Stolen Artifacts

Last week's "Editorial: Stolen property does not belong to the thief"  tackled an important subject.  It was good to see people, such as Senator Charles Schumer of New York, take a stand:



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 23, 2013

SCHUMER CALLS ON STATE DEPT. NOT TO RETURN TO IRAQ NEARLY 3,000 JEWISH ARTIFACTS, ORIGINALLY SEIZED BY SADDAM HUSSEIN REGIME—U.S. PLANS TO RETURN CONFISCATED ITEMS NEXT YEAR; JUDAICA COLLECTION BELONGS TO IRAQI JEWISH COMMUNITY EXILED OVER 50 YEARS AGO

n 2003, American Soldiers Discovered 2,700 Ancient Iraqi Jewish Artifacts—Including Parchments From Torah Scrolls & Prayer Books; U.S. Has Spent $3M Preserving Collection & Plans to Return Items to Iraq in 2014

Schumer Calls on State Dept. to Not Return Judaica Collection to Iraq; Artifacts Were Stolen by Iraqi Government & Belong to the Thousands of Iraqi Jews Exiled in the 1940s and 1950s

Schumer: U.S. Should Work With Iraqi Jewish Community to Ensure Artifacts Remain Accessible to Jews Worldwide

U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today urged the State Department to not return more than 2,700 Jewish artifacts to Iraq. In 2003, American soldiers found the collection of Iraqi Judaica in a flooded Baghdad Intelligence Center. The collection, which includes partial Torah parchments and ancient prayer books, had been seized by Saddam Hussein’s troops and belonged to members of the once-vibrant, exiled Iraqi Jewish community. The collection is being preserved by the National Archives in Washington, DC and the United States has agreed to return the materials to Iraq in 2014.

 

Schumer said that because these ancient items were stolen, they do not belong to Iraq and therefore, the United States should not return them. Schumer is asking the State Department to work with Jewish organizations and the Iraqi Jewish community to determine an alternative location for these sacred artifacts.

 

“These sacred artifacts were taken from the Iraqi Jewish community and thus do not belong to the Iraqi government; rather they belong to the thousands of Iraqi Jews, an ancient and once-vibrant community, who were exiled many years ago,” said Schumer. “The Iraqi government illegally obtained these artifacts and I am urging the State Department to do everything in their power to ensure that these treasured artifacts remain available and accessible to Jews worldwide.”

 

In 2003, 16 American soldiers discovered 2,700 books and tens of thousands of documents in a flooded intelligence building in Iraq. The collection had belonged to synagogues and Jewish organizations in Baghdad. The Iraqi Judaica includes a Hebrew Bible with commentaries from 1568, a Babylonian Talmud from 1793, a Torah scroll fragment from Genesis, a Zohar from 1815 and other sacred ritual objects.

 

“The Iraqi Jewish community was large, vibrant and once one of the oldest communities of Jews anywhere in the world. Tragically, they were targeted for discrimination and abuse and suffered exile by the tens and tens of thousands, losing precious possessions, including these religious materials, which rightly belong to the exiled community of Iraqi Jews,” said Schumer.

 

The Iraqi Jewish Archive was shipped to the United States and is now at the Washington, D.C. National Archives. The United States spent $3 million restoring select documents and on October 11^th, the National Archives and Records Administration opened an exhibit that displays 24 of the recovered objects.

 

Items of the collection were seized by Saddam Hussein in 1984 from a Baghdad synagogue. The collection was placed there by Iraqi Jews during their mass exodus in the early 1950s. In the 1940s, outbreaks of anti-Jewish rioting occurred, and in 1948 Zionism was a capital crime. Between 1950-1952, more than 130,000 Jews left Iraq and were not allowed to carry more than one suitcase each.

 

The U.S. State Department has agreed to ship the collection back to Iraq in 2014.

 

Schumer today called on the State Department and the National Archives to reconsider its decision to return the artifacts to Iraq. Schumer made the case that because these items were stolen by the Iraqi government, they should not be allowed to return to Iraq. Schumer today urged the State Department to work with Jewish organizations and the Iraqi Jewish community both in the U.S. and abroad to find a location to store and display the Judaica collection.

