RUTHFULLY YOURS

Marcus Weldon, the current president of one of the most celebrated technology centers in the world, has high hopes for his local team
BY DAVID SHAMAH

Over the years, Bell Labs has won eight Nobel Prizes – more than any other tech lab – and Marcus Weldon, the current president of Bell Labs, fully expects the organization to win a ninth, based on the work that will be done by its new Israel location.

Bell Labs on Monday night inaugurated its Israeli branch – the group’s first out-of-the-US location – at the Kfar Saba offices of Alcatel-Lucent, the multinational communications firm that now owns the organization. The Israel lab actually began work several months ago, but got its official kick-off when Weldon, along with other top Bell Labs officials and alumni, gave the Israel site their official stamp of approval.

Often called “America’s Idea Factory,” Bell Labs has a long and storied history of innovation and invention. Originally the engineering department of “the phone company” — American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) — Bell Labs researchers developed many of the building blocks of modern electronics and computers. In 1927, a Bell team transmitted the first television images; in 1937, it transmitted the first stereo signals via radio; a Bell scientist invented the photovoltaic cell in the early 1940; and in 1947, Bell scientists created the transistor, an invention that made modern computing possible. Later inventions included TDMA and CDMA digital cellular telephone technology, the compiled C programming language, the UNIX operating system, the first single-chip 32-bit microprocessor, and much more.

Bell Labs remained a part of AT&T until 1996, when the company spun it off into a new company named Lucent Technologies, which in 2006 merged with communications company Alcatel, and created Alcatel-Lucent. Worldwide, the company has over 70,000 employees, about 50,000 of them in research and development, and the company operates Bell Labs facilities in about a dozen countries.

Between its invention of the transistor, the microprocessor, and UNIX, it’s fair to say that Bell Labs was responsible for the computer revolution, said Weldon – and the company was gearing up for the next revolution, the one in communications, he added. “We won those past Nobels by working to meet ‘grand challenges,’ developing technology to solve problems in important projects, and using that technology to change the world.”

38The House on Tuesday passed legislation to terminate Social Security benefits for suspected Nazi war criminals.

Passed 420-0, the bill was approved after an October Associated Press report found that dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals forced to leave the U.S. collected millions of dollars in federal benefits.

Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), the measure’s sponsor, said it would close a loophole that allowed Nazis who skipped the lengthy deportation process to still receive Social Security benefits.
“Social Security is an earned benefit hardworking Americans pay as a portion of their wages for promises of future benefits,” Johnson said. “It’s a benefit that was never intended for those who participated in horrific acts of the Holocaust.”

The Justice Department pressured Nazi war crime suspects to leave the U.S. voluntarily to speed up their departures, according to the AP. However, avoiding the deportation process resulted in the individuals still being eligible for federal payments.

It may not seem as if Ferguson, Missouri has much to do with Israel, but some of the activists protesting the events in that Missouri city seem to also have Israel on their mind. What happened in Ferguson and why does Israel factor into the picture?

Ferguson was a case of a white policeman shooting and killing a black civilian. There are between 300 and 400 cases of police killings in the United States each year (there are a smaller number of police killed in the line of duty). A majority of the victims of police shootings are not African-American. Some of the African-American victims (10-20 percent each year) are killed by African-American police. There are maybe 100 or so cases a year of white policemen killing blacks, and the great majority of these cases are non-controversial. The half dozen or so that are controversial are now becoming the biggest news stories of the day and the year.

In an average year, about 16,000 Americans are murdered, so police killings are maybe two percent of that number. Over half of all murder victims are African-Americans, and almost all of them are killed by other African-Americans. Overall, African-Americans commit murder in the United States at a rate seven times their share of the population. While 16,000 is a big number, the U.S. murder rate has sharply declined the last 20 years, by about 40 percent. In New York City, the scene of the latest race-related controversy over a police killing (in this case from a chokehold,) the murder rate has dropped 85 percent.

