the cover-up in other police forces.

"It is certainly important that government departments trawl their archives to see what documents they hold," said Watson. "But my experience of uncovering massive establishment conspiracies leaves me in no doubt that what you have suggested does not go anything like far enough. Its limited scope may even slow things down, muddy waters, damage trails. What is needed is a much wider, but equally immediate, investigation."

He adds: "Since sharing my concerns with you at PMQs, a number of people have come forward to say that they raised their suspicions with the police, but investigations were not carried out. One allegation involves alleged child abuse and a former cabinet minister. We both know that many untruths are told about politicians, but this allegation was specific, informed and appeared well corroborated."

The prime minister's official spokesman insisted Cameron was "very keen to ensure that everything is looked at properly and thoroughly and that no stone is left unturned".

Another alleged victim, Keith Gregory, claimed names of abusers were excised from the inquiry report, apart from individuals in the care homes, and that the culprits included "MPs, solicitors, factory directors, shopkeepers, senior police officers. The list goes on".

The Welsh first minister, Carwyn Jones, said: "The Welsh government takes these allegations very seriously but could I ask that in the first instance victims of abuse who feel the abuse they suffered was not investigated properly should report their cases to the police. My officials have been in touch with North Wales police regarding these matters."

Jones said the Waterhouse inquiry had been "extensive" and many of its recommendations for improving child protection were implemented by the Welsh government.

But he added: "I have asked for urgent advice on the terms of reference of the Waterhouse inquiry. I want to fully understand what was included and what was not. That will enable me to consider whether any further inquiry will be necessary."

Jones said he would meet with the children's commissioner – a role set up following the inquiry – so he could "hear his thoughts directly".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/05/cameron-inquiry-north-wales-sex-ring

America goes into the darkness

The greatest satisfaction today over the re-election of Obama is not being felt in the Democratic Party. It is not being felt among the media, who are no longer objective observers but have turned instead into corrupt partisans who ruthlessly censored the truth about Obama and helped peddle his demonising propaganda about his opponent. It is not being felt among the gloating, drooling decadents of the western left who now scent a great blood-letting of all who dare defy their secular inquisition. No, the greatest satisfaction is surely being felt in Iran.

With four more years of Obama in the White House, Iran can now be sure that it will be able to complete its infernal construction of a genocide bomb to use against the Jews and the west. World War Three has now come a lot closer.

It is said that, with likely gridlock in Congress over domestic issues, Obama will concentrate on foreign policy. We should all shudder. So far, Obama has empowered Iran to destabilise the region; supported Islamist takeovers in Egypt and Libya; is backing al Qaeda affiliates in Syria; refused to come to the aid of Americans being attacked by al Qaeda in Benghazi as a result of which four American officials were murdered; and hung Israel out to dry against its genocidal Palestinian attackers.

A report last month that Obama was secretly negotiating with the Iranian regime took on an even more incendiary aspect a few days ago with a claim that these negotiations were being led by his close friend and adviser, Valerie Jarrett.

If Jarrett was indeed involved, that should strike a deep chill into anyone who has not joined the lemming-like leap over the edge of the western cliff. For Iranian-born Jarrett – who Obama has admitted he consults before he takes any decision and who has been said to act as his ‘spine’ -- is a far-leftist with roots deep in the corrupt Chicago Democratic machine. Indeed, Jarrett has been credited with originally smoothing Obama’s entry into Chicago’s political elite, and is now said to be – despite her background of incompetence and corruption -- the most influential person in his circle.

There have also been claims that she advised Obama against killing Osama bin Laden, which although unsubstantiated are all too credible. If this wholly ill-equipped and sinister individual really has been leading secret negotiations with Iran – raising the fear that far from preventing Iranian nuclear terrorism Obama intends to allow the regime a face saving compromise under cover of which it will finish building its nuclear weapon – then Obama’s perfidy against the west really is as bad as some of us feared from the start.

Four years ago, America put into the White House a sulky narcissist with an unbroken history of involvement in thuggish, corrupt, far-left, black power, Jew-bashing, west-hating politics. Obama’s agenda has been crystal clear from the get-go: to increase the power of the state over the citizen at home, and to neutralise American power abroad. Four more years of this and he’ll almost certainly have succeeded. The impact upon western security could be cataclysmic.

