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When NYPD officer Marc St. Arromand, 42, of Elmont, was involved in a motorcycle crash on his way to work on April 11, he was rushed to Long Island Jewish Hospital in Valley Stream. Despite doctors’ best efforts, St. Arromand died early that morning, shortly after his arrival at the facility. Upon hearing the news of their colleague’s death, dozens of members from St. Arromand’s highway patrol unit headed to the hospital to pay their respects and to support his wife, Cecilia Jackson-St. Arromand, and their five children. It was because of the care the group received by staff during their nearly 16-hour stay at the hospital, holding vigil, that on July 17, members of St. Arromand’s unit honored the doctors and nurses at LIJ with a plaque for their efforts and their compassion during the difficult time. “The outpouring of support that we received that day from this hospital’s staff and administration was nothing short of extraordinary,” said Highway Patrol Unit 2 commanding officer, Capt. Daniel Shouldis. Cecilia, upon hearing of her husband’s passing, was so distraught she reportedly needed assistance just to stand, according to LIJ Medical Director Dr. Joseph Marino, and Shouldis recalled his officers filling the hallways, attempting to find solace that day through sharing anecdotes and thoughts about their friend. St. Arromand had been veteran on the force, serving for 14 years. Because he was an organ donor, his body had to be kept at the hospital for an extended period of time while they were harvested. Roughly 300 mourners reportedly stayed at the facility until 11 p.m. on the day of his death to see him out the door, which is tradition for fallen officers. All the while, the hospital staff cared for the group as they waited. Shouldis praised them for their efforts, providing amenities such as food, drink, a private conference room for mourning, as well as grief counselors for St. Arromand’s loved ones. “You made what was the beginning of something no one ever wants to endure, just a little more bearable,” he told the staff. He also thanked the organ donation team, who kept the administration up to date with the process, allowing highway patrol officers, other members of the NYPD as well Nassau County police to escort St. Arromand’s body from LIJ to the Nassau County medical examiner’s office. After the plaque was handed over, Marino thanked the NYPD for the gesture. “The terms ‘bravest’ and ‘finest’ were appropriately coined for the firefighters and the police officers of New York,” Marino said, “and that day, on April 11, I had the opportunity to witness the bravest and finest within Northwell: the staff at LIJ Valley Stream.” -Christina Daly contributed to this story.

Rainer Stahl retired general secretary of Martin Luther Bund (Habichtstrasse 14 A, Erlangen, Germany, D-91056) Stahl R. Martin Luther inspiriert und regt zum Widerspruch an. Teil 2., Religiya. Tserkov’. Obshchestvo. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po teologii i religii [Religion. Church. Society: Research and publications in the field of theology and religious studies], Saint-Petersburg, 2018, vol. 7, pp. 44–67. The text «Martin Luther inspires and stimulates contradictions» continues the second part of the artcile based on the report read 11. April 2017 in Tscheboskary and published in the previous volume of the almanac. The author raises such questions as the Luther’s attitude to the new picture of the universe (of Copernicus), the reformer’s approach to the relation between Jews and Christians and his view on the Muslims. The author insists on careful historical understanding of Luther’s positions, especially then they are far from the modern one. In the Jewish question, Luther used to be very critical and severe, but the author emphasizes that no government followed specifically his suggestions and ideas. As to the Luther’s approach to the Muslims , in the author’s opinion, the only attractive theme is his demand to understand the other religion correctly. It’s clear that for the contemporary ethnical situation in Europe make necessary for Lutherans to re-estimate Luther. The author comes to conclusion that the only idea that should be taken today is Luther’s understanding of the Revelation as made by Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.

ATLANTA (AP) — The first outside political group has already started to hammer Georgia Democrat Michelle Nunn using her leaked campaign plan that detailed her strategy and discussed her potential weaknesses as an Atlanta nonprofit executive seeking a seat in the U.S. Senate. Republicans and Democrats agree that even more powerful blows will come later, as GOP nominee David Perdue and the independent Super PACs that support him try to use the Nunn campaign's words against her in a deluge of television attacks Outside groups have already spent more than $8 million on the race, and Perdue, a former corporate CEO, is wealthy enough to finance whatever level of advertising he desires. The question is whether those attacks persuade voters in a contest that will help determine which party controls the Senate for the last year of President Barack Obama's administration. "The outside groups are going to take this and go nuclear on her," said Georgia GOP strategist Joel McElhannon of the memos first published by the conservative magazine National Review, which said they were unintentionally uploaded briefly to Nunn's campaign website in December. A super PAC financed by billionaire conservative Joe Ricketts — the TDAmeritrade founder and owner of baseball's Chicago Cubs — was first to turn material from the memos into an ad, backed with a seven-figure buy this weekend. The 30-second spot from Ending Spending Action Fund follows previous Ricketts attacks on Nunn. The new ad uses quotes from the leaked document to tell voters that "Nunn's campaign worries she's too liberal ... a lightweight ... not a 'real' Georgian," among other charges. Those partial quotes come from the document's outline of attacks that Nunn could expect from Republicans. But McElhannon said the distortion is just why disclosure of the 144-page document hurts Nunn. The GOP, he said, will continue using the memos to buttress their claims that Nunn is "being dishonest with voters" by campaigning as a moderate "who is above all the usual politics." A top Nunn backer, former Democratic Rep. George "Buddy" Darden, downplayed the expected GOP offensive. "This is all stuff they would say anyway," he said. "This will ultimately just be a blip on the screen." For her part, Nunn said the disclosure doesn't change her fundamental message. "What's remained constant is we're focused on talking about a collaborative approach ... and changing the culture in Washington," she told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution this week. Her campaign declined to make her available to The Associated Press. And even before the latest attack ad, she's already taken to criticizing Ricketts on the campaign trail, casting him as an example of outside money that poisons the political process. The document is a compilation of consultant-written memos that detail Nunn's hopes to increase minority voter turnout while building a fundraising behemoth to compete with Republicans. The outline of Republican attacks notes everything from her ties with national Democrats to loose associations between her Points of Light Foundation and a Palestinian charity with its own alleged link to Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza, at war with Israel. Both get mention in the Ricketts ad. Gathering such details isn't uncommon in a major campaign, but GOP consultant Chip Lake said having the most frank assessments on paper is unusual. Every campaign depends on money, but the Nunn memo states plainly that "hitting our targets will require us to prioritize fundraising above all else and to focus the candidate's time on it with relentless intensity." The document identifies the Jewish community as a "tremendous financial opportunity" but cautions that "the level of support will be contingent on her position" on Israel. Nunn doesn't shy away from the fact that she grew up in suburban Washington while her father, Sam Nunn, represented Georgia in the Senate. But one memo says that to reach small-town and rural voters, the campaign should present "Michelle and her family in rural settings with rural-oriented imagery." There also are plans for events with farmers and gun owners, whom the memo describes as "validators." Said Lake, "That makes it awfully easy for us to say, 'Look, she doesn't really care about you. She's just using you.'" Democrats have identified Nunn as perhaps their best opportunity to pick up a seat and frustrate the GOP's push for a Senate majority. Republicans need six more senators to run the chamber, and they acknowledge the importance of holding retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss's seat. At the least, Nunn supporters concede that the leak is an unwelcomed bump for a candidate with little-to-no margin for error in a state Obama lost twice. Several Democrats were reluctant to discuss the memos or their fallout publicly but noted that many portions Republicans have been most gleeful over are simply the Nunn campaign predicting Republican lines of attack, just like those in the latest ad from Ricketts' group. McElhannon argued: "It won't matter whether that fairly represents what her consultants actually said. Everyone in this business is a used-car salesman to some degree." Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/BillBarrowAP. - Politics & Government - Michelle Nunn - Joe Ricketts - Sam Nunn

PRAGUE (JTA) — It has the tone of a newspaper from Berlin in 1936, except it’s from Vilnius in 2009. The face of a rabbi is enlarged on the cover of a Lithuanian tabloid with the words “Give it now!” emblazoned across the top. The subject, Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of international affairs for the American Jewish Committee, is cast as the villain, looking down on a miniature Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, portrayed as defenseless at the hands of some Shylock. The image, which appeared on the June 26 edition of the popular right-wing daily Vakaro Zinios (The Evening News), alludes to Baker’s demand that the Lithuanian government return Jewish property after eight years of promises to do so. In lieu of restitution, Lithuania wants to pay just one-third of the value of Jewish property confiscated by the Nazis and Communists — $46 million — over 10 years and starting in 2011. Lithuania’s Jews and their advocates, including Baker, are not satisfied. “It is far too little, far too late,” Baker says. The Lithuania case represents the stalling tactics, lack of political will and nationalist-fueled resentment of Jews that have frustrated efforts by Jewish owners, heirs and their advocates to recover property stolen by the Nazis and the Communists in Central and Eastern Europe. The economic crisis has made it even more difficult to get local politicians to take action on restitution. In a significant gesture this week, 46 countries signed a declaration at the close of a Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague aimed at easing the restitution process for Jewish property taken during the Nazi era. The Terezin Declaration is a nonbinding set of guiding principles aimed at faster, more open and transparent restitution of art and private and communal property taken by force or under duress during the Holocaust. However, questions linger over what such a document can accomplish with only the power of moral force. “Back in the late 1990s, NATO membership was a driving motivation for countries in Eastern Europe, who were told by the U.S. government that how they treated their Jews will be a key factor in their admission,” Baker said. This was in stark contrast to the European Union, which did not make any demands for restitution. In fact, the European Union lifted a requirement for restitution that would have blocked Poland’s 2004 admission to the 27-country union. Pressured by the United States and Jewish groups since the fall of the Iron Curtain two decades ago, most countries previously under the sway of the Soviet Union have made some attempts at communal and private restitution or compensation. There are two major sore spots within the European Union: Poland and Lithuania. Poland, where 3 million Jews lived before World War II — the largest Jewish prewar population in any country — has no private restitution law for Jews or non-Jews. In the area of looted art, progress has been much slower than for compensating the rightful owners of confiscated properties. The U.S. government estimates that 600,000 paintings were looted by the Nazis, with 100,000 still not accounted for. Forty-four countries agreed to another set of nonbinding principles on the return of looted art at a 1998 conference in Washington, but only four countries have made “major progress” in implementing the principles, according to the Claims Conference, and 23 have made no significant progress. The Washington principles were supposed to ease the claims process and called for greater research into collections, the opening of archives and the removal of barriers for claimants, such as statutes of limitations and export laws. Hungary, a signatory to the Washington agreement, is one of several countries in the no-progress category. “The Hungarian experience may be described as a total and concerted effort by successive governments to keep the looted art in their museums,” Agnes Peresztegi, a lawyer with the Commission for Art Recovery, told attendees of the Prague conference last week, “even if it requires that the museums conceal or destroy archival evidence or deliberately lengthen negotiations — effectively delaying legal actions that would be filed against the state.” In the Czech Republic, only direct heirs of deceased owners, not nieces or nephews, can make art claims, even though this contravenes Czech inheritance law. In the United States, claimants often must wage lengthy legal battles against museums because there is no national arbitration commission. In most countries, museums do not even know if their art was looted because they cannot afford to document the history of their holdings. “Researching one painting cost us $800,000,” said Graham Beal, director of the Detroit Institute of Art. To address these obstacles, the declaration in Prague calls for the establishment of a Holocaust institute in Terezin, where the concentration camp was located. The institute would study “best practices” in compensation, restitution, looted art research, Holocaust education, care for Holocaust survivors and combating anti-Semitism. The institute would not monitor countries because it would have not have that power, according to the Czech government representative at the conference, Denisa Haubertova. It is not clear how the institute would be funded. Conference participants, including restitution experts and Holocaust survivors, agreed that creating a central body for collecting information is a good start, but that time for effective solutions is running out. “I fear this will not bring us any closer to the day when elderly survivors will get compensation for property,” said Ruth Deech, a Jewish member of Britain’s House of Lords who had grandparents on both sides of her family with substantial property in Poland. Rather than declarations, she said, the European Union should create a fund immediately to deal with claims. “In Britain we are subject to so many European Union directives,” she said, “why can’t there be one on this?”

Dossier 20: Muslim Conservatism in South Africa Publication Author:Ebrahim Moosa |Word Document||148.57 KB| number of pages:168 The main Muslim actors articulating a conservative political discourse are the ‘ulama-groups, chiefly represented by the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC), the Jamiatul ‘Ulama (Council of Theologians) of Transvaal, the Jamiatul ‘Ulama of Natal and The Majlisul ‘Ulama (Council of Theologians) of South Africa. In addition, there are organisations such as the Islamic Council of South Africa (ICSA), and The Majlis-as-Shura which are not strictly theological councils. There are also ‘ulama who belong to the Sunni Jamiat al-Ulama. This group has a separate administration because of its allegiance to the Barewl theological school. Although the focus of this paper is on the larger institutions, many of the assumptions and conclusions are also applicable to the Sunni Jamiat and other conservative bodies. The ‘Ulama: The Mediators of the Tradition It is the ‘ulama who largely mediate the variety of theological traditions of Islam. They are to some extent the prototype of the intellectual in Muslim communities. In practice the interpretation of the law, ethics, morality and religious values of Islam is largely the responsibility of the ‘ulama. As such, they have the authority and power over the religious symbols. The radical critique of the ‘ulama regards the latter’s tradition as static and conservative. The ‘ulama stand accused of abdicating their duty to set polity and society right. This raises a more contentious question, which is whether normative Islam prescribes any specific function for the ‘ulama. Theoretically, Islam has no ecclesia, with the result that its counterpart, the saeculum, becomes redundant. ‘In a sense’, writes Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi, ‘Islam is a secular religion, because it has no church’. To concede this assertion would be an oversimplification. A de facto separation between the realm of the ruler and that of the ‘ulama has historically always existed. It would not be incorrect to assert that the ‘ulama did, and still do, function in a sort of ecclesiastic capacity. Direct ‘ulama involvement in politics, with the exception of some isolated periods in Islamic history, has been minimal. However certain ‘ulama did participate in the anti-colonial struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in the form of Ben Badis in Algeria, Al-Afghani in Egypt and Mahmud al-Hassan in India. However, this does not characterise a general practice where the ‘ulama provide secular and religious leadership. Yet to use Geertz’s terminology, there is no single ‘model of’ and a ‘model for’ the ‘ulama in Muslim society. The absence of a central politico-religious authority further exacerbates the situation. The demise of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924 signalled the end of what remained of a token politico-cum-religious authority. Now that the ‘ulama have assumed the mantle of the caliphate, the question is debated whether they ought to provide both secular and religious leadership as the caliph did or whether they are only restricted to religious guidance. The advent of new political structures, such as the nation-state and the attendant political and cultural pluralism has also seriously challenged the traditional authority structures of Muslims. Qurieshi captures the paradoxes of the ‘ulama in Muslim society that have made them sociologically mystifying. He attributes their conservatism to their legalistic training. In other words, they are victims of a tradition which legitimates itself by invoking the immutable authority of the past which only adds to their conservatism. On the other hand, he believes that they have made their conservatism ‘convincing’ because of their loyalty and passionate devotion to Islam. It is within the stated problematic of the role and function of the ‘ulama in Muslim society that certain ambiguous and conservative tendencies appear within the South African context of Islam. Three recent events will be examined in order to locate and explore the conservative discourse. These are the response of the ‘ulama to first, the 1984 tricameral elections; second, the charges of heresy made against radical groups; and, third, the condemnation of participants in anti-apartheid politics. During the tricameral elections of 1984, the Jamiats in the Transvaal and Natal were conspicuously reluctant to criticise the apartheid state. Pressure by radical groups and a wide range of organisations eventually succeeded in that the Natal Jamiat issued a statement on the eve of the ‘Indian’ elections. In what turned out to be an extraordinary occasion in its history, the Jamiat said that the elections were unacceptable because they perpetuated racism and segregation. On the other hand, the Transvaal Jamiat was consistent in its silence, cautious not to make any political statement on the tricameral parliamentary system. The last mentioned Jamiat has since maintained a record silence on any political issue which would appear to be anti-state. Spokespersons for the Sunni Jamiat, in their turn, joined the radical Muslim groups in opposing the elections. In fact, a representative of the Natal Sunni Jamiat described apartheid and the August 1984 elections as ‘Satanic and un-Islamic and an insult to human dignity and prestige’. The MJC, prodded by the nouveaux ‘ulama from the Call of Islam, declared participation in the tricameral election to be juridicially forbidden - haraam. Its theological reasoning stressed the primacy of ‘adl (justice) and a condemnation of racism since the only criterion valid in the eyes of God was the believer’s taqwa - (fear or consciousness of God). Indeed the MJC’s political stand received popular applause. To a large extent the dynamic of the political struggle and the intensity of the popular insurrection which engulfed the entire Cape Peninsula left few institutions untouched, the MJC being no exception. Thus, while the theologians in the Transvaal and Natal were either cautious or even reactionary, the MJC made a brave political stand and affiliated itself to the popular United Democratic Front (UDF). However, under pressure from the conservatives in its ranks, the leadership was forced to withdraw its affiliation from the UDF. The conservatives, in seizing the initiative through a range of tactical manoeuvres, effectively distanced the Council from any committed political position. In other words, the MJC would protest against injustices without necessarily doing anything about it. Press statements during the political unrest of the mid-1980s form another index by which to measure the conservatism of some ‘ulama in the Western Cape. In a two-part series of articles, the pro-Nationalist Cape Town daily, Die Burger, published the views of certain ‘ulama who were termed to be ‘moderates’ (gematigdes). The Burger said: Moderate Muslim theologians (geestelikes) in the Peninsula are of the opinion that not even civil disobedience is permissible for the minority of the Muslims in South Africa where they are to obey the law and are under obligation to negotiate if they consider the political system to be unjust or oppressive. Conservative spokespersons argued that if the government allowed Muslims the religious liberty to pray, build mosques and go for pilgrimage they could not engage in jihad (struggle) against such an authority. To invoke jihad while co-operating with non-Muslims, as the radicals did, was not religiously acceptable, they said. An unnamed theologian told the paper that: ‘Islam strongly rejects anarchy and advocates non-confrontation’. Muslims who were unhappy with the status quo should emigrate or undertake hijra (exodus) to a safer haven. The above arguments favouring political passivism are neither unauthentic nor inaccurate in terms of the mainstream Muslim tradition. A brief digression is in order at this point. The central ideas of medieval Muslim politics are derived from a Persian-inspired genre of writings, known as the ‘mirrors for princes’. These tracts were produced by the medieval Muslim jurists and constitutional theorists as advisory notes for the caliph or sultan. Contemporary ‘ulama who uncritically restate these views run the risk of ignoring the ideological frame in which each of these texts were written. Being mainly a court genre, these ‘mirrors’ were captive to the ideas and political interests of the ruling powers. They rarely addressed issues affecting the legitimacy and illegitimacy of political authority. The aim of this type of political theology was to promote a policy of moderation and cohesion against lawlessness and chaos. The fear of anarchy can be traced to the early Muslim community’s nightmarish experience of the Fitnah or civil war after 648 C. E. Sami Zubeida neatly summarises the effect this history had on Muslim realpolitik: Historically the attitudes of the ‘ulama, jurists and philosophers have displayed a characteristic ambivalence between prudence and legitimacy. Prudence is recognising the realities of politico-military powers and anxiety to maintain the integrity and peace of the Islamic community under a Muslim ruler, however nominal his Islam and oppressive his rule. Legitimacy is still insisting in theory on the correct qualifications of an Islamic ruler and the proper procedures of managing the affairs of the community. But for the most part they kept silent on the gap between theory and practice: prudence prevailed. In the wake of the civil war in the seventh century, the extremist Khawarij (Seceders) called for the removal of any political authority if it committed a single mistake. Their opponents, the Shi’is, considered all temporal authority to be illegitimate until the legitimate candidate from the house of the Prophet (Ahlul Bayt) was installed. In the eyes of the dominant tradition the Shi’i position was an anathema. The sectarian division which later polarised into Sunni and Shi’i schisms was in itself considered to be a product of the fitnah. And, from the point of view of Sunni orthodoxy, there remains an unbridgeable chasm between the two parallel orthodox Sunni-Shi’i perspectives. For the Sunnis, says Enayat, ‘the course of history ... has been a movement away from the ideal state, for the Shi’is it is a movement towards it’. These two movements, away and towards the ideal, as well as the notion of fitnah, have symbolically far-reaching consequences on the Muslim world-view. Subsequent political thought abstracted these ideals from their historical realities and transformed them into powerful mythological ‘truths’ which shape the thought and practice of its adherents. Politics of Deviance or Heresy? Conservative interpretations also attribute the impetus for ‘radical’ Islam to the revolutionary zeal of the 1979 Iranian revolution whose impact on groups of local Muslims cannot be ignored. At this point the sectarian polemics between Sunnis and Shi’is surface in the South African context. The Shi’i ethos provides a messianic view of history which moves towards an ideal. The power of this ‘mythos’ enthuses the devout to believe that triumph is the inevitable outcome of the divine scheme of things. Against the background of the age-old Sunni-Shi’i hostilities, it took little imagination to kindle the flames of sectarian dogmatism against those Sunnis who had ‘politically’ converted to Shi’ism in espousing radical Islam. Heightened militancy and pro-Iranian fervour among local activists were interpreted as acts of theological deviancy or heresy in the eyes of the conservatives. But, the deepening animosity between radicals and conservatives disguised itself in a controversy over the legitimacy of Shi’ism. This led to conservative accusations of heresy or unbelief (kufr) against activists and the consequent attempt to disqualify them from membership of the community. During the height of the political unrest in 1985, Qiblah activists were specifically singled out and assaulted by a vigilante group, known as the ‘A-team’. These Muslim vigilantes accused the Qiblah activists of being Shi’is due to the latter’s open support for revolutionary Iran. The victimisation of these activists was carefully orchestrated. Several confrontations between the ‘A-team’ and their Qiblah opponents took place and even led to a shoot-out. To a rationalistic and materialistic generation it is inconceivable that these conflicts ‘merely’ involved religious issues. It is not difficult to discern a pattern in the vigilante action. The Muslim vigilante action coincided with the vigilante action which killed scores of Crossroads/ KTC squatters in which the state is suspected to have had a hand. With the exception of a few politically aware individuals, the ‘official’ ‘ulama were silent about the brutality metered out to the Qiblah activists. In another separate incident the conservative discourse is even more transparent. In 1988 a joint pamphlet was issued by the three main ‘ulama bodies of South Africa, namely the Transvaal and Natal Jamiats and the MJC. The pamphlet ostensibly announced an agreement between the participants for the establishment of a National Hilaal (Crescent) Committee in order to regulate the controversial Islamic lunar calendar. However, on the reverse side of the pamphlet three carefully worded resolutions were documented. The first resolution warned of the: ...avowed threat of the Shias of taking over the Haramayan (Makkah and Madina), and condemn the exportation of the Khomeini revolution to the Muslim world of the Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah (the Sunnis). The second resolution opposed the ‘efforts of genocide against the valiant Muslims of Palestine... the large numbers of Muslims killed, murdered, maimed and crippled by Jewish Zionist oppressors ...’and expressed ‘full support for the Palestinian Muslims in their jihad against the Israelis...’. The third resolution expressed ‘sincere admiration for the Mujahideen of Afghanistan’ in their Jihad against the ‘invading Russian Imperialists’. The last resolution stated that: We also express our support and sympathy for the struggling, striving and suffering Muslims of Russia, China, Lebanon, Ethiopia, India, Burma, Philippines, Syria etc. and all those areas where Muslims are striving against Anti-Islamic forces, atheistic or Communist forces for survival and self-preservation. A close examination of these texts reveal a concealed discourse. The noticeable absence of any condemnation of racism and the economic exploitation of black people in South Africa is striking. The pamphlet reflects an acute awareness of world events, ranging from Zionism and Soviet imperialism to repression in Burma, but fails to take account of apartheid. What is evident is the selective use of sectarian polemics in order to theologically discredit groups hostile to the political interests of the conservative ‘ulama. The ‘ulama’s discourse is exclusivist, in other words, only concerned with Muslims. Exclusivism is a familiar trademark of reactionary and conservative ideologies. Given the exclusivist discourse, there was no mention of any ‘Muslim’ prisoners of apartheid, such as Achmat Cassiem, Yusuf Patel, Ebraham Ebrahim, Ahmad Kathrada, Ashley (Ashraf) Forbes and Nazeem Dramat, to mention but a few. But, there is also a new spirit among conservatives to create alliances with other conservatives of whatever religious background to the point that such ties would service their common interests. Without having to press the text it is obvious that atheism, communism and Soviet Imperialism are demonised, while American Imperialism and Capitalism are implicitly condoned. The class position of the ‘ulama, as middle-class and merchant-class actors, has a significant influence in their predisposition towards right wing ideologies. Outrage Against Kuffaar (Infidel) Politics An outspoken champion of conservative Islam is the Port Elizabeth-based tabloid, The Majlis - ‘Voice of Islam’. As a representative of a trend which has a significant following, especially in the Transvaal and Natal, it is also an index of Muslim self-understanding in South Africa. Recently, the tabloid attacked Muslim anti-apartheid activists for participating in what it described as kufr (infidel) politics. A mélange of theological and political ideas is invoked to demonstrate that political co-operation between non-Muslims and Muslims is un-Islamic. Its general view is that both left and right wing Muslim groups may be ‘sincere’ in their efforts, but are ‘misguided’. To begin with we will look at the following statement where The Majlis warns that co-operation with non-Muslims meant to be: ... under guidance and instructions of mushrik (polytheist) priests and godless communists; mingling with kuffaar men and women in gatherings where the nafs (passions) find free scope to assert all its baneful domination; dancing hand in hand with kuffaar, bible-wielding priests. It is evident that the paper takes a very dim view of the humanity of non-Muslims, whose status is theologically determined as polytheists, Christians and communists. Sexually, women have the limitation of only being the object of sexual passion and desire. The involvement of ‘unbelievers’ and women sublimates a fear that the pristine character of Islam will be polluted. The cumulative effect of this inclusivism enhances the potential for fitnah, in other words the prospect of change which is reprehensible to the conservative psyche. Perhaps the following statement epitomises this conservative fear more plainly: The methods employed by kuffaar (infidel) political organisations on the left envisage the total destruction of Islamic belief, Islamic practice, Islamic morality and Islamic values. These movements of baatil only culminate in liberal assertion of all the lowly traits in man’s nafs (lower self). Audacity, disrespect for even parental authority and Shar’ia authority are among the baneful consequences of participating in politics under the guidance and instructions of the kuffaar. The implicit hermeneutical keys of fitnah in the above text are terms such as ‘destruction’, ‘disrespect’, ‘baatil’, ‘nafs’, ‘baneful consequences’ and the vilification of the ‘kuffaar’. A deconstruction of the discourse reveals an inherent fear of the dislocation of existing socio-moral structures and the deterioration of Shar’i (religious) authority; and second, the breakdown in parental authority. The enormity of the moral and cultural disjuncture caused by socio-political upheaval is a paramount fear precisely because it will generate an unknown quantity and quality of change. As a consequence, conservatives mount a moral crusade in order to blame radical activists for the breakdown in family and religious morality and hope thereby to redress what they consider to be the social ills. Implicit in the above text, the case is made that irrespective of the level of oppression and injustice, any disturbance of the existing socio-political and moral structures will in Enayat’s words be a movement away from the ideal towards perpetual disintegration and deterioration of society. A fact that has eluded Muslim conservatives thus far, is that when the Prophet Muhammad started his prophetic mission in Makkah he was also accused of disrupting and being the cause of dislocating the society. In a bid to rationalise their political views, conservatives impute certain negative theological and moral values to terms like ‘leftists’, ‘atheists’ and ‘bible-wielding priests’ as shorthand for heresy and deviance. This new theological grammar is the modern-day equivalent of the medieval demonology of Islam. Another statement will place The Majlis’ own political proclivities in perspective: While the group on the right of kuffaar politics collaborate primarily for pecuniary gain, the left collaborate with communists and Christian priests for nafsaani (carnal) gains of riya (show) and takabbur (pride). Both groups are plodding the trail of baatil (falsehood) and dhalaal (deviance). But, the collaboration of those on the left is fraught (sic) with graver dangers for Imaan (faith) and the moral life of Muslims. The evil of the collaboration of those on the right is largely confined to the participants themselves ... they neither represent Islam nor the Muslims ... there is not much to worry about them. But, the real danger to the Islamic way of life is posed by the collaborators with kuffaar political organisations on the left ... It must be reiterated that non-participation in kufaar politics means abstention from all forms of kuffaar politics, be it on the left or the right. The invective against the left and its Muslim allies is extremely belligerent. However, if one examines the text on a comparative basis, the discourse is less opprobrious towards the ‘right wing’ than the ‘left wing’. There is a rationalisation as to why one group is less dangerous than the other. Right wing evil is described as being ‘confined to the participants themselves’. The evil of the left poses ‘graver dangers’ (sic) and ‘real dangers’. The text explicitly cautions that the left wing can ultimately bring about the demise of Islam. From the point of view of interpretative theory there is a distinct privilege for the right wing in the discourse of The Majlis. Exclusivism is forcefully evident in the latter statements of The Majlis. New categories are invented to impute heresy and deviance in order to disqualify those who threaten and challenge conservatism. In fact, the predisposition of The Majlis towards the ‘right wing’ is discursively more explicit than any of the other ‘ulama groups. It attempts to defend, and by implication preserve, existing moral codes, forms of authority and centres of power within the Muslim community and outside. It prefers the status quo as opposed to the uncertainty of change. When some ‘ulama joined the UDF, The Majlis described it as the Day of Judgement drawing near. This only confirms the hypothesis that for the conservatives all change leads away from the ideal towards deterioration. As South Africa inches towards political and socio-economic change it becomes apparent that conservatism will not retreat. On the contrary, there is less certainty about its demise. While one is hesitant to predict the future, it is not inconceivable that conservative Islam is capable of shaping Islam’s destiny in this country for a long time to come. Even though the conservatives may lose the political battle to the radicals, there is no perceived gap between their conservative views and that of the religious constituencies they serve. It is deceptive to believe that conservatism does not have a political posture. Beneath the veneer of civic apathy is a benign and paradoxical political posture. The prevailing opinion that it is narrow, sectarian and exclusivist does not mean it cannot rejuvenate itself to become a force to be reckoned with. In fact, it does from time to time make a forceful public appearance if the issue(s) justify such presence. In the eyes of the conservative ‘ulama, Islam is at stake in the political vicissitudes of South Africa. For that reason, as Qureshi observed, they would want to keep the values of the past intact and avoid the destructive effects of fitnah. There is a pronounced desire to preserve the pre-modern religious discourse, especially its order and authority structures. This takes precedence over creative thinking and the adaptation of Islam to modern circumstances. Issues such as apartheid and racism are of secondary importance compared to the preservation of Islam. Such preservation could mean passivism or co-operation with repressive regimes and a shift towards anachronistic and sectarian dogma. While war is waged with the prevailing political culture of the left and its Muslim allies, the conservatives themselves can hardly be described as alienated from modernity. Conservatives enter universities and flourish in the top professions of medicine, law and business. In other words their resistance to change is selective. Perhaps the most significant observation is the upward shift in the socio-economic status of conservatives. Capitalism and free enterprise are freely embraced, which is a reflection of their class positions. The central thrust of their opposition is socialism, communism, atheism and the morality of modernity. Trapped within the ideological discourse of conservatism, the ‘ulama do on rare occasions protest against the immorality of apartheid without offering any form of meaningful resistance. Islam, as understood by the conservative ‘ulama, is captive to an unchanging symbolic and semiotic universe which fosters preservation by resisting change. Acknowledgements: This paper was first published in the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa December 1989, pp.73-81, and is reprinted with permission from the author and publisher. Journal of Theology for Southern Africa Department of Religious Studies University of Cape Town

May 12, 2021: Nadeen Awad, 16, was killed along with her father Khalil Awad, 52, in front of their home in the Palestinian village of Dahmash in central Israel, about 20 kilometers from Tel Aviv, in the early morning of May 12. The two were killed by a Palestinian resistance rocket, but Nadeen and Khalil Awad, were themselves Palestinian – with Israeli citizenship. But their town, Dahmash near Lod, being a mainly Palestinian village, was never provided bomb shelters like the Jewish Israeli towns were provided by the government. In fact, their village, Dhamas, was not recognized by Israeli authorities, and so lacks basic services and is under threat of demolition by the Israeli government. One of their relatives, Ismail Arafat, lives there as well and has been part of leading the struggle for recognition of the village. The rocket attack that killed them occurred after the al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas armed wing, said in a statement on the evening of May 11 that they had “directed the largest rocket barrage toward Tel Aviv and its surrounding areas, with 130 rockets, in response to the enemy’s targeting of civilian buildings.” In the midst of a deadly night in Gaza in which Israeli bombardment killed at least 34 Palestinians in a single night of bombing, Palestinian resistance fighters retaliated in the early morning hours with the launch of rockets toward Israel, killing six Israelis. The rockets were fired in the early morning hours on Wednesday, as Gaza’s hospitals were besieged with hundreds of wounded Palestinians, many of them children, who suffered traumatic and severe injuries from the numerous Israeli missile strikes into crowded Palestinian neighborhoods throughout Gaza on Monday and Tuesday. In addition to bombing Palestinian neighborhoods for two straight days, the Israeli military called up 5,000 reservists and had them stationed at the border with Gaza to threaten the Gaza Strip with a possible ground invasion. The Palestinian resistance responded to this violent aggression with rocket fire directed toward Tel Aviv. This marks the longest-range rockets that have been fired by the Palestinian resistance to date. Other rockets fired in the past have reached as far as the coastal Israeli city of Ashkelon (formerly the Palestinian town of Azkalan), but had not had the range or capacity to reach the Israeli capital Tel Aviv (built on the former Palestinian town of Yaffa) before. Israelis in the cities of Sderot, Holon and Ashkelon rushed to shelters and many stayed there overnight to try to avoid the impact of Palestinian resistance rocket fire. Israeli media reported that at 8:45 A.M. on Wednesday, Israeli forces intercepted a drone crossing from Gaza into Israel. The Israeli news agency Ha’aretz quoted Ismail Arafat as saying, “We have nowhere to go. We don’t have a bomb shelter here for everyone. For the Thai [migrant] workers they built shelters, but we were not allowed because we are not humans. Nadine and Khalil were in the middle of breakfast before fasting [for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan]. It seems that he opened the door and that’s how he was hit.”

When I was a little girl, I was terrified of the Ku Klux Klan. My mother is Jewish, and while my father is not, and nor were we raised Jewish or affiliated in any overt way, I knew that by Jewish law, and in the eyes of the KKK, I was Jewish too. Back in the mid-seventies, our community in Silver Spring was not notably diverse, as it is today; we were among a few (also fractional) Jews; our best friends, the Miller family, were the only African Americans in the neighborhood. In my deep-rooted fears – and something that I imagined well and often – white-cloaked Klansmen stormed our house with blazing torches held aloft. They would kill my mother, my brother and me, and then burn down the house. I worried most about what would become of Oliver, my dog. I wondered if they would show him mercy since he was a dachshund, as emblematic of the master race, if not as intimidating, as a German Shepherd. My father traveled frequently for work, and I always figured the KKK guys would not be so stupid as to attack when he was home. Then these robed monsters would move to the Miller’s house, across the street and four houses down at the end of the cul-de-sac, where there they would kill them too. I quite literally imagined my friends Kim and Karen – their lifeless bodies hanging from nooses on a tree. As I grew older, this fear of the KKK never vanished, but it did, thankfully, subside. By the time I reached middle school, several other partial Jews, and more Black kids, and Vietnamese and Korean and El Salvadoran and Mexican immigrants – refugees, in fact, from all over the world – had added character and color to our school and the outlying community. It started to seem like there were more of us than them. And that we could take them on. At the same time, I couldn’t shake a lingering concern that anti-Semites and bigots lurked silently among us. I developed what some might have called an obsession with the Holocaust. I was not an avid reader but what I did read veered toward true crime macabre and concentration camp memoirs. In typical childlike self-absorption, I became convinced that I was Anne Frank, reincarnated, a suspicion borne out in 1980 when my family visited the Amsterdam house where the Frank family had hidden for years in the attic; I felt quite certain that not only had I been there before, but had spent many nights sequestered in those cramped quarters, grappling with boredom and scribbling in my diary. Back at home, I often occupied the few minutes before I fell asleep considering options for if-and-when the Nazis came to power in America. I was thankful for my last name, derived from my Irish Catholic father’s side. But I knew that would not be enough to save me. I thought about who among our neighbors would take us in. By that time, we’d moved to a new house, just one block away from our old one; I decided there was enough room in my friend and next-door-neighbor Michelle Baubé’s attic – not to mention plenty of clothes (for dress-up games and make believe) and stacks of her father’s Playboys! But maybe the Baubés would have to take in the Neri family on the other side of their house, because Mrs. Neri was Jewish too; would there be room for all of us? I decided the Kirwans were likely to take in the Neris. But what about my friends Sydney Dorfman and Pam Epstein who lived in another neighborhood altogether? Syd’s mother Mary was Catholic but I figured Syd was a goner on account of her last name alone. Pam’s mother had been a Holocaust survivor herself; she might know what to do. But how would I see them? What if we were sent to different camps? Or would I manage – as I thought might be possible – to somehow escape? I thought of the labyrinth of underground man-sized tunnels that my more courageous friend Sarah McKelvie and I sometimes explored. And the woods behind the YMCA that I knew better than the Viet Cong did the jungles of Vietnam. And the non-Jewish relatives on my dad’s side who lived like hippies in the California desert – maybe I could make it out to them? And if I escaped, would I possess the courage and conviction to fight for the resistance; or would I just lay low? Point being – while everybody said Never Again, I was quietly planning for Again. As the years passed, the failure of the KKK to materialize with blazing torches on my lawn, or of the Nazis to make a comeback, emboldened me, and I grew into a young woman fairly unencumbered by fear. But my early professional life was spent in the Balkans and former Yugoslavia, where people of different religions and ethnicities who had lived peaceably side-by-side for decades, suddenly turned on each other. When the first photos emerged of starved Bosnian men behind barbed wire in Serbian-run concentration camps, and stories surfaced of mass rapes and executions, I knew that the fears of my youth had never been unfounded. “It” could happen again – anytime, anywhere. When I married, I took my then husband’s last name – which I would never use professionally or personally – solely based on one fear: what if, after the next Holocaust, I need to be reunited with the children, who might not remember me? I will need some document proving that they are mine. As a kid and adolescent doing a personal deep dive in the Holocaust and the rise of fascism in Germany that preceded it, I was attuned to those “moments” that seemed like turning points. I remember thinking to myself that I, or at least my family, would have seen the signs before it was too late. We would have refused to “register”; we would not have acquiesced to wearing yellow arm bands; we would have been long gone before Kristallnacht; for absolute sure, we would not have boarded those trains. I told myself all of this because – no matter evidence to suggest that America was different and that what befell Germany and Europe would never happen here – in my heart of hearts, I knew that it could. Here are some “moments’ in our collective and all-too-recent American history: - December 2015: Then presidential candidate Donald J. Trump calls for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” He is applauded and heralded by conservatives across the land. - November 2016: The Crusader, official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan and self-branded “premier voice of the white resistance,” becomes one of the few newspapers to endorse Trump. - November 8, 2016: Donald J. Trump – a notorious bigot who built a campaign upon fomenting fear, racism and xenophobia; bragged openly about assaulting women; and is known to have kept a bedside copy of Mein Kampf – is elected 45th President of the United States of America. - January 2017: Newly-elected Trump makes one of his first acts in office Executive Order 13769, suspending the entry of anyone, including refugees and victims of war crimes, from seven “Muslim” countries. Hundreds of people – some American citizens or Green Card holders – are inexplicably and indefinitely detained. Hate crimes immediately rise. - August 2017: After a white supremacist deliberately drives into a crowd of people peacefully protesting the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – killing civil rights activist Heather Heyer and injuring more than 30 others – President Trump publicly defends the white nationalists, calling them “some very fine people.” - April 2018: The Trump administration makes public its family separation policy (that in fact was quietly enacted a year prior) intended to deter illegal entry across the Mexican border. Under the policy, federal authorities separate children from their parents or guardians, with adults prosecuted and held in federal jails and children and infants as young as 4-months-old placed in unsanitary and unsafe detention centers. To date, at least seven children have died in immigration custody. I could go on. But at the same time, I cannot. My fear and frustration are constantly close to combustion. This blog was prompted by a bad dream. I recognize it’s tedious to endure other people’s accounts of their dreams so I’ll try to make it short: I awake in my bed to find blood dripping from the ceiling, which for reasons I cannot explain, is made of those styrofoamy drop panels. The blood seeps through the tiles and lands on my bed, staining my white sheets. Drops of blood run in rivulets down my forehead as I move under the source to more closely examine. The ceiling, my sheets, are steeped in red. I decide it’s best to leave the house, and so I do; but outside, I am unsure where to go. And so I return. My father is there now; he agrees to remove one of the tiles to determine the source of the blood. When he does, poking the tile up and out with a long black umbrella he happens to have on hand, he peers into the crawlspace, and a torrent of thick blood washes down and across my face. Through my matted, bloody hair, I look to my father, who says, “Yes it’s as we expected; there’s somebody’s head up there. This is clearly the work of the Klan. They’re just sending you a warning.” It was one of those dreams that was so realistic that upon waking, it took me several moments to realize it had only been a dream. With the room still dark, I felt the bed around me – no blood. The warm furry body of Brewster, our hound dog, snoring loudly next to me. Next to him, the straw-headed lump of my twelve-year-old son who still sometimes ends up in my bed. On the floor to my left, Scout, our “guard dog,” alert at his post. But still I could feel blood tracing its way down my cheek. I wiped it aside and checked my hand. The wetness was not red; it was not blood, just a tear. I heaved a sigh of relief. I swung my feet to one side and planted them on the cold floor. I stood up, and told myself All is well with the world. It was just a bad dream. But I also made a mental note; I have seen enough signs. It is time now. Never Again is and always was a fantasy. But for me, for my children, there will be no such thing as No Escape. I am shifting gears into survival mode. And that is never a pretty but always a necessary thing. Donald J. Trump does not frighten me. He is a small, simpleminded stooge of a man. What does frighten me is the fact that – Russian interference or not – arguably half of America voted for him, implicitly embracing his (albeit inarticulate) platform of fear, anger and entitlement. When I force myself to watch, for however long I can stand it, pro-Trump rallies, what I see is a tidal wave, packed with the flotsam and jetsam of ignorance and hate, breaking over us, destroying everything in its path and all that we’ve accomplished and pushing this once great nation backward in time.

