The focus on Ahmadinejad obscures American holocaust

The focus on Ahmadinejad obscures American holocaust

EDITOR:

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the United States was a very widely disseminated news event. I heard excerpts from his Columbia University Q&A session that stimulated laughter and I also heard Columbia President Lee Bollinger's remarks to the Iranian guest.

Rather than finding anything amusing about the exchange, I am more astonished and appalled. Mr. Ahmadinejad is clearly recognized by most in this country as a maniacal fork-tongued tyrant. He is. His denial of the holocaust is especially noteworthy. What I find most appalling is not the rants and raves of this evil tyrant, but the rank hypocrisy of the so-called academia and intelligentsia of our society, to include many students and faculty at Columbia University. While Mr. Ahmadinejad is derided and loathed for his denial of the holocaust, the ones who are leveling the charge are adherents and participants in a holocaust that is sanctioned by our society. What holocaust, you ask. Have you ever heard of abortion?  

The majority of the academic crowd, the news media, Hollywood, and the political left, which includes most of the Democratic Party, facilitate through their political and judicial activism the murder of multiplied millions of helpless human beings — human beings that were made in the image of God. This crime against humanity, I believe, eclipses the known crimes of Mr. Ahmadinejad in the sheer scope and magnitude of evil. 

Abortion is America's holocaust. The killing fields of Cambodia claimed an estimated 2 million lives. The mass murders at  Auschwitz claimed at least 3 million lives. According to one estimate, Joseph Stalin is responsible for 20 million deaths. The National Right to Life’s Web site lists abortion deaths since the 1973 ruling at 48,589,993. 

The hypocrisy is nauseating. This same group is the first to cry out for children's rights and to champion anti-poverty and nutrition programs for children, etc.

Until "we the people" learn that the worst enemy is the enemy within, we are going to continue on our bobsled to hell.

THOMAS F. WOODWARD

Youngstown

Indiscriminate use reduces the power of special words

EDITOR:

It has come to my attention that there is an exhibition on the Youngstown State University campus that effectively equates abortion with genocide. While it may be emotionally satisfying to equate the two, reason must dictate that there is a fundamental difference between the demise of unwanted fetuses and the eradication of a people.

This is not to dismiss the seriousness of abortion. Abortion is a very serious matter. But even if it were held to be murder (which it is not in the Jewish tradition, for many reasons, among them a difference in understanding and interpretation of Exodus 21: 22-23), it cannot be equated with genocide.

Unfortunately we are in an age where any group of deaths is indiscriminately branded a genocide or holocaust, and distinctions are not honored between the living and the unborn, or between other forms of mass death, such as a massacre, and the Holocaust (a word coined to describe the horrors of the Nazi genocide of the European Jews in World War II). But making such distinctions is key to a reasoned approach to sharing this world. If we are not able to draw distinctions, even as we are emotionally pulled one way or another, we will not be able to appropriately deal with this multifaceted world.

Unjustifiable abortions may be a tragedy, but to compare it to what went on in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or Rwanda, or what is happening now in the Darfur region of the Sudan is to lose perspective. To compare any of them to the Holocaust of World War II is to dissolve it completely. To use genocide or holocaust to describe any situation of multiple deaths lessens the power and usefulness of these words. You may choose to disagree or agree, but let’s not lose the power of words. Because when we lose that power, physical violence is the next step, and we open ourselves to chaos.

Rabbi JOEL BERMAN

Ohev Tzedek Congregation

Boardman

Don’t pamper students with
air conditioning in schools

EDITOR:

My letter is in response to the Boardman resident who was complaining about school children in her township being educated in non-air-conditioned buildings.

I am a baby boomer! I was born in 1947 and attended Holy Name parochial school on Youngstown’s West Side in the 1950s. Uniforms were the dress code — being a girl, that meant white cotton undergarments, a white cotton blouse, a wool jumper, knee socks and saddle shoes. Polyester wasn’t a popular item back then. I walked (my parents only had one car, which my Dad drove to work and we had no school buses available) and went to school nine months of the year, and there was no air-conditioning in my building, but there was a lot of self-sacrifice, discipline, commitment, respect and faith in God to make up for it.

Teachers in dress clothes? What about the Ursuline Sisters who staffed our school? They had their cotton undergarments, black cotton stockings, a wool, long-sleeved, floor length layered habit, a starched, white wimple and guimpe along with a veil, a leather belt with a Rosary attached and heavy leather black brogues on every day of those nine months — fall, winter and spring.

I am most grateful for my Catholic education, and I applaud the Ursuline Sisters for their self-denial in their vocation to educate. Maybe we had it rough, but we didn’t notice because “it was what it was” and we lived through it and are better for it. Most of the parochial schools in Youngstown are not equipped with “air conditioning” and are still producing some of the best educated minds in the area and nation. It is the desire to learn and to succeed that makes good students, not air conditioning.