Britain and the Europeans love Obama because they think he will end American exceptionalism and turn the US into a pale shadow of themselves. What they don’t realise is that, all but lobotomised by consumerist rights, state dependency, victim culture, sentimentality, post-religion, post-nationalism and post-Holocaust and Empire guilt, Britain and Europe are themselves fast going down the civilisational tubes.

Romney lost because he refused to provide an alternative to any of this for fear of being labelled a warmonger, flint-heart or social reactionary. He refused to engage with any of the issues that made this Presidential election so truly momentous. Up against the bullying of the totalitarian left, he ran for cover. He played safe, and as a result only advertised his own weakness and dishonesty. Well, voters can smell inconsistency from a mile away; they call it untrustworthiness, and they are right.

Romney lost because, like Britain’s Conservative Party, the Republicans just don’t understand that America and the west are being consumed by a culture war. In their cowardice and moral confusion, they all attempt to appease the enemies within. And from without, the Islamic enemies of civilisation stand poised to occupy the void.

With the re-election of Obama, America now threatens to lead the west into a terrifying darkness.

http://melaniephillips.com/america-goes-into-the-darkness

The Case for Obama

"There is no shame in being ignorant about  political issues and candidates. Such ignorance is often unavoidable, given the many issues out there and the fact that we all have shopping on eBay to do. But at least in important situations, like for voting for the leader of the free world, it is wrong for us to inflict our ignorance on our fellow citizens by voting on issues and candidates we know nothing about."

UOJ

Re-election would ensure he is accountable for the mess he inherits from himself.

We spent last night at the Wriston Lecture, the Manhattan Institute's annual gala. As you can imagine, at the reception all anyone wanted to talk about was the election, which turned out to be the next day. As the Manhattan Institute is a conservative think tank, everyone we talked to was hoping Mitt Romney would win. But the range of moods ran the spectrum, from a guy confidently predicting a Romney landslide to any number who were anxiously expecting Barack Obama to win.

In an effort to be different, we tried making the case for optimism in the event of an Obama victory. We cited Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the German philosopher who argued in "The Theodicy" that "this universe must be in reality better than every other possible universe." If that's true, and if this universe gives us a second Obama term, how bad could it be?

Obama has spent the past four years explaining away his failings by essentially arguing he is the best of all possible presidents--that he has done as well as any man could given the "mess" he "inherited" from his predecessor. It is certainly true that he took office under adverse circumstances. But so will whoever takes office Jan. 20. In fact, things are about to get a lot worse because of decisions taken but deferred during the Obama years.

The mess today's winner will inherit includes not only high unemployment and slow growth but impending policy changes that threaten to make those problems worse. On Jan. 1, unless Congress acts, the Bush tax cuts expire--or, to put it another way, "massive, job-killing tax increases" are about to take effect (that quote is from President Obama). If Obama gets his way--which he likely would if re-elected--Congress will forestall the hike only for taxpayers making under $200,000 or $250,000 a year. That would be good for those fortunate enough to have jobs, but it would not change the tax increase's job-killing nature, as it would hit investors and small businesses hard.

Then there's ObamaCare. Although enacted nearly three years ago, it was written so that most of its provisions would not take effect until the next presidential term. "The bottled-up rules to set up President Barack Obama's health care reform law are going to start flowing quickly right after Election Day," Politico reports. "As soon as Wednesday, the gears and levers of government bureaucracy are likely to start moving at full speed again."

Already, The Wall Street Journal reports, ObamaCare is killing jobs: "Some low-wage employers are moving toward hiring part-time workers instead of full-time ones to mitigate the health-care overhaul's requirement that large companies provide health insurance for full-time workers or pay a fee." And ObamaCare includes an additional massive, job-killing tax increase (on investment income), also scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.

That's the mess a President Romney would inherit from his predecessor. He'd have to spend much of his political capital persuading Congress to undo this legislation, and quite possibly with a Democratic Senate majority.

If Obama is re-elected, he will inherit this mess from himself. There will be no blaming George W. Bush for a two-term Obama presidency. History will hold Obama accountable for the results, and the electorate will hold his party accountable in 2014 and 2016. As H.L. Mencken observed: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

Leibniz's theodicy, by the way, was fallacious. He reasoned from a priori premises about the nature of God that it was logically necessary for the actual world to be the best of all possible ones. But that is another way of saying that the alternatives--all "possible worlds" that are either better or worse than the actual one--are logically impossible. If it's "the best of all possible worlds," it's the only possible world....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203347104578103053678880658.html?mod=djemBestOfTheWeb_h

To those Jews planning to vote for Obama

Are you prepared to explain to your children not the principles upon which your vote is cast, but its probable effects upon them?

