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Whitewashing the Arab historical record has long been the practice not only of Arab spokesmen but of the Arabs' Western and Communist sympathizers. Among the most persistent efforts to this end have been the denial and belittling of Arab involvement with the Nazis and the Holocaust.
In fact, many Arab nationalist leaders - from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east - not only sympathized with the Nazis but cooperated with German agents before and during World War 2. The most outstanding Arab Nazi collaborator, however, was the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Haj Muhammud Amin el-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem.
Husseini spent most of World War 2 in the Axis domain in Europe. He conferred officially with Mussolini and Hitler. In a petition he submitted together with other Arab leaders, Husseini urged the Fuehrer in the name of the Arab nation to recognize the Arab right to solve "the Jewish Question" in the Arab countries. Later he helped the Germans recruit an SS division among the Bosnian Muslims, exerting his influence over their imams, later on inspiring them during their service.
One researcher tells us, "The Mufti worked closely with the Nazi machinery responsible for exterminating Jews." (1)
This apparatus was part of the SS headed by his friend Himmler. Husseini made energetic efforts to further the mass murder process by preventing the emigration of Jews from the Axis domain. He petitioned the governments of Axis Croatia, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria, as well as their patrons in Germany and Italy, and neutral Turkey, (2) to prevent Jews from leaving the Axis zone.
Towards the end of the war, when the Axis satellite states of Eastern Europe could see the looming Nazi defeat, they made plans to release Jews, especially children, from their territory, in return for various considerations or perhaps in order to clear themselves with Allied public opinion. The Mufti, hearing of these plans, exerted his considerable diplomatic influence among the Germans and their satellites to stop these children and adults from escaping their fate under the Nazis. For instance, Husseini wrote to the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, an Axis partner, urging Bulgaria to send 4,000 Jewish children to Poland where they would be "under stringent control" in his words (letter of June 5, 1943). These children, he asserted, presented "a degree of danger to Bulgaria whether they be kept in Bulgaria or be permitted to depart from that country." (3)
Under "stringent control" in Poland, apparently, these children would no longer represent a danger to Bulgaria. He also delivered a note to the same end to the German Foreign Ministry which in turn instructed its ambassador in the Bulgarian capital to bring to the Bulgarians' attention the common German-Arab interest in preventing the departure of these children. Thus, the Mufti succeeded in blocking the further release of Jewish children from Bulgaria. That same summer of 1943, he sent a similar letter to the Rumanian foreign minister. He again urged sending Jewish children -- 1,800 this time -- to Poland where they would be under "active supervision." (4)
Husseini even intervened with the Germans against trading Jews under their control for fellow Germans (including the so-called Templars) who had been interned by the British in the Palestine mandate, perhaps thusly showing himself more resolute in finishing off the Jews than were the Germans themselves. Complaining to SS chief Himmler about this planned trade, the Mufti wrote, "It is to be feared that further Jewish groups may leave Germany and France." By "further" groups, he had in mind his earlier, unsuccessful attempt to prevent Egyptian Jews from leaving the Axis domain as part of a larger group of Egyptians. "In my letter to you of June 5, 1944, I referred back to our conversation in which I reported to you on the inclusion of [Egyptian] Jews in the exchange plan of some Egyptians living in Germany." He complained in this later letter (July 27, 1944) that despite his earlier protest and general German promises to the Arabs, "the Jews, nevertheless did leave." (5) This shows that he was not always successful in his efforts.
Interventions of this kind were widely reported after World War II. Bartley Crum, an American member of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine (1946), was shown documentation to this effect by an investigator for the Nuremberg Tribunal. It was also reported at the time in the New York Post by Edgar Ansel Mowrer. Since then, however, this information has generally been omitted from both academic studies and popular-level accounts of Arab-Israeli relations and modern Arab politics. But research has gone on. Fairly recently, Professor Daniel Carpi of Tel Aviv University has published his research on the matter, based on Italian archives, whereas most earlier information had come from German archives. (6)
Yet the whitewashers customarily overlook this information which does not fit the innocuous, put upon image of the Arabs (particularly Palestinian Arabs) that they wish to project.
Husseini broadcast often to the Arab countries over Radio Berlin. Indeed he was in charge of Arabic broadcasting not only for Radio Berlin but for the Italian station at Bari. (7)
In one broadcast he urged Arabs, "Kill Jews wherever you find them for the love of God, history, and religion." (8)
If those who had heard such urgings yet acclaimed the Mufti as a leader after World War 2, would this reflect on their attitudes towards genocide and Jews? The thought might be inconvenient. Another broadcast presented what was the first public notice from an Axis source as to the scope of the Holocaust. In a broadcast of September 30, 1944, he asked the Arabs rhetorically, "Is it not in your power to repulse the Jews whose number is not more than eleven million?" (9)
Before the war, the world Jewish population had been estimated at around 17 and 18 million, which Husseini surely knew.
The Germans subsidized Haj Amin in the amount of 75,000 reichsmarks per month. He received other sums from them for expenses for his several residences, for maintaining his "Arabisches Büro," for maintaining other Arabs living in Axis Europe, etc. The Germans also subsidized a number of other prominent Arabs who had found refuge in Nazi Germany. (10) Husseini's subsidies came from both the Foreign Ministry and the SS. (11)
Husseini's Nazi collaboration did not begin with World War 2 itself. As early as March 1933, after the Nazis under Hitler had won the general elections in Germany, Husseini offered his congratulations through the German consul in Jerusalem. (12)
Hitler's fanatic Judeophobia was no secret even then, not even in far off Jerusalem.
Admiral Canaris of German intelligence, the Abwehr, provided support for the socalled Arab revolt in mandatory Palestine (1936-1939), the first intifada. Meanwhile, the Mufti sent emissaries to Berlin in 1937 and 1939 to discuss financial, diplomatic, and weapons assistance. He also received financial support for the Arab revolt from the wealthy American anti-semite and Hitler sympathizer, Charles R. Crane who was also the patron of Husseini's associate on the Palestine Arab Executive, George Antonius. (13)
Of course Husseini did not act alone. He had a large following and travelled with an entourage. When the British decided in 1937 to stop indulging the Arab revolt, he was allowed to leave mandatory Palestine for Lebanon where he was surrounded by his own retinue. He again had an entourage with him when he settled in Baghdad from 1939 to 1941, one of his close advisors being his kinsman `Abdul-Qadir al-Husayni (Husseini), Faisal Husseini's father. In Iraq he very successfully engaged in pro-Nazi, pan-Arab intrigue. He was in fact one of the major figures in Iraqi politics at that time, helping to instigate a coup d'etat which installed a pro-Nazi government that declared war on the British while Rommel was advancing in North Africa. British intelligence reports show that Husseini was one of the decision-makers of the Iraqi government in this period, while Rashid `Ali el-Kilani was prime minister. (14)
Part of the pro-Nazi work at the time of Husseini and his allies was propagating hatred of Jews among the Muslim Iraqis. This came to its most violent expression in an incident called the Farhud in June 1941, after British defeat of the Iraqi Arab army. The Mufti's pro-Nazi Iraqi associates incited a pogrom in Baghdad which killed an estimated 600 Jews while British troops stayed outside the city. Subsequent to the restoration of order in the country, an official Iraqi investigating commission reported that the Mufti of Jerusalem and his entourage were among the factors causing the pogrom. Husseini, after arriving in Iraq, "began disseminating Nazi propaganda with great cunning... His entourage also engaged in wide-scale anti-Jewish and anti-British propaganda activities among all classes." The report added, "The Palestinian and Syrian schoolteachers" in Iraq opposed "government... steps against Nazism." (15)
While operating in the Nazi-fascist domain during the war, the Mufti demonstrated complete identification with the Nazi policy of mass murdering Jews as outlined above. He also knew the scope of the Holocaust in terms of numbers killed before the fact of the mass murder was generally known. This knowledge showed up in a broadcast of 1944 quoted above and no doubt came from his close ties to Himmler.
On occasion he went farther than the Germans themselves. We see this for instance, in his opposition to the German plan to exchange Jews for German prisoners of the British. Husseini energetically protested against letting any Jews escape their fate under the Nazis.
His help for the Holocaust was considerable. Besides helping to recruit Bosnian Muslims for the SS - who later went out to hunt down partisans and slaughter Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies - he also recruited Soviet Muslims to collaborate with the Nazis. (16)
Some of them served in the Einsatzgruppen, the dread murder detachments that massacred Jews in Belarus and Ukraine.
In fact Husseini set up an Islamic Institute in Dresden for training Soviet Muslim imams. Meanwhile, he also set up an Arab Institute for Research into the Jewish Question (based on a German model). These projects were made possible by the generous German subsidies that he received. (17)
His ties were particularly close with SS commander Himmler. A photograph of the Mufti with Himmler bears a dedication to him from the Nazi leader, reading as follows: "Seiner Eminenz dem Grossmufti zur Erinnerung 4 VII. 1943" ("To his Eminence the Grand Mufti in remembrance, July 4, 1943"). This photo has been fairly widely published (18) as has the photo of his meeting with Hitler.
Members of his entourage in Germany, young men of various prominent Palestinian Arab families, Khalidis and others besides Husseinis, took SS training and visited the Sachsenhausen murder camp. All this was done with German money. Apparently the Germans considered his work worthwhile for them, since they gave Husseini's activities wide publicity. For instance, his review of Bosnian Muslim SS troops was featured on the front cover of the Wiener Illustrierte (January 12, 1944).
Busy as he was helping the Nazis in places as far apart as Bosnia, Belarus, and the northern Caucasus, Husseini did not forget the Jews in the Arab countries. While battles raged in Libya, the Mufti urged that Tripoli be "purged" of its Jews. As pointed out above, he and his associates had urged Hitler to extend the "Solution of the Jewish Question" to Arab lands. In their meeting, November 28, 1941, Hitler promised that this was part of his own plan. When the German troops crossed the Caucasus, the Fuehrer added, "then will strike the hour of Arab liberation." Hitler informed Husseini of his intent to "solve" the "Jewish problem," not only in Europe but in non-European countries as well. "The Grand Mufti replied that... He was fully reassured and satisfied by the words which he had heard from the Chief of the German State." (19)
Of course pro-Nazi sentiment among the Arabs did not stem from the Mufti's influence alone. While Iraq had the pro-Nazi Futuwwa and Youth Phalanxes youth groups, Egypt and Morocco had their "Green Shirts" in imitation of the Italian fascist blackshirts and the Nazi brownshirts. Nasser and his "Free Officers" circle were notoriously pro-Nazi.
The former Egyptian Army Chief of Staff, `Aziz `Ali el-Masri, was arrested on his way to Rommel's headquarters to aid the German war effort. One of the plotters in this affair was Anwar Sadat, then a young officer and comrade of Nasser. Sadat wrote of this at length in his early book of memoirs, Revolt on the Nile (London, 1957). (20)
He wrote: "We made contact with the German Headquarters in Libya and we acted in complete harmony with them." (21)
He added: "We prepared to fight side by side with the Axis." (22)
To show Sadat's identification at the time with the paranoid Judeophobia of the Germans, we may point to his explanation of the failure of a German intelligence mission. Certain Egyptian Jews, he claims, gave the British information on two German agents sent to Cairo to make contact with the pro-Nazi Egyptian officers. (23)
Through the Allied victories at El-Alamein and Stalingrad, he wrote, "both arms of the German pincer movement on Egypt were broken, and Egyptian hopes were broken too." (24)
At any rate, Sadat's later essay at autobiography, In Search of Identity (New York, 1978), softens the picture of his pro-German, anti-Jewish attitudes.
"Arab nationalists found Berlin a haven of hospitality and understanding in World War II," the International Herald Tribune tells us in an unusual show of candor on this issue. (25)
The hospitality extended not only to Husseinis but to certain of their Hashemite rivals, at that time the ruling family in both Iraq and Transjordan. Rashid `Ali el-Kilani, the Iraqi prime minister who had declared war on Britain in 1941 with the Mufti's encouragement, found asylum in Berlin too. Saudi Arabia, hostile to the Hashemites for its own reasons, was also pro-Nazi. (26)
It was one of the first states to recognize the Italian fascist conquest of Ethiopia. (27)
Arab-Nazi collaboration took place on the ideological plane as well as the political and military planes. On a visit to Berlin in 1937, Dr Sa`id `Abdel-Fattah Iman of the Damascus Arab Club proposed, inter alia, to promote National Socialist ideology among the Arabs and Muslims generally. (28)
As time went on, Nazi ideological penetration of the Arab world took place in various ways and through several channels. Mein Kampf was published in Arabic, the translator later becoming a minister in the Kilani cabinet in Iraq. The Nazis supplied information bulletins to the Arab press. Nazi agents encouraged Arab nationalists to travel to Germany and to study there. (29)
Movie theaters in Beirut, Damascus, and Aleppo received German films and newsreels. (30)
German and Italian radio broadcast Arab nationalist agitation in Arabic to the Middle East. In an expression of sympathy for Nazi ideology, Arab politicians showed their presence at Nuremberg rallies. (31)
It is admitted even by sympathizers of Arab nationalism that the Ba'ath Socialist Party, separate factions of which now hold power in Syria and Iraq [in Iraq until 2003], got its start in imitation of German National Socialism. (32)
Another instance of Arab imitation of the Nazis was the Palestinian Arab Party founded by Husseini family members. Jamal Husseini, its president, freely admitted this. The party's youth group, modelled on the Hitler Youth, was for a while called the "Nazi Scouts." (33)
On the other hand, some Arabs did object to Nazi anti-Jewish policy. Monsignor Arida, the Maronite Patriarch in Lebanon, issued a pastoral letter in 1933 "strongly condemning the Nazi persecution of Jews." (34)
Nevertheless, Arab-Nazi collaboration had serious implications for the future. Sami al-Jundi, a Syrian Arab nationalist, a founder of the Ba`ath Party, wrote in his memoirs, "We were racialists. We were fascinated by Nazism, reading its books and the sources of its thought..." (35)
From the 1930s till now, Mein Kampf, other Nazi writings, and earlier Judeophobic works like the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion, have been commonly read in Arab countries. And Arab writers have made their own contributions to this literary genre. PLO publications have joined in the chorus of Holocaust denial. (36)
Arab leaders freely expressed pro-Nazi sentiments even years after the war. For example, Nasser told a German neoNazi editor in 1964: "Our sympathies in the Second World War were on the German side." (37)
Nazi war criminals were granted refuge in Syria and Egypt. Some of them, such as former Goebbels assistants, Johann von Leers, Franz Buensche, and Louis Heiden, helped those governments make anti-Jewish propaganda, while others helped Nasser to set up a security police. (38)
Moreover, Arab governments have carried out their own mass murders. Sudan is the worst example. There Arab Muslims have slaughtered tribal Black Africans. The New Columbia Encyclopedia (1975) estimated the tribal Black victims of the civil war at 1.5 million as of 1972; and it still goes on. In Iraq of course, the army has murdered tens of thousands of Kurds with poison gas and other means. The civil war in Lebanon saw scores of thousands of civilians massacred by their Arab brothers, with the Palestino-Progressiste forces (to use the label favored by the French press) as major culprits.
