The Historical Review Press

We are the world's leading publisher of revisionist and hard-to-find political material -- serving the truth and fearing no-one! Visit our home website here!

Search This Blog

Wednesday 27 November 2013

Israel demands family pays for house demolition

The Israeli authorities have demanded that a Palestinian family who were evicted from their house before it was demolished now pays for removing the wreckage.
by Kuzey News Agency 

When Israeli bulldozers arrived in front of Ayman Said Kerrish's home, Israeli officers woke him up and instructed him to leave his home within five minutes. This stirred a wave of protests and anger in other parts of the world, but it has become a daily routine for Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem, which is the capital of the Palestinian State.
Kerrish and his family were left homeless and helpless in just five minutes and were not able to stop the cruel Israeli officers who were determined to tear down the house. The only things they possess now are the pajamas they were wearing as they fled their home.

“They came very early in the morning. There were 40-50 police officers and some troops from border units. Although we had not received any early warning about our house being demolished, they came here and start to destroy the house. We begged them to give us some time to take some valuable possessions,” he said, telling the incident to TRT TURK
.
After several days of demolishing, Ayman’s little girl Nura still runs away from her father’s arms to the broken house that has a special meaning in her memory. There were 6 floors in the house where Ayman Kerrish lived, with his brother and other family members in four of them. But now this crowded Palestinian family must stay in a tent given by the Red Crescent in front of their destroyed house.

This tragic story is not unique for the Kerrish family. Israel will continue to illegally destroy Palestinian houses to make way for new Jewish settlements. Facing an economic bottleneck, the Palestinian authority is unable to provide sufficient aid to victims of Israeli brutality. The Kerrish family is working to get some legal consultancy from a Norwegian NGO.

The lawlessness embraced by the Israeli authorities with their indifferent stance towards international rules worsen the situation of Palestinian victims who do not know what the future holds for them. Noting that the Israeli goal is to put pressure on Palestinians to leave their lands, Kerrish said, “We do not know what will happen to us. They claimed our house without a license and destroyed it. But we did not rent this house, we bought it. How can they throw us out of a house without compensation?”

Instead of getting compensation for the injustice implemented by the Israeli officers, the Jewish authority demanded the family pays the cost of removing the wreckage. “What kind of justice is this? The laws are just on the paper. Their intention is clear to make Palestinians leave Jerusalem,” he cried out.


Friday 1 November 2013

Erich Priebke's real crime: his revisionism?

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Robert Faurisson - The Unofficial Blog

Captain Erich Priebke was in Rome in 1944 when thirty of his comrades in arms were cowardly murdered, blown up by a bomb planted in via Rasella by Communist-led partisans. Another hundred of his comrades in arms were wounded by the same bomb, a large number of them permanently blinded. He was especially disturbed on learning that an eleven-year-old Italian boy had also been killed, his body cut in two by the blast. So, just a minute: what man, what woman, in such circumstances, could keep a cool head? One may add that Priebke was among those who received the order from Berlin, transmitted by his superiors, to execute the following day, in reprisal, approximately ten men for each victim. A new horror after a first horror.
The Jewish, communist and other associations that yesterday took the initiative of organising loathsome acts of violence against the attempts to transport Priebke’s coffin to a church certainly had in mind the "crime" of which they accused him, but it may be asked whether in their eyes the real crime of the scapegoat was his revisionism (see his written interview of July 2013). At a time when, on the strictly historical and scientific level, the revisionists have won victory after victory, the panic overtaking enthusiasts of the "Holocaust" or "Shoah" religion is understandable. And the conditions required for Italy to adopt, in its turn, a special ad-hoc law against revisionism need to be created, do they not?

Source: http://robertfaurisson.blogspot.it/2013/10/erich-priebkes-real-crime-his.html

Monday 26 August 2013

Russian Deputy of the Duma says Germany is just another US colony


Posted on 08/25/2013 by justice4germans

This is a translation of a recent video interview with Evgeny Fyodorov, Deputy of the Duma, and friend of Vladimir Putin, which one of my readers discovered and kindly translated. The video is in the original Russian language with Germans subtitles, and the English translation is added below:
  
English Translation:
Intro:

Evgeny Fyodorov, Deputy of the Duma, a friend of Vladimir Putin, and one of the most popular politicians in Russia, speaks about the American occupation of Germany, recorded on August 21st, 2013.

