Lawsuit Saves Trump White House Records

 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/foia/2021-02-12/lawsuit-saves-trump-white-house-records?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=80ca7a28-6a05-4db0-b4e5-bb033e9e4fec

Poland And The Holocaust

 

POLAND

Historicity’s Folly

A Polish court ruled against two renowned Holocaust researchers Tuesday in a case that could set an important precedent regarding independent research of the Holocaust in Poland, the Associated Press reported.

Judges ordered scholars Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski to formally apologize to 81-year-old Filomena Leszczynska, who said her deceased uncle had been slandered in a historical work.

Leszczynska’s uncle, Edward Malinowski, was a Polish hero who had saved Jews, the family said. The researchers briefly mentioned Malinowski in their work, writing that had robbed a Jewish woman during World War II and was complicit in the death of 18 Jews in 1943, when Poland was under German occupation. He was acquitted by a court in Poland in 1950 of involvement in the deaths.

The case has been monitored closely internationally as it comes amid a broader attempt by Poland’s conservative government to whitewash Polish involvement in the Holocaust, say critics: In 2018, the ruling Law and Justice Party tried to criminalize falsely blaming Poland for Holocaust crimes but squashed the law after it sparked a diplomatic dispute with Israel.

Engelking and Grabowski criticized the ruling as an attempt to discredit their overall findings and discourage other researchers investigating Polish involvement in the Holocaust. Engelking said she plans to appeal the ruling.

Following Nazi Germany’s invasion in 1939, Poland’s population was subjected to mass murder and slave labor. About three million Jews and more than two million Christian Poles were murdered.

Poland’s conservative authorities don’t deny that some Poles harmed Jews but they believe the focus on Polish wrongdoing obscures the fact that most of these killings occurred under German orders and terror even as some pogroms continued after Nazi Germany’s defeat, historians say.

The Partridge Family Pilot w/ Original Commercials

Mira Furlin-The Sad Loss Of A Great Actor

 

You have loving memories of your time in Croatia. It is a beautiful country that I would like to see one day. A bright Croatian lady moved to Los Angeles in 1991 to escape the civil war associated with the break-up of Yugoslavia. Her name was Mira Furlin. Here is her story:

 

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001245/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

         I lived in L.A. in the late 1980s. I got to know a lot of people in the entertainment business. To get hired as an actor is tough business. You first have to qualify for a Screen Actor's Guild card (the union for the entertainment industry). Then one must face the harsh reality that only 5% of the actors find some kind of work. Only 2% of the actors really make a living at acting.

        Mira "hit the ground running" when she arrived here. In 1993, she landed a recurring role in the series Babylon-5. It ran for five years. To this day, it is a cult classic for science fiction fans like me. She went on to have a long and full career as an actor. She never was a super-star. But, she earned a good living. She was loved by her fans.

    I got the sad news that Mira died at the end of 2020 at age 65. It was not a Covid-19 death. It was a freak happening. She and her husband live in the Hollywood Hills. It can get hot there. Mosquitos come out. A mosquito bit her. She got infected with the West Nile Virus. Most of us would have a strong immune system that would carry us through this illness. Elena's medical opinion was that she did not have a strong immune system. Life is always unfair. She survived a violent and deadly civil war only to die due to a mosquito.

After A $1 Trillion US Investment, Iraq Is A Basket Case

 

IRAQ

A Government of Ghosts

Sixteen years ago, after the US had occupied Iraq for more than two years, South Africa’s Mail & Guardian painted a picture of lawlessness in the country’s capital of Baghdad.

“Two and a half years of bloodshed have convinced the outside world that Baghdad is not so much a city as an event, a maelstrom of violence,” it wrote. “The ferocity and frequency of bombings and shootings have turned Iraq’s capital into a maze of military checkpoints, concrete blast walls and razor wire.”

Unfortunately, a lot has not changed.

Women don’t drive saying that since men are kidnapped regularly, what chance then do they have. People who pray going outside because of their fear of bombs find themselves in a constant cycle of prayer. And some people are just thankful when there is only one bomb a week, saying “it’s nice.”

These folks are the lucky ones.

Iraqi party planner Arshad Haibti al-Fakhry was at his Ladies Night event at the Ishtar Hotel in Baghdad on Nov. 20 when unidentified men in Iraqi security force uniforms barged in and abducted him, a friend and 10 others.

As the Washington Post wrote, the men released the 10 partygoers almost immediately. They released al-Fakhry’s friend, the nephew of a government minister. But the party planner has not been seen since. His family and friends still are not sure who is holding him, or where.

Al-Fakhry’s story illustrates the lawlessness that has taken root in Iraq in the almost 18 years since the US invaded the country.

For example, armed groups abducted and sometimes tortured more than 100 people during anti-government protests in 2019, Al Jazeera reported. Authorities have not prosecuted anyone for these crimes.

This summer, kidnappers seized a German curator off the street before she was rescued, Euronews wrote with reporting from the Associated Press. At around the same time, two gunmen shot and killed Hisham al-Hashimi, a security expert who often discussed armed groups in the media, in Baghdad, reported the BBC.

The disappearances don’t only affect dissidents, intellectuals or other prominent figures.

Islamic State militants kidnapped eight people in eastern Iraq recently. The extremists erected a fake checkpoint on a main road, taking whoever was unlucky enough to fall into their trap, Xinhua, China’s state media outlet, wrote. Iraqi forces, with the help of the US and Iran, have largely defeated much of the Islamic State in recent years. Even so, some fighters still roam near the Iranian border.

Even more extreme violence still occurs in Iraq, too, years after widescale fighting has ended.

Suicide bombers killed at least 32 people and injured 100 more at a Baghdad market recently, according to the United Nations. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. But the government may execute hundreds of people now in prison in retaliation.

It’s an endless cycle of violence. And unfortunately, some say rightly that it’s hard to stop such cycles when they’ve taken hold – and become entrenched.

Sarmad Riyadh, a 35-year old antique dealer, saw this firsthand 16 years ago.

“If the Americans left tomorrow, I would close my shop immediately,” he told the Mail & Guardian back then. “No one wants his country to be occupied but in Iraq, we have no security. No one is in charge…We have a government of ghosts.”

SPCE Stock All-Time Intraday: This Happens Till Test Flight!

A Vaccination Passport

 

Vaccination passports

Governments and the travel industry are seriously looking into developing vaccine passports, which would securely prove that a person has been inoculated, my colleague Tariro Mzezewa reports.

President Biden recently asked the government to “assess the feasibility” of producing a digital document to confirm vaccination, while the Danish government said yesterday that it would introduce a digital vaccination passport in the next few months. Some airlines are moving even more quickly. Etihad Airways and Emirates said that in a few weeks they would begin using a digital travel pass that would provide documentation that passengers had been vaccinated or tested for the coronavirus.

The challenge is creating a universal document or app that would protect users’ privacy and would be available to all, not just the wealthy or those with smartphones.

IBM has been developing its own “digital health pass,” built on blockchain technology, that can use temperature checks, test results and vaccine status to monitor people seeking access to sports stadiums, airplanes or workplaces. The World Economic Forum and a Swiss nonprofit group have been testing a digital health passport called CommonPass that would generate a QR code to show the authorities.

The concept of a vaccine passport isn’t really new. For decades, travelers to some countries have had to show proof of vaccination against yellow fever, rubella and cholera, among other diseases. And in the U.S. in the 1880s, in response to smallpox outbreaks, some public schools began requiring students and teachers to show vaccination cards.