 

Dear Secretary Kerry,

 

I write today out of deep concern over the decision to return over 2,700 pieces of Iraqi Judaica to Iraq next year. These treasured artifacts belong to the Jewish community and I ask that you do everything in your power to ensure that these artifacts remain available and accessible to Jews worldwide – especially the exiled Iraqi Jewish community.

 

In 2003, American soldiers found the collection of Iraqi Judaica in a flooded Baghdad Intelligence Center, and the United States has spent over $3 million dollars preserving the collection. The collection, which includes partial Torah parchments and ancient prayer books, had been seized by Saddam Hussein’s troops and belonged to members of the exiled Iraqi Jewish community. This priceless collection of Judaica includes a Hebrew Bible with commentaries from 1568, a Babylonian Talmud from 1793, a Torah scroll fragment from Genesis, a Zohar from 1815 and other sacred ritual objects.

 

Items in the collection were seized by Saddam Hussein in 1984 from a Baghdad synagogue. Iraqi Jews placed the collection there during their mass exodus in the early 1950s. In the 1940s, outbreaks of anti-Jewish rioting occurred and in 1948, Zionism was made a capital crime. Between 1950-1952, more than 130,000 Jews left Iraq and were not allowed to carry more than one suitcase each. When the United States attempted to assist Iraqi Jews who wished to leave Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003, just 34 Jews were found in the entire country – a mere shadow of a 2,500 year old community which at its height numbered over 130,000 people.

 

These items belong to the people who were forced to leave them behind when the Iraqi government chose to exile them from their homes. Since the exile of Jews from Iraq virtually no Jewish life remains in the country – this treasured collection belongs to the Jewish community and should be made available to them. I strongly urge you to reconsider your decision to return these artifacts to the Iraqi government and urge you to work with Jewish organizations and the Iraqi Jewish community both in the United States and abroad to find a location to store and display these cherished items in a manner which respects their history. 

 

Sincerely,

U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer

###

Miliband and Marx (Socialist Worker)

Repost from Great Britain's Socialist Worker:

Miliband and Marx

After the Daily Mail’s attack on Ed Miliband’s father, Charlie Kimber looks at what Ralph Miliband’s work can tell us about the nature of the Labour Party

---

It’s been good to watch the Daily Mail squirm. By attacking Ed Miliband’s father Ralph as “the man who hated Britain” it managed to outrage large sections of the population and even part of its own Tory readership. 


The paper that is thoroughly accustomed to abusing and bullying people has reaped at least a tiny portion of the revulsion it so richly deserves. Not that this will change its ways. It will continue its war on anyone who dares to raise a hand against the rule of profit and against anyone who seeks to combat oppression and injustice. 


And we will need to keep combating its slurs and lies. But it has also brought the spotlight back onto Ralph Miliband’s ideas—which include a scathing critique of the Labour Party his son now leads.


Last week marked a change in strategy for Labour. Tony Blair spent years seeking to woo the Mail, as part of his strategy to make himself acceptable to the rich and powerful. He succeeded with Rupert Murdoch, but failed with the Mail.


But Ed Miliband took a different course. Instead of ignoring the Mail’s story, he confronted it. This is part of a wider pattern of the Labour leader’s behaviour. Miliband detects that austerity is really biting now as living standards plummet. 


There is a big audience who want to see someone stand up against the Tories, the profiteering bosses, and the ruthless benefit-cutters.



He also knows that there are a lot of very angry people who aren’t impressed by Labour’s utter failure to oppose the government effectively—including some of the union leaders who put him in his position.


Miliband has made some promises that Labour would be different to the Tories. He said he’ll axe the bedroom tax, freeze energy prices for 20 months and build more homes. He did so because of pressure from inside the party and, crucially, from campaigns like the one against the bedroom tax.
Meagre


However meagre the pledges, they were enough to enrage the right, which responded with dire predictions of economic collapse and social upheaval. 



The architects of austerity are determined that there must be no limit to the butchery of workers’ wages and conditions in order to jack up profits. In fact Miliband’s promises are very limited and constrained by the decision to stick to Tory spending limits for at least a year. 


He is offering far less than Labour called for in its manifesto in 1992, let alone in the 1980s. And we know from the recent experience of Labour-type governments elsewhere in Europe that they are ready to attack workers as the bankers demand. 


The Socialist Party president Francois Hollande is attacking pensions in France. In Denmark the coalition government, led by the Social Democrats, backed an employers’ lockout of protesting teachers. 