Q:  (statement) The Federal Republic of Germany rejects collaboration in the area of informational exchange with the US and EU states.

What do you think?  Will the FRG be punished by the USA?

A: Uhm, come on…. this is all lies. The FRG’s Intelligence Services have always been directly commanded by the US. We know that from many sources.
The German Military and Intelligence Generals laugh about the statements by Merkel!
Angela (Merkel) makes her patriotic statements, because of the federal elections coming up, because the German people expect that from her.

But the German people can demand whatever they want.  It won’t change the fact, that the German Intelligence Services and Military are only affiliates (of NATO etc) of the CIA and of the US Defense Ministry and nothing more.

This is the reason why German Intelligence and Military take shots at Merkel and her statements, since their positions and careers don’t depend on her, but rather, on the USA.

The German Generals and Intelligence chiefs are carefully selected and controlled, and their position depend on the Americans, and not on the Chancellor, nor on the German government.


Germany is just another US colony, like many other countries too.
By the way, there is a national liberation movement in Germany, like we have in Russia too.

And this German national liberation movement tries to publicly talk about these topics, such as German gold reserves stored abroad, the question of the sovereignty of the German people, and the rights of the self-contained administration of the German territory, and they are demanding the withdrawal of US occupation troops from Germany.

In contrast to Russia, Germany however,  is directly occupied by US troops, who are stationed there.

The USA has occupied Germany in 1945 and stationed their troops at many military bases, and we see today, the same military bases, and the same US troops in Germany, and so it doesn’t matter that these bases are renamed in “NATO bases” or simply as military bases.

Do you seriously think, that this has changed even the slightest bit in respect to Germany’s US occupation?

This is just ridiculous! The people who believe it are so naive!

Q  (Statement)  It is claimed, however, that Germany is a member of NATO and so,  for that reason, the US and British troops are stationed in Germany.

A: Of course they say that!  That is the task of US propaganda … to “sugar coat” the American occupation, and to display it to the Germans as a “nice” and “cozy” relationship.

But in reality, simple US occupation is behind it. And within NATO, Germany is treated as another US vassal state and is exploited.

There is a “master” in Washington, and there is the servant who was commanded by the master to become a NATO member!

And just like we see in the case of Mr. Snowden, Germany is a vassal state of the USA, and so all other statements by Merkel are a fiction … a lie!

http://justice4germans.com/2013/08/25/russian-deputy-of-the-duma-says-germany-is-just-another-us-colony/


Thursday 11 July 2013

Precise atomic clock may redefine time


Device lays the groundwork for a new second.
Philip Ball - 09 July 2013



The international definition of a second of time could be heading for a change, thanks to researchers who have demonstrated that an advanced type of ‘atomic clock’ has the degree of precision and stability needed to provide a new standard.


Under a blue laser light, a cloud of strontium atoms kept in a vacuum fluoresces at a characteristic wavelength, which could be used to redefine the second.

Jérôme Lodewyck of the Paris Observatory and his colleagues have shown that two so-called optical lattice clocks (OLCs) can remain as perfectly in step as experimental precision can establish1. They say that this test of consistency is essential if OLCs are to be used to redefine the second, which is currently defined according to a different type of atomic clock.

Christopher Oates, a specialist in atomic-clock time standards at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado, says that this is “very beautiful and careful work, which gives grounds for confidence in the optical lattice clock and in optical clocks generally”.

Since 1967, the second has been defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the microwave radiation absorbed or emitted when a caesium atom jumps between two particular energy states.

The most accurate way to measure this frequency at present is in an atomic fountain, in which a laser beam propels atoms in gasous caesium upwards. Emission from the atoms is probed as they pass twice through a microwave beam – once on the way up, and once as they fall back down under gravity.