Personally, I think the children of Boardman are better off without air conditioning. It will teach them how to cope under duress in their thirst for knowledge. Our children need to learn to be responsible for themselves. They need to learn that values such as honesty, courage, respect for life, common decency and integrity stand firm. They need to learn that adversity is not an enemy but an ally. Pampering is not a requirement of their education.

MARY ELLEN CHANCE

Youngstown

U.S. Rep Wilson’s position
on Cuba policy is puzzling

EDITOR:

Why did Congressman Charlie Wilson vote to retain the agricultural trade and travel embargo to Cuba, depriving his constituents of some of their liberties? Wilson has never given a speech on the floor of the U.S. House or the Ohio Senate, when he served there, on the subject of Cuba. He has never publicly expressed a view on Cuba and likely has little interest or knowledge about Cuba. So, why the vote?

Not to protect the interests of Ohio farmers and manufacturers of medical products, nor promote the interests of Cuban-Americans in his district (yes, there are a few of us in his district and most of us wish for normalized relations with Cuba) or of most Cuban-Americans. A 2000 poll conducted by Florida International University found that 74 percent of Cuban-Americans in Miami oppose the embargo. Many of us hold the view that this embargo, now nearly five decades old, is a political failure and only harms children, the aged, and infirm.

The reason Congressman Wilson voted to retain this embargo is that he was paid to vote that way. Yes, paid. Given that he has never expressed a policy position, given a speech, indicated some belief about Cuba, one can safely assume that prior to his term in Congress Cuba was not on Wilson’s political radar. Cuba did pop up on his radar on Dec. 12, 2006, when the US-Cuba Democracy PAC paid him $1,000. The PAC is an organization solely dedicated to ending the Castro government. All it takes to buy Wilson’s vote in Congress is $1,000. How cheap is that?

GABRIEL PALMER-FERNANDEZ, Ph.D.

Boardman

Imports from China strangle
our area’s pipe industry

EDITOR:

On July 20, 2007, the International Trade Commission determined that there is a reasonable indication that the domestic welded pipe industry is materially injured by imports from Communist China.

Imports of standard and structural pipe jumped from 10,000 tons in 2002 to 690,000 tons in 2007. I don’t call that a reasonable indication of dumping, I call it a “wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee” level of them dumping their garbage. As everyone has read or seen on TV, the Chinese make nothing but garbage: toys, tires, paper products, etc.

What makes our government headed by King George think that Communist China’s pipe products are any different? I worked for Wheatland Tube Co. for 38 years, and I’m proud to say that we made the best pipe in America, bar none. Wheatland also has the best work force. But how can you compete with communists who control everything, including the work force? Our so-called president doesn’t understand that. He refused to crack down on the communists by adding tariffs to their garbage pipe, which would have been a start, but King George doesn’t want to anger his golden goose, who by the way, pays for his unconstitutional wars. He will be gone in 2009, but he’s already done his damage. Just look at the parking lot down on Clark Street — empty. Look around, try to find the Wheatland Tube Sharon plant — gone. What’s next? The Wheatland plant, the Warren, Ohio, plant or Sharon Tube? King George doesn’t care what happens to the pipe industry, so we have to work on Congress. The people in the Shenango Valley, the people in Warren and Youngstown area, plus the people in New Castle-Greenville area have to take charge. Write your senator, your representatives and let them know how you feel, because if something isn’t done, we will be looking at empty lots in Wheatland, Sharon and Warren.

BUD MCKELVEY

Hermitage, Pa

Youngstown would be ideal
for a boxing hall of fame

EDITOR:

With the new renaissance happening in Youngstown, it is vitally important to keep the movement going. As Newton’s Law of Motion states: An object at rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. The unbalanced force can be a speedup or a slowing down.

We have been a stay-at-rest town for too long and are now moving forward. Let’s speed up the process with a new idea, and here’s one for starters. Akron has its Inventors Hall of Fame, and Cleveland has its Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. How about Youngstown having a boxing hall of fame? We certainly qualify with the likes of Ray “Boom-Boom” Mancini, Harry Arroyo, Greg Richardson, and now we have Kelly Pavlik. And how about Ernie Shavers from Warren? There is enough interest with the thousands of Youngstown fans going to see the Pavlik-Taylor match in Atlantic City.

Nothing happens until someone comes up with an idea. As that bit of philosophy states: Wise men talk about ideas. Ordinary men talk about things. And little people talk about other people.

Lets have some wise men take a look at this idea.

JOHN GRANTONIC

Poland

Correction

A letter last Sunday from Dr. Joni Canby contained a typogrphical error. The number of births at the Women and Infants Pavilion at Beeghly Medical Park should have read 5,000. The original letter stated 5000, without a comma; a typist dropped the third zero.