Jews From The United States

"The embassy [in Washington], however, has not commented on incidents of anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh from 2009 forward; a period roughly consonant with the installation of the Awami League government in Bangladesh...(117)"

"In 2015, the Bangladeshi Islamist party, Jamaat e-Islami, opened up a branch office in Kolkata, India. Extensive reporting alleged West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee helped funnel money to Jamaat inside Bangladesh (The Hindu 2014) and help Jamaat’s power in West Bengal politics grow (Banerjee 2015). By the end of November 2015, Banerjee appeared openly with Jamaat at a large public rally in Kolkata (Ali 2015)."

"After independence, officials of the Bangladeshi government under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman reviewed the laws of Pakistan under which they previously lived. Their mandate was to ratify some and eliminate or change others. At one point, they encountered Pakistan’s Enemy Property Act, passed in 1965 after another embarrassing defeat at Indian hands as a retaliatory law against Hindus. The openly anti-Hindu nature of the law matched the national rhetoric before and during the war, as well as most of the time since. Significantly, this was one of the laws that Bangladeshi officials decided to keep on the new nation’s books. Since, however, it had to maintain the fiction of a break from Pakistani bigotry, it was circumspect about it. They changed the name of the law from Enemy Property Act to Vested Property Act while adopting the Pakistani law verbatim"

"According to Professor Abul Barkat (and Shafique uz Zaman 2008) of Dhaka University, after about thirty years of Bangladeshi rule, approximately 75 percent of all Hindu land in Bangladesh was seized under the VPA. Nor did it matter if the ruling party was the Awami League or the BNP. Barkat’s data showed that the percentage of the spoils did not depend on which party was in power but on the party in power. Whoever held power took essentially the same amount of loot. During BNP rule it was BNP 45 percent, Awami League 31, all others 24. During Awami League rule it was Awami League 44 percent, BNP 32, all others 24. Despite the enormous amount of property seized, Barkat also noted that only about 0.4 percent of the Bangladeshi population derives any of the proceeds; the greatest number of it goes to party loyalists"

"During my 2014 fact-finding trip to Assam, locals frequently impressed on me how they believe the influx of “infiltrators” from Bangladesh is not only changing Assam’s culture, ecology, and demographics; they also are building support for radical Islam inside the state (Benkin 2014). I have been tracking the demographic change in West Bengal for almost a decade and have seen village after village on the border with Bangladesh, formerly with robust Hindu and Muslim populations, become entirely Muslim, the Hindu population having been forced to leave. The growth of Islamism in West Bengal through the influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh is well-documented."

"The most severe anti-minority activity, however, has been directed at Hindus, in part because they are the largest religious minority, in part because of the larger Hindu-Muslim conflict that so characterizes South Asia. Hindus are not safe in Bangladesh; not from radicals, not from their government. They were almost a third of the population after the population transfers that accompanied the Indian subcontinent’s 1947 partition. After Bangladesh gained its independence, they were less than a fifth; thirty years later, less than one in ten; and several estimates put the Hindu population at less than 8 percent today"

"Professor Sachi Dastidar (2008) of the State University of New York estimates that about 49 million Hindus are missing from the Bangladeshi census. This is not a phenomenon, as apologists try to assert, that is a mere consequence of demography or the actions of a small group of radicals. Rather, as Samir Kalra (2012), Senior Director and Senior Human Rights Fellow of the Hindu American Foundation, notes, there have been “nearly 1,200 incidents of violence directed against religious minorities (mostly Hindus) between 2008 and 2011.”"