Irrespective of your endorsement of liberal sentiments, of fairness and “more equal distribution,” will you explain to your children that top-down economic policies will increasingly limit their ability to find challenging and well-paid work, and that the diminution in employment and income will decrease their opportunity to marry and raise children?

Will you explain (as you have observed) that a large part of their incomes will be used to fund programs that they may find immoral, wasteful and/or indeed absurd? And that the bulk of their taxes go to no programs at all, but merely service the debt you entailed on them?

Will you tell your children that a liberal government will increasingly marginalize, dismiss and weaken the support for and the safety of the Jewish state?

Will you tell them that, in a state-run economy, hard work may still be applauded, but that it will no longer be rewarded?

Will you explain that whatever their personal beliefs, tax-funded institutions will require them to imbibe and repeat the slogans of the left, and that, should they differ, they cannot have a career in education, medicine or television unless they keep their mouths shut?

Will you explain to them that it is impossible to make a budget, and that the basic arithmetic we all use at the kitchen table is not practiced at the federal and state level, and to suggest that it should be is “selfishness?”

Most importantly, will you teach them never to question the pronouncements of those in power, for to do so is to risk ostracism?

Are you prepared to sit your children down and talk them through your vote on the future you are choosing for them?

Please remember that we have the secret ballot and, should you, on reflection, vote in secret for a candidate you would not endorse in public, you will not be alone.

 My friend David Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony- and Oscar-nominated playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director. His latest book is “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture” (Sentinel).

READ BRADLEY'S REVENGE:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203846804578100893981059314.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

 UOJ FACT CHECK: In 1980 when Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, the Dow rose 1.4 percent, and it rose 1.2 percent the day he was re-elected in 1984.


TODAY: NOVEMBER 6, 2012

DJIA 13,245.68 +133.24 +1.02%

NASDAQ 3,011.93 +12.27 +0.41%

S&P 500 1,428.39 +11.13 +0.79%

ROMNEY IS REAL POSITIVE CHANGE - DO NOT BE FOOLED JEWS IN PENNSYLVANIA, OHIO & FLORIDA!

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Mitt Romney isn't known for his dramatic entrances, but in the campaign's final stretch, he's stepped up his game.

As several thousand people waited for the Republican presidential nominee at an airplane hangar here on Saturday afternoon, a campaign aide switched on the soundtrack to the film "Air Force One," known for its soaring melodies and dramatic crescendos. A few seconds later, the hangar door slowly opened to reveal Romney and his wife, Ann, exiting his campaign plane, prompting the crowd to go wild.

Romney walked the long rope line leading to the stage like a star football player introduced into the lineup. He high-fived and shook hands, grinning all the while. Once onstage, both he and his wife became emotional looking out over the crowd.

"That is quite a welcome. That is amazing, to walk in and have this kind emotion come to us. It makes me believe we can win Colorado," Ann Romney said, her voice quivering. "[It is] quite emotional, I must say, to be in this room, but it's also quite emotional to me to know how humble I feel at this moment."

Behind her, Romney nodded, clearly moved by the scene.

It was not the first time a member of the Romney clan had shown emotion as the campaign heads into its final days. On Saturday, Ann Romney walked back to say hello to reporters in the rear cabin of her husband's campaign plane and seemed almost wistful about the long campaign's end.

"Three more days," she said. "It's been a long road. ... It's been an extraordinary experience."

That seemed to capture the mood on the Romney plane, which was more packed than usual as the candidate headed out on his final weekend of campaigning.

Several of Romney's senior aides, including strategists Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer and longtime advisers Beth Myers and Bob White, joined up for the candidate's final days on the road. In the front cabin, they took seats with embroidered chair covers featuring the Romney campaign logo and their name.

Asked for the campaign's mood, one senior Romney aide, who declined to be named, summed it up in a few words. "Enthusiastic. Hopeful," the aide said. "Relieved."

Amid the most grueling schedule of his campaign, Romney has seemed generally upbeat, spotted laughing and walking around the front cabin of his plane. On Friday, reporters observed the candidate giggling as he slowly moved around the first few rows of his plane using his iPhone to film his campaign aides passed out asleep in their seats.