Arab nationalist spokesmen in the West have naturally tried to downplay or minimize - and where they could get away with it, to deny - the record of Arab-Nazi collaboration. For instance, Philip Mattar, executive director of the PLO-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington, distorts the Mufti's work to organize Bosnian Muslims to fight for the Germans. In Mattar's words, Husseini "recruited Muslims to fight the Communists in Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia." Mattar carefully avoids informing his readers in the Washington-based Middle East Journal, (39) an anti-Israel publication since its founding, that the Mufti was recruiting an SS division, formally called the 13th Waffen-Gebirgsdivision der SS "Handschar" (kroat. Nr.1). (40)
The Handschar as the division was called for short after a Turkish sword (khanjar), was notorious for atrocities, (41) not only against the Yugoslav partisans, but against Serbian, Jewish, Gypsy and other civilians. The Yugoslav war criminal commission charged that the Handschar had handed Allied airmen over to the Germans, in addition to other crimes. (42)
In a speech to these troops, Husseini declared:
This division of Bosnian Moslems, established with the help of Greater Germany, is an example for Moslems in all countries... Many common interests exist between the Islamic world and Greater Germany, and those make cooperation a matter of course... National-Socialist Germany is fighting against world Jewry. The Koran says: "You will find that the Jews are the worst enemies of the Moslems." There are also considerable similarities between Islamic principles and those of National Socialism... I am happy to see in this Division a visible and practical expression of both ideologies. (43)
The reader can judge for himself whether, as Mattar implied, the goal that the Mufti urged on the Handschar was merely the fight against Communists.
Mattar does allow that Husseini helped the German war effort. However, he omits the Mufti's work for the genocide of the Jews. As a sign of our times, a New York publisher has commissioned Mattar to edit a reference work on the Middle East.
In view of the evidence, the efforts in the West and even in Israel to overlook or deny or whitewash the Arab historical record are simply outrageous. The Encyclopedia Britannica (EB) offends in this regard. The EB Micropedia (1985 ed.) tells us of the Mufti that in 1939, "Ceasing to play an active role in Palestinian politics, Husayni spent most of World War II (1939-45) in Germany. At the war's end he fled to Egypt." In the article entitled "Palestine," (44) Walid Khalidi asserts: "The Arabs [in Palestine] had remained quiescent throughout the war, and some 12,000 enlisted in the British forces." This may be true as far as it goes but it certainly gives an incomplete, misleading picture, especially since comparative figures for Jewish enlistment are not given. On the other hand, Kamal Salibi and William Polk in the article entitled "Israel" are slightly more forthcoming. (45)
They allow that "German propaganda was gaining wide support in Arab nationalist circles." The editor of a later edition of EB, Robert McHenry responded to criticism of the EB's soft approach to the Mufti by boasting of an "article in the Britannica, to which the Index will direct any curious reader," which describes the Mufti as "Amin al-Husayni, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and admirer of the Nazis." (46)
The EB writes as if the Mufti merely "admired" the Nazis.
The Britannica's approach is typical. The Dictionary of World History (London, 1973), a weighty tome of about 10 pounds for which A.J.P. Taylor served as advisory editor, writes of Husseini, "For a time (1937-46), he lived outside Palestine, during which period he negotiated with Germany. He resumed his leadership of the Palestinian Arabs (1946)..." By this account, he was not necessarily an admirer of the Nazis. He merely "negotiated" with them.
Now let us look closer to home. If it is only to be expected that Arab spokesmen will try to whitewash the Arab record in general and in respect of the Holocaust in particular, such efforts are bizarre when made by Israelis. Consider the writings of two members of Israel's "peace camp." Amos Elon, the journalist, recently penned a choleric tract for the habitually anti-Israel New York Review of Books (47) in which he deplores the propensity among some Israelis to see the Palestinian Arabs as continuing the work of the Nazis, or to even consider that they might.
"Standing behind each Arab or Palestinian, Israelis tend to see SS men determined to push them once again into gas chambers and crematoria." (48)
Elon sees this as an obstacle to peace. Of course it would be foolish to see every Arab in this way and the typical Israeli that Elon presents seems to be a straw man of his own manufacture. Yet Elon's diatribe, which goes on for eight columns of rather small type, disregards the relevant history, to wit, the collaboration in the Holocaust of the Mufti of Jerusalem and others whose families are still prominent in the Palestinian Arab leadership. Nor does he mention the massacres carried out by Arabs in the past 40 years in Lebanon, the Sudan, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Surely this information was relevant to his discussion. However, these omissions are apparently intentional since Elon goes on to argue that "a little forgetfulness [toward the Holocaust] might finally be in order." (49)
One might accept Elon as sincere if one knew that he had asked the Arabs too to forget their various grievances.
Making Elon's article all the more bizarre (and it happens to be the featured article of the issue), is that the same issue of New York Review contains a piece by George Soros describing contemporary Holocaust-like events in Bosnia. Now after all, if Serbs or other former Yugoslavs, exposed for years to Communist propaganda in favor of the brotherhood of nations, could commit numerous atrocities against other ethnic groups, then why could not the Arabs who have been subject for years to intense nationalist (indeed chauvinist) indoctrination (and more recently to Islamic jihad incitement) do the same?
Another Israeli, Zvi El-Peleg, a biographer of the Mufti, admits part of the Mufti's pro-Nazi activities, denies or casts doubt on other parts, and distorts the moral meaning of his pro-Nazi and pro-Holocaust exertions. In the Hebrew edition of his book, El-Peleg takes pains to cast doubt on one of the incriminating pieces of evidence against Husseini. He writes that "those who saw him [Husseini] as a partner to the Nazi crimes" reported "that he asked of the Germans that upon their arrival in the Middle East they allow the Arabs 'to solve the Jewish Question in Palestine and the other Arab countries in accord with the interests of the Arabs and in the same ways in which this problem was solved in the Axis states.'" (50)
El-Peleg writes as if to insinuate that Jewish writers hostile to the Mufti chose to believe without substantial proof that he had made such a request of the Germans. What El-Peleg fails to say is that a nearly identical request is reported in a book by Husseini's Arab admirer, the historian Majid Khadduri (Independent Iraq, 2nd ed.), (51) a book listed in El-Peleg's bibliography. Neither Khadduri nor his publisher, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), has been suspected in the past of pro-Zionist or pro-Jewish bias. By the way, an interesting discussion of different versions of this request appears in Bernard Lewis' Semites and Anti-Semites. (52)
Lewis considers the difference between versions submitted while Husseini was in Iraq and those drawn up after he arrived in Axis Europe.
Another tendentious interpretation by El-Peleg is his denial of Husseini's Arab nationalist, pan-Islamic political outlook, by making him into a "Palestinian" nationalist, a more suitable, politically correct creature for the 1990s. Ironically, the quotes from the Mufti that El-Peleg presents in his book show Husseini's pan-Arabist, pan-Islamist character.
Whereas the respected American journalist Edgar Ansel Mowrer said of Husseini, "As a murderer, this man ranks with the great killers of history," (53) El-Peleg chooses to glorify this war criminal. El-Peleg is a historical revisionist, but even more is he a moral revisionist.
Just what explains the compulsion of Elon, El-Peleg, and others to portray the Arabs as historical innocents or to explain away Arab guilt remains an open question. But it appears symptomatic of the political prejudices and Orwellian political morality of our times.
Irit Abramski-Bligh, "Husseini, Haj Amin al-" in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust [Hebrew & English editions].
Daniel Carpi, "The Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, and His Diplomatic Activity during World War II (October 1941-July 1943)" Studies in Zionism, No. 7, Spring 1983.
Elias Cooper, "Forgotten Palestinian: The Nazi Mufti," American Zionist, March-April 1978.
Bartley Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, New York, 1947.
Zvi El-Peleg. HaMufti HaGadol. Tel Aviv, 1989.
Lukasz Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East London, 1966.
Majid Khadduri. Independent Iraq. London (2nd ed. 1960). Bernard Lewis. Semites and Anti-Semites. New York, 1986.
Joseph Schechtman, The Mufti and the Fuehrer New York, 1965.
Anne and Robert Sinai, Israel and the Arabs, New York, 1978.
George Stein, The Waffen SS. Ithaca 1966.
Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times, Philadelphia, 1991.
Other authors consulted include Abdel-Razak Abdel-Kader, Elie Kedourie, etc.
Jennie Lebel. "Hitler v'haMufti." Meqor Rishon [article published about Spring 1998].
Jennie Lebel, Haj Amin uBerlin Tel Aviv 1996 [book on Mufti based inter alia on little used Serbian-Croatian sources].
Martin Kolinsky, "After the Arab Rebellion," Part I, Israel Affairs vol. 2, no. 2 (Winter 1995), Part II, vol. 5, no. 1 (Autumn 1998).
Eliyahu Green, "Ha`Arabim ve'haNazim," Nativ no. 4 1995, p 12.
Eliyahu Elath. Haj Amin al-Husayni. Tel Aviv 1968.
David Yisraeli. Ba`ayat Eretz Israel baM'diyniyut haGermanit 1889-1945, Ramat Gan 1974.
E Kedourie and S. Haim,eds., Palestine and Israel London 1982.
See various articles here, rather detailed and difficult reading.
Rafael Medoff, "The Mufti's Nazi Years Reexamined," Journal of Israeli History 17, 3.
E. Wohlgelernter, "In a State of Denial," Jerusalem Post June 8, 2001.
Monty Penkower. The Jews Were Expendable. Urbana & Chicago: U of Illinois Press, 1983.
On Pius XII, see Journal of Modern Italian Studies 6,1 (spring 2000)-review by A Long.
Peter Neville, Appeasing Hitler: the Diplomacy of Sir Neville Henderson -- see review in European History, 31,2 (4/2001).
Temps Modernes
Revue d'Histoire de la Shoah
Barbara Rogers, "Auschwitz and the British," History Today, 49 (10) Oct 1999.
1. Lukasz Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East, London, 1966; 312-13.
2. The Mufti's appeals to all the countries mentioned, but for Turkey, were known from documents, and in large part published, not long after World War II. It appears that Husseini himself was the first to make known his appeal to the Turkish government not to permit the passage of escaping Jews through Turkish territory. This revelation came in his own memoirs issued in Arabic in 1970 in Falastin (Beirut, July 1970), pp. 4ff. These memoirs included other documents relating to his efforts to prevent Jewish escape which had been previously published. See Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, New York, 1986; p. 268 n19. The major post-World War II collection of relevant documents was The Arab Higher Committee: Its Origin, Personnel, and Purposes. The Documentary Record. New York: The Nation Associates, 1947. This collection will be henceforth referred to as Arab Higher Committee.
3. Bartley Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain, New York, 1947; 111-12.
4. Crum, 110-112; Hirszowicz, 262-63, 312-13; Daniel Carpi, "The Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, and His Diplomatic Activity during World War II (October 1941-July 1943)," Studies in Zionism, No. 7, Spring 1983; pp. 130-31. Joseph Schechtman, The Mufti and the Fuehrer (New York, 1965); pp. 154-58. The sardonic use of euphemisms such as "active supervision" for the mass murder of Jews was not limited to the Mufti. Consider Count Ciano's record of a conference with Croatian officials in Venice on 16 December 1941, several weeks after Husseini's meeting with Hitler. The Croatian fascist leader Pavelitch explained to Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, that, in Ciano's words: "The most urgent problems [of the new Croatian state] were being faced, and in the front rank that of the Jews. The latter, who were 35,000 when the Ustashis took power, do not exceed 12,000 at present (Young Kvaternik [an aide to Pavelitch and nephew of the Croatian minister of war] explains this reduction by the word 'emigration,' accompanied by a smile that leaves no room for doubt)." Galeazzo Ciano, Les Archives secrètes du Comte Ciano (Paris: Plon, 1948), p. 487. The Mufti later collaborated with Pavelitch and other Croatians when helping recruit and motivate the Bosnian Muslim SS division.
5. Letter in Schechtman, p. 310. See a similar letter to Ribbentrop in Ibid., 155-56; A number of important letters in this vein are in Arab Higher Committee.
6. Carpi, op. cit., 130-31; and D. Carpi, "The Diplomatic Negotiations over the Transfer of Jewish Children from Croatia to Turkey and Palestine in 1943," Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XII (1977), pp. 109-124.
7. Elias Cooper, "Forgotten Palestinian: The Nazi Mufti," American Zionist, March-April 1978; p. 19.
8. Hirszowicz, pp 311, 364 fn 18.
9. Crum, 113.
10. Cooper, 18.
11. Cooper, 23.
12. Irit Abramski-Bligh, "Husseini, Haj Amin al-" in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust [Hebrew & English editions].
13. F.W. Brecher, "Charles R. Crane's Crusade for the Arabs, 1919-39," Middle Eastern Studies, XXIV, January 1988; pp 46-47. Also see Elliott A Green, "The Curious Careers of Two Advocates of Arab Nationalism," Crossroads [published in Jerusalem], no. 33 [1992].
14. Cooper, pp 14-16.
15. Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times (Philadelphia, 1991); 414-15.
15. Hirszowicz, 312.
16. Cooper, 18.
17. inter alia, in Cooper, p. 22.
18. Walter Z. Laqueur (ed.), The Israel-Arab Reader, New York: Bantam, 1969; pp. 80-84; also see Hirszowicz 204, 218-19; Schechtman, p. 306.
20. Anwar Sadat, Revolt on the Nile, London, 1957.
21. Ibid., p. 34.
22. Ibid., p. 42.
23. Ibid., pp. 46-49.
24. Ibid., p. 50.
25. International Herald Tribune, July 13, 1987.
26. Hirszowicz, pp. 48-52.
27. Hirszowicz, p 52 and footnote
28. Ibid., pp. 35-36.
29. Ibid., p. 27.
30. Ibid., p. 131.
31. Ibid., p. 19.
32. Eric Rouleau, "The Syrian Enigma: What Is the Ba'ath?" New Left Review, No. 45, September-October 1967.
33. Jillian Becker, The PLO, London, 1984, p. 19.
34. Stillman, op. cit., p. 108.
35. Stillman, op. cit., p. 106.
36. For instance, El-Istiqlal, a PLO paper published on Cyprus, ran a two-part feature article denying the Holocaust, December 13 and 20, 1989. The Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles privately circulated photocopies and a partial translation of this material.
37. I.F. Stone's Weekly, June 1, 1964, quoted from Deutsche National Zeitung und Soldaten Zeitung, May 1, 1964. I.F. Stone was known as a leftist critic of Israel.
38. See, inter alia, Glenn Infield, Skorzeny: Hitler's Commando, New York, 1981; pp 205-219; and Robert St John, The Boss, New York, 1960; pp 152-53; Simon Wiesenthal provided a list of names of Nazi veterans who had obtained refuge in Arab countries, see Le Monde, June 9, 1967.
39. Philip Mattar, "The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Politics of Palestine," Middle East Journal (vol. 42, Spring 1988); p. 237.
40. George Stein, The Waffen SS. Ithaca, 1966; pp. 179-185.
41. For instance, see Parameters, Autumn 1993; p. 80. Parameters is the quarterly of the US Army War College.
42. Anne and Robert Sinai, Israel and the Arabs, New York, 1978. p. 65.
43. Schechtman, pp. 139-40.
44. EB Macropedia, vol. 25, 1985 edition.
45. EB Macropedia vol. 22, p. 142.
46. Robert McHenry, letter to the editor of Commentary, Nov. 1993.
47. Amos Elon, "The Politics of Memory," New York Review of Books, October 7, 1993; pp 3-5
48. Ibid., 3.
49. Ibid., 5.
50. Zvi El-Peleg, HaMufti HaGadol, Tel Aviv, 1989; 72. See the review of this book by Eliyahu Green, in Nativ [Tel Aviv, Hebrew], March 1990; pp 81-84.
51. Majid Khadduri, Independent Iraq, London (2nd ed.) 1960; p. 185.
52. Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, New York, 1986; pp. 157-58.
53. John Roy Carlson, Cairo to Damascus (New York, 1951), 413-14.
Elliott A. Green is a writer, researcher, and translator living in
Jerusalem. His work has appeared in the Jerusalem Post, Nativ (Tel
Aviv), Forum (Jerusalem), and the French Review (USA). His article on
the Jewish underground in Algiers during World War II was published in
Midstream in January 1989.
A shorter version of this article appeared in Midstream in October
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subset: commoncrawl


