Ukranian?

What this country needs is more young people

who will carry to their jobs

the same enthusiasm for getting ahead

that they display in traffic jams.

.

Oneliners

Yesterday's stress is past tense.

My opinions are my wife's, and she says I'm lucky to have them.

You know you're getting old when you're more attractive hanging upside

down

All I ever wanted was an unfair advantage.

Eminent domain is just a fancy name for government theft.

If I knew then what I know now . . . "now" would be a whole lot better.

Outcome has a lot to do with income.

Too many couples marry for better or for worse, but not for good.

Whenever you're losing an argument, just talk louder.

I wonder why black olives come in cans and green olives come in jars.

.

A mother will go to the store for bread and milk, and return with

enough groceries to feed Bangladesh for a year.

A father goes to the store for bread & milk and return with bread,

nacho-flavored Doritos and 5 dollars' worth of lottery tickets.

.

Child-Safety Experts Call For Restrictions On Childhood Imagination

WASHINGTON, DC-The Department of Health and Human Services issued a series

of guidelines Monday designed to help parents curtail their children's

boundless imaginations, which child-safety advocates say have the

potential

to rival motor vehicle accidents and congenital diseases as a leading

cause

of disability and death among youths ages 3 to 14.

"Defuse the ticking time-bomb known as your child's imagination before it

explodes and destroys her completely," said child-safety expert Kenneth

McMillan, who advised the HHS in composing the guidelines. "New data shows

a

disturbing correlation between serious accidents and the ability of

children

to envision a world full of exciting possibility."

The guidelines, titled "Boundless Imagination, Boundless Hazards: Ways To

Keep Your Kids Safe From A World Of Wonder," are posted on the HHS

website,

and will also be available in brochure form in pediatricians' offices

across

the country.

According to McMillan, children can suffer broken bones, head trauma, and

even fatal injuries from unsupervised exposure to childlike awe. "If your

children are allowed to unlock their imaginations, anything from a

backyard

swing set to a child's own bedroom can be transformed into a dangerous

undersea castle or dragon's lair," McMillan said. "But by encouraging your

kids to think linearly and literally, and constantly reminding them they

can

never be anything but human children with no extraordinary

characteristics,

you can better ensure that they will lead prolonged lives."

Although the exact number of child fatalities connected to an active

imagination is unknown, experts say the danger is very real. According to

a

2006 estimate, children who regularly engage in imagination are 10 times

more likely to suffer injuries such as skinned knees from mythical quests,

or bruises and serious falls from the peak of Bookcase Mountain.

One of the HHS recommendations emphasizes increased communication between

parents and children about the truths behind outlandish fantasies. "Speak

with your children about the absolute impossibility of time travel,

magical

powers, and animals and toys that talk when adults are not around," reads

one excerpt. "If this fails to quell their imaginations, encourage them to

stare at household objects and think clearly and objectively about their

actual, physical characteristics."

The HHS also discourages aimless playtime activities that lack a rigid,

repetitive structure: "Opt instead for safe activities like untying knots,

sticking and unsticking two pieces of Velcro, drawing straight lines of

successively longer lengths, and quietly humming a single note for two to

three hours."

But even these relatively safe activities can become imaginative, experts

warn, without proper precautions. "Do not let children know that, for

example, sailors and pirates untie knots," McMillan said.

Although no cure has yet been developed for childhood imagination,

preventative measures can deter children from potentially hazardous bouts

of

make-believe.

"Many of the suggestions are really quite simple, like breaking down

cardboard boxes or sewing cushions to couches so they cannot be converted

into forts or playhouses," McMillan said. "Blank pieces of paper, which

can

inspire non-reality-based drawings, should be discarded unless they are

used

in one of our recommended diagonal folding and unfolding activities. And

all

loose sticks left lying in the yard should be carefully labeled 'Not a

Sword.'"

Unfortunately, removing everything from a child's field of view that could

stimulate his active young mind is extremely time-consuming, and

infeasible

as a long-term solution, McMillan acknowledges. "To truly protect your

children, you must go to great lengths to completely eliminate their

curiosity, crush their spirit of amazement, and eradicate their childlike

glee. Watch for the danger signs: faraway expressions, giggle fits, and a

general air of carefree contentment."

Added McMillan: "Remember, if you see a single sparkle of excitement in

their eyes, you haven't done enough."

.

Short Ones

We are developing a unique educational system.

Where else can you find

algebra taught in the third grade and spelling in college?

The France that helped us during the Revolutionary War

was that of Louis XVI . . . but then

they cut off his head and France has not helped us since.

I'm convinced that no one "earns" a journalism degree.

Universities just hand them out

to those who managed not to get lost in the hallways.

A bank is a dignified institution that was established

for people to have a place

to keep the government's money until tax time.

Global warming can be attributed to that

extra hour of sunlight we get

when we switch to daylight-saving time.

Issue of the Times;

Stalin and the Ukranian Massacre by Eric Margolis

Five years ago, I wrote a column about the unknown Holocaust in Ukraine. I

was shocked to receive a flood of mail from young Americans and Canadians

of

Ukrainian descent telling me that until they read my article, they knew

nothing of the 1932-33 genocide in which Stalin's regime murdered 7

million

Ukrainians and sent 2 million to concentration camps.

How, I wondered, could such historical amnesia afflict so many young

North-American Ukrainians? For Jews and Armenians, the genocides their

people suffered are vivid, living memories that influence their daily

lives.

Yet today, on the 70th anniversary of the destruction of a quarter of

Ukraine's population, this titanic crime has almost vanished into

history's

black hole.

