The Enduring Holocaust

Here speaks irony. That Nazi Germany even while it was in the throes of fighting for its very existence when its plans for world domination through the Third Reich began to fall apart - when the Allies started to edge toward winning the battle against ultimate Fascism - still remained fixated on destroying European Jewry. Germany took increasingly scarce resources away from the war effort to devote to its malevolent task of ridding the world of Jews.

And the Allies, knowing by that time full well what was being planned for European Jews, knowing what had been accomplished - and it was devastatingly considerable - simply could not manage to spare war-time resources to halt the killing machine by taking the transport systems out of commission, by bombing the crematoria, by utilizing any means to slow down the orderly and determined mass execution of the Jews.

Dreadful information had been seeping out to the world about what was happening in the death camps. If it were just a question of slave labour, starvation, working people to death, dread disease running rampant through concentration camps, it would have represented a horrible enough indication of man's inhumanity to man, through a concerted effort to commit genocide by ridding the world of its hated Jews.

The knowledge was there, the full horror of what was proceeding apace. But the will was not there for those civilized countries of the world - who did rigorous battle with a delusional, hateful Nazi ideology that was intent on installing itself as a master race and subjugating the rest of the world to its will as lesser human beings - to come to the aid of the beleaguered Jews.

They could fend for themselves - and some did, joining resistance groups if they were able to escape the prison camps, and by organizing uprisings in the ghettos and resisting to the last of their fading energies and hopes, the catastrophic will of a powerful enemy to destroy them. A people destined for annihilation, hoping the world would notice and might care.

The world did notice, but it did not care.

When what was left of the inmates of concentration camps ultimately found freedom from their certain fate, the world wrung its hands in despair that human beings could descend to such depths of depravity. And of course, there were many who claimed themselves to be innocent of the knowledge of what was occurring. In the death camps outside of Germany the indigenous population claimed they were themselves victims, how could they assist the Jews?

Not that, in Poland, in Lithuania, in Ukraine, in Austria, in Latvia, in Estonia, in Germany, people were unaware of the camps and their purpose. But they pleaded innocence; there was nothing they could do, they were themselves occupied peoples. And they did suffer. And some rare individuals did care, and did lend themselves to securing Jewish lives.

But Europe was never free of anti-Semitism, and the Nazi propaganda machine churned out proof of Jews as being sub-human, a canker living within Europe, deserving of extermination, to make the world a finer place. And there were many who applauded that effort, willing and eager to assist, apart from those who simply had no opinion and didn't much care.

From villagers whose meagre lives were deleteriously impacted by the war, to socialites who had designs on the property of Jews, easily acquired through confiscation, and elite religious figures who never much liked the Jews in any event, a general aura of complicity ensued; better the Jews than them, in any event.

With the creation of the State of Israel as a singular haven for world Jewry which the United Nations sanctioned finally to expunge a sense of collective guilt for inaction when it was needed, Jews knew they had a homeland reflective of their heritage. Now world events have come full circle, and once again the Jews are despised and slandered, and with the return of anti-Semitism has come the stealthy and effective de-legitimization of Israel.

Jews as the perennial scapegoat of the world. Guilty by birth of all that is implied they plot to achieve. World domination, of course.

By securing the world's news networks, banking systems and claiming exceptionality as victims of the Holocaust. The six million men, women and children who were sacrificed to the alter of hatred have scarcely been replenished. The memory of their horrendous fate has dimmed; the world no longer cares.

And in Israel, a haven not only for Jews, but for Christians in an increasingly hostile Middle East, and a place which offers equality and justice to all its citizens; Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, the struggle for survival continues.

Disappearing Holocaust Survivors

Generation of Holocaust Survivors Disappearing
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Holocaust survivors, who are first-person testimony to the Nazi death machine, are disappearing. On the eve of Holocaust Memorial and Remembrance Day, statistics show that their death rate in Israel is 35 a day – 13,000 a year.

The Welfare of Holocaust Survivors Foundation reported that 208,000 Holocaust survivors remain in Israel, a decline of 26,000 from 2009. The decline of the number of living survivors coincides with increasing anti-Semitic campaigns that deny, belittle and even mock the Holocaust. The Palestinian Authority teaches the Holocaust denial doctoral dissertation of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas throughout its educational curriculum.

