COMMUNITY MAGAZINE May 2008

50 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE the Baltimore Sun, workers say it’s impossible to pack the entire cemetery into sacks to be reburied. Critics say the behavior is part of a pattern of indifference toward Belarus’ Jewish heritage that has con- tinued since the country was a Soviet republic. The stadium in Gomel, a center of Jewish life until World War II, is one of four that were built on top of Jewish cemeteries in the country. The cemetery was originally destroyed when the stadium was built in 1961, but the remains were undisturbed until recently when reconstruction began digging up bones. A Jewish leader in Gomel, Vladimir Gershanok, says he asked the builders to put the bones into sacks for reburial at a cemetery that has a monument to Holocaust vic- tims. City authorities have ruled that the construction can resume because the bones are more than 50 years old. Similar occurrences have taken place throughout Belarus and in the Ukraine. So far, a local history professor who sees the cemetery as part of the city’s heritage has tried to preserve some of the bones and gravestones, but others have already been put in the trash. Jews began settling in Gomel in the 16th century, and most of the city’s 40,000 Jews managed to flee before the Nazis arrived; the rest were killed in November 1941. – CM Staff “Social Security Fund Will Never Run Out” The doomsday predictions that the Social Security system will run out of money by the time today’s thirty-somethings retire, have been greatly exaggerated according to Chief Economist for MarketWatch and for Capital One Bank, Dr. Irwin Kellner. Referring directly to the more realistic predictions of the Social Security system’s own annual report, Kellner points out that under the “low cost” projected annual growth rate of 2.9% between now and 2085 – which is still well below the economy’s actual 3.4% average growth rate – the Social Security system will never run out of money. Kellner theorizes that since the report’s summary page routinely highlights the overly conservative “high cost” projection and not the “low cost” – and few people actually read the entire report – that the Social Security system’s relatively healthy outlook has largely escaped politicians from both major parties. Hamas TV: Child Puppet Kills George Bush Puppet A Hamas children’s TV program last month featured a child puppet stabbing to death a George Bush puppet. The child puppet, son of an Iraqi father and a Lebanese mother, with brothers from Gaza, confronts Bush on behalf of Muslim children from around the world, and accuses the Bush puppet of worldwide mass killings. The altercation ends when the child puppet ignores the Bush puppet’s pleas for mercy, announces that the White House has been turned into a mosque and kills the Bush puppet. George Bush: Who are you, what brings you here, to my home? Islamic child: My daddy, you killed him in the Iraq war. And mommy, you killed her with the criminal Zionists, in Lebanon. My younger and older brothers, you killed them also, with the criminal Zionists, in Gaza’s Holocaust. I am orphan, I am orphan, you criminal! With my sword, I came to take my rights, and the rights of my mother and my sisters. Bush, I must take my rights with the sword of Islam. George Bush: I repent, just don’t kill me. Where are my guards? Guards! Islamic child: [laughing] There are no guards, and your people surrendered, oh Bush. I’m coming with billions of children from Palestine, Iraq, children from Syria, Lebanon and Afghanistan. You prevented them from seeing their fathers and mothers. George Bush: I will give you whatever you want. Come with me to the White House, you and your friends. I will give you food and toys. We will talk in the White House, and give you all your rights. Islamic child: [laughing] Bush, you are impure, and it won’t help you to go to the White House. It turned into a big mosque for the Islamic nation and Muslims. I will kill you, Bush. It is your fate. I will kill you. Islamic Child: [stabs Bush] I killed him. – Palestinian Media Watch CM Assets as a percentage of annual expenditures