So has the extermination of the Don Cossacks by the Soviets in the 1920's,

and Volga Germans, in 1941; and mass executions and deportations to

concentration camps of Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Poles. At the

end of World War II, Stalin's gulag held 5.5 million prisoners, 23%

Ukrainians and 6% Baltic peoples.

Almost unknown is the genocide of 2 million of the USSR's Muslim peoples:

Chechen, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Tajiks, Bashkir, Kazaks. The Chechen

independence fighters today branded "terrorists" by the US and Russia are

the grandchildren of survivors of Soviet concentration camps.

Add to this list of forgotten atrocities the murder in Eastern Europe from

1945-47 of at least 2 million ethnic Germans, mostly women and children,

and

the violent expulsion of 15 million more Germans, during which 2 million

German girls and women were raped.

Among these monstrous crimes, Ukraine stands out as the worst in terms of

numbers. Stalin declared war on his own people. In 1932 he sent Commissars

V. Molotov and Lazar Kaganovitch, and NKVD secret police chief G. Yagoda

to

crush the resistance of Ukrainian farmers to forced collectivization

Ukraine was sealed off. All food supplies and livestock were confiscated.

NKVD death squads executed "anti-party elements." Furious that

insufficient

Ukrainians were being shot, Kaganovitch "the Soviet Adolf Eichmann" set a

quota of 10,000 executions a week. Eighty percent of Ukrainian

intellectuals

were shot.

During the bitter winter of 1932-33, 25,000 Ukrainians per day were being

shot or dying of starvation and cold. Cannibalism became common. Ukraine,

writes historian Robert Conquest, looked like a giant version of the

future

Bergan-Belsen death camp.

The mass murder of 7 million Ukrainians, 3 million of them children, and

deportation to the gulag of 2 million (where most died) was hidden by

Soviet

propaganda. Pro-communist westerners, like the New York Times' Walter

Duranty, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and French Prime Minister Edouard

Herriot, toured Ukraine, denied reports of genocide, and applauded what

they

called Soviet "agrarian reform." Those who spoke out against the genocide

were branded "fascist agents."

The US, British, and Canadian governments, however, were well aware of the

genocide, but closed their eyes, even blocking aid groups from going to

Ukraine. The only European leaders to raise a cry over Soviet

industrialized

murder were, ironically, Hitler and Mussolini. Because Kaganovitch, Yagoda

and many senior communist party and NKVD officials were Jewish, Hitler's

absurd claim that communism was a Jewish plot to destroy Christian

civilization became widely believed across fearful Europe.

When war came, Roosevelt and Churchill allied themselves closely to

Stalin,

though they were well aware his regime had murdered at least 30 million

people long before Hitler's extermination of Jews and gypsies began. Yet

in

the strange moral calculus of mass murder, only Germans were guilty.

Though Stalin murdered 3 times more people than Hitler, to the doting

Roosevelt he remained "Uncle Joe." At Yalta, Stalin even boasted to

Churchill he had killed over 10 million peasants. The British-US alliance

with Stalin made them his partners in crime. Roosevelt and Churchill

helped

preserve history's most murderous regime, to which they handed over half

of

Europe.

After the war, the Left tried to cover up Soviet genocide. Jean-Paul

Sartre

denied the gulag even existed. For the Allies, Nazism was the only evil;

they could not admit being allied to mass murders. For the Soviets,

promoting the Jewish Holocaust perpetuated anti-fascism and masked their

own

crimes.

The Jewish people saw their Holocaust as a unique event. It was Israel's

raison d'tre. Raising other genocides would, they feared, diminish their

own.

While academia, media and Hollywood rightly keep attention on the Jewish

Holocaust, they ignore Ukraine. We still hunt Nazi killers but not

communist

killers. There are few photos of the Ukraine genocide or Stalin's gulag,

and

fewer living survivors. Dead men tell no tales.

Russia never prosecuted any of its mass murderers, as Germany did.

We know all about crimes of Nazis Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler;

about

Babi Yar and Auschwitz.

But who remembers Soviet mass murderers Dzerzhinsky, Kaganovitch, Yagoda,

Yezhov, and Beria? Were it not for Alexander Solzhenitsyn, we might never

know of Soviet death camps like Magadan, Kolyma, and Vorkuta. Movie after

movie appears about Nazi evil, while the evil of the Soviet era vanishes

from view or dissolves into nostalgia.

The souls of Stalin's millions of victims still cry out for justice.

Quote of the Times;

All passports issued by the US State Department after January 1 will have

always-on radio frequency identification chips, making it easy for

officials - And Hackers - to grab your personal stats. Getting paranoid

about strangers slurping up your identity? Here's what you can do about

it.

But be careful - tampering with a passport is punishable by 25 years in

prison. Not to mention the "special" customs search, with rubber gloves.

Bon

voyage!

1) RFID-tagged passports have a distinctive logo on the front cover; the

chip is embedded in the back.

2) Sorry, "accidentally" leaving your passport in the jeans you just put

in

the washer won't work. You're more likely to ruin the passport itself than

the chip.

3) Forget about nuking it in the microwave - the chip could burst into

flames, leaving telltale scorch marks. Besides, have you ever smelled

burnt

passport?

4) The best approach? Hammer time. Hitting the chip with a blunt, hard

object should disable it. A nonworking RFID doesn't invalidate the

passport,

so you can still use it.

- Jenna Wortham

Link of the Times;

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=440069&in_page_id=1770

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