Caesium atomic-fountain clocks are used to set national time standards at NIST, at the Paris Observatory and elsewhere.
The caesium fountain clock has an accuracy of about three parts in 10 quadrillion (3 × 10−16). This means that it will keep time to within one second over 100 million years. But some newer atomic clocks can do even better. Monitoring emission from individual ionized atoms trapped by an electromagnetic field can supply an accuracy of about 10−17.

Better timing

The clocks studied by Lodewyck and his colleagues are newer still: they were first demonstrated less than a decade ago2. Although they cannot yet beat the accuracy of trapped-ion clocks, they have been shown to be comparable to caesium fountain clocks, and some researchers are convinced that they will ultimately be the best of the lot.

There are two reasons for this. First, like trapped-ion clocks, they measure the frequency of visible light, with a frequency tens of thousands of times higher than that of microwaves. Second, they measure the average emission frequency from several thousand trapped atoms rather than just one, and so the measurement statistics are better. The atoms are trapped in an optical lattice, rather like an electromagnetic egg box for holding atoms.

If OLCs are to succeed, however, researchers must show that one such clock ticks at exactly the same rate as another prepared in an identical way. This is what Lodewyck and colleagues have shown. They prepared optical lattices that each held about 10,000 atoms of the isotope strontium-87, and have shown that the two clocks stay in synchrony to within a precision of at least 1.5 × 10−16, which is as accurately as the experiment could measure.

The team has also shown that their strontium OLCs can keep pace with all three of the caesium clocks at the Paris Observatory, to an accuracy dictated only by the fundamental limit on the caesium clocks themselves.

Better atomic clocks would be a boon to basic science. For example, physicists could use such clocks to investigate whether some of nature’s fundamental constants change over time, as some theories predict.
Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2013.13363

References

1.
Le Targat, R. et al. Nature Comms. 4, 2109 (2013).
Jérôme Lodewyck of the Paris Observatory and his colleagues have shown that two so-called optical lattice clocks (OLCs) can remain as perfectly in step as experimental precision can establish1

2.
Takamoto, M., Hong, F.-L., Higashi, R. & Katori, H. Nature 435, 321–324 (2005).
The clocks studied by Lodewyck and his colleagues are newer still: they were first demonstrated less than a decade ago2…

Source:-   http://www.nature.com/news/precise-atomic-clock-may-redefine-time-1.13363#/ref-link-1    

Saturday 15 June 2013

For Belgium's Tormented Souls, Euthanasia-Made-Easy Beckons


PUTTE, Belgium—In this small village amid an array of Flemish farms, they were an unusual but seemingly happy pair, two 43-year-olds who were identical, deaf twins. Townspeople recalled seeing Marc and Eddy Verbessem around town frequently, talking animatedly in sign language together, tooling around in a small blue car, and regularly buying two copies of a popular gossip magazine.
No one expected them to decide to die on purpose.
For Belgium's Tormented Souls, Euthanasia-Made-Easy Beckons

According to their doctor, the twins had developed a genetic disorder that was making them blind, and several years ago they began pressuring him to put them to death. Even in Belgium, with its decade-old euthanasia law, the request was striking, since the twins were relatively young and not terminally ill. But their doctor says that as their condition worsened and threatened their independence, they would hand him envelopes containing a blunt request for euthanasia—and, for good measure, a list of symptoms they said were making their lives unbearable.

The twins' ordeal wasn't publicly known at the time, but their request—and its fulfillment last December—highlights an emotional battle over expanding Belgium's euthanasia law, and is reverberating in the end-of-life debate in the U.S.

On Dec. 14, Marc and Eddy, after a long legal and medical journey, met their doctors and family in a Brussels hospital, according to their doctor. They enjoyed a final cup of coffee and lay down in adjoining beds, where a chaplain said a prayer. Then they waved to their family, pointed up as if to say "see you on the other side," received their injections, and were gone.