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FAITH groups across Southampton are joining forces to battle against controversial plans to put fluoride in the water.
Religious organisations from across the city are coming together at a public meeting this weekend to discuss ways of combating the plans.
It comes after the Daily Echo yesterday revealed South Central Strategic Health Authority is continuing to press ahead with the scheme, despite there being fewer than three months left before the body is axed by the Government.
Even if the project is not up and running by March 31, responsibility for introducing fluoridation in parts of Southampton, Eastleigh, Totton, Netley and Rownhams will fall to the new body Public Health England.
Councils will have the power to reverse the scheme, but they are likely to have to stage expensive public consultations before making any move.
Despite the authority having previously voted to oppose the plans, Southampton City Council leader Richard Williams admitted there is no money in the cash-strapped council's budget to fight the scheme.
Health chiefs insist fluoridation is the best way of improving dental health in Southampton, particularly among children in more deprived areas.
The SHA's board unanimously approved the scheme in February 2009 despite 72 per cent of the 10,000 respondents who participated in the public consultation saying they opposed the plans, with fears over a lack of democracy and possible side effects.
Health bosses said they were convinced by arguments fluoride will help cut high rates of tooth decay, particularly in under-fives.
At the time the plan was introduced Southampton was said to have had an especially poor record on rates of rotten teeth in children, and although later surveys suggest the situation has improved the SHA has said it remains confident its decision was right.
But although it is working with Southern Water on how best to implement the scheme, bosses admitted they still don't yet know how much it will cost, or the exact area it will cover.
This weekend's public meeting is being held at the Gurdwara Nanaksar, in Peterborough Road, Bevois Valley, at 6.30pm on Saturday, with representatives from many of the city's religious organisations attending to combat the plans.
All are welcome to attend.