Free or pay what you can Free or pay what you can Longtime CU Boulder College of Music duo Margaret McDonald and Erika Eckert invite you to a special evening of sublime, quirky, lyrical and sometimes toe-tapping works for piano and viola. Spanning the globe from England, Holland and France to Australia, this wonderful collection of short pieces explores some of the many delightful facets of musical collaboration and conversation. Renowned CU Boulder College of Music faculty artists perform with students and colleagues in chamber music recitals featuring world premieres and beloved classics. Free most Tuesdays August through March. Performance date and time Tuesday, Nov. 9, 7:30 p.m. MST Trouble loading the live stream? Watch at vimeo.com Join us for free or pay what you can Whether it's $5 or $100, your gift will help the work of the College of Music continue to inspire artistry and discovery, together. Please pay what you can before or after enjoying this special presentation—or join us for free! Keal: Ballade in F minor for viola and piano; Kats-Chernin: Still Life for viola and piano; Fleury-Roy: Fantaisie de Concert for viola and piano, Op. 18; Bosmans trans. Grinten: Nuit Calme from Trois Impressions for cello and piano; Boulanger: Trois Pièces pour violoncelle et pianoRead more Ballade in F minor for viola and piano (1929) Minna Keal (1909-1999) Minna Keal (née Nerenstein) was born to Russian-Jewish immigrants in London’s East End. Only Yiddish was spoken in her house, and it was not until entering grade school that Keal learned English. Her family was not musically trained, yet there was always music in the house, especially in the form of her mother’s folk songs. Keal began to play piano and compose simple pieces while still in grade school. In 1928, she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music to study composition with William Alwyn and piano with Thomas Knott. Her time at the Academy was quite prolific—during her first year she composed a piano sonata, Three Summer Sketches for piano, the Fantasy for String Quartet, and the Ballade in F minor. Keal’s time at school was cut short when family pressures required her to leave school to help run the family book business. Keal would not compose again for 46 years. Keal’s fascinating life took many turns following her departure from composition. She became involved in politics, joined the Communist Party and formed an organization that rescued hundreds of children from Nazi Germany. She married three times, raised her family and held several secretarial jobs. Keal began to study piano again as she approached retirement and completed qualification to teach beginning piano herself. At the age of 64, one of Keal’s young pupils took an examination to qualify for a Grade 3 piano exam. The examiner happened to be a young composer named Justin Connoly, who learned that Keal had studied composition and persuaded her to share her music with him. The first piece she presented was the Ballade in F minor. Upon hearing the piece, Connoly encouraged Keal to return to composition. She subsequently returned to the Royal College of Music and went on to study with Oliver Knussen. Her works include a symphony that was performed by the BBC Symphony in 1987, a cello concerto, a mini violin concerto and several chamber works, including a cello quintet. It is not surprising that the Ballade made an impression on Connoly. The work demonstrated Keal’s great talent and makes wonderful use of the capabilities of both instruments. The late romantic style of the Ballade is reminiscent of Frank Bridge’s compositions, a composer Keal greatly admired. Lionel Tertis praised the Ballade, and Keal won a composition prize with the work as a first-year student. —Program note by Hilary Herndon, La Viola: Music for Viola and Piano by Women Composers of the 20th Century, MSR Classics Still Life for viola and piano (2001) Elena Kats-Chernin (b. 1957) Elena Kats-Chernin was born in the Uzbekistan capital of Tashkent. As a child, she received intensive training in both figure skating and music. At age fourteen she chose music as a career, leaving her home in the Volga riverside town of Yaroslavl to study at the Gnessin Musical College in Moscow. Four years later, she and her family emigrated from the Soviet Union to Australia. She entered the New South Wales Conservatory as a pianist and as a composition pupil of Richard Toop. Graduating in 1980, she received a DAAD Fellowship (a German academic exchange program) to study with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover, West Germany. While in Europe she became active in theater and ballet, composing for state theaters in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg and Bochum. Her music attracted the attention of the Ensemble Modern; in 1993 the group premiered Clocks which was an artistic breakthrough for the composer. Clocks has since been performed in Europe, Australia, and the USA. Kats-Chernin remained in Germany for 13 years, returning to Australia in 1994. Since her return, Kats-Chernin has become one of Australia’s leading young composers. Among her many commissions are works for the Sydney Alpha Ensemble, Ensemble Modern (Concertino), Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and also for the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games. Her music was featured at the Musica Nova Helsinki in March of 2001, and the 2002 Soundstreams Festival in Toronto. Her recent full length ballet, Wild Swans, with choreography by Meryl Tankard for the Australian Ballet, was an enormous critical and public success. Still Life for viola and piano was written for Patricia Pollett with Australia Council support. It is in six movements and is based on intimate and self-contained cells. Each movement starts in D minor and mostly stays in that key. Still Life 1 is hypnotic in nature and sets the mood for the whole suite. It is slow and the piano’s high register is used extensively. Still Life 2 is based on an interval of a fifth and is reminiscent of cimbalom based folk music. It is probably the most virtuosic of the six movements. Still Life 3 lightens up the atmosphere somewhat, being a kind of a blues in a strange 3+3+2 meter. Still Life 4 is very still and quiet, underscored by a constant pizzicato figure in the viola. Still Life 5 is a movement with a repetitive tango element and is more forceful than the others. Still Life 6 is almost funereal in nature, it is the most archaic and simple in this suite and sees the return of the material of the first movement towards its end. —Program note by Elena Kats-Chernin, Still Life, Tall Poppies Records Fantaisie de Concert for viola and piano, Op. 18 (1906) Hélèna Fleury-Roy (1876-1957) Hélène Fleury-Roy (1876-1957) studied composition at the Paris Conservatory with Henri Dallier, Marie Widor and André Gedalge. She was the first female French composer to enter and to win a prize in the Prix de Rome composition competition (1904). In 1928 she moved to Toulouse where she was professor at the conservatory teaching piano, harmony and composition until 1945. She taught students such as the future conductor Louis Auriacombe, violinist Pierre Doukan and composer Charles Chaynes. Fleury-Roy wrote mainly for the piano, but left us also with a few songs, pieces for violin and cello as well as the Fantaisie for viola (or violin) op 18, composed in 1906, which was dedicated to Théophile Laforge and used in the same year as a pièce de concours, an exam composition for students enrolled at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris. —Program note by Jutta Puchhammer-Sédillot Nuit Calme from Trois Impressions for cello and piano (1926) Henriëtte Bosmans (1895-1952) trans. Tom van der Grinten Henriette, an only child, was raised in a musical environment. Her father, Henri (1856-1896), had been principal solo cellist of the newly established Concertgebouw Orchestra. He died when she was just a baby. Her mother, a piano teacher at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, gave Henriette her first piano lessons. At seventeen she passed her final piano examination at the Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Toonkunst (Society for the Advancement of Music). She studied music theory and composition with Jan Willem Kersbergen, later followed by composition lessons with Willem Pijper, who happened to be her neighbor at the time. In the 1930s Bosmans performed regularly with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. As a woman composer she found less recognition in the Netherlands, except from colleagues and friends. Cellist Marix Loevensohn frequently performed her Poème for cello and orchestra, while Louis Zimmermann, concertmaster of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, premiered the Concert Piece for Violin and Orchestra in 1935, conducted by Willem Mengelberg. Her international breakthrough began in 1938, when violinist Willem Noske played this work, full of “Oriental moods,” in Prague and Paris. In October 1941 it was also performed several times in the United States with Ruth Posselt as violinist. However, the prospect of further international engagements became blocked by the war. The increasing interference by the Nazis in cultural life was evident early on. In 1933 the Maandblad voor Hedendaagsche Muziek (Monthly Magazine for Contemporary Music) published an article entitled “Terror in Germany.” By April 1939 newspapers reported that music by Jewish composers was banned in Italy. Paradoxically, Bosmans’ career as a pianist prospered, as many foreign soloists could not or dared not travel to the Netherlands. Bosmans considered exile to the United States, but at the last moment decided to stay; she didn’t want to leave her elderly mother behind. If musicians wanted to pursue their profession, they were obliged to register as of April 1, 1941 at the Kultuurkamer, a regulatory cultural agency instated by the German occupying forces during World War II. Bosmans was half Jewish and was registered at the Kultuurkamer as a “Jewish Case.” At first, she continued giving concerts, but in June the Concertgebouw Orchestra was informed that Bosmans was undesirable as soloist because of her “partial Jewish origin.” In 1942 she could no longer perform in public. Over the next five months, Bosmans wrestled with a nerve inflammation in her leg. At the same time, she collected genealogical information about her family, trying to save her mother, one of the 140,000 Dutch Jews, from persecution by the Nazis. She was terribly worried, even though Sara Benedict Bosmans was registered in the category “mixed marriages,” because her husband had been a Roman Catholic. The Germans had no uniform policy for this category. Meanwhile, Bosmans’ income had diminished. Bosmans earned some at the so-called “black evenings,” underground house concerts, which were often intense experiences for both artists and audience. Venues included “a countryside villa in Wassenaar, a surgeon’s home in Gouda, an Amsterdam mansion, and the home of a leather manufacturer in Waalwijk.” The Bosmans became victims of persecution in the spring of 1944, when mother Bosmans, at the age of 83, was arrested and deported to Westerbork. Henriette immediately pleaded her mother’s case with the authorities, and even went to the notorious Gestapo headquarters in the Euterpestraat in Amsterdam. As a last resort, she asked Willem Mengelberg to intervene, which resulted in her mother’s release along with other mixed-married Dutch Jews. In the autumn of 1944 trains stopped operating and Bosmans could no longer perform outside Amsterdam. Mother and daughter scraped through the harsh winter months, with the western part of the Netherlands hit by famine. In these difficult circumstances she began composing, which she hadn’t done since the death in 1935 of her fiancé, violinist Francis Koene. After the war, Bosmans welcomed a new creative period inspired by mezzo-soprano Noémie Perugia. Of the twenty-five songs she wrote, influenced among others by Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc, she dedicated eleven songs to Perugia. On June 16, 1951, Henriette Bosmans was knighted in the Royal Order of Orange Nassau. The following year, after her last recital with Noémie Perugia on April 30, 1952, she collapsed and died on July 2, 1952, at the age of 56, most likely of stomach cancer. Her considerable oeuvre includes orchestral works, chamber music and many songs. Nuit calme is one of the Trois Impressions from 1926 for cello and piano. —Program note by Helen H Metzelaar, excerpts from article on the website Forbidden Music Regained Trois Pièces pour violoncelle et piano (1911-13) Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) trans. Alphonse Leduc Éditions Musicales Descended from a long line of musicians, Nadia Boulanger very early on received plaudits from her father, composer Ernest Boulanger, Grand Prix de Rome, and from her teachers at the Conservatoire de Paris, Charles-Marie Widor and Gabriel Fauré. Her work as a composer, now being rediscovered, long remained hidden behind her gifts as a virtuoso at the piano and organ, her skill as a conductor (of vocal ensemble and orchestras) and most of all, her incredible charisma as a teacher. For close to sixty years, “Mademoiselle” made the most of her famous Wednesdays, bringing passion and high expectations to the training of several generations of musicians: among many others, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Igor Markevitch, Michel Legrand, Witold Lutoslawski, Astor Piazzolla, Quincy Jones and John-Eliot Gardiner have all kept unforgettable memories of these times. Boulanger became the director of the American Conservatoire in Fontainebleau after the war, and in the eyes of her contemporaries, personified music: Paul Valéry would immortalize her as “she who imposes enthusiasm and rigour”. Three Pieces, originally written for the cello, were composed just before World War I, before Boulanger decided to abandon composition and devote herself fully to teaching music. Her melodies happily take on nostalgic accents or explore the lively rhythms of Spanish dance. —Program note by Alphonse Leduc Éditions Musicales, Nadia Boulanger Three Pieces for viola and piano Due to popular demand for Faculty Tuesdays concerts, we advise arriving early to secure a seat. These concerts are general admission on a first-come-first-served basis. House doors open 30 minutes before concert start. Plan your visit Most CU Presents performances take place on the beautiful University of Colorado Boulder campus. Take some time to explore our venues, find out how to get here and get more tips on what to do while you’re in town.Plan Your Visit - Plan your visit The University of Colorado is committed to providing equal access to individuals with disabilities. If you are planning to attend an event take some time to review our accessibility services.Accessibility - Accessibility Services

Politics postsTuesday May 21, 2013 If I were the I.R.S., I would be investigating Tea Party claims, too. From Jeffrey Toobin's post, “The Real I.R.S. Scandal,” on the New Yorker site: It’s important to review why the Tea Party groups were petitioning the I.R.S. anyway. They were seeking approval to operate under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. This would require them to be “social welfare,” not political, operations. There are significant advantages to being a 501(c)(4). These groups don’t pay taxes; they don’t have to disclose their donors—unlike traditional political organizations, such as political-action committees. In return for the tax advantage and the secrecy, the 501(c)(4) organizations must refrain from traditional partisan political activity, like endorsing candidates. I don't get why this isn't the story. On the other hand, this may be a boon: a call to visit your local Tea Party office if you're ever in need of social welfare. I'm sure, as a social welfare organization, they'd be willing to help. White House Correspondents Dinner: Obama with an Edge I'm generally not a fan of this thing, at least not since Stephen Colbert skewered both George W. Bush and the press corps back in ... was it 2006? ... but Pres. Obama rocked it tonight with an edge. My favorite line: I know Republicans are still sorting out what happened in 2012, but one thing they all agree on is they need to do a better job reaching out to minorities. And look, call me self-centered, but I can think of one minority they could start with. (Laughter.) Hello? Think of me as a trial run, you know? See how it goes. My second-favorite came after this joke about the edifice Obama is building next to the George W. Bush Presidential Library: That's good. But this is the one that stuck in it in there. It's not the easy joke. It's the sharp joke that follows the easy joke: I'm also hard at work on plans for the Obama Library. And some have suggested that we put it in my birthplace but I'd rather keep it in the United States. (Laughter.) Did anybody not see that joke coming? Show of hands? Only Gallup? Maybe Dick Morris? I wish they'd cut to Nate Silver at that point. If he was there. I haven't even gotten into the whole Daniel Day-Lewis starring in Steven Spielberg's “Obama,” or the beautifully serious way with which he ended it, but the whole thing made me think, once again, I'm glad I'm living in a country where Barack Hussein Obama is my president. Here's the whole deal: Remaining Stationary is the New Freedom Did you see this story the other day? With the Senate set to debate gun control this month, a National Rifle Association task force released a 225-page report on Tuesday that called for armed police officers, security guards or staff members in every American school, and urged states to loosen gun restrictions to allow trained teachers and administrators to carry weapons. The report is fodder for Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. But the second graf became fodder for me: Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas who led the task force, unveiled the report at a packed news conference with unusually heavy security, including a bomb-sniffing yellow Labrador retriever. A dozen officers in plain clothes and uniforms stood watch as he spoke; one warned photographers to “remain stationary” during the event. (Italics mine.) It immediately sparked this idea for a Tom Toles-like editorial cartoon: - Panel 1: Show the news conference, use Hutchison's quote, and have one of the armed security officers telling the photographers: “Remain stationary.” Include: “*Actual quote.” Photogs look scared. - Panel 2: Similar scene in our new, NRA-approved schools, where an armed guard tells students: “Remain stationary.” Students and teacher look scared. - Panel 3: Similar scene at mall. Armed guards telling shoppers, “Remain stationary.” Shoppers look scared. - Panel 4: Then in Congress during arm-control legislation debate. NRA to Congress: “Remain stationary.” - Panel 5: Then in front of the thousands who have died because of gun violence since Newtown. NRA to the dead: “Remain stationary.” - Denouement: Little Oliphant or Toles figure at bottom with hands raised before NRA guard. Oliphant figure says: “Remaining stationary is the new freedom.” Guns guns guns. Henny Penny, When the Sky Fell: 'No End in Sight' and the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq Invasion Yesterday, the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, pissed me off more than I'd anticipated. I think what set me off was this piece by Alex Pareene on Joe Scarborough, and the realization that the bastards got away with it, got away with calling us names, too, and now blame us for flag-waving our way into war when I was sickened by it all. Pareene dissects Scarborough well but you almost want a body blow. I remember seeing MSNBC at the time, and the American flag waving behind triumphant music and the Bush administration's chosen phrase, OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM, up front, and thinking, “This is a cable news show?” I was naive at the time. I'm so much older than that now. I remember a few years later, in 2005 or '06, arguing with a conservative friend about Iraq, and he trotted out the usual right-wing line about whether I would put Saddam back in place if I could. I gave him a look. I said: Would I put him back in place? Does that mean we get back all of the American soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq, and all of the Iraqis killed and wounded in Iraq? We get back the money we spent, and the prestige we lost, and the focus we lost, and we're able to spend that money and put that focus elsewhere? On our more immediate concerns and enemies? Is that what you're asking me? Would I make that trade? In a fucking second. How did you celebrate the 10th? I got drunk and watched “No End in Sight,” Charles Ferguson's 2007 documentary, which is the best thing I've seen on our early involvement there. It's about all of the fuckups that led to present-day Iraq, which we no longer pay attention to. What gets me each time I watch this? It's not the lies and misrepresentations that led us into war. It's not the fact that we spent a few months, rather than years, prepping for a post-war Iraq. It's not that we didn't send the troop levels the miltary wanted but sent the troop levels Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thought we needed (SPOILER ALERT: he was wrong), and it's not the fact that ORHA, the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, the organization designed to stabilize Iraq, reported to Rumsfeld and not, say, Secretary of State Colin Powell. We could have gotten away with all of those fuckups. But then the Bushies disbanded Jay Garner's ORHA and replaced it, and him, with L. Paul Bremer's CPA, the Coalition Provisional Authority, and Bremer ordered de-Ba'athification and the disbanding of the Iraqi military. And that was that. A few quotes from last night's viewing, which I subsequently drunk-tweeted (see what you're missing by not following me on Twitter?): - “We're a platoon of Marines. We could certainly stop looting if that's our assigned task.” — Lt. Seth Moulton. - “It was just henny penny the sky is falling.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on media reports about the postwar looting in Baghdad. - “My goodness, were there that many vases?” --Donald Rumsfield, implying that U.S. media reports on looting were greatly exaggerated; followed by laughter from the press corp. - “Whether you were Sunni or Shiite, you were outraged about the looting.” --Nir Rosen, Iraqui journalist. - “And what followed was this pervasive sense of lawlessness that Iraq never recovered from. Guys with guns took over.” - “The Iraqi army was essentially standing there, waiting. They were waiting for an overture. ... No one did that.” - “I thought we had just created a problem. We had a lot of out-of-work soldiers.” - “I don't do quagmires.” --Donald Rumsfeld. If you're looking for a gift for Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc., 10th anniversaries are traditionally associated with tin. Bremer (left), taking over from Garner (right). Email to Jake: March 9, 2003 I sent this email to a group of friends on March 9, 2003: Anyone been reading about the celebrity commercial wars? Martin Sheen & Co.? Liberal media articles mocking liberals. “Those know-nothing celebrities know nothing” is the gist. I've yet to hear much about the conservative response, led by former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, who, in his commerical (which I haven't seen), says the following in support of a possible war with Iraq: When people ask, “What has Saddam done to us?” I ask, “What had the 9-11 hijackers done to us before 9-11?” So true! We're all guilty until proven invaded. Jake responded. Same day: The conservatives, whose recent ascendance was led by a B-movie actor turned president, have no business complaining about “know nothing celebrities.” Same for the liberal media complaining about fellow liberals. The reason the actors are making such noise about the war has a lot to do with the shameful absence of noise coming from the democrats in Congress. My senator Hillary Clinton, for her part, went out of her way last week to reaffirm her support of Bush's war plans. And the fact that the media themselves accept the myth of the liberal media only tilts their coverage further to the right. According to polls, a majority of Americans believe Saddam was a 9/11 co-conspirator. No evidence has been produced, but who needs evidence when a steady barrage of slanted coverage will do? Apologies that we were all so, so right, and the others were all so, so wrong. Email to Elin: March 2003 I sent this to my friend Elin in 2003.... How goes the war on your front? Here it's the same. The majority still favor Pres. Bush but Americans tend to rally round the president, any president, in times like these - even when we create times like these. Things will change if the war goes on too long, we create too many enemies (as we're doing), and the U.S. economy stagnates. Came across an appropriate JFK quote this morning from 1961: “The United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient... We are only six percent of the world's population; we can't impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind.” Meanwhile the latest New Yorker magazine brings articles on our television coverage of the war (bordering on propaganda), W.'s lack of humility in his person or rhetoric, how the U.S. diplomatic community is viewing the war (scary line from a moderate on what's wrong with Europe: “What they're doing is listening to their public opinion, rather than leading it.”), and an article on the documents relating to Iraq's supposed nuclear program which helped pave the way for this war - even though, it turns out, they were forged. Not good. Most of my friends are against the war but then they're my friends. Sarah Palin, Big Gulp, and Freedom in America Apparently Sarah Palin showed up at CPAC today and talked guns and gun racks, and took swipes at both Mitt Romney and Pres. Obama, and then, for the coup de grace, and displaying all of her wit, brought out a Big Gulp and took a sip. The use of right-wing food props immediately reminded me of Greg Stillson, the politician on a road to the presidency (and nuclear destruction) in Stephen King's 1979 novel, “The Dead Zone,” who, with a U.S. decal on his hard hat, threw hot dogs to the enthusastic crowds at his rallies: “Hot dogs for every man, woman and child in America! And when you put Greg Stillson in the House of Representatives, you gonna say HOT DOG! SOMEONE GIVES A RIP AT LAST!” I'm not the first to make the Palin/Stillson connection, either. “Around my house,” Mr. King told Salon.com in 2008, “we kinda laugh when Sarah Palin comes on TV, and we say, 'That's Greg Stillson as a woman.'” The 32-oz. Big Gulp, in case you missed it, is a swipe at NYC's Mayor Bloomberg, who has attempted to limit, in restaurants and theaters, and for health reasons, the size of sugary drinks to 16 ounces or less. Jon Stewart among others has objected. I believe Stewart used the same prop as Palin. Is this the first thing the two have ever agreed on? Expect a mash-up. Besides, didn't a judge strike down the Mayor's initiative earlier this week? But Palin wasn't going to give up a good prop when she had one. Here's the bigger point. Yesterday, before a movie at Regal Cinemas in downtown Seattle, I got unaccountably thirsty and went to the refreshment stand to buy a soda. I just wanted a little, not much. Me: What's the smallest soda you have? Underpaid Regal employee: 32 ounces. That's the small. But the employee was nice enough to sell me the kids' size, which is a mere 16 ounces. Which is still about twice what I wanted. But that's freedom in America. You have the freedom to buy whatever the corporation is selling—for whatever reason it wants to sell it that way—without interference from the government. Moynihan's 1967 Warning to Democrats Now Applies to Republicans I've long contended that the radicalism of the left during the 1960s is now the province of the radical right. Whereas the left used to attack the judicial system (as unfair) and the education system (as creating “citizens” rather than “individuals”), the right now attacks both for different reasons. Judges are activists, teachers are de-incentivized unionized members. To give two examples. I thought of this shift again while reading Rick Perlstein's “Nixonland” yesterday afternoon. On pg. 395, Perlstein quotes Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat but beloved by Nixon and the right, in a speech that became known as “The Politics of Stability.” This is what Moynihan said in 1967: Liberals [must] see more clearly that their interest is in the stability of the social order, and that given the threats to that stability, it is necessary to make more effective alliances with politcal conservatives who share that concern, and who recognize that unyielding rigidity is just as much a threat to the continuity of things as is an anarchic desire for change. All you have to do is underline these words: Liberals [must] see more clearly that their interest is in the stability of the social order, and that given the threats to that stability, it is necessary to make more effective alliances with politcal conservatives who share that concern, and who recognize that unyielding rigidity is just as much a threat to the continuity of things as is an anarchic desire for change. The far right [must] see more clearly that their interest is in the stability of the social order, and that given the threats to that stability, it is necessary to make more effective alliances with politcal moderates who share that concern, and who recognize that unyielding rigidity is just as much a threat to the continuity of things as is an anarchic desire for change. See: Fiscal Cliff, Sequestration, Obamacare, pretty much anything that's been debated in Congress since Jan. 2009. Eric Cantor and the Tea Party practice the politics of instability. America Held Hostage I seem to get my best reading done now at 2 AM when I wake up and can't get back to sleep. That's my silver linings playbook. Last night, this morning, I read the following in Rick Perlstein's “Nixonland.” It's about the gathering of power and paranoia by both Nixon and Kissinger during the first 100 days of their time in the White House in 1969: Senator McGovern, with a former college professor's faith in the power of reason and dialogue, had gone to the White House to meet Henry Kissinger and suggest a plan [to end the war in Vietnam]: since our involvement was a disaster and a mistake, couldn't Nixon just say that his predecessors Kennedy and Johnson had comitted troops in good faith, but events had shown that commitment was no longer consistent with the national interest? Kissinger allowed that the war was a mistake. But he said America couldn't pull out because the right wing would go crazy: “We couldn't govern the country.” And that, America, is why you can't have nice things. Because the right wing would go crazy. When Romney was the Most Honest Man in the Race I'm in the middle of Rick Perlstein's epic tome, “Nixonland,” about how the U.S. went from a Democratic landslide in 1964 to a Republican landslide in 1972. Think race riots, open housing, left-wing idiots and right-wing wish-fulfillment fantasies. I don't agree with everything here. I think Perlstein's a bit harsh on RFK. He includes some odd asides, such as declaring the song “She's Leaving Home,” from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the album's “most beautiful moment.” Overall, the book merely strengthens, rather than challenges, my opinion of what went wrong with politics in this country in my lifetime. But it's giving me ammunition. Some of the most eye-opening moments, particularly when compared with the recent 2012 election, contrast George Romney, the Republican governor of Michigan and a media darling, with Richard Nixon, a media joke and a stealth campaigner, who would, of course, trounce Romney before the '68 race even began. Romney's fault, according to Perlstein? He was too damned forthright, too earnest—especially about Vietnam. He grappled with it honestly. Which would make what he said sound absurd, since everyone else was in denial or lying. [Romney's] forthright honesty was his calling card, his contrast with the wheeler-dealer LBJ and the used-car salesman Nixon, what made him, along with that strong, square chin and silvering hair and popularity with Democrats, look like a contender. But honesty was a dull blade to take into a knife fight with Richard Nixon—who was simply willing to lie. It doesn't take a genius to realize the lesson young Mitt took from this. Quote of the Day “Last year's [58% voter] turnout was right in the middle of the 17 elections presented in this chart—better than eight, but worse than eight. ... The friendly and civic-minded people of Minnesota always have the nation's highest turnout, and this year an admirable 75.7 percent of them came to the polls. At the other end, four states came in below 50 percent: Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Hawaii, bringing up the rear at 44 percent.” -- Paul Waldman, “Voter Turnout in 2012: Meh,” on The American Prospect site. Yay Minnesota! Of the four states who don't show up, meanwhile, three are deep red and one is deep blue (Hawaii). Waldman explores, or at least links to, an explanation for HI. Apparently we know the explanation in TX, OK and WV. Obama on the 'Us vs. Them' of Immgration Reform: 'A lot of folks forget that most of us used to be them' Pres. Obama on immigration reform: What My $3,000 Helped Buy “We have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today's world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we'll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.” “For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America's prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.” “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.” Not to mention the freedom to roll your eyes. The Way the Right-Wing Has Always Supported Martin Luther King, Jr. Here are a few lines from Rick Perlstein's book, “Nixonland,” which I read yesterday, and which are particularly appropriate today—both MLK Day and the second inauguration of Barack Obama. They're reminders of how much, and how little, things have changed: “It is my firm belief, and of all my neighbors, that King should be taken into custody ... Today, the insufferable arrogance of this character places him on a pedestal as a dark-skinned Hiter.” “When greedy Mr. Hitler started taking over other countries, people at first thought 'give him a little more, then he will be satisfied' ... Give greedy Mr. King a little more freedom then he will stop. Isn't that what we are told today?” --Constituent letters to U.S. Senator Paul Douglas (D-IL), during the battle for opening house in the summer of 1966; from “Nixonland,” pp. 122 and 123 These days, of course, everyone evokes Dr. King for their own cause, even, absurdly, the NRA. That's how things have changed. At the same time, every prominent black leader, particularly those known for non-violence and compromise, are still being compared to Hitler. That's the way we're hearing the same damned shit. Back in the day, Steve Kaplan, editor-in-chief at “Minnesota Law & Politics,” used to include a section in the year-end “Turkeys” issue called “Who's Being Compared to Hitler This Year?” It's the comparison that's always absurd and never goes out of style. Martin Luther King, Jr. after his march for open housing in Chicago was disrupted by violence. He said he'd never seen hatred—not in Alabama or Mississippi—like the hatred he saw in Chicago. How Grover Norquist is like Abbie Hoffman I'm reading Rick Perlstein's “Nixonland,” the second volume of his three(?)-volume history on the rise and ascendancy of the far right in the United States and the unmaking of the American consensus. I'm at the summer of 1966. Chicago. Daley and King. In its broadest sense, America fractured, and remains fractured, over the role of, and our faith in, government. But it's not an either/or proposition. Both sides have their contradictions. The left believes government can do well domestically (social safety net) but fucks up internationally (Vietnam, Iraq). The right believes government can do well internationally (Cold War, nation building) but fucks up domestically (welfare state). All of this is fairly obvious but I didn't really see it with any kind of clarity until this morning. I grew up in the '60s and '70s with the left distrustful of government and came of age with the right distrustful of government, and I thought it was the same thing. It's not. It's really about where you want to spend the money. It's also about which side gets extreme and when. In the 1960s, it was the left, and its embodiments included Abbie Hoffman. Today it's the right, and its emodiments include Grover Norquist. Again, all fairly obvious. I apologize for even bringing it up. Idiot of the Day, Month, Year: Wayne La Pierre “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” --The NRA's Wayne La Pierre during a press conference, his first since Newtown, in which he suggested we prevent future school massacres by employing armed guards at every school in the country. A transcript, and a video of his talk, is available here. Rebuttal from Andrew Sullivan's readers, including a reminder that Columbine had armed guards, not to mention the cost of what La Pierre is suggesting, is available here. My thoughts? La Pierre is bad for the NRA, which is bad for America. So are all the fools ascribing cultural factors, such as violence in movies and violence in video games, to the various massacres in this country. Because aren't such movies and video games sold and watched and played all over the world? So why the problems here? Is it in our nature? Is America unexceptional? As for the supposed lack of God in our culture, isn't Europe more Godless? Isn't that what these same folks say? So why so much murder here? Why not there? Let's face it: we have a bit of a gun problem. It's fucking obvious. Do we blame the 2nd amendment? I was in a discussion about this on Facebook the other day, with people who supported the invidual rights interpretation of the amendment (“the right of the people to keep and bear arms”) rather than the collectivist rights interpretation (“A well regulated militia,” etc.). Here's the version of the amendment as passed by Congress: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Here's the version as ratified by the States: We lost two commas and a capital “A,” but both versions contain 27 words. Thirteen of those tend to be ignored by Wayne La Pierre and the NRA. But why ignore them? Seriously. What is the above really saying? It's saying, “Because X, therefore Y.” But X is no longer true. We have a regular army and a National Guard. A well regulated militia is no longer necessary for the security of a free state. And if X is no longer true, Y is no longer therefore. I know. The U.S. Supreme Court doesn't agree with me. But it used to. For most of its history. As for La Pierre's quote above about good guys and bad guys with guns? It's the product of Hollywood stupidity. Stupid liberal Hollywood. Wayne La Pierre of the NRA gave a post-Newtown press conference today (top), which was interrupted by a different message than the one he was bringing (bottom). Our Country, Our Song In November 2004 my sister wrote a page-one story for The Wall Street Journal about a group of motorcyclists that lobbied state legislatures to turn back helmet laws. They wanted the wind in their hair when they rode, and they rode around the country, lobbying state legislatures, to make it so. Among other things, they argued that helmets were actually less safe in low-impact crashes, but their evidence on this was suspect and anecdotal. Scientific studies proved the opposite. No matter. They were successful. By the time of the article, several legislatures had already rescinded their state's mandatory motorcycle helmet laws. In the back-and-forth email exchange with my sister, I wrote the following: I just like the unspoken critique of our system in your article: if one side lobbies and the other doesn't, then the first side wins. Even if they're lobbying about something that's kind of insane. I first heard about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the same way I first heard about the massacre at the movie theater in Aurora, Col., last July: through a posting on Facebook. Same person, I think. Same story, really. I think her post on Aurora even referenced the sameness of it all. Oh crap, this again. Her post yesterday was more charged and horrified. Because it was children in an elementary school. Kids who would never get older than 5 or 6 or 8. Parents who were told their kids were never coming back from school that day. In the middle of your workday, doing this thing that seems important but isn't, that doesn't matter in the long run—which describes the workday of almost everyone in the world except teachers—you try to touch some aspect of that horrible reality so you don't feel like such an uncaring asshole. It's hard, though. It's impossible, really. There are screens in the way. We're experiencing this through computer screens and TV screens, and some part of us can't get through these screens and some part of us doesn't want to. It's safer where we are, in unreality, sympathizing and empathizing, rather than where they are, where the awful thing has happened. This week's awful thing. So instead we simply feel stunned, numb, guilty, angry. Certainly angry. This is our country, this is our song. We're singing it again. Why? That's what we eventually get to, after all the lit candles and consoling quotes and angry tweets. Why? We know why. It's in the above. If one side lobbies and the other doesn't, then the first side wins. Even if they're lobbying about something that's kind of insane. I'm complicit. I cared about gun control enough that in the 1990s I read Osha Gray Davidon's book “Under Fire: The Nra and the Battle for Gun Control,” which detailed the history of the NRA, and its dramatic shift from a gun-safety group (since the 19th century) to a gun-lobbying organization (beginning in 1978). I read Jill Lepore's article, “Battleground America,” in the New Yorker last year and recommended it to everybody. I saw Michael Moore's documentary. But politics is triage and gun control kept slipping down my list of important issues of the day. We first had to fight George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and al Qaeda and Grover Norquist and the Koch brothers before we got to Wayne LaPierre. We've got to push back against the idiotic thing that Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly or Richard Mourdock or Todd Akin said that day—and if not them someone else. In the modern age, in the 24-hour news cycle, there's always an idiot flapping their gums and being filmed and broadcast and going viral. You could say that is the essence of the 24-hour news cycle. That's what keeps it going. And keeps us distracted. This election cycle I actually said the following to a friend: “I don't really care much about gun control right now.” And I didn't. Not with everything else going on. Not if taking that stand prevented everything else that needed to happen from happening. But if one side lobbies and the other doesn't, the first side wins. That's all it comes down to. We need to have more people who care passionately about this issue, who are willing to put up money and time, than the other side. It's like same-sex marriage: you fight and you fight and you fight and then suddenly the wave crests with you, not against you. Maybe that will happen with gun control someday. Maybe that's beginning to happen now. I like what Adam Gopnik wrote on the New Yorker site last night. The whole thing is good but this part in particular: So let’s state the plain facts one more time, so that they can’t be mistaken: Gun massacres have happened many times in many countries, and in every other country, gun laws have been tightened to reflect the tragedy and the tragic knowledge of its citizens afterward. In every other country, gun massacres have subsequently become rare. In America alone, gun massacres, most often of children, happen with hideous regularity, and they happen with hideous regularity because guns are hideously and regularly available. The people who fight and lobby and legislate to make guns regularly available are complicit in the murder of those children. They have made a clear moral choice: that the comfort and emotional reassurance they take from the possession of guns, placed in the balance even against the routine murder of innocent children, is of supreme value. Whatever satisfaction gun owners take from their guns—we know for certain that there is no prudential value in them—is more important than children’s lives. Give them credit: life is making moral choices, and that’s a moral choice, clearly made. FURTHER READING. Feel free to suggest your own in the comments field. I'll add to it periodically: - “Battleground America: One Nation, Under the Gun” by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker, April 23, 2012 - “Newtown and the Madness of Guns” by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker, December 14, 2012 - Pres. Obama's statement, December 14, 2012 - “In Public Conversation on Guns, a Rhetorical Shift” by Nate Silver in The New York Times, December 14, 2012 - “Nancy Lanza's Guns” by Ben Stocking on the Obamanator site, December 16, 2012 - “How Popular is Gun Control?” by Andrew Sullivan on the Daily Dish, December 17, 2012 - “Obama in Newtown: Ready to Act on Guns?” by Amy Davidson in the New Yorker, December 17, 2012 What Does the GOP Stand For? The other day I went to Five Spot at the top of Queen Anne for lunch with a friend. I hadn't been there in a while but I always liked their various themes: Caribbean food this month, Portlandia food the next. For November? There was, of course, an election theme, with super-pork sandwiches and Super Pac entrees, and various election-themed artwork around the restaurant, including, my personal favorite, this painting of a to-do list (“MARRIAGE EQUALITY: HA HA HA HA”) and a list of “To Actually Do” (“Cry, Obstruct, Pander, Cry”), from the desk of John Boehner: I also noticed we were sitting beneath the Republican elephant, which is, in a sense, where all of us have been sitting for the past 30 years. The Republican elephant never forgets and the Democrat donkey is stubborn. Old metaphors. Republicans have recently been worrying about the growing minority population in the U.S., since they can no longer win presidential elections by demonizing minorities, but their concerns should go deeper. The GOP used to be good at, or at least known for, the following: - fiscal responsibility - a strong military They're no longer accountable since they live in their own world; they balloon deficits via tax cuts for the rich while Dems are more likely to balance the budget; and they start unnecessary wars with false information and are unable to capture or kill our enemies, the people who truly attack us, leaving that mess for the Dems to clean up. Then they disparage the way the Dems clean it up. What does the GOP currently stand for besides tax cuts for the rich and various petty hatreds of the weak and vulnerable? My view vis a vis the GOP: 1981-present. Bill O'Reilly's Real Nightmare This came my way via Facebook, which is apparently still good for things beside copyright hoaxes. Every panel I was like, “Yes .. Yes ... YES!” Ruben Bolling has turned me into Molly Bloom. Pundit Shaming: Laura Ingraham I came across this the other day. I think I started on YouTube with Louis CK and somehow wound up with Christopher Hitchens (R.I.P.) in 2008 defending then-candidate Barack Obama against Laura Ingraham on FOX-News. Here's the exchange that pricked up my ears: Hitchens: The losers in this are not me, it's the MoveOn.org types. They're campaigning for someone who says if necessary he'll go straight across the border into Pakistan to root these guys out. And McCain has attacked Obama, saying, “How can you be so militant?” Ingraham: That's bravado. That's campaign bravado, though. The “bravado” she's talking about is Obama's militant stance toward Pakistan, which she favors, rather than McCain's objection to said stance. Later, when Hitchens says Obama is evolving toward his position, Ingraham interrupts again: He's in a campaign. That's a big bet, though, is it not? That's a big bet on the War on Terror you're making. A bet that paid off. Then she goes on to defend Sarah Palin. Fun! The above starts at 2:00: Any correction from Ms. Ingraham after the killing of Osama bin Laden? Any mea culpa? A sense of humility somewhere? Someone alert the pundit-shaming tumblr, which should be the busiest site on the Web. Why Obama Won; Why Romney Lost Why Did Obama win? - “...the truth is that there are reasons why Obama is a phenomenon, and one of them is that his political intelligence is so keen that he knows when unreality best serves his ends.” — Adam Gopnik, “Obama's Political Intelligence,” in The New Yorker - “...the country is changing. And this may be the last election in which anyone but a fool tries to play — on a national level, at least — the cards of racial exclusion, of immigrant fear, of the patronization of women and hegemony over their bodies, of self-righteous discrimination against homosexuals. ... Ronald Reagan won his mandate in an America in which 89 percent of the voters were white. That number is down to 72 percent and falling.” — David Simon, “Barack Obama and the Death of Normal” on “The Audacity of Despair.” - “The president’s victory was a triumph of vision, not of demographics. He won because he articulated a set of values that define an America that the majority of us wish to live in: A nation that makes the investments we need to strengthen and grow the middle class. A nation with a fair tax system, and affordable and excellent education for all its citizens. A nation that believes that we’re most prosperous when we recognize that we are all in it together.” — Joel Benenson, “Obama Won on Values, Not Demographics,” in The New York Times. Why Did Romney lose? - “In the final analysis, Mitt Romney lost simply because he ran a campaign that insulted large swaths of the American people.” --Kyle Curtis, “Mitt Romney Lost Because He Ran an Insulting Campaign,” on Blue Oregon. - “The GOP's most reliable supporters remain white, married couples who identify themselves as Christians , a group that continues its sharp decline in numbers.” — Joshua Holland, “What Propelled Obama to Victory?” on AlterNet. - “Mitt Romney lost because of the Republican brand and Republican policies. There are other reasons, of course, like Mitt being unlovable to anyone not named Ann Romney, but nothing trumps the idea that 2/3rds of America thinks the other 1/3 is a frightening conglomerate of Bible-thumpers, xenophobes, and vaginophobes. (Not a word, but should be.)” --Bill Mahr, “Why the Republicans Lost,” on HBO.com. - “Mitt Romney says he is a numbers guy, but in the end he got the numbers wrong. His campaign was adamant that public polls in the swing states were mistaken. They claimed the pollsters were over-estimating the number of Democrats who would turn out on Election Day. Romney’s campaign was certain that minorities would not show up for Obama in 2012 the way they did in 2008.” --John Dickerson, “Why Romney Never Saw It Coming,” on Slate. - “There is an attitude of contempt, derision and disrespect that permeates Republican politics and Republican and conservative media. There are attitudes that permeate Republican politics and Republican media that are outside of traditional Republicanism and outside of American discourse. Democrats are demonized and liberals are hated and alternate opinion is often treated as though it does not exist, and even worse, treated as though it is unpatriotic.” — Brent Budowski, “Why Obama Won,” on The Hill. Who still doesn't get it? At all? - “A political narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform. Instead of using his high office to articulate a vision for our future, Obama used it as a vehicle for character assassination, replete with unrelenting and destructive distortion, derision, and division.” --Mary Matalin, “Mendacity and Malice Won,” on the National Review site. Mary Matalin is just one of many, of course, who still don't get it. Look for their comments, past and future, on the new, crowd-pleasing (or at least Erik-pleasing) pundit-shaming tumblr. Obama addresses campaign supporters in Chicago. My Election Day: November 6, 2012 For the past three weekends, whenever I was helping with Pres. Obama's Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts in Seattle and Washington state, either by knocking on doors or making phone calls, I'd write the following on my script: This isn't about you. It was just a reminder in case an irate or harried or impatient person got me down. You're not doing this for you, Erik. This isn't about you. Let it go. It's also an echo of something Pres. Obama has himself said over and over again: “This is not about me; this is about you.” He said it at his 2008 convention speech and in his 2012 convention speech. He said it while stumping for a jobs bill in Raleigh, N.C., in 2011. He said it while trying to unblock judicial nominees in 2012 and during the health case battles of 2009. “This is not about me; this is about you.” According to his memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” it was his college friend Regina who first said it. And she said it to him: “Let me tell you something, Mr. Obama. It’s not just about you. It’s never just about you. It’s about people who need your help. Children who are depending on you. They’re not interested in your irony or your sophistication or your ego getting bruised. And neither am I.” It's a helpful thing, not having it be about you. It allows you to do things you wouldn't normally do. It's a freeing message. For example, in mid-October, when the election seemed to be slipping away from us, and again yesterday, when it felt better, I went door-to-door in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, in the Pike-Pine corridor, getting out the vote. I'm not an extrovert. I don't gain energy from interactions. But you do it anyway. Because it's not about you. Most of the residences I was assigned were security buildings with intercoms, often old, so there was little face-to-face contact. One building was an assisted living and Alzheimer's facility, at which I didn't stay long. The people I talked to were too confused. It felt wrong. At a security building on Pike, the intercom was waist high, so I got down on one knee, then both knees, as I buzzed the voters on my sheet. It felt like I was literally begging for votes. Please, come out and vote. I was on my knees on the dirty Pike sidewalk. But it wasn't about me. Building managers were helpful. They wouldn't let me roam their buildings but at least they told me who had moved. The last manager I spoke with ran an apartment building across from Sitka and Spruce, and we talked a good 10 minutes, about the same-sex marraige amendment, Referendum 74, and about how she had supported Hillary in 2008, and hadn't even voted for Obama back then because she was still pissed that Hillary didn't win. Not this time. This time it was Barack all the way. She's got her fingers crossed for Hillary in 2016. Afterwards I walked past all the thin, fashionable ladies shopping at the ritzy downtown department stores at noon on a weekday, returned my sheets to the Democratic Headquarters on 2nd and Cherry, then returned home to get ready for a party. I was nervous but not too nervous. I had Nate Silver on my side. Ward was the first guest to arrive. Throughout the night, he kept urging us to change the channel to FOX. He wanted to see the bastards squirm. We did once or twice but missed their biggest meltdowns: Karl Rove arguing over Ohio; Megyn Kelly fact-checking her own stats people. It was over quickly. Not as quickly as in 2008, it seemed, but all of a sudden. MSNBC just declared. We didn't even see the graphic for Obama winning Ohio; just ”Barack Obama re-elected 44th President of the United States.