Only three percent of Holocaust survivors in Israel are under the age of 70, while half of them are over the age of 80. Projected figures indicate that only 145,000 survivors will still be alive in 2015.

Their most common health problems are hypertension, heart disease, chronic neck and back pain and arthritis. A study has shown that 92 percent of Holocaust survivors live in their home community, while the others are in institutional housing.

The Holocaust Welfare fund assists approximately 60,000 survivors, nearly three times the number of those who required financial help in 2005.

Chairman of the Foundation for Holocaust Victims Elazar Stern said, "Our data show that in the coming years due to aging, the needs of needy Holocaust survivors still will continue to grow…. The younger generation will not forgive us if we do not deal respectfully with the older generation."

As published online at ArutzSheva, 1 May 2011

Malicious Credibility

The Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress have led a sanctimonious protest in public, airing their grievance that the Holdomor is not receiving equal, if not superior place of pride front-and-centre at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. They claim that the Holocaust, a historical and precisely-documented event representing the atrocity of institutionalized genocide should be treated as just one of many such events.

They take great umbrage that the museum was originally planned, and continues to be planned, to primarily showcase the Holocaust as representative of the unspeakable tragedy that can befall a specifically-focused-upon ethnic/religious group through systematically de-humanizing them with an organized agenda of slander to justify all human rights denied them, isolating them from the rest of humanity and embarking on a mission of total annihilation.

It does not assuage their grievance to be informed that the Holdomor, and indeed all events of man's inhumanity to man will be present, documented and clearly mourned in the museum. Their resentment and anger is directed at the plans to 'elevate' one nation's tragedy over that of another. Reasoning with them that the Holocaust represents a singular event in the scope and detail of its prosecution makes no inroads with them.

They have taken to inflating the dreadful and deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainians (1932-33) by the Soviet Union in an effort to 'prove' that it represented a horror whose effect far transcended that of the Holocaust. Their loss was greater than that of European Jewry. Their numbers of dead far outstripped that of the Jews. The assault and trauma left them was more awful and must be acknowledged.

Academics and scholars representing studies in history, sociology, social anthropology, languages, literature, linguistics, communications, education, remembrance and research, history and classics, legal and political philosophy, holocaust studies, comparative politics, contemporary theory, humanities, sociology and social research, study of contemporary antisemitism, European studies, culture studies and academies of sciences, Slavic languages and literatures, from the United States, Britain, Spain, Canada, Israel, France, Ukraine, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Poland, and Russia have become involved to admonish this movement to de-legitimize the purpose of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

They correct the figures related to the Ukrainian famine to represent the true numbers, not the inflated numbers put forward by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. They point out that some of the hallowed nationalist groups that these two associations defend were Fascists, allied with the Nazis and were themselves responsible for many civilian deaths.

And they conclude their statement of support for the function, purpose and focus of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights by this summation:

"We therefore assert that since the UCCLA and UCC have not understood that confronting the historical record openly and honestly is preferable to manipulative falsehood, have engaged in a competition of suffering, and have failed to acknowledge both the vices and the virtues of the nationalist movement, they ought to stay out of a debate about the Canadian Museum of Human Rights."

Hell And The Holocaust

I Hell: Definition and Description

Death camps. Zyclon B: cyanide-based pesticide. Use: Fitting to the nth degree for the purpose of destroying sub-humans having more in common with pestiferous insects than with the human race.

A vast, unbottom'd boundless pit,
Fill'd fou 'o lowing brunstane,
Wha's raging ragin' flame an' scorchin' heat,
Wad melt the hardest whunstane. R. Burns

Gathered from all the cesspools and pits of xenophobic, racist European society where they were sometimes quietly, sometimes violently despised, to assemble into holding areas called ghettoes, far from the original in Venice; these crowded, squalid pre-death camps suffocated the Jewish spirit rendering their victims compliant but not complacent, awaiting they knew not yet quite what.