Remember that just a few weeks ago Miliband was laying into the Unite union over a manufactured and empty vote-rigging “scandal”. He has called a special conference to weaken the unions’ link with Labour.


We should also note the real problems that come when you seek to take on the Mail or the ruling class in a race to show who is most “patriotic” or “British”. Socialists don’t believe in “one nation” or “we’re all in it together”—in the workplace, in society or on the battlefield. 


There’s something much more fundamental at play. Labour governments have always acted to defend capital, not abolish its rule. Some times they’re more left wing, such as in 1945. Some times they’re much worse, such as under Blair. But they share the same essence.


This process was dissected by the man who was the focus of the Mail’s ire—Ralph Miliband. Every socialist will gain from reading his books. 


In his excellent Parliamentary Socialism he wrote about Labour, “Empirical and flexible about all else, its leaders have always made devotion to that system their fixed point of reference and the conditioning factor of their political behaviour….leaders of the Labour Party have always rejected any kind of political action (such as industrial action for political purposes) which fell, or which appeared to them to fall, outside the framework and conventions of the parliamentary system.”



Reform



Ralph went on to explain that Labour “plays a major role in the management of discontent and helps to keep it within safe bounds”. Labourism was “an ideology of social reform, within the framework of capitalism, with no serious ambition of transcending that framework”.


Ralph could very well have been describing Ed. He recognised that capitalist democracy was truncated and hypocritical. Ralph wrote, “In an epoch when so much is made of democracy, equality, social mobility, classlessness and the rest, it has remained a basic fact of life in advanced capitalist countries that the vast majority of men and women in these countries has been governed, represented, administered, judged, and commanded in war by people drawn from other, economically superior and relatively distant classes.”



Miliband dropped out of the Labour Party in the mid-1960s and began discussions about building an alternative. He was convinced that, “The belief in the effective transformation of the Labour Party into an instrument of socialist policies is the most crippling of all illusions to which socialists in Britain have been prone”.


Yet in his posthumously published last book he argued that “the best the left can hope for in the relevant future…is the strengthening of left reformism as a current of thought and policy in social democratic parties”.


What are the weaknesses of Ralph’s politics?


First his analysis of Labour’s failings locates the problems in the party’s ideology, its ideas. He doesn’t see the roots of those ideas in the party’s reflection of the trade union bureaucracy, a layer that balances between workers and bosses. Based on this non-revolutionary layer, Labour is an obstacle to workers coming to a true understanding of the world. 


When struggle opens up the opportunity for millions of workers to become revolutionary, Labour imprisons them in capitalist versions of the world. 


Second, Ralph had only a partial critique of Stalinist Russia. He agreed that the Eastern European states had “nothing to do with what Marx meant by communism”. But he also saw the societies that collapsed after 1989 as different to Western capitalism and in some ways more progressive.


Third, Ralph showed that the state acted in the interests of a tiny elite. But he did not see it as an unreformable structure that had to be smashed and replaced by a wholly-different workers’ state. Taken together these factors led Ralph to accept Labour, or at least an improved and more left wing Labour, as the best that could be achieved. 


At a time when the left in Britain feels much weaker than it should be and is far too fragmented, there are many who will say he was right. We disagree. As Ralph himself wrote in 1972, “the absence of a viable socialist alternative [to Labour] is no reason for resigned acceptance or for the perpetuation of hopes which have no basis in political reality. 


“On the contrary, what it requires is to begin preparing the ground for the coming into being of such an alternative: and one of the indispensable elements of the process is the dissipation of paralysing illusions about the true purpose and role of the Labour Party.

---

READ MORE



For a full treatment of Ralph Miliband, go to Paul Blackledge, Labourism and socialism: Ralph Miliband’s Marxism, International Socialism issue 129
Some of Miliband’s writing is available at www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/index.htm
Miliband’s Parlimentary Socialism is available at Bookmarks, the socialist bookshop. Phone 020 7637 1848 or go to www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk

Payments © Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.