Belgium adopted euthanasia in 2002, a year after neighboring Holland, with the goal of helping incurably ill patients escape "unbearable physical or mental suffering." It has become widely accepted; in 2011, the last year for which numbers are available, 1,133 Belgians had euthanasia requests approved, up about five fold from the first full year after the law was passed. Euthanasia accounts for about 1% of all deaths in Belgium.

The Belgian parliament is now considering expanding euthanasia in ways that many Americans might find startling. Under one proposal, gravely ill teenagers could seek euthanasia, if their parents agreed.

Another bill would let patients with early Alzheimer's sign a declaration asking to have their life ended when a doctor concludes they're no longer interacting with the outside world, even if they seem vigorous and happy at the time. Now, patients must be lucid to request euthanasia, which is generally carried out soon after.

The twins' case, along with those proposals, is playing into the end-of-life debate in the U.S., as American opponents of assisted suicide warn that America could end up like Belgium. Critics say Marc and Eddy's case shows how aid-in-dying laws invariably expand their reach.

"It's a deep worldview if you accept that life isn't necessarily a good and death isn't necessarily a bad," said John Brehany, executive director of the U.S. Catholic Medical Association, which advocates against assisted suicide. "A lot of people in the world aren't happy, and if death is one more option we lay out for them the world will look like a very different place."

But many Europeans see euthanasia as highly compassionate, a way for individuals to control their fate and even a matter of human rights. "This law should serve as an example for countries who have not been able to agree on a suitable framework for this delicate issue," David Dufour, the twins' family doctor. He discussed the Verbessem case via email.

In the U.S., four states—Oregon, Washington and Montana and Vermont—allow assisted suicide, while several others are considering it. Assisted suicide differs from euthanasia in that the patient himself, not a doctor, administers the lethal dose. That is crucial for many Americans, and polls suggest U.S. voters are more open to assisted suicide than euthanasia, though opponents claim one can lead to the other. Still, the battle on both sides is heating up. The Vermont legislature just enacted its assisted-suicide law, while Massachusetts voters defeated a version last November.

The debate is part of an intensifying discussion, at once public and highly personal, of end-of-life issues, due partly to the aging baby boom generation and partly to technological advances that can prolong life. From cremation to living wills, Americans are grappling more directly with how to die.

One U.S. group spreads the word on how patients who want to can use plastic hoods to die.
.
One U.S. group pushing the limits is Final Exit Network, a New Jersey-based nonprofit that spreads the word on how to assemble a homemade "exit bag"—a plastic hood that fits over the head and is fed by helium, resulting in a quick death. The group even supplies "exit guides" who have witnessed about 350 suicides so far, the group estimates.

Rita Marker, executive director of the Ohio-based Patients Rights Council, which opposes assisted suicide, says Final Exit volunteers essentially invite people to kill themselves. "A lot of times vulnerable people fall for this sort of thing," she said. "It's ghoulish."

Frank Kavanaugh, a Final Exit board member, denies that. He also rejects a charge from critics that "exit guides" prevent people from removing the hoods if they have last-minute doubts. "We do not as a matter of policy hold down a person's hands to keep them from taking off the hood," Mr. Kavanaugh said. "We often hold their hand, if they wish, as a matter of compassion."

The end-of-life debate has become global, with euthanasia defining one end of it. Luxembourg in 2008 joined Belgium and the Netherlands in allowing euthanasia. In France, a medical panel recently approved the practice, paving the way for possible legislation. Switzerland allows assisted suicide, and its Dignitas clinic outside Zurich has become a destination for those seeking death.

The subject is also entering the broader culture in the U.S. and world-wide. The BBC recently commissioned a series called "Way to Go," which it described as "a black comedy about three ordinary guys who find themselves forced by an extraordinary set of circumstances into setting up an assisted-suicide business."

When her Alzheimer's worsens, Gerda Windgasse, 72, wants to die this way, too.
.
In Belgium, euthanasia's foothold is illustrated by Gerda Windgasse, 72, a bubbly retired secretary who's planning to end her life in the coming years. She has a still-mild case of Alzheimer's, and when she decides she has deteriorated enough, she intends to gather her family and receive a lethal injection.