“ Which state did they declare for him? we wondered. They weren't saying. So we did math: 18 meant Ohio. So it was Ohio. So it was over. Except on FOX-News and in the Romney camp, which waited a bit. Rove wanted a replay of 2000 and Florida. I'm sure the thinking went: Surely we've suppressed enough votes in Ohio to make a difference; to screw up the exit polls. Surely, if there's a God in heaven, we did that. The nice thing? It wouldn't have mattered anyway. It turned out that Obama got Ohio but didn't need it. He got Virginia but didn't need it. It looks like he'll get Florida but doesn't need it. All the pundits today, so wrong yesterday, are wrong again today. They're saying that in the end the auto bailout won the day; that Obama saved Detroit and so Detroit saved Obama back. Maybe. But he would've won Michigan anyway and he didn't need Ohio. Because he got Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Colorado. And that was enough. We knew that going in. If the popular vote holds, and it looks like it will, Barack Obama will be only the third Democrat to win the U.S. presidency twice with clear majorities. The others? FDR (four times) and Andrew Jackson (twice). That's it. Clinton never did it (third-party candidates), Carter once, LBJ once, JFK never, Truman never, Wilson never. Just: Obama, FDR and Andrew Jackson. That's the company he now keeps. This was my first Twitter election, my first Facebook election, and, smartphones in hand, we kept trading comments and information from our Twitter feeds. We drank a lot, ate too much, laughed a lot. It wasn't just the Obama victory. It was same-sex marriage referendums in Maine and Maryland and Washington state that passed. It was pot legalizaton initiatives in Colorado and Washington state that passed. It felt like, at long last, after 30+ years, the world, or at least the United States, was finally turning our way. On Facebook I wrote something intelligent like, ”YES!!!!!!!!!!!!" Everyone knew what that meant. One friend, who had been hugely involved in GOTV efforts in 2008, and who knew of my donations and GOTV efforts this year, wrote: I raise my beer to you Erik for all your hard work and donations. You helped make it happen. It was a nice thought but felt so beside the point. Because it wasn't about me. Not even a little bit. Our friend Erika's view of our TV, election night. James Baldwin's Message to Bill O'Reilly Fifty years ago, at the end of his book-length essay “The Fire Next Time,” which became a best-seller the year I was born, James Baldwin wrote the following: “The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too. . . . It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.” Bill O'Reilly and FOX-News still haven't gotten the message: Have there been more veiled, racist comments in a 60-second span? Let's count them off: - “It's a changing country and it's not a traditional America anymore.” - “There is 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff. Who want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama. He knows it and he ran on it. ” - “The white establishment is now the minority.” - “You're going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama's way. People feel they are entitled to things, and which candidate between the two is going to give them things. As always with FOX-News, this stuff is full of half-truths. It is a changing country but it always is. It's not a traditional America but what does that mean? Are we losing core values or surface values? O'Reilly is implying the former but I know the latter. Because in a certain sense, no president is more traditionally American in his rhetoric and in his beliefs than Pres. Obama. He just doesn't look like the other 43. Fifty percent of the people want things. (Like health insurance. We're greedy that way.) Then O'Reilly ties this 50 percent to Hispanics, blacks and women. It's the welfare argument all over again. It's Reagan's politics of resentment all over again. There are welfare queens (read: minorities) who want stuff (read: your tax dollars). Meanwhile, hard-working white people do things the honorable way: by selling insurance on bundled sercurities that were created from subprime mortgage loans, which poor and working-class owners were guaranteed to default on. It's interesting that O'Reilly calls it ”the white establishment,“ that he owns up to it. ”White“ certainly isn't a minority, so he must be talking ”white“ and ”conservative“ and maybe ”rich.“ In which case: yes, yes, and yes. And thank God. There are so many lessons you can draw from yesterday's election. For example: ”Continually mentioning rape in a positive way tends to be a losing strategy.“ You can go to literature, too, with this paraphrase of e.e. cummings' Olaf, glad and big, whose warmest heart recoiled at war: ”There is some shit we will not eat.“ Then there's Baldwin, above, paraphrased: America is white no longer, and it will never be again. To O'Reilly, this spells America's doom. To the rest of us, the opposite. It's the very reason our country is exceptional. ”It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today." --James Baldwin, 1963 Status Updates from the 2012 Election - “Does anybody else spend a silly amount of time trying to fill in the ovals perfectly? I have an irrational fear that that any white speck will discount my vote.” --Ross P., Minneapolis - “I almost got into a fist fight with a Republican poll watcher who's trying to intimidate minority voters.” --Ben S., Seattle, getting out the vote in Newton, Florida - “'If Romney wins, I worry less about any policies his administration may enact (although I worry a lot about those, too) than I do about the long-term implications of the fact that it will have been proven that you can just straight-up fucking lie your way to the Presidency. That's not good for anyone.' Seen on metafilter. Totally agree.” --Roger L., Clinton, WA - “Barack is going to take every single swing state, with the possible exception of North Carolina.” --Ben S., Seattle - “Mitt and his minions waged a dirty, dishonest campaign — perhaps the most dishonest in history — and now the proverbial chickens have come home to roost.” --Ben, S., Seattle - “YES!!!!! 4 more years!!!!” — Karen T., Minneapolis - “Oh. Thank. God.” — David G., Seattle - “This was to be the Republicans’ night. They had the most money—more than a billion dollars. The anemic economy was an albatross around Obama’s neck. The public hated Obamacare. The President fumbled the first debate. Romney was surging. Benghazi proved that Obama’s foreign policy was unraveling. The Democrats were defending the vast majority of the open Senate seats. The spectre of gay marriage was rousing the religious right. The jockeying for positions in the Romney cabinet had begun. ... Then we had an election.” — Kim F., Seattle - “When I was living with my ex- in Virginia from 1990-1995, we went to a wedding in the chambers of Chief Judge Abner Mikva. We talked with him about gay rights, and he said 'The bigots know that they are fighting a battle that they will lose, and we have to remember that we are fighting a battle that we will win. Don't lose hope. It may not happen in my lifetime, but it inevitably will in yours because this is America, and we're better than hatred.'” --Chris N., Seattle - “Thanks, America.” — Andy E., Nanoi, Viet Nam THE MORNING AFTER - “In Minnesota the Republicans took the State House and Senate for the first time in ages in 2010. Result? A state shutdown, a Senate leader demoted for conduct unbecoming, her bulldog of an illicit paramour threatening to sue the state about his subsequent firing (another white male filing for gender discrimination), an ill-advised Governor's race recount request, and a financial bankrupting of their party. And cynically put voter ID and anti-gay referenda on the ballot to increase turnout. Well, that worked, but it turned out the wrong people. Referenda defeated; House and Senate back in Dem hands. Don't let the Capitol door slam you in the ass on your way out. Doorknobs.” — Joe G., Minneapolis - “election's over. time to unblock a bunch of fb friends.” --Brenda B., Seattle 270 to Win: Vote I leaned heavily on Nate Silver this past month. While the right-wing had their narratives of 'Mittmentum,' and Gallup was claiming a national six-point Romney advantage, Silver gave Romney, on Oct. 12, only a 38.9% chance of winning the electoral college. And that was his best showing. Since then, downhill. This morning's numbers give Romney a 9.1% chance of winning the electoral college. But that's still a chance. At some point, maybe this evening, all the possibilities and probabilities will be reality. We want that reality to be good. So get out there and vote. Why do I follow Silver? Why do I believe him? Because he got every state right in the 2008 election except for Indiana, which went for Obama. He also predicted the correct outcome of every Senate race that year. In 2010, he predicted 34 of the 36 Senate races correctly, missing only Colorado and Nevada, both of which went Democrat. So: 1) he's usually right, and 2) hardly leans left in his prediction model. Plus he's a sabremetrician. He's a Jamesian. He's a baseball guy. If he were a football guy, no chance. According to both Silver and this great interactive feature on the NY Times site, there are nine potential swing states, with 95 electoral votes: New Hampshire (4), Nevada (6), Iowa (6), Colorado (9), Wisconsin (10), Virginia (13) North Carolina (15), Ohio (18), and Florida (29). With the states Obama's presumed to win, including Pennsylvania, he starts with 236 electoral votes. These are Silver's probabilities for each of these states (sans North Carolina, which I didn't bother to track) over the last week and a half: |Oct 26||Oct 28||Oct 29||Oct 30||Oct 31||Nov. 1||Nov. 4||Nov. 6| And here are Obama's electoral college chances. It's 270 to win, kids: |Oct 26||Oct 28||Oct 29||Oct 30||Oct 31||Nov. 1||Nov. 4||Nov. 6| A lot of it falls upon Ohio again. There's a kind of “As goes Ohio, so goes the nation” tendency even as the state has shed electoral votes as it's shed population. No Republican has ever been elected president without winning Ohio, and, since 1900, only two Democrats have: FDR (once) and JFK (in 1960). But Obama can still win without winning Ohio. He can still win without winning Ohio and Florida. And Virginia. He just needs Wisconsin, Nevada, Iowa, Colorado and New Hampshire. I'm nervous, of course. But I'm less nervous than I was a week ago; and a week ago I was less nervous than I was two weeks ago. Back to that first debate. I'm expending my nervous energy by helping get out the vote in First Hill, Seattle. My neighborhood. Washington state is a mail-in only state now, which is a bit of a bummer. I like the community act of voting. I like the civic-ness of it. I like talking to the old ladies at the church or school. I like talking to people in line. But at this point it's GOTV. Gotta be postmarked today, kids. So if you haven't mailed it in yet, bring it to the post office. Watch them postmark it. Or bring it to a drop box. Here's a list of ballot drop boxes in King County. Final thought. For the longest time I've heard from right-wing blabbermouths about how Obama's supporters are less enthusiastic than they once were. How he's got an enthusiasm gap, whlie all the right-wingers are crazy, yes crazy, for Mitt. Here. Here's how I've demonstated my lack of enthusiasm: I've given him $3,000 and the last three weekends of my life in GOTV efforts. Plus this morning. Let's do this. Hans von Spakovsky and the Voter-Fraud Myth “You are hereby notified that your right to vote has been challenged by a qualified elector. The Hamilton County Board of Elections has scheduled a hearing regarding your right to vote on Monday, September 10th, 2012, at 8:30 A.M. . . . You have the right to appear and testify, call witnesses and be represented by counsel.” --Notice that Teresa Sharp, 53, received from The Hamilton County Board of Elections, as recounted in the article ”The Voter-Fraud Myth: The man who has stoked fear about imposters at the polls“ by Jane Mayer, in the Oct. 29 issue of The New Yorker. Mayer's piece is scary and worth reading. The Voter ID laws are the new Jim Crow. They target African-Americans and the elderly without saying they target African-Americans and elderly. Meanwhile, the man behind this targeting, Republican lawyer Hans von Spakovsky of Atlanta, Ga., can't cite much evidence of voter fraud given his almost preternatural interest in the subject. A recent study by the Pew Center found that more than 1.8 million dead people were registered to vote, and 2.5 million people were registered to vote in more than one state (I might be one of those, since I voted in Minnesota in 2006 and in Washington state since 2008), but von Spakovsky has no idea how many of these cases led to actual voter fraud. He cites a 2000 investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in which, in the previous two decades, 5400 dead people were recorded as voting; but he doesn't cite the limp follow-up in which the Georgia Secretary of State's office indicated that most of these were clerical errors. ”Upon closer inspection, the paper admitted, its only specific example of a deceased voter casting a ballot didn’t hold up. The ballot of a living voter had been attributed to a dead man whose name was nearly identical,“ Mayer writes. So from 1.8 million potential cases of voter fraud to 5400 actual cases of voter fraud in Georgia to ... zero actual cases of voter fraud in Georgia. Later von Spakovsky gives Mayer the names of two experts who would confirm the peril of voter fraud: Robert Pastor, the director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University, and Larry Sabato, a political-science professor at the University of Virginia. Neither did. The opposite. “I don’t think that voter-impersonation fraud is a serious problem,” Pastor said. Yet since 2011, pushed by von Spakovsky and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-sponsored, right-wing organization, 37 states have enacted or proposed some form of voter ID law. Other quotes from the piece: - “This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate.” — Pres. Bill Clinton - “[Von Spakovsky] is trying to create a cure where there is no sickness.” — Rep. John Lewis, (D-GA) - “You can't steal an election one person at a time. You can by stuffing ballot boxes—but voter I.D. won't stop that.” — Robert Brandon, president of the Fair Elections Legal Network - “It makes no sense for individual voters to impersonate someone. It's like committing a felony at the police station, with virtually no chance of affecting the election outcome.” — Lorraine Minnite, Rutgers professor and author of “The Myth of Voter Fraud” - “I think they are trying to stop as many black people as they can from voting. I won't even know until Election Day if I got the right to vote. But if they tell me I can't vote—it is over. They are going to have to call the police.” — Teresa Sharp, citizen, Ohio Endorsement of the Day: Susan Eisenhower Endorses Barack Obama for Re-Election Four years ago, I left the Republican Party of which I was a lifelong member and became an independent. Not long after, I supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election for president. ... Like many other voters who crossed party lines to vote for Barack Obama in the last election, I have watched the 2012 campaign carefully and listened closely to what the candidates have said. I believe that President Obama should be re-elected. Four years ago, Obama, a relatively inexperienced public servant, became the 44th President of the United States during one of the most difficult times our country has faced. The nation’s economy was on the brink of collapse. Our image overseas was tarnished, and our military was bogged down in two unpopular wars. I supported Obama then because I thought that he was unflappable. I saw him as a man with a keen intellect and a cool analytical head. ... In the last four years, and despite the global downturn, America has come back from the brink. ... According to the International Monetary Fund, today the United States is poised for 3 percent growth, which would make our economy the strongest of the other richest economies, including Canada and Germany. Other influential studies, cited in a recent column by Fareed Zakaria, show that debt in the U.S. financial sector, relative to GDP, has declined to levels not seen since before the 2000 bubble. And consumer confidence is now at its highest levels since September 2007. The housing market is also slowly coming back. ... [Obama] ended the war in Iraq, was the first Democratic president to ratify an arms control treaty with the Russian Federation, and rallied global leaders to put nuclear security at the top of the international agenda. The Obama Administration has also been responsible for decimating the top leadership of al-Qaeda and introducing biting sanctions on Iran. ... I am more confused than ever about what Mitt Romney stands for. I know little of his core beliefs, if he even has any. ... Given Romney’s shifting positions, he can only be judged by the people with whom he surrounds himself. Many of them espouse yesterday’s thinking on national defense and security, female/family reproductive rights, and the interplay of government and independent private enterprise. In this context, Barack Obama represents the future, not that past. His emphasis on education is an example of the importance he places on preparing rising generations to assume their places as innovators and entrepreneurs, workers and doers, and responsible citizens and leaders. He recognizes, as many of us do, that access to opportunities must be open to every American ... As I said in 2008 and will say again: “Unless we squarely face our challenges as Americans—together– we risk losing the priceless heritage bestowed on us by the sweat and the sacrifice of our forbearers. If we do not pull together, we could lose the America that has been an inspiration to the world.” Endorsement of the Day: The Stranger “This endorsement might seem like a no-brainer, but this shit is important, so let's go over it one more time. Electing Barack Obama to a second term goes beyond the standard Democratic boilerplate about how a Democratic president will nominate Democratic judges to the US Supreme Court—though that is vitally important, and is the reason we don't at all regret voting for John Fucking Kerry in 2004. ”The thing that's easy to forget in the middle of all this bullshit is that Obama has been a very good president. He saved us from a second Great Depression; he passed health care reform that future Democrats can utilize as a first step to a national health care system; he's made investments in science, transportation, and green energy that will pay off for decades; he supported gay marriage at just the right moment; and he's made dozens of advancements for equality and dignity (Lilly Ledbetter, DADT repeal, executive orders for humane immigration reform) that have changed millions of people's lives for the better. “Sure, there are issues—with presidents, there are always issues—where he's dropped the ball (drones, Gitmo, drones). Those are serious issues. But right now, President Obama needs our help. After all he's done for us, we owe him the opportunity to transform from a very good president into a truly great one in his second term.” --The Stranger Election Board, in its “Endorsements for the Nov. 6, 2012 General Election” Endorsement of the Day: The Chicago Tribune The Chicago Tribune was founded in 1847 and has endorsed a Democrat for president only twice: Barack Obama in 2008 and Barack Obama in 2012. From the endorsement that went out this week: Obama ... has been careful about projecting military power overseas. At home he has initiated, or agreed to, tax cuts to promote growth: investment tax credits, payroll tax cuts and extension of all the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. He proposes to reduce a corporate tax rate that everyone this side of far left agrees is a globally unfair hindrance for U.S. businesses. On questions of economics and limited government, the Chicago Tribune has forged principles that put us closer to the challenger in this race, Republican Mitt Romney. ... [Romney] has, though, been astonishingly willing to bend his views to the politics of the moment: on abortion, on immigration, on gun laws and, most famously, on health care. As a governor, his signature issue was the deal he cut with Democrats to extend health care — and a health insurance mandate — to all citizens. Romneycare was the Massachusetts model on which key elements of Obamacare were modeled. Yet Romney won’t acknowledge he is, in effect, the godfather of the national health care plan he vows to repeal. His proposals to achieve a balanced budget, and to begin reducing taxpayers’ huge debts, rest on questionable math and rosy assumptions. ... Romney’s fix on tax cuts, plus his guarantee to protect defense spending that genuinely could constrict, leaves him precious little room to maneuver [on the federal debt]. Remember, the next president needs to reach deals that slash debt by many trillions — without bankrupting Washington in the process. ... If a European debt meltdown doesn’t stoke another, pardon our repetition, global financial crisis, Obama’s next term would open to less economic tumult: Friday morning’s GDP reading confirms anew that U.S. economic growth has a fluttering heartbeat. Home prices are stabilizing, the stock market and consumer confidence have risen, and job growth has been steady if unspectacular. Bolstered by his steadiness in office, cognizant of the vast unfinished business before him, we endorse the re-election of Barack Obama. Getting Out the Vote I'll be helping with the get out of the vote campaign for Pres. Obama today and tomorrow, 3-6 pm, at Washington Democratic Headquarters in downtown Seattle. I've contributed money, now time. I urge you to do the same. Give what you can. We can't let bullshit win. Right now, despite Gallup, it's not. Obama's winning. Let's keep it so. Read your Nate Silver. In 2008 he got every state correct except for Indiana, which went for Obama. He also got every Senate race correct. In the 2010 midterms, he got 34 of the 36 Senate races correct. The ones he missed went Democrat. So his misses have favored Republicans. And he's got Pres. Obama winning both the popular and electoral vote. Endorsement of the Day: Colin Powell Signs on for 'Long Patrol with Pres. Obama' “When he took over, the country was in very very difficult straits. We were in the one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression. The fiscal system was collapsing. Wall Street was in chaos, we had 800,000 jobs lost in that first month of the Obama administration and unemployment peaked a few months later at 10 percent. So we were in real trouble. The auto industry was collapsing, the housing was start[ing] to collapse and we were in very difficult straits. And I saw over the next several years, stabilization come back in the financial community, housing is now starting to pick up after four years, it's starting to pick up. Consumer confidence is rising. ... ”The president got us of one war, [is starting] to get us out of a second war and did not get us into any new wars. And finally I think that the actions he has taken with respect to protecting us from terrorism have been very very solid. And so, I think we ought to keep on the track that we are on. I've signed on for a long patrol with President Obama.“ --Gen. Colin Powell on why he's endorsing Pres. Barack Obama for a second term as President of the United States. ”The governor who was saying things at the debate on Monday night ... was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier. I'm not quite sure which Gov. Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy. “One day he has a certain strong view about staying in Afghanistan but then on Monday night he agrees with the withdrawal. Same thing in Iraq. On almost every issue that was discussed on Monday night, Governor Romney agreed with the President with some nuances. But this is quite a different set of foreign policy views than he had earlier in the campaign. My concern ... is that sometimes I don't sense that he has thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have.” --Gen Colin Powell on why he's not endorsing Gov. Mitt Romney for POTUS. Former Mossad Chief for Obama, Warns Romney's Rhetoric Against U.S. Interests “What Romney is doing is mortally destroying any chance of a resolution without war. ... Obama does think there is still room for negotiations. It’s a very courageous thing to say in this atmosphere. In the end, this is what I think: Making foreign policy on Iran a serious issue in the US elections. What Romney has done, in itself, is a heavy blow to the ultimate interests of the United States and Israel.” 'One of the Most Successful Foreign Policies of Any Administration' From Robert Reich: I thought the third and last presidential debate was a clear win for the President. He displayed the authority of the nation’s Commander-in-Chief – calm, dignified, and confident. He was assertive without being shrill, clear without being condescending. He explained to a clueless Mitt Romney the way the world actually works. ... I kept wishing Obama would take more credit for one of the most successful foreign policies of any administration in decades: not only finding and killing Osama bin Laden but also ridding the world of Libya’s Gaddafi without getting drawn into a war, imposing extraordinary economic hardship on Iran, isolating Syria, and navigating the treacherous waters of Arab Spring. Obama pointed to these achievements, but I thought he could have knitted them together into an overall approach to world affairs that has been in sharp contrast to the swaggering, bombastic foreign policies of his predecessor. Like George W. Bush, Mitt Romney has a pronounced tendency to rush to judgment – to assert America’s military power too quickly, and to assume that we’ll be viewed as weak if we use diplomacy and seek the cooperation of other nations (including Russia and China) before making our moves. President Obama won tonight’s debate not only because he knows more about foreign policy than does Mitt Romney, but because Obama understands how to wield the soft as well as the hard power of America. He came off as more subtle and convincing than Romney – more authoritative – because, in reality, he is. Although tonight’s topic was foreign policy, I hope Americans understand it was also about every other major challenge we face. Mitt Romney is not only a cold warrior; he’s also a class warrior. And the two are closely related. Romney tries to disguise both within an amenable demeanor. But in both capacities, he’s a bully. Quote of the Day The choice is clear. The Romney-Ryan ticket represents a constricted and backward-looking vision of America: the privatization of the public good. In contrast, the sort of public investment championed by Obama—and exemplified by both the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Care Act—takes to heart the old civil-rights motto “Lifting as we climb.” That effort cannot, by itself, reverse the rise of inequality that has been under way for at least three decades. But we’ve already seen the future that Romney represents, and it doesn’t work. The reëlection of Barack Obama is a matter of great urgency. Not only are we in broad agreement with his policy directions; we also see in him what is absent in Mitt Romney—a first-rate political temperament and a deep sense of fairness and integrity. A two-term Obama Administration will leave an enduringly positive imprint on political life. It will bolster the ideal of good governance and a social vision that tempers individualism with a concern for community. Every Presidential election involves a contest over the idea of America. Obama’s America—one that progresses, however falteringly, toward social justice, tolerance, and equality—represents the future that this country deserves. I'd Like to Apologize to All Women on Behalf of All Men Not for the usual reasons, either. From Nate Silver at the FiveThirtyEight blog: If only women voted, President Obama would be on track for a landslide re-election... If only men voted, Mr. Obama would be biding his time until a crushing defeat at the hands of Mitt Romney... The biggest gender gap to date in the exit polls came in 2000, when Al Gore won by 11 points among women, but George W. Bush won by 9 points among men — a 20-point difference. The numbers this year look very close to that. I thought the polls would improve more after the second debate but they're not. Enough. Or they're just too volatile. Gallup, which is assuming 80% of the votes will come from whites, isn't helping. I participated in GOTV efforts for Obama on Capitol Hill (Seattle) on Saturday and there were fewer people participating than in 2008. Not surprising, but ... Do the rest really want Pres. Romney? I know I don't. You've got to fight these motherfuckers. The 2000 election map. Gaffes, Blunders, Walkbacks and Lies: A Week-by-Week Retrospective of the Year in Mitt It's been such a long year, for both Mitt Romney and us, that it's tough to remember all his gaffes, blunders, walkbacks and lies. Apparently he's having trouble remembering himself. Apparently so have many voters, those glorious undecideds, who gave him a 6-point boost after the first debate, where he repudiated much of what he'd said during the GOP primaries. He shook the Etch a Sketch and it worked. In 2004, John Kerry changed his position on one matter, the Iraq War, and was condemned for an entire election season, and beyond, for it. Mitt Romney flip-flops on everything and he's awarded the governorship of Massachusetts, the Republican nomination for president, and... ? So I used Google's “custom range” tool to search, week by week, for the various top stories on Mitt Romney, and came up with the compendium below. Caveat: “Dog on roof,” and “Corporations are people, my friend,” two favorites, are from 2011. Enjoy. Or grimace. - January 1-8: “Gingrich: Mitt Romney is a Liar” on CBS News. - January 8-14: “Where's Romney's tax return?” on FOX Business. - January 15-21: “Romney's Taxes: the offshore controversy” on CNN Money. - January 22-28: “Mitt Romney Made Nearly $22 Million in 2010, Paid Less Than 14% in Taxes” on ABC News. - January 29-February 4: “Mitt Romney: 'I'm Not Concerned with the Very Poor'” on Huffington Post - February 5-11: “Mitt Romney tells CPAC he was 'severely conservative governor'” in The Washington Post - February 12-18: “Romney: 'Michigan trees are the right height'” on YouTube: - February 19-25: “Another Romney Clunker? 'Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs actually'” on the Christian Science Monitor site. - February 26-March 3: “Romney: Limbaugh's 'Slut' line is 'not the language I'd use'” on The Hill. - March 4-10: “Romney in the South: 'I like grits, y'all'” on YouTube. - March 11-17: “Mitt Romney on Planned Parenthood: 'We're going to get rid of that'” on KSDK.com. - March 18-24: “Mitt Romney Platform 'Like an Etch a Sketch,' Top Spokesman Says” on Huffington Post. - March 25-31: “Can Romney Recover from Etch-a-Sketch Moment?” by National Journal Staff. - April 1-7: “The Facts vs. Mitt Romney” on the Washington Post site. - April 8-14: “Mitt Romney at NRA: Beware of Obama 'Unrestrained by the Demands of Re-Election'” on Huffington Post. - April 15-21: “Mitt Romney's years at Bain represent everything you hate about capitalism,” in the Village Voice. - April 22-28: “Mitt Romney Tells Otterbein University Students to Borrow Money from Their Parents to Start Business” on Huffington Post. - April 29-May5: “FOX News' Shep Smith reacts to Mitt Romney reacting to Newt Gingrich quitting” on YouTube. - May 6-12: “How Mitt Romney Bullied a Gay Student at Cranbook” on The New Yorker site. - May 13-19: “Mitt Romney: 'I stand by what I said, whatever it was” on YouTube highlight reel. - May 20-26: “Right-Wing Billionaires Behind Mitt Romney” in Rolling Stone. - May 27-June 2: “Romney to officially clinch Republican nomination Tuesday” in The Washington Post. - June 3-June 9: “Romney Mocks Obama for Wanting More Firemen, Policemen, Teachers” on Huffington Post. - June 10-16: “The Root of Mitt Romney's Comfort with Lying” in Time magazine. - June 17-23: “A Case of Romnesia: Mitt Romney's long history of misremembering his past” in Mother Jones. - June 24-30: “I Will Repeal Obamacare” on MittRomney.com. - July 1-7: “The Mystery of Romney's Exit from Bain” in Mother Jones. - July 8-14: “Romney stayed at Bain three years longer than he stated” in the Boston Globe. - July 15-21: “What Might Be Hiding in Romney's Tax Returns?” in US News and World Report. - July 22-28: “Mitt Romney Makes 'Disconcerting' Olympic Gaffe in London” in International Business Times - July 29-August 4: “Mitt Romney Palestinian comments 'racist and out of touch'” in the Daily Telegraph. - August 5-11: “Mitt Romney Would Pay 0.82 Percent in Taxes Under Paul Ryan's Plan” on The Atlantic site. - August 12-18: “Mitt Romney says he pays 13 percent in taxes. How low is that?” on the Christian Science Monitor site. - August 19-25: “Romney birth certificate joke sets off firestorm” on CBS News. - August 26-September 1: “Romney: 'Now is the Time to Restore the Promise of America'” on C-Span. - September 2-8: “Clint Eastwood bests Mitt Romney as RNC highlight: Poll” by Reuters. - September 9-15: “Mitt Romney's Response to Libya Murders was Un-American” on US News.com. - September 16-22: “Deciphering Mitt Romney's '47 Percent' Blunder” on Politico. - September 23-29: “Mitt Romney Lowers Debate Expectations” on ABC News. - September 30-October 6: “Mitt Romney is the Smartest Guy in the Room” on FOX News. - October 7-13: “Mitt Romney still mum on specifics of tax plan” in the LA Times. - October 14-20: “'Binders Full of Women': Mitt Romney's claim not even accurate” in the Boston Globe. You could almost sing a version of Billy Joel's “We Didn't Start the Fire” to Mitt's year: NASCAR owners, Cadillacs, He pays what in income tax Kid Rock, Y'all and grits, Michigan trees. Severely conservative governor Not concerned with the poor Bain exit, Paul Ryan, Benghazi. Etch a sketch, Eastwood's chair, You can't take him anywhere Brit Olympics disconcerting Homosexual student hurting Mitt keeps starting fires And he keeps them burning Instead of learning... Feel free to add your own stanza. I didn't even touch “47 percent” or “binders full of women.” “I stand by what I said, whatever it was.” Absent Fathers, Powerful Fathers Our two most recent Democratic presidents never knew their fathers. Clinton's father died before he was born while Obama met his father for one extended two-week meeting when he was 10. That was it. Both men were raised by single mothers, grandparents, and stepfathers. Neither came from wealth or power but they raised themselves up to positions of wealth and power. They represent the Horatio Alger aspects of the American dream, which, for most Americans, is just that (a dream), but which they, as leaders, have tried to keep open for as many as possible. Our most recent Republican president and the current Republican nominee are the scions of wealthy, powerful men. George Romney was the CEO of General Motors, the governor of Michigan and a presidential candidate; George H.W. Bush was a U.S. Representative, director of the CIA, ambassador to China, Vice President of the United States, and then the 41st President of the United States. Both scions had/have father issues. W. probably resented his father too much and Romney probably loved his father too much. Both tried to do what their fathers couldn't or didn't: topple Saddam; become president of the United States. In other words, the rhetoric that the right tends to use about success in America, bootstraps and all, is best represented by Democrats. The reality, that money and connections help immensely, is best represented by Republicans. I suppose Obama and Clinton, bootstraps guys, never bought bootstraps rhetoric because, in part, they saw the inequities of the world and knew the pain of absent fathers. That's why they are men of the people. Mitt Romney is a man of the LDS Church and the boardroom. He knew the pain of being the son of a man who might not be reelected governor of Michigan. From Nicholas Lemann's profile in the Oct. 1 New Yorker: [Romney] recalled watching his father on Election Night in 1964, when George was running for reëlection as governor of Michigan. Lyndon Johnson had won the Presidency by a landslide. “The numbers had come in, and in Michigan Johnson was way ahead of what our pollster, Walter DeVries, had estimated. And Walter DeVries came in. Our family was in a hotel room. He said, ‘George, you probably can’t win. Most likely you’ve lost tonight.’ And I, as a seventeen-year-old, was thinking about how embarrassing it would be to go to school and have your dad having lost as governor... Wow. Wow wow wow. Additional reading: Ta-Nehisi Coates on “The Burden of a Black President,” in which he compares Obama's first debate to Joe Louis' first fight with Max Schmeling. Lies, Damned Lies and Mitt Romney The Convention failed to move the needle, but some time in late September, a rise began, perhaps as Republicans came home and just decided they could like the guy. But then the big turning point is Romney's first debate, when he effectively undid in one night almost everything the Obama campaign had thrown at him since the spring. It was a new market; he had a new sales pitch; a new set of policies; a personality implant. And for many low-information voters, and others, that was enough. He worries what this will mean on election day, as do I. But more, I worry what this means about democracy, and whether we can have it. If you can win the presidency by repudiating many of your past positions in order to appeal to a rabid base, then repudiate those repudiations in order to appeal to the uninformed, undecided, middle-of-the-road voter, and you can prosper in this, what does that say about representative government? What does that say about success and who gets it? And how does that conform with typical right-wing rhetoric about success? None of this is exactly news to me. But for the past year I've assumed that most people were at least smart enough to sense the inauthenticity in Mitt Romney. Unfortunately, he had a good 90 minutes, Obama had a bad 90 minutes, and apparently that was enough for some of them. We'll see how the second debate numbers shake out. We'll see if enough people can see, as almost every conservative leader says in this video, what a pathetic and pathological liar Mitt Romney is. Not What We Do I first saw this on Andrew Sullivan's site (hello again, Sully!) but I remember the power of the moment during the debate last night. Romney's about to step into it in a manner described well by Paul Krugman: A large part of Romney’s campaign has been based on the false claim that Obama “apologized for America”. This supposed verbal weakness is supposed to trump the reality that Obama, you know, actually did get bin Laden. So naturally Romney tried to go after Obama [on the Benghazi issue] not for what he did or didn’t do, but for his supposed failure to talk tough enough. But then how did Romney get it so wrong? And if you read the transcript, by the way, Obama was clearly enjoying this — it seems as if he knew what was coming: MR. ROMNEY: I think it’s interesting the president just said something--which is that on the day after the attack, he went in the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror. You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration. PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please proceed. MR. ROMNEY: Is that what you’re saying? PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please proceed, Governor. MR. ROMNEY: I — I — I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror. PRESIDENT OBAMA: Get the transcript. MS. CROWLEY: It — he did in fact, sir. MR. ROMNEY: So let me — let me call it an act of terrorism — PRESIDENT OBAMA: Can you say that a little louder, Candy? (Laughter, applause.) MS. CROWLEY: He did call it an act of terror. Which left Romney looking stunned and angry ... and small. But even before that moment, which is all about Obama letting Romney hang himself in the politest manner possible (“Please proceed, Governor”), we got this moment, which is all about Obama's strength of character: I love the way he faces Romney. I love the look in his eye. I love his insistence on respect and seriousness in the disrespectful realm of political gamesmanship that Romney is playing. “That's not what we do” has an unasked follow-up: “So why are you doing it?” Obama makes Romney seem like a petulant child here. Man of the People, Mitt of the Sons Hey, candidates. You've just spent 90 minutes debating each other over the future of the country. Who do you hang with? Pres. Obama talked with and mingled with voters: Romney immediately surrounded himself with his sons, who seemed to close him off from the rest of the world: Via The Atlantic and their debate recap. The Second Debate: Romney Creates a Meme OK, I can read Andrew Sullivan again. I missed the first debate, stuck at work, but followed it via Sullivan's blog and Twitter, and, well, barely got any work done for all the panic I felt. I watched the VEEP debate and thought Joe stuck it and Paul Ryan was smooth and without answers to tough questions, which is the GOP way. Increase defense + cut taxes doesn't equal balanced budget, as they claim. It equals bullshit. It has for 30 years. I watched the second presidential debate and thought Romney did a good job for someone impersonating someone running for president. He doesn't seem as inauthentic as he did during the GOP debates, when he was awful, but he began to crumble near the end. He seemed a little sweatier, his voice a little reedier. He complained too much over little things. Obama was calm when he needed to be, forceful when he needed to be. He seemed presidential. I think Romney began to go off the rails with the answer to the question about women making 72% of what men in the same positions make: Obama's answer: I signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in January 2009. Romney's answer: I hired a woman once. Not even that. He tells a story about filling cabinet positions as governor of Massachusetts in which all the applicants were men. And I went to my staff and said, 'How come the people for all of these jobs are men? and they said, 'Well, these are the people who have the qualifications.' And I said, well, gosh, can’t we—can’t we find some—some women that are also qualified? That's some condenscending crap. Let's break it down to see what he's saying. - He only knows men. - The only qualified job applicants for his administration were men. - He decided to look for qualified women, because they were not anywhere around him. - Plus: He's not really answering the question. This leads to his already infamous “binders full of women” line: I brought us whole binders full of—of women. That meme went viral faster than anything I've ever seen. By the time the debate was over, it was all over the Internet. It's already a tumblr site. It's already a Facebook page with a quarter of a million 'likes.' My favorite so far: But in some ways, the meme actually misses the point. The bigger problem with his answer, which doesn't even answer the question, is that it implies that he, Mitt Romney, was a business leader for two decades, helped organize the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ran for governor of Massachusetts and won, and yet through all of these endeavors knew no women who would work well in positions of power. He had to search for them. Because apparently they're so passive, being women, and he's such a good guy, being Mitt. It implies a very cloistered and closed-off existence. Guess what? This horrible answer is actually a lie. A woman's group actually presented him with qualified candidates. They were proactive. He was passive. According to Think Progress' fact-check, this was just one of 31 times that Romney lied during the debate. We still have a long way to go. There's one more debate. Obama needs to do it again. He needs to kick ass again. We all need to help. I contributed $500 to his campaign last night, bringing me up to $2,000. Other than a car and a home, I don't think I've spent $2,000 on anything in my life. But at least I can breathe again. I can read Andrew Sullivan again. It was good seeing my president again. Why Obama Now Yes, I wish he'd said more of this during the debate. Doesn't mean I'm not voting for him. Seriously, America. Dude takes it on the chin—for you—for four years, and because he doesn't call out a blatant liar during a 90-minute debate, a guy who rewrites everything he fucking believes in, that means you're voting for the blatant liar? What are you—a woman in a Sam Peckinpah movie? I know. Obscure. But brutal. Facts Don't Speak for Themselves: Obama's Worrisome Conciliatory Nature This is worrisome. From David Remnick's piece, “Obama's Old Friends React to the Debate.” When Barack Obama was a student at Harvard Law School, he was never known as a particularly good debater. In class, if he thought that a fellow student had said something foolish, he showed no forensic bloodlust. He did not go out of his way to defeat someone in argument; instead he tried, always with a certain decorous courtesy, to try to persuade, to reframe his interlocutor’s view, to signal his understanding while disagreeing. Here's Laurence H. Tribe, a leading constitutional-law scholar and Obama’s mentor at Harvard: Barack Obama’s instincts and talents have never included going for an opponent’s jugular. That’s just not who he is or ever has been. And here's Will Burns, a Chicago alderman, who worked for Obama in '96 and 2000: The President has always been someone who takes the truth seriously and has a great faith in the American people and their ability to handle big ideas. He doesn’t patronize them. He uses the campaign as an educative process. He wants to win but also wants to be clear about his ideas. Finally Burns again: Romney stood there, with his hair and his jaw and his terrific angles—and he lied! About taxes, about Medicare. Obama pushed back on the five-trillion-dollar tax cut or the way Romney’s version of Medicare would destroy Medicare as we know it. And Romney just tilted his head and said, Oh, no, it won’t. At some point, you have to believe that the facts speak for themselves. That's the sad thing about facts: they don't speak for themselves. You have to speak for them. In a way that people will hear. The sadder fact about the electorate is that they don't want facts; they want wish fulfillment. You say you'll cut my taxes and the deficit won't grow? Yay! You say we can take down Saddam, who caused 9/11, with no cost to ourselves? Double yay! You say you'll give me a loan for this house I can't afford? Triple yay! At some point, the bill arrives. We respond to emotion: fear and reassurance. The GOP knows this. Everyone including me thought Obama's 2008 victory was about hope and change but it was really about fear and reassurance: our fear that an idiot president was destroying our economy. Huge institutions like Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. were crumbling to the ground like the twin towers on 9/11. What do we do? Hey, this guy seems smart and calm. Let's vote for him instead of the crazy old man, with the dippy girl, neither of whom is reassuring me at all. He's what? He's black? Whatever. He seems smart and calm. Obama '08! But for Obama to win this time, he needs to be more than calm and smart. He needs to call a liar a liar. For the good of the country. He can't be Ali holding back his punch as Foreman goes down, because, now, Romney isn't going down. He's going up. And if he goes up, we go down. Obama needs to do it. In the next debates. Every day on the campaign trail. He can even frame it within the context of who he is. “I'm not the type of person who...” “People who know me know I try to be diplomatic whenever possible...” Then add the “but.” Then throw the fucking punch already. Because Mitt Romney, rich bastard, dissembler and liar, hider of taxes and firer of people, needs to be decked with the truth. And brother? Make it sting. My Overwhelming Conviction about Pres. Obama's DNC Speech I disagreed with many people who were immediately disappointed with Pres. Obama's acceptance speech before the Democratic National Convention Thursday night. I loved it. I thought it was straightforward and honest and at times uplifting. It was uplifting enough that it lifted me up from my couch and over to my computer where I donated another $500 to the Obama campaign. But the line of the speech wasn't an uplifting one—except in the sense that it was beautiful. It wasn't even Obama's. It came from Abraham Lincoln. Here's what Pres. Obama said: While I’m proud of what we’ve achieved together, I’m far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, 'I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.' God, that's beautiful. You don't even have to believe in God to know the feeling. We've all felt it. We can only imagine how a president in a time of crisis must feel it. The quote comes from Noah Brooks writing in Harper's Weekly three months after Lincoln's assassination. Brooks was a journalist for the Sacramento Union, and, particularly because he didn't indicate the circumstances under which Lincoln said the line, some doubt whether Lincoln said it at all. If he didn't then Brooks is less hack than great writer, because it's a great line worthy of repeating. It's one of our most fundamental and human images, isn't it? Man on his knees in times of crisis and despair. As soon as Pres. Obama said it, as soon as I began to play it over in my mind, I thought of two similar lines, one humorous, one spiritual. This is the humorous version. It's from Saul Bellow's “Herzog”: On the knees of your soul? Might as well be useful. Scrub the floor. The other, more spiritual line, comes from U2's “Mysterious Ways”: To touch is to heal - to hurt is to steal If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel We are driven down by the weight of the world; but in accepting our failings we are raised up. It's the low place we go to find hope. Pres. Obama greeting tourists at the Lincoln Memorial in 2011. White House Photo. Quote of the Day “Now, the fact that a lot of Americans are still opposed not simply to the presidency of Barack Obama but to the idea of the presidency of Barack Obama is not something that Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, or in fact any Democratic speechmaker will talk about at the convention. But it's indisputable, and it accounts for the almost fantastic nature of what many Americans think of both the president and the First Lady. To be sure, they're politically vulnerable on merit; but they're also vulnerable because even, after their four years in office, a weirdly unvarying percentage of America does not accept them as Americans. It is prejudice, pure and simple, and it manifests itself less in polling results than it does in a political discourse warped by whispers and suspicions kept sub rosa. ”And so it was hard to say what Michelle Obama had to do on Tuesday night, because so much of what she had to do tonight was something outside the realm of polite speech. Republican commentators spoke almost winsomely of Ann Romney's need to humanize Mitt Romney; but no Democratic commentator could speak of the necessity of 'Americanizing' Barack Obama without indulging the worst instincts of the American electorate. So what Michelle Obama did, quite simply, was engage the best. I sat with the Ohio delegation as she spoke, and I watched from close up as she went from one thing — a woman of glamor and poise, in a dress the color of sherbet and matching heels — to quite another, in the course of a single speech. She never sounded embattled on Tuesday, but she was clearly responding to something, and it was this aspect of her speech that lent it a special force... “Tuesday night's speech had an almost lonely power, because it wasn't only about him but about them — about a couple that has changed the world, only to be misperceived. And it addressed those misperceptions not by naming them but by rising above them, and inviting the rest of America to rise above them, too.” --Tom Junod, “The Lonely Power of Michelle and the Idea of Barack,” on THE POLITICS BLOG at esquire.com David Denby's Defense of Clint Eastwood—Annotated David Denby, film critic for The New Yorker, took the road less traveled last week and wound up defending Clint Eastwood's speech at the Republican National Convention. I'm a fan of the “In Defense of...” article—I've done a few of them myself—but, as I began the piece, I couldn't imagine what defense Denby could conjure. Here it is: For the record, I didn’t think Clint Eastwood’s chair dialogue was “sad and pathetic” as Roger Ebert put it, or the weird mutterings of a senescent citizen, as Rachel Maddow and other liberal commentators thought, or quite as incoherent as Amy Davidson said. John Cassidy admitted that the speech was “refreshing,” which was closer to my response. It’s amusing that so many commentators complain about the wooden or pre-fabricated nature of convention speeches and then carry on as if some unspeakable disaster had taken place when someone tries something off-beat and a little strange. That's actually not a bad defense, particularly from a film critic. 