It never happened

Why does the belief that the Holocaust did not happen persist? And why is it popular enough to gain public traction? Why aren't Holocaust deniers laughed off the public stage?

DocBrain will give you the answer.

The concept is simple, easy to say and to remember. The Holocaust didn't happen.
The concept is memorable as it is unexpected. Try forgetting that DocBrain believes that the moon is made out of vanilla ice cream.
The concept is concrete. The truth is either yes or no.
There is an emotional tag to it. If the Holocaust didn't happen, then Jews have scammed the world into a global sympathy for something that never happened. The victims are now the villains. And the villains, and the not-so-innocent bystanders are now off the hook.
It makes a great story! If one assumes the Holocaust didn't happen, then... well, lots of tales can be spun with that premise!
And, the story is told by charismatic people, such as the Iranian President and Mel Gibson!

The failure of this belief is that it is not credible. Data strongly supports the existence of the Holocaust as a real historical event.

However, access to and analyzing data is not the strong suit of the average person. So, ideas that lack credibility yet contain all the other elements thrive.

Don't believe me? Did you know that:

• Elvis is still alive (so are JFK and Jim Morrison).
• KFC serves dead rats as chicken.
• Kidney snatchers will leave you in a bathtub filled with ice
• There is some really bad mojo in the Bermuda Triangle!
• There are no homosexuals in Iran!

Stand up and take a bow...wow

It seems that the average arab-on-the-street in the Middle East admires Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his standing up to the West (i.e., the USA) and Israel.

So, DocBrain wonders...standing up for what? Standing up against what?

Israel has the audacity to want to remain in it's territorial borders and conduct business and life. The USA wants to remain in it's territorial borders and conduct life and business. Both the USA and Israel provide charity (i.e., foreign aid). Neither has any great desire to prostelitize to those of other religions and cultures. Both do desire, however, for economic growth through trade and have somewhat materialistic societies.

One can throw out the catchphrase "Imperialism" which has no meaning. We all live under mathematical imperialism. It is undeniably wrong to say that 2 + 2 equals anything other than 4. We live under social imperialism. Try to light up a cigarette in a restaurant! Just because something becomes a Juggernaut doesn't necessarily make it Imperialistic. Our culture, system of social contracts, language, industrial might and intellectual prowess is copied, admired, reviled, but rarely surpassed by other countries.

If the USA makes any mistakes, it is assuming that other people want our type of freedom, which has lifted us from a country of outcasts, refugee immigrants and primitive natives to world dominance. If Israel has made any mistakes, it has been in the belief that the world would not become polarized by a few million people escaping from a continent that would have seen them all slaughtered and setting up their own country in a New Jersey-sized semi-arid undeveloped part of Palestine.

So, I get back to...standing up for what? against what?

Based on what I read, they stand up for:

• The right to take the land occupied by Israel by force, since kindness, cooperation, shared and mutual goals, and a spirit of good will would be a sign of weakness.
• The right to terrorize, maim and kill the citizens of and visitors to Israel, because the rightness of their cause trumps all else.
• The right to attack US soldiers, civilians and targets because the US culture is decadent, because the US supports Israel, and because the US uses it's economic leverage to buy off some Arab leaders so they won't condemn Israel and US decadence.
• The right to have nuclear weapons to attack the US and Israel.
• The right to attack the US if we do not behave as a proper Muslim country should behave.

Just because their are two sides to a story doesn't mean that both have merit. One cannot escape the fact that the key component of the dispute is the existence of Israel, with materialism and cultural influence a secondary issue. It is used as the glue that holds together the tribal groups of the Middle East.

So, here is a quick question. If all Muslims in the world renounced Islam and became Jews, what would happen? What if all Jews renounced Judaism and became Muslims? Which one would leave the world a calmer, safer place?