"My life was good, but I don't want to make it two years longer if my mind is not there," Ms. Windgasse said in an interview at her modern-style home in the prosperous town of Oud-Turnhout. "When I don't recognize my husband or my kids or grandchildren, I don't want that."

When Ms. Windgasse was diagnosed in 2002, her doctor said he'd never euthanize her because of his Catholic beliefs, prompting her to seek another physician. "When I found a doctor who could help me with euthanasia, tears came down, I was so happy," she said. Knowing she can end her life before losing her dignity, she said, "makes me feel free, like I can fly."

That new doctor is Peter De Deyn, a white-bearded bear of a man who's a neuropsychiatrist at the University of Antwerp. He estimates he has euthanized about 20 patients with dementia, plus more with other conditions.

Dr. De Deyn rejects the notion, prevalent especially in the U.S., that patients can get bullied into euthanasia by doctors or family members. He said euthanasia is only performed on those who desperately want it.

"It's something they are looking forward to," Dr. De Deyn said. "That sounds paradoxical, but it is the only way to step out in a dignified manner, having control over their life and death, and they see it as a kind of party. They are surrounded by loved ones, they sing songs sometimes. It's very, very strange."

Dr. De Deyn has told Ms. Windgasse he will euthanize her when she's ready. On a recent afternoon, she and her husband Karel Broeckx opened a black binder to show the declaration she has signed saying she can be euthanized if she falls into a coma.

But Ms. Windgasse hopes to end her life while she's lucid, and her husband says he won't fight that. "There is no doubt I will accept the decision," Mr. Broeckx said. "It's out of love for her that I couldn't stand the full decline of her personality."

More complicated is the question of whether to invite their granddaughters Laura and Amber, ages 12 and 10, to the event. "I often think, 'Why not with the grandchildren?' " Mr. Broeckx said during the interview. Ms. Windgasse protested, "They're too young." Mr. Broeckx replied, "I have my doubts about that. I saw my own grandfather die…It can be a beautiful moment."

Earlier this month, Christian de Duve, a Belgian Nobel laureate in medicine, was euthanized at his home at age 95 after various health problems. Such prominent cases can spur a greater interest in euthanasia in the country, as happened after the 2008 death of Hugo Claus, a well-known Belgian writer.

Now the Belgian senate is debating whether to expand the law. One of the most controversial proposals would let severely ill, suffering minors request euthanasia, if a psychiatrist finds they have a "capacity for discernment" and if their parents agree.

The Catholic Church, among others, fiercely objects to that. "Minors are…considered legally incapable of certain acts, for example buying or selling, marrying, and so on," Msgr. Andre-Joseph Leonard, archbishop of Brussels, told reporters recently. "And here all of a sudden, they're sufficiently mature in the eyes of the law to ask someone to take their lives?"

Ms. Marker, of the Patients Rights Council, said such proposals highlight the perils of aid-in-dying provisions, including assisted suicide laws. "This presents a really good lesson for those in U.S. considering this," she said. "If it is a good medical treatment to end suffering, why deny it to a 3-year old, a 5-year-old, an 8-year-old?"

Assisted-suicide advocates say history disproves such slippery-slope arguments; Oregon, they say, has never moved to expand its law, despite allowing assisted suicide since 1997. In all, 1,050 Oregon patients have receive lethal prescriptions since 1998, a number that is rising but, on a per capita basis in the state, is far lower than that in Belgium.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323463704578495102975991248.html?mod=trending_now_4

Sunday 19 May 2013

Jewish Wealth by the Numbers

 

Jewish Wealth by the Numbers
by Steve Sailer

May 01, 2013

Americans can learn much from Israel. It’s an increasingly prosperous nation that grapples manfully with its problems. For example, when the Israelis put up a fence along the border to keep out illegal aliens (or “illegal infiltrators,” as the Israeli government calls them), they put up a fence.
 