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Sexual trafficking in the US

Repost of C.I. reporting on a Congressional hearing. the House Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee hearing on sexual trafficking in the US:




It's amazing what gets coverage in the US media and what doesn't.  Iraq is the war the media withdrew from -- and to think of all the scorn they heaped on war resisters who refused to participate due to ethics.  For the media, it was money and cowardice.  Today, to flip through what passes for cable news is to realize just how much trash and nonsense is shoved off on the American people daily.  Comedy Central has proved as damaging as Jon Stewart once accused Crossfire of being.




Yesterday, we attended a hearing.  Not on Iraq, not on veterans, not on a topic we cover here.  We're noting it (briefly) now because this hearing has been ignored.  It's been ignored as much as the "invisible" children the Chair of the Subcommittee spoke of.   "We cannot allow this to continue," insisted US House Rep Dave Richert but to who did he insist this when the press is silent on the hearing?




Subcommittee Chair Dave Reichert:  I think most people know that before getting elected to Congress, I spent 32 years in law enforcement in King County and I became sheriff in 1997 and left in January of 2005 to come to Congress.  I saw first-hand the tragedies that children face when they're not cared for by loving parents.  It was in the sheriff's office where I first witnessed the horrors of child sex trafficking and it convinced me that we needed to do more to protect our youth at risk of abuse.  And in late summer of 1982, I began a 20-year journey that would focus my attention on this issue like nothing else ever could.  On August 12 of 1982, I was called to investigate the death of a young woman whose body was found in the Green River just south of Seattle and suburban Kent, Washington.  Of course, I didn't know then that that was the beginning of 20 years, I thought that I was investigating one murder.  Three days later, I received a call about two more bodies being found in the river.  And, as I was investigating that crime scene, I found a third body on the banks of the river.  Finding these victims began our two decade hunt for a man who became known as The Green River Killer who, once caught, confessed to killing more than 70 young women who had been involved in the sex trade.   Of the 48 known victims of The Green River Killer, at least 17 were minors, children who had been abused or neglected, who had run away from home, who had been victimized and ultimately killed.  Ridgway pled guilty to 49 murders and, like he said, probably killed 79 or 80.  The sad part of the story is the families who will never see their daughters again, lives lost, of course, people recognize that.  But the community didn't see these children.  Driving from home to work to work to home, they were invisible. This issue is not just an abstract problem from a faraway place for me, it's personal.  As Chairman, I focused on how we can improve the child welfare system and help children in foster care lead successful lives.  One of the most devastating examples of the vulnerability of children in foster care is when they become victims of sex trafficking.  In 2010, officials in Los Angeles reported that 59% of juveniles arrested for prostitution were in foster care.  Of children reported missing to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who were also likely sex trafficking victims, 60% were in foster care or group homes when they ran away.  Research cited by the Dept of US Health and  Human Services shows the majority of sex trafficked youth experience sexual abuse growing up.  




Subcommittee Ranking Member Lloyd Doggett observed, "While there is not one piece of legislation that will stop sex trafficking of children, we can't allow complacency to stop us from doing everything in our power to put a stop to this. Our first task in this Subcommittee, given our jurisdiction, is to ensure the child welfare system doesn't become a pipeline to prostitution."



The Subcommittee heard from two panels.  The first was made up of members of Congress: US House Reps Erik Paulsen, Lousie Slaughter, Ted Poe and Karen Bass and, via video presentation, US Senator Orrin Hatch. The issue, Reichert noted, demonstrated "true bipartisanship so we have Democrats and Republicans testifying here today."



The second panel was Human Rights Project for Girls' Withelma Ortiz Walker Pettigrew, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's John Ryan, Center for Children and Youth Justice's Bobbe J. Bridge. YouthCare's Melinda Giovengo and Texans Care For Children's Ashley Harris.



As if anticipating the media blackout that would surround the hearing, US House Rep Erik Paulsen observed, "This is an issue that people don't always like to talk about.  And while we read stories about it going on in foreign countries, the reality is that it's happening right in our backyards."  Paulsen and Slaughter are sponsoring HR 2744, the Child Sex Trafficking Data and Response Act.

US House Rep Louise Slaughter:  [. . .] [T]he part of this bill that is of primary importance to me is that the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act will be amended to require that child victims of sex trafficking will now be considered victims of abuse and neglect, making them eligible to receive services within the child welfare system.  The idea that a young person rescued from a sex trafficking operation could be considered an offender within the juvenile justice system was shocking to me.  These are victims in the strongest sense of the world -- children who have been preyed upon by those who would take advantage of their situation, the fear and loneliness that comes from being in the foster care system, to use them to their own advantage.  They deserve help, a chance at healing and wholeness, not a criminal record.