"The election of an Awami League government was supposed to herald an end to the ethnic cleansing of Hindus, but it did not. During their first term in office, major anti-Hindu atrocities occurred at an average of at least one per week for the entire five years. They included murder, rape, child abduction, forced conversion, severe assaults, land seizures, religious desecration and more. There were periods of intense anti-Hindu activity, for instance, a 26-day period in the Spring of 2010 that saw three a week; and a nine-day period in May 2012 with an abduction and disappearance, a murder in broad daylight, and two gang rapes; one of a child on her way to a Hindu festival (Ghosh 2012; Benkin 2015).[1"

"Bangladesh is heavily invested in advertising itself to Americans and other potential trading partners as a "moderate Muslim country." ... Over the last few decades, however, they have come more and more under the thumb of radical jihadis. Yet, they have not stopped trying to portray themselves as what they perhaps were at one point, and few Americans know that the reality is not what they are saying it is."

"Police refused to register the case and destroyed the evidence. Officials including Superitendant of Police have refused to lodge case, intimidated family, and taken bribes. (324)"

"One story men and women both told me repeatedly involved abductions of young Hindu women in Bangladesh. They might be walking by the road or on their way to school when groups of Muslims would force them into vehicles, carry them off, and then rape them. (224)"

"Five Muslim men broke into Koli's family [Koli Goswami] at 12:45 am on Junne 13, 2009. ... they carried her away. Her family has not seen her since. To many Westerners, stories like this strain credulity. It simply is not within the realm of their experience. (230)"

"Nipa Banarjee (17), a Hindu school girl, was kidnapped December 1, 2010... The police have taken no action.... (231-2)"

"On February 16, 2013, Bangladesh Minority Watch (BDMW) President and Founder Rabindra Ghosh and I walked into the remote Hindu village of Balai Bazaar, which is part of Chirir Bandor Upazilla, located in the far northern Bangladeshi state of Dinajpur.[14] Several months prior, the village had been overrun by a marauding gang of angry Muslims. According to numerous villagers with whom we spoke, the attackers moved “from home to home, taking some possessions and destroying the rest; from farm to farm stealing livestock and destroying crops.” They torched homes, burning many to the ground; and they abused many of the women, an all-too-common feature of such attacks. One woman described in detail how she and her daughter fled to nearby fields and hid there until the attackers left. Other women testified to me that they were sexually assaulted, and several witnesses claimed to have seen “five women rounded up by the rioters, forcefully disrobed, and their clothing thrown in a large bonfire and left publicly naked.”"

"The motion of my blood no longer keeps time with the tumult of the world. It leads me to seek happiness in the lap of, and love of my family, in the society of my neighbors, and my books, in the wholesome occupations of my farm and my affairs, in an interest or affection in every kind of bud that opens, in every breath that blows around me, in an entire freedom of rest or motion, owing account to myself alone of my hours and actions."

"Most retired business people "know how to work but they don't know how to play; they are completely devoid of the spirit of relaxation and recreation. Such forced idleness is ruinous to the morale of many of the more capable men of affairs.""

"The differentiation of the neuroses from organic visceral diseases, Dr. Crohn said, "is one of the difficult problems in clinical medicine. Let him who is proud of his acumen and experience as a physician survey, from year to year, his own record in this respect, and his pride may take, will take, a severe fall. With his eyes wide open to the problem, with much experience with the world, people and moods, and with years of clinical training and knowledge, no one is immune to, at times, mistaking organic diseases for the neuroses, or of falsely interpreting neurotic symptoms in terms of pathological states."

"Anti-Zionism is not criticism of Israel. It is a hatred of Israel — a hatred greater than that of any other country and a delegitimization of Zionism, the movement to reestablish the Jewish national home. Imagine someone who argued that the establishment of the Italian state — Italy — was illegitimate and who hated Italy more than any other country in the world yet claimed that he was in no way anti-Italian, as he had Italian friends and loved Italian culture. No one would believe such an absurdity."

"Women are used by feminists; blacks are used by Democrats; workers are used by Communists."

"Affluence + secularism = cowardice. Affluence + boredom = Leftism."

"Truth is a liberal value, and it is a conservative value, but it is not a leftist value."

"I will not end on a happy note, because there isn't one. But neither do I despair. One doesn't fight only when one is optimistic. One fights because it is the right thing to do and because America remains, as Lincoln said, 'the last best hope of earth.'"