'In a world of Hollywood gloss, Eastwood has given us mumblecore.' Rachel Maddow, whom I generally admire, teases Republican squareness with shrugs and grins in every broadcast. Every broadcast, Gracie? I think I've seen, at most, a half-hour of her show total. But then I don't watch TV news. But last night, with a larger than usual national audience watching, she relied on some presumed proper standard of behavior to judge Eastwood, using that assumption as an opportunistic sarcastic tool. Last night, Maddow came off as the square. I deplore most of Clint’s politics, yet this speech was not a disaster but an act of cunning, like many of his public appearances. I looked at it as an act of “One-take Clint.” Here's Arnie Hammer on Eastwood's directing style: “At one point he was like, 'OK, cut, print.' And I was like, 'Whoa, whoa, Clint, I had my sides in my hands, I thought we were just rehearsing that.'” That's how Eastwood does it and he probably thought he could get away with it at the RNC, too. He couldn't. He eschewed rhetoric and “rousing” pro-Romney remarks. Apparently most of the speakers did without rousing pro-Romney remarks. They weren't there to nominate Romney; they were there to nominate against Obama. I could have done without his reprisal of “Make my day,” but, in general, he was folksy, Will Rogersish, eccentric, maybe, but less doddering than mock-doddering. Look at it again: there’s a kind of logic to what he said. As always, his focus was on his idea of integrity—a man should do what he promises to do. Like give a good speech at a national convention? That led him into a tangle on Obama’s not closing Gitmo, but he started out by saying that it was a broken promise. That matters to him much more than ideology. Then why is he stumping for Romney--a man who's repudiated everything he ever did as governor of Massachusetts? Does Eastwood like the fact that Romney's making no promises other than the generic and jingoistic? That's he's making the usual Republican promises to increase defense, cut taxes on the rich and yet somehow balance the budget? That he's promising us voodoo economics all over again? Does Eastwood like how the GOP's attack on Obama is an attack on a strawman? Does he like Romney's line about “voting for the American” as if Obama isn't? He’s always been more of a libertarian than an orthodox Republican, and is actually quite liberal in his social views. Exactly. So why was he there? His remark that we should have consulted the Russians before going into Afghanistan was startling and very far from stupid. No, it was stupid. Particularly if it was an attack on Obama. Or was it an attack on Bush 43? Or was it attack on our post-9/11 response? Dirty Harry was telling us we shouldn't have attacked those who attacked us? That we should have read al Qaeda its rights? Funny. His assertion that Obama should bring the troops home tomorrow morning was even more startling. How many people at the convention reject our military efforts in Afghanistan and want to end them tomorrow? Besides Eastwood and the Ron Paulites? I'm guessing ... none. Eccentric, maybe, but not a disaster, and it will be remembered fondly as the one humanly interesting moment of the convention. Nice try, David. The mere fact that Eastwood was there was a bad call, given his politics; but it was his lack of rehearsal, his thought he could do this in one take, that hurt him. Sometimes, Clint, a man's gotta know his limitations. Eastwood said Hollywood has conservatives; they just don't “hot-dog it” like Hollywood liberals. And where did he say this? Before a national audience at the RNC. Chris Rock Rules Mitt Romney Drives I-5 to Chehalis My friend Ben (“The Obamanator”) has a cousin who helped create this video for the Obama campaign. “He built it,” as Ben says. It focuses on the lack of specifics in Mitt Romney's speech at the GOP convention last week: I didn't watch that speech or much of the convention. I had a busy week at work building things and didn't need the extra aggravation of all the GOP lies. But what stands out in this video is less Romney's generic fluff than this line from his acceptance speech: When the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American. Lousy sentence construction anyway (“the world”...“you”) but worse in its implication. Romney = an American. Obama = not an American. You know. It's a sentiment straight out of I-5, Chehalis. Mitt Romney: What a fucker. Great Moments in Right-Wing Paranoia: Swinging Sixties Edition The following examples of right-wing paranoia are all from the late 1950s and early 1960s as seen in the book, “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Dream,” by Rick Perlstein. It's a good reminder that right-wing paranoia isn't new. It's been around a while. It's almost always wrong. - “A private outfit, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, bankrolled by the conversative Richardson Foundation, was being retained by military bases worldwide... Among their teachings was that Defense Secretary McMamara's project to replace bombers with missiles as the centerpiece of American nuclear strategy was in fact a deliberate, covert plan for unilateral disarmament.” (pg. 146) - “In Pensacola....the chief of naval air training set up a series of mandatory, weeklong seminars for officers that taught that the progressive income tax, the Federal Reserve, and increased business regulations were, just as Robert Welch believed, part of the Soviet takeover of the United States.” (pg. 147) - “Day after day, fanatics pressed into [Nixon's] hand yet another copy of that damned little blue pamphlet with the United Nations insignia on the cover, Department of State Publication 7277, which they claimed was proof that the government was about to sign over America's armed forces to a Soviet colonel. (Actually it was a woolly UN report setting a course for atomic disarmament over something like a century...) (pg. 167) - ”On May 10 , the same day as the Birmingham settlement-cum-riot, the far right returned to the news when Tom Kuchel stood up in the Senate to declare that 10 percent of the letters coming into his office—six thousand a month—were 'fright mail,' mostly centering on two astonishing, and astonishingly widespread, rumors: that Chinese commandos were training in Mexico for an invasion of the United States through San Diego; and that 100,000 UN troops—16,000 of them 'African Negro Troops, who are cannibals' [sic]—were secretly rehearsing in the Georgia swamps under the command of a Russian colonel for a UN martial-law takeover of the United States.“ (pg. 210) - ”[TV host Steve Allen] decided to get Goldwater's reaction to a far-right hotline, 'Let Freedom Ring.' ... The nation heard a frantic voice say: ... 'The pattern in this country is very closely following the events which took place during the internal takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1946. ... Keep yourself well-informed. Do not trust newspapers, radio, TV and newsmagazines for your information. These are the main weapons the enemy has to use against us.'“ - ”In Mississippi, vigilantes were setting upon black churches, tearing them apart for 'weapons' they assumed were being stockpiled as a prelude to the Communist takeover, then burning them to the ground at the rate of one a week when no weapons could be found.“ (pg. 363) - ”Goldwater delegates were at the top of Nob Hill at the city's WPA-style Masonic Temple screamng their heads off when Michael Goldwater explained how his father had taught his children to 'be wary of any man who tries to take our land away from us or our God away from us,' and that Johnson's self-professed Great Society 'can only result in dictatorship.'“ (pg. 380) The book contains some left-wing paranoia, too, such as this letter sent to John F. Kennedy's press secretary, Pierre Salinger, on Nov. 19, 1963: - ”Don't let the President come down here. I'm worried about him. I think something terrible will happen to him.“ (pg. 241) Salinger tried to quiet the woman's fears: ”I appreciate your concern for the president,“ he wrote back, ”but it would be a sad day for this country if there were any city in the United States he could not visit without fear of violence. I am confident the people of Dallas will greet him warmly." That Right-Wing, Uncle Sam Billboard near Chehalis, Wash. P and I, with our friend Ward, went to a friend's place along the Columbia river on Friday, stayed over, hiked, drove back Saturday. On the way down, on I-5 near Chehalis, Wash., we saw a tattered Uncle Sam sign with these words spelled out: VOTE FOR THE AMERICAN Do they mean ...? I wondered. Of course they do. On the way back it read: WHY IS OBAMA SUPPRESSING THE MILITARY VOTE? It's a well-known billboard, started by a farmer named Alfred Hamilton, who died in 2004. The messages keep going up even as they eminate from an image that grows ever-more faded. They're the usual loony paranoid crap. They're the usual, accuse-the-Dems-of-what-the-GOP-is-doing crap. Because voter suppression? Ain't nothing but a GOP thang. Of course, now Romney is doing his version of the first sign mentioned above. It's his 1,001st sign of desperation. Stay classy, America. A Legitimate Choice Until last weekend, whenever I heard the word 'legititmate' I thought of Kenneth Branagh doing Edmund's soliloquy in a Renaissance Theater Company recording of “King Lear”, which I listened to while schlepping in the University Book Store warehouse in the mid-1990s: Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund As to the legitimate: fine word: legitimate! Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, Edmund the base Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper: Now, gods, stand up for bastards! Now, thanks to Todd Akin, U.S. Rep from Missouri, current Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, and professional douchebag, my association is somewhat more ... base: “First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” You see where it comes from. If you're pro-life, the tough question is “What about in instances of rape and incest? Do you demand that the woman, or girl, carry the fetus to term?” This is the wish-fulfillment answer. Oh, women don't get pregnant when they're REALLY raped. That's science. It's what I understand from doctors. Or misunderstand from doctors. I like that word: legitimate. I'd like to talk to the GOP about that word. Because in my lifetime, in U.S. elections, they've rarely given me a legitimate choice. I shouldn't be that hard to win over. I have conservative elements in me. The mewing and whining of the left often bothers me. The political correctness of the left often bothers me. But in almost every election, increasingly so as I age, it's not even a contest. The choice is between the conservative, which is the Democrat, and the reactionary, who is the Republican. It's between those who want to hold the line and those who want to dismantle what we have, those who want to repair the social safety net and those who want to hack it to pieces, those who think government has a role and those who think it has virtually none. In my lifetime, the GOP appeals to fear and retribution, paranoia and selfishness. Its candidates are chest-thumpingly stupid, and proudly so. They invoke God against the Constitution and the founding fathers as if they were gods. They are expert propagandists who spread their bullshit uniformly across the country. They accuse others of wanting to take what we have, then take what we have. Anyone who doesn't agree with their platform is a Socialist or a Communist or a Fascist—or all three. They are adept at the Big Lie. They accuse the opposition of being what they themselves are—again and again and again. They demonize the powerless and hold up the powerful as victims. They are always on the wrong side of history when it comes to the rights of others, and then, when it's convenient, they rewrite that history. They like to rewrite history. In this way, they are absolutists in rhetoric but relativists in strategy, relying on the relativity of truth to obfuscate that which doesn't favor them, which is most things. They undermine democracy by not giving me a legitimate choice. I'd like one, one day. 'Sikh, Arab, What's the Difference?' The Sikh Temple Killings and Spike Lee's 'Inside Man' When I first heard of the Sikh Temple shooting in Oak Creek, Wis., last Sunday, and the identity, such as it is, of the neo-Nazi shooter, my thoughts turned to filmmaker Spike Lee—specifically his 2006 action-film “Inside Man.” The movie is about hostages and a bank heist, in the manner of “Dog Day Afternoon,” and there's a scene halfway through where a Sikh hostage is released by the robbers only to be ordered by New York cops, with itchy, post-9/11 trigger fingers, onto the ground. They call him an Arab and take away his turban. Here's a later scene where the cops (Denzel Washingon, Willem Dafoe and Chiwetel Ejiofor) question the Sikh, Vikram, about the hostage situation, while he questions them about his turban situation: “I bet you can get a cab, though,” is a good line, but it's a shame Vikram didn't get the last word. He deserved it. I also thought of Anthony Lane, the great critic for The New Yorker, and his review of “Inside Man,” and the way he contrasted Spike Lee's vision of the world with that of Jean Renior in “The Grand Illusion”: “Inside Man” needs to be seen. The more it sags as a thriller, the more it jabs and jangles as a study of racial abrasion. A hostage is released, and an armed cop shouts, “He’s an Arab!” The hostage replies, “I’m a Sikh,” and you can hear the weariness at the edges of his fear. Another hostage is quizzed by Frazier about his name: “Is that Albanian?” “It’s Armenian,” the man explains. “What’s the difference?” Frazier asks, not that he cares either way. It is these small, peppery incidents of strife—far more than the stridency of recent Lee projects like “Bamboozled” and “She Hate Me”—that show the director at his least abashed and most tuned to current anxieties, and that mark him out, for all the fluency of his camera, as the anti-Renoir of our time. “Grand Illusion” offered the ennobling suggestion that national divisions were delusory, and that our common humanity can throw bridges across any social gulf. To which Lee would reply, Nice idea. Go tell it to the guy who just had his turban pulled off by the cops. Or to the folks who lost loved ones in south Milwaukee last Sunday. The Gettysburg Address, Out of Context I remember visiting the Lincoln Memorial with my friend Dean in 1989, looking up at the words of the Gettysburg Address engraved on the wall, and asking him, with the news-junkie question of the day: Where's the sound bite? What portion of this speech would modern news organizations focus on? I think we decided on this: The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. Today's question is actually worse. Today's question is: What portion of the speech would Lincoln's opponents take out of context? What would they focus on, and mangle, in the tradition of FOX-News, in order to demonize Lincoln? My thoughts in bold: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. [1.] Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, [2.] can long endure. We are met on [1.] a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. [3.] But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that [4.] government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. The talking points would be: - Lincoln thinks the civil war is great. He thinks the battle of Gettysburg was great. Try telling that to the mothers and fathers of the young men who died, Mr. President! - He doesn't believe this nation can endure. - He refuses to give a blessing to the battlefield! - Government of the people, by the people, for the people? Socialist! Abraham Lincoln hates America! This post results, of course, from a recent speech by Pres. Obama, which was taken out of context by the usual suspects. Let it be noted--but not long remembered--that I agree with everything Pres. Obama said. Pres. Lincoln, too. Remember when Abraham Lincoln refused to bless the Gettysburg battlefield? He hates America! Why a Patriotic WWII Film Starring Frank Sinatra Would Get Booed by Modern Republicans I was going to include “The House I Live In,” a short, cornball, patriotic film starring Frank Sinatra and made in the middle of World War II, in my earlier post about what Seattle means to me. Then I watched it and realized it was a post of its own. The first thing you notice about the film is that Sinatra looked good. You finally understand what all those bobbysoxers were screaming about. Plus I love his jacket. Then in the middle of the film (4:22), he delivers a lesson on religious tolerance to tough neighborhood kids who've been beating up on another boy of another religion. He tells them this: Listen, fellas. Religion makes no difference--except maybe to a Nazi or somebody who's stupid. Why, people all over the world worship God in many different ways. God created everybody. He didn't create one people better than another. Your blood's the same as mine, mine's the same as his. Do you know what this wonderful country is made of? It's made of a hundred different kinds of people, and a hundred different ways of talking, and a hundred different ways of going to church. But they're all American ways. It's kind of stunning to hear in 2012, and it's indicative of how reactionary the far-right in this country has become. A cornball patriotic film, with Frank Sinatra, made nearly 70 years ago, in the middle of World War II, is a bastion of tolerance compared with their rhetoric. If someone said the above at a Tea Party rally, they'd probably get booed off the stage. So I guess the question Tea Party folks have to ask themselves is: Are you a Nazi, or are you stupid? Frank is waiting for your answer. Here's the film: The Annotated David Brooks The following appeared on the New York Times op-ed page on Friday. Without annotations. Democrats frequently ask me why the Republicans have become so extreme. As they describe the situation, they usually fall back on some sort of illness metaphor. Republicans have a mania. President Obama has said that Republicans have a “fever” that he hopes will break if he is re-elected. He's kind. I hope it kills them. “We have a sense that the economic order we knew in the second half of the 20th century may not be coming back at all — that we have entered a new era for which we have not been well prepared. ... We are, rather, on the cusp of the fiscal and institutional collapse of our welfare state, which threatens not only the future of government finances but also the future of American capitalism.” So what do you mean by “welfare state”? Social security? Medicare? Highways? Policemen? Speak up, David. To Republican eyes, the first phase of that collapse is playing out right now in Greece, Spain and Italy — cosseted economies, unmanageable debt, rising unemployment, falling living standards. And Sweden? And Germany? Why are Greece, Spain and Italy seen as harbingers of the U.S.? Doesn't Germany, 'to Republican eyes,' have a bloated health care system? Are Republican eyes paranoid eyes? Can I look through them? America’s economic stagnation is just more gradual. In the decades after World War II, the U.S. economy grew by well over 3 percent a year, on average. But, since then, it has failed to keep pace with changing realities. The average growth was a paltry 1.7 percent annually between 2000 and 2009. Highlighting stagnant years, which were led by a conservative administration intent on ending the so-called welfare state, isn't exactly a strong argument for ending the so-called welfare state. (And by 'welfare state' you mean... what exactly? Social security? Medicare? Highways? Policemen? Speak up, David.) It averaged 0.6 percent growth between 2009 and 2011. Well, it does take a while to climb out of a Republican-dug shithole. (P.S. Thanks for the shit.) Wages have failed to keep up with productivity. Yeah, thanks for that, too, fuckers. Family net worth is back at the same level it was at 20 years ago. Ditto. Fuckers. In America as in Europe, Republicans argue, the welfare state is failing to provide either security or dynamism. The safety net is so expensive it won’t be there for future generations. Or we could tax the rich at levels we taxed them at during most of the Reagan administration. Meanwhile, the current model shifts resources away from the innovative sectors of the economy and into the bloated state-supported ones, like health care and education. Bloated like babies in Africa. Numbers would be nice here. Or anywhere. Successive presidents have layered on regulations and loopholes, creating a form of state capitalism in which big businesses thrive because they have political connections and small businesses struggle. I actually agree with this. The secret to your success, David: one good thought out of 20. You're the .050 hitter in the Major Leagues. The welfare model favors security over risk, comfort over effort, stability over innovation. Money that could go to schools and innovation must now go to pensions and health care. I thought schools were bloated? Two sentences back. Numbers would be nice here. Or anywhere. And when did we stop innovating anyway? The 1930s? The 1960s? Last year? This model, which once offered insurance from the disasters inherent in capitalism, has now become a giant machine for redistributing money from the future to the elderly. This is beginning to sound like a euthanasia column, David. This is the source of Republican extremism: the conviction that the governing model is obsolete. Psst. That is extreme. It needs replacing. Or you could tax the wealthy at a higher rate. A thought. Mitt Romney hasn’t put it this way. Of course not. He wants to keep the focus on President Obama. But this worldview is implied in his (extremely vague) proposals. As are yours, David. As are yours. He would structurally reform the health care system, moving toward a more market-based system. Pardon me, sir, but the free hand of the market needs to examine your prostate. He would simplify the tax code. He would reverse 30 years of education policy, decentralizing power and increasing parental choice. I thought we already spent 30 years decentralizing power and increasing parental choice. Oh, right. That was centralizing corporate power and increasing corporate choice. My bad. The intention is the same, to create a model that will spark an efficiency explosion, laying the groundwork for an economic revival. The level of wish fulfillment in this sentence outdoes the level of wish fulfillment in any Hollywood blockbuster. I wanted a bucket of popcorn after reading it. I wanted to see it acted by Bruce Willis. Democrats have had trouble grasping the Republican diagnosis because they don’t have the same sense that the current model is collapsing around them. Or because Republicans aren't upfront about what their proposal entails. Killing social security? Medicare? Highways? Policemen? Speak up, David. In his speech in Cleveland on Thursday, President Obama offered an entirely different account of where we are. In the Obama version, the welfare-state model was serving America well until it was distorted a decade ago by a Republican Party intent on serving the rich and shortchanging the middle class. Don't be modest. Republicans began distorting our system three decades ago. In his speech, Obama didn’t vow to reform the current governing model but to rebalance it. The rich would pay a little more and everyone else would get a little more. I'd have the rich pay A LOT more. Erik 2016! He’d “double down” on clean energy, revive the Grand Bargain from last summer’s budget talks, invest in infrastructure, job training and basic research. Obama championed targeted subsidies and tax credits. Republicans, meanwhile, envision comprehensive systemic change. The G.O.P. vision is of an entirely different magnitude: replace the tax code, replace the health care system and transform entitlements. With what... with what ... to what? This is what this election is about: Vagueness? Is the 20th-century model obsolete, or does it just need rebalancing? Is Obama oblivious to this historical moment or are Republicans overly radical, risky and impractical? Are there national issues that require national solutions? Should the wealthiest people pay a smaller percentage in taxes than you and me? Do we want to return to the economic policies of 2001-2009? How about 1801-1809? What percentage of U.S. voters are now part of the reality-based community? Republicans and Democrats have different perceptions about how much change is needed. I suspect the likely collapse of the European project will profoundly influence which perception the country buys this November. David, because of your column, I got off the schneid. I just donated $500 to Obama for America. Thank you. The Myth of Job Creators Confession. I often imagine myself on cable news shows wrangling out the issues of the day. Probably because that's where we often see the issues of the day being wrangled out. The dialogue I've had in my head for the past year goes something like this: FOX News Blowhard: BLAH BLAH BLAH 1%. BLACK BLAH BLAH job creators. Me: Excuse me? What did you just call them? FNB: Job creators. That's what they-- Me: What's the goal of a CEO or corporation? FNB: To create jobs. Me: It's to create profit. You know that. So does everyone out there. That's what capitalism is all about. That's Business 101, isn't it? I ask because I've never taken Business 101. FNB: Yes, but when you create profit, you create jobs. Pinhead. Me: Not necessarily. If to create profit, a CEO has to elminate jobs, or ship them overseas, he'll do that. In a heartbeat. That's part of what's been going on for the last 30 years. So why do you call them job creators? FNB: BLAH BLAH socialism BLAH BLAH Obama BLAH BLAH Jimmy Carter. Me: You call them 'job creators' because it's politically expedient to do so in a time of high unemployment. But it's a lie. You know it's a lie. And so does everyone watching. I know. For some reason in my fantasy appearance on FOX News I sound like Bob Dole. It's sad that this is still a talking point for all the blowhards out there. It's such a talking point that when venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, Seattle's own, gave one of those TED talks on the myth of job creators, the people behind TED felt it too divisive, too immediately political, to actually post on their site. They didn't feel it was worthy of all of the other TED talks about BLAH BLAH BLAH. And in this manner they stumbled right into controversy. Hanauer's talk has since been uploaded to YouTube. Here it is: He takes the businessman's stance on the matter, which is deeper and infiinitely more knowledgable than mine. He argues that the way things are is the opposite of the way they've been presented. They've been presented this way: If taxes on the wealthy go up, job creation goes down. He argues that job creation actually stems from consumer demand; and consumer demand stems from a rising middle class; and for the past 30 years our middle class has been falling—in part because tax policies favor the wealthy and place a greater burden on what was once our proud middle class. This may be the talk that TED didn't want, but it's the talk the US needs. I know it's not “Sovereignty means it's sovereign; you're a — you've been given sovereignty,” but it'll do if you want some smart, straight, teleprompter-less talk. Endorsement of the Day I posted the above this morning before work, and before I knew Pres. Obama would be speaking today about marriage equality, and before he came out in favor of same-sex marriage. Now it's even more true. Now it's a great day. I've seen a lot of good messages, good comments, good thoughts out there in the social media landscape, but the one below is my favorite. From someone named Erin on Twitter: My parents don't approve of the fact that I'm gay. It's sort of nice to know that my president does. Stat of the Day “Today the United States economy is producing even more goods and services than it did when the recession officially began in December 2007, but with about five million fewer workers.” --from “U.S. Added Only 115,000 Jobs in April; Rate Is 8.1%” by Catherine Rampell in The New York Times. Reheadlined “Why You May Be Exhausted” on Andrew Sullivan's site. Compare to an interview I did two years ago with labor lawyer Thomas Geohegan. Quote: It defies the laws of economic gravity. Under everything you understand about labor economics—if you take Economics 10 or Labor Economics 101—productivity goes up, wages go up. That’s the gold standard. That’s what raises the standard of living. Hasn’t happened here. Productivity has shot up a lot; the real median hourly wage has gone down. So we're working more, producing more, getting less. 'I Don't Want Government in My Bank...' Why Mitt and Ann Romney are Just Like You: Scrimping By with a Seven-Bedroom Colonial and a 5,000-Foot Lakefront Vacation Home Now that Ann [Romney] is using the details of her domestic life for political purposes, journalists and Obama supporters are sure to focus on parts of that existence that might reflect less well on her and her husband. For example, she has said that when Mitt was in college, the two of them were so financially strapped that they had to liquidate some of their stock portfolio to get by. At the time Mrs. Romney said that she was engaged in a “struggle” to bring up her children, the family was living in a seven bedroom, six-and-a-half-bathroom mock-Colonial mansion in Belmont, Massachusetts, while spending summers at their five-thousand-square-foot vacation home, which sits on eleven lakefront acres in New Hampshire. It'll be interesting to see if the GOP, working with the mainstream media, who love to turn a mouse into a lion (because reporting what we already know is so boring), can turn Mitt and Ann Romney, rich beyond our wildest dreams, into ordinary Americans. There's no amount of BS we can't lap up. And it is BS. It's all beside the point. The point is the economy, and what to do, and what each candidate's plan is. New Yorker Magazine Paints Ted Nugent as Funny and Unfiltered Here's what Ted Nugent said at an NRA convention last week: If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year. Here's what Reeves Wiedeman writes on the New Yorker site today: This second-act version of Ted Nugent may seem manic, but on inspection it’s clearly more rehearsed. I doubt anything Nugent said to me was something he had never said before. His answers are so print-ready (and, let’s be honest, often pretty funny), that it seems unlikely he’s freestyling. I suspect Nugent’s comments this weekend were not off the cuff, but meant squarely for the audience he was addressing. Whether this is simply ignorant and depressing, or actually dangerous, depends on your view of the power of rhetoric. (If the President can’t convince people of something, can Ted Nugent?) Not only is Nugent's comment dumb and dangeorous, so is New Yorker's commentary. Obama is trying to convince a majority, or a supermajority, of people. Ted Nugent needs to convince only one. Guns Guns Guns: An Overview of Jill Lepore's BATTLEGROUND AMERICA Article Have you read Jill Lepore's article, “Battleground America: One Nation, Under the Gun,” in the latest New Yorker? You should. It's necessary reading. It details one way our country has gone insane since the 1970s. We keep bowing to the wrong people: Grover Norquist, Rush Llimbaugh, the NRA. They're ruining our country. We're letting them. Lepore visits a firing range, the American Firearms School, near Providence, R.I. She visits the biggest gun show in New England, in West Springfield, Mass. She delves into the history: how state after state in the 19th century adopted laws against concealed weapons. She quotes the Governor of Texas in 1893: The “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder,“ he said. ”To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.” Yes: Texas. She reminds us that the NRA was once a gun club. It was about firearms safety. Then there was a coup in the late 1970s in Cincinnati and it became what it became: a loud, angry, lobbying organization that fueled paranoia among its members. She reminds us how the Second Amendment was once interpretted by the U.S. Supreme Court: How, in 1939, in U.S. v. Miller, FDR’s solicitor general, Robert H. Jackson, “argued that the Second Amendment is 'restricted to the keeping and bearing of arms by the people collectively for their common defense and security.' Furthermore, Jackson said, the language of the amendment makes clear that the right 'is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only one which exists where the arms are borne in the militia or some other military organization provided for by law and intended for the protection of the state.' The Court agreed, unanimously.” Those were the days. Some facts worth noting: The United States is the country with the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world. (The second highest is Yemen, where the rate is nevertheless only half that of the U.S.) No civilian population is more powerfully armed. Most Americans do not, however, own guns, because three-quarters of people with guns own two or more. According to the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Policy Opinion Center at the University of Chicago, the prevalence of gun ownership has declined steadily in the past few decades. In 1973, there were guns in roughly one in two households in the United States; in 2010, one in three. In 1980, nearly one in three Americans owned a gun; in 2010, that figure had dropped to one in five. ... Gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, higher in the country than in the city, and higher among older people than among younger people. One reason that gun ownership is declining, nationwide, might be that high-school shooting clubs and rifle ranges at summer camps are no longer common. Because the NRA is too busy lobbying. A positive: NRA members appear to be less nuts than its leadership: Gun owners may be more supportive of gun-safety regulations than is the leadership of the N.R.A. According to a 2009 Luntz poll, for instance, requiring mandatory background checks on all purchasers at gun shows is favored not only by eighty-five per cent of gun owners who are not members of the N.R.A. but also by sixty-nine per cent of gun owners who are. Its history is also more tempered than we've been led to believe: The National Rifle Association was founded in 1871 by two men, a lawyer and a former reporter from the New York Times. For most of its history, the N.R.A. was chiefly a sporting and hunting association. To the extent that the N.R.A. had a political arm, it opposed some gun-control measures and supported many others, lobbying for new state laws in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, which introduced waiting periods for handgun buyers and required permits for anyone wishing to carry a concealed weapon. It also supported the 1934 National Firearms Act—the first major federal gun-control legislation—and the 1938 Federal Firearms Act, which together created a licensing system for dealers and prohibitively taxed the private ownership of automatic weapons (“machine guns”). ... In 1957, when the N.R.A. moved into new headquarters, its motto, at the building’s entrance, read, “Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation.” It didn’t say anything about freedom, or self-defense, or rights. Then in the 1960s our leaders were killed. JFK. MLK. RFK. Gun control became a common conversation. Here's a nice irony: Gun-rights arguments have their origins not in eighteenth-century Anti-Federalism but in twentieth-century liberalism. They are the product of what the Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet has called the “rights revolution,” the pursuit of rights, especially civil rights, through the courts. In the nineteen-sixties, gun ownership as a constitutional right was less the agenda of the N.R.A. than of black nationalists. In a 1964 speech, Malcolm X said, “Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun.” Establishing a constitutional right to carry a gun for the purpose of self-defense was part of the mission of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which was founded in 1966. The NRA picked up on the Black Power rhetoric: In the nineteen-seventies, the N.R.A. began advancing the argument that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to carry a gun, rather than the people’s right to form armed militias to provide for the common defense. Fights over rights are effective at getting out the vote. Describing gun-safety legislation as an attack on a constitutional right gave conservatives a power at the polls that, at the time, the movement lacked. Opposing gun control was also consistent with a larger anti-regulation, libertarian, and anti-government conservative agenda. In 1975, the N.R.A. created a lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, headed by Harlon Bronson Carter, an award-winning marksman and a former chief of the U.S. Border Control. But then the N.R.A.’s leadership decided to back out of politics and move the organization’s headquarters to Colorado Springs, where a new recreational-shooting facility was to be built. Eighty members of the N.R.A.’s staff, including Carter, were ousted. In 1977, the N.R.A.’s annual meeting, usually held in Washington, was moved to Cincinnati, in protest of the city’s recent gun-control laws. Conservatives within the organization, led by Carter, staged what has come to be called the Cincinnati Revolt. The bylaws were rewritten and the old guard was pushed out. Instead of moving to Colorado, the N.R.A. stayed in D.C., where a new motto was displayed: “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.” Ronald Reagan was the first NRA president and he was shot two months after he took the Oath of Office. The irony was lost on everyone. The act of John Hinckley seemed to make the NRA stronger: In 1986, the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment achieved new legal authority with the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act, which repealed parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act by invoking “the rights of citizens . . . to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.” This interpretation was supported by a growing body of scholarship, much of it funded by the N.R.A. According to the constitutional-law scholar Carl Bogus, at least sixteen of the twenty-seven law-review articles published between 1970 and 1989 that were favorable to the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment were “written by lawyers who had been directly employed by or represented the N.R.A. or other gun-rights organizations.” In an interview, former Chief Justice Warren Burger said that the new interpretation of the Second Amendment was “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” Between 1968 and 2012, the idea that owning and carrying a gun is both a fundamental American freedom and an act of citizenship gained wide acceptance and, along with it, the principle that this right is absolute and cannot be compromised; gun-control legislation was diluted, defeated, overturned, or allowed to expire; the right to carry a concealed handgun became nearly ubiquitous; Stand Your Ground legislation passed in half the states; and, in 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court ruled, in a 5–4 decision, that the District’s 1975 Firearms Control Regulations Act was unconstitutional. Justice Scalia wrote, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.” Two years later, in another 5–4 ruling, McDonald v. Chicago, the Court extended Heller to the states. All of these victories mean nothing. The NRA remains a paranoid organization. They're paranoid about Pres. Obama. “If this President gets a second term, he will appoint one to three Supreme Court justices,” says David Keene, 66, the N.R.A.’s current president. “If he does, he could reverse Heller and McDonald, which is unlikely, but, more likely, they will restrict those decisions.” Keene is worried about losing any ground. He's standing his ground. Actually he's moving forward. He's advancing on us. Yes, Lepore also writes about Trayvon Martin, and Chardon High School outside Cleveland. She doesn't write about Ted Nugent seeming to threaten the life of the president of the United States, for which he refuses to apologize. He's standing his ground, too. No, he's advancing on us. Mouth flapping. Waving something. Keene and Nugent are paranoid about the wrong things. They see enemies where there are none. Their true enemy is themselves. The dwindling number of Americans who own and use guns is their fault. The NRA used to be a gun club, about gun safety, but they decided to spend all their time lobbying instead. So now we have what we have: laxer gun laws than at any time since the early 19th century, and fewer and fewer people utilizing them. Crazy people get to carry concealed weapons. Lepore is right. We're a nation under the gun. Our society is sick. It doesn't know how sick: One in three Americans knows someone who has been shot. As long as a candid discussion of guns is impossible, unfettered debate about the causes of violence is unimaginable. Gun-control advocates say the answer to gun violence is fewer guns. Gun-rights advocates say that the answer is more guns: things would have gone better, they suggest, if the faculty at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Chardon High School had been armed. That is the logic of the concealed-carry movement; that is how armed citizens have come to be patrolling the streets. That is not how civilians live. When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left. A gun show in Houston, which are, like classified ads for gun sales, unregulated. The Symbiotic Relationship between the GOP and the Mainstream Media It's pretty simple. The mainstream media is interested in news, i.e., what's new, or, a la Slate.com, what's contrary to what we currently believe. The GOP, particularly since the ascension of Karl Rove, has no scruples in discrediting its opponents. So the GOP presents contrary images of Democrats, over which the mainstream media has a feeding frenzy. Pres. Obama is somehow involved in a war on women, John Kerry's decorated Vietnam War record is suspect, Al Gore makes huge mistakes. Al Gore's mistakes are actually tiny, George W. Bush's are huge, but we all know Bush isn't that smart so that's not news. But Gore: He should know better. Democrats attack Republicans for what they are, which isn't news. Republicans attack Democrats for what they are not, which is. It's the only way the GOP, with its platform (supporting the rich few against the many), can thrive. Indeed, the GOP attacks Dems for what it, the GOP, is actually guilty of: being anti-women, avoiding service, fudging economic numbers. As I've stated elsewhere, this is the ultimate in propaganda. Supporting the troops: In the 2004 election, the record of John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, was questioned, while George W. Bush, who sat out the war in Texas and Alabama, mostly received a bye. Bullshit of the Week: the Hilary Rosen Fiasco I hate having to do this. I hate having to write this. I hate having to wade through the bullshit of the week because other people aren't doing their jobs. The bullshit of this week is that somehow the Obama camp is against women, or housewives, because Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, who is not part of the Obama campaign, said that Ann Romney, Mitt Romney's wife, who is apparently advising her husband on economic matters, “never worked a day in her life.” So the GOP is doing what it can to connect “Never worked a day in her life” with the idea that “Democrats look down on housewives” with the idea that “Obama looks down on housewives.” Let's clear away the bullshit for a moment. The initial discussion on CNN was about how the Romney camp was pegging Obama as “anti-women” because the economy still isn't going gangbusters, and women, more than men, are out of work. If Rosen had simply said “Ann Romney hasn't had to look for a job since she got married” we wouldn't be here. We would be some other stupid place, just not this stupid place. Here's the transcript of what Rosen said. The key line is in the second paragraph. The video is below: With respect to economic issues, I think actually that Mitt Romney is right, that ultimately women care more about the economic well-being of their families and the like. But he doesn't connect on that issue either. What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, 'Well, you know my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues and when I listen to my wife that's what I'm hearing.' Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and why do we worry about their future. So I think that, yes, it's about these positions and yes, I think there will be a war of words about the positions. But there's something much more fundamental about Mitt Romney. He just seems so old-fashioned when it comes to women and I think that comes across and I think that that's going to hurt him over the long term. He just doesn't really see us as equal. The GOP focuses on the second graf, second sentence. Rosen's true meaning is in second graf, third sentence: She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and why do we worry about their future. The Romneys are rich. You and I are not. I don't know about Ann, but Mitt Romney has never been poor and unconnected. He doesn't know what that's like. Just as most of us don't know what it's like to be as rich and connected as Mitt Romney has been all of his life. I don't know about Ann, but Mitt Romney doesn't know what it's like to scour the Want Ads and see nothing that says “you,” nothing that says “hope,” nothing that says “possibility” or “I have a chance.” Everything else about this discussion is bullshit. The mainstream media is always looking for a different story and the GOP is always ready to give it to them to distract everyone from the real story. It's 3 A.M.: Do You Know Where Your Affordable Care Act Is? I awoke in the middle of the night thinking of the Affordable Care Act. Such are the times we live in. No matter what the U.S. Supreme Court decides in the next few weeks, I'm still of the mind that the health insurance industry should not be a for-profit industry. It's not just the amorality or immorality of making a profit off of people's health. It's the shaky capitalism of it all. The goal of the insurance industry is to sell to whose who don't need its product and reject those who do. Its market efficiency leads to this vast product inefficiency. It wants to sell us something we'll never use. If there's a chance we'll use it? It doesn't want to sell it to us. Are there other products or services like this? Not broccoli, certainly. That Sound You're Hearing is the Rich Getting Richer Some cheery economic news from Steven Rattner, a longtime Wall Street executive, in a New York Times Op-Ed. His data comes from French economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, who worked from U.S. tax returns: In 2010, as the nation continued to recover from the recession, a dizzying 93 percent of the additional income created in the country — $288 billion — went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, those with at least $352,000 in income. That delivered an average single-year pay increase of 11.6 percent to each of these households... The bottom 99 percent received a microscopic $80 increase in pay per person in 2010, after adjusting for inflation... Government has ... played a role, particularly the George W. Bush tax cuts, which, among other things, gave the wealthy a 15 percent tax on capital gains and dividends. That’s the provision that caused Warren E. Buffett’s secretary to have a higher tax rate than he does. As a result, the top 1 percent has done progressively better in each economic recovery of the past two decades. In the Clinton era expansion, 45 percent of the total income gains went to the top 1 percent; in the Bush recovery, the figure was 65 percent; now it is 93 percent... The only way to redress the income imbalance is by implementing policies that are oriented toward reversing the forces that caused it. That means letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy and adding money to some of the programs that House Republicans seek to cut. Allowing this disparity to continue is both bad economic policy and bad social policy. We owe those at the bottom a fairer shot at moving up. Why Democratic Veeps Run for President; Why Republican Veeps Don't Apparently Joe Biden is thinking of running for president in 2016. He should. Yes, he'll be 74, and, no, I don't know if he'd make a good president. But it's the way of Democratic vice-presidents. As opposed to Republican ones. Since 1972, when more open primary rules were first enacted, three Democrats have been elected president: Carter, Clinton and Obama. In the case of the first two, in the election after their last election, the nomination went to their vice president: Mondale in '84 and Gore in '00. Neither won. This was true for Reagan's veep as well: George H.W. Bush ran and won in '88. Since then? Bush's veep, Quayle, sputtered in '96 and never got out of the starting gate. He was considered a lightweight with no shot. Still is. W's veep, Cheney, never ran. He was considered a horrible heavyweight with no shot. Still is. Darth Cheney, who chose himself veep. The lightweight was the president. There's always a lightweight on the Republican ticket, isn't there: a “folksy” someone, generally, who isn't that smart. Each election you think it can't get worse and then it does. It can't get worse than Reagan, you think, and then they choose Quayle. It can't get worse than Quayle, you think, and then they choose W. OK, W's gotta be the bottom, right? Hello, Sarah Palin. Dems are always a little more serious about who might be a heartbeat away. Or who might be the heartbeat. So I can see Biden in 2016, although I'm more intrigued by Hillary. As for the Republicans in 2012? This certainly wouldn't break the trend: Ben Volunteers for Obama My friend Ben recently moved to Seattle after eight years in Hanoi. I like introducing him as “the former AP bureau chief in Hanoi,” which he was. I don't know of a more romantic phrase in the English language than “AP bureau chief in Hanoi.” Like most true journalists I know, Ben's an opinionated S.O.B. It probably goes with the territory. You spend 30 years objectively reporting the world until you want to grab the world by the lapels and shout in its face about what it doesn't get from your objective reporting. Ben is now doing some shouting, about politics and volunteering for the Obama campaign, over at The Obamanator blog. Much, much recommended. Some samples: - “...the Republicans made the mess and are campaigning to restore the very policies that created it... from ”Flying High at Boeing“ - ”We called someone who thought that Tiger Woods was the African-American running for president...