I especially admire how Israelis enjoy what might be called “effective freedom of speech.” While I treasure the legal protections provided by the First Amendment, the increasing tendency of Americans to pass up moneymaking opportunities that might be deemed “controversial” makes America duller and dumber.
In contrast to America, in Israel you can, say, go see the latest Mel Gibson action flick in a movie theater.
Why? Don’t Israelis know that Gibson is controversial?
The Israeli attitude, however, is: Why not? If some people in Tel Aviv will pay good shekels to see Gibson’s Get the Gringo, then somebody else in Tel Aviv will charge them to show it.
Similarly, in Israel, you can write openly about one of the more interesting and important subjects of our era: Jewish wealth. For instance, the Israeli-American centrist think tank Jewish People Policy Institute reported in 2010: “World Jewry today is at a historical zenith of absolute wealth creation.”
Forbes Israel, the Tel Aviv offshoot of the American business magazine, has a cover story on Jewish billionaires. The Israeli edition has made up a list, drawn from Forbes‘s overall ranking of the world’s 1,426 billionaires, of the 165 richest Jews in the world.
“Per capita, Jews are a little over 100 times more likely to become billionaires than the rest of the human race.”
The billionaire on the cover is cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. His $3.6 billion makes him, according to Forbes Israel, the world’s 69th richest Jew. (By the way, Lauder has one of those rare New York City concealed-carry permits.)
In America, this just isn’t done in the mainstream media, even though it’s obvious and fairly easy to do.
Sure, Forbes has been publishing its rankings of rich people for three decades.
Moreover, counting by ethnicity is something that the government, corporations, and foundations have been doing assiduously since the late 1960s.
And these days, it’s easy to look up most well-known individuals’ ethnicity on the Internet. Wikipedia, for example, usually states the subject’s ancestry immediately after the table of contents. (That reflects a major change in our culture’s emphasis. At bedtime, I often browse in my 1971 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Biographical entries back then were quite reticent about ethnic backgrounds.)
Still, there’s one ethnicity that’s never counted in polite circles in America…except by other Jews, who do it constantly.
You can use Google Translate to convert the Forbes Israel richest Jews ranking from Hebrew into awkward-but-adequate English. Thus, “165 billionaires [sic] Jews constitute 11% of global billionaires list, and common wealth reaches $812 billion,” or an average of $4.9 billion per Jewish billionaire.
Jews are usually said to comprise about 0.2% of the world’s population, so 11% of the world’s billionaires means they’re doing pretty well.
Here’s my count of Forbes Israel‘s list, with Jewish billionaires as a fraction of the country’s total number of billionaires:
US 105/442 = 24% 
Israel 16/16 = 100% 
Russia 12/99 = 12% 
Canada 6/29 = 21% 
Brazil 6/45 = 13% 
UK 5/37 = 14% 
Ukraine 3/10 = 30% 
Monaco 3/3 = 100% 
Australia 3/22 = 14% 
Spain 2/20 = 10% 
France 2/24 = 8% 
Germany 1/58 = 2% 
Hong Kong 1/39 = 3%
According to Forbes Israel, the ten richest Jews are Oracle magnate Larry Ellison, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, casino king Sheldon Adelson, Russian-American Google guy Sergey Brin, other Google guy Larry Page, corporate raider Carl Icahn, Hungarian-American money trader George Soros, Russian oligarchMikhail Fridman, Russian-American tycoon Len Blavatnik, and Lebanese-Brazilian banker Joseph Safra.
Page’s conclusion brings up an obvious question: Who is a Jew? Generally, non-rabbinical Jewish organizations, such as Forbes Israel, tend to attribute Jewishness generously to individuals perceived as good guys, such as the popular Page. In turn, it’s common to quibble when the topic is anybody who isn’t popular. (Thus, you’ll often see it argued that, say, Einstein was obviously Jewish despite not being religious, while Trotsky can’t be considered Jewish because he was not religious.)
In the odd case of Page, we know that his mother came from a Zionist household and had moved to Israel, but the background of his father, the late computer-science professor Carl Victor Page, is obscure. A Google search reveals only that his paternal grandfather had been an autoworker and labor activist, and that his father despised religion.