"The majority of Republicans are not conservative."

"Most Americans no longer know what America stands for. For them, America has become just another country, a place located between Canada and Mexico. But America was founded to be an idea, not another country."

"Conservatives view America as President Abraham Lincoln viewed it; as the 'Last Best Hope of Earth.'"

"[T]he further left one goes, the more negative the assessment of today's America and the America of the past."

"The United States of America fought a horrific civil war that ended slavery. Yes, slavery was the reason for the Civil War."

"The ideas that America should be a 'melting pot' or that all Americans should identify as American are now unutterable in educated company. Indeed, many college campuses do not have an American flag on their campus because some students regard it as 'offensive' — representing imperialism and capitalism."

"Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the document that articulated the principle of human rights endowed by the Creator, thereby ultimately ensuring the end of slavery, and led to the establishment of the country that has served as the beacon of hope for people of every race and ethnicity."

"The Left doesn't hate evil, it hates those who hate evil. On the Left there is a subliminal, subconscious deep understanding that they are inadequate to the job of fighting evil. That's why they get so passionate about trivia."

"It is small surprise that among tyrannical regimes and their defenders, America and Israel are so often identified as the same enemy. This is not merely a consequence of America's standing along behind Israel; the United States has aided various Arab countries very generously, and it has on some critical occasions backed Arab regimes, such as Nasser's Egypt in 1956 and Saudi Arabia in 1981, against Israel. The hostility is aroused largely because America and Israel represent democracy, equal rights for women, a higher quality of life, and a willingness to confront despotism. That is why the two non-Muslim countries that have suffered the heaviest losses from Islamic suicide murderers are Israel and the United States."

"Israel remains an embattled democracy in the midst of authoritarian states, and the birthplace of the kibbutz to which tens of thousands of youth from around the world have turned for a living lesson in human equality."

"[I]f you look at Europe and see a continent adrift, with no identity and no strong values beyond economic equality and possessing little capacity to identify evil, let alone a will to fight it, then you need to start fighting."

"If you drop desires, you'll never have a Salk vaccine."

"The foolishness of that comment [equating meat-eating to the Holocaust] is so deep, I can only ascribe it to higher education. You have to have gone to college to say something that stupid."

"[A] child smacking an adult across the face is not funny. It is, in fact, one of the last things society should tolerate."

"I am for no law to be passed to prevent Keith Ellison or anyone else from bringing any book he wants to his swearing-in, whether actual or ceremonial. But neither I nor tens of millions of other Americans will watch in silence as the Bible is replaced with another religious text for the first time since George Washington brought a Bible to his swearing-in"

"The insufficiency of defining goodness as not hurting others is clearly demonstrated by the general assessment of the behavior of most Germans under the Nazis. According to this definition, most Germans during the Holocaust were good people, since they did not hurt anyone. Yet most of us do not consider such Germans good people, clearly indicating that we recognize the impossibility of defining a good person as one who does not hurt anyone. You do not have to do something bad in order to do bad; you only have to do nothing."

"The moment you meet a person of another religion whom you consider to be as good, as intelligent, and as religious as you are, you will never be the same."

"A person whose conduct consists of not hurting anyone is not good; such a person is merely not bad. To be a good person involves the active pursuit of good. It is not enough merely to refrain from hurting other human beings; one must intercede on their behalf."

"Nor is it enough to refrain from personally performing an injustice, for in order to be good one must seek out and rectify injustices performed by others."

"I'm pro-choice, but I believe that most abortions are immoral. I take the nuanced middle ground."

""I'm a passionate moderate"."

"Of all the world's evils, child abuse may rank as the greatest."

"American values, or Americanism, refers to what I call the "American Trinity": "Liberty," "In God We Trust," and "E Pluribus Unum" ("Out of Many, One"), the three values that appear on all American coins."