“ from ”Another Phone Bank, Another Moron“ - Newt Gingrich is so full of baloney, he’s going to explode. Perhaps this accounts for his remarkable girth...” from “Excuse Me While I Rant for a Moment.” I think my favorite is this juxtaposition: “I Used to Be an Objective Journalist” on March 16th, followed by “Only a Twisted, Deranged, Hard-Hearted Creep Would Try to Repeal the Affordable Care Act” a day later. Stay tuned. I will. The 400 Highest Earners in the U.S. Pay Only 18.1 Percent in Taxes Do you subscribe to The New Yorker yet? Why not? Come on. James B. Stewart has a must-read piece in the March 19th issue entitled “TAX ME IF YOU CAN: The things rich people do to avoid paying up.” Money (cough) quote: The Internal Revenue Service discloses detailed statistics for the four hundred highest-earning taxpayers in the country. In 2008, the most recent year available, those taxpayers had an average adjusted gross income of two hundred and seventy million dollars each. Thirty of them paid less than ten per cent in federal taxes, and a hundred and one paid between ten and fifteen per cent. On average, the group paid 18.1 per cent. President Obama has seized on that fact, making tax fairness a central issue in his reëlection bid. The President has called for comprehensive tax reform and for specific proposals for a “Buffett Rule,” which would raise tax rates on taxpayers earning more than a million dollars a year. Romney has called for a twenty-per-cent across-the-board tax cut, while limiting some deductions. ... None of the proposals address the fact that rich people aren’t taxed on certain income, either because it is exempt, as with interest on municipal bonds, or because they claim to be living outside the jurisdiction that is levying the tax. Relatively scant media attention has been paid to residency requirements, even though enormous revenue is at stake. So that's what Stewart does: he pays attention to the residency requirements and how the rich can afford to skirt them. A thumbnail of the piece is available here. It's also on newsstands. You can also borrow my copy if you promise to bring it back. And subscribe. The U.S. Right-Wing: Sharing Conspiracy Theories with the Middle East John Lee Anderson's reporting, or “letter,” from Syria (in New Yorker parlance), entitled “The Implosion: On the front lines of a burgeoning civil war,” which is now a few weeks old, is one of those articles you really need to read if you're at all interested in fathoming what's going on in that country. To a degree, of course. If before I understood bupkis, I now understand bupkis +1. But it's an improvement. Check it out. I'm nearly 50 now and not surprised by much these days, but this part just threw me: Skepticism about the rebels was common among Assad’s supporters. One influential businessman, Nabil Toumeh, informed me that what was taking place in Syria was the result of a plan—dreamed up years before by Zbigniew Brzezinski, and supported by Israel—to help the Muslim Brotherhood take over the Middle East. “After fifty years of persecution, they are being given power, and this will bring the Arab world to a state of backwardness,” he said. Assad’s friend told me, “This is not the Arab Spring. It’s the awakening of the extremes of Islam.” The Brotherhood was trying to seize power in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, but it would not happen in Syria. “There is no reasoning with these people; with them, it is only God.” But in Zabadani one of the protesters, a Sunni, told me, “There’s no Muslim Brotherhood here. The people are Muslims, yes. But the Brotherhood doesn’t have any real plan for them. What we want is freedom, to be able to protest in peace without being fired upon.” We'll never get away from these insane conspiracy theories, will we? It's one thing, I suppose, that right-wing nutjobs in the U.S. have in common with some folks in the Middle East: they both think the Obama administration favors the Muslim Brotherhood. The right-wing nutjobs think he favors the Brotherhood because he is Muslim. (Or because he's Obama and he's black and he's all foreign-y and they just don't like him.) The Syrian nutjobs think the Obama administration favors the Muslim Brotherhood—and before him the Bush and Clinton and Bush and Reagan administrations—in order to better foment radical Islam and keep Arab countries backward. I.e., the very thing the U.S. doesn't want in the Middle East is the very thing some Middle Easterners think the U.S. has plotted for decades to unleash. I throw up my hands. Read the article. Will that lake's name change anytime soon? Quote of the Day “It seems to me that a Democratic president who gets us health care reform and tough new financial protection for consumers, who guides the economy through its roughest period in 80 years with moderate success (who could do better?), who ends our long war in Iraq and avenges the worst insult to our sovereignty since Pearl Harbor (as his Republican predecessor manifestly failed to do, despite a lot of noise and promises); a president who faced an opposition of really spectacular intransigence and downright meanness; a president who has the self-knowledge and wisdom about Washington to write the passage quoted above, and the courage to publish it: that president deserves a bit more credit from the left than [Thomas] Frank is willing to give him.” --Michael Kinsley in his review of “Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right,” by Thomas Frank, which is as critical of Pres. Obama as Frank's previous book, “What's the Matter with Kansas?,” was critical of Kansas. Conservatives Disrespecting Authority Jonathan Chait's New York Magazine piece, “When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?” is necessary reading for anyone concerned with the 2012 election--particularly those on the left. I tend to agree with Chait. Obama has disappointed me a few times but he's by far the best president I've had in my lifetime. More power to him. Four more years to him--hopefully, with a Tea Party-less Congress. Hell, if folks on the left spent as much time working to get rid of these bastards as they do bitching about the imperfection of Obama, we might be getting somewhere. So bravo to Chait. Even so, there's a line in his piece that made me squint my eyes in disagreement. Conservatives, compared with liberals, have higher levels of respect for and obedience to authority and prefer order over chaos and continuity over change. Generally and historically true. Yet they've spent the last three years besmirching, demonizing and undermining the ultimate authority figure in the country--the president of the United States--in a way that has never been done before. Democrats may have considered George W. Bush illegitimate because he only became president through a very shaky ruling by a very conservative U.S. Supreme Court; but Republicans and Tea Partiers argue that Pres. Obama's very presence in this country is illegitimate. They say he's not a U.S. citizen, he's not Christian, he's a socialist, he's Hitler. It's ugly stuff. More importantly, beyond Obama, conservatives have shown massive disrespect for traditional authority figures for a long, long time: - Judges (“activist”) - Lawyers (“frivolous”) - Teachers (“incompetent”) - Cops (how can they be against armor-piercing bullets?) It astounds me sometimes. The law-and-order folks that the left disrespected in the 1960s--pillars of the community--now get pilloried daily by Republicans and the usual loudmouths on FOX-News. Chait's thoughts on conservatives, in this regard, need some correction. From the Archives: A Review of Muammar Qaddafi's “Escape to Hell and other stories” In 1999 I reviewed several novels written by politicians, including Newt Gingrich's “1945” and Ed Koch's “Murder on Broadway” for a slightly humorous piece in Washington Law & Politics magazine. One of the other books was Muammar Qaddafi's “Escape to Hell and other stories.” The review is below. Take note, in bold, of the main character in the title story and his fear of the masses, and his obsession with Mussolini's fate... The first section of Qaddafi's book, “Novels”, is essentially polemic intermingled with parable; the second section, “Essays”, is mostly polemic. Why the division? And why use the word “novels” when these things are, at best, essays? I suppose ours is not to question the mind of Qaddafi. Yet here I go. At one point he sounds like a New Age chick: “Truly, the earth is your mother; she gave birth to you from her insides. She is the one who nursed you and fed you. Do not be disobedient to your mother--and do not shear her hair, cut off her limbs, rip her flesh, or wound her body.” In another chapter, he's G. Gordon Liddy, extolling, he says, “the fact that a person's will can overcome death...” Near the end of the book, he talks up the virtues of “the people” like a good politician should, but earlier, in the titular story, the masses are dreadful, inspiring an almost Kafka-esque paranoia. “People snap at me whenever they see me,” he writes. He chronicles the rise and fall of other leaders: “...the masses dragged Mussolini's corpse through the streets, and spat in Nixon's face as he departed the White House for good, having applauded his entrance years before.” Spat in his face? When did this happen? And why wasn't I allowed my turn? Muammar has his moments. He does up western culture pretty well, for example. “Entertainment,” he writes, “takes on the meaning of wasting time and being absorbed; culture becomes superficial, telling and exchanging jokes takes the place of good literary work and criticism.” Overall, though, Escape to Hell is boring as hell. Quote of the Day “To rid the world of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Moammar Qaddafi within six months: if Obama were a Republican, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now.” --Andrew Sullivan, “A Tale of Two Presidents” Also worth reading: Sullivan's post, “The Untold Story of the Actual Obama Record.” Why I'm Behind Occupy Wall Street 99% In 2009 I interviewed Chicago labor lawyer and author Thomas Geoghegan, who, that year, 1) argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court (he won); 2) ran for Rahm Emanuel's congressional seat in Chicago (he lost); and 3) wrote a cover story for Atlantic magazine (“Infinite Debt: How unlimited interest rates destroyed the economy”). May we all have such successful and far-ranging years. At one point in our Q&A, we had the following exchange about the depressed state of labor and the rise of the Tea Party: Does it surprise you that angry populism seems to exist on the right rather than the left? I think the left is pretty beaten down in this country. The non-electoral checks that I think a republic needs—and here I’m thinking about labor movements, works councils, co-determination—they just don’t exist here. So you would think, given the unemployment, given the debt, given the poverty in this country, and how wealthy it is, you’d think people would be really angry. In fact, I think they are. And so they are. And so angry populism is existing, in public, on the left again. I'm truly grateful for the Occupy Wall Street crowd. I'm behind them 99 percent. My generation, born in the early-to-mid-sixties, and coming of age in the early years of the Reagan administration, dropped the ball completely. We helped create the world as it is. Hopefully these kids will help create the world as it should be. Or closer to that ideal. It'll get messy. It'll be disorganized. What can I say? It's the left and it's human beings and many will talk over their heads and/or demand what they can't get or what the majority of protesters don't even want. Plus you'll get your anarchists and nutjobs, and the mainstream media will focus on them, as will the right, and they'll try to discredit the movement any way they can. They'll say: It's just spoiled college kids. They'll say: Get a job! Leave the poor Wall Street brokers alone! They'll talk up the individual responsibility of the protesters, as if the lives of others, and the lives of powerful others, have no bearing on our own. As if the Global Financial Meltdown just kinda—oops—happened. Others will parse, and have parsed, that 99% number. Isn't it more like 90%? Or 75%? They'll shake their heads and think the kids have already blown it. But they don't know a good slogan when they hear one. “Shouldn't it be, We WILL overcome?” Others will conflate, and have conflated, the Occupy Wall Street crowd with the Tea Party: Andrew Sullivan keeps doing this. He loves this chart. He thinks it's meaningful. I don't. Look at the point of intersection between the two movements. It says: “Large corporations lobby for government to have more power, and in return the government enacts laws and regulations favorable to corporations.” Question: In this scenario, what is the government doing? It's enacting laws and regulations. Which is its job. The problem isn't what the government is doing; the problem is who the government is listening to (corporations/CEOs/lobbyists) and who it isn't listening to (the 99%). That's what we need to fix. That's why the Occupy Wall Street crowd makes sense and the Tea Party never did. I admit it: I hated the Tea Party from the get-go. It was the wrong people marching about the wrong things at the wrong time. It was historical movement as farce. If Tea Partiers were truly worried about the national debt, as they said they were, where were they when the national debt doubled from $5 trillion to $10 trillion during the Bush years? Why wait for the first few months of the Obama administration before taking to the streets? And if they were worried about taxes, as they said they were, why protest at all? Aren't taxes at historic lows? And if they were worried about both, well, how to reconcile the two? Lowering taxes raises the debt. You can say you want lower taxes and a lower debt, but, as the saying goes, people in hell want ice water. That kind of wish fulfillment, which has been going on for more than 30 years now, is why we're in this mess in the first place. Others will conflate the movements in this manner: Bigger version here. Andrew Sullivan keeps doing this, too. He thinks this kind of thing is meaningful. I think it's ludicrous. The folks on the right want to cut taxes, or, absurdly, cut them to zero, when surrounded by all the necessities their taxes create. That's hypocrisy. The folks on the left may or may not think corporations are evil (none of their signs indicate that), but even if they did, the fact that they use the products of these corporations (and, again, the “razors by Gillette” indicators are mostly guesses) is not a sign of hypocrisy. It's evidence of just how pervasive corporations are in our lives. As consumers, we can't escape corporations. As employees, we may not be able to, either. So we better make sure they do the right thing. We better make sure that we, as both consumers and employees, are protected from the natural corporate drive to create profit at our expense. Besides, this isn't what the movement is really about. What's it about? That 99% number is a clue. It's about the growing American oligarchy. It's about how the many have less, the few have most, and the government seems to be listening to the few with most rather than the many, the 99%, with less. Which isn't democracy as we were taught it. Quote of the Day “Though I have some respect for 'The Virtue of Selfishness,' her collection of essays ... I don't think there's a need to have essays advocating selfishness among human beings. I don't know what your impression has been, but some things require no further reinforcement.” --Christopher Hitchens on Ayn Rand, from the Q&A portion of his lecture, “The Moral Necessity of Atheism,” given on February 23, 2004 at Sewanee University How great is it to be as stupid as Maureen Dowd? In her latest column, “Eggheads and Blockheads,” Maureen Dowd chastises the Republican party as the “How great is it to be stupid?” party, which it is, by comparing its current front-runner for president, Rick Perry, to ... wait for it ... John Wayne. So she attempts to trash a man by comparing him to one of the most iconic heroes of American cinema? How great is it to be as stupid as Maureen Dowd? Dowd uses John Ford's “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” as her prism for the upcoming presidential race. She casts Barack Obama as Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart), the thin lawyer from the east who is often bullied by the likes of Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), whom, in a final showdown, he shoots and kills. From this he gains acclaim, becoming an ambassador to England and U.S. Senator. But it's all a lie. Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), from behind a corner store, was the real man who shot Liberty Valance. Stoddard's shot missed high and wide. What's the connection between Ford's film and our current reality? None. The comparison is facile. The connective tissue is barely there. She merely sees Obama as an egghead (forgetting Stoddard's rage), Perry as a blockhead (forgetting Doniphan's heroism), and the rest of us as the townsfolk caught in the middle (forgetting that most were stereotypical Scandinavians, a favorite Ford trope.) As she puts it: So we’re choosing between the overintellectualized professor and blockheads boasting about their vacuity? What's awful about Dowd is not just her myopic dichotomies, not just her clumsy Hollywood analogies, but the fact that she misses the bigger picture. Because what's fascinating about modern Republicans, who continually trash Hollywood, is how their candidates fit so easily into Hollywood western and action-adventure archetypes. This is intentional. The party that trashes Hollywood is the party that apes Hollywood. Both the GOP and Hollywood create wish-fulfillment fantasies in good vs. evil battles because that's what we, the public, wish to see. Until reality intrudes. Which makes us wish to see it even more. It's not an insult, in other words, to compare Rick Perry to John Wayne. It is, in fact, the whole point to his awful, awful career. Idiots, the Bush Administration, and 9/11 At an outdoor dinner party last night, overlooking Puget Sound, the subject got around to freedom vs. safety, and I mentioned how most people would give up the former for an imagined version of the latter (not a very original thought), and that our reaction to 9/11 was indicative of this (another not very original thought). One of the other guests disagreed. We went back and forth in a genial enough manner. He felt we hadn't given up any freedoms post-9/11. Then he talked about how 9/11 was foreseeable to anyone who was paying attention. We had the following exchange: He: Anyone who didn't see 9/11 coming was an idiot. Me: Or in the Bush administration. He: Don't go there. At this point I was warned away from the conversation by the hostess. I later found out that the guy I'd been talking to was, like the hostess, a Republican and a Bush supporter. If only I'd known. I would've totally gone there. Conversation of the Day I've had some good conversations today, long ones, too, but this short, awful conversation stands out. I was leaving Metropolitan Market on Mercer with some red peppers for Patricia, who's recovering nicely from arthroscopic surgery, thank you, when a clean-cut, 20-ish dude, a young man really, waved his hands at me to get my attention. I looked down at his table, on which there was a poster of Pres. Obama with a Hitler moustache and the words “Dump Obama.” He smiled at me. I shook my head at him and kept going. He called after me. He: Are you ready to end the madness? And kept going. Obama, the GOP and Terrence Malick's “The Tree of Life” Early in Terrence Malick's “The Tree of Life,” the following existential dichotomy is set up in voiceover narration from the mother (Jessica Chastain): The nuns taught us there were two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. The she explains what she means by each one: Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Gets others to please it, too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. The movie focuses on a young boy in Waco, Texas in the 1950s, Jack (Hunter McCracken), who aspires to the way of grace, like his mother, but who succumbs to the way of nature, like his father (Brad Pitt). It struck me, as I was writing my review last weekend, around the time of the Ames, Iowa straw poll, that our current political struggles, and the upcoming 2012 election, can be seen through this same prism. Obama is the way of grace. He's been more insulted than any sitting president, and his response has been to work with those who keep insulting him. People on his side often fault him for that. I'm often one of them. The GOP, which claims to have God on its side, and which claims a kind of Godlessness for Obama, is the way of nature. It wants to please itself. It's about more for me and less for you (or us). It's about lording it over people. You see this attitude, which can be bullying or swaggering, in Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann and the pundits on FOX-News. There's a killer instinct there. Sometimes this instinct exhibits itself in actual calls for violence. It is, at the least, a stark contrast. The question remains whether this country sees any value in the way of grace, or if we, like young Jack in the film, and like most of us in our lives, will succumb to the way of nature. Images from Terrence Malick's “The Tree of Life” (2011) Your Liberal Media at Work The above screenshot is from The New York Times. Their lede? Perry drowned out a heckler with a Texas college football reference. Now you know who to vote for. So let's see if we can't get away from the Times front page for a little perspective. Over at Salon.com, Joan Walsh puts the Texan on the grill: Perry's Texas leads the nation in minimum-wage jobs, uninsured children, high school dropouts and pollution. He balanced the state's budget with stimulus money he railed against. His record won't back up his bragging. The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed is hardly enthusiastic: The questions about Mr. Perry concern how well his Lone Star swagger will sell in the suburbs of Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where the election is likely to be decided. He can sound more Texas than Jerry Jones, George W. Bush and Sam Houston combined, and his muscular religiosity also may not play well at a time when the economy has eclipsed culture as the main voter concern. Meanwhile, Paul Krugman, the Times Op-Ed columnist, is perhaps sharpest on the matter. How is Perry's Texas doing so well economically? In “The Texas Unmiracle” he gives two reasons: Big Oil and surprisingly strong mortgage regulations--the kind Republicans are usually against. Plus they're not necessarily doing well: From mid-2008 onward unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else. In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts. By the way, one in four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation, thanks largely to the state’s small-government approach. So what about all those jobs Perry claims he added in Texas? The result of population growth more than anything: Many of the people moving to Texas — retirees in search of warm winters, middle-class Mexicans in search of a safer life — bring purchasing power that leads to greater local employment. At the same time, the rapid growth in the Texas work force keeps wages low — almost 10 percent of Texan workers earn the minimum wage or less, well above the national average — and these low wages give corporations an incentive to move production to the Lone Star State. So Texas tends, in good years and bad, to have higher job growth than the rest of America. But it needs lots of new jobs just to keep up with its rising population — and as those unemployment comparisons show, recent employment growth has fallen well short of what’s needed. Quote of the Day “This Shariah law business is crap. It’s just crazy, and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies. It’s just unnecessary to be accusing this guy of things just because of his religious background.” --Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, responding to questions about the campaign to villify his judicial appointee to the Superior Court in Passaic County, Sohail Mohammed. I've been on this story for awhile. Six years ago, the publication I work for featured Mohammed in the profile “First Call for Freedom.” Mohammed, despite the crazies, wound up being confirmed. He's now the second Muslim judge in New Jersey. Jeffrey Goldberg, writing for Bloomberg News, applauds Christie here. And here's the full Christie. Enjoy: Lessons in Headline-Making Here's the headline in today's Seattle Times: Dissent stalls GOP debt plan Here's what it should have read: Dissent among GOP stalls GOP debt plan Is that partisan? Of course not. It's factual. Does it matter what the headline reads? Of course it does. Most people, if they even see the headlines, don't get past the headlines. The current headline makes it seem Republicans and Democrats are in disagreement. That's a problem but it's not this problem. Not nearly. Folks glancing at the headline need to know what the real problem is. The real problem is a GOP problem. They have people in government who don't believe in government, who want to bring down government, who want to shrink it and (their words) kill it in the cradle. It's their final solution after 30 years of Reaganesque anti-government pronouncements. We're already here. Welcome to the jungle. Welcome to hard times. Quote of the Day “In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And [Michele] Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she's living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies.” --Matt Taibbi, “Michele Bachmann's Holy War,” in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine Al Qaeda's New Leader “In [Ayman al-]Zawahiri's hands, al-Jihad had splintered into angry and homeless gangs. ... His disillusioned followers often reflected on the pronouncement, made during the prison years by the man Zawahiri betrayed, Major Essam al-Qamari, that some vital quality was missing in Zawahiri. Qamari was the one who had told him, 'If you are the member of any group, you cannot be the leader.' that now sounded like a prophecy.” —from page 246 of Lawrence Wright's much-recommended book, “The Looming Tower,” on one of the low points for Ayman al-Zawahri, the former leader of al-Jihad, and current leader of al-Qaeda. The Christian Science Monitor agrees about his lack of charisma. This Wright paragraph, by the way, follows a horrific story of Egyptian intelligence drugging and sodomizing the thirteen-year-old son of a senior member of al-Jihad, then blackmailing him to spy on his father, then recruiting another boy, a friend, for the same purpose. When the two boys were discovered, Zawahiri convened a Sharia court, forced the boys to strip to determine if they had attained puberty, and, since they had, and so were officially men, had them convicted of sodomy, treason and attempted murder. “Zawahiri had the boys shot,” Wright writes. “To make sure he got his point across, he videotaped their confessions and their executions, and distributed the tapes as an example to others who might betray the organization.” Quote of the Day “You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing. ”You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing. “I'm tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I'm trying to do the right thing, and that's where I'm going with this.” --State Sen. Roy McDonald (R-Saratoga), in The New York Daily News, on why he'll vote to legalize gay marriage in New York. Bumper Stickers Seen Driving From Seattle, Wa. to Bodega, Ca. WHY IS THERE ALWAYS MONEY FOR WAR BUT NOT FOR EDUCATION? FOLLOW ME TO DRIVE-THRU FEED GOD DANCED THE DAY YOU WERE BORN MY OTHER CAR IS A DRAGON BOAT LAND OF THE FREE/ BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE ARNOLD DON'T SURF Patricia, Dairy Queen, and Hwy 101 during a rare sunny moment on our trip. Humphrey, at 100, is Still the Man; Nixon Still Goes in the Garbage Can There's a nice Op-Ed in the New York Times by Rick Perlstein, author of “Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America,” on the forgotten liberal, Hubert H. Humphrey, former Mayor of Minneapolis, Senator from the great state of Minnesota, and a man for whom a downtown stadium was named. It's now called Mall of America Field. So it goes. Humphrey was born 100 years ago today and Perlstein reminds those who need reminding that he helped turn the Democratic Party toward civil rights in a 1948 speech at the Democratic Convention. Humphrey said: To those who say this civil rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights. A friend on Facebook also gave us this HHH quote: It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. One of his friends added this comment, which made me smile: I was at a dinner once when the speaker said, “We can't just throw money at problems.” Unfortunately for him, Hubert was in the audience. He stood up and said, “What, then, is money for, if not to throw at problems?” I miss him. He was abused by LBJ, but we know that. Is that LBJ's greatest legacy? Not the Vietnam War, not the Great Society, but abusing his vice-president so much that it paved the way for Nixon and dirty tricks. Not in our household in south Minneapolis, by the way. My father, a fierce Democrat, once recounted in a letter to his father, a Danish immigrant who voted Republican, some ditty my brother and I had picked up in the schoolyard and recited at the dinner table back home: He's our man! In the garbage can! My political awakening. I was 5. And not wrong. The Humphrey statue outside the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis. Life-sized, like the man himself. Quote of the Day “This spring, Obama officials often expressed impatience with questions about theory or about the elusive quest for an Obama doctrine. One senior Administration official reminded me what the former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said when asked what was likely to set the course of his government: 'Events, dear boy, events.'” -- from “The Consequentialist: How the Arab Spring remade Obama's foreign policy” by Ryan Lizza in the May 2, 2011 New Yorker. Amusingly, Lizza's last graf begins thus: “Nonetheless, Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine.” Oh, Ryan. Read the whole thing here. Osama + Arnold Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, surveying the books about Osama bin Laden: As for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, most of these books agree that it was a terrible misstep that played into Bin Laden’s hands, fueling Qaeda recruitment efforts and diverting critical military and intelligence resources away from Afghanistan, which in turn led to the resurgence there of the Taliban. Peter L. Bergen’s new book, “The Longest War,” provides a devastating indictment of the Bush administration on many levels, from its failure to heed warnings about a terrorist threat, to its determination to conduct the war in Afghanistan on the cheap, to its costly, unnecessary and inept occupation of Iraq. Both “The Longest War” and Lawrence Wright’s “Looming Tower” give readers a visceral sense of what day-to-day life was like in Qaeda training camps. Mr. Wright, noting that Bin Laden was not opposed to the United States because of its culture or ideas but because of its political and military actions in the Islamic world, observes that Qaeda trainees often watched Hollywood thrillers at night ( Arnold Schwarzenegger movies were particular favorites) in an effort to gather tactical tips. My History of the U-S-A Chant: With a Benediction from Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld I'm not much of a fan of chants. On the left we have this old chestnut: “What do we want? X! When do we want it? NOW!” On the right there's “USA! USA!” It didn't used to belong to the right. In the winter of 1980 it belonged to all of us, all of the new hockey fans around the country watching a team of college kids beat the best players in the world, a Soviet machine who had dominated everybody, including U.S. professionals. The Olympics were imbalanced back then, restricted, as they were, to amateurs, to non-professionals, when non-capitalist societies had nothing but. Their players were state-sponsored non-professionals, trained since infancy, drilled daily, while ours were college kids: Mike from Minneapolis and Mark from Madison and Mike again from Wintrop, Mass., and Neal from northern Minnesota. Guys. As in: Hey, why don't you guys get together and play some games? I'd followed their run through the Winter Games peripherally but was assuming the worst when, flipping channels one Friday night (literally: hand on the knob, kids), I came across a newsbrief informing us that the U.S. hockey team had beaten the Russians. Immediately I flipped back to the Olympics, to the tape-delayed game, just in time to see Mark Johnson (from Madison) slide between two defenders and flip it in the goal with one second left in the first period to tie it, 2-2. Holy crap! We win this? I watched the rest of the game on tenterhooks even though I knew its outcome, then went out into the night pumped beyond belief. It was an odd sensation. I'd grown up in unpatriotic times, when patriotism was the last refuge of squares rather than scoundrels. I'd watched the country fall apart militarily (Vietnam), politically (Watergate), economically (OPEC, stagflation). We had gas lines and hostages. Now we had this. What was this? It felt good. USA! USA! Four years later the chant was already the province of louts. In the interim “USA Today” had been published, full of its dull news and patriotic charts, and capitalizing on the acronym “USA” as much as possible. Then we heard it all the time during the '84 Summer Games in Los Angeles, which the Soviet bloc, responding to our boycott of the 1980 Summer games in Moscow, boycotted. So we weren't going up against the eastern bloc's professional non-professionals; we were going up against ... Trinidad and Tobago. We weren't underdogs anymore, we were overdogs, beating our chests and reveling in our expected triumphs. Why chant for that? You'd hear it on the campaign trail, too. Ronald Reagan would reference the Olympics and get the chant going. Eventually the chant became his. And theirs. It turned my stomach. I thought Homer Simpson killed it in 1993. I really did. There was an episode of “The Simpsons” in which Homer and Marge, driving to a parent-teacher conference, argue over who gets Lisa's teacher (an easy gig) and who gets Bart's (trouble). Homer, who had Lisa's teacher the previous year, whines and wheedles his way into getting Lisa's teacher again, and when Marge finally capitulates he does this: Brilliant, I thought. That's that. They'll never be able to use it again. Wrong. Too many scoundrels in this country. Too many louts. Now we use it to cheer on death rather than college kids. I don't know if there is a proper response to bin Laden's death. Mine is, as I wrote yesterday, muted. I'm glad he's gone, glad he was killed in the way he was killed, applaud the men who did it; but I assume someone somewhere will take his place. I suppose the response closest to mine comes, ironically, from the website of David Frum, the right-wing originator of the phrase “Axis of Evil,” written by Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, a man of God 11 years my junior, in a piece entitled “Is it Wrong to Feel Joy at Bin Laden's Death?” Rabbi Herzfeld writes: First there is recognition that even when our enemy falls, this does not signal an end to all our troubles. Just because one enemy or one army or one threat has been removed does not mean we are entirely safe. Second, we must acknowledge that the destruction of the enemy did not necessarily arise from our own merits. We are perhaps not worthy of the good fortune that we have received and so we do not want to tempt God, as it were, or remind the Angel of Death of our own defects. At the same time, I can't admonish those who have the impulse to chant “USA! USA!” for the death of the man who perpetrated this. Herzfeld again: The Talmud tells us that “God does not rejoice with the fall of the wicked.” As the rabbinic teaching goes, as the Children of Israel were crossing the sea and the army of Pharaoh was drowning, God rebuked the angels for showing excessive joy. The chanters are in good company. It's the impulse even of the angels. Osama's Death Certificate In June 1989 I was 26 years old, recently returned from a year in Taiwan, and driving around at night with some friends in an unfamiliar warehouse district north of downtown Minneapolis when the news came on the radio: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, was dead at the age of 86. We were a fairly liberal group in a very liberal city but a spontaneous cheer went up in that car. Khomeini had been a thorn in our country's side for 10 years, we'd been hearing about him for 10 years, and it was nice to know we wouldn't be hearing about him much anymore. A minute later we sobered up. It felt classless, cheering for death. Last night Patricia and I had some friends over for Sunday Movie Night. We used to do this fairly often but got off course this winter; but some of our members, who've been through hellacious springs, needed it again, so we gathered in our living room for homemade pasta and wine and salad, to watch Martin Scorsese's “Goodfellas.” Afterwards, before going to bed, I checked my email and received one from Ward, the man who made the homemade pasta: FW: BREAKING NEWS: An AP source says Osama bin Laden is dead See what we miss watching movies? I immediately went to the New York Times site for confirmation, then Andrew Sullivan to read his thoughts, then Salon to read their headlines (which were already aftermath headlines; “And now what?” headlines). I looked up Abbottabad on Google maps. Finally I went to Facebook. “Oh right, Facebook,” I thought. I scrolled backwards to see who posted the news first. It was a friend from Delaware who referenced, obliquely, how happy Wolfie B. had made her with “those five words.” Two people had already posted this photo, which made me smile, since it encapsulated the seriousness of one side of our political debate versus the decided lack of seriousness on the other: Someone wrote “The world feels better tonight.” Another: “I wish I had some fireworks to set off,” to which her friend, our mutual friend, replied, “I just heard one go off in my neighborhood.” People were gathering at the White House, and in Times Square, to cheer. A local journalist admonished his readers: “I hope people (esp. liberals) don't overthink this. Bin Laden dead is a good thing.” A movie critic wrote, “If you're in Times Square in a Navy uniform tonight and don't kiss a nurse, you have no sense of history. And no game.” There were also the usual status updates about weekend trips, Sunday concerts, and funny things the child said. Despite the wine, I stayed sober. I didn't disagree with the local journalist—“Bin Laden dead is a good thing”—I just knew the world wasn't much of a changed thing. Bin Laden has been a thorn in our country's side for 10 years, and it was nice to know he was gone, but there will be others, because there are always others. I simply hope he was the worst of it. In this way, and perhaps only this way, Osama bin Laden and I were in accord. He wished to be the western world's greatest enemy for the 21st century, and I sincerely hope, when the century's history is written, he's gotten that wish. - Today's front pages via Newseum - David Remnick on Obama vs. Osama - Also from the New Yorker: What did Pakistan know and when did they know it? - Via NPR: The Pakistani who tweeted the news without realizing it - David Weigel on the gathering outside the White House - ABC News footage of the bin Laden compound - One more time: Andrew Sullivan liveblogs the news of the death of Osama bin Laden Thomas Geoghegan: Future Supreme Court Nominee? “Memo to President Obama: How about appointing [labor lawyer Thomas] Geoghegan (whom you surely know, or know of, from his quiet heroics on behalf of working folk in Chicago) to the federal bench, preferably the Supreme Court? He’s eminently qualified. He writes prose that can be read for pleasure. He thinks clearly and creatively. He even ran for dogcatcher once. Admittedly, he’s not one of your chronically cautious “centrists,” but isn’t it about time the Court had a serious (and funny) counterweight to the charmless right-wing dittoheads who now dominate it and who are so politically and morally insensible that they cannot distinguish between a Fortune 500 corporation and a human being?” --Hendrik Hertzberg in “Mr. Justice Geoghegan, Dissenting,” on The New Yorker Web site. I'm not smart enough to say who does or doesn't belong on the USSC, but I interviewed Mr. Geoghegan for Illinois Super Lawyers a few years back—about running for U.S. Congress, about why the left seems so beaten down in this country, about why productivity goes up and real wages don't—and he's impressive. Put it this way: I'd certainly like to hear his voice, his point of view, more often in national discussions than, as Hertzberg says above, the usual charmless dittoheads. I asked him, for example, what stayed with him about his campaign for Rahm Emanuel's seat and he said: “I met a lot of elderly people living alone who don’t have enough to live on.” Please send that sentence to Paul Ryan and John Boehner, symptomatic of the unsympathetic right. Quote of the Day “With this budget deal, America's brief flirtation with milquetoast progressivism comes to an end.” Quote of the Day “I'm not saying that our debt problem isn't serious and that adjustments to entitlements shouldn't be part of of the solution. But the hard question that Paul Ryan's hucksterism avoids is this: what is government's role in caring for its most vulnerable citizens?” Quote of the Day “If it had been my call, I wouldn't have gone into Libya. But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him because I trust him, and I still do. ”For now, anyway. But I wouldn't have intervened in Libya and he did. I sure hope his judgment really does turn out to have been better than mine.“ —Kevin Drum, ”Obama, Libya and Me," in Mother Jones Quote of the Day “Well, now there are two Minnesotans in the 2012 race, despite the fact that the Constitution strictly states that no Minnesotan will ever reach office higher than vice president. Michele Bachmann, three-term congresswoman with no accomplishments beyond an ability to enrage Chris Matthews, will form an exploratory committee, according to CNN.” --Alex Pareene, “Michele Bachmann is running for president now, sigh,” on Salon.com Plus Ca Change... I was reminded of the JFK “Wanted for Treason” poster, popular in Texas in the early 1960s, while watching the documentary “Oswald's Ghost” the other night, then easily found the Obama poster, one of the milder anti-Obama propaganda pieces out there, via Google. I've said it before: In 50 years, the extreme right in this country has managed to change exactly one letter. They've gone from Birchers to Birthers. The content of the above posters may be the same but the form of each bears scrutiny. In the early '60s, it was enough to convict Pres. Kennedy through a modern, FBI prism. Maybe the extreme right now views the FBI, a government organization, as equally suspect, so they have to delve even deeper into American history and mythology to make their case. They need to see themselves as cowboys, not knowing the derivation of cowboys. They're forced to rely on Hollywood mythmaking, even as they despise Hollywood. They think they're protecting America when they represent the worst of America. Movie Review: “Oswald's Ghost” (2007) WARNING: MAGIC SPOILERS Norman Mailer gives us the title. “Oswald is the ghost that lays over American life,” he says, with his usual twinkle, near the end of this well-made documentary. “What is abominable and maddening about ghosts is you never know the answer. Is it this or is it that? You can’t know because the ghost isn’t telling you.” Yet “Oswald’s Ghost” tells us plenty—because it’s less conspiracy theory, or conspiracy debunker, than conspiracy history. It takes us chronologically, and cleanly, through events, and delves into why we began to believe there was a cover-up, and what it means that we now believe there was a cover-up, and how we now act as a result. It sees the Kennedy assassination as the great dividing point of the American century, the break from which we never recovered. John F. Kennedy began his administration with the pro-government rhetoric of his inaugural—“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”—and yet the mystery surrounding his assassination, along with the lies of Vietnam and Watergate, set the stage for the anti-government rhetoric of Ronald Reagan and all of his acolytes, from which we still haven’t recovered. Is there a story of the last 50 years that’s been told more often than the Kennedy assassination? Yet filmmaker Robert Stone, working for PBS and “The American Experience,” finds footage, and photos, I’ve never seen before. Here’s Oswald in the Dallas police station professing his innocence so matter-of-factly that I began to believe him: Oswald (in glare of TV lights): I'd like some legal representation, but these police officers have not allowed me to have any. I don't know what this is all about. Reporter: Did you kill the president? Oswald: No, sir, I didn't. People keep asking me that. ... They are taking me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy. One suddenly wonders: Hey, how did they trace him to the murder of Officer Tippit? How did they find him in that Dallas movie theater? How did they make him the focal point of the worst American murder of the 20th century? Newsman: Was this the man that you believed killed President Kennedy? Dallas police: I think we have the right man. Dan Rather: Confusion reigned inside the Dallas police station. Abraham Zapruder didn’t help. Instead of showing his film to the American people, he hired a lawyer and sold the rights to Life magazine, which printed individual frames. The film itself wouldn’t be shown on television until 1975. Oswald’s mother didn’t help. She said her son was being framed, which one expects, but she also said her son was a government agent, which raised spectres. Jack Ruby certainly didn’t help. Did Mark Lane? The New York lawyer became the first man to openly question whether Oswald acted alone, in a December 1963 article in The National Guardian entitled “Lane’s defense brief for Oswald.” Did the Warren Commission? Shouldn’t its hearings have been public? Shouldn’t we have taken our time with the matter instead of rushing out a verdict before the 1964 elections? Yet, at the time, most Americans accepted the lone-gunman theory. That would quickly change as conspiracy books began appearing, then proliferating, two and three years later: First Lane’s “Rush to Judgment,” then Edward Jay Epstein’s “Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth.” Then it was off to the races. Initially outsiders were blamed. It was Castro or the KGB. It was the South Vietnamese government, responding to the Diem assassination. Eventually we began blaming ourselves. It was some rogue CIA element. It was some right-wing element that wanted to stay in Vietnam just as JFK was getting ready to pull us out. “And like all those theories,” Mailer says, “it had a certainly plausibility and a depressing lack of proof.” That didn’t stop New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison, wild-eyed and bug-eyed, and the worst of the conpiratorialists, who went after Clay Shaw, a prominent, closeted businessman. Stone (Robert, not Oliver) includes a fascinating 1967 news report critical of Garrison: Garrison’s investigation has seemed to concentrate on homosexuals. That of course is an old police trick, and homosexuals have been a particular target of Garrison’s over the years. Even members of his staff have been privately critical of his emphasis on men whose deviation makes them vulnerable. 