iPhone's App Store Gold Rush

From Newsweek:

Apple won't say how much money the App Store is taking in, nor will it say how many of the 300 million downloads were free apps and how many were apps that cost money (most apps are free; the others cost anywhere from a buck to $10). Apple gets a 30 percent cut of any revenue generated by apps. But for Apple right now the money isn't the point. The big thing is the race to become the dominant mobile-computing platform, the way IBM-standard PCs running Microsoft operating software—first DOS and then Windows—came to dominate personal computing in the 1980s and early 1990s. The mobile-computing space looks a bit like the early days of personal computers, when different operating systems were competing to be king. A half-dozen smartphone platforms compete in the market, including Symbian (used by Nokia), Windows Mobile, the BlackBerry and Google's Android. Yet another is on the way from Palm, maker of the Palm Pilot and the Palm Treo. Next year Palm will introduce an entirely new operating-system platform for mobile computing. Whichever platform draws the most developers will likely rule the market. Right now "it's a 100-yard dash and Apple is already 75 yards down the track while the other guys are still trying to get out of the blocks," says Ken Dulaney, analyst at researcher Gartner in San Jose.

Half the fun of owning an iPhone is trying out all the cool new apps you can put on it, and developers are cranking things out at a feverish pace. "It's kind of a gold rush," says Brian Greenstone, who runs a tiny outfit (it's just him and a few freelancers) called Pangea Software in Austin, Texas, that has created several hit games for the iPhone, including Cro-Mag Rally and Enigmo. Greenstone, 41, has been writing games for Apple's computers for 21 years. But he says he's never seen anything like the iPhone apps phenomenon, which this year will deliver $5 million in revenue for him. "It's crazy. It's like lottery money. In the last four and a half months we've made as much money off the retail sales of iPhone apps as we've made with retail sales of all of the apps that we've made in the past 21 years—combined." Business is so good that Greenstone won't even bother writing for the Mac anymore. Besides, Greenstone says, iPhone apps are easy to create: some get cranked out in just two weeks by a single developer. "Some kid in his bedroom can literally make a million bucks just by writing a little app," Greenstone says.

What Borat Didn't Tell You About Kazakhstan...

It has Ghengis Khan as an ancestral ruler--and a film industry developed by the USSR. They combine in Mongol-- a slow but memorable epic and coming-of-age story, directed by Sergei Bodrov that someone I know and yours truly watched the other night. Somehow the scenes of young Temujin (Ghengis Khan's boyhood name) communicating with wolves and dogs went deep into the unconscious. Well worth getting from Netflix. A bit too much "ultra-violence" for the videogamers out there, but I fast-forwarded through that stuff. On the other hand, lots of beautiful horses, landscapes, costumes, Asian actors (from Japan, China, & Kazakhstan) as well as yurts. Plus, the film seems to be in Mongolian, which is not something one hears everyday...

Camille Paglia on Hillary Clinton

From Salon:

As for Obama's appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, what sense does that make except within parochial Democratic politics? Awarding such a prize plum to Hillary may be a sop to her aggrieved fan base, but what exactly are her credentials for that position? Aside from being a mediocre senator (who, contrary to press reports, did very little for upstate New York), Hillary has a poor track record as both a negotiator and a manager. And of course both Clintons constantly view the world through the milky lens of their own self-interest. Well, it's time for Hillary to put up or shut up. If she gets as little traction in world affairs as Condoleezza Rice has, Hillary will be flushed down the rabbit hole with her feckless husband and effectively neutralized as a future presidential contender. If that's Obama's clever plan, is it worth the gamble? The secretary of state should be a more reserved, unflappable character -- not a drama queen who, even in her acceptance speech, morphed into three different personalities in the space of five minutes.

Given Obama's elaborate deference to the Clintons, beginning with his over-accommodation of them at the Democratic convention in August, a nagging question has floated around the Web: What do the Clintons have on him? No one doubts that the Clinton opposition research team was turning over every rock in its mission to propel Hillary into the White House. There's an information vacuum here that conspiracy theorists have been rushing to fill.

Daniel Pipes on Mumbai Attacks

From DanielPipes.org:

If terrorism ranks among the cruelest and most inhumane forms of warfare, excruciating in its small-bore viciousness and intentional pain, Islamist terrorism has also become well-rehearsed political theater. Actors fulfill their scripted roles, then shuffle, soon forgotten, off the stage.