Senator Hatch continued that thread by noting, "I'm sure many Americans would be surprised to learn that most child welfare agencies will not serve trafficked children and youth who are not in the custody of a biological or foster family or living in a group home.  Often these children, who are not legally able to give consent for sex, are arrested for prostitution and referred to the juvenile justice system."




US House Rep Karen Bass has introduced HR 1732, Strengthening Child Welfare Response to Trafficking Act.  GovTrack.US notes:

Status

This bill was assigned to a congressional committee on April 25, 2013, which will consider it before possibly sending it on to the House or Senate as a whole.

Progress

Introduced	Apr 25, 2013
Referred to Committee	Apr 25, 2013
Reported by Committee	...
Passed House	...
Passed Senate	...
Signed by the President	...

Prognosis

0% chance of getting past committee.
0% chance of being enacted.

Only 11% of bills made it past committee and only about 3% were enacted in 2011–2013. [show factors | methodology]

Cosponsors

33 cosponsors (25D, 8R) (show)         

Prognosis?  "0% chance of getting past committee.  0% chance of being enacted."  If the press was doing their job, might the prognosis be better?



US House Rep Ted Poe:  Let me tell you the story of Anna, a survivor who was brave enough to tell her story, which I heard from Shared Hope International.  After Anna's family passed away, she was placed in the foster care system at the age of three.  She was shuffled from home to home until age 12 when she was finally adopted by a loving family.  As a typical pre-teen, she did not like her family's rules.  She hung out at the corner store where she could break the rules and eat junk food without her family knowing.  There, she made a friend whom she thought she could trust.  Little did she know that the 'friend' she met at the corner store was not actually a friend at all.  One day, when she got into a fight with her parents, as teenagers do, she called her 'friend' from the store, who promptly picked her up.  Anna didn't know that this call would change her life forever.  Her 'friend' was actually a trafficker.  He was violent.  He beat her and sold her body.  She feared running away or putting up a fight because he threatened her family's lives.  So she stayed.  And the emotional, physical and sexual abuse continued.  Ann became convinced that her family no longer wanted her.  She felt helpless and scared.  After almost four years of this unspeakable abuse, Anna eventually escaped and was reunited with her family.  [. . .] She now has a ministry for sex trafficking survivors and runs an outreach program for at risk-youth.





Congress looks at American youth at risk and no one cares enough to report?  We have a very sick media in this country creating a trash culture that grows ever more toxic. The information we need is kept from us and, this time, it's not because it was stamped "TOP SECRET," it's because the press was too busy having fun to do anything of value.

Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ, Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends, Ann of Ann's Mega Dub, Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.



"Foreman Grill in the Kitchen"  -- Trina weighs in on the Foreman.


"ObamaCare website has already cost $349 million" -- And that may be a low balled figure.

"Movies," "Action stars?," "Does Tom Hardy come in scratch and sniff versions?," "DVD issues that piss me off" and "The Counselor" -- Betty, Stan and Kat go to the movies.


"scandal,"  "Norman Pollack, Grimm, Dracula," "tv eye candy," "Revolution: A Couple Of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking," "Arrow,"  "The Mindy Project (Mindy loves Danny)," "lee majors was just eye candy," "Almost Human again," "revenge (the good) from 'mercy'," "Revolution keeps tanking," "The Good Wife part two" "Almost Human," "revenge (the bad)," "The Good Wife" and "TV, pissy and pouty on my part" -- Rebecca, Mike, Marcia, Stan, and Ann cover TV.

"Where are the jobs?"  -- Trina asks the important question.



"Benghazi" -- Ruth's continued Benghazi coverage.

"Still not indicted, still behind bars," "Adam Kokesh" and "The government continues to persecute Adam Kokesh" -- Elaine, Kat and C.I. cover Kokesh.

"On Greenwald" and "Do we hold media accountable?" -- Mike on the media.

"White House Twits and other things" and "THIS JUST IN! A WHITE HOUSE FIRING AT LAST!" -- so that's what gets you fired.

"The Guardian" -- Elaine on the attacks on the Guardian newspaper.

"I do not delete"  -- Ruth breaks it down.