One might think that the far larger murder toll that does not involve police would be a much bigger story than the few controversial cases of white cops killing black civilians. That this is not the case reflects the role of today’s media, which feeds off of the white cops killing black civilian stories almost as much as they love hurricanes and tornadoes and airplane disasters. Stories that enable the 24- hour cable news networks to fill their time reporting updates for days and weeks is the news that is fit to broadcast. America is an extremely polarized nation at this point on issues involving race, but also on broader political questions, like immigration, and Obamacare chief among them, and conflict is good for news departments. And this, unfortunately is where Israel has begun to filter into the frame.

In a major defeat for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the leading association for British architects has rescinded its call for their Israeli counterparts to be suspended from an international association representing the profession.

“We got it wrong,” said Stephen Hodder, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA,) after he confirmed that a RIBA motion passed in March urging that Israelis be barred from the International Union of Architects (UIA,) in protest at the building of “illegal settlements” in the West Bank, was no longer RIBA policy.

According to the London-based Jewish Chronicle, RIBA’s change of heart was triggered by warnings from its lawyers that the endorsement of a boycott of Israel could compromise the institute’s charitable status.

Financial concerns were another factor, as the boycott is said to have cost the institute around $150,000 in lost revenue; many Jewish supporters of RIBA have cancelled bookings to use the institute’s impressive central London building for Bar Mitzvahs and similar events.

Hodder emphasized that the policy change signaled a new, positive approach to international affairs on RIBA’s part. “For the Institute to have engaged in this issue in a confrontational way – by seeking suspension of the Israeli Association of United Architects from the UIA (the International Architects Union) – was wrong,” he said.

Indyk’s insidious analysis

The disbanding of the Israeli government this week is breathing new life into dead arguments from the American Left about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

One example worth noting is Christiane Amanpour’s “interview” with Brookings Institution foreign policy director Martin Indyk on Wednesday. The reason for the quotation marks is that the exchange between the two celebrities, who owe their careers to the promotion of a twisted view of the Middle East, was more like a victory volley than a question-and-answer session on a serious topic about which each is touted as an expert.

It is hard enough for Israeli voters to stomach the internal scramble for Knesset seats that will dominate the public sphere for the next three months without the added cacophony from abroad.

That the noise from overseas is going to play into the hands of the Israeli Left, which is as adept at twisting the truth about the Jewish state as its international counterparts — makes it even more unbearable.

But it, like Indyk’s take on the situation, has its advantages.

Indeed, if anyone can serve as a negative gauge by which to measure a political climate, it is he. Oh, yes, and the think tank that has served as his cash-cow fallback whenever his peace-brokering between Israel and the Palestinians ends in abject failure. (You know, the research institute which receives most of its funding from Qatar, where it has its “Overseas Center.”)

One neat trick Indyk employs is referring to the peace camp in Israel as the “center.” This is not only false; it is also a complete misreading of the electorate. Just as the Democratic party in the United States was dealt a heavy blow in the mid-term elections due to utter disillusionment on the part of the public with the Obama administration, so too in Israel has the bloc to the left of Netanyahu disappointed the voters who believed they were opting for some better alternative that turned out not to exist.

In both countries, the fantasy that socialist policies (cloaked as a viable marriage of the free market and a welfare state) would cure economic ills, and that peace overtures would make the West safer from radical Islam than military might, was killed by reality. This is not to say that average voters in the U.S. or Israel have all shifted their support to the Right. On the contrary, many of them blame their plight on their leaders’ not going far enough.

It is this mind-frame that Indyk and his ilk possess.

Senator Mary Landrieu comes from a political dynasty in Louisiana — her father was mayor of New Orleans, and her brother is the current mayor. But as she heads into Saturday’s runoff election as a clear underdog, she is tarnishing her political inheritance by fighting ugly. She is resorting to lies and distortion to accuse her GOP opponent of backing the impeachment of President Obama and endorsing a documentary that, as she describes it, says slavery was better for blacks than welfare.