The Page family seemed to have cherished an old-fashioned socialist belief that in the future, ancestry would no longer matter. Ironically, the wife of Page’s partner Brin, Anne Wojcicki, cofounded that quintessential 21st-century company 23andMe, which offers DNA testing for genealogy enthusiasts.
The true problem with Forbes Israel‘s list is neither ideological nor ethical. Instead, it’s a slapdash affair with poor quality control. Forbes Israel palpably undercounts the number of American Jews on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. (In 2012, it took a minimum net worth of $1.1 billion to make the 400, so everyone on the Forbes 400 is a billionaire, but a few hard-up billionaires with only $1.0 billion didn’t make the Forbes 400.)
The highest quality analysis of the Forbes 400 list by ethnicity is the one updated periodically by human-sciences blogger n/a at his race/history/evolution notes website.
To check which of the competing lists is more accurate, I’ve searched the first 21 names on which n/a and Forbes Israel disagree.
In one case, Forbes Israel categorizes as Jewish a man who appears to be a WASP, cable TV sultan Amos Barr Hostetter Jr., while n/a rightly classifies him as Northwestern European.
The other 20 disagreements consist of Forbes billionaires left off the Forbes Israel list that n/a denotes as Jewish.
I rapidly found that for 16 of those 20, n/a has a slam-dunk case based on readily accessible online evidence. For example, the Wikipedia article on former American Enterprise Institute chairman Bruce Kovner ($4.3 billion) states: “Kovner was born into a Russian Jewish family.…”
Two of the disputed 20, Orange County real-estate baron Donald Bren and Indianapolis Colts owner James Irsay, are the product of mixed marriages.
That leaves only two of n/a‘s 20 whom I couldn’t easily document: banker Bernard Saul II and Miami TV station owner Edmund Ansin. The first has a stereotypical Jewish name, while the second is a relatively rare name that has left me stumped. Ansin’s father is said to be an immigrant from Ukraine who opened a shoe factory in Worcester, MA.
In general, I found that n/a‘s accuracy is better by far.
Overall, n/a states that 140 of the Forbes 400 rankings of richest Americans, or 35 percent, are Jewish.
Perhaps that 35 percent figure is slightly overstated by fully counting individuals of mixed backgrounds, such as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Then again, n/a may be missing a roughly similar number of non-Jewish names of billionaires who are a half or a quarter Jewish in their mother’s lines, so it may all balance out.
In general, however, the question of how to count people of partial Jewish ancestry is, no matter how fascinating in theory, still difficult at present. The current denizens of the Forbes 400 (average age 66) largely come from generations when mixed marriages were fairly rare, so solving this methodological issue can reasonably be deferred for a few more years.
Jews are usually said to make up about two percent of the US population and perhaps three percent of the older generation that dominates the Forbes 400. Therefore, Jews are roughly 17 times more likely per capita to make the Forbes 400 than is the rest of the American population.
This 35 percent Jewish figure has been fairly stable since n/a started his analyses in 2009. The first careful analysis of the Forbes 400 was performed by Nathaniel Weyl back in 1987, when he found 23 percent were Jewish. That suggests a sizable increase in Jewish representation among plutocrats over the last generation. Yet bear in mind that’s only one data point from the past. I’ve been casually following the Forbes 400 for 30 years, and membership shifts frequently due to various bubbles.
n/a has also done a quick and dirty look at Forbes‘s global list of 1,426 billionaires (#1, by the way, is Lebanese-Mexican Carlos Slim). Unlike Forbes Israel‘s estimate of 11 percent Jewish, n/a comes up with over 17 percent. Note that this is pretty much of a SWAG for Eastern Europe, where it’s harder for an Anglophone to look up biographical information. Still, this estimate would mean that per capita, Jews are a little over 100 times more likely to become billionaires than the rest of the human race.
In summary, as an Israeli might tell you, an informed opinion is better than an uninformed one.
Taki's magazine:-