On the stump, Romney has seemed equally positive, as he has attracted some of the biggest audiences of his campaign: nearly 20,000 in West Chester, Ohio, on Friday night, and 17,000 at an outdoor amphitheater just outside Denver. At every stop, he has mentioned the "long road" he's traveled to get to this moment.

"We've journeyed far and wide in this campaign for America's future. And now we are almost home. One final push. We're gonna be there," Romney told the crowd in Colorado Springs. "Many long days, short nights. We're that close right now. The door to a brighter future is there. It's open for us. It's waiting for us."

OBAMA LIES - AMERICANS DIE

BLEEDING IN BENGHAZI

Ambasssador Chris Stevens

I find this Benghazi tragedy outrageous! It looks like a complete breakdown on many levels, and I’m wondering how long will it take to exact an accurate explanation and assign some blame? When will this president take responsibility & stand accountable?

When Wall Sreet melted down, causing our economy to sputter and die, I waited to hear who was responsible? What particular bank, industry or government program was the primary culprit behind the debacle?

Nothing.

 Weeks went by, then months and years, and we’re still debating - what happened? No one stepped forward to admit to error/stupidity, no government officials did mea culpas for under-estimating impacts or for creating foolish programs that generated unaccountable boondoggles; no banking officials/executives were held to answer for the missing trillions, or their role in the debacle.

All delightfully vague, with no accountability. Nobody lost their job, got demoted or took a paycut. No criminal prosecutions/indictments. Just a bunch of hooey, a passel of pin-striped suits whistling slyly as they carted away our money. Government types up to their necks, like Frank, Dodd et al? They slunk off with their reputations and pensions intact. No blame there, just business as usual.

This episode did to the safety of money/investment what 9/11/01 did to homeland security, domestic tranquility and military capability: destroyed it. Because no one was held accountable!

Recall, we had severe, tragic breakdowns in our systems of home- land security and airport/airplane security. Also the communications interface between civilian controllers > military response.

All failed miserably.

The spin?

Let’s get past this, move on, make sure it never happens again. Let’s come together, mend our wounds, rebuild and look to the future. Oh yes, and focus on why this happened. Let’s work on fixing the problems/misunderstandings that precipitated this horrible event. It’s now eleven years later, and see what’s happened!

In recent memory, these two man-made events did more damage, took more lives and generated more cost than anything short of a full-fledged war. They did lasting, permanent harm to our country and we vowed it would never happen again. Well, we’ve just been smacked pretty good with a new 9/11, and they killed more of our people! What the hell?

This president boasts how he got bin Laden, that al-qaeda and the Taliban are done. They’re not a threat anymore, except they/their brethren just killed our ambassador and three other Americans. It’s been 30yrs since we’ve had anything like this. Now, this kinder, gentler president allows havoc to rain down.

What do we do? Nothing!

 Here we go again, standing around with fingers up, looking for someone to blame. Is the press demanding answers? Is the media enraged? Has congress moved to create a special bipartisan committee to investigate and demand answers?

Meanwhile, in this vacuum of interest and absence of action, the president sends UN Ambassador Rice on talk shows to spout unsupported nonsense about mobs and videos, he has Press Secretary
Carney spin lies nonstop, and allows Secretary(s) Clinton and Pin-etta to remain virtually silent. Aside from a quick briefing in the Rose Garden, which was proved unreliable/fallacious in following days, he says more on The View then he does to the nation!

I guess in his mind this tragedy didn’t warrant full attention and exigency, a priority above all others. No, it was simply another day at the office, a momentary problem that went with the territory, to be explained in a non-hostile venue of minimal intimidation. He actually said, on another show of similar import and pseudo-credibility, the Benghazi incident and resulting American casual- ties was not optimal. You’re correct, Mr. President, not optimal. Perhaps a better choice of non-telepromptered words might be, intolerable! Unacceptable!! But all we get is more rhetoric and campaign mode. No crisis here, just a little nuisance in that pesky Libya place, interrupting our political grandiloquence.

Let’s say it plain. Hillary Clinton is incompetent, in over her head and should be fired. It’s unbelievable she hasn’t submitted her resignation. There should be a complete top-down shake-up at State, ferreting out those responsible for this tragedy. If it traces back to the White House, and a smarmy reluctance to admit there even is a terrorist threat (i.e. workplace violence at Fort Hood?) the American people better wake up and realize there’s a dangerous ideologue running things, someone with his own agenda, taking his own counsel, seeking to fulfill his own fantasies. Our military and intelligence communities must speak out! Career diplomats/professionals in world affairs must sound an alarm!