"The continued sexism of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" -- it never ends.

"Barry explains why he's so angry"  and "THIS JUST IN! BARRY O IS JEALOUS OF BIEB!" -- at last, an explanation.


"Antiwar.com" -- Ann tells it like it is.


"White House 'stud'" -- Isaiah dips into the archives.

Truest statement of the week

The moral abyss that I refer to—here, not the callousness of turning away from the consequences of US financial decisions, but the absolute desensitization toward what has been left out: a nonnegotiable military presence which permeates consciousness, policy-making, the nation’s very identity, in disregard of all that is, or rather, could be, the moral obligation of government to its people and the world beyond.


-- Norman Pollack, "Psychodynamics of US Default" (CounterPunch).

Truest statement of the week II

5. We gave an ongoing river of cash to private health insurance companies. Millions more are now forced to buy their crappy product, with the premiums funded by billion annually in public subsidies.

Health insurance executives got massive salary increases since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Existing insurance company shareholders saw profits and stock prices spike, first with the passage of the ACA, then with the onset of open enrollment. Anticipated ballooning profits have led health insurance companies to buy back as much of their own stock as possible. What else would you expect? Health insurance company lobbyists wrote the ACA.
While the ACA pads the pockets of insurance company executives and keeps employed an army of advertisers, marketers and bureaucrats, single payer would have created a quarter million new good paying jobs delivering actual health care to people, according to the National Nurses Union.
6. The ACA gives us little or no cost control over medical care and even bans most measures that would lower the cost of prescription drugs.

With the substandard policies the most families will be able to afford, skimpy coverage, high co-pays and deductibles will continue to threaten hundreds of thousands annually with bankruptcy due to unpayable medical bills.
The US is one of the few places in the developed world in which a family can lose its home, and its children their college educations because of unpayable medical bills. We could have changed that. But we didn't.


-- Bruce Dixon,  "Obamacare VS Single Payer – Top 10 Things the ACA Gave Us VS the Top 10 We Gave Up" (Black Agenda Report).

A note to our readers

Hey --

Another Sunday.



First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:




The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.

And what did we come up with?

• Truest statement of the week

Norman Pollack gets another truest. 

• Truest statement of the week II

As does Bruce Dixon.

• Editorial: Stolen property does not belong to the ...

Our Iraq piece this week. 

• TV: NBC provides the glee

Half-way into writing this piece, Ava and C.I. stopped and asked me (Jim) how long they could go?  This is a big story and they had so much on the topic.  I told them I'd help edit if needede but to go long.  They did and I said it didn't need to lose a word.  This is the sort of reporting they do from time to time.  I wish they'd do it all the time and stated that again when I got done reading this.  They said if they did it more often, no one would take their calls.  :D  But they have done it again and it's the most important journalism done on Michael J. Fox's return to sitcoms.  And that's especially amazing if you think of all the press that bad show's gotten.

• The week in funny

We look back at some of the week's funniest moments.

• Photo of the week

Our other Iraq feature. 

• Press Whoring: Entertainment Section

A woman fawns over the (bad) wig of a 77-year-old man? 

• Tweet of the week

When our feature became so popular another website was stealing it, we knew we needed to do this feature more often.

• News of last week you shouldn't have missed.

With Ava and C.I. going long, Dona wanted us to focus on short features.

• Syria: US still aims for 'regime change' (WW)

Repost from Workers World. 

• Guantanamo guards target Shaker Aamer

Repost from Socialist Worker.

• Global Handwashing (UNICEF)

Repost from UNICEF.

• Highlights

Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.

 Peace.




-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.

Editorial: Stolen property does not belong to the thief

Last year, a guy broke into my home and stole all my family albums and scrapbooks.  Then he ran me out of town.  Now he's insisting he has the right to keep my family albums and scrapbooks.

That actually didn't happen to us.

It happened to the Jews of Iraq.