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Here we go….woooooooo
1. Calvary Chapel Jupiter – I'm really liking this CD and trying to listen enough that this one becomes one I don't need the lyrics for
2. Paul Baloche – God Saves (I got a hold of a pre-release…uh wow…its awesome…kinda how I felt with matt redmans last CD. It was not something I expected sound wise)
3. Michael Neale – No Greater Audience (yeah I know it's been in my top for a month now….there is probably a good reason though.)
2. Black Crowes – Shake Your Money Maker (listening to some of my faves this week….this CD is brilliant)
1. Tori Amos – Under the Pink (nuff said…one of the best Cd's of all time)
How bout you all…whats your top 5?


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Justin Bieber -- Investigated for Battery Against Neighbor
Justin Bieber Investigated for Battery Against Neighbor
1:34 PM PT -- One of Justin's neighbors tells TMZ ... the argument between Bieber and the accuser was NOT over a party ... it had to do with a Ferrari.
We're told Bieber had the car delivered to his home last night on a flatbed truck ... and this morning, he was racing the vehicle up and down the streets.
Neighborhood sources tell us ... the neighbor was furious about the deafening noise AND felt Justin was endangering the community by tearing through the streets at breakneck speeds.
We're told the neighbor went over to confront Justin about the situation ... and that's when the two sides got into a screaming match.
Justin Bieber has been accused of battery by a neighbor ... and cops are at the singer's home in Calabasas, CA investigating ... TMZ has learned.
Sources tell TMZ .... Justin and one of his male neighbors got into a verbal altercation just after 9 AM. We're told the argument was intense.
We've confirmed Justin has returned from his overseas concerts and was back home this morning.
L.A. County Sheriff's spokesperson Steve Whitmore tells TMZ ... the accuser told deputies Justin made physical contact with him and he has filed a battery report. He also claims Justin threatened him.
Sources connected with Justin's security tell TMZ ... the neighbor came on to Justin's property and began screaming that while Justin was away (overseas) there were people at the house throwing loud parties.
Our sources tell us Justin told the man to get off his property ... but they insist Justin did not have any physical contact with him.
Sources connected with JB's security tell us the singer went inside his house and security escorted the neighbor off the property.
The Sheriff's Dept. is investigating.