This mode of behavior holding no one accountable when tragedy strikes is outrageous! Hold this course, it will strike again & again. We’re better than this. We must not become the world’s biggest idiot! When will we realize how media is aiding/abetting this process, as are academia and the entertainment industry? Our republican-style democracy is in the throes of a life-death struggle and the left is winning out!

Time to stand up to this nonsense. Time to reinstate professionalism vocationalism and honor. Time to hold people accountable with appropriate result.

Time to clean house!

Al Shane

al@bmgmtassoc.com

Obama Lies - Americans Die - The smoking gun of the Benghazi cover-up

On June 11, the British ambassador’s motorcade was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, wounding a medic and doctor. The next day, the ambassador was gone and the British Benghazi post was closed.

At the same time, the Red Cross, after a second attack, shut down and fled the city.

“When that occurred,” says Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, who headed the military security team in Tripoli, “we were the last flag flying in Benghazi; we were the last thing on their target list to remove.”

On Aug. 15, at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, an emergency meeting was convened to discuss the 10 Islamist militias and their training camps in the area, among them al-Qaida and Ansar al-Sharia.

On Aug. 16, a cable went to the State Department describing the imminent danger, saying the compound could not defend itself against a “coordinated attack.”

The cable was sent to Hillary Clinton — and signed by Ambassador Chris Stevens.

On Sept. 11, Ambassador Stevens died in a coordinated attack on the Benghazi compound by elements of Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaida.

Catherine Herridge of Fox News, who unearthed the Aug. 16 cable, calls it the “smoking gun.”

Yet, on Oct. 11, Joe Biden, during the vice presidential debate, asserted, “We weren’t told they wanted more security there.”

While House spokesman Jay Carney said Biden’s “we” applied only to Biden, Obama and the White House. As the National Security Council is part of the White House, Carney was saying the NSC was in the dark over the Aug. 16 cable that had warned about the exact attack that occurred.

What else have we lately learned?

The State Department was following the Benghazi assault in real time.

Three emails came from the compound that night. The first described the attack; the second came as the firing stopped; the third reported that Ansar al-Sharia was claiming credit.

From an Oct. 26 report by Jennifer Griffin, also of Fox News, we now know there were two drones over Benghazi the night of Sept. 11 capable of sending pictures to U.S. commanders within reach of Benghazi, and to the CIA, Pentagon and White House.

We also know that ex-SEAL Ty Woods, in the CIA safe house a mile away, was denied permission to go to the rescue of the compound, and that he disobeyed orders, went and brought back the body of diplomat Sean Smith.

After the attack on the compound, the battle shifted to the safe house — for four more hours. Another ex-SEAL, Glen Doherty, made it to Benghazi from Tripoli. Seven hours after the initial assault that killed Ambassador Stevens and Smith, Doherty and Woods were still returning fire, when, having been abandoned on the orders of someone higher up, they were killed by a direct mortar hit.

Due to stonewalling and the complicity of the Big Media in ignoring or downplaying the Benghazi story during the last weeks of the campaign, the Obamaites may get past the post on Nov. 6 without being called to account.

But the truth is coming out, and an accounting is coming. For the character, competence and credibility of Obama’s entire national security team have been called into question.

Hillary Clinton said she takes full responsibility for any security failure by her department at the Benghazi compound. But what does that mean? Did she see the Aug. 16 secret cable sent to her by Stevens describing his perilous situation? Was she oblivious to the battle in her department over security in Benghazi?

This failure that occurred in her shop and on her watch, that Stevens warned about in his Aug. 16 cable, resulted in his death and the most successful terrorist attack on this country since 9/11.

Why has Hillary not explained her inaction — or stepped down?

The CIA has issued a terse statement saying it gave no order to anyone not to try to rescue the ambassador or not to move forces to aid Doherty and Woods, who died because no help came.

Who, then, did refuse to send help? Who did give the orders to “stand down”?

The president says he is keeping Americans informed as we learn the truth. But is that still credible?

When did Obama learn that State was following the Benghazi attack in real time, that camera-carrying drones were over the city that night, that a seven-hour battle was fought, that desperate cries for help were being turned down.

The CIA had to know all this. Did Tom Donilon of the NSC not know it? Did he not tell the president?

Five days after Benghazi, Susan Rice went on five national TV shows to say the attack was a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim video.