There is in hell a place stone-built throughout,
Called Malebolge of an iron hue,
Like to the wall that circles it about.
(Loco e interno detto Malebolge,
Tutto di pietra e di color ferrigno,
Come la cerchia che d' intorno il volge.) Dante

In that world there were many helping hands, eager to divest their communities and their societies and their nations of the irritating inconvenience of those classical outsiders; biblical-era scapegoats transformed into the world's detested horde of balefully malicious skulkers intent on world domination.

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd
In one self place; for where we are is hell;
And where hell is, there must we ever be;
And to conclude, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven. Christopher Marlowe

We pause but briefly to recall six million lives methodically, systematically extinguished because there were those who would have it so. The world made that much poorer for their absence. Loving life as they did, their cries for mercy and for help to avoid their fate went unanswered, their desperately clawing hands ignored, clasping life and loved ones as they made that journey from whence none return.

A dungeon horrible on all sides round
As one great furnace flam'd yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible,
Serv'd only to discover sights of woe,
regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end. Milton - Paradise Lost

Heaven and Hell, Hieronymus Bosch

The Banality Of Evil

Poor France, it is under attack by dint of its 20th Century history during the Second World War as a Third Reich-collaborationist government by the Petainist government whom most French citizens detested, and it is embattled by claims levelled by the grandson of one of the Petain government's chief functionaries who aided in the removal of French Jews.

France has always had an unfortunate relationship with its Jewish population. In that respect, however, little different from most other European countries, and far better than east European nations.

Still it does rankle, like prickly burrs somehow stuck under one's underclothing, never permitting one to sit comfortably and look dignified through the process of attempting, in public, to discreetly extract those burrs while carrying on a civil conversation. The conversation is anything but civil at the moment, with denials from every corner of the allegations levelled by Alexandre Jardin through his legacy accounting of his grandfather Jean Jardin, chief of staff to Pierre Laval, prime minister of Vichy France.

France has never been comfortable in contemplation of its war-time compliance thanks to Marshal Petain, with Nazi Germany's occupation of the country.

"France is a curious country. You can talk about anything here: about pedophilia, about the most shameful passions, but not about our families' dishonour during the Second World War - because that particular past just won't pass. Especially if you argue that to have taken part in the worst atrocities of the Nazi occupation one didn't necessarily have to be a monster." Author, Alexandre Jardin

Aiding in the mass extermination of a signal portion of Franc's population who just happened to be Jews is not a nice topic of conversation in polite company. Best to simply ignore it. The past, after all, is the past.

And France currently feels it has a special obligation to its Jews. It took great moral umbrage when, on a visit to France, former Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and later Ehud Olmert and Benyamin Netanyahu, issued pointed invitations to French Jews to remove themselves to Israel, where they would be protected from the growing incidence of anti-Semitic attacks in France. And just incidentally help to increase the Jewish presence in the State of Israel.

Even Mr. Jardin's own family has condemned him for writing his revelatory book claiming his grandfather to have been quite involved in the arrest and deportation of Jews. "It took me a while to realize that nothing is signed by a chairman of the board that didn't pass through his chief of staff", he wrote. Historians have their doubts about Mr. Jardin's nomination of his grandfather as chief enabler of the transport of French Jews to death camps and the chimneys of the crematoria.

But Mr. Jardin is adamant. He will not be swayed. He knows of a certainty what is obvious to him. Despite the social and familial pressures he is under he remains unswayed and will not renounce what he has written. His book has given him notoriety, but he regrets nothing other than to state his regret at the "blindness of my family and our whole nation", responding to the contents of his book which "evokes the guilt of the upright, morally endowed people who collaborated with Nazism and who, definitely, allowed the extermination of the Jews."

"I have wondered how a perfectly decent man like him, belonging to a society of perfectly decent people, could aid the horror.
"To burn down a synagogue and liquidate a few Jews, all you need is a handful of violent sadists. But to perpetrate this on a large scale, a moral discourse must be used of a sort that mobilizes a great many decent people, who will be even more efficient.
"My grandfather, a man steeped in Christianity, was one of those people."