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The FDA's latest campaign to protect the profits of a drug company over the safety of Americans is unprecedented, and the organizers include a gang of current and former FDA officials largely credited with turning the nation's regulatory beagle into a lapdog for Big Pharma under the Bush Administration.
FDA spokesman Douglas Arbesfeld, apparently the industry's new inside guy, kicked off the campaign by sending an e-mail to journalists which was intended to discredit Dr Steven Nissen and the Cleveland Clinic. Dr Nissen's study appeared online on May 21, 2007, in the New England Journal of Medicine and warned that GlaxoSmithKline's diabetes drug Avandia increased the risk of heart attacks by 43% and death from cardiovascular events by possibly 64%.
The talking points for the media appear to have been formulated and agreed upon ahead of time between Arbesfeld and others (see below) because more than one story from ostensibly different sources later appeared in the media and on the internet referring to Dr Nissen with such names as "St Steven", "Patron Saint of Drug Safety" and "Saint Steven the Pure."
In his email to journalists, Mr Arbesfeld pasted portions of an article which appeared on the Heartwire website, containing umpteen critical comments about Dr Nissen and the Avandia study, as well as comments made by an anonymous blogger on the internet who said that business at the Cleveland Clinic is run similar to a Mafia TV series. The full bog states:
"Wake up pharmaceutical companies, this is a call from Dr. Nissen, if you don't hire the Cleveland Clinic for your big trials then you face the firing squad from Nissen and Company."
"The Cleveland Clinic was one of the most respected names in medicine, now they are positioning themselves as candidates to take over for a new series on HBO to replace the Soprano's " the Clinico's 'next week who should we wack ……' " Bata bing bata boon. Comment by Brian A – May 22, 2007."
However, it could just as easily be inferred that Mr Arbesfeld authored the slanderous blog and supplied it to Heartwire with the intention of quoting it later from a "reputable web site. For its part, Heartwire has since removed what it says are "unsubstantiated remarks about Dr Nissen and the Cleveland Clinic," and states: "In retrospect we regret that we published those sentences, as they do not meet the highest standards of journalistic or scientific integrity or credibility."
The smear campaign has federal lawmakers up in arms. At a June 6, 2007 hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in response to questions about Mr Arbesfeld sending the e-mail under his official title of FDA spokesman, FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach told the lawmakers, "It was an inappropriate and unfortunate act on the part of an individual which has been addressed through disciplinary procedures."
Dr Nissen is none too happy about the stunt either. "I'm a pretty tough guy," he told ABC News on May 30, 2007, "but I'll tell you, having this kind of an e-mail that questions my motives, broadcast to the major journalists with whom I work and have established a reputation, is — it's an outrage."
As for his part, Mr Arbesfeld told the Boston Globe that the email reflected his own personal views and not the FDA's. Any assertion that the email reflected his own personal views is not quite credible considering that his previous employment was always promoting the views of the industry.
A few articles in the media mentioned that Mr Arbesfeld worked for Johnson & Johnson, but his employment with public relations firm Manning Selvage & Lee was not noted. On December 16, 1999, the Healthcare Marketing & Communications Council reported that Mr Arbesfeld had joined Manning as Senior Vice President in New York.
On January 5, 2001, the firm issued a press release to announce the promotion of Mr Arbesfeld and others and referred to Manning as "one of the largest healthcare practices worldwide and has a broad array of clients including Allergan, Amgen, Eli Lilly and Company, Genentech, Hoffmann La-Roche, Kaiser Permanente, Novartis, Pharmacia and Procter & Gamble."
In reading the press release, Mr Arbesfeld's expertise with using the Internet is apparently a bi-product of his work for Manning. "In this role," it said, "Arbesfeld will help healthcare clients maximize internet-relations in the marketing and communications mix, and will expand the Practice's strategic e-product offerings."
On August 5, 2002, Arbesfeld identified himself in a Reuters article as representing none other than Glaxo, along with six other drug giants including Bristol-Myers, Aventis, J&J, AstraZeneca, Abbott Labs and Novartis, in a campaign to promote the "Together Rx" prescription drug card program for senior citizens. In 2005, the Reporters Handbook listed him as the contact person for J&J subsidiaries, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical and Ortho Biotech Products.
Less than a week after Mr Arbesfeld's hatchet job on Dr Nissen, ex-FDA Deputy Commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb planted an editorial in the May 29, 2007, Wall Street Journal entitled, "Journalist Malpractice," accusing the New England Medical Journal of intentionally publishing the Nissen study to make the FDA look impotent. "The publication was timed," he wrote, "to get ahead of the Food and Drug Administration's more careful evaluation of the same issues."
"The journal seemed bent on beating the FDA to the punch," Dr Gottlieb claimed.
"The goal?" he said, "Painting the FDA as impotent, in order to argue for legislation winding through Congress that would increase regulatory hurdles for drug approvals."
The only problem with the Nissen-NEJM conspiracy theory is that the issue under investigation in Congress right now is why the FDA did not warn the public about Avandia heart risks six months before the Nissen study was ever published.
In the end, when it comes to "Journalistic Malpractice," the larger question would seem to be how was it that so many industry shills were able to get the major media outlets and medical journals to immediately publish commentaries and editorials attacking the NEJM and the Nissen research with headlines splashing all over the internet.
In his editorial, Dr Gottlieb notes that there are "questions" whether Avandia is associated with heart risks, but says they are "so far unsupported by more rigorous, randomized studies and extensive review by the FDA and other authorities around the world."
"When it comes to the issue du jour, drug safety," he wrote, "no description of medical research in a medical journal comes close to the detail level or scrutiny imposed by the FDA on study results before approval."
Assuming this is true, the problem is that the industry insiders running the FDA refuse to act on the advice of the agency's top scientists with first hand access to the underlying data. In a July 26, 2007 speech on the Senate floor, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), of the Senate Finance Committee, said that, in the case of Avandia, "Not only did the FDA disregard the concerns and recommendations from the office responsible for post-marketing surveillance, but I have found that it also attempted to suppress scientific dissent."
In the past two months, he told his fellow senators, "I've had to write to the FDA regarding the suppression of dissent from not one but two FDA officials involved in the review of Avandia."
The Heartwire website conveniently echoed Dr Gottlieb's sentiments by featuring portions of a May 23, 2007, unsigned editorial from the medical journal The Lancet, which claimed that the verdict on Avandia should await the results of a Glaxo sponsored trial called RECORD, not due out until 2009.
"Taken together," the editorial said of Dr Nissen's findings, "these results, although based on very small numbers of events, certainly raise a signal of concern and indicate the need for more reliable information about rosiglitazone's safety."
"But the FDA, physicians, and patients can reasonably await the results of RECORD, a phase 3 trial designed specifically to study cardiovascular outcomes," it said.
"Until the results of RECORD are in," the Lancet noted, "it would be premature to overinterpret a meta-analysis that the authors and NEJM editorialists all acknowledge contains important weaknesses."
The problem with waiting two years for the results of the RECORD trial is that FDA scientist Dr David Graham reviewed the results of this study thus far and told an FDA advisory panel that the study design is so flawed that the results should not be considered in any risk benefit analysis of Avandia now, or in 2009.
In fact, Dr Graham says the RECORD study is so useless that it is probably unethical to allow it to continue because no possible benefit can be achieved by allowing it to go on and that Avandia should be pulled off the market now because thousands of patients are being injured each month by using the drug.
At the end of his editorial, Dr Gottlieb lists himself as a physician and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, as well as former Deputy Commissioner of the FDA from 2005 to 2007. However, back on August 24, 2005, the Seattle Times provided a much better picture of his background and highlighted the oddity of the FDA hiring him in the first place in light of his solid alliance with the industry. "Only a month ago," the article states, "Dr Scott Gottlieb was a Wall Street insider, promoting hot biotech stocks to investors."
At the time, the Times noted, "Now Gottlieb holds the No. 2 job at the federal agency that approves new drugs, oversees their safety and affects the fortunes of companies he once touted."
"Now, as one of three deputy commissioners," the article said, "Gottlieb will help oversee such major policies as the FDA's fast-track approval process for drug and biotech products, a priority for many Wall Street funds and the pharmaceutical industry."
The Times also noted that a half-dozen current and former FDA officials said they did not know of anyone else from Wall Street ever moving directly into such a high-level job at the agency.
A couple months later, the November 12, 2005, Boston Globe reported that Dr Gottlieb could not participate in formulating the nation's defense plan against the avian flu due to conflicts of interest. He "was recused from key parts of the planning effort because his past consulting work for Manning Selvage & Lee involved companies whose products would be used to combat a flu pandemic," it said. Yes, the very same Manning Selvage & Lee at which Arbesfeld held the Senior Vice President position. Does anyone smell a rat (or several)?
The article pointed out that Dr Gottlieb's former clients included Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, and Sanofi-Aventis, the parent company of the nation's sole flu vaccine maker.
According to the Globe, Manning paid Gottlieb a $12,500 monthly retainer for nine months for projects that included eight companies, and he was also paid $9,000 for private consulting work for VanGen Inc, a firm that won a $878-million contract to supply the US government with 75 million doses of anthrax vaccine.
Dr Nissen and Dr Gottlieb's disputes are not new. In fact, on August 2, 2006, they participated in a debate on the topic: "Government Science Panels: Fair and Balanced?" sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and reported on by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman in Common Dreams.
Likewise, lawmakers have mentioned in their communications with the FDA that they found it "troubling" that Mr Arbesfeld might be trying to settle old scores with Dr Nissen because they were on opposite sides regarding the approval of the heart failure drug Natrecor.
Much to his credit, Dr Nissen openly communicated his objections to the industry's infiltration of the FDA. While sitting right next to Dr Gottlieb, he candidly described the conflicts of interest, which he stated were "evident at the highest levels of the FDA."
"For years," he said of FDA leadership, "we had an interim FDA Commissioner, Lester Crawford, who shortly after confirmation, abruptly resigns, apparently because he and his wife owned stock in regulated companies."
"Then the administration appointed Andrew von Eschenbach as interim commissioner creating another conflict," he said. "In his role as director of the National Cancer Institute, von Eschenbach must seek FDA approval for human testing or approval of new cancer drugs, an obvious conflict," he noted.
"But even worse," Dr Nissen stated, "the administration appointed Scott Gottlieb as deputy commissioner."
"He came to this job with no regulatory experience, directly from Wall Street, where he served as a biotech analyst and stock promoter," Dr Nissen told the audience.
Dr Gottlieb's response to Dr Nissen's comments was, in essence, that he would not dignify the comments with a response.
Firms with which Dr Gottlieb was involved prior to his gig at the FDA, according to the Globe, also include the Inamed Corp, one of two companies that were seeking to return silicone gel implants to the market and on November 17, 2006, the FDA announced that it would lift restrictions on the sale of the implants.
When Dr Gottlieb left the FDA, he headed right back to greener pastures with the drug giant Novartis. The press release to announce his hiring read: "Bench International Places Eminent Regulatory Advisor Scott Gottlieb, M.D., as Senior Counsel to Novartis."
"Under an exclusive consulting agreement," the release stated, "Scott Gottlieb, M.D., will provide advisory services to Novartis on matters of global regulatory policy and strategy."
Two more members of FDA,s alumni, Peter Pitts and Robert Goldberg took another swipe at Dr. Nissen in a June 6, 2007 commentary in the Washington Times, using the same talking points as the anonymous blogger, likewise referring to Dr. Nissen as a "self-appointed and media-anointed Patron Saint of Drug Safety and "Saint Steven the Pure.
For much of the childish commentary, they poke fun at Dr Nissen because he acknowledged in the NEJM that he consults for many drug companies but said he "requires them to donate all honoraria or consulting fees directly to charity so that he receives neither income nor a tax deduction."
At the end of the commentary, Mr Pitts says he is a former FDA associate commissioner, and both men list their affiliation with the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest; but as usual, that listing really does not give credit where credit is due.
On its web site, the Center describes itself as "a non-partisan, non-profit educational charity," and Mr Pitts is indeed listed as President, but his bio also says he is the Senior Vice President for Global Health Affairs at none other than Manning, Selvege & Lee.
The Manning firm apparently fills two important roles. It's a breeding ground for industry moles preparing to enter "public service" and serves as an employment hub for industry shills once they finish their on average 2- to 3-year stint inside the Bush Administration.
In his CMPI bio, Mr Pitts describes his duties as the FDA's Associate Commissioner from 2002 to 2004 as serving as the agency's "Chief Messaging Officer."
On June 7, 2007, Mr Pitts had this to say in defense of fellow hit-man Mr Arbesfeld on the Pharmalot web site: "I know Doug Arbesfeld and he is a guy devoted to advancing the public health."
According to Mr Pitts, in sending the derogatory e-mail about Dr Nissen to journalists, Mr Arbesfeld was just standing up for the FDA and that people should know about the sacrifice he made by accepting a job in government.
"He is also a guy," Mr Pitts says, "who took a pretty significant pay cut to put in some time in public service."
Some would no doubt argue that it's difficult to imagine that Mr Arbesfeld will end up in the poor house as a result of serving as the top industry mole inside the FDA.
Mr Pitts' sidekick, Mr Goldberg, is indeed listed as the vice president of CMPI, but Mr Goldberg's bio also says he used to be Director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Medical Progress and Chairman of its 21st Century FDA Task Force.
In fact, a review of the CMPI web site turned up a whole nest of ex-moles who served the industry in one capacity or another in the Bush Administration's FDA. For instance, Daniel Troy, the former FDA Chief Counsel, also known as the "Godfather of Preemption," sits on this "charity's" Advisory Board.
Troy,s bio points out that he "played a principal role in FDA,s generally successful assertion of preemption in selected product liability cases."
This "assertion of preemption" says that, as long as the FDA has approved a drug and its label, private citizens in state courts cannot sue the drug company for failing to warn about a product's serious health risks, even in cases where it can be shown that the company concealed studies that revealed the risk from the public and the FDA.
Now that he's switched back to private practice, Mr Troy's CMPI bio says he currently specializes in constitutional and appellate litigation, as well as strategic counseling with "particular focus" on what else – clients regulated by the FDA.
The Advisory Board also includes, Tomas Philipson, whose bio says he served as the Senior Economic Advisor to the commissioner of FDA during 2003 and 2004 and as the Senior Economic Advisor to the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2004 and 2005.
That would mean that Mr Philipson served Mark McClellan, and they are now apparently joined at the hip because, as part of a program called "Patient-Centric and Prospective Medicine," CMPI says it has created the Patient-Centric Health Forum and that Mr McClellan, "former Medicare administrator and FDA commissioner, will chair the group."
So, it would appear that anyone looking for the retirement home for industry hit men who served in the Bush Administration's FDA can find it right in the middle of cyberspace on the CMPI web site.
Persons seeking legal advice regarding Avandia can contact Baum, Hedlund, Aristei, Goldman & Menzies Law Firm at: (800) 827-0087; http://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/
EVELYN PRINGLE is an investigative journalist. She can be reached at:


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In the troposphere, the ground-level or "bad" ozone is an air pollutant that damages human health, vegetation, and many common materials. It is a key ingredient of urban smog. In the stratosphere, we find the "good" ozone that protects life on earth from the harmful effects of the Sun's ultraviolet rays.
Courtesy of COMET program


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Related Products In Amazon | No Matched Products found in Amazon |


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If you opt to do your holiday shopping on Amazon.com, odds are good that the merchandise you order will be plucked from a shelf by a human: The Seattle e-commerce giant is adding 70,000 seasonal workers in its distribution centers for the Christmas crunch.
But Amazon is also beginning to add Massachusetts-made robots. In October, the company divulged for the first time that it has deployed more than 1,300 robotic warehouse workers from Kiva Systems in North Reading, a company Amazon bought last year for $775 million. And Kiva's squat orange robots, which move racks of merchandise to workers who fill boxes, could prove essential to helping Amazon return to profitability. In 2012, Amazon lost $39 million, and it lost $41 million in the most recent quarter.
When Amazon bought Kiva, "I believed that it was an awful lot about Amazon solving its inefficiency problems," says Jim Baum, former chief executive of Symbotic, a warehouse robotics company in Wilmington. "They thought Kiva's technology could have an impact."
But as Kiva ramps up production of its robotic systems for its new parent — the number on order from Amazon may be as high as 18,000, according to one trade publication, and could be higher according to my sources — the big question is what happens to Kiva's early customers. Major retailers such as Staples, Walgreens, Gap, Office Depot, and Crate & Barrel installed Kiva's technology in their warehouses. And now they all must grapple not only with possible shortages of Kiva bots, but also whether they want to do business with a direct competitor.
Kiva is a unique Massachusetts success story. The company was founded in Silicon Valley in 2003 by a tech executive who previously worked at Apple and WebVan, a dot-com-era grocery delivery venture that flopped. Mick Mountz moved the fledgling company to Massachusetts to tap into the robotics engineering talent here and be close to Boston-based Bain Capital, which supplied early funding. Bain also helped make an introduction to Staples, another company it had backed.
Mountz was always clear that Kiva was "not about the robot." As he told me in 2008, "This company was founded to solve a business problem, and a lot of robotics companies are about a cool technology that is looking for an application."
I got the chance to try Kiva's system. While I stood at a packing station, a fleet of ottoman-size robots carried tall metal racks of merchandise to me, following bar codes printed on the concrete floor to find their way. A red laser pointed to the item I was supposed to grab. When I placed it in a cardboard box and hit a button, that robot drove off and a new rack showed up.
Kiva dubbed this the "magic shelf" — items simply materializing in front of you, no walking required. The robot didn't replace humans, but it made them far more efficient.
Amazon was always Kiva's white whale: Though the e-tailer acquired a couple companies that used Kiva technology, like Diapers.com, it never became a customer itself. Then, in March 2012, in the second-biggest acquisition in its history, Amazon bought Kiva outright. Since then, Kiva has fallen under Amazon's cone of silence. Press releases have all but stopped. No one at Kiva or Amazon would comment for this story.
But the impression is that Kiva's interest in selling to non-Amazon customers has waned. The company hasn't announced a new customer since it became part of Amazon, and much of its sales staff has departed. The company continues to hire — but in departments like engineering and manufacturing, not sales or marketing. It could be that satisfying Amazon's appetite for Kiva bots is consuming most of the company's resources.
And many people in robotics aren't surprised. "Amazon is so big that if Kiva's technology can help them be more efficient, and add one percent to their gross margin, then that $775 million price tag might be cheap," says John Kawola, chief executive of Harvest Automation, a North Billerica maker of agricultural robots.
John Lert, a Wakefield robotics entrepreneur, says that for Amazon, which operates more than 40 fulfillment centers around North America, "it was cheaper to buy the company than pay Kiva a license fee for the technology." Amazon initially pilot-tested Kiva's technology in Seattle and has since rolled it out to two other locations.
The story of Kiva may turn out to be that it radically improves Amazon's order-filling efficiency. But Kiva's earliest supporters invested in the technology hoping for that same efficiency boost — and now find themselves being forced to either buy the technology from a rival, or shift to another supplier. Lert says there aren't any warehouse systems closely comparable to Kiva, though companies like Dematic and Swisslog sell somewhat similar technology.
I called every customer that Kiva had announced prior to the Amazon acquisition, but none wanted to comment on the record, beyond confirming that they use Kiva robots in their warehouses.
"I think they're in a delicate position," says Lert, referring to Kiva's early customers. "They need support, maintenance, and replacement parts, and they're dealing with Amazon as their supplier, whom they also compete with. If I were in their shoes, I would be reluctant to tick off Amazon, too."
I did talk to one Kiva customer, only on the condition that I not use his name or company. He said Amazon would continue to support the systems he'd installed for several years, but added, "I'm planning now for life without Kiva."
Scott Kirsner can be reached at email@example.com. Follow him on Twitter @ScottKirsner.


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OCEAN CITY – The City Council unanimously denied a request from a first-time beach stand bidder to withdrawal his successful bid for a downtown parcel and return his 20 percent deposit, citing that the town is not responsible for bad bid decisions.
City Clerk Carol Jacobs presented the request this week, citing inexperience as the reason for the first-time bidders high bid for an unpopular downtown parcel.
The south-end beach parcels were bid in December, with three parcels re-bid in February. John Robinson, of Ambler, PA, a first-time bidder in Ocean City, was the successful bidder for the 11th Street parcel. Robinson bid a high price of $7,001 for the parcel, which was well above other bidders. The second highest bid was just $800.
Subsequently, Robinson requested a withdrawal of his bid as well as the return of his 20 percent deposit, citing personal reasons as the cause for his change of heart.
Jacobs reported to the Mayor and Council that a few beach stand operators informed her that the 11th Street parcel is difficult to operate.
"I can only tell you what's been told to me," she said, noting that she did not know why the parcel was unpopular or why the street was described as having a "difficult customer base."
"He bid too much and now he wants out," said Councilman Jim Hall.
Hall made a motion that the council deny Robinson's request for withdrawal. The denial would result in an acceptance of Robinson's original bid. If Robinson still chooses to not go forward with the beach stand rental, he will be subject to a debarment hearing before the town.
"It just ruins the bidding process," said Hall, explaining that the town cannot be held responsible for poor bids.
"How would Mr. Robinson bid almost 10 times the amount?," questioned Councilwoman Mary Knight.
"I would have to say it was a lack of experience," Jacobs said.
Jacobs explained to the council that she was available to answer all of Robinson's questions. She also provided Robinson with information on past bids. Jacobs pointed out that Robinson bid well below other bids for the 26th Street parcel.
"He had access to all of the information he needed to make a good bid and he didn't," said Knight, seconding the motion.
The council voted unanimously to deny the request for withdrawal, to not return the 20 percent deposit and to ultimately accept Robinson's initial bid of $7,001.