1968 didn’t help. Both MLK and RFK were assassinated by “lone gunmen.” Both were progressives. How could it not be conspiracy? (But did it have to lead to the inaninities of “The Parallax View”?) Post-Watergate, the Church Committee detailed all of those early 1960s CIA assassinations of foreign leaders. Was Malcolm X more right than he knew? Was the JFK assassination a case of the chickens coming home to roost? It’s the Ruby factor that’s always bugged me. He had mob ties. He was a strip-club owner. Yet he killed Oswald, effectively silencing him, out of respect for Jackie? Out of sudden anger? Tie that with the difficulty of Oswald's shot, of squeezing three bullets out of the 6.5 mm Carcano rifle in the time allotted, and of the whole back-and-to-the-left thing, with that final shot, the kill shot, looking, in the Zapruder film, like it’s blasting him from the front, well, you know, maybe there was something to it. It's Jack Ruby's dog who pushes us back from the brink. Oswald was scheduled to be moved at 10:00 a.m. that Sunday morning. Here’s Hugh Aynesworth, a Dallas reporter: Ruby slept 'til probably 9:30 or 9:20 something of that sort, and then he drives with his dog down to the Western Union and sent a telegram at 11:17 that morning. Came out and he looked one block up and he saw the crowd there at the police department. Jack Ruby was always on the scene of action, whether it be a fire, whether it be a raid, whether it be a parade, whatever. He had to be there. And he knew some of those cops. The fact that he left the dog in the car indicates to me that he thought he was going down to send a telegram and go back home. He took that little dog everywhere with him. Few have assumed conspiracy longer and more vocally than Norman Mailer—yet even he comes around. “The internal evidence just wasn't there,” he says. “There were too many odd moments that just didn't add up.” Instead he focuses on Oswald’s mindset: I think what Oswald saw was that if he committed the crime, if he assassinated Kennedy and he got away with it, then he would have an inner power that no one could ever come near. And, if he was caught, well then, he was quite articulate, he would have one of the greatest trials in America's history, if not the greatest, and he would explain all of his political ideas. He would become world famous and might have an immense effect upon history ... When he shot Tippit, I think at that point he knew he was doomed because he could no longer make the great speech. If you shoot a policeman forget it, you're a punk. And so after he was caught he did nothing but protest his innocence and say, “I'm a patsy.” “If you shoot a policeman, forget it, you're a punk.” “This is not a whodunnit,” says Stone (Robert, not Oliver) in a DVD special features interview. “This is what a whodunnit has done to us.” He adds: “Conspiracy theory is part of the human condition; and it always will be.” Think of the doc as one Stone to correct another. Is conspiracy the new American religion? The notion that we exist as small nothings for a short span of time in a cosmic eternity is unbearable, and thus we construct meaning out of it. The notion that this small nothing brought down the most powerful, glamorous man in the world is unbearable, and thus we construct meaning out of it. It was our enemies—foreign or domestic. It was the left or right. It was anything—please, God, let it be anything—other than little Lee Harvey Oswald. “[George] Washington was a very good President, and an unhappy one. Distraught by growing factionalism within and outside his Administration, especially by the squabbling of Hamilton and Jefferson and the rise of a Jeffersonian opposition, he served another term only reluctantly. His second Inaugural Address was just a hundred and thirty-five words long; he said, more or less, Please, I’m doing my best. In 1796, in his enduringly eloquent Farewell Address (written by Madison and Hamilton), he cautioned the American people about party rancor: 'The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.' And then he went back to Mount Vernon. He freed his slaves in his will, possibly hoping that this, too, would set a precedent. It did not.” --Jill Lepore in her article, “His Highness: George Washington scales new heights” in The New Yorker. Much recommended. The Non-Partisan President I first heard Barack Obama speak in April 2006 at the annual Democratic Farm Labor Party convention in downtown Minneapolis. At the time I was working for Minnesota Law & Politics, which was part of Key Pro Media, which was owned by Vance Opperman, and since Opperman was a major donor to the DFL we had a pretty good table for the show. An embarrassingly good table. During appetizers, I looked around and saw famous faces. Hey, there's Mayor Ryback. Behind me. Hey, there's Walter Mondale. Behind me. Apologies, Mr. Vice-President. Hope I'm not obscuring your view. The speech Sen. Obama gave that night was the speech he gave often in 2006, and which became the prologue to his second book, “The Audacity of Hope.” Here's a sample: You don't need a poll to know that the vast majority of Americans—Republican, Democrat, and independent—are weary of the dead zone that politics has become, in which narrow interests vie for advantage and ideological minorities seek to impose their own versions of absolute truth. Whether we're from red states or blue states, we feel in our gut the lack of honesty, rigor and common sense in our policy debates, and dislike what appears to be a contentious menu of false or cramped choices. The guy was talking my language. He was articulating the great unsaid in American politics. He was offering a third way. Now to the present. I have some friends on the left who are outraged, outraged by the tax deal cut earlier this month, which basically boils down to: We'll extend the Bush tax cuts even for the richest 2% and you give us extended unemployment benefits. They see it as a gigantic betrayal. They fill their status updates on Facebook with invective. Now I'm someone who thinks the wealthiest people in this country should be be taxed at a 50% rate (as they were for most of the Reagan years), or maybe at a 70% rate (as in the '70s). Tea Partiers seem to idolize the stability of the 1950s ... when the tax rate for the richest people in the country was more than 90%. I wouldn't go that far but wouldn't mind scaring some people with it. Even so, I don't see the deal as a great betrayal. The opposite. I know this is who Pres. Obama is. I know this is the reason he appealed to me in the first place. But I am amused as the cries of the left recede and the cries of the right crescendo. I'm with Andrew Sullivan here: I think of Frank Rich and Paul Krugman as brilliant men, but profoundly resistant to the core rationale of the Obama presidency (and the underlying dynamic of its accumulating success). That rationale is an attempt to move past the paradigms of the boomer years to a pragmatic, liberal reformism that takes America as it is, while trying to make it more of what it can be. Now, there's little doubt that in contrast to recent decades, Obama has nudged the direction leftward - re-regulating Wall Street after the catastrophe, setting up universal health insurance through the private sector, recalibrating America's role in the world from preachy bully to hegemonic facilitator. But throughout he has tried, as his partisan critics have complained, not to be a partisan president, to recall, as he put it in that recent press conference, that this is a diverse country, that is is time we had a president who does not repel or disparage or ignore those who voted against him or those who have grown to despise him. ... He really is trying to be what he promised: president of the red states as well as the blue states. And a president who gets shit done. The results after two years: universal health insurance, the rescue of Detroit, the avoidance of a Second Great Depression, big gains in private sector growth and productivity, three stimulus packages (if you count QE2), big public investments in transport and green infrastructure, the near-complete isolation of Iran, the very public exposure of Israeli intransigence and extremism, a reset with Russia (plus a new START), big drops in illegal immigration and major gains in enforcement, a South Korea free trade pact, the end of torture, and a debt commission that has put fiscal reform squarely back on the national agenda. Oh, and of yesterday, the signature civil rights achievement of ending the military's ban on openly gay servicemembers. In some ways, and despite his famous press conference, I think the least surprised person by all the anguish and disappointment on the left is Pres. Obama himself, since, in “The Audacity of Hope,” he anticipated it: Undoubtedly, some of these views will get me in trouble. I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them. How's that hopey-changey thing working out for us? Slow and steady. Packer on W. In the latest issue of The New Yorker, George Packer, who spent all that time in Iraq thanks to George W. Bush, goes over W.'s memoir and comes up with a telling but not surprising question: Why does a book called “Decision Points” tell us so little about how the author's decisions were made? But of course this tells us almost everything we need to know about George W. Bush (but knew already). Some excerpts from Packer's review: - There are hardly any decision points at all. The path to each decision is so short and irresistible, more like an electric pulse than like a weighing of options, that the reader is hard-pressed to explain what happened. Suddenly, it’s over, and there’s no looking back. - Here is another feature of the non-decision: once his own belief became known to him, Bush immediately caricatured opposing views and impugned the motives of those who held them. - For Bush, making decisions is an identity question: Who am I? The answer turns Presidential decisions into foregone conclusions: I am someone who believes in the dignity of life, I am the protector of the American people, I am a loyal boss, I am a good man who cares about other people, I am the calcium in the backbone. This sense of conviction made Bush a better candidate than the two Democrats he was fortunate to have as opponents in his Presidential campaigns. But real decisions, which demand the weighing of compelling contrary arguments and often present a choice between bad options, were psychologically intolerable to the Decider. They confused the identity question. - For him, the [Iraq] war remains “eternally right,” a success with unfortunate footnotes. His decisions, he still believes, made America safer, gave Iraqis hope, and changed the future of the Middle East for the better. Of these three claims, only one is true—the second—and it’s a truth steeped in tragedy. Then there's this devastating close: - Bush ends “Decision Points” with the sanguine thought that history’s verdict on his Presidency will come only after his death. During his years in office, two wars turned into needless disasters, and the freedom agenda created such deep cynicism around the world that the word itself was spoiled. In America, the gap between the rich few and the vast majority widened dramatically, contributing to a historic financial crisis and an ongoing recession; the poisoning of the atmosphere continued unabated; and the Constitution had less and less say over the exercise of executive power. Whatever the judgments of historians, these will remain foregone conclusions. FOX News: Accusing Others of Its Own Crimes What must it be like to be Roger Ailes? To conduct the national discussion as if it were a symphony? To get people to talk about what you want them to talk about. To get them to question what you want them to question (Pres. Obama, NPR, ACORN, “the ground-zero mosque,” Woodrow Wilson) and get them to accept what you want them to accept (Pres. Bush, WMD, Sarah Palin, the Bush tax cuts). That’s a lot of power. But apparently the FOX-News channel isn't enough of a bully pulpit for him. So he spouted off yesterday to The Daily Beast about NPR, saying the following: “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view.” He’s since apologized. “Apologized.” He apologized to the Anti-Defamation League, with whom he now has a bit of a relationship, ever since one of his more popular stars, Glenn Beck, earlier this month, spun George Soros' attempts to pass as a gentile in Nazi-occupied Europe as if they were Nazi war crimes. But he didn't apologize to NPR. In fact, he continued to attack NPR in his apology: “I’m writing this just to let you know some background but also to apologize for using ‘Nazi’ when in my now considered opinion, ‘nasty, inflexible bigot’ would have worked better.“ Ailes is a fascinating man. If he weren't upending democracy and ruining this country, he might be amusing. Look again at what he says about NPR: These guys don’t want any other point of view. Or in the apology: Nasty, inflexibile bigot. Who does this remind you of? There’s a documentary out now called “A Film Unfinished,” which is one of the best movies of the year. Is it playing somewhere near you? Can you stream it? PPV it? Do so. The background: At the end of World War II, a 60-minute, silent documentary was found in the German archives on Jewish life in the Warsaw ghetto in the months before the ghetto was liquidated and its inhabitants shipped off to the extermination camps of Treblinka. The question arise: Why document what you're about to destroy? And why stage scenes of better-off Jews going about their day? A woman puts on lipstick in her vanity mirror, another buys goods at the butcher, couples dine out. Initially one thinks the Nazis are showcasing comfortable people to refute claims of horrible conditions. Except they also showcase the horrible conditions. We see emaciated people with shaved heads. We see children in rags. We see a corpse every 100 meters. The Nazis filmed it all. Why? The answer is juxtaposition. Here’s take 1, take 2, take 3 of a well-off woman buying meat at the butcher while children in rags starve outside. Here’s take 1, take 2, take 3 of sated couples leaving a restaurant and ignoring the emaciated woman in rags begging for a handout. This juxtaposition is justification. The Nazis are attempting to showcase a race of people so indifferent to the suffering of others that they didn’t deserve to live. They are documenting an excuse for extermination. Once one realizes this one finally understands the true meaning of propaganda. It is the powerful blaming the powerless for the crimes of the powerful. The Nazis herded 600,000 Jews into a single zone of Warsaw. They gave them no way to live. They let them starve. They let them die by the hundreds of thousands. Then they staged scenes of Jewish indifference to the suffering of others. There is, of course, no modern equivalent of the Nazis. But there is modern propaganda. There is even modern propaganda is this most virulent form: the powerful blaming the powerless for the crimes of the powerful. Example: class warfare. You hear that phrase all the time on FOX. It may be the only place you hear it. And you hear it lately for the following reason: the Bush tax cuts are set to expire on Jan. 1, 2011. Pres. Obama wants to preserve the middle-class portion of the tax cut and allow the tax cut for the wealthiest one percent to expire. The tax rate for the wealthiest Americans will zoom from 35% all the way up to 39%. On FOX-News, this is considered class warfare. Here's an example of that language. Here's another. OK, here's a bunch of them. But who's really conducting class warfare? I would argue it's the rich, the powerful, who are accusing the poor and middle class, or the powerless, of what the rich are in fact doing. Because the rich can't deal with a 39-percent tax rate. Question: What was the top tax rate during most of the Reagan years? 50 percent. Question: What was the top tax rate during the Eisenhower years? 91 percent. It's all here. So the question shouldn't be: ”Should we roll back the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans to a 39-percent rate?“ The question should be: ”Should we tax the richest Americans at a 50 percent rate?" The right, and FOX-News, keep doing this. It's not always powerful/powerless—Pres. Obama isn't powerless, for example, and the Democratic party shouldn't be powerless—but FOX's attacks almost always have that vibe. It's FOX-News accusing others of its own crimes. These guys don’t want any other point of view. Here he is on Jon Stewart: “He loves polarization. He depends on it. If liberals and conservatives are all getting along, how good would that show be? It’d be a bomb.” He's describing himself and his own network. Again and again and again. Pay attention. That's all. Just pay fucking attention. Hertzberg on the Midterms Hendrik Hertzberg's column in the latest New Yorker, about the midterms, is a must-read. He alludes to why the Republicans should be angry with, rather than beholden to, the Tea Party: The Democrats retained their Senate majority, now much reduced, only by the grace of the Tea Party, which, in Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada, saddled Republicans with nominees so weighted with extremism and general bizarreness that they sank beneath the wave so many others rode. In 2008, when 130 million people cast votes in the Presidential election, 120 million took the trouble to vote for a representative in Congress. In 2010, 75 million did so—45 million fewer, a huge drop-off. The members of this year’s truncated electorate were also whiter, markedly older, and more habitually Republican: if the franchise had been limited to them two years ago, last week’s exit polls suggest, John McCain would be President today. He comes up with a better metaphor (big surprise) than the Dems' “they drove it in the ditch/we're pushing it out”: By the time the flames [from the economic firestorm] reached their height, the arsonists had slunk off, and only the firemen were left for people to take out their ire on. Best, there's this graf, on the “cognitive dissonance” of the election—or, in layman's terms, the reason why it was so fucking annoying: Frightened by joblessness, “the American people” rewarded the party that not only opposed the stimulus but also blocked the extension of unemployment benefits. Alarmed by a ballooning national debt, they rewarded the party that not only transformed budget surpluses into budget deficits but also proposes to inflate the debt by hundreds of billions with a permanent tax cut for the least needy two per cent. Frustrated by what they see as inaction, they rewarded the party that not only fought every effort to mitigate the crisis but also forced the watering down of whatever it couldn’t block. But the scariest graf is the penultimate graf, on the problems the Dems had this election: proving a negative (things woulda been worse without the stimulus), delayed gratification (the health-care bill doesn't fully enact until 2014), good-for-the-goose, not-for-the-gander logic (citizens tighten belts while government goes on a spree). Then he gets into what he calls “public ignorance”: An illuminating Bloomberg poll, taken the week before the election, found that some two-thirds of likely voters believed that, under Obama and the Democrats, middle-class taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks under the Troubled Asset Relief Program are gone, never to be recovered. One might add to that list the public’s apparent conviction that illegal immigration is skyrocketing and that the health-care law will drive the deficit higher. Reality tells a different story. He goes on to show that each of these things is not true, and, in the final graf, blames the Dems for not beating their chests enough. I agree, but also fault Hertzberg (and everyone) for not stating what this “public ignorance” truly is: the triumph of FOX-News, the Koch brothers, and a propaganda machine that went into 24/7 mode as soon as Barack Obama took the oath of office in January 2009, telling us it was time to “get to work.” The propagandists listened. They cared not a lick for the act of governing; they weren't interested in sorting through proposals to see which were the best means of extracting us from the mess we were in; they were only interested in confusing the issues and demonizing opponents—often by accusing those opponents of the very things that the propagandists themselves were guilty of. We need to call this what it is: propaganda. You don't need totalitarian control of the government, or the media, to effectively propagandize. You just need money, and a forum, and a message that appeals to our worst instincts. The American people have been effectively propagandized. It can happen here. It has. Why The Tea Party Hates George Washington Here's the long view, courtesy of Joseph J. Ellis' Pulitzer-Prize-winning “Founding Brothers,” published in 2000: There are two long-established ways to tell the story [of the founding of the republic in 1787]... Mercy Otis Warren's History of the American Revolution (1805) defined the “pure republicanism” interpretation, which was also the version embraced by the Republican party and therefore later called “the Jeffersonian interpretation.” It depicts the American Revolution as a liberation movement, a clean break not just from English domination but also from the historic corruptions of European monarchy and aristocracy. The ascendance of the Federalists to power in the 1790s thus becomes a hostile takeover of the Revolution by corrupt courtiers and moneymen (Hamilton is the chief culprit), which is eventually defeated and the true spirit of the Revolution recovered by the triumph of the Republicans in the elections of 1800. The core revolutionary principle according to this interpretive tradition is individual liberty. It has radical and, in modern terms, libertarian implications, because it regards any accommodation of personal freedom to governmental discipline as dangerous. In its more extreme forms it is a recipe for anarchy, and its attitude toward any energetic expression of centralized political power can assume paranoid proportions. The alternative interpretation was first given its fullest articulation by John Marshall in his massive five-volume The Life of George Washington (1804-18O7). It sees the American Revolution as an incipient national movement with deep, if latent, origins in the colonial era. The constitutional settlement of 1787-1788 thus becomes the natural fulfillment of the Revolution and the leaders of the Federalist party in the 1790s—Adams, Hamilton, and, most significantly, Washington—as the true heirs of the revolutionary legacy. (Jefferson is the chief culprit.) The core revolutionary principle in this view is collectivistic rather than individualistic, for it sees the true spirit of '76 as the virtuous surrender of personal, state, and sectional interests to the larger purpose: of American nationhood, first embodied in the Continental Army and later in the newly established federal government. It has conservative but also protosocialistic implications, because it does not regard the individual as the sovereign unit in the political equation and is more comfortable with governmental discipline as a focusing and channeling device for national development. In its more extreme forms it relegates personal rights and liberties to the higher authority of the state, which is “us” and not “them,” and it therefore has both communal and despotic implications. It is truly humbling, perhaps even dispiriting, to realize that the historical debate over the revolutionary era and the early republic merely recapitulates the ideological debate conducted at the time, that historians have essentially been fighting the same battles, over and over again, that the members of the revolutionary generation fought originally among themselves. When looked at through this prism, we get a sense of how fucked-up the current generation is. The Jeffersonians in this equation are obviously the tea partiers, who are in the midst of an extreme, and paranoid, period. They view Pres. Obama, for example, who talks the language of cooperation, as a despot. But the original Jeffersonians fought moneyed interests while the current Jeffersonians, the tea partiers, are bankrolled by those interests: The Koch brothers, the Citizens United decision, etc. Moreover, if, in the 1790s, the debate was individual liberties (Jefferson) vs. American nationhood (Washington), the rhetoric on the right now equates individual liberties with American nationhood. At the least, the current Washingtonians, the Democrats, don't use the rhetoric of “America” as well as the current Jeffersonians, the Republicans. They haven't for some time. Thus we have imbalance. The rhetoric and the money have gone over to the Republican side. It's a wonder the Democrats ever win at all. Or to quote a cinematic version of FDR: “I often think of something Woodrow Wilson said to me. 'It is only once in a generation that people can be lifted above material things. That is why conservative government is in the saddle for two-thirds of the time.'” Bush Offers Mea Culpa - WTF has Pres. Obama done so far? Click here. - My favorite sign from the Jon Stewart rally: “I support reasonable conclusions based on supported facts.” - St. Louis Park's own Tommy Friedman, that old Iraq War supporter, worries about a know-nothing future. - Bob Herbert on what has happened to the middle class? Not in the last two years, kids. In the last 30. - Nate Silver, the 538 guy, predicts a divided Congress...but it could all go Republican. - A practical definition of propaganda could be: “accusing others of your own crimes.” For more than a year the right has called the left “Fascists.” But I don't remember anyone on the left literally stomping heads. - Imagine any Republican, any, being as articulate and open as Pres. Obama is with this “It gets better” message. - No link here, but yesterday I kept seeing banner ads from “Freedom Club State PAC of Minnesota,” who apparently don't know I haven't lived there in three years, urging me to vote against Mark Dayton, and trotting out their favorite Republican candidate: Ronald Reagan. Love the new ideas they have. Love their new candidates. - And who is the Freedom Club State PAC of Minnesota? White suburban businessmen. The kind who give “white,” “suburban” and “businessmen” bad names. - Two years ago on election day, Michael Sokolove visited his hometown of Levittown, Penn., and found people both anxious for change and patient. Here's one former Vietnam Vet: “How long did it take Bush to get us into this mess? It’s a lot easier to screw things up than to make them better.” A shame this isn't the voice we're hearing these days. - Again no link, just a promise. No depression. Tomorrow I'll either be relieved or ... really pissed off. - Vote. Democrat. Jon Stewart's Funny, But... I finally saw the interview with Pres. Obama on “The Daily Show” the other night and thought the president continued to do what I want him to do. He explained, articulately, about the slow business of governing. I was happy at the end. I thought he came off well. I should say “read,” in quotes, because I can only get so far into these things. Their assumptions are not my assumptions. Neither is Jon Stewart's, for that matter. He's had a lot of fun these past two years juxatposing the high rhetoric of politicking with the slow process of governing, but in doing so he comes off as a spoiled shit. He wants it, and he wants it his way, now. I'm a little tired of that attitude. Which increasingly seems to be the American attitude. “The Daily Show” has it both ways. When the Obama administration plays politics, Stewart calls them on it—as he should. But when they don't play politics, when they tell uncomfortable truths, Stewart calls them on that, too. (E.g., “Dude, that's not the way you play the game.”) So “The Daily Show” wins either way. No matter what the Obama administration does, Stewart can make comedy out of it. Listen to Milbank on the appearance: Stewart, who struggled to suppress a laugh as Obama defended [Larry] Summers, turned out to be an able inquisitor on behalf of aggrieved liberals. He spoke for the millions who had been led to believe that Obama was some sort of a messianic figure. Obama has only himself to blame for their letdown. By raising expectations impossibly high, playing the transformational figure to Hillary Clinton's status-quo drone, he gave his followers an unrealistic hope. A messianic figure? Who are these people? It's not me. Is it Milbank? Is it Stewart? Again: Obama is doing what I want him to do. And he's doing it in the face of the strongest internal propaganda campaign a sitting president has had to endure (from the right), and dopey liberals, or at least the perception of dopey liberals, who wonder why he hasn't made all the bad things go away (from the left). Here's more from the Post: President Barack Obama barely cracked any jokes during an appearance Wednesday on “The Daily Show” despite host Jon Stewart's attempts to draw out the president's humorous side. Is that criticism? Look, I'm happy that Stewart is holding his rally to restore sanity and/or madness today. I think we need it. I think too many people are buying into too much right-wing propaganda. Plus, who doesn't need a laugh? I'm just tired of Obama being criticized for being the only adult in the room at a time when we desperately need adults in the room. Not spoiled shits. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the “Just a Bunch of Guys” Theory of Al Qaeda I've said it before: If you're going to pay for any magazine in this freebie-content world, particularly a general interest magazine, get The New Yorker. Their Sept. 13th issue is a case in point. Writer Terry McDermott give us a startlingly good, startlingly detailed profile of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the so-called mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and the cause of much fear, in the U.S. press if not in the U.S., because of talk he would get his day in court in New York City. If McDermott's article isn't part of the conversation yet it's because it's not online, or it's only online in an abstract, which means it can't be copied and then disposed of. It also means you have to go get the magazine your own damn self. The takeaway: We tend to think our enemies as united but they're not, any more than a Bush administration of Dick Cheney and Colin Powell was united, any more than the United States of America is united. We tend to think of Al Qaeda as an international terrorist organization when it may just be “a bunch of guys.” This, too: After nine years, we still don't know who our enemies are. Insofar as we know Mohammed, we see him as a brilliant behind-the-scenes tactician and a resolute idealogue. As it turns out, he is earthy, slick in a way, but naive, and seemingly motivated as much by pathology as ideology. [Al Jazeera reporter Yosri] Fouda describes Mohammed's Arabic as crude and colloquial and his knowledge of Islamic texts as almost nonexistent. A journalist who observed Mohammed's apparearance at one of the Guantanamo hearings likened his voluble performance to that of a Pakistani Jackie Mason. A college classmate said that he was an eager participant in impromptu skits and plays. A man who knew him from a mosque in Doha talked about his quick wit and chatty, glad-handing style. He was an operator... Mohammed's parents moved to Kuwait from Pakistan in the 1950s....[where he] was born on April 14, 1965... He and his nephews attended Fahaheel Secondary School... [He] was a superior student... He was also rebellious; he told interrogators that he and his nephew Abdul Basit Abdul Karim (later internationally known as Ramzi Yousef, the man behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center) once tore down the Kuwaiti flag from atop their schoolhouse... In January 1984, Mohammed, travelling on a Pakistani passport, arrived in tiny, remote Murfreesboro, North Carolina, to attend Chowan College, a two-year school that was advertised abroad by Baptist missionaries... Arab students who were there at the time said they were the butt of jokes and harassment, in the anti Muslim era that followed the Iranian takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, in 1979. The local boys called them Abbie Dhabies... They were required, along with all the other students, to attend a weekly Christian chapel service... Mohammed developed a dislike for the U.S. in his time here. He told investigators that he had little contact with Americans in college, but found them to be debauched and racist... [In] 1986, both he and his nephew graduated with engineering degrees. Mohammed returned home to Kuwait... unable to find work... [During the Afghanistan War against the Soviet Union], Mohammed and his brother Abed went to work for Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the leader of Ittihad e-Islami, one of the Afghan-refugee political parties headquartered in Peshawar [Pakistan]... In 1991, [Mohammed's nephew] Basit got in touch with Abdul Hakim Murad, a fellow-Baluchi and a boyhood friend from Kuwait, who was then in the U.S., training as a pilot. Basit told him that he wanted to attack Israel, but thought it too difficult. He would attack America instead. He asked Murad to suggest potential Jewish targets in the United States... “I told him the World Trade Center,” Murad later told investigators... In Karachi [Pakistan], Basit had introduced his pilot friend, Murad, to Mohammed... Mohammed interrogated Murad about flying. Murad, the licensed pilot, at one point suggested to Basit dive-bombing a plane into C.I.A. headquarters... The National Security Council staff in the Clinton White House wanted to pursue Mohammed... The C.I.A. was noncommital. The Pentagon objected vigorously... Instead, the State Department tried to negotiate with the Qataris... By the time the team arrived, Mohammed was gone; someone had apparently warned him that the Americans were coming... [Mohammed] didn't want to join Al Qaeda, he later told his interrogators, but merely sought resources to fund a spectacular attack against the United States.... Mohammed's initial proposal was to hijack a single airplane and crash it, as Abdul Murad had suggested, into C.I.A. headquarters. Bin Laden dismissed this target as inconsequential. So Mohammed proposed hijacking ten airlines in the United States, some on each coast. The plotters would crash nine of them, and Mohammed would triumphantly land the tenth, disembark, and give a speech explaining what he had done and why. Bin Laden thought that the plan was too complicated. It was not until late 1999 that he approved a somewhat less ambitious proposal: the 9/11 plan.... A Pakistani Jackie Mason Three Winston Churchill Quotes to Use Against Conservatives Who Quote Winston Churchill From Adam Gopnik's excellent essay, "Finest Hours: The making of Winston Churchill," in the August 30th issue of The New Yorker: - The word ‘appeasement’ is not popular, but appeasement has its place in all policy, he said in 1950. “Make sure you put it in the right place. Appease the weak, defy the strong.” He argued that “appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble and might be the surest and perhaps the only path to world peace.” - This faith in government as the essential caretaker led him later to support the creation of a national health service, “in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available.” - This habit of thinking about peoples and their fate in collective historical cycles, however archaic it might seem, gave him special insight into Hitler, who, in a Black Mass distortion, pictured the world in the same way. Both Churchill and Hitler were nineteenth-century Romantics, who believed in race and nation—in the Volksgeist, the folk spirit—as the guiding principle of history, filtered through the destinies of great men. ...Of course, Churchill and Hitler were, in the most vital respects, opposites. Churchill was, as Lukacs insists, a patriot, imbued with a love of place and people, while Hitler was a nationalist, infuriated by a hatred of aliens and imaginary enemies. But Churchill knew where Hitler was insecure and where he was strong, and knew how to goad him, too. Democracy is Dead. Discuss. Nothing v. All "There's gotta be some kind of rebellion between the people that have nothing and the people that got it all. I don't understand. There's no in-between no more. There's the peple that got it all and the people that have nothing." —Peoria, Ill., man, in 2009, about to be put out of his home, in Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story." I have some sympathy for this guy but I still wonder about his voting patterns. Did he vote, for example, for Ronald Reagan for president? Once? Twice? When Reagan came into office in 1981, the tax rate for the wealthiest one percent of the country was 69%. When he left office? 28%. The rich got richer under Reagan and the unions got screwed. And that's just the beginning. Moore's doc is best in that short segment on the Reagan years but in the end he winds up flailing all over the place, and pulling the usual stunts about not getting into places he'd never get into. Most egregiously, he makes the initial bailout, the TARP bailout in September 2008, seem like a Bush plot when it was actually a repudiation of everything Bush believed in and stood for. It was a caving in. It was a mea culpa without the mea culpa. But the Peoria man's question is the right question. How did we lose our middle class? For me, the answer starts with Reagan and those tax rates. So the question for today isn't whether or not to roll back the Bush tax cuts from 35% to 39%. The question is why stop there? And why stop at the "top one percent," which supposedly includes families making $250,000 a year? Why not divide this group further? The top .5 percent. The top .1 percent. Tax those making $1 million at a higher rate, and tax those making $10 million at a higher rate, and those making $100 million at a higher rate, etc., etc., until maybe we have something like a middle class again. How I'm Like Dick Cheney This morning I had an epiphany: I realized I was like Dick Cheney. Not a pleasant thing for a lifelong Democrat and fervent Obama supporter to realize. But helpful nonetheless. I realized I was like Dick Cheney when I was making a sandwich before work. Patricia has been sick for four days now, and I’m a bit of a germaphobe, and so for four days I’ve been extra careful about touching things around the house, and washing my hands after I touch things around the house, particularly if I’m going to make something that goes in my mouth—like a sandwich before work. But it’s been four days now, and Patricia is feeling better, and I’m hoping that the cold germs have passed through our home like a bad wind. Even so, as I was making that sandwich, I thought, vis a vis the cold germs that might be lingering: They only need to succeed once. And that’s when I realized I was like Dick Cheney. Because that was his attitude after 9/11. Terrorists were germs, they only needed to succeed once, and once they infiltrated our body they would make us sick. It helped me better understand Cheney. Yes, “understand,” a word that the extreme right likes to sneer at, because they feel they already understand it all, and anyway understanding often leads to sympathy and they want none of that. To them, sympathy and understanding make us weak. And in a way they do. My epiphany this morning about Dick Cheney, for example, weakened some of my hatred for Dick Cheney. I saw him in a new light. “Oh. So Dick Cheney’s like me when Patricia’s sick.” Here’s the key. I don’t like myself when Patricia’s sick. I don’t like being super paranoid about everything I touch. It’s no way to live. I’ve said this often. I try to change. Paranoia gets in the way of living my life. It upends my life. My fear of getting sick actually sickens me—not physically so much as mentally and spiritually. We’re scared enough already, but to be that scared? That’s really no way to live. And that’s Dick Cheney. The left sees him as a monster, and in a way he is, but at the same time it must be awful to be Dick Cheney. To be so fearful and paranoid all the time. It must warp your mind and sicken your soul. Cold germs, after all, pass. Review: “The Tillman Story” (2010) WARNING: REDACTED SPOILERS As someone who just lived through the 2000s I can honestly say that W.H. Auden didn’t know from low dishonest decades. Auden used the phrase in his poem, “September 1, 1939,” about the 1930s: I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade... His low dishonest decade ended with war, ours began with it. The dishonesty of his decade was the enemy’s, masterminded by Nazi Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebels, which played on our hopes for peace. The dishonesty of our decade was our own, the Bush administration’s, masterminded by Karl Rove, which played on our fears, as well as our corresponding need for heroes. The administration that couldn’t stop attacking Hollywood kept using the tropes of Hollywood to gather power and silence opposition. Pat Tillman was a minor figure in all of this, a pawn in the Bush administration’s game, and “The Tillman Story,” a documentary written by Mark Monroe and directed by Amir Bar-Lev, is his family’s attempt to set the record straight. Most of us are familiar with some part of the story. On Sept. 10, 2001, Pat Tillman was a an All-Pro safety with the Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League, happily married and making millions of dollars. Eight months later he joined the U.S. Army Rangers. He served a tour in Iraq in 2003. In his second tour, in Afghanistan, on April 22, 2004, he was killed. He was posthumously promoted to corporal and awarded the Silver Star, the Army’s third-highest award for combat valor, because of “gallantry on the battlefield for leading his Army Rangers unit to the rescue of comrades caught in an ambush,” according to the New York Times. A memorial service was held in San Jose, Cal., and Tillman was eulogized by the Pentagon, by politicians, and throughout the media as a patriotic hero-soldier who died selflessly for his country and for his fellow soldiers. Except it was a lie. During an ambush by enemy forces near the village of Sperah, close to the Pakistan border, yes, Tillman led several men to higher ground; but they were subsequently mistaken for the enemy and fired upon by their own troops. Tillman and a member of the Afghanistan Military Police were killed by friendly fire. Everyone on the ground knew this. There was no mistaking it. But the lie got out quickly. Reading the first, heroic press accounts, with details provided by the Pentagon, is to be steeped in Bush-era bullshit. From USA Today: When the rear section of their convoy became pinned down in rough terrain, Tillman ordered his team out of its vehicles “to take the fight to the enemy forces” on the higher ground. As Tillman and other soldiers neared the hill's crest, he directed his team into firing positions, the Army said. As he sprayed the enemy positions with fire from his automatic rifle, he was shot and killed. The Army said his actions helped the trapped soldiers maneuver to safety “without taking a single casualty”... A month later, the truth seeped out, but it wasn’t well-covered. As the saying goes: the mistake is always on page 1, the retraction on page 14. From the May 30th New York Times: Ex-Player's Death Reviewed Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals football player, was probably killed by allied fire as he led his team of Army Rangers up a hill during a firefight in Afghanistan last month, the Army said. Sometimes there’s no retraction at all. The following is every USA Today news headline about Tillman from 2004. Notice how they fed on him until they didn't: - Tillman killed in Afghanistan (April 23, 2004) - Moment of silence at NFL draft (April 24, 2004) - Tillman's legacy of virtue (April 25, 2004) - Body returns to U.S. (April 26, 2004) - Army promotes Tillman to corporal (April 29, 2004) - Tillman posthumously awarded Silver Star (April 30, 2004) - Items related to Tillman sold on E-bay (May 2, 2004) - Tillman mourned by hometown (May 2, 2004) - Tillman memorial service held in San Jose (May 3, 2004) - Arizona salutes Tillman (May 8, 2004) - Report details Tillman's last minutes (Dec. 5, 2004) Not only did Tillman not die the way they said, he didn’t live the way they said, either. “He didn’t really fit into that box they would’ve liked,” Tillman’s mother, Mary, mentions in the doc. He joined the Rangers to fight al Qaeda but wound up in Iraq and wasn’t happy. “This war is so fucking illegal,” one of his brothers quotes him saying. He had an open curious mind at odds with the incurious absolutism of the time. There’s hilarious footage of Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity refusing to believe that Tillman read linguist and conservative bete noire Noam Chomsky. (Because it didn’t fit into their notions of a football player? A soldier? A conservative hero? All of the above?) Fellow Ranger Bryan O’Neal, a Mormon, talks about coming across Tillman, a religious skeptic, possibly an atheist, reading “The Book of Mormon.” He wanted to see what was what. He swore like a truck driver and loved risking his life. He jumped from high places and climbed to higher places. He was that rare tough guy who didn’t need to show how tough he was. He never hazed recruits. He didn’t yell and get into the face of men who screwed up—as is the Army way. O’Neal recounts how, when he screwed up, Tillman took him aside and told him how disappointed he was. That was it. According to O’Neal, that was enough. This is straight out of his father’s vocabulary, by the way. In the doc, Patrick Tillman says he’s “disappointed” in Pfc. Russell Baer, Tillman’s fellow Ranger, who was the first to lie to the family about the incident. He tells the Army in 2005 that he’s “disappointed” in them, too. The mother is lauded in the doc but the father dominates it. Thinner than his son, with the same lantern jaw, he seethes with rage. Still. He wants the answer to a simple question: Who lied about his son’s death? Eventually he tells the Army, in writing, “fuck you,” and this—and a Washington Post editorial—got their attention. In August 2005, the Pentagon launched an internal investigation into the incorrect reports of Tillman’s death. In March 2007, the report pinned the blame on a lieutenant general who had already retired. They took away one of his stars. There were some congressional hearings, and joint chiefs and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denied knowledge of blah blah blah, and had no recollection of yadda yadda. It all petered out. “The Tillman Story” is a sad story but it’s not a great doc. It focuses too much attention on the Tillman family rather than on Tillman himself. Like the family, it can’t accept the military’s non-answer, and, panning up the command flowchart to Pres. George W. Bush, spends too much time insinuating who might’ve ordered the falsification of Tillman’s death. At the same time, it’s so vague in describing Tillman’s actual death that a friend, who saw the doc the same time I did, assumed Tillman had been “fragged” rather than killed by friendly fire. For all the attempts to release Tillman from his box, too, its portrait isn’t as complete as in Jon Krakauer’s book “Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman.” In particular it ignores an incident during his senior year of high school, when Tillman, thinking he was defending a friend from an ass-whooping, put an innocent kid into the hospital. His life was nearly derailed by this—he served jail time and came close to losing his scholarship to Arizona State—but he came out of it, according to Krakauer, more contemplative and slower to temper. He came out closer to the man he would become. The doc would’ve benefited from this story. But it’s a good reminder. Just six years ago we were all living through this: Jessica Lynch, WMDs, smoking gun/mushroom cloud, Video News Releases (VNRs), fake White House correspondents, the firing of U.S. attorneys, the outing of Valerie Plame, “greeted with flowers,” “Mission Accomplished,” “a few bad apples,” “last throes.” And Pat Tillman. What company to keep. If I were his family, I’d be enraged, too. Off By That Much "At headquarters, the agency kept advising Truman that China would not enter the [Korean] war on any significant scale. On October 18, as MacArthur's troops surged north toward the Yalu River and the Chinese border, the CIA reported that 'The Soviet Korean venture has ended in failure.' On October 20, the CIA said that Chinese forces detected at the Yalu were there to protect hydro-electric power plants. On October 28, it told the White House that those Chinese troops were scattered volunteers. On October 30, after American troops had been attacked, taking heavy casualties, the CIA reaffirmed that a major Chinese intervention was unlikely. A few days later, Chinese-speaking CIA officers interrogated several prisoners taken during the encounter and determined that they were Mao's soldiers. Yet CIA headquarters asserted one last time that China would not invade in force. Two days later 300,000 Chinese troops struck with an attack so brutal that it nearly pushed the Americans into the sea." —from Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA," pp. 58-59, beginning, or continuing, a tradition of faulty intelligence that invariably missed the biggest foreign policy events of the 20th century and beyond. Quote of the Day “Politically, these issues are poisonous. That’s what Rahm Emanuel is looking at. [But] you can’t finesse it, and you can’t spin it. The President just has to lead the American people away from fear.” —Elisa Massimino, the president of Human Rights First, on civilian trials vs. military tribunals, Guantanamo, and what kind of war is the War on Terror, in Jane Mayer's New Yorker article, "The Trial: Eric Holder and the battle over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed." - The New York Times gives equal weight to all sides by letting five lawyers, including Andrew McCarthy, who led the prosecution in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and is now legal affairs editor of The National Review, have their say. - Jon Stewart spars with conservative columnist and former Bush administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen on "The Daily Show." - Scott Horton is less kind to Thiessen in this Harper's column. - A letter from conservative lawyers, such as Ken Starr, coming to the defense of Dept. of Justice lawyers against the attacks of Liz Cheney's organization "Keep America Safe." From PC to Protests: How the Right became everything it despised in the Left A week ago Friday I was walking through downtown Seattle on my way to work when I noticed, from 6th and Olive, a small group of protesters standing with signs over on 6th and Stewart. I wasn’t wearing my glasses so I couldn’t tell what exactly they were protesting, and gave a momentary thought to checking them out, but kept going my usual way. At 5th I saw two of the protesters talking to some folks. One of the them held a sign I could now read: Lord, I thought. So: Engage them? Ask them where they’ve been during the last eight years—when our national debt more than doubled from $5 trillion to over $10 trillion? Ask them if they voted for George W. Bush, whose policies and lack of foresight and accountability brought us to this place? Did they double-down in 2004? Instead I continued on 5th Avenue, where, under the monorail, I saw a few cops, then a few more, then a larger contingent. They were there to protect the protest, or the march, or whatever it was—I didn't see any reports on it. Then I noticed how much traffic was backed up. I thought of the time lost and the tax dollars and oil wasted for these 50 or so protesters. And I thought this of members of the tea party: “Get a job.” Has the right-wing become everything it used to despise? They’re all whiners and protesters now. They attack authority—judges, Congress, Democratic presidents. They’re politcally correct, scouring media and movies for signs of the slightest offense. (Some even objected to “The Blind Side,” a positive story about a white southern Christian family, because there's a quick W. joke in the middle of it.) The recent Conservative Political Action Conference called itself "Woodstock" for conservatives. Remember “Easy Rider”—the hippie-biker film from 1969? Its tagline: “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere." That’s how these guys feel. They keep wondering where their America went. They keep talking about getting it back. But they’re repeating history as farce. The marches of the civil rights movement were borne because a group of people had no voice in government and second-class status everywhere. The tea party protests—at least the wing of it most concerned with fiscal responsibility—seem to have been borne because the voice they had in government led to a place they didn’t want to be: with the country overwhelmingly in debt and foundering on the brink of economic disaster. In this way they could be like anti-war protesters of the 1960s, who most likely voted for LBJ over that nuke-loving extremist Barry Goldwater and wound up in a place they didn’t want to be: in a full-fledged war in Vietnam. The difference? These folks protested LBJ. They took to the streets in ’66, ’67, ’68. They didn’t wait for Nixon to get into office. The Tea Partiers were silent for eight years while their guy wrecked the country, then took to the streets as soon as he left. Last week before going to bed I read Ben McGrath’s piece on the tea partiers in the Feb. 1st New Yorker and got so angry I couldn’t fall asleep until after 1 a.m. I guess I was mostly angry at McGrath and The New Yorker for giving deluded, potentially dangerous people a prominent place to air their views. Fanning the flames in the piece was U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis, 4th district, Kentucky, who says cap-and-trade legislation would be “an economic colonization of the hard-working states that produce the energy, the food, and the manufactured goods of the heartland, to take that and pay for social programs in the large coastal states.” Jesus. Can we have a discussion in this country? Can we have a back-and-forth? The above is like Reagan’s welfare mother with her Cadillac: an urban myth that won't go away. Time and again, statitistics show that the states who get more tax dollars back than they put in tend to be the quote-unquote heartland states. For the last year available, 2005, Davis’ Kentucky is at no. 9 on this list. Kentuckians got back $1.51 for every $1.00 they put in. For which they're complaining. Or Davis is. Here are the big winners in the federal tax game, as per the conservative, anti-tax Tax Foundation: 1. New Mexico 5. West Virginia 6. North Dakota 8. South Dakota Meanwhile the states that get the least bang for their tax buck? The ones who get screwed in this game? Those awful coastal and liberal Midwest states: 42. New York 47. New Hampshire 50. New Jersey The tea-partiers actually have a legitimate gripe—about the power of corporations and government—but they're not griping legitimately. Some of them are just plain nuts. They’re “we didn’t land on the moon” nuts. John McCain is a communist. All political parties bow down before George Soros. And many believe in Edgar Cayce? Really? So the tea partiers are full of discontented New Agers? Who were, what, discontent hippies? No wonder they seem like hippies. This is even nuttier. From McGrath: An online video game, designed recently by libertarians in Brooklyn, called “2011: Obama’s Coup Fails” imagines a scenario in which the Democrats lose seventeen of nineteen seats in the Senate and a hundred and seventy-eight in the House during the midterm elections, prompting the President to dissolve the Constitution and implement an emergency North American People’s Union, with help from Mexico’s Felipe Calderón, Canada’s Stephen Harper, and various civilian defense troops with names like the Black Tigers, the International Service Union Empire, and CORNY, or the Congress of Rejected and Neglected Youth. Lou Dobbs has gone missing, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh turn up dead at a FEMA concentration camp, and you, a lone militiaman in a police state where private gun ownership has been outlawed, are charged with defeating the enemies of patriotism, one county at a time. The final straw for the left was domestic terrorism, the Weather Underground, etc., which pretty much destroyed any progressive movement in this country for decades. Is that where the right is now? Anti-tax proponents emulate al Qaeda by flying planes into federal buildings, killing innocent people. Their actions are sympathized with by Republican congressmen. Republicans running for president condone such violence. I don’t want this. I really don’t. I want a strong, smart opposition, and the right is becoming a dumb, dangerous farce. And all the while our country suffers. Miss Me Yet? - II “As Steve Coll wrote in The New Yorker in April 2006, Saddam [Hussein] could not bring himself to admit that there were no weapons of mass destruction, 'because he feared a loss of prestige, and, in particular, that Iran might take advantage of his weakness—a conclusion also sketched earlier by the C.I.A.-supervised Iraq Survey Group. He did not tell even his most senior generals that he had no W.M.D. until just before the invasion. They were appalled, and some thought he might be lying, because, they later told their interrogators, the American government insisted that Iraq did have such weapons. Saddam ”found it impossible to abandon the illusion of having W.M.D.,“ the study says. The Bush war cabinet, of course, clung to the same illusion, and a kind of mutually reinforcing trance took hold between the two leaderships as the invasion neared...' ”A Gallup poll conducted in May 2003 indicated that 79 percent of Americans believed the Iraq war was 'justified.'