Thursday 11 April 2013

Is War With North Korea Inevitable?


Pat Buchanan - April 2013
 
"If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you," said Calvin Coolidge, who ever counseled patience over the rash response.
Unfortunately, the troubles presented by North Korea's Kim Jong Un seem unlikely to run into a ditch before they reach us.
For Kim has crawled out on a limb. He has threatened to attack U.S. forces in Korea and bases in Asia, even U.S. cities. He has declared the truce that ended the Korean War dead and that "a state of war" exists with the South. All ties to the South have been cut.
The United States has sent B-52s and stealth fighters to Korea and anti-missile warships to the Sea of Japan. Two B-2 bombers flew from Missouri to Korea and back in a provocative fly-by of the Hermit Kingdom. And both South Korea and we have warned that, should the North attack, swift retribution will follow.
Kim Jong Un is in a box. If he launches an attack, he risks escalation into war. But if his bluster about battling the United States turns out to be all bluff, he risks becoming an object of ridicule in Asia and at home.
Why is he playing with fire? Because his father and grandfather did, and got away with murder.
In 1968, Kim Il Sung hijacked the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo and held its crew hostage. America, tied down in Vietnam, did nothing. In 1976, North Koreans ax-murdered two U.S. officers in the DMZ. In 1983, Pyongyang tried to assassinate South Korea's president in Burma and blew up three members of his cabinet. In 1987, North Koreans blew up a South Korean airliner.
These unpunished atrocities all occurred during the rule of Kim Il Sung.
Under Kim Jong Il, Pyongyang torpedoed a South Korean patrol boat, killing 47, and shelled a South Korean island, killing four. Neither Washington nor Seoul retaliated.
The danger is that Kim Jong Un believes he, too, can get away with murder and he, too, will be appeased with aid and investments.
Yet neither President Obama nor President Park Geun Hye — whose father, President Park Chung Hee, was the target of assassination attempts and whose mother died in one — can be seen as tolerating another North Korean outrage.
To avoid a collision, a diplomatic path will have to be opened for Kim to back away from the confrontation he has provoked.
But, in the longer term, America has to ask herself:
What are we doing, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, with 28,000 troops in Korea and thousands on the DMZ facing the North?
What are we doing there that South Korean soldiers could not do for themselves? Why is South Korea's defense our responsibility, 60 years after President Eisenhower ended the Korean War?
For over a decade, some of us have urged the United States to pull all U.S. troops off the peninsula.
Had we done so, we would not be in the middle of this crisis now.
South Korea is not inherently weaker than the North. It has twice the population, and its economy is 40 times as large. And the South has access to U.S. weapons superior to anything the North can acquire.
After Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, as Robert Gates said, any defense secretary who recommends that America fight a new land war in Asia ought to have his head examined.
Why, then, are we still on the DMZ?
The long-run danger that has to be addressed is this: Kim Jong Un is about 30, and his life expectancy, absent a coup, is 40 or 50 years. Yet, within a few years, if he persists as he promises to do, he could have dozens of nuclear-armed missiles pointed at South Korea, Japan and Okinawa.
And if Pyongyang becomes a nuclear weapons state, it is difficult to see how Seoul and Tokyo will not be required to match its nuclear arsenal, as Pakistan felt compelled to match India's.
And a nuclear-armed South Korea or Japan would hardly be welcomed in Beijing.
What would China do? Some Chinese are urging Beijing to dump North Korea as an unreliable and uncontrollable ally that could drag them into war. Hard-liners are said to be urging China to stand by her longtime ally and buffer state.
Whatever comes of this crisis, U.S. policy, seemingly frozen in the 1950s, is in need of review. We cannot indefinitely be responsible for the defense of South Korea from an erratic dictator hell-bent on acquiring nuclear missiles.
In the near-term, even a conventional war on that most heavily armed border on earth, between South and North Korea, would be a calamity. To avert it, if necessary, Obama should pick up the phone, call North Korea and talk directly to Kim.
In a far graver crisis, perpetrated by Nikita Khrushchev in 1962, John F. Kennedy did not hesitate to communicate with the culprit.

https://www.creators.com/opinion/pat-buchanan/is-war-with-north-korea-inevitable.html