And France still does not recognize nor does it admit its portion in the history relating to the Holocaust. Only in 1962 did school curriculum address the Second World War, and the related textbooks barely make mention of the Holocaust; too depressing, distressing, embarrassing for young Frenchmen. And certainly with the preponderance of immigrants from Muslim backgrounds, far too socially inconvenient.

No French leader had given public acknowledgement of the country's role in deporting Jews to the Nazi death camps stationed around Europe. Until Jacques Chirac as president in 1995 succumbed to the issuance of a public apology. Now, can we all set this aside for good?
Not, it seems, if Alexandre Jardin has anything to say and write about it.

Public discourse anyone?

Canadian Museum for Human Rights

The debate, between seemingly civilized people swings from reasonable to despicable. What is there to further debate about the occurrence of the Holocaust and the impact it has had on the conscience of the world? The impact its planning and execution had on its intended target is beyond debate.

At no time in the history of humankind was manpower and technology ever used so ferociously and efficiently even during a time of global conflagration, to eliminate an ethnic-religious group.

The blazing hatred of an identifiable group of people, including those who had, over generations, submerged their ethnic identity into that of the larger prevailing society, with pride in their civic place in that society, invested in its elevated degree of attention to the arts and sciences, was utterly devoid of reason.

Characterizing a people whose genius in every field of human endeavour was exemplary as sub-human defied rationality.

But the endemic and chronically renewed hatred for Jews was warmly received by a large faction of the population in almost every country in Europe. And those countries which were occupied by Nazi Germany were encouraged to invest themselves in the pan-European detestation of their Jewish populations and to aid in the gargantuan plan of extinction.

If for no other reason than that anti-Semitism is a deadly virus that will not allow itself to become absent from human consciousness, the Holocaust and its ravaging results should be studied. If for no other reason than that there are individuals, groups and political regimes that continue to sneer that the reality of the Holocaust is a figment of demented imagination, the Holocaust should be given primacy over other incidences in historical genocide.

There will always be vicious deniers. Not necessarily those like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and others of his ignorant ilk, but those who, while not denying that the Holocaust occurred, seek to minimize its impact by citing other atrocities they claim rival the Holocaust in intent and numbers.

It should not surprise anyone that the most vocal protesters represent those very countries that were committed to assisting fascism to wipe out Europe's Jews.

Germans, the instigators and propellants of a new wave of anti-Semitism whose purpose was not merely to scorn, dehumanize and humiliate, but to do all that as a prelude to the real purpose of annihilation. Ukrainians who as fascist collaborators happily surrendered those Jews unfortunate enough to live among them, seem to feel great unease at elevating the status of the Shoah above their own Soviet-era suffering.

There have been objections from the president of the German Canadian Congress, Tony Bergmeier, about plans for a permanent Holocaust exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The Jewish catastrophe should not be singled out for special attention above other human rights abuses.

And Lubomyr Luciuk, director of research for the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association takes umbrage at spotlighting the Holocaust as a permanent exhibit - "elevating their horror above all others". It offends him and his like-minded supporters in this volatile debate that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights has been "attached" as he would have it, "to the public teat, permanently. It has been sucking generously ever since."

Now that is offensive. This is a museum with a spotlight on the most egregious of human rights abuses mounted by nations on defenceless peoples; their own populations in most instances. And while the Government of Canada has funded the museum to roughly one-third of its cost, public subscription and corporate generosity has also funded it substantially more.

What distinguishes the Holocaust in particular is that war-time Nazi Germany's fascist ideology focused on the extermination of Jews, not only German Jews back to the slightest thread of genealogical connection, but Jews extracted from the populations of all the European countries which Nazi Germany defeated and occupied in its striving toward the Thousand-Year Reich.

As a museum situated within Canada to commemorate a historical event of immense proportions and stunning success in obliterating a significant proportion of the world's Jews, Canada also has its own coming-to-terms historical backward glance at its role during those dreadful years of genocidal implementation.

Canada's dismissive role in the Voyage of the Damned, turning back to Germany 907 German Jews aboard the MS St.Louis represents a notable example of compliance through indifference led on by anti-Semitic attitudes.