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I have never been more proud of my career accomplishments than I am today. It has been said that the friends and foes accrued over a lifetime can be used as a measure of the man. Given the coalition of homophobes and hate groups that viciously attacked me today, I feel my life's work has been vindicated and validated.
When I woke up this morning, I was greeted with a pernicious press release headlined, "Family Groups Urge FOX NEWS to Stop Providing Unchallenged Prime Time to Agitator." The sub headline read: "Bill O'Reilly ignores repeated requests to drop SPLC's Wayne Besen from show." (Note: I don't work for SPLC. I am the founder of Truth Wins Out)
The letter/press release was signed by a who's who of anti-gay activists, many of whom have helped land their organizations on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups. Here is the All-Star line-up:
Mathew D. Staver, Founder and Chairman, Liberty Counsel
Sally Kern, Oklahoma State Representative
Diane Gramley, President, American Family Association of Pennsylvania
David Smith, Executive Director of the Illinois Family Institute
Laurie Higgins, Cultural Analyst for the Illinois Family Institute
Matt Barber, Vice President, Liberty Counsel Action
Denise Shick, Founder and Director, Help 4 Families
Regina Griggs, Executive Director, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX)
Arthur Abba Goldberg, J.D., Co-Director, Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH)
Greg Quinlan, President, Pro-Family Network of Ohio
John Kirkwood, Pastor, Grace Gospel Fellowship
Brian Camenker, Executive Director, MassResistance
Peter LaBarbera, President, AFTAH
Scott Lively, J.D., President, Defend the Family International
Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt, PhD, The Pray In Jesus Name Project
Linda Harvey, President, Mission America
First, I'd like to thank Bill O'Reilly and his producers for ignoring these fringe elements. Bill has invited me on periodically as a guest for more than a decade. While Bill and I have rarely agreed on the air, our exchanges have consistently been reasonable, rational, and respectful. Perhaps, this is why I have been invited back time and again. I applaud Bill and his staff for thinking for themselves and not being intimidated by activists who are well known for an ignoble history of indecency and intolerance. A motley crew that has sullied the nation's discourse and lowered the tenor of the debate in America.
Second, it is rich to see these alleged defenders of liberty and freedom begging FOX to censor a point of view in which they find objectionable. The hypocrisy of these individuals and groups is stunning and reveals that they embrace "free speech" as little more than political buzzwords employed for tactical advantage. This effort to silence diverse points of views is disappointing and stands in stark contrast to the America I grew up in and love.
Third, it is improper, if not a tad unseemly, for this group to cravenly exploit the tragic shooting that occurred last week at the Family Research Council. Truth Wins Out might have been the first non-profit organization in the nation to respond to the incident, immediately releasing the following statement:
"This is an awful tragedy and our thoughts and hearts go out to the victim, his family, and his colleagues at the Family Research Council," said Truth Wins Out's Executive Director Wayne Besen. "In America we settle political differences through robust debate in the public square, not with violence. If the shooting is found to be politically motivated, it is a detestable act of cruelty and cowardice and the perpetrator should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. We stand squarely with the Family Research Council today and offer them our full support and prayers." (Additionally we signed onto an LGBT community statement and issued a press release)
It deeply saddens me that anyone would use this awful situation as an occasion to sow further division and engage in unbecoming personal attacks. This is a time when we should all come together in the spirit of unity and not try to capitalize off this tragedy or score cheap political points.
Fourth, it was quite revealing that these activists would falsely accuse me of "demonizing conservative organizations and individuals" while asking their supporters to write to them at the e-mail address: firstname.lastname@example.com. According to Wikipedia:
In modern popular culture, 666 has become one of the most widely recognized symbols for the Antichrist or, alternatively, the Devil. The number 666 is reportedly used to invoke Lucifer (Satan) the dark spirit of seething rage.
The press release ends with the signers saying: "words have consequences. Yes, they do. And Besen's may lead to violence." There appears to be a serious disconnect when these activists make such unverifiable claims but are unable to comprehend that equating LGBT advocates with the devil might place them and their families at an elevated risk.
This is not the first time I have been literally demonized by the organization Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX), who spearheaded the press release and letter to FOX News. The group's former webmaster used his computer to manipulate my facial features so they would appear demonic. A former PFOX board member photoshopped a Hitler mustache onto my face, even though I am Jewish.
And these activists want to be portrayed as the voice of reason and restraint?
Fifth, one must ask why the signers are genuinely upset and want to silence me with a smear campaign?
The reason: Because I have consistently challenged their propaganda campaigns, exposed their lies, publicly taken them to task, helped undermine the so-called "ex-gay" myth that they promote, and even destroyed some of their careers. If anything the level of vitriol they displayed highlights the effectiveness of Truth Wins Out and our ability to strategically frustrate the goals of our adversaries.
I think it would be instructive to now take a closer look at whom these activists making such crude and unsubstantiated charges truly are:
Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern is the most prominent signer of the letter. In a March 2008 speech Kern said that homosexuality was a bigger threat to America than terrorism:
"Studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it's the death knell of this country. I honestly think it's the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat… If you got cancer or something in your little toe, do you say, well, you know, I'm just going to forget about it because the rest of me is fine? It spreads. OK? And this stuff is deadly, and it's spreading, and it will destroy our young people, it will destroy this nation."
Kern's views on other minorities are no more enlightened. Here is what she said during a debate in April 2011 regarding African Americans:
"We have a high percentage of blacks in prison, and that's tragic, but are they in prison just because they are black or because they don't want to study as hard in school? I've taught school, and I saw a lot of people of color who didn't study hard because they said the government would take care of them."
Kern's opinion of women isn't much better, with this statement coming from the same debate:
"Women usually don't want to work as hard as a man… women tend to think a little bit more about their family, wanting to be at home more time, wanting to have a little more leisure time."
It is quite clear to me that those who signed this letter must concur with Kern or they would not have elected to include her in the original draft. They are entitled to their opinion, for sure, but it's a bit ironic that they are masquerading as paragons of civility and tolerance.
Scott Lively is a holocaust revisionist and one of America's most spiteful anti-gay activists. He is the co-author of an incendiary, intellectually bankrupt, and historically inaccurate propaganda book, The Pink Swastika, which blames Nazism on LGBT people. According to the Lively's description of his book:
"The Pink Swastika will show that there was far more brutality, torture, and murder committed against innocent people by Nazi deviants and homosexuals than there ever was against homosexuals."
Lively has repeatedly compared homosexuality to pedophilia and demonizes advocates for LGBT equality:
"Even though probably the majority of homosexuals are not oriented towards young people, there is a significant number that are, especially the men…male homosexuality has historically been not adult to adult it has been adult to teenager"
"The gay movement is an evil institution that's goal is to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity in which there's no restrictions on sexual conduct except the principle of mutual choice."
Lively is currently being sued by a Ugandan gay rights group in federal court in Massachusetts, alleging that he violated international law by inciting the persecution of gay men and lesbians in Uganda. According to the New York Times:
The lawsuit maintains that beginning in 2002, Mr. Lively conspired with religious and political leaders in Uganda to whip up anti-gay hysteria with warnings that gay people would sodomize African children and corrupt their culture.
Lively's decision to join this unprecedented personal attack probably has to do with the fact that I openly challenged him on his misinformation at a church seminar he gave a few months ago in Oklahoma City. He was visibly flustered by my efforts and I eventually had to leave the church after his followers became testy.
I wasn't stunned that Linda Harvey was on the list considering that she may be the most homophobic woman in America. In one of her columns, she warned mothers about the alleged "threat" of openly gay doctors and nurses treating their children.
"There are a few homosexual doctors treating kids, there are far more nurses, LPNs, technicians and other health care workers in these lifestyles so you may want to consider writing a letter that you file with your pediatrician that should your child ever be hospitalized, you do not want your child to be treated or cared for by one of these members of the Children's Hospital gay employees group except in the case of an emergency situation."
Harvey is also opposed to openly LGBT schoolteachers and claimed on her website that, "These teachers then become role models, in-house activists, and possible confidants for students who want to start homosexual behavior. Student molestation becomes a real risk."
Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt is likely upset with me because he recently humiliated himself in a debate we had on The David Pakman Show. During the episode, he claimed that he could "cure" LGBT people by giving them exorcisms.
Peter LaBarbera once awarded me his "Gay Grinch" award. He's angry because I dubbed him "Porno Pete" – a nickname that has stuck and defined his bizarre advocacy. Why the label? Because LaBarbera is best known for infiltrating gay male leather events and surreptitiously photographing naked men and posting the pictures on the Internet. He then claims that he is "exposing" the "homosexual lifestyle." Of course, such activism is the equivalent of a gay person secretly recording revelers at Mardi Gras and Spring Break and politicizing the material as the "heterosexual lifestyle." LaBarbera's entire purpose in life, it seems, is to grossly distort the reality of LGBT people.
Perhaps, Arthur Abba Goldberg holds a grudge because I ruined his career. In a joint investigation with South Florida Gay News, we revealed that Goldberg was an ex-con who went to prison for defrauding investors when he worked on Wall Street. The moment his parole ended, he formed his latest scam, the Jewish "ex-gay" organization JONAH, which has been accused of sexual impropriety – which TWO also uncovered.
Here is some of the sage advice Goldberg dispenses to JONAH members:
"By the way, did you notice that a lot of gays who remain in the gay lifestyle also do a lot of body building. They will be in the gym a lot trying to build up their pecs…Because they have these body image issues and don't feel they are masculine enough."
The Liberty Council's Matt Barber is a vulgar individual and regularly hurls insults at the LGBT community. According to Barber:
"It boils down to this: there is nothing 'conservative' about one man violently cramming his penis into another man's lower intestine and calling it 'love.' Or two women awkwardly mimicking natural procreative relations or raising a child together in an intentionally fatherless home."
Barber's cohort at Liberty, Matt Staver, was just hit with a civil RICO lawsuit alleging that he may have played a role in helping Lisa Miller kidnap her daughter and leave the country.
Finally, Greg Quinlan has been personally attacking and outright lying about me for more than a decade. His rhetoric includes referring to gay people as "flaming faggots." Last year, I sued his organization, PFOX, after Quinlan fabricated a story, saying – with no evidence — that I had ordered people to murder him.
Clearly, the over-the-top rhetoric coming from the individuals who signed this letter speaks for itself and they do not practice what they preach. They will do and say virtually anything to slime opponents who expose their misinformation and misdeeds.
There are 15 anti-gay activists who signed onto today's letter representing some of the most homophobic individuals in the nation. Please consider giving Truth Wins Out $1 for each person who signed – for a tax-deductible contribution of $15 (or more). If we've upset an A-list of America's most notorious anti-gay activists, we must be doing something right.


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Executive Director and UN Secretary-General meet with Hillary Rodham Clinton
(New York) UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka met today with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and former United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. They discussed gender equality and women's empowerment in the context of several current global processes such as the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, the formulation of the post-2015 development agenda and the acceleration of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Read the Secretary-General's "Off the Cuff" remarks on that occasion »
Watch the archived webcast


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Mars Curiosity Takes First Baby Steps (w/ Video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Like proud parents, mission team members gathered in a gallery above a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the Mars Curiosity rover roll for the first time.
Engineers and technicians wore "bunny suits" while guiding Curiosity through its first steps, or more precisely, its first roll on the clean room floor. The rover moved forward and backward about 1 meter (3.3 feet).
Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) is scheduled to launch in fall 2011 and land on the Red Planet in August 2012.
Curiosity is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It will carry 10 instruments that will help search an intriguing region of the Red Planet for two things:
1. Environments where life might have existed
2. The capacity of those environments to preserve evidence of past life
More information: Learn more about Curiosity at mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/
Provided by JPL/NASA