For background, let's go the US National Archives:


On May 6, 2003, just days after the Coalition forces took over Baghdad, 16 American soldiers from Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, a group assigned to search for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, entered Saddam Hussein’s flooded intelligence building. In the basement, under four feet of water, they found thousands of books and documents relating to the Jewish community of Iraq – materials that had belonged to synagogues and Jewish organizations in Baghdad.
The water-logged materials quickly became moldy in Baghdad’s intense heat and humidity. Seeking guidance, the Coalition Provisional Authority placed an urgent call to the nation’s foremost conservation experts at the National Archives. Just a week later, National Archives Director of Preservation Programs Doris Hamburg and Conservation Chief Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler arrived in Baghdad via military transport to assess the damage and make recommendations for preservation of the materials. Both experts share this extraordinary story and take you “behind the scenes” in this brief video [http://tinyurl.com/IraqiJA]. This video is in the public domain and not subject to any copyright restrictions. The National Archives encourages its use and free distribution.
Given limited treatment options in Baghdad, and with the agreement of Iraqi representatives, the materials were shipped to the United States for preservation and exhibition. Since then, these materials have been vacuum freeze-dried, preserved and photographed under the direction of the National Archives. The collection includes more than 2,700 Jewish books and tens of thousands of documents in Hebrew, Arabic, Judeo-Arabic and English, dating from 1540 to the 1970s. A special website to launch this fall will make these historic materials freely available to all online as they are digitized and catalogued. This work was made possible through the assistance of the Department of State, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Center for Jewish History.
The Jews of Iraq have a rich past, extending back to Babylonia. These materials provide a tangible link to this community that flourished there, but in the second half of the twentieth century dispersed throughout the world. Today, fewer than five Jews remain. 


The Jews of Iraq may have had a rich past.  But since 2003, they've all but disappeared to the point that the total number of Jews now in Iraq can be counted on one hand.  Judit Neurink (Rudaw) notes:



Director Saad Eskander of the National Library in Baghdad will be glad to receive the archives. From the start, he was against their trip to the United States, although he admits that Iraq could not look after them in 2003. “Iraq was in a chaos. Nobody was interested in our cultural heritage.”
Yet, the documents should have stayed, he says: “Instead of taking them away, the Americans should have taught the Iraqi’s how to repair and maintain them.”

The US shouldn't have taken these documents out of the country to restore them?

That was the crime, was it?

No, the crime was thieves stealing them from Iraqi Jews.


The crime is people like Saad Eskander thinking they have a right to stolen property that has nothing to do with their own heritage.  Stewart Ain (Jewish Weekly) reported last week:



 Harold Rhode, who discovered the trove while working as a Defense Department policy analyst assigned to Iraq’s transitional government, said he is “horrified” to think the material would be returned when it had been “stolen by the government of Iraq from the Jewish community.”
“It would be comparable to the U.S. returning to the German government Jewish property that had been looted by the Nazis,” he told The Jewish Week.
Attorney Carole Basri, whose great-grandfather served as chief rabbi of Iraq, pointed out that there was “no consultation” with the Jewish community before the Bush administration entered into that agreement. International law stipulates that national treasures be returned to the country of origin.
Rhode said the material, which been stored on the second floor of a Baghdad synagogue by Iraqi Jews at the time of their mass exodus in 1950-52 – some 135,000 Jews left the country, allowed to carry no more than one suitcase of clothing each – was taken by Saddam Hussein in 1984. (There are thought to be only five or so Jews left in all of Iraq.)
Joseph Dabby, 67, an Iraqi Jew in Los Angeles who was one of about 25,000 Jews who initially remained in his homeland, said he fears that should the items be returned, they would simply be locked away and never exhibited. Board chairman and former president of Los Angeles’ Kahal Joseph Synagogue, home to 300 Iraqi Jewish families, said he escaped from Iraq in 1971 after several imprisonments and does not trust the present Iraqi leadership.



The National Archives notes the collection includes:

A Hebrew Bible with Commentaries from 1568 – one of the oldest books in the trove;

A Babylonian Talmud from 1793;

A Torah scroll fragment from Genesis - one of the 48 Torah scroll fragments found;

A Zohar from 1815 – a text for the mystical and spiritual Jewish movement known as “Kabbalah”;

An official 1918 letter to the Chief Rabbi regarding the allotment of sheep for Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year);

Materials from Jewish schools in Baghdad, including exam grades and a letter to the College Entrance Examination Board in Princeton regarding SAT scores;

A Haggadah (Passover script) from 1902, hand lettered and decorated by an Iraqi Jewish youth ; and

The stolen property belongs to the Jewish community and with the Iraqi government having failed to protect the Jewish community, they certainly have no right to stolen property.