Did the president not know she was talking nonsense? Could he himself have still been clueless about what went on in Benghazi?

http://www.humanevents.com/2012/11/02/buchanan-the-smoking-gun-of-the-benghazi-cover-up/

For Israel, a Second Term From Hell

Within days, Hurricane Sandy and all its devastation will be featured less prominently on front page headlines, to be replaced by a rapid countdown to next week’s Presidential election.

There is no consensus over who is slated to win. Even reliable polls are largely out of sync with each other. Unexpected events and the three debates have never failed to bring continued new elements to the table.

For the President, the hurricane was a political blessing, as Americans tend to unite around their sitting leaders during times of crisis. More importantly, the graphic imagery of wholesale devastation has forced the emerging and ever evolving debacle, over the Administration’s handling of the September 11th terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, from national focus.

For many around the world, there has been continued concern over President Obama’s attitude towards Israel, which at times has been overtly hostile. Haaretz journalist Ari Shavit described it thusly in an interview on Israeli TV last year; “The rage that Barack Obama expresses towards Binyamin Netanyahu and the State of Israel is a raging fury.”

I have no doubt that Shavit is right when he says that “If Barack Obama is elected…There will immediately be a very strong attack and Israel will find itself in a very sharp crisis. Because right now…Obama is…like a lion in a cage.”

To estimate the steps that Obama might take towards Israel, with his last election behind him, his intent must be judged based on his past actions and sentiments expressed. The President has been clear about his opinion on a number of matters relating to Israel, and his current muted stance on the eve of Election Day, surely has no post-election staying power.

1.Obama believes that Israel is engaged in an illegal occupation, and that building anywhere beyond the 1948 armistice line is against international law.

2.He believes that the claims of Palestinian Arabs against Israel are generally legitimate.

3.He believes that the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state is necessary and important.

4.He believes that the term pro-Israel can be applied in a prescriptive fashion. What Israelis think is in their interests is not necessarily pro-Israel.

5.Obama believes that the pro-Israel community can be bought off by sending financial aid to Israel.

6.Obama believes in the power of public opinion and words, “daylight,” to steer public sentiment in favor of his policies.

When it comes to unrestricted sitting duck policy, these ideals can find damaging manifestation in a number of areas. For example, in a second term, Obama is likely to further the cause of Israel’s delegitimizers like none other before him, by aggressively and publically slamming any and all construction outside of pre-1967 Israel. It is unlikely that he would condemn anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations and I believe that he will not veto Palestinian Arab attempts at the UN towards a unilateral declaration of statehood.

On the whole, since 1974, once coming to the understanding that Israel could not easily be vanquished militarily; the Jewish state’s enemies have waged a war of accusation, seeking to isolate and diplomatically weaken the country to the extent that it is forced to significantly compromise its security.

A second Obama term would go a long way in furthering that agenda.

But in truth, the extent to which the sitting US President can impact affairs on the ground in Israel will be seen on January 22nd, when Israelis go to the polls. Israelis view the state of the US-Israel relationship as vitally important, and typically Prime Ministers who are viewed as having jeopardized that relationship have difficulty staying in power.

If President Obama is re-elected, and Israeli voters veer leftward, Zionism will fall into regression.

If however, the new Lieberman-Netanyahu coalition marks significant gains, and especially if winning a Knesset majority, the country will enter a troublesome adolescent stage in its relationship with the US. Perhaps Israel the adult will emerge and embark on an independent new path.

If Mitt Romney wins, and Israel’s left is voted into power, we will see a repeat of the Olmert-Bush years, where Israel makes grand offers and gestures to the PA, only to face rebuff after rebuff.

If a sweep of Israel’s nationalist parties follows a Romney victory, the tide of Israel deligitimization will be stunted, and Israeli leaders will focus on building long terms security solutions for their citizens.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/11/01/for-israel-a-second-term-from-hell/

Rumors of Rabbi’s Sexual Misconduct Raise Tensions Among UK Ultra-Orthodox Jews

TENDLER - TENDLER - TENDLER

Rumors of rabbi’s sexual misconduct raise tensions among UK Haredim  --- Long-simmering scandal threatens to divide those who want to involve secular authorities and those who want to deal with abuse

 London’s ultra-Orthodox establishment is investigating one of its most senior rabbis following a barrage of rumors that he engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with a woman, The Times of Israel has learned.

The rabbi wields considerable influence in the city’s Haredi institutions.