"I once asked Bell whether during the years he was studying the quantum theory it ever occurred to him that the theory might simply be wrong. He thought a moment and answered, “I hesitated to think it might be wrong, but I knew that it was rotten.” Bell pronounced the word “rotten” with a good deal of relish and then added, “That is to say, one has to find some decent way of expressing whatever truth there is in it.” The attitude that even if there is not something actually wrong with the theory, there is something deeply unsettling—“rotten”—about it, was common to most of the creators of the quantum theory. Niels Bohr was reported to have remarked, “Well, I think that if a man says it is completely clear to him these days, then he has not really understood the subject.” He later added, “If you do not getschwindlig [dizzy] sometimes when you think about these things then you have not really understood it.” My teacher Philipp Frank used to tell about the time he visited Einstein in Prague in 1911. Einstein had an office at the university that over looked a park. People were milling around in the park, some engaged in vehement gesture-filled discussions. When Professor Frank asked Einstein what was going on, Einstein replied that it was the grounds of a lunatic asylum, adding, “Those are the madmen who do not occupy themselves with the quantum theory.”"

"I have avoided so far the use of the term —the analog in the of the . Certainly, deserves the credit for first exhibiting the mechanism in the context of . But as I have tried to show, it took other people to make it work. The Higgs boson is what is being looked for at . If they find it, we shall all be happy and relieved. And if not? I am reminded of a story about Einstein. He had just received a telegram with the news that the eclipse expeditions had confirmed his general relativity prediction about the Sun bending starlight. He was very pleased with himself and showed the telegram to one of his students, . She asked him what he would have done if the telegram had contained the news that the experiments disagreed with the theory. He replied, “Da könt mir halt der lieber Gott leid tun—die theorie stimmt doch. (Then I would have been sorry for the dear Lord. The theory is right).”"

"Although it is always somewhat dangerous to look for the cause of a complex sociological phenomenon in a single event, nonetheless, I believe that a cause can be made for the proposition that the present widespread interest in the quantum theory can be traced to a single paper with the nontransparent title “On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox,” which was written in 1964 by the then thirty-four-year-old Irish physicist John Bell. It was published in the obscure journal Physics, which expired after a few issues. Bell’s paper was, as it happens, published in its first issue. Bell, who has worked since 1960 at CERN, the gigantic elementary-particle physics laboratory near Geneva, has been known to claim that his paper involves only the use of “high school mathematics”; however, its six pages are dense with an extremely abstract set of arguments, which even professionals in the field must work hard at to understand. In fact, for several years after its publication, few if any professional physicists bothered to try."

"The signs on Bell’s door read “J.Bell” and “M.Bell.” I knocked and was invited in by Bell. He looked about the same as he had the last time I saw him, a couple of years ago. He has long, neatly combed red hair and a pointed beard, which give him a somewhat Shavian figura. On one wall of the office is a photograph of Bell with something that looks like a halo behind his head, and his expression in the photograph is mischievous. Theoretical physicists’ offices run the gamut from chaotic clutter to obsessive neatness; the Bells’ is somewhere in between. Bell invited me to sit down after warning me that the “visitor’s chair” tilted backward at unexpected angles. When I had mastered it, and had a chance to look around, the first thing that struck me was the absence of Mary. “Mary,” said Bell, with a note of some disbelief in his voice, “has retired.” This, it turned out, had occurred not long before my visit. “She will not look at any mathematics now. I hope she comes back,” he went on almost plaintively; “I need her. We are doing several problems together.” In recent years, the Bells have been studying new quantum mechanical effects that will become relevant for the generation of particle accelerators that will perhaps succeed the LEP. Bell began his career as a professional physicist by designing accelerators, and Mary has spent her entire career in accelerator design. A couple of years ago Bell, like the rest of the members of CERN theory division, was asked to list his physics speciality. Among the more “conventional” entries in the division such as “super strings,” “weak interactions,” “cosmology,” and the like, Bell’s read “quantum engineering.”"

"My work's an attempt to challenge notions about nudity in a public space and how the body is represented in our culture."