“ —from Jon Krakauer's ”Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman," pp. 214-15 Miss Me Yet? "Jessica Lynch dominated the news for weeks. The details of the incident provided by military public affairs officers made for an absolutely riveting story that television, radio and print journalists found irresistible: a petite blond supply clerk from a flea-speck burg in West Virginia is ambushed in Iraq and fearlessly mows down masked Fedayeen terrorists with her M16 until she runs out of ammo, whereupon she is shot, stabbed, captured, tortured, and raped before finally being snatched from her barbaric Iraqi captors during a daring raid by American commandos... "Subsequent reporting by investigative journalists revealed that most of the details of Lynch's ordeal were extravagantly embellished, and much of the rest was invented out of whole cloth. Because her rifle had jammed, she hadn't fired a single round. Although her injuries had indeed been life threatening, they were exclusively the result of her Humvee smashing into Hernandez's tractor trailer; she was never shot, stabbed, tortured, or raped. After she had been transferred to Saddam Hussein General Hospital, her captors treated her with kindness and special care. And when the American commandos arrived at the hospital to rescue Lynch, they met no significiant resistance. "The spurious particulars did not come from Private Lynch. The bogus story was based on information fed to gullible reporters by anonymous military sources. The government official who arranged for reporters to interview these sources—the guy who deserves top biling for creating the myth of Jessica Lynch, in other words—was a White House appparatchik named Jim Wilkinson. Although his official job description was director of strategic communcations for General Tommy Franks... actually Wilkinson served as the Bush administration's top 'perception manager' for the Iraq War." —from Jon Krakauer's "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman," pp. 180-81 Picture making the rounds on conservative blogs. Quote of the Other Day — Republican Incoherence and You “On every single major issue of the day, [the Republicans] are incoherent. They have no workable plans to insure the uninsured and no practical way to contain healthcare costs; most deny climate change even exists; most seek to prolong wars because ... er, we have to be tough; their response to the massive debt is to defend Medicare and call for tax cuts; their position on civil rights is that gay people need to go to Jesus; their position on terror suspects is to detain them and torture them, violating domestic and international law; their position on immigration is to round up millions and force them to go home. ”My worry, however, is that there are enough Americans perfectly happy to live with this nihilism indefinitely, and to perpetuate the policies of spend-and-borrow and invade-and-occupy that any serious attempt to address our problems is impossible. And their response to that will be to blame all those problems on a Democratic president, if there is one; and if there's a Republican president, to simply deny that any of the problems exist at all. —Andrew Sullivan, “Tactics Over Strategy” Who's Controlling the News? Not Auletta "You missed it." I kept thinking of that line from “All the President’s Men” while reading Ken Auletta’s Jan. 25th New Yorker piece, “Non-Stop News: Who’s Controlling White House Coverage?” Auletta missed the story. Shame. I normally like Auletta. The story for me doesn’t begin until the fifth of 11 sections, the one beginning “Like other American workers, journalists these days are crunched, working harder with less support and holding tight to their jobs” and ending with a quote from Chuck Todd, who, this section tells us, is not only NBC’s White House correspondent and political director, but is busy from dusk 'til dawn with appearances on “Today,” “Morning Joe,” his own (aptly named) “The Daily Rundown,” along with the usual blogging and tweeting from and to various sites. The news cycle is now a cycle in the way that time is a cycle. It never stops. As a result, Todd, and other journalists, have no time for in-depth coverage or even deep thought or analysis. “We’re all wire-service reporters now,” Todd says. The sixth section is also about how technology has transformed media matters but this time from a White House perspective. “The biggest White House press frustration is that nothing can drive a news cycle anymore,” Republican political advisor Mark McKinnon says. Auletta then goes on to criticize the Obama White House for being too slow and reactive. He criticizes Press Secretary Robert Gibbs because “he rarely asserts control from the podium, to steer the press onto the news that Obama wants to make.” I.e., He’s not telling the newsmen what the news is. One could argue he’s treating them like adults. So if we’re all wire-service reporters now, and the Obama White House isn’t steering these reporters towards the news, who is? That’s where it gets scary. Auletta writes: “What the press is paying attention to, [former Obama White House Communications Director] Anita Dunn says, is cable and blog attacks on the Obama Administration.” And who’s steering those? Guess. That’s the story: In an increasingly fragmented, perpetual news-cycle world, who or what is steering the news? That’s even the story in Auletta’s headline, isn’t it? And he still misses the story. Because much of Auletta’s piece is old news. Has the mainstream media been pro-Obama? Is Pres. Obama too prickly with the media now that the honeymoon is over? Should he be lecturing the media on its faults the way he does? About how the media focuses on the most extreme elements on both sides? About how they’re only interested in conflict? Early on, Auletta quotes from a PEW Research Report on Obama’s early glowing press coverage: The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan media-research group concurred; tracking campaign coverage, it found that McCain was the subject of negative stories twice as frequently as Obama. (The study says that the press was influenced by Obama’s commanding lead in the polls—the kind of ‘Who won today?’ journalism he now decries.) Allow me a sports metaphor. Do we assume that Albert Pujols gets more positive press coverage than, say, Yuniesky Betancourt? Of course he does. He’s a better ballplayer. Our eyes see it, the stats prove it. Unfortunately, politics has no such stats beyond poll numbers and votes. I’m not suggesting that Barack Obama is Albert Pujols; I’m merely suggesting that, in dealing with two political figures, we’re not dealing with two interchangeable blocks of wood. I’m suggesting that the mainstream press cannot pretend that the Yuniesky Betancourts of the political, legal or business realms are equal to the Albert Pujolses of same, without losing as much credibility as they would if they misreported facts. Objectivity is not stupidity. Let me add, not being a journalist, that I have no idea how you work this out within the constraints of objective journalism. But make no mistake: This is an issue for objective journalism. If objective journalism is to survive. Perhaps more importantly, does the Pew Research Center Project include FOX News and conservative radio in their study of mainstream media? If not, why not? The notion that “the media” is limited to The New York Times goes against what should be the brunt of this article. We’re in the middle of a whole new ballgame. Auletta quotes ABC’s Jake Tapper on the matter. “This President has been forced to deal with more downright falsehoods than any President I can think of,” Tapper says. Auletta then lists off some examples: “Obama was brought up a Muslim; he was not born in the U.S.; he studied at a madrassa in Indonesia.” How about: Obama is Hitler? He wants to kill your grandmother? He’s destroying the foundation of American society? That’s daily fodder in these venues, and it keeps seeping out, and it becomes the story. Even when it becomes the joke story, on “The Daily Show,” or “The Colbert Report,” it’s still the story. In addressing these falsehoods in an objective matter, or a jokey matter, how are you not perpetuating these falsehoods? That’s the issue. This was the issue in the summer of 2008 and in the fall of 2009. And today. And for 10 pages of prime New Yorker real estate, Auletta misses it. Steve Tesich Quote of the Day As an immigrant to the United States, Mr. Tesich says, he was for a long time very positive and very optimistic about this country. That optimism, he says, has changed, and the change started with Vietnam. "I didn't just love America," he says. "I was in love with America. I honestly believed that it was going to be one of those nations that would take care of everybody, that would try to make its rewards available to all. And now I feel there is absolutely no agenda for helping those on the bottom in this country. Nobody is really interested in them. And I don't know what the country stands for." The word I'd use to sum up the decade. I'm bushed, you're bushed, we've all been Bushed—the country and the world. We need a new starting line. Hey, here comes one now. Quote of the Day “What delight and joy in reading the Auburn Plainsman's Ben Bartley, some red-white-and-blue type guy from Texas who's fuming that such an anti-corporate, anti-arrogant, anti-Bush legacy, pro-eco, pro-nativist pantheist tract is raking it in big-time and spreading the myth everywhere, and there's nothing this guy can do about it. Hah! Eat shit, Christian asshole!” Lancelot Links (Wants to Deck Someone) - John Perr's blog, "Crooks and Liars," takes Sarah Palin apart for her massive ignorance of the history of our country, but equally important, not to mention related, is the accompanying graph (below) on the recent tax rate of our lowest and highest income brackets. During World War II, which Palin insists, in a Washington Post Op-Ed of all places, was paid for by war bonds (volunteerism), the top income bracket was taxed at 94%. Ninety-four percent! So much for voluteerism. Now they're taxed at 35 percent. Me, I'd raise it back to at least 50 percent —at least—as it was from 1982 to 1986. Reagan years, people. Everyone in this bracket is making tons of money off of a system they were born into and it's time they showed their appreciation to that system, and the long-term stability of that system, by, yes, "volunteering" to give back. Read the whole piece, it's worth it: - My man! Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) takes down Sen. John Thune (R-SD) on the health care bill. Franken, by way of Pat Moynihan, has given us a mantra for this age of disinformation: "You're entitled to your own opinion, you're not entitled to your own facts." I particularly like how frustrated and angry Franken gets by the end. You can tell he's fed up. These people keep lying. - It's actually worse. These people make careers out of accusing the opposition of doing what they do. It's the absolutist right, not the relativist left, that's as close to a fascistic organization as this country has ever had. The Nazis, remember, started out as a vocal minority, an absolutist, bullying, hateful group that wheedled its way into power and then shut out all opposition. That's the absolutist right in this country. And their latest alley-oop accusation? Via the Daily Show: Global-warming debunkers are now accusing global-warming proponents (i.e., the scientific community) of believing what they believe...for money! The idea being that global warming is big business so it doesn't matter if it's true or not. Nice. Because we all know it's the opposite of that. Global warming continues because of big business, because of the money that's made pumping what we pump into the air. The whole thing is so awful it makes you want to retch. It makes you want to deck somebody. - A voice of reason in this wretched political world? Hendrik Hertzberg. Again. - And another. It's worth watching Pres. Obama interviewed by Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes." He's a serious man in serious times surrounded by the unserious and the moronic. By people who are dicking around. And not just the absolutist right and not just the mainstream media but you and me. We create all of this. Every second, with every decision, we create our world. - And even this serious interview gets an idiotic response from Dana Perino, whose 15 minutes, in a normal world, that is a non-cable, non-fragmented world, would be up. Yet she keeps talking. She says that President Obama's suggestion that President Bush "was too triumphant in his rhetoric when talking about war...is demonstrably false." The obvious follow-up? "Can you demonstrate it?" But she was on FOX News so they didn't ask the obvious follow-up. Here. Here are the three words that demonstrate the truth of what Pres. Obama implied about Pres. Bush: "Bring 'em on." Do we need more? Do we need to recall the swagger and the smirk? The aircraft carrier and flight suit? The "Mission Accomplished" banners? The talk of good and evil? The covering up of America's war dead? Damn, people, it wasn't even 10 years ago. - But apparently some people can't even remember January 19, 2009. - First, The Daily Show helped expose Glenn Beck's inciting panic/encouraging gold-buying and repping for Goldline. Now it's The Colbert Report's turn. "'Pray on it.' Like we're preying on you." Brilliant. Here's an in-depth look from the L.A. Times. The question that needs to be asked—and I mean this—is: Why is Glenn Beck trying to destroy this country? - To end on an up note, here's Pres. Obama's speech after winning the Nobel Prize. It's a serious speech by a serious man in serious times. Read the whole thing. An excerpt: - We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak -- nothing passive -- nothing naïve -- in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King. But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason. - We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. - It feels like Richard Brody is a bit too kind to Wes Anderson in his Nov. 2nd, New Yorker profile on the director, "Wild, Wild Wes." Or maybe he's simply too kind to Anderson's 2003 film, "The Life Aquatic," which came on the heels of his biggest hit ("The Royal Tenenbaums"), which came on the heels of his most critically acclaimed film ("Rushmore"). After detailing several critic complaints about "Aquatic," Brody writes: "In fact, 'The Life Aquatic" does tell a story, but it's one that sprawls with an epic ambition and a picaresqe wonder. Anderson's playfully unstrung storytelling was both purposeful and meaningful: life in the wild, the film suggests, doesn't follow the neat contours of dramatic suspense but is filled with surprises, accidents, and sudden lurches off course. ... 'The Life Aquatic' was proof of Anderson's maturation as an artist..." - Come again? Here's my 2007 take on Anderson and his ouevre. I actually like Anderson, within limits, which I hope my article makes clear, but I'm not a fan of "Aquatic," for reasons stated, none of which has to do with its lack of storytelling. The short version of Brody's article is here, but you have to buy, or borrow from your local library, the Nov. 2nd New Yorker to read it in full. Or subscribe. I recommend subscribing already. - The Washington Post focuses on a quiet but powerful contingent that is being ignored in the same-sex marriage debate: the ex-spouses of now-out-of-the-closet gay men and women. This section in particular packs a whallop: Many of these former spouses -- from those who still feel raw resentment toward their exes to those who have reached a mutual understanding -- see the legalization of same-sex marriage as a step toward protecting not only homosexuals but also heterosexuals. If homosexuality was more accepted, they say, they might have been spared doomed marriages followed by years of self-doubt. "It's like you hit a brick wall when they come out," Brooks said. "You think everything is fine and then, boom!" Carolyn Sega Lowengart calls it "retroactive humiliation." It's that embarrassment that washes over her when she looks back at photographs or is struck by a memory and wonders what, if anything, from that time was real. Did he ever love her? "I'm 61 years old," said Lowengart, who lives in Chevy Chase. "Will I ever know what it's like to be loved passionately? Probably not." - I'm going to have to permanently link to Joe Posnanski below but in the meantime here's his early Hall of Fame arguments and they warm the cockles of my cold, cold Seattle heart. Actually his argument is: Who is the best eligible hitter not in the Hall of Fame? He then goes through the usual suspects. Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe and Barry Bonds are not eligible so he eliminates them. Mark McGwire? Impressive, certainly. A homer ever 8 at-bats, "but we knew how he did it," and anyway there's that lifetime .263 batting average. Dick Allen? Don Mattingly? Minnie Monoso? Babe Herman? I'll cut to the chase—particularly since the photo at right is a giveaway. Posnanski suggests Edgar Martinez. He talks about why he's a great hitter, all of which should be familiar to Seattle fans (lifetime: .300/.400/.500), and why he won't make it anyway, which will also be familiar to Seattle fans. Edgar's got the percentage numbers, but he played the majority of his career as a DH and he didn't play long enough to accumulate the gross numbers: the 3,000 hits, etc., because the Mariners (idiots!) didn't bring him up until he was 27. If he'd played his entire career at third, I think he would've made it. If he'd been a DH but had the cumulative numbers, I think he would've made it. It's the two together that put the kibosh on him. Of course I'd vote for him in a second but I'm obviously biased. At the same time, here's my non-bias: How many career .300/.400.500 guys, with as many at-bats as Edgar, aren't in the Hall of Fame? Extra credit. We've just been talking lately about what a great pitcher Mariano Rivera is. So how did Edgar do against Rivera? 16 at-bats, 10 hits, 3 doubles, 2 homeruns, 6 RBIs. A .625 batting average and a 1.888 OPS. Don't know if anyone with double-digit at-bats against Rivera has ever done better. Obviously that's not an argument in favor of the Hall but it is fun. Michelle Malkin's Journey from A to A There's an odd piece on the Crosscut Web site called "Michelle Malkin's Journey from Ideas to Tribes," by Ross Anderson, a former Seattle Times political writer whose office was next to Malkin's when she was a columnist at the paper from 1996 to 1999. I remember those days and those columns. I remember thinking what a lousy writer she was. I remember wondering if she got the gig because of her race and gender. According to Anderson? Yes: The Times had been looking for a new voice, preferably a minority and a woman. That she turned out to be both of the above, plus a young libertarian was a bonus. Anderson is wondering what happened to the person he knew back then. "I didn’t always agree [with her]," Anderson writes, "but I always enjoyed chatting at our office doors." Now, he says, she's guility of tribalism, a kind of "my people vs. your people" attitude. "Missing are those ideas we exchanged at our office doors," he says. Fine. So what ideas did they exchange at their office doors? "She never asked what I thought," Anderson admits, but he told her anyway. Afterwards, he writes, "Michelle said nothing, resisting an impulse to roll her eyeballs." This is exchanging ideas at office doors? Anderson's description refutes his own premise. Malkin hasn't journeyed anywhere. She didn't care what you thought back then; she doesn't now. "You" being not just Ross Anderson but you. The More Republicans Change: Anger, Paranoia, and Visions of Apocalypse at the 1976 Republican Convention When my girlfriend, Patricia, moved to New York in 1975, she worked as an editorial assistant at New Times, a short-lived but impressive feature news magazine that included Richard Corliss, Frank Rich, Robert Sam Anson and Bob Shrum among its writers. She still has some bound copies. I was leafing through these the other day when I came across a piece by Nora Sayre on the 1976 Republican convention. It's startling how familiar the language is. In the wake of Watergate, in the face of an almost-certain Jimmy Carter victory, these Republicans offer nothing but complaints, paranoia, conspiracy theories and visions of apocalypse. Some samples: That entire shower of joy—the celebration of a happy and healthy America [at the '72 Republican convention]—was a spectral memory in Kansas City in 1976. Never has our social fabric seemed so fragile; today, imperiled by demonic forces that may shatter it from outside or from within, the mere "survival of the nation" is at stake—along with its safety... Ford himself seemed to have forgotten that he had actually been in office, while Goldwater talked as though Carter had been elected eight years ago... [This female delegate's] sense of an America in shreds was echoed by both Ford and Reagan delegates, and reinforced by the speakers, who emphasized that we're in a race with the clock. Goldwater warned that we must "save the last stronghold of freedom on earth," since this "may be the last time" that we'll be able to "defend ourselves against our suicidal slide toward socialism"... A Texan screamed at the nearby New York delegation, "If we fought the Civil War today, we'd win!" His friends broke into a Rebel Yell... On the final night, Reagan caught the mood of his party to perfection when he mused on the letter that he'd been asked to compose for a time capsule that will be unsealed in Los Angeles a hundred years hence. He wondered if "the erosion of freedom that has taken place under Democrat rule" would have prevailed by the Tricentennial, and if "horrible missiles of destruction" would have eliminated "the civilized world we live in." His readers of the next century "might not even get to to read the letter at all" if the Republicans should fail to preserve the liberties that their enemies yearn to demolish. Ecstasy greeted his bleak message, and his followers cheered on having their fears confirmed... Glenn Beck's shit is old... - Here's a good piece by my friend Jessica Thompson, who's lived in India for a year now, on the sexual harassment—called "Eve teasing"—there: "Eve teasing is to sexual harassment what Delhi Belly is to projectile vomiting and diarrhea: both are really ugly things hidden behind a cute name." - Jeff Wells begins the end-of-decade ceremonies with his top 37 (37?) films of 2000-2009. It's a fun list—particularly his no. 1 choice. Have only vaguely thought about my top list, but it would include "The Pianist" (his no. 9) and "United 93" (his no. 5). What else would I have? "Yi Yi"? "Spider-Man 2"? "Munich"? "Brokeback Mountain," definitely. That movie just gets better with age. What about you? What movies in this decade stand out in your mind? - Is "web" really the proper metaphor for this thing? It works, although not with the verb. You crawl a web while we claim to surf this one—and surfing is much cooler than what we do here. The metaphor that comes to my mind is pinball. I bounce from spot to spot. I careen the Pinball. The other day I visited Jeff Wells again, and he bounced me to this James Rocchi piece on MSN about press junkets in general and "Couples Retreat"'s in particular, and after reading one sentence I sought more of Rocchi and bounced all over the place. Found this MSN review on "Transformers 2," which definitely echoes my feelings about that abomination: "Where the first film was desperate, this one is desperate and sad. Where the first film sent mixed messages about ethnic and racial groups and women, this one is overtly racist and sexist. Where the first 'Transformers' was clumsy, 'Revenge of the Fallen' is paralyzed with its own stupidity." Rocchi's own site is here. - Some good lines from Anthony Lane on "The Invention of Lying": "...as for the soundtrack, it’s like being haunted by the ghost of Easy Listening Past. Supertramp and the Electric Light Orchestra are one thing, but Donovan: there’s no excuse. And what really galls is not the songs themselves but the greasy way in which they are wrapped around crucial passages of action, to muffle any awkward transitions; thus, once Mark has armed himself with white lies, he strolls off to reassure all the other miserable folk we have encountered so far—old-timers, bums on the street, a bickering couple—with a smile and a word in their ears. But what word? We can’t tell, because Elvis Costello is busy belting out “Sitting” by the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens." - The New York Times' business column is becoming more of a must-read every day, particularly David Carr's on Monday and David Leonhardt's on Wednesday. This week, Carr wrote a sober, infuriating piece on the $66 million in bonuses delivered to Tribune Co. managers who mostly axed reporters to increase profits...which mostly went to them. Funny how that works. Leonhardt, on Wednesday, wrote of the excesses of left and right economic thinking, and who on the right (Bruce Bartlett) is finally going beyond "cut taxes" as a means to economic stimulus. We'll see how it plays. A smart voice on the right would be a nice change. - Not all these links are worth clicking on, by the way. This is one. I'm sure you heard about it: The First Lady has white, slave-owning ancestors. That's the big story. A bigger story for me is that Mrs. Obama's great-great-grandfather, Dolphus T. Shields, the first child born to Melvina Shields, who was born into slavery, co-founded the First Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., which was pivotal in the civil rights movement. It's amazing, on the one hand, how carefully the Times tells its story, and, on the other, how carelessly. "While [Melvina] was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time." That's in the second graf. I would definitely lose "under circumstances lost in the passage of time," which is, given the circumstances, so romantic a phrase as to be close cousin to "under circumstances now...gone with the wind!" Plus the quotes from Edward Ball, "a historian who discovered that he had black relatives, the descendants of his white slave-owning ancestors," are embarrassing: "We are not separate tribes," he says. "We've all mingled, and we've done so for generations." Nice verb: mingled. - Finally a must-read by another friend, Jim Walsh, in Southwest Journal in Minneapolis, on the funeral of the father of a friend. Jim's the real deal. Not just as a writer. Quote of the Day “I got a note from a good friend yesterday expressing shock, and anger, about Drudge and Malkin's usage of that alleged racial beat-down on a school-bus. On some level, I wonder if something's wrong with me. I'm neither shocked, nor angry. This is exactly how I expected these fools to respond to a black president. ”If anything, I'm a little giddy. For black people, the clear benefit of Obama is that he is quietly exposing an ancient hatred that has simmered in this country for decades. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of us grew tired of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, mostly because they presented easy foils for Limbaugh-land. ... Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance. He tells kids to study--and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness--and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date--and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them." Flash: Rush Limbaugh Has No Genitalia! Frank Rich has a piece in this morning's New York Times on Obama's squandered summer. It's a good piece. He talks up Obama's m.o.: Let everyone else rachet up the rhetoric until it becomes intolerable, and then come in, cool and calm, and direct things like an adult. He did it during the campaign—to both Hilary and McCain—and he's done it now with the health care debate. Rich wonders if it's worth it. Couldn't he have made that speech in June? Why did he let the inmates take over the asylum all summer? Rich says that m.o. is good for winning elections but bad for making policy. It's a particularly bad method when your party dominates the executive and legislative branches of government. Get involved. Now. Don't stay above the fray. Be yourself but direct things daily, rather than seasonally. I tend to agree. There's a stink from the idiocy of this summer that may never wash out. You elect a president, in part, because his is the voice you want to hear every day for the next four years, and I haven't heard enough from Pres. Obama. The voices that seep through tend to be the crazy conservatives, elected or not: Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, the LaRouche-ites. Joe Wilson. Here's a question for Frank Rich, though: To what extent is the media responsible? To what extent are we responsible? This isn't happening in a vaccum. Every day each news organization puts out its material. Every day each person picks up, or at, the material he wants. What material are they picking? What material are we choosing? I've used this example many times before but one more time won't hurt. Say I'm a nationally known media figure in the political realm. Say I've got my own show. And then I say the following: Rush Limbaugh has no genitalia. Literally. He just has a ball of fluff between his legs. Is that news? Not in a serious country. But in this country? Here's the beauty of the accusation: Not only is it sensationalistic, not only is it "sexy"—since it deals with sex, or the lack of it—but it can never be proven without Limbaugh demeaning himself greatly. So it stays out there. Does he or doesn't he? Well, his wife says he does but should we believe her? Can't we hear from an objective source? Is there an objective source? And is that why he smokes those big fat cigars—as compensation? Why can't we get a definitive answer on this! It's the shouted whisper campaign. And it's no more absurd than half the stuff I've heard this summer. Look at Tobin Harshaw's "Opinionator: A Gathering of Opinion from Around the Web" in Friday's Times. It's all about Joe Wilson shouting "You lie!" during the president's speech on Wednesday. Harshaw begins by taking "The Hill," a Capitol Hill liberal newspaper, to task, for its weak response. Then he writes this: So what’s the point, exactly? For conservatives, it’s that another reflexively liberal publication is trying to tarnish a new straight-talker. Straight talker? Why is Harshaw allowing conservatives to frame the debate this way? He even quotes from FOX News: Indeed, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service study found that the House health care bill does not restrict illegal immigrants from receiving health care coverage. You know what else it doesn't restrict? Rush Limbaugh from getting a faux-penis to cover up his lack of genitalia. Just because something isn't restricted doesn't mean it's allowed. Shouldn't Harshaw mention that? But he doesn't. He blabs on. He's got this important platform and he talks about everything that doesn't matter: the conseratives who condemn Wilson; the liberals who support him. Then he ends it with such a facile close I'd edit it out of one of my publications, which is a trade publication, and not The New York Times. We used to live in an echo chamber. We now live in an outragegous chamber. The more outrageous the behavior the more likely it is to get covered. And the feces go flying. I tend to agree with Frank Rich in his column today. It just seems bad form to complain that Pres. Obama—the custodian-in-chief—is cleaning things up seasonally, rather than daily, when most of Rich's colleagues are doing everything they can to keep the feces flying. We are lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky to have Barack Obama as the president of the United States of America. Here's Andrew Sullivan's live blogging of the president's speech before Congress on health care reform. I agree with almost everything Sullivan says. Pres. Obama, too. How Texas Executed an Innocent Man In a 2006 case before the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the death penalty, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that there has not been “a single case—not one—in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.” First, Justice Scalia seems to be employing horse-and-barn-door logic. In order to prevent this horrible thing from happening, we must first let it happen. Second, guilt and innocence are tricky matters, requiring an entire court system to sort out. The assumption that the sorting has been done correctly, 100 percent of the time, for the entire life of our nation and maybe all nations, seems a trifle naive. Third: Cameron Todd Willingham. Does Scalia read The New Yorker—from which the above quote was taken? The Sept. 7 issue has a good long article (“Trial By Fire”) by David Grann on Cameron Todd Willingham, who, in Dec. 1991, watched in horror as his three children were burned to death in their home. A month later he was arrested for arson and manslaughter. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. In Feb. 2004 he was executed by the state of Texas. Grann employs a Rashomon-style type of reporting. But rather than giving us different people’s perspectives of the same event, he gives us different “general perceptions” of the same event. The event is the burning to the ground of a one-story wood-frame house, in Corsicana, Texas, on Dec. 23, 1991. Three children died. The first “general perception” is the immediate one. The wife is away. The father is out front, and frantic, and has to be restrained from trying to re-enter the building, which is erupting in flames. The fire department arrives, too late, and the girls die. It’s a tragedy. The second “general perception” is the one started by the fire investigator, whose maxims include “Fire does not destroy evidence—it creates it," and “The fire tells the story. I am just the interpreter.” The investigator finds the evidence and interprets the story, and in this interpretation Willingham is found wanting and monstrous. Based upon the evidence, he could not have done the said the things he did...unless he started the thing. As a result, neighbors and ministers begin to change their stories. Maybe Willingham wasn’t as distraught as he seemed. Maybe he didn’t try to get back in the house until there were people there to restrain him. Maybe he protested too much. This is the story of a monster who rightfully winds up on death row. The third “general perception” begins in 1999 when a woman named Elizabeth Gilbert volunteers to become a pen pal to someone on death row, and winds up with Cameron Todd Willingham. She listens to his story and doesn’t believe him. Then she begins to research the case. She wonders why neighbors and ministers changed their tune. She questions the mental state of the cellmate who claimed Willingham confessed the crime to him. She doubts Willingham received a fair trial. The case against him is still based upon strong evidence from the fire investigator but it’s beginning to unravel. This is a story full of ambiguity and doubt, which is where most of us live most of the time. What happened again in that one-story wood-frame house? What was the event? The fourth and final “general perception” occurs when Dr. Gerald Hurst, a national fire investigator, looks at the evidence in the case and disagrees vehemently with the local fire investigator, whose interpretations, he says, are all wrong. Fire, after all, is a foreign language. It’s as if the original fire investigator, interpreting Mandarin Chinese, says “Szi means ‘death,’ and that’s why he’s guilty,” and then another interpreter comes along and says, “Wait. Don’t you know szi also means ‘four’? It’s completely innocuous. He’s not guilty at all.” But even though the evidence is found in time, and backed by other, prominent fire investigators, and presented to the powers-that-be in Texas, including Gov. Perry, Willingham is still executed by lethal injection in Feb. 2004. Our story is back to being a tragedy, but now it’s a double tragedy. The girls are killed by fire; the father is killed by us. Cameron Todd Willingham, Justice Scalia. Cameron Todd Willingham. No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day. Last night P and I and Courtney and Eva checked out the town hall madness at Meany Hall on the UW campus. U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott hosted. He was a gracious host. Some in the audience were not gracious guests. It didn’t get as bad as health care town halls I’ve seen on television. The naysayers, who mostly seemed of the Lyndon Larouche camp, simply tried to disrupt things. They shouted comments while Rep. McDermott was mid-sentence. Initially the rest of the folks in the audience turned toward the noise, curiously, but when it continued, when the guy in question wouldn’t shut up, they shouted him down. There was an adamance to this that was refreshing. The best shoutdown, a quiet but poignant shoutdown, came from Rep. McDermott himself. He was talking about a particular universal health-care-coverage proposal and then asked rhetorically, “Where did this idea come from?” One of the rabble-rousers yelled “Communists!” McDermott cocked his head, put his hands on the lectern, and enunciated distinctly: “Richard M. Nixon.” Laughter and applause. There was a lot of applause last night. There were a lot of questions. A lot of people’s concerns were my concerns. This is Seattle so most in the audience wanted the public option if not a complete single-payer system like in Canada. They’re worried they won’t get the public option. They’re worried the Dems will fold. They asked: “What can we do to make sure the public option, or public choice, gets through?” McDermott mentioned showing up, as we were showing up, and letting our voices be heard. He said show up at the rally at Westlake Thursday evening. He said write your Senators. Let them know how you feel. For Washington-ites, you can e-mail Sen. Patty Murray here. You can e-mail Sen. Maria Cantwell here. It’s Google time people. It’s easy to contact these folks. Here are some other resources. T.R. Reid, a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, and the author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, hosted a Frontline special last summer, that you can watch here, at the end of this Q&A. (It’s worth it.) Reid also has a good Op-Ed in The Washington Post: “Five Myths About Health Care Around the World." It continues to startle me how xenophobic this country remains, and how much our xenophobia is used against our better interests. “Communist!” when someone isn’t, “Terrorist!” when they’re not. “Kenyan!” when someone’s American, “Socialist Medicine!” when it’s generally not. And even if it is a socialist system, like Great Britain’s, well, it’s socialist in the sense that our education system and police force and firefighters are socialist. What do these things have in common? They’re essential to our well-being. Isnt health care? Other countries’ health care systems are always used to stifle debate in this country—it’s gotten to the point where merely mentioning it is disparaging it—but who’s happy with our system? We’re locked into our employer’s heath care package (and thus fear getting fired or changing jobs), we waste everyone’s time with “gatekeepers” (and thus have to go through general practitioners to get to specialists), and 20-22% of our heard-earned money goes toward administrative costs rather than, you know, actual medical costs. This compares with 6-10% in other countries. And the nutjobs say we have the best health care in the world? We may spend the most, in terms of GDP, but the World Health Organization ranks the U.S. system 37th. Time to get better. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to write my Senators. Worst Wedding Day Ever I guess I wasn't paying enough attention watching the second episode of "Mad Men," but it took a while for the other shoe to drop. Maybe I was distracted by all the tension involved in the wedding plans. Last season Roger Sterling left his wife for a young thing and now his daughter didn't want the golddigger at her wedding—why should she?—and Roger was drinking too much, and the wife, the original wife, was calm and coy, and so the date of the wedding skipped by me. It wasn't until the episode was two-thirds over that the tumblers fell into place. Odd how the mind works. Appropos of what exactly I suddenly woke up. "Wait a minute," I asked Patricia. "They didn't say the wedding was November 23rd, did they?" "November 23rd. 1963." "The day after Kennedy was assassinated." "They've just given this poor girl one of the saddest days in American history to have her wedding." That's part of the sad fun of "Mad Men." Waiting for history to catch up with its characters. To overwhelm them. ADDENDUM: I wrote the above without realizing that history, or time, had caught up with the final Kennedy brother. Godspeed, Senator. The Reverse Debate Idea The [Bush] aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' —from Ron Suskind's New York Times Magazine article, "Without a Doubt," October 2004 So it goes. So it continues. We thought this was a Bush administration thing but it's obviously a Republican thing. One can see their entire strategy in the above quote. They lie about one thing until it gains traction in the mainstream media, until it becomes a talking point, until it begins to get refuted by responsible sources ... and then they'll lie about something else. The bigger the lie the better. Repeat the lie often enough and people believe it. The point isn't to debate, it's to distract. It's to misread and mislead. It's to accuse the oppositon of being like yourself so the opposition has trouble responding. Democrats are the ones who are fascistic, bullying, and fomenting a civil war? Maybe Dems should accuse Republicans of being vacillating and overly compromising. Maybe that way we can at least have a reverse debate. Truly, there's such awfulness here, such mind-numbing goo, that anyone with a heart can't help but turn away in disgust. Which is also part of the gameplan. The more I think about it, the more I like the reverse debate idea. The point of accusing someone of what they aren't is to make them more of what they are. To a fault. So you accuse compromising Dems of being fascists and Nazis, which makes them even more compromising. So you accuse uncompromising Republicans of being wishy-washy and vacillating—of being hippies, say—in order to make them even more uncompromising. It won't help us get anything done but at least it'll stick them through the looking glass for a while. For a change. Gun Nuts and the People Who Support Them Frank Rich's Sunday column in The New York Times is called "The Guns of August," which was the title of Barbara Tuchman's 1962 account of the beginnings of World War I, which was a favorite book of Pres. Kennedy. He gave copies to the prime minister of England and the U.S. ambassador to France, among others. Rich's column is less about the long and intricate European windings to war than about the same homegrown violence—the culture of it and the cultivation of it—that led to Pres. Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. It's about American gun nuts and the people who support them. Not just the bigmouths of Fox News and far-right radio but elected officials such as Sen. Tom Coburn (R, Ok.), who, when asked if he was troubled by the rising threats against the U.S. government, blamed the government: “Well, I’m troubled any time when we stop having confidence in our government,” the senator said, “but we’ve earned it.” Rich reminds us that Coburn did the same thing in supporting the Barr amendment to the Comprehensive Anti-Terrorism Act of 1995. He said people in this country were worried more about their own government than terrorism: Terrorism in this country obviously poses a serious threat to us as a free society. It generates fear. But there is a far greater fear that is present in this country, and that is fear of our own Government. We should not further that fear. We should not do anything to promote further lack of confidence in our own Government. Public officials must recognize that our citizens fear not only terrorism, but our Government as well. Then there was Rep. Phil Gingrey (R, Ga.) who told Chris Matthews on MSNBC that he saw no reason to discourage citizens from carrying unconcealed weapson to public debates about health insurance. In fact, he seemed to encourage it. He seemed to revel in it. Rich is worried and so am I. He's worried that Pres. Obama is compromising too much with forces that don't compromise and so am I. But mostly he's worried about the rise in the rhetoric of violence and so am I. I wish I could say something insightful about all of this but I've got nothing. Thoughts are welcome. Quote of the Day "Conservatives love to pretend they're the disability community's knights in shining armor when it suits their political purposes. In years past, they tried to co-opt us in the abortion debate by making both subtle and explicit claims that every gimp would be snuffed out in the womb were it not for them staying the liberals' murderous hand. The right has now adapted the tactic to the health care debate, portraying themselves as the defenders and protectors of us meek and vulnerable cripples who dwell in the shadow of a tyrannical and cruel government. "I won't win any Pulitzers for this sentence, but they can take their false magnanimity and go fuck themselves... "The only reason I'm able to live a life with any measure of dignity or independence is because of a government health plan. ... We need health care reform. I need it. Trig needs it. Kids and adults with every kind of disability need it. "What we don't need is a bunch of screeching ideologues attempting to cynically exploit us for purposes of maintaining the status quo." —Mark Siegel, the 19th Floor. Read the whole post and pass it along. The Most Banned Movies Ever! ... Maybe A few days ago The Independent ran a short piece on the most controversial films in...history? Or just 10 banned films? If the former then “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) is the most banned film ever (11 countries), while Singapore, no surprise, is the banningest of all countries, preventing seven of the ten listed films from arriving on their chewing-gum-less shores. A bigger surprise, at least for me, is the second banningest country, Ireland, which refused “Chainsaw,” A Clockwork Orange,” “Life of Brian,” “Freaks” and “The Evil Dead.” And who’s Italy to ban “Last Tango in Paris”? Have they seen some of their own films? I’m also curious what constitutes a ban. Not every film is distributed abroad, so... Do distributors have to begin inquiries before the ban is announced, or are some governments more proactive in their banning? Refusing before it’s offered, as it were. This list includes two best picture nominees (“A Clockwork Orange” and “The Exorcist”) and one best picture winner (“All Quiet on the Western Front”), and it was this last one that intrigued. Which country, you might ask, banned the peace-loving, war-hating “All Quiet”? Why Germany, of course, after the Nazis took power. In fact, according to The Independent... During its brief run in German cinemas in 1930, the Nazis disrupted the viewings by releasing rats in the theatres. Another reminder of what democracy isn’t. Disruption—whether with actual rats or with the kind Rachel Maddow talks about here. Krugman: "Government involvement is the only reason our [health care] system works at all" Please don't buy the various anti-government scare tactics. It's b.s. You probably know it's b.s. Listen to Krugman: Private markets for health insurance, left to their own devices, work very badly: insurers deny as many claims as possible, and they also try to avoid covering people who are likely to need care. Horror stories are legion... Most Americans do have health insurance, and are reasonably satisfied with it. How is that possible, when insurance markets work so badly? The answer is government intervention. Most obviously, the government directly provides insurance via Medicare and other programs. Before Medicare was established, more than 40 percent of elderly Americans lacked any kind of health insurance... The vast majority [of Americans under 65], however, don’t buy private insurance directly: they get it through their employers. There’s a big tax advantage to doing it that way, since employer contributions to health care aren’t considered taxable income. But to get that tax advantage employers have to follow a number of rules; roughly speaking, they can’t discriminate based on pre-existing medical conditions or restrict benefits to highly paid employees. And it’s thanks to these rules that employment-based insurance more or less works... So here’s the bottom line: if you currently have decent health insurance, thank the government... Wearing Wool Caps in 100 Degree Weather It hit 100 degrees in Seattle today. It’s been over 90 degrees for, what, four days in a row now? Five? That’s a lot of heat for a city without much air-conditioning, and where people tend to complain when it hits 78. Seattleites like their weather, like their politicians, temperate. Despite this, biking through downtown this morning, I saw a few people wearing wool caps. Yesterday, when it was already around 75 degrees, I saw a guy wearing a thick coat, a stocking cap, and a determined look of crazy. You avert eyes at that point. You just keep biking. I thought of these folks when I visited Oliver Willis’ site and watched the clip of Orly Taitz on “The Colbert Report.” Stephen was having fun with this lawyer/dentist/realtor and professional debunker of Pres. Obama’s birthplace, but the interview ceased to be funny after a while. The woman is under the mistaken impression that because Pres. Obama’s father was not a citizen of this country, then Pres. Obama cannot be a citizen of this country, and therefore he cannot be president. If her first fact is so wrong, so grossly wrong, why is anyone giving her a forum? But then how does Michelle Malkin get a forum on the "Today" show? How about these folks on “The O’Reilly Factor,” slamming Amsterdam with words meant to evoke ‘60s liberalism (naïve, social tolerance, free love), while ultimately revealing how clueless they are? More and more of the prominent voices on television, on the Internet, and particularly within the Republican party, remind me of folks wearing wool caps in 100 degree weather. I avert my eyes. P.S. Visit Amsterdam. Overreacting with Color Coding: 1975 "The biggest bomb at the Pentagon recently was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's Christmas party for the department's 22,000 employees. The recently appointed secretary decided to introduce himself by throwing a handshaking party. Expecting one of the largest reception lines in history, Rumsfeld had aides devise a three-party, color-coded pass system to prevent congestion and delay. ... There were few takers. Rumsfeld set aside three hours and was prepared to stay longer. Only 200-odd employees showed up, however, and by 4:00 a bewildered Rumsfeld was standing virtually alone with his deputy defense secretary, William Clements." —New Times magazine, January 23, 1976 What I Would've Said If I'd Been with the Cambridge Police Dept. and Seen Henry Louis Gates Breaking Into His Own Home "I really liked 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man.' Good book. Needs an update, though, don't you think? Hey, what are the chances of my nephews getting into Harvard? Ha ha. Just kidding. Well, duty calls. Sorry about the door, sir. You should have somebody look at that." Tax the Rich Already Hed and subhed in today's New York Times: Obama Pushing, But Early Vote on Health Fades Tax on rich is at issue My question: At issue? For whom? Prescient Quote of the Day "She may decide that she does not need office in order to have great influence—any more than Rush Limbaugh does." —Todd S. Purdam in his August 2009 Vanity Fair article on Sarah Palin, "It Came from Wasilla," published before her July 3rd resignation announcement. Rich, Noonan, Palin Many greeted Sarah Palin’s sudden, July 3rd resignation from the Alaska governorship with a Nelsonesque “HAW-HAW” but Frank Rich, last Sunday, argues both why she’s dangerous (“The essence of Palinism is emotional, not ideological. ... The real wave she’s riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that’s larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.”), and why she might be back (“No one thought Richard Nixon—a far less personable commodity than Palin—would come back either after his sour-grapes ‘last press conference’ of 1962.”) For me, I doubt 1012 could be 1968, just as I doubt BHO could be LBJ. But the whole column is worth reading. Then I found myself actually agreeing with Peggy Noonan (that Reagan shoe fetishist) in her July 11th column on same. She’s of the good-riddance school, and says what I’ve often said: It’s time for the Republican party to get smarter, not dumber. Then she adds this: Here are a few examples of what we may face in the next 10 years: a profound and prolonged American crash, with the admission of bankruptcy and the spread of deep social unrest; one or more American cities getting hit with weapons of mass destruction from an unknown source; faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate. All of us, certainly, have fears of a prolonged American crash and an American city getting hit. But secession? Is that a concern serious enough for the pages of the WSJ? It's certainly more politics of resentment. It also reminds me of a child throwing away a toy that he himself has broken. He's not even waiting around to see if the nearest grownup can fix it. Minnesota Corrects a Low-Rent Mistake Garrison Keillor is known for his supercalm demeanor on “Prairie Home Companion,” and he used it to good, skewering effect in this 2002 article on Norm Coleman, the former Democratic St. Paul mayor who switched sides, went deep for the Bush camp, and was rewarded, in the absence of Paul Wellstone, with a U.S. Senate seat in 2002. Now, finally, thankfully, about-freakinly-time, we've taken it away from him. Godspeed, Al Franken. Good riddance, Norm Coleman. Good work, Mr. Keillor. Empty victory for a hollow man How Norm Coleman sold his soul for a Senate seat By Garrison Keillor Nov. 7, 2002 | Norm Coleman won Minnesota because he was well-financed and well-packaged. Norm is a slick retail campaigner, the grabbiest and touchingest and feelingest politician in Minnesota