“Landrieu has flailed, veering from one issue to another,” concluded a Washington Post article this Thursday. When it hasn’t been haphazard, her campaign has been, at best, factually challenged.

Take the following radio ad airing on African-American stations, approved by Landrieu and paid for by the Democratic State Committee of Louisiana:

I’m Mary Landrieu, candidate for Senate, and I approve this message.

Man: News flash — Bobby Jindal endorses Bill Cassidy 100 percent. That troubles me. Jindal, our absentee governor, and Doc Cassidy, a medical doctor, oppose affordable health care for working families. These millionaire Republicans are against equal pay for women and have opposed the Violence against Women Act. And can you believe, Doc Cassidy has endorsed a documentary that claims slavery was better for black folks than welfare.

Woman: Oh, no, he didn’t!

Man: Yeah, well he sure did, my friends. But worse than that, Cassidy and Jindal are trying to impeach our president. Back in the day, there was a TV cowboy named Hopalong Cassidy. I don’t know if they’re related, but why don’t you just hop along, Doctor Cassidy, to wherever your No, 1 supporter, Bobby Jindal, is headed this week, and let Senator Landrieu continue doing a great job for the people of Louisiana?

Cassidy/Jindal — bad for Louisiana, disastrous for black families.

Paid for by the Democratic State Central Committee of Louisiana.

The Rolling Stone story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia has, in the eyes of many in the media, gone from bombshell reporting to journalistic malpractice in the bat of an eye.

The piece achieves its punch with a difficult-to-read opening about the protagonist of the story, Jackie, arriving with a date at a fraternity party where a trap has been set by fraternity brothers to take turns brutally raping her for hours.

The details of this crime are practically unspeakable. The shock of it led many people to recoil in horror upon the article’s release and ask, “How could this have happened at such a respectable school?” Upon further reflection, and after a skeptical blog post by Worth Editor Richard Bradley, people began to ask, “Could this really have happened?”

First, there’s the scale of the crime. No one doubts the existence of sociopaths on campus, but nine of them conspiring together at one fraternity in an act so depraved it could be something out of a West African civil war?

Then, there are the details. If the gang rape was premeditated, why did the fraternity brothers leave a glass table in the room, which Jackie was smashed through in the initial attack, with the subsequent assaults taking place on the shards?

Would Jackie’s friends, seeing her bruised, cut and traumatized, really have stood around debating how it would affect their social status if she dared report the crime?

Perhaps all of this happened (life is full of evil and improbabilities), but it is impossible to know one way or another from reading the story, which marshals little evidence beyond Jackie’s own testimony. In fact, even the writer of the article doesn’t seem to know if the story is true.

Sabrina Rubin Erdely has said she found Jackie credible. But she didn’t talk to the accused students. She explained in a Slate podcast that she couldn’t get in touch with the alleged perpetrators “because [the fraternity’s] contact page was pretty outdated.” She wouldn’t tell the Washington Post whether she even knew their names, and retreated to the argument that the real point of the story wasn’t the violent incident itself, but the culture of UVA.

Of course, without the nightmarish account of what Jackie experienced, the piece would never have generated so much attention.

(I graduated from UVA, by the way, and while I love the school, I have no use for its administration and never belonged to a fraternity.)

China’s promises sound impressive — until you look at the fine print.

Every December since 1995, the United Nations has held a meeting of the countries that signed onto its 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. This year, the 20th “Conference of the Parties” (“COP-20”) is another iteration, with officials (and anyone who wants to influence them) spewing countless tons of carbon dioxide into the air to meet, posture, disagree, agree, and declare a breakthrough on global warming. This movie has played more times than A Christmas Story airs during the holidays. Ho, ho, ho!

Sometime during this year’s conference, various governments will breathlessly pronounce that 2014’s global temperatures will set an all-time record. Make that some temperatures, as not all the global records agree, and it’s also unclear what the previous record-warm year was. Some histories give it as 1998, while others say 2010. And make that “all-time” going back to the late 19th century. Before then, there was still a climate, and sometimes it was warmer.