Indeed, as one reflects on the most publicized episodes of Islamist terror against Westerners since 9/11 – the attack on Australians in Bali, on Spaniards in Madrid, on Russians in Beslan, on Britons in London – a twofold pattern emerges: Muslim exultation and Western denial. The same tragedy replays itself, with only names changed.

Muslim exaltation: The Mumbai assault inspired occasional condemnations, hushed official regrets, and cornucopias of unofficial enthusiasm. As the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center notes, the Iranian and Syrian governments exploited the event "to assail the United States, Israel and the Zionist movement, and to represent them as responsible for terrorism in India and the world in general." Al-Jazeera's website overflowed with comments such as "Allah, grant victory to Muslims. Allah, grant victory to jihad" and "The killing of a Jewish rabbi and his wife in the Jewish center in Mumbai is heartwarming news."

Such supremacism and bigotry can no longer surprise, given the well-documented, world-wide acceptance of terror among many Muslims. For example, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press conducted an attitudinal survey in spring 2006, "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other." Its polls of about one thousand persons in each of ten Muslim populations found a perilously high proportion of Muslims who, on occasion, justify suicide bombing: 13 percent in Germany, 22 percent in Pakistan, 26 percent in Turkey, and 69 percent in Nigeria.

A frightening portion also declared some degree of confidence in Osama bin Laden: 8 percent in Turkey, 48 percent in Pakistan, 68 percent in Egypt, and 72 percent in Nigeria. As I concluded in a 2006 review of the Pew survey, "These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come." Obvious conclusion, no?

Western denial: No. The fact that terrorist fish are swimming in a hospitable Muslim sea nearly disappears amidst Western political, journalistic, and academic bleatings. Call it political correctness, multiculturalism, or self-loathing; whatever the name, this mentality produces delusion and dithering.

Nomenclature lays bare this denial. When a sole jihadist strikes, politicians, law enforcement, and media join forces to deny even the fact of terrorism; and when all must concede the terrorist nature of an attack, as in Mumbai, a pedantic establishment twists itself into knots to avoid blaming terrorists.

Politico: Valerie Jarrett Was Blagojevich's Senate Bargaining Chip

Ben Smith reports on the Obama advisor's role in the fall of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich:

The transition hasn't yet responded to questions about Rod Blagojevich's indictment, but the key question is whether the transition was talking to prosecutors, whether Obama and Valerie Jarrett knew that Blagojevich had offered her the Senate seat in exchange for a labor job, and how she, the transition, or SEIU handled the solicitation of a bribe. (The existence of a transcript suggests that the SEIU official -- Andy Stern, the president, had met with Blagojevich just before the election on the subject, though nobody is identified in the complaint -- was wearing a wire.)

One piece of speculation: Jarrett's abrupt withdrawal from consideration for the Senate seat suggests Obama's circle aware of the investigation.

It is clear from the complaint that Obama refused to offer Blagojevich anything for appointing Jarrett.

"ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the Senate seat but 'they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F*** them,'" says the complaint.

Arianna Huffington on Bush's Reverse Darwinism

From today's Huffington Post:

Among its myriad failings, the Bush administration has repeatedly gotten it wrong when it comes to getting it right. Over the last eight years, there has consistently been no penalty for those who have gotten things - even the most important things - wrong, and no reward for those who have gotten things right.

Call it Bush Darwinism: survival of the unfittest.

Over the weekend, Barack Obama made an encouraging move to reverse that unintelligent design by appointing retired General Eric Shinseki to be the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. While having had a long and distinguished career, Shinseki is most famous for getting it right when it came to Iraq - and for suffering the consequences typical in the Bush administration for getting it right: being shown the door.

"Separate but Equal" in American Higher Education?

Mark S. Langevin teaches political science at the University of Maryland's University College. He published an oped in today's Baltimore Sun arguing that adjunct faculty are part of a "separate but equal" system in American higher education:

In some ways, UMUC is similar to the East Louisiana Railroad car that Homer Plessy boarded on June 7, 1892. Just as railroads served to propel the U.S. toward progress in the 19th century, UMUC plays a key role in creating a future of global opportunities for thousands of adult students in Maryland and throughout the world, offering bachelor's and master's programs, a doctoral program and a multitude of certificate programs and numerous online offerings. Last year, UMUC enrolled more than 90,000 students in three continents. UMUC could grow by 50 percent in the next decade, by far the largest increase in the University System of Maryland. Unfortunately, the burden of such expansion will fall upon those least able to afford it: students and faculty.