history, a hugger and baby-kisser, and he's a genuine boomer candidate who reinvents himself at will. The guy is a Brooklyn boy who became a left-wing student radical at Hofstra University with hair down to his shoulders, organized antiwar marches, said vile things about Richard Nixon, etc. Then he came west, went to law school, changed his look, went to work in the attorney general's office in Minnesota. Was elected mayor of St. Paul as a moderate Democrat, then swung comfortably over to the Republican side. There was no dazzling light on the road to Damascus, no soul-searching: Norm switched parties as you'd change sport coats. Norm is glib. I once organized a dinner at the Minnesota Club to celebrate F. Scott Fitzgerald's birthday and Norm came, at the suggestion of his office, and spoke, at some length and with quite some fervor, about how much Fitzgerald means to all of us in St. Paul, and it was soon clear to anyone who has ever graded 9th grade book reports that the mayor had never read Fitzgerald. Nonetheless, he spoke at great length, with great feeling. Last month, when Bush came to sprinkle water on his campaign, Norm introduced him by saying, “God bless America is a prayer, and I believe that this man is God's answer to that prayer.” Same guy. (Jesse Ventura, of course, wouldn't have been caught dead blathering at an F. Scott Fitzgerald dinner about how proud we are of the Great Whoever-He-Was and his vision and his dream blah-blah-blah, and that was the refreshing thing about Jesse. The sort of unctuous hooey that comes naturally and easily to Norm Coleman Jesse would be ashamed to utter in public. Give the man his due. He spoke English. He didn't open his mouth and emit soap bubbles. He was no suck up. He had more dignity than to kiss the president's shoe.) Norm got a free ride from the press. St. Paul is a small town and anybody who hangs around the St. Paul Grill knows about Norm's habits. Everyone knows that his family situation is, shall we say, very interesting, but nobody bothered to ask about it, least of all the religious people in the Republican Party. They made their peace with hypocrisy long ago. So this false knight made his way as an all-purpose feel-good candidate, standing for vaguely Republican values, supporting the president. He was 9 points down to Wellstone when the senator's plane went down. But the tide was swinging toward the president in those last 10 days. And Norm rode the tide. Mondale took a little while to get a campaign going. And Norm finessed Wellstone's death beautifully. The Democrats stood up in raw grief and yelled and shook their fists and offended people. Norm played his violin. He sorrowed well in public, he was expertly nuanced. The mostly negative campaign he ran against Wellstone was forgotten immediately. He backpedalled in the one debate, cruised home a victor. It was a dreadful low moment for the Minnesota voters. To choose Coleman over Walter Mondale is one of those dumb low-rent mistakes, like going to a great steakhouse and ordering the tuna sandwich. But I don't envy someone who's sold his soul. He's condemned to a life of small arrangements. There will be no passion, no joy, no heroism, for him. He is a hollow man. The next six years are not going to be kind to Norm. ...And he's only 54 “In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, [John] Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.” —Jeffrey Toobin in his New Yorker article “No More Mr. Nice Guy.” Worth reading in its entirety. I was a little perplexed that we got this now, rather than at the end of June when the decisions in the more controversial Supreme Court cases are announced. And the end of the piece is a little weak, particularly for Toobin, who's such a good writer. But worth reading, and considering, as the more vocal part of the conservative nation picks-a-little, talks-a-little about Pres. Obama's recent U.S. Supreme Court nominee. Is this another example of a journalist trying too hard to be objective? Or is it merely poor writing? Read the entire piece (it’s short) by Janie Lorber, under the headline “Cheney’s Model Republican: More Limbaugh, Less Powell,” in The New York Times. Two observations, both by Lorber, stick out. Here’s the first: The [Powell] endorsement, in a carefully timed and deliberate statement after Mr. McCain chose Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate in a move to fire up the party’s conservative base, helped solidify Mr. Obama’s campaign. Yes, it did help Obama’s campaign but…doesn’t this graf make it sound that the Powelll endorsement came shortly after the Palin selection? But McCain chose Palin on August 30, while Powell endorsed Obama on October 19. That’s more than a month and a half difference. And a month and a half thick with campaigning. How was that “carefully timed and deliberate”? And deliberate? What does that mean anyway? As opposed to carelessly timed and accidental? Here’s the second: Mr. Cheney has been a particularly fierce critic of the Obama administration and a defiant defender against critics of the Bush administration, including President Obama. While his remarks have been striking, they are not unusually outspoken by comparison, for example, to former Vice President Al Gore’s condemnations of the Bush administration when it held office. True. But Al Gore didn’t criticize the Bush administration immediately, the way that Cheney is doing with the Obama administration. After the 2000 election, Gore disappeared, remember? Then returned with a beard that everyone made fun of. Then 9/11 happened and no one criticized the Bush administration. Gore really didn’t criticize Pres. Bush, et al., until the Bush adminstration began gearing up for war with Iraq in the fall of ’02. And, yes, he was one of the first to do so. To his credit. I guess all I’m saying, with both points, is: chronology matters. Quote of the Day In case the moral argument against torture isn't swaying you: Imagine if an American operative out of uniform were captured by the Iranians tomorrow. Imagine he were put into a coffin for hours with no light and barely enough air to breathe, imagine if he were then removed and smashed against a plywood wall by a towel tied around his neck thirty times, imagine if he were then kept awake for eleven days in a row, then kept in a cell frozen to hypothermia levels, and then waterboarded multiple times, after which he confessed to being a spy trying to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. Would you believe that intelligence? Would Krauthammer? Would you believe both that he wasn't tortured and that the information he gave was reliable? —Andrew Sullivan, taking on Charles Krauthammer, here. The Journalistic Mission of Bill O'Reilly You don’t need to read any more. Quick: What’s goal no. 1 for any journalist? To get the story first. To scoop the other bastards. What’s goal no. 2? To be as objective as possible in doing this. Journalistic mission? These villains? Does he know he's sticking his foot in, if not his own mouth, then his producer's mouth? And what villains? Murderers? Torturers? Bernie Madoff types? Not exactly. The ambushees include Mike Hoyt, executive editor of The Columbia Journalism Review, who assigned a story on right-wing media to a writer with a supposed liberal background. There’s Hendrik Hertzberg, my man from The New Yorker, who, the Times writes, “was confronted for what Mr. O’Reilly described as taking a ‘Factor’ segment out of context.” (No word from the Times on how Mr. Hertzberg described the incident.) There’s also Amanda Terkel of thinkprogress.org, who organized a protest against O’Reilly. These are the villains. People who disagreed with Bill O’Reilly. From what I remember of those “60 Minutes” segments, Wallace and his producers would use the ambush technique, when they used it, to confront either legitimately powerful people and/or crooks. It was a technique unmotivated by politics or personal vendettas. Michael Moore, when he uses the ambush technique (which is often), uses it to confront legitimately powerful people: U.S. congressmen and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. His ambushes are, more often than not, motivated by politics but unmotivated by personal vendettas. Both are examples of the journalistic mission, the journalistic mission, to speak truth to power. Most of O’Reilly’s targets are less powerful than he is. Thus these ambushes simply seem another bullying aspect of his show. It’s less speaking truth to power than power picking on (often) truth. Journalistic mission? These villains? Presidential Quote of the Day “We seek broader engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect. We will listen carefully, we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground. We will be respectful, even when we do not agree. We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country. The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. I know, because I am one of them.” — Pres. Barack Obama in a speech before the Turkish parliament. I read this in The New York Times (newspaper version) while sitting at the Kerry Park overlook on this sunny Seattle day, eating my lunch and listening to Teddy Thompson's “In My Arms.” I was pretty happy for that half hour. Tomorrow it's supposed to rain. Tomorrow things may get worse economically. But for now it's sunny and more people realize we're at least heading in the direction we should. Amen. ED HENRY, CNN (asking a follow-up question): So on AIG, why did you wait — why did you wait days to come out and express that outrage? PRESIDENT OBAMA: I -- ED HENRY: It seems like the action is coming out of New York in the attorney general's office. It took you days to come public with Secretary Geithner and say, look, we're outraged. Why did it take so long? PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak. There are also good takes on the press conference from Andrew Sullivan (love his line about the White House press corps' job being “polite assholes”) and Eric Alterman's Daily Beast piece, which posits the short-term thinking of those polite assholes versus Pres. Obama's long-term thinking. Toles and Jelly Seriously, is there a better editorial cartoonist in the country? Is there a better editorial anything in the country? Most cartoonists are inevitably reductive but Toles merely simplifies a point to its essence. The issue seems larger in his hands rather than smaller. God, I Love This Guy “Going forward,“ Mr. Obama said, ”each and every time we’ve got an initiative, I’m going to go to both Democrats and Republicans and I’m going to say, ‘Here’s my best argument for why we need to do this. I want to listen to your counterarguments. If you’ve got better ideas, present them. We will incorporate them into any plans that we make, and we are willing to compromise on certain issues that are important to one side or the other in order to get stuff done.’” ... When asked about the sharp drop in the stock markets after Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced an expanded bank bailout plan last week, Mr. Obama replied: “I am not planning based on a one-day market reaction. In fact, you can argue that a lot of the problems we’re in have to do with everybody planning based on one-day market reactions, or three-month market reactions, and as a consequence nobody was taking the long view. “My job is to help the country take the long view — to make sure that not only are we getting out of this immediate fix, but we’re not repeating the same cycle of bubble and bust over and over again; that we’re not having the same energy conversation 30 years from now that we had 30 years ago; that we’re not talking about the state of our schools in the exact same ways we were talking about them in the 1980s; and that at some point we say, ‘You know what? If we’re spending more money per-capita on health care than any nation on earth, then you’d think everybody would have coverage and we would see lower costs for average consumers, and we’d have better outcomes.’” — from Bob Herbert's column, “Obama Riding the Wave,” from The New York Times, February 17, 2009 We Are Not a Serious Nation I checked out YouTube for the first time in a long time this morning, saw the shit that passed for shit there, and thought of Gore Vidal: We are not a serious nation. I read a friend’s account of how even at a pizza gathering half the kids were texting other kids rather than talking with the kids present, and thought: We are not a serious nation. I read Paul Krugman’s column in this morning’s New York Times, about how serious our economic crisis is, and how lame the response in Congress has been, particularly from the Republicans in Congress, and thought: We are not a serious nation. I look at this site and think the same. You do what you do. I try to write about movies seriously but to what end? We’ll see where this goes. Both versions of “this.” In November I wrote a spirited defense of how “The Daily Show” would fare in an Obama administration but I’m having my doubts now. It’s the economic crisis more than Pres. Obama. Every joke about it, from a guy making millions, and I think: “That shit ain’t funny.” Comedy is, what, tragedy plus time? They’re ignoring time. We’re just wasting it. I apologize for this post but a blog is about what’s on your mind and this is what’s on my mind. Probably yours, too. The economy shed 598,000 jobs in January. I knew of three of them. Ponzi and the Happy Days (Are Here Again) Gang My friend Dave McLean, currently living in Presov, Slovakia, alerted me to this piece by Dan Roberts in the Guardian, which, with the aid of some cheery graphics, explains, in layman's terms (or as layman as he can get), the extent of the less-than-cheery global financial crisis, and why the infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars from the federal government isn't likely to stabilize the beast. Just how much is the world in debt? Or overvalued? Some stats: from small to large numbers: - $845 billion: The amount of gold reserves in central banks — held as a buffer against financial instability. - $3.9 trillion: All global notes and coins in circulation, plus reserves, in Oct. 2008. - $39 trillion: The assets (or loans due to be paid back) at the world's big financial banks. - $62 trillion: The peak amount of credit derivatives, which, from my limited understanding, is a financial instrument whose value is derived from the value of something else, such as an asset or index. All part of the shadow banking system, which I also don't understand. - $290 trillion: Peak of the total asset value of all developed economies. Roberts says that it resembles, if anything, a Ponzi scheme. I get it...but still don't understand it. Meanwhile Wall Street bankers gave themselves $20 billion in bonuses for 2008. That, unfortunately, I understand. Barack Obama Quote of the Day “Because of you, John. Barack Obama.” —How Pres. Obama autographed a photo for U.S. Rep. (and civil rights legend) John Lewis after the inauguration on Jan. 20th. From David Remnick's must-read “Talk of the Town” piece in this week's New Yorker. Paul Krugman has a great piece today on — basically — arguments against Republican arguments against Obama's stimulus package. Among them: - First, there’s the bogus talking point that the Obama plan will cost $275,000 per job created. Why is it bogus? Because it involves taking the cost of a plan that will extend over several years, creating millions of jobs each year, and dividing it by the jobs created in just one of those years. It’s as if an opponent of the school lunch program were to take an estimate of the cost of that program over the next five years, then divide it by the number of lunches provided in just one of those years, and assert that the program was hugely wasteful, because it cost $13 per lunch. (The actual cost of a free school lunch, by the way, is $2.57.) - Next, write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money. Here’s how to think about this argument: it implies that we should shut down the air traffic control system. After all, that system is paid for with fees on air tickets — and surely it would be better to let the flying public keep its money rather than hand it over to government bureaucrats. If that would mean lots of midair collisions, hey, stuff happens. - Finally, ignore anyone who tries to make something of the fact that the new administration’s chief economic adviser has in the past favored monetary policy over fiscal policy as a response to recessions.It’s true that the normal response to recessions is interest-rate cuts from the Fed, not government spending. And that might be the best option right now, if it were available. But it isn’t, because we’re in a situation not seen since the 1930s: the interest rates the Fed controls are already effectively at zero. That’s why we’re talking about large-scale fiscal stimulus: it’s what’s left in the policy arsenal now that the Fed has shot its bolt. Rome is burning and the Republicans are fiddling, but it's nice to have a Nobel-Prize-winning economist on your side. “There's Work to be Done” Here's a great site, via Andrew Sullivan, that collects the newspaper headlines of the day. Yesterday was the day for it. Interesting to see what different editors chose to highlight or headline. There's almost poetry in it: “A New Era,” “A New Day,” “A New Beginning,” “A New Start,” “A New Hope.” “Hope Over Fear,” “Hope Meets History,” “History Made Today,” “History in the Making,” “Remaking America.” “Hello, Mr. President,” “Mr. President,” “The President,” “The 44th President,” “The 44th and the First.” “President Obama,” “Obama Ovation,” “Obama's Promise,” “Let's GObama,” “The Obama Era Begins.” “Change,” “Change Has Come,” “The Time Has Come.” “Face of a Nation”? “Yes, He Is.” “Mark This Day”: “We Are Ready to Lead.” There was also this: It struck a chord and it took me a minute before I remembered why. It's similar to a line in “TimeQuake,” Kurt Vonnegut's last novel. I reviewed it for The Seattle Times in 1997. Back then I wrote: Just as Billy Pilgrim could get unstuck in time (in “Slaughterhouse-Five”) and gravity could become variable (“Slapstick”), so Kilgore Trout and the world discover in “Timequake” that the universe isn't always expanding. In the year 2001, the universe has second thoughts and contracts, or hiccups, sending everyone back to what they were doing 10 years before. It's a perverse form of eternal recurrence. Everyone has knowledge of the next decade but is unable to alter it in any fashion. They essentially become prisoners within their own bodies. Thus, when the universe gets going again, people are unprepared — asleep at the wheel, as it were — and disasters occur. They don't realize that once again they have to drive their cars or fly their airplanes or concentrate on walking straight. So cars crash, planes plummet, people wobble and fall over. Trout, one of the first to realize what has happened, tries to wake people out of their stupor by shouting, “You have free will!” When this doesn't work, he tells them, “You were sick, but now you are well, and there's work to do!” It's January 21, 2009. You were sick. But now you are well. And there's work to be done. Sam Cooke Quote of the Day There’ve been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long Now I think I’m able To carry on It’s been a long A long time coming But I know Change gonna come Oh, yes it will ADDENDUM: The New York Times editorial on the inaugural speech. Since last February I’ve seen bumper stickers, and sometimes signs and t-shirts, celebrating my upcoming birthday. “1-20-09,” they read. Sometimes they added: “End of an Error,” which I thought a bit much. The first 45 years of my life have had their share of bumps but I wouldn’t say they were an “error.” That’s a tough decision from the official scorer. OK, jokes aside, you and I and the world have been waiting for this day. It’s not just because the most incompetent guy is leaving. It’s because the most competent guy is arriving. For the past year I’ve littered this blog with the overall thought that the wrong guy — the guy obsessed with numbers rather than people, with getting ahead rather than helping others get ahead — is invariably put in charge. That’s certainly the lesson of “The Wire.” It’s even the lesson of that recent article on Tim Palen and marketing. We’ve become a nation that sells the insubstantial so well we’ve convinced ourselves it’s substantial. Maybe that’s the error we’re tryng to end. It’s been a helluva ride. I first heard him speak at the annual Minnesota Democratic-Farm-Labor dinner in downtown Minneapolis in the spring of '06 and he cut through my cynicism right away. “Jesus,” I thought, “this guy could do it.” He was my guy from the get-go, even as the press 1) dismissed him too soon, then 2) annointed him too soon, then 3) invariably missed the point. But I still had my doubts. Sure, the Democrats might vote for him. But the nation? When idiocies flared up, when Palen and that circus arrived, when community organizers were dismissed out-of-hand as somehow undeserving, he stayed calmer than I did. I went to him to get calm. He gave us this, and this, and this. We gave him this. I’m 46 today and the most competent guy is arriving. It's the best birthday present I ever got. Now let’s get this party started. Quote of the Effin' Year "A gangly Illinois politician whom 'the base' would today label a RINO—a Republican in Name Only—once pointed out that you can fool some of the people all of the time. We now know how many 'some' is: twenty-seven per cent. That’s the proportion of Americans who, according to CNN, cling to the belief that George W. Bush has done a good job. "The wonder is that this number is still in the double digits, given his comprehensively disastrous record. During the eight years of the second President Bush, the unemployment rate went from 4.2 per cent to 7.2 per cent and climbing; consumer confidence dropped to an all-time low; a budget surplus of two hundred billion dollars became a deficit of that plus a trillion; more than a million families fell into poverty; the ranks of those without health insurance rose by six million; and the fruits of the nation’s economic growth went almost entirely to the rich, while family incomes in the middle and below declined. What role the Bush Administration’s downgrading of terrorism as a foreign-policy priority played in the success of the 9/11 attacks cannot be known, but there is no doubting its responsibility for the launching and mismanagement of the unprovoked war in Iraq, with all its attendant suffering; for allowing the justified war in Afghanistan to slide to the edge of defeat; and for the vertiginous worldwide decline of America’s influence, prestige, power, and moral standing." — Hendrik Hertzberg, "Talk of the Town," New Yorker, Jan. 19, 2009 The Tyranny of the Short Term The best article I've read on the financial crisis was the second-most e-mailed article on the NY Times Web site yesterday. Today's it's the most e-mailed. It's by Michael Lewis and David Einhorn and it should be read by everybody. It explains the crisis in ways that even laypeople, of which I am hopelessly one, can understand. Some highlights: Obviously the greater the market pressure to excel in the short term, the greater the need for pressure from outside the market to consider the longer term. But that’s the problem: there is no longer any serious pressure from outside the market. The tyranny of the short term has extended itself with frightening ease into the entities that were meant to, one way or another, discipline Wall Street, and force it to consider its enlightened self-interest... Over the last 20 years American financial institutions have taken on more and more risk, with the blessing of regulators, with hardly a word from the rating agencies, which, incidentally, are paid by the issuers of the bonds they rate... These oligopolies, which are actually sanctioned by the S.E.C., didn’t merely do their jobs badly. They didn’t simply miss a few calls here and there. In pursuit of their own short-term earnings, they did exactly the opposite of what they were meant to do: rather than expose financial risk they systematically disguised it... The instinct to avoid short-term political heat is part of the problem; anything the S.E.C. does to roil the markets, or reduce the share price of any given company, also roils the careers of the people who run the S.E.C. Thus it seldom penalizes serious corporate and management malfeasance — out of some misguided notion that to do so would cause stock prices to fall, shareholders to suffer and confidence to be undermined. Preserving confidence, even when that confidence is false, has been near the top of the S.E.C.’s agenda... Read the whole thing. You get a sense that the people who are running our world are not the people who should be running our world. "The tyranny of the short term" is a phrase that could be used to describe almost every aspect of American life. Worse: The things we did to wind up in this hole are the very things we're now doing to get us out of this hole. We're relying on the same people. We're relying on the same institutions. We're trying to preserve confidence even when the confidence is false. Read the whole thing. Seriously, Did That Guy Get Anything Right? In our annual Christmas letter (I know), which went out yesterday (apologies), I wrote the following: "We gave up trying to sell Patricia’s condo in May but once we did it rented like that to a very nice woman — one of 30 people who desperately wanted it. Apparently it’s a renting market. As opposed to an ownership society. Seriously, did that guy get anything right?" Even as I wrote it I began to wonder about that old Bush line, another catchphrase gone horribly awry, and why no one had done an in-depth piece on specifics of the Bush administration's culpability in our current housing — and thus economic — crisis. The New York Times to the rescue. In today's paper, Jo Becker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Stephen Labaton have a great in-depth piece on the political push for an ownership society that led to our current renting market. It's easy to see in hindsight. Basically the administration was pushing for more ownership and less regulation at a time when housing prices were soaring and salaries were flatlining. How to fit more people into more expensive homes at a time when they had less real money and fewer people were watching? Yeah: So Mr. Bush had to, in his words, “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to meet his goal. He proposed affordable housing tax incentives. He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending. Concerned that down payments were a barrier, Mr. Bush persuaded Congress to spend up to $200 million a year to help first-time buyers with down payments and closing costs. And he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for federally insured mortgages with no money down. Republican Congressional leaders and some housing advocates balked, arguing that homeowners with no stake in their investments would be more prone to walk away, as Mr. West did. Many economic experts, including some in the White House, now share that view. This administration made decisions that allowed the free market to operate as a barroom brawl instead of a prize fight,” said L. William Seidman, who advised Republican presidents and led the savings and loan bailout in the 1990s. “To make the market work well, you have to have a lot of rules.” But Mr. Bush populated the financial system’s alphabet soup of oversight agencies with people who, like him, wanted fewer rules, not more. It gets worse. One of the top 10 donors to the Republican party in 2004, Roland Arnall, founded Ameriquest, one of the largest lenders in the subprime market. In 2005, White House aides discussed Ameriquest's troubles — including setting aside $325 million to settle with 30 states which claimed Ameriquest preyed on borrowers — but not in terms of the economy. They discussed Ameriquest because Pres. Bush had just nominated Arnall to be ambassador to the Netherlands. Gov. Blagojovitch looks like a piker in comparison. Read the entire article. It's worth it. Conservatives accuse liberals of being naive about the poor — that the poor are poor because they deserve it — and so helping them is pointless. But conservatives are just as naive, if not moreso, about the rich. They think the rich are rich because they deserve it — because they're talented, not because they're, say, predatory or ruthless — and so regulating them is unnecessary and just gets in the way of their talent. My French teacher, Nathalie, spent a week in Sayulita, Mexico last month and took this picture of the Mexican version of Shepard Fairey's famous series of Obama posters. Cambio. Change. The people there told her about the spontaneous celebrations that erupted the night Obama got elected. As here in Seattle. As all over the world. I'm sure there are similar posters from different countries and in different languages. If you know of any, or, better, if you have images of any, please send them my way. Give the People What They Want One of the top 12 videos on YouTube this morning is a thing called "Betty Cakes," in which, in the static "cover" image (is there a term for this?), you see an attractive woman's limbs and some cupcakes where breasts might be. Its three-star rating implies a come-on that goes nowhere. The 11 remaining most-seen videos show the same thing: an Iraqi journalist throwing a shoe at President Bush. All have five-star ratings. I've never seen such domination of the charts since the Beatles had all top 5 U.S. singles in April 1964. That said, a friend of mine mentioned yesterday that he was more impressed by Pres. Bush's handling of the shoe-throwing incident than anything he's done during his presidency. He ducks but keeps the journalist in his line of sight. Made my friend think he's had shoes thrown at him before. One conjecture was Laura. Another was Condi. Feel free to make your guess below. Overall, footage of the shoe-throwing incident occupies 62 of the top 100 videos on YouTube. The Obama Non-Stories Idiocies of the week. First this one. Here's AP's headline: “Many Insisting That Obama Is Not Black.” Suggested headline: “A Few Idiots Insisting Obama Is Not Black.” It's beyond annoying, beside-the-point, and could only be spouted by people who hadn't read “Dreams From My Father,” or who hadn't thought one inch into our cross-country racial history. Serously: STFU. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters has smartly raised the other: the non-story of Obama's non-involvement in the Gov. Blagojevich scandal, which I've been bitching about it all week, particularly in connection with the New York Times coverage. Liberal press, my ass. Boehlert flags (and emphasizes within) this NYT graf: Although prosecutors said Mr. Obama was not implicated in their investigation, the accusations of naked greed and brazen influence-peddling have raised questions from some about the political culture in which the President-elect began his career. At least the Times used “some” here, rather than the AP's “many,” but even their “some” still turned out to be “some Republican operatives.” Meanwhile, what's Obama been up to? Nominating Nobel laureates to his cabinet. At least someone's taking their job seriously. “The Most Vicious Smear Campaign Ever Mounted Against an American Politician” Since the election, there's been a lot of talk about how the media favored Obama during the campaign. Hell, there's was noise about this before the election. Such talk seems to imply that all coverage should be equal no matter who the candidates are or what they say, but someday, when I have time, I might drill down to see if anything was unnecessarily positive or negative about either candidate, or if it was merely a matter of, say, Albert Pujols generating more positive media coverage than Willie Bloomquist because he’s the better ballplayer. To what extent, in other words, can you remove a candidate’s performance from the equation? Baseball’s a little different, of course, in that you have quantifiable statistics rather than qualitative remarks or actions. At the same time, as I often say, objectivity is not stupidity. Journalists can’t, or shouldn’t, pretend things aren’t as they are. Put another way: I had my own problems, from a pro-Obama point-of-view, with the media’s coverage of this campaign. Here, here and here. And here and here. And here. Besides, Michael Massing reminds us, in his excellent article in The New York Times Review of Books, “Obama: In the Divided Heartland,“ that a whole lotta media wasn't exactly backing Obama: For months, [Rush] Limbaugh had been hammering away at [Obama]—for abetting terrorists, hating Israel, being corrupt, supporting socialism. Today, oddly, he was faulting him for his lack of passion. ”He's like a Stepford husband,“ he said. ”He's cold enough to consort with terrorists. Cold enough to dismiss small-town America as 'bitter clingers.' Cold enough to take our guns away. Cold enough to take our money away.“ Such charges were standard fare on the toxic, overheated combine of right-wing talk radio, cable television programs, and Internet blogs that has so multiplied and festered in recent years. Americans who do not regularly tune in have little idea how nasty and venomous a campaign was waged there against Barack Obama. Day after day, night after night, a steady stream of poison was directed at him not only by Limbaugh but also by Sean Hannity, on his daily radio show and nightly Fox broadcast; by Bill O'Reilly, on Fox, the radio, and the Internet; by Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, and a legion of other ranting radio hosts; by Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, Monica Crowley, and their fellow pike-bearers in the blogosphere; by columnists like Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, Mark Steyn, Michael Barone (”The Coming Obama Thugocracy“), and Ann Coulter (”Obama's Dimestore 'Mein Kampf'"), all joining together to produce firestorms of manufactured rage about Obama's purported ties to Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Jeremiah Wright, ACORN, Castro, Chávez, Ahmadinejad, and Karl Marx... These outbursts were supplemented by a noxious barrage of e-mails, mass mailings, and robocalls claiming that Obama was pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, unpatriotic, a Muslim, a madrasa graduate, a black racist—even the Antichrist. Amounting to a six-month-long exercise in Swift Boating, these attacks, taken together, constituted perhaps the most vicious smear campaign ever mounted against an American politician. That's the question I'd ask anyone pushing one of these studies. Is talk radio included? And if not, why not? Didion, Clad in her Armor Last night, the cover of the latest New York Review of Books — VICTORY!, with a cartoon of Obama in the center, and promises of articles by Joan Didion, Darryl Pinckney and others — made me happy for a moment... until I began reading Didion’s article. Then I went: Oh yeah. This. Didion was an established writer by the time I began to read serious literature, well-known for her essays, and I enjoyed White Album and others in my twenties but began feeling disappointment in my thirties when I read Salvador. I thought: “Does she only have irony? Is that her sole tool?” After reading all of Norman Mailer’s messy attempts to be engaged with the world, Didion’s ironic distance felt dry and useless. In the Review she writes about how, in the Obama era, irony is supposedly out. Her essay proves otherwise. She casts an ironic eye less on Obama than on the support he engenders: Irony was now out. Naiveté, translated into “hope,” was now in. Innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized. Partisanship could now be appropriately expressed by consumerism. I couldn't count the number of snapshots I got e-mailed showing people's babies dressed in Obama gear. Was innocence ever prized in this campaign? Youth, yes, but innocence? As for the consumerism and snapshots, well, maybe she needs new friends. I received no snapshots of babies in Obama gear during this election season. My friends were too busy, among other things, campaigning for Obama. Being engaged. She goes on: I couldn't count the number of times I heard the words “transformational” or “inspirational,” or heard the 1960s evoked by people with no apparent memory that what drove the social revolution of the 1960s was not babies in cute T-shirts but the kind of resistance to that decade's war that in the case of our current wars, unmotivated by a draft, we have yet to see. Must be tough to be one of Didion’s friends — to hear your words later mocked in her essays. Yet wasn’t Obama, certainly on the most basic of levels, transformational? Wasn’t he inspirational? It feels so small, her objections. She stands back, like in the famous David Levine caricature, holding her cigarette aloft, clad in her irony, while the world celebrates. It’s an easy stance because the world is full of fools and she quotes some of them. A commentator who said other nations now “want to be with us.” That’s how she ends her essay: Imagining in 2008 that all the world's people wanted to be with us did not seem entirely different in kind from imagining in 2003 that we would be greeted with flowers when we invaded Iraq, but in the irony-free zone that the nation had chosen to become, this was not the preferred way of looking at it. Maybe this was not the preferred way of looking at it because “wanting to be with us” came from a commentator after someone else’s election, while “greeted with flowers” came from the highest officials in the Bush administration before their own invasion. The first, though clumsily phrased, was based upon evidence we could actually see: people around the world celebrating Obama’s victory. The second was based upon evidence the Bush administration didn’t let us see and which they wanted to see: Their policy dictating their evidence, rather than vice-versa. Maybe that’s part of why Didion's way is not the preferred way of looking at it. Irony isn’t out; it’s simply, as always, an easy way out. Torture to Watch “Dark Side” uses the incarceration and subsequent death of an innocent Afghani taxi driver while in U.S. military custody as the starting point to examine our entire post-9/11 system of torture and humiliation — specifically at Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It’s a good overview of what will surely be one of the blackest marks of the many black marks on the Bush administration. For some, of course, the mark isn’t even black, but this doc should give pause to proponents of torture, as well as to regular viewers of “24” — where the efficacy of torture in extracting accurate information is regularly dramatized. Morris’ film is more focused and creepier. He trains his eye on Abu Ghraib, on what was done there, on the photos that were taken there, on what they say or don’t say and how they lie or don’t lie. He interviews, almost exclusively, the various “bad apples” who forced Iraqi prisoners to debase themselves. It’s beautifully shot, but claustrophobic and so sad about human nature. What people can convince themselves to do — particularly when ordered to do so. What they can convince themselves of afterwards. A few small apples were scapegoated for our unethical system, and their main defense is the Nuremberg defense: I didn’t know any bettre; I was just following orders. They also blame the photographs. They blame the evidence rather than the crime. It’s as if being scapegoated for the crime is keeping them from examining their role in the crime. I’m not sure what happens when we stare into those faces as they justify their actions, but it’s definitely uncomfortable. Would we have done the same in their situation? Are they us? The tawdriness of the enterprise is overwhelming. Maybe it says something that the talking head who is least culpable — who was not even a guard at Abu Ghraib, but who wound up in the background of some photographs and was prosecuted based on that evidence — blames himself the most. Maybe that’s something the rest of us could begin to emulate. DFMF Quote of the Day "So, Barry. What have you brought me from America?" I reached into my bag and pulled out one of the portable cassette players that I had bought for him [Abo] and Bernard. He turned it over in his hands with a thinly disguised look of disappointment. "This brand is not Sony, is it?" he said. Then, looking up, he quickly recovered himself and slapped me on the back. "That's okay, Barry. Thank you! Thank you." I nodded at him, trying not to get angry. He was standing beside Bernard and their resemblance was striking: the same height, the same slender frame, the same smooth, even features. Just shave off Abo's moustache, I thought to myself, and they could almost pass as twins. Except for...what? The look in Abo's eyes. That was it. Not just the telltale redness of some sort of high but something deeper, something that reminded me of young men back in Chicago. An element of guardedness, perhaps, and calculation. The look of someone who realizes early in life that he has been wronged. —Barack Obama, visiting Kendu Bay in Kenya in the 1980s, in Dreams From My Father, pg. 384 New Yorker Quote of the Day "At a Clinton event in Hampton, New Hampshire, a seventy-one-year-old woman named Ruth Keene told me that 'the Republicans would chew Obama up.' "They tried like hell. They called him an élitist, a radical, a socialist, a Marxist, a Muslim, an Arab, an appeaser, a danger to the republic, a threat to small children, a friend of terrorists, an enemy of Israel, a vote thief, a non-citizen, an anti-American, and a celebrity." —George Packer in his article "The New Liberalism: How the economic crisis can help Obama and redefine the Democrats." Quote of the Day “The Rush Limbaugh attacks and other attacks from the far right generate a lot of heat but not much light.” —Colin Powell, in “The Joshua Generation: Race and the Campaign of Barack Obama” by David Remnick, in the latest New Yorker David Grann on Why McCain Lost But as I read, I began to sense in John McCain (again) a tragic figure out of Shakespeare: The honorable man who once lost honorably (in 2000), yet who betrays that honor in order to try to win (in 2008). Worse, he betrays it with the same men who had dishonored him during his defeat. Worse, despite all he gives up, all he pretends to be in order to win, he loses. Badly. The dishonorable and divisive methods used to defeat him, are, when employed by him, part of the reason for his defeat. To get what he desires he becomes his enemy, but by becoming his enemy he is kept from getting what he desires. Somewhere in Grann's piece I not only began to feel sorry for McCain but identify with him. Most of us lose in life more than we win, and, despite being a U.S. senator, McCain lost big. Twice. He knew 2008 was his last chance and he gave up everything for it. In the process, because of all that he gave up and all that he pretended to be, long-time allies turned against him. William G. Milkien, former Republican governor of Michigan, who endorsed him in 2000 and again during the 2008 primaries, said in October, “McCain keeps asking, ‘Who is the real Barack Obama?,’ but what I want to know is who is the real John McCain?” Frank Schaeffer, son of the man credited with starting the religious right, who backed McCain in 2000, and for whose 2006 book “AWOL,” McCain offered a blurb, said the following, again in October, in an open letter to the candidate: “If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as ‘not one of us,’ I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence. ... You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.”I’ve written about what McCain said about John Lewis during the final debate, and Lord knows I was pissed off then, but my anger softened when I read this: Though McCain publicly called [Lewis’] accusations “shocking and beyond the pale,” a campaign aide told me that when McCain first heard Lewis’s remarks he sat in silence inside the campaign’s official bus.So I was feeling a little sympathetic for John McCain. Then Mark Salter opened his piehole. Salter still doesn’t understand any of the criticisms of McCain and the way that he and Steve Schmidt (his Iago) ran his campaign. He accuses the press of a double standard that favored Obama. He fobs it all off on the “liberal media.” He brings up the few positives McCain did (his poverty tour, his town-hall suggestion) and all he didn’t do (playing the Rev. Wright card), and thinks that’s enough to demonstrate his candidate’s positive side — not bothering to explain away the reactions of Milkien and Schaeffer, let alone McCain’s own brother, Joe, who pleaded with the campaign to let McCain be McCain. “Everybody kept saying, ‘Where’s the old happy warrior?’ It was fucking crazy,” Salter says. The best response to Salter is Grann’s next graf: But many who hoped that McCain could modify his policies without sacrificing his identity felt that he had crossed the line. He surrounded himself with conservative economic advisers, such as Phil Gramm, a fanatical proponent of deregulation, and Jack Kemp, the apostle of supply-side economics. He called for making Bush’s tax cuts permanent. He declared that the estate tax, which he, like Teddy Roosevelt, had championed, was now “one of the most unfair tax laws on the books.” ... [He] reversed his position on offshore drilling and endorsed the teaching of “intelligent design.” He disowned his own bill on immigration reform. Whereas he had once decried the use of torture under any circumstances, he now voted against banning the same techniques of “enhanced interrogation” that had been practiced against him in Vietnam.This election won’t truly be over until the side that lost realizes why it lost. Yes, it was the economy. But it was also who was the stronger candidate, and who was the weaker. In Ryan Lizza’s piece on Obama’s campaign, in which Obama comes off as a tougher Chicago pol than people give him credit for, the “crucial moment” for many aides came way back in July 2007 when, during the YouTube debate, Obama said he would meet world leaders without preconditions. Hilary pounced. The aides worried. They were thinking about backing off, changing the subject, bobbing and weaving, when Obama, overhearing, spoke up: “This is ridiculous. We met with Stalin. We met with Mao. The idea that we can’t meet with Ahmadinejad is ridiculous. This is a bunch of Washington-insider conventional wisdom that makes no sense. We should not run from this debate. We should have it.”In Grann’s piece on McCain, here’s the key moment: Just before the Republican Convention, McCain, who often seemed miserable in his new right-wing guise, tried to resurrect his former identity. He decided to choose as his running mate Joe Lieberman—a pro-choice Democrat who shared McCain’s views on foreign policy. The choice would have signalled both McCain’s independence and his return to a more bipartisan agenda. “He wanted Lieberman badly,” a McCain confidant said. But when leaders of the base threatened to challenge him at the Convention, McCain did the one thing that he believed a great politician never did. As the confidant put it, “John capitulated.One candidate stood up to his aides, one didn’t. One candidate ran his show, the other let it run him. One won, the other lost — not just the campaign but himself. It’s tragic, yes, Shakespearean even, but only for the candidate, not for us. By losing, in fact, you could say John McCain finally lived up to his campaign’s motto: He put country first. Baffling Republican Quote of the Day More than halfway through David Grann's must-read piece in the post-election issue of The New Yorker, "The Fall," about John McCain and his disastrous campaign, Grann paraphrases McCain speechwriter and close aide Mark Salter: In a recent conversation, Salter told me that at one moment the press was criticizing McCain for lacking a central message and the next was castigating him for not being spontaneous. First, the media is not monolithic. More importantly, those two criticisms are not mutually exclusive — as the sentence seems to imply. One can have a central message and be spontaneous. Just look at Barack Obama. Unfortunately, McCain didn't have (a central message) and wasn't (spontaneous). The worst of both worlds. Dan Savage Opens a Can of Whup-Ass TDS: RIP? — Addendum So the argument — jumpstarted, post-election, by Dan Kois — is that “The Daily Show” will have trouble with an Obama presidency because Jon Stewart and his writers are basically Dems who will have trouble mocking a Dem president. Certainly Bush provided a wider target than Obama, or anyone, will, but I've argued that Stewart's main target isn't really politicians anyway but the mainstream media and the effed-up way it portrays our world. As for the whole Dem thing, I suddenly realized — today — that the funniest thing I've seen on TDS in months, maybe ever, was the show's reaction to John Kerry's attempt to explain a “Depends” joke he made at the expense of John McCain. They spun it into its own mini-segment: “John Kerry Ruins Your Favorite Jokes.” Patricia can back me up. When we were watching this, I could barely breathe I was laughing so hard. The good stuff starts at 3:30 in. When Bush Met Obama — 2004 Jan Schakowsky told me about a recent visit she had made to the White House with a congressional delegation. On her way out, she said, President Bush noticed her “OBAMA” button. “He jumped back, almost literally,” she said. “And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a ‘b.’ And I explained who he was. The President said, ‘Well, I don’t know him.’ So I just said, ‘You will.’ ” — from William Finnegan's article, “The Candidate: How the son of a Kenyan Economist became an Illinois Everyman,” in the May 31, 2004 issue of The New Yorker. Recommended reading. Hertzberg on McCain: 9/13/04 From the same column: McCain—who in 2008 will be three years older than Reagan was in 1980—faces a different problem [than the moderate Republicans]. Though wobbly on gays, he is solidly anti-abortion and firmly in favor of the Iraq war. But it’s hard to see how he can ever win back the trust of the hard core. As hard to see as Russia from Sarah Palin's backyard. Hertzberg on Obama: 9/13/04 From a “Talk of the Town” piece: When Barack Obama spoke at the Democratic Convention in Boston, a lot of people thought—and hoped—that they were seeing the future. Half Kansas and half Kenyan, half black and half white, yet all-American in a novel and exhilarating way that seemed to transcend the usual categories, Obama, who on November 2nd will be elected to the United States Senate from Illinois, embodied and expressed a fresh synthesis of the American civic religion —one that fused not only black and white, and immigrant and native-born, but also self-reliance and social solidarity. “He represents the future of the party,” Stephanie Cutter, the communications director for John Kerry’s campaign, said by way of explaining why Obama had been chosen to deliver the keynote speech. And it is not hard to imagine circumstances under which, a decade or two hence, he might represent the future of the country as well. So NY Times reporter Michael Sokolove returned to his hometown of Levittown, Pa., on Election Day to find out how and why people were voting. Great piece. Read it in full. Some might wonder how this differs from what Maureen Dowd does. The biggest difference is in the question itself: “Why are you doing what you're doing” vs. “How do you feel?” The latter is a lousy question even when it comes from a reporter and is directed at a championship-winning athlete, and it's positively abyssmal when it comes from two citizens partcipating in the same democratic process. It implies a separation (as between reporter and athlete) when there should be none. It also assumes that people within a generalized group (that is, African-Americans) fit the generalization (that is, support Obama), and Dowd's black bartender, a Libertarian, was one of 4 percent nationwide who did not fit this generalization. Oops. Sokolove asks a real reporter's question (or a reporter's real question?) and gets great results. Why did this area, which went overwhelmingly for Hilary during the primaries, now go for Obama? - “McCain pointed a lot of fingers instead of giving answers,” Steve O’Connor, a plumber, told me. - “I don’t want a clone of George Bush,” Mark Maxwell, 47, a corporate chef, said. “With McCain, that’s exactly what we’d get.” - Said Lisa Winslow, a 20-year-old college student: “I’m not rich. I can’t afford to vote for McCain.” - Levittown is filled with a great many veterans of the Vietnam War, not all of whom served happily. “I didn’t want to be there when I was told to go,” said Frank Carr, 62, who recently retired from his shipping job in a corrugated box factory. “I know how the boys feel. I believe Obama is a man of his word.” When Mr. Obama says he is going to bring home the troops, “I believe him,” Mr. Carr said. Sokolove then concludes smartly: The people I met in Levittown were not on Mr. Obama’s e-mail list or among his donors, but they may be more likely than his younger supporters and more affluent ones to give him what he most desperately needs: time and patience. Like characters from the songs of one of Mr. Obama’s celebrity endorsers, Bruce Springsteen, many Levittowners have been weathered by life. They haven’t benefited from a lot of quick fixes. Others of his supporters say they’ll be patient, but I sensed these people really mean it. They were harder to sell, but they could end up being pretty loyal. “How long did it take Bush to get us into