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As a gay dad, I have heard the words a thousand times. "A child is better off with both a mother and a father." The statement always baffles me. Certainly, no two sets of parents of any make up are identically equipped, so is the theory that any opposite sex parents are better than any same sex parents?
The anti-gays claim that to be the case. Right wing spokespeople have gone so far as to declare that even orphanages are superior to same sex parents. The Catholic Church has previously declared that same sex parents were doing "violence" to the children in their care.
I don't believe my life supports the concept. I have two sons. Each was born to a heterosexual couple and due to personal issues, each of them would have died had they remained with their birth parents. That is not conjecture, that is fact.
Drug addiction plagued all four of my sons' birth parents. With the life I was able to give them, my sons are happy, healthy well adjusted eleven year old boys.
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Sadly, in the most devastating of ways, a couple of mothers in Iowa will have no such happy ending. Rachel and Heidi McFarland had a baby boy named Gabriel since his birth. Within days of when the adoption was to finalize, the sixteen year old birth mother changed her mind. Rachel and Heidi became what the Des Moines Register called "former adoptive parents ".
I know the taste of that crushing and painful experience. On the road to adopting my two sons, there were periods of time when one of each of their adoptions were called into question. Should I have lost either of them, I would have dearly wanted to believe that the child I was losing was going to the possibility of a good and happy life, even if I was not privileged to be his parent. In my loss, the love I felt for my child would have placed him first beyond my own desires.
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"We had been scrutinized, our life style has been scrutinized, the people in our lives have been scrutinized, we had to have letters of reference for this home study, to make sure we were…adequate as parents.." said Rachel, " And, they never had to have anything when they took him back."
Little boy Gabriel went back to the "a child is better off with a mother and a father" ideal, to two teenagers. It was under a teen boy's care, while the birth teen mom was running errands, that Gabriel lost his life. He was alone when he was found.
His moms heard about his death… by listening to the news.
Gabriel did not die because his moms were lesbian. His death was not the byproduct of homophobia. His fate was not because of a violation of any legal custody issues. His story is bigger than any of that. His story is about love, sacrifice and the true meaning of being a parent. His story is one that brings the bigoted preconceived notions around same sex parenting to its knees.
When I heard the story of Rachel and Heidi, I wept over what had happened to them. This is my letter from a dad to two moms.
Dear Rachel and Heidi,
I will not pretend that I know what you are going through. Even though I possess the over abiding love for my two sons, and a distant but constant fear that something bad could ever happen to them, I have never experienced the pain I can only imagine you feel today.
You are both such magnificent women, and you have experienced what is arguably life's most ultimate loss. I wish I could say that my note here was one to cheer you, or even give you comfort. Sadly, it is not.
This is a note that validates your pain, anguish, horror and sorrow. There are those in this world who see you as bystanders, mere caretakers who were there for a few months and then cut loose. I know the truth. You are mothers who have lost a great and significant love. You lost Gabriel, in a deeper, more profound way than anyone else.
You were the parents who held the hope and promise for a little boy, and he was blessed by your wonderful glow. Life is precious and fragile, and the disastrous events that happened were made possible by just a few childish decisions by two people who had no business being parents at all. Again, we, the world, need to see that procreating a human child and being his parent are not one and the same thing.
I desperately wish I could make this better for you. I want that I could have that kind of power, because this is exactly a situation in which I would use it. But, I don't and I can't . You are in my thoughts and prayer. I put out the hope that the love you have within your family can carry you through this loss, and eventually deliver your next child, who will be so fortunate and blessed to have you.
Your little Gabriel was born deaf in one ear. You fitted him for a hearing aide. There was a fear he might become entirely deaf. You both started to learn sign language.
In the end, there was no one in your family that was hard of hearing. It was the world. The world did not recognize that a love and dedication strong enough to put your child before your own needs earned you the right to motherhood. This is your tragedy and loss,. You gave our world clarity. You have defined true parenting more clearly than it has been understood before.
I fill my heart with love and solidarity. You are not "former", you are not "adoptive". You are real moms in every way that counts.
In a few weeks, it will be Mothers Day. On that day, I will buy two roses to honor you. I will look on them and think of you, as you are: Gabriel's Moms, now and forever.


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One reality of life is that the older a person gets, the more money they spend on medical care. The United States government understands this monetary crunch on its elderly citizens, and also the spouses of those citizens, and established the Medicare program in July of 1965.
Getting Started with Medicare
Medicare enrollment is open to individuals who qualify under one of the following categories:
- Individuals that are at least 65 years of age.
- People below the age of 65 who struggle with certain disabilities.
- Individuals with End-Stage Renal Disease, a chronic failure of the kidneys that necessitates dialysis or organ transplants.
The Initial Window
In normal cases, a person can sign up for Part A and Part B of Medicare up to three months before they turn 65 years old. Medicare's many parts will be covered further in this article. Generally speaking, the "Initial Enrollment Period" begins 3 months before the month a person turns age 65 and extends to three months after that month, enrolling later than this period tends to incur a penalty. Beyond the IEP, general enrollment opens up from January to March of each year.
In cases where a Medicare recipient is suffering from ESRD, they can begin enjoying Medicare assistance starting on the fourth month of their need for dialysis or, in the case of a kidney transplant within a two-month timeframe, the window changes to the first day of admission into a Medicare-certified facility. It is also worth mentioning that dialysis patients can receive retroactive coverage for up to 12 months, even if they do not initially file for Medicare eligibility.
When Does Medicare's Coverage Start Assisting with Costs?
There are two possible answers to this question and the difference is entirely dependent upon when you initially signed up for the program.
- If qualifying for Premium-Free Part A, coverage begins on the month of your 65th birthday, unless it falls on the first day of that month, these special cases begin enjoying coverage a month before their birth month.
- Individuals qualified for Part B can begin enjoying coverage either on their birth month if they enrolled during the three months before turning 65, or the month after their birth month if they signed up during the IEP after turning 65.
Breaking Down the Parts
Despite being referred to as a single entity, Medicare is an umbrella of services that is broadly divided into four parts. Each of these parts is relevant to a specific subsection of medical care and treatment.
Medicare Part A
This section of Medicare is synonymous with hospital insurance. If you need assistance paying for staying in a hospital, receiving care at a qualified nursing facility, hospice care, or certain forms of home health care, Part A is the relevant division of Medicare for you. It should be mentioned that Part A carries no monthly premium if you enroll on time.
Medicare Part B
This section is relevant to medical insurance. A short list of the charges that this portion of Medicare can assist enrollees with includes doctor bills, outpatient medical care, the purchase of medical supplies, like catheters and insulin, and preventative services. Unlike Part A, everyone pays a monthly premium for Part B.
Medicare Part C
This specific subsection is sometimes called an MA Plan and it is a health plan that comes from a Medicare-certifies third party operating within the private sector. These "Medicare Advantage" plans, also known as "Medigap" policies, entail Part A and Part B but often cover even more than those programs on their own.
Medicare Part D
This is the simplest part of the Medicare program to understand and governs prescriptions and most commonly recommend shots/vaccines.
Original Medicare vs Medicare Advantage (Part C)
Medicare gives you plenty of options regarding your coverage, beginning with the two choices you have to make upon enrollment.
Original Medicare
This program covers Part A and Part B. Services are paid for as they are received based on an annual deductible that is usually 1/5 of the cost of the service, known as coinsurance. Part D does not come part and parcel with original Medicare and must be added separately. While Medicare can cover a lot of payments, there are some gaps in that coverage that may require looking into a Medigap policy to fill. Medigap policies can vary a great deal, like providing coverage for emergency care while traveling abroad.
Medicare Advantage
As briefly discussed in an earlier section on the parts of Medicare, Medicare Advantage is a health plan that bundles Part A, Part B, and often Part D. These plans are highly dependent on the individual company but most cover services that Original Medicare ignores, like dental, hearing, and vision care. These sorts of health plans have annual contracts with Medicare and must abide by all rules regarding Medicare coverage. Furthermore, you must be notified about any changes your plan may undergo before enrolling in the following year.
More on Part D
Medicare drug coverage assists in paying for prescriptions but only if your plan is approved by Medicare and offers drug coverage. Every plan can vary in cost and what drugs it will cover but the bare minimum is the standard coverage of Medicare. Medicare drug coverage handles both generic and branded drugs and these plans can alter the list of prescriptions they will handle, known as a "formulary. These formularies help to determine what "tier" of drugs a given prescription is considered. Medicare drug plans can have different monthly premiums and the amount you pay for each drug is entirely dependent on your plan's tiers and formularies.


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This is big.
A new study by online sharing tool Shareaholic has found that Pinterest now drives more referral traffic than Twitter. Again, when it comes to referral traffic, Pinterest > Twitter.
The data is based on analytics from 200,000 publishers which reach approximately 270 million unique visitors a month.
Now, it was big news back in February when Pinterest surpassed Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined in referral traffic, but Twitter has made a name for itself as the de facto sharing network with URL shorteners abounding and real-time, concise flow of information.
Still, Pinterest closed the gap within the last month going from a .85 percent share of referral traffic visits to 1.05 percent from January to February. The social pinboard site is now trailing behind Facebook and StumbleUpon. And remember, Pinterest is still invite only.


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On September 28, 1901, Ed Sullivan, who will become the host of the long-running TV variety program The Ed Sullivan Show, is born in New York City. During the peak of its popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, Sullivan's program showcased a wide range of entertainers, including Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Rudolf Nureyev, Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope.
Sullivan worked as a newspaper reporter and columnist in New York during the 1920s and 1930s and also hosted and produced vaudeville shows and benefits. In 1948, he became the master of ceremonies of a weekly TV variety show dubbed Toast of the Town. In 1955, the program, which aired Sunday nights on CBS, was renamed The Ed Sullivan Show. Although Sullivan was often awkward and self-conscious on camera, he was a hit with audiences and his program had broad appeal. In addition to big-name entertainers, the show featured animal acts, athletes, comedians, dancers and opera singers, along with such regulars as Topo Gigio, a mouse puppet with an Italian accent, and a ventriloquist named Senor Wences.
Notable moments in the history of The Ed Sullivan Show include its broadcast on January 6, 1957, when Elvis Presley appeared on the program and the cameras shot him from the waist up because his gyrating hips were considered too scandalous for family television. On February 9, 1964, more than 70 million viewers tuned in to the show for the American TV debut of the Liverpool-based rock quartet The Beatles.
Sullivan was also notable for featuring African American performers on his program. According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications: "At a time when virtually all sponsors balked at permitting black performers to take the stage, Sullivan embraced Pearl Bailey over the objections of his sponsors. He also showcased black entertainers as diverse as Nat 'King' Cole, Leontyne Price, Louis Armstrong, George Kirby, Richard Pryor, Duke Ellington, Richie Havens and the Supremes."
The Ed Sullivan Show was cancelled in 1971. Sullivan died of cancer at the age of 73 on October 13, 1974. In 1967, CBS renamed the Billy Rose Theater, from which Sullivan broadcast his show, the Ed Sullivan Theater. David Letterman hosted his late-night talk show from the Ed Sullivan Theater, which is located at Broadway and 53rd Street in Manhattan.