UMUC resident students pay 400 percent more toward their educational expenses than the state's share. At College Park and Frostburg State, students pay only 80 percent of what state taxpayers do. Multiplying the inequality, only 33 percent of UMUC undergraduates receive financial aid, compared with a majority of students enrolled at peer institutions. It gets worse. UMUC has no tenured faculty, only a tiny team of full-time professors with short-term contracts lost among the legions of part-time faculty. More than 80 percent of UMUC faculty are contracted one course at a time.

UMUC's faculty model doubles down on inequality by forcing students to the back of the higher-education bus along with their part-time professors who earn only a third of what full-time professors at peer schools in Maryland earn for comparable work.

Shinseki Good Choice for VA

The Chicago Sun-Times explained why in its lede:

The very man rejected by the Bush administration for warning that Iraq would be no cakewalk is President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be Veterans Affairs secretary.

Eric Shinseki, 66, was Army chief of staff when months before the Iraq war was launched, he warned that several hundred thousand troops would be needed -- more than the Bush administration planned.

He also warned that ethnic rivalries would break out and that American troops would face a long, difficult clean-up afterward. Bush administration officials repudiated Shinseki's remarks.

But on Sunday, Obama said, "He was right."

My guess this appointment might indicate that Shinseki may be in line for the Defense Secretary job, when Gates steps down...

My Bas Relief of Anton Chekhov as a Young Man

Based on Levitan's portrait:

From 20081207

Yet One More Reason Hillary Should Not Be Secretary of State

Today's story in the NY Times about Bill Clinton's recent $200,000 speech for a suspicious Malaysian businessman embroiled in controversy and legal problems:

Mr. Clinton promoted the Petra Group’s new deal on Friday, telling the audience, “One of the biggest rubber shoes and boots manufacturers, Timberland, is replacing the soles of its shoes it makes with this man’s green rubber technology.”

Mr. Clinton often praises companies that pay him to speak. In 2001, he received $125,000 from an Illinois management consulting company called International Profit Associates. It was later revealed that the Illinois attorney general was investigating accusations of deceptive marketing tactics by the company.

After a start-up Web search site named Accoona donated $700,000 worth of stock to his foundation, Mr. Clinton praised the company at a corporate event in December 2004.

“I hope you all get rich,” he told Accoona executives, “but, remember, you are doing something good for humanity as well.”

Another Reason Hillary Should Not Be Confirmed as Secretary of State

From the AP, this story of what looks like a corrupt practice:

The Clintons plan a New York City fundraiser this month, which will give donors a final chance to buy some face time with the future secretary of state.

Aides said the New York senator will try to avoid doing anything that suggests she is leveraging her new post for fundraising advantage. But the appearance of a conflict of interest is always possible when people give campaign money to politicians.

"If nothing else, there's the embarrassment element," said Brad Smith, a former Federal Election Commission chairman. "A secretary of state trying to raise campaign money is kind of ugly."

Obama's team sent an e-mail Friday, signed by Vice President-elect Joe Biden, asking supporters to help Obama fulfill a pledge to whittle Clinton's campaign debt."

This story reminds one of the continuing scandal surrounding Hillary fundraiser Norman Hsu reported in November by the San Jose Mercury News:

A state appeals court Tuesday upheld a three-year prison term for disgraced political donor Norman Hsu, whose hefty campaign contributions to prominent politicians amid a life on the lam at one point thrust his name into last year's presidential primary campaign.

In a unanimous ruling, the San Francisco-based 1st District Court of Appeal rejected Hsu's bid to overturn his fraud conviction and sentence, which dated back to a 1992 San Mateo County criminal case involving a $1 million investment scam. A San Mateo County judge sentenced Hsu to the three-year prison term in January, prompting the appeal.