So what’s with the cricket sounds emanating from Lima?

Climate hype is definitely on the down-low in Lima because the meeting is specifically designed to be a preparatory step for the great Paris climatefest of 2015, where leaders hope to (finally) ink a “legally binding” agreement to replace the failed and expired Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

That treaty never bound the U.S., because it was never ratified by a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The Constitution is clear that this needs to be done for a treaty to have the force of law. It’s therefore rather odd that the Obama administration floated a trial balloon last summer suggesting that the Paris agreement will not have to be ratified. Damn the Constitution! Full speed ahead!

As has been shown repeatedly, the president can, via the Environmental Protection Agency, command any reduction in carbon dioxide emissions that Tom Steyer desires, thanks to a 2007 5–4 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA.

Continuing to politicize tragedy, our community organizer-in-chief reacted to the grand jury’s refusal to indict a New York City police officer in the killing of Eric Garner by complaining that this decision and the one in Ferguson, Mo., “highlighted the frustrations that many African-Americans have harbored about a legal system that has a long history of discrimination against black people.” Obama is quoted by the New York Times proclaiming:

“When anybody in this country is not being treated equally under the law, that is a problem, and it’s my job as president to help solve it.”

Really?

Perhaps the president could start with Dinesh D’Souza. He should be able to get up to speed on it quickly since, unlike the state cases he is bloviating about, the D’Souza case was prosecuted by Obama’s own Justice Department. Even though his offense involved a comparatively trifling among of money ($15,000), D’Souza, unlike the overwhelming majority of people who violate the campaign finance laws, was not permitted to settle his case by paying an administrative fine. Instead, Obama’s Justice Department not only prosecuted him for a campaign finance felony, but gratuitously threw in an additional felony false-statements charge that turned Congress’s two-year maximum into a seven-year potential sentence.

By comparison, the Obama 2008 campaign, which committed over $2 million in campaign finance infractions, was permitted to pay a fine — indeed, a fine that was substantially less than the $500,000 bond D’Souza was forced to post just to get out on bail. Fortunately, a federal judge declined the Obama Justice Department’s push to send D’Souza to jail for 16 months. But he is absurdly being forced to spend six months in a halfway house — which is supposed to be the transition stage back into the community after a long prison sentence.

D’Souza is a conservative writer and film producer who has portrayed the president in an unflattering light.

Remember when she was inevitable? Ladbroke’s still rates Hillary Clinton a heavy favorite in 2016, paying 4 to 9 on a bet that she’ll take the Democratic nomination and 11 to 8—slightly more than even money—that she’ll be elected president. But if it were our intention to place a bet on Mrs. Clinton, we’d wait a while. Our suspicion is that the odds are about to lengthen.

“There’s plenty of bad news for [Mrs.] Clinton in last month’s Quinnipiac poll, the first national survey conducted since the November election,” observes the Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone. “Clinton runs 1 point behind Mitt Romney, 1 point ahead of Chris Christie, 4 points ahead of Paul Ryan and 5 points ahead of Jeb Bush, Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee. None of this can be blamed on low off-year turnout; the poll is of registered voters.” For what it’s worth, the Ladbroke’s Mrs. Clinton is having difficulties with retailing as well. Yesterday she spoke at Georgetown University, her husband’s alma mater. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank notes that when she “spoke in the same place a year ago, the room was reportedly packed”—so packed, apparently, that Milbank couldn’t get in. She was there again in October, and the hall “again ‘was filled to capacity,’ the campus newspaper reported; some students lined up overnight and others were turned away.” (How Georgetown can afford all these pricey speeches we’ll never know.)

Yesterday, according to Milbank, “half of the 700 seats in the place were empty.” An optimist would say they were half-full, but we live in pessimistic times. “Roughly half a dozen people rose to applaud, and for a terrifying moment it appeared they might be the only ones standing. But slowly, lazily, most of the others struggled to their feet.” Really, “terrifying”? Ambassador Chris Stevens could not be reached for comment.