As Victor Suthren, former director general of the Canadian War Museum pointed out "Canada in the 1940s was scarcely less anti-Semitic and xenophobic than Europe, and the Mackenzie King government's immigration officials turned away Jewish refugees after 1945 with the callous observation that none was "too many".

Poland has honoured the memory of the millions of Jews who passed through the gates of the death camps set up on its soil. Germany remembers its pathology of deadly hatred and deplores what it represented. In Europe today anti-Semitism is back and thriving. It has reared its ugly head, compromising humanity in North America and Latin America - and in Canada.

Canada has a real need to finally acquire its own Human Rights Museum, in emulation of those which have been erected elsewhere in the world. Done so in a concerted and concentrated effort to ensure that mass murder, wholesale atrocities, stunning genocides from all eras and all countries not be forgotten.

Holocaust Diminishment

In the planning for quite some time, now, because there is seen to be 'undue' attention to the Holocaust, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights whose purpose is to chronicle human rights abuses in a larger perspective, but also focus largely on the Holocaust, has come under fire from an organization which states it represents German-Canadians. And it seems that umbrella organization, speaking on behalf of 90 German-Canadian clubs, churches and businesses across the country, has taken umbrage with that purpose.

"We shouldn't have a Holocaust exhibit as a permanent exhibit if no one else has one", according to Tony Bergmeier, national president of the German-Canadian Congress.

Oops, why not? In fact, there are many countries of the world which have built stand-alone, single-purpose Holocaust memorials. The Holocaust stands out as a truly impressive over-arching, government-sponsored, national and during a time of war, international determination in Axis and occupied countries to destroy all living traces of a single ethnic human community. During that time of war in a world conflagration, time, energy and resources were deployed for the singular purpose of destroying Europe's Jews.

With the success of the Axis countries in establishing the Thousand-Year Reich under German rule, there would have been an extension of the ghettoes, the death camps, in the vanquished countries of the free world. Feeding Jews into the death chambers that Nazi Germany planned and worked so efficiently to exterminate a people they claimed were inferior and deserving of wholesale destruction. The minute attention and details paid to accomplishing this grotesque scheme to rid the world of Jews is surely deserving of close attention...?

But Mr. Bergmeier claims his organization strenuously objects to permanent galleries edifying the Holocaust, and those dedicated to the plight of Canada's aboriginal peoples in view of the fact as he saw it, that no other human-rights violation of human suffering will receive permanent display.
"The way it is, (it's) one type of exhibit for the Holocaust and one for the native people, and separate types of exhibits for the rest of the world. ..That's not the proper way."

Oh. Perhaps, on the other hand, it is justified and does represent the 'proper way'.

As the distinguishing international example of man's inhumanity to man in the 20th Century there are many who have no problem whatever disagreeing with Mr. Bergmeier and those whose interests he represents. And as Canada's singular blot on human rights, shared by other Western countries in their similar historical casual dismissal of aboriginal rights, the permanent displays on native justice certainly qualifies.

Mr. Bergmeier, on behalf of all the groups he represents, is willing to lend his particular expertise to demonstrate the proper way. The website for his umbrella group states it is dedicated to preserving German culture and "defend(ing) human rights within the laws of Canada, and the human rights declaration of the United Nations". Denying that he or his organization are "holocaust deniers", he feels entitled to contact the Government of Canada to relay his concerns.

His concerns appear blatantly designed to keeping a lid on further revelations and spreading greater information within Canada about the Holocaust, a German-designed and -prosecuted wholesale execution of a people, quite amazing in its scope and technical focus, let alone the bestiality of its intent and immense success.

The Holocaust information will inform that the mentally and physically impaired, gypsies, homosexuals, political dissenters, religious protesters, also were incarcerated and met their dreadful deaths as did six million European Jews. This was a unique event in the annals of human atrocity. It encompassed all the Axis and occupied countries of Europe with the demand that they remit their Jewish populations for transfer to death camps.

The horrendous event became known to the international community which itself did precious little to aid desperate Jews to escape the inevitable, when that could still be arranged. The League of Nations, later the United Nations, had the Holocaust largely in mind when it issued its human rights declaration. Post-Holocaust, guilt lay heavy on the consciences of countries and their leaders, and among vast numbers of people who could not believe the extent of the carnage.