Rich and Poor

Should laws favor the poor? Should laws protect the interests of the rich? The Bible indicates that laws should do neither. Favoring the rich does not provide justice for the poor, and favoring the poor does not provide justice for the rich. What is not mentioned is mercy, charity, and good deeds.

The more we use laws to define special groups for separate legal justice, the more people will want to be members of special groups to obtain the special benefit.

If we say that disabled people can get money from the government, people with any difficulties will seek out ways to get defined as disabled.

If we say that we will allow minorities to have preferential admissions to schools, students will look for ways to be members of that minority. DocBrain knows of two examples: a young woman of European origin whose parents became temporary citizens of a Latin American country before moving to the USA. She got preferential treatment as a Latino. Another is a young white teen who joined the African-American Student Association at his high school (no school associations can exclude based on sex or race) and included this information on his college application. He got accepted with a scholarship to an ivy league school although he only had mediocre grades.

Hate crimes represent another similar problem. They are sold as a way of preventing a felon from getting off from a crime against a minority because of bias of the jurors. Two wrongs are felt in some way to create a right.

What we need is a fair judicial system and people who are committed to charity, good deeds, and mercy. It is people of this type who mainly make up our country, and, for that reason, we need laws that reflect an equipose.

Bye-Bye Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Wah-Hoo!!!

Finally, the Tribune-Review delivers to my neighborhood! I am not a big fan of newspapers, but need one for the dog (see prior posts). A review by WifeBrain showed that the coupon count in the T-R was equal to the PPG, so no problemo.

The PPG has a liberal bias. So, this paper, in theory, should strongly appeal to about 1/3 of the population, repel 1/3 and be neutral to 1/3.

Lately, even the hard core liberals are having trouble with this paper. Cyril Wecht, MD recently wrote a letter condemning the paper for its blasting of him in a biased way. Cyril has discovered the anti-Jewish leanings of the paper, as he comments on in his letter.

Two days ago, a colleague described DocBrain as a Liberal. DocBrain didn't think of himself in that way, but perhaps he is.

DocBrain was told by the front page editor two years ago that the PPG had no option but to run the pictures given to them by the national news, but this year ran a local picture for the Jewish New Year.

I have no trust in the PPG, find them uncredible, and their news emotionally biased in favor of rascals and criminals. Won't miss ya!

Excessive force

DocBrain had a situation yesterday where a young psychotic woman pushed past him and fled from a locked psychiatric ward. DocBrain could only grab her arm as she flailed at him and could not stop her without using a martial arts move that might have broken her arm or at least dislocated her shoulder, so he let her go. Later, she was subdued by a group of people. Luckily, she had not harmed any patients in her rumspringa. DocBrain needed some safer way to stop her.

Let's assume that you get into a situation where the police need to come down hard on you. What would you prefer? Being shot? Billy-clubbed? Tasered? Shot with a tranquilizer? Kung-fu kicked?

This morning ABC News ran a story about the horrors of being Tasered. One young woman reported impaired vision after being Tasered twice.

This story had three major flaws.

• Structural injury leading to impaired vision is testable in many ways, but the results of such testing were not discussed in the news story. This implies that her symptoms had no organic basis and were just a hysteric reaction or perhaps malingering to get public attention.
• Did the police just pick a random person to Taser? This was omitted from the story, so the assumption is that she was a risk to others at the time she was Tasered.
• There was a safer, better way to subdue her. No alternative to Tasering was presented in this story. In fact, data not presented in the story indicate that many thousands have been Tasered without permanent effects. Those who require Tasering are often under the influence of drugs and alcohol which, alone or in combination, can be lethal or toxic. Blindness, for example, is a known adverse reaction to mixing alcohol with tobacco. Cause and effect. Cause and effect.

The story gave no solution, just sensationalized the woman's story. There were three possible motives for the story:

• Brutal police use Tasers to harm their victims
• Don't be a menace to society
• ABC or it's parent company have invested in a different technology to subdue violent people and are setting the public stage for such a product.

Typical news.