Hsu's troubles came to light after news reports revealed he was a fugitive on the San Mateo County charges, skipping bail in 1992 after pleading no contest to the fraud allegations. Hsu had been a major fundraiser for prominent Democrats, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, and his plight attracted nationwide attention. Many of the politicians who received contributions from Hsu returned the money or gave it to charity after the revelations.

Is Afghanistan Lost?

Just found this announcement for an upcoming Harvard University seminar in my inbox

Is Afghanistan Lost?
A panel discussion on Afghanistan: Development, Human Rights and Security

Date: December 8, 2008
Time: 1:30-3:00pm
Location:
Malkin Penthouse, 4th Floor
Littauer Building
Harvard Kennedy School
79 John F. Kennedy St.
Cambridge, MA. 02138

Moderator:

Samantha Power, Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership
and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School

Panelists:

Steve Coll, President, New America Foundation, author of Ghost Wars:
The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the
Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, which won a Pulitzer Prize in
2005 and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

Mark Garlasco, Senior Military Analyst, Human Rights Watch

Maleeha Lodhi, Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics,
former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S.

Barnett Rubin, Director of Studies, Center for International Conflict,
New York University, author of The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State
Formation and Collapse in the International System and The Search for
Peace in Afghanistan: From Buffer State to Failed State

Sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Carr Center for
Human Rights Policy, the University Committee on Human Rights, Harvard
Law School Human Rights Program, and the Initiative on contemporary
state and society in the Islamic world.

More from Dawn:

PARIS, Dec 4: France has invited a dozen states to a conference on Afghanistan on Dec 14 to enlist the support of neighbouring countries in a stepped-up effort for peace, officials said on Thursday.

“Apart from Afghanistan and its immediate neighbours (Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan), India and China have been invited as countries from the region,” said a French foreign ministry spokesman.

The United Nations special representative for Afghanistan, Kai Eide, has been invited to the informal ministerial meeting along with representatives of the United States, Britain and Russia, he said.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was also due to attend the Paris talks, six months after a donors’ conference in France, which currently holds the EU presidency, raised $20 billion for reconstruction in Afghanistan.

French officials see Pakistan, alleged to be the staging ground for Taliban attacks, as key to stabilising Afghanistan, which remains mired in poverty and violence more than six years after US-led forces drove the extremist militia out of Kabul."

Caroline Kennedy for US Senate

ABC News has reported speculation that NY Governor Patterson may appoint Caroline Kennedy to Hillary Clinton's Senate Seat. Sounds good to me (this blog recommended her for VP). Full disclosure: Caroline danced with a schoolmate of mine at a mixer about 35 years ago...he said she was very nice. (ht Huffington Post)

This just in...

Google just let me know about this item on Courthouse News Service from October:

CIA Info On Uzbek Massacre Demanded

WASHINGTON (CN) - Conservative culture critic Laurence Jarvik sued the CIA in a federal FOIA complaint demanding information on Uzbekistan's massacre of protesters on May 13, 2005, and events before and after the slaughter.

After wrangling over fee waivers, Jarvik says he agreed to pay the fees, but the CIA refuses to cough up any documents. Jarvik, known as a critic of the Public Broadcasting System, is represented by Matthew Simmons of Bethesda, Md.

EU Human Rights Court Upholds French Secularism

According to this report from the Irish Times(ht Althouse):

Europe's human rights court today threw out a complaint by two French Muslim girls who were expelled from their school for refusing to remove their headscarves during sports lessons.

France, which takes secularism in state schools very seriously, passed a law in 2004 banning pupils from wearing conspicuous signs of their religion at school after a decade of bitter debate about Muslim girls wearing headscarves in class.

"The court observed that the purpose of the restriction on the applicants' right to manifest their religious convictions was to adhere to the requirements of secularism in state schools," the European Court of Human Rights said.

The two girls were 11 and 12 when they were expelled in 1999. After French courts ruled against them, they complained to the European court that their school had violated their freedom of religion and their right to an education.

The court, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, rejected both complaints by a unanimous ruling of seven judges.

N

Putin Offers Olive Branch to Obama

During his annual call-in TV show:

OLEG BELAN: Good afternoon, Mr Putin. Nenets Autonomous Area. I am Oleg Belan and I am a deputy of the regional assembly.