Over the past few weeks, he has been accused in blogs and on the street of a variety of sexual misdeeds with at least one woman — for whom he was allegedly acting as a counselor — and possibly with others. The allegations range from serious criminal offenses to actions which, one rabbi said, may be halachically dubious, but “in the non-rabbinical, non-Haredi world, wouldn’t raise eyebrows.”

The rabbi at the center of the rumors did not return a phone call.

Since mid-October, his London colleagues have met twice to discuss the handling of the case, once in the Orthodox suburb of Golders Green in North West London, and once in the considerably more Haredi Stamford Hill.

Now a prominent London rabbinical authority has appointed a small committee to investigate the claims. The committee apparently includes a mental health professional and a legal professional; at least one of them is Jewish.

Gabriel Schleider, a clerk at the North Square Chambers legal firm, refused to comment on reports that he was on the panel.

One local Haredi rabbi, who like all the British interviewees for this article requested anonymity due to the case’s sensitive nature, said he did not believe the rumors, which “seem incompatible with [the rabbi's] personality.”

Because of the accused rabbi’s senior status and popularity, if the most serious allegations were proven, “it would send shock waves through the community. It would be on par with the chief rabbi being accused of such a thing,” he added.

Another rabbi said the fallout “would be like a mini Shabtai Tzvi,” a reference to the 17th century false messiah who, before his eventual conversion to Islam, legitimized sexual excess as part of religious ritual among his followers. The story is regarded as one of the most disruptive incidents in early modern Jewish history.

Whatever the outcome in this particular case, the severity of some of the allegations has sparked a discussion within the British Haredi community about sexual abuse by members of the clergy — problems that have received scant attention to date.

The discussion will likely intensify in the coming months, as a television investigation into the community’s approach to child sex abuse is currently in its final stages. The program, which is being fronted by journalist Annamarie Cumiskey, has been in the works for more than a year and a half, and The Times of Israel has seen evidence that suggests it will be aired on a major British network, Channel 4, as part of its “Dispatches” current-affairs show.

A looming TV report will apparently allege that sexual crimes are systematically covered up in the Haredi enclaves of London, Manchester and Gateshead

The program will apparently allege that sexual crimes are systematically covered up in the Haredi enclaves of London, Manchester and Gateshead, and will feature testimony from both victims still in the community and several who have left it.

In contrast to New York, where high-profile allegations of abuse in the Orthodox community have become a regular occurrence, in London, they are still relatively rare and low-key. Cases do sometimes come to court — just last week, 40-year-old Menachem Mendel Levy appeared before a London judge to face charges of regularly raping a young Orthodox woman — but the last major abuse scandal occurred in 1991, when two Orthodox, male babysitters in Stamford Hill were accused of molesting their charges. The victims’ family, which went to the police, was chased by a mob and forced to leave the area. The babysitters were later acquitted of most charges.

A number of British rabbis told The Times of Israel that they had seen little evidence of significant incidents of sexual abuse among London’s Haredim.

However, Ben Hirsch, the president of Survivors for Justice, a New York-based advocacy group for survivors of sexual abuse in the Orthodox community, called this naive. He says his organization regularly fields calls and emails from the UK.

“We were quite surprised — it was notable,” he says. “We were getting panicked phone calls from people in London, Stamford Hill, Gateshead and Manchester. Many were so frightened, they wouldn’t give us their names. Those that did were referred to people that were able to deal with situations in the UK. Some were looking for therapists; others just wanted to talk. They were panicked because they were not prepared to go to the authorities, and didn’t know what else to do. People were afraid. We even received calls from several therapists who wanted help dealing with abuse in the Haredi communities in the UK. ”

There is no British equivalent organization to Survivors for Justice, nor any communal organization that deals solely with sexual abuse.

Hirsch says he would expect the rates of sexual abuse in the UK’s ultra-Orthodox community to be similar to those in Haredi communities elsewhere.

“The culture is very similar, and the culture is the source of the problem,” he says.

Referring to Hasidic and other very insular Orthodox communities in particular, he says that in both the US and the UK, “You’ve got a few community leaders in power, and members of the community afraid to cross the road without permission, knowing that if they call the police, they’re on the outs.”

If anything, he says, “based on everything we know of the coverups in London and Gateshead, they are worse, more egregious than the coverups in New York.”

He blames this on the UK communities’ more formalized, top-down rabbinic structure, which gives rabbis even more power than in the US.