Most certainly, with no equivocation required, this sole event is deserving of illumination on the world stage, with its solemn pledge that such dreadful human rights violations, plans for and execution of genocide, never again be allowed to occur. Regardless of the fact that that very pledge itself, although heartfully declared and dedicated to humanity, would see its resolve falter and dreadful events re-occur.

That, in fact, there were previous horrible events like the Ukrainian Holdomor, like the massacre of Armenians by the Turks, like the atrocities of Pol Pot, like the Rwandan genocide, Russia's slaughter of intellectuals and professionals and China's "cultural revolution", prior to and following the Holocaust, serve as good enough reason to memorialize the Holocaust in the manner in which it is being done, to instruct and caution.

The kind of vested interest that German-Canadians have in muffling attention to the Holocaust is obviously self-serving, and their oppressive denials of reality would never see the light of day in Germany itself which continues to serve its penance in deploring what its Nazi past represents; the absolute descent into the deepest recesses of human-devised evil possible, on this Earth.

TZIPI LIVNI CRITICIZES NETANYAHU FOR BRINGING UP THE HOLOCAUST AT UN SPEECH

I would've posted this sooner, but because of Yom Kippur it took some time. Who would've thought that, if there's any Israeli politician who could slam Netanyahu for his excellent speech last week, that it would be none other than Tzipi Livni:

Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni became the first Israeli politician to criticize Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's landmark speech to the United Nations, in an interview she gave to Channel 2 on Saturday afternoon.

Netanyahu made a mistake when he invoked the horrors of the Holocaust in his criticism of Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Livni said. The comparison could harm Israel's diplomatic efforts and make Israelis question their security, she said.

"We have to be careful not to encourage the world to think that Israel was established because of the Holocaust," Livni said. "When Obama said so in Egypt [at Cairo University in June], there was a justified uproar. It is wrong to compare any event in history to the Holocaust, because it minimizes the most horrible historic event that happened to the Jewish people. It also makes Israeli citizens feel less secure. The Jews of Israel in 2009 are not the Jews of Europe in 1939, and I've said this to Netanyahu."

Livni also attacked the prime minister on the diplomatic issue, saying that he is "neither ready nor interested in making the tough decisions."

"He is merely trying to survive, and this stalling might be good for Netanyahu, but it is not good for Israel," she said.

I don't think that disgraceful woman understood anything he said. He was not trying to compare anything, he was condemning Ahmedinejad for committing Holocaust-denial while threatening to commit mass murder with nuclear warfare. He was also expressing his disgust at the UN for allowing the monster a platform on which to spew his hatred.

I think Livni is the one who's going to frighten Israelis with her approach to the subject.

She even attempts moral equations - or something like that - in an attempt to offset the damage she's doing:

Livni also criticized her party's former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, for the far-reaching offer he made to the Palestinians that he revealed an interview to the BBC last week. She said that she, unlike Olmert, would not allow the influx of more than a thousand Palestinian refugees to within Israel's final borders.

"I had differences of opinion with [Olmert] on how to manage the diplomatic process and on its content," she said. "For me, there is no right of return, not symbolic and not partial. I would not even accept the entrance to Israel of a single refugee, and the Palestinians and the Arab world know this."

Sorry, but it's just weak, when she was lending herself at the time they were running the government to the damage Olmert was doing. I don't buy a word of what's she saying.

Likud MKs slammed Livni for criticizing Netanyahu's General Assembly speech despite the rave reviews it received in Israel and around the world. Party officials criticized Livni for vacationing in Hawaii during the proceedings at the UN and over the Rosh Hashana holiday.

"Livni should have stayed abroad instead of harming the diplomatic efforts of the state," coalition chairman Ze'ev Elkin said.

"It is very unfortunate that instead of supporting the prime minister in his struggle against Iran and international terror and welcoming his successful speech at the UN that was universally praised, the head of the opposition is allowing politics to interfere is issues that are part of the Israeli consensus."

I fully agree on that. Now is not the time for pathetic and needless criticism of a speech that's meant to protest evil. Livni is only showing why she really has no talent to be a prime minister, let alone a politician.