Do you think our relations with the United States will change after the election of Barack Obama as President? Will they become more pragmatic and constructive? Thank you.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: The question should be directed first and foremost to the new US Administration. Usually, when there is a change of power in any country, especially such a superpower as the United States, such changes do take place. We very much hope that the changes will be positive.

We see these positive signals. What are they? Look at the meeting of NATO foreign ministers: both Ukraine and Georgia have been denied a Membership Action Plan. We already hear at the level of experts, the people who are close to the President elect and the people around him, his aides, that there should be no hurry, that relations with Russia should not be jeopardised. We already hear that the practicability of deploying the third position of missile defence in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic should be considered once again.

We hear that the relations with Russia should be built with respect for our interests. If these are not just words, and if they are translated into practical policies, then of course we will react in kind and our American partners will immediately feel it.

Obama: Permission Granted--India May Bomb Pakistan

According to the Washington Times, President-Elect Obama has given the green light to India (unlike President Bush): "President-elect Barack Obama declared Monday that India 'would be within its rights if it took retaliatory action against militants hiding inside Pakistan.'"

Lucette Lagnado on Chabad in Mumbai

From today's Wall Street Journal:.

I still remember the rabbi's first sermon, about the Valley of Dry Bones -- that amazing biblical passage where the dead come to life again. I thought of the hopelessness I had felt on 9/11, the collective hopelessness, but then, listening to the story of how even a bunch of bones had been brought back to life, I too felt a sense of possibility again. And safety.

I thought of that sense of safety and comfort as I watched the horrific events unfold in Mumbai, and specifically at the Chabad House.

I am absolutely certain that Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his pregnant wife Rivka, massacred by the terrorists, had also set up a safe-haven. Theirs was a retreat for Jews living in and around Mumbai or even those who were merely passing through.

I would venture that's one of the secrets behind the Chabad movement's extraordinary growth -- that they build little sanctuaries for lost Jews, alienated Jews, secular Jews, Jews who have no interest in traditional religion.

Chabad has redefined religion in part by getting away from the notion of large, formal temples to establishing places of worship that are small, intimate and, above all, deeply comforting; they have made religion personal.

And so, even as some other branches of Judaism and other religions have withered, they have ventured to the far corners of the earth: Siberia, Alaska, Kiev, Odessa, Ho Chi Minh City. But no matter where the Chabad house the philosophy is always the same -- to bring even the most alienated Jews back into the fold.

You go to a Chabad house and you can count on being invited to Friday night dinner by the rabbi and his wife. The model emphasizes old-fashioned notions of community and home -- the sense that religion is not a once-a-year affair but a way of life.

Memo to Obama: To Solve Financial Crisis, Declare a Jubilee Year

Debt relief for developing economies was all the rage in the 20th century. The IMF and World Bank forgave oodles of debt, with the support of Margaret Thatcher among others. Now, an item on Sudden Debt suggests that the USA practice IMF debt forgiveness on herself. I'll go one step farther...IMHO, it is time for a Jubilee Year::

The biblical requirement is that the Jubilee year was to be treated like a Sabbatical year, with the land lying fallow, but also required the compulsory return of all property to its original owners or their heirs, except the houses of laymen within walled cities, in addition to the manumission of all Israelite indentured servants.[7] The biblical regulations state that the Jubilee was only to come into force after the Israelites had gained control of Canaan,[8] presumably because it would otherwise require the Israelites to return the land to the Canaanites within 50 years; similar nationalistic concerns about the impact of the Jubilee on land ownership have been raised by Zionist settlers.[9] From a legal point of view, the Jubilee law effectively banned sale of land as fee simple, and instead land could only be leased for no more than 50 years; the biblical regulations go on to specify that the price of land had to be proportional to how many years remained before the Jubilee, with land being cheaper the closer it is to the Jubilee.[10]

Since the 49th year was already a sabbatical year, the land was required to be left fallow during it, but if the 50th year also had to be kept fallow, as the Jubilee, then no new crops would be available for two years, and only the summer fruits would be available for the following year, creating a much greater risk of starvation overall;[11] Judah haNasi contended that the jubilee year was identical with the sabbatical 49th year.[12] However, the majority of classical rabbis believed that the biblical phrase hallow the fiftieth year,[13] together with the biblical promise that there would be three years worth of fruit in the sixth year,[14] implies that the jubilee year was the 50th year.[15] The opinion of the Geonim, and generally of later authorities, was that prior to the Babylonian captivity the Jubilee was the intercalation of the 50th year, but after the captivity ended the Jubilee was essentially ignored, except for the blast of the shofar, and coincided with the sabbatical 49th year;[16] the justification given for this lapse of adherence to the Jubilee was that the Jubilee was only to be observed when the Jews controlled all of Canaan, including the territories of Reuben and Gad and the eastern half-tribe of Manasseh.