In New York, secular authorities have cultivated relations with the ultra-Orthodox community for help in cracking down on sexual abusers, a process that has yet to take place in the UK. In addition, even if offending rates are similar, the absolute numbers of abusers in UK Haredi circles would be minute compared to those in America, as there are fewer than 300,000 Jews of all streams in the UK altogether, as compared to 250,000 Haredim in the New York area alone.

Some rabbis believe that change is afoot. One rabbi says he hopes that the upcoming TV report will make a difference.

“I can’t say [the program's allegations] are not true. We are unable to deal with these issues effectively. We’re much better than we were in the past, but we’re not moving fast enough. A lot of it is naivete — people really sometimes don’t believe it’s happening, or they believe that an abuser can stop if you beat them up or if you treat them. If a person shows remorse, they accept that as genuine, and that they will never do it again.

“If the program is done responsibly, maybe it will be a catalyst. If not, it will be counterproductive.”

The same rabbi claimed that a group of colleagues belonging to the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations was trying to band together to become “the address” for families whose members have experienced sexual abuse. The group would be the final arbiter on whether the families could go to the police.

The purpose, he said, was to circumvent a number of other rabbis who regularly obstruct efforts to report abuse to the secular authorities.

“The group will have the whole support of the rabbinate, and whatever they say, for good and for bad, will be the verdict. No rabbi can start terrorizing families [not to go to the police] — the rabbonim will be standing behind the families.”

Another Haredi rabbi said that the large number of cases in New York has not gone unnoticed in London.

When it came to the recent allegations against the senior London rabbi, he said, “The rabbis don’t want a repeat of New York, where [the rabbis] were accused of not dealing with these issues. They want to be seen to be stamping it out.

“If any discoveries lead to an indictment, they will be the first to expose, condemn and deal with it. The last thing they want to do is try and hush it up.”

The latest scandal burst into the public domain over Sukkot, when a London rabbi reportedly confronted his colleague and demanded that he leave the city

There have also been claims of police involvement in the Haredi investigation of the London rabbi, but The Times of Israel was unable to verify this.

Regarding the current case, rumors surrounding the rabbi’s behavior have been circulating for several months, but other senior rabbis were unwilling to approach him, according to a source familiar with the details of the case.

The allegations burst into the public domain over Sukkot, when a local rabbi reportedly confronted his colleague and demanded that he leave the city.

For Hirsch, this is “standard operating procedure for frum communities. Running the perpetrator out of town is what generally happens when complaints are brought to the rabbinic leadership. Usually the person reporting will be cajoled or intimidated into silence, and the case gets covered up. If the case gets too big, too well-known, there are too many complaints and it cannot be controlled, the attitude is, let’s just get rid of the problem. This means sending the perpetrator to another Jewish community. In cases of child abuse, the perpetrators are almost guaranteed to reoffend.

“Because of the lashon harah [gossip] and shidduch [matchmaking] issues, there is a very strong push to keep it quiet, protect the perpetrator’s family and children from negative impact. They are completely blinded to the dangers this attitude poses to future victims, and the deep injustice to past victims.”

If the rabbis want to bring about real change, he says, they have just one option: involve the police in every case. Rabbis who are not trained professionals cannot investigate allegations of abuse, or even correctly diagnose abuse, nor can they be trusted to fairly investigate their own colleagues or to put the needs of victims above the reputation of the community — there is simply too much conflict of interest.

“If the rabbinical leadership says, ‘We’re not qualified to investigate; go to the authorities,’ that’s when change begins,” he says. “Then there’s no stigma.”

The plan for a permanent group of rabbis to decide whether the police should be approached, he says, was “a classic coverup.

“It’s the fox guarding the henhouse. It needs to be left to the professionals. If these rabbis really want to stop obstructionist rabbis, they need to find the courage to issue a clear and unambiguous statement that says, ‘Don’t go to rabbis to ask permission. Always report child sexual abuse directly to the secular authorities.’ They should put themselves in the firing line and openly praise and support those victims and their families who report abuse to the secular authorities. That would be heroic. Any other rabbinical involvement leads directly to coverup.”

The same applies, he says, to an investigating panel that includes people with ties to the community.

“If the purpose of the panel is to determine whether a rabbi should be defrocked or ejected from a member organization for improper conduct, that’s appropriate. But if the panel seeks to provide an alternative to a formal criminal investigation by trained law enforcement officers, they are playing with fire.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/rumors-of-rabbis-sexual-misconduct-raise-tensions-among-uk-haredim/