Basically it means cancelling debts. To those holding mortgage-backed securities...tough luck.

Chabad Tribute to Slain Mumbai Rabbi

At Chabad.org, Jonathan Mark writes:

Someone wondered: What effect would the Mumbai attack by Islamic terrorists have upon Chabad's presence in dangerous places?

I never met Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg or Rebbetzin Rivkah Holtzberg, martyrs of the Mumbai massacre, but I met more than a thousand of their spiritual brothers and sisters, the shluchim and shluchot, the Rebbe's emissaries, and here's what they always told me when the situation was darkest.

Chabad doesn't quit. They stood their ground in Czarist Russia, and they didn't quit after the Holocaust, and they didn't abandon Crown Heights after the 1991 riot. Chabad doesn't quit even in Islamic countries that might blow up any minute, such as Morocco, where Chabad teachers still operate in a city called "Gazablanca."

The Chabad idea of activism is to enlist for a lifetime job in Siberia, or Beijing, or Mexico, or MumbaiThey were working in the spiritual and anti-Semitic ruins of East Berlin when religion was criminalized, before the wall fell, and they were working in the Jewish ruins of Dnepropetrovsk before that Ukrainian city was open to the West and their activity could have meant a trip to the gulag. Chabad is still in the Congo amidst Africa's "world war," and they're still working in inner city neighborhoods where experts say "there are no Jews there anymore," except there are.

They didn't sign up to be American "clergy" whose idea of activism is announcing how their partisan politics are – surprise! – identical to Torah values. No, the Chabad idea of activism was to enlist for a lifetime job in Siberia, or Beijing, or Mexico, or Mumbai, a life in the trenches, on the front lines—the first wave in G‑d's infantry.

Even as I write this, Chabad is planning to re-open the Chabad House at 5 Hormusji Street, the now-famous Nariman building in Mumbai.

Jews don't run. Chabad doesn't run. Tonight, in India, Rabbi Tzvi Rivkin and Rebbetzin Noa will be open for Friday night davening and hosting people for Shabbos meals on Brunton Cross Road in Bangalore; Rabbi Baruch Shanhev and Rebbetzin Rachel Tova will be open for davening and Shabbos meals on Club House Road in Manali; Rabbi Guy Efraim and Rebbetzin Maya will be open for davening and Shabbos meals in Anjuna Village; and tonight, you can bet on it, there will be Shabbos in Mumbai.

Jews lit candles in the Warsaw Ghetto until they ran out of wicks, and tonight Jewish women in Mumbai will be lighting Shabbos candles not a second after 5:42 p.m., India time. That's what Jews do. That's what Chabad does.

Maybe some Jews will be understandably less inclined to backpack in India, or to do business in India, but plenty of Jews will still pass through Mumbai and Chabad will be there when they do.

There's a war on — a spiritual war as much as a shooting war — and Chabad knows it. The Lubavitcher Rebbe is their Churchill, even from the Other World. Good men and women will die, but Chabad will never surrender. They call their youth group Tzivos Hashem, the Army of God. The Holtzbergs were in it when they were young. Their two-year-old baby, Moishele, will be in it soon enough.

When the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, died in 1994, all the experts wondered how soon would Chabad fold.

Good men and women will die, but Chabad will never surrenderThis is what Chabad did. A Chabad carpenter sawed wood from the Rebbe's lectern to build a casket; a Chabad burial society gently poured water over the Rebbe's body and wrapped him in a shroud; straw was placed on the floor and the Rebbe's body was placed on it; and then they drove to the cemetery and laid the Rebbe in the ground. That night they davened Maariv. The next morning they showed up for Shachris. Then, over the next 15 years, they sent out several hundred shluchim and shluchot – including the Holtzbergs — representing the Rebbe.

Chabad did what they had to do when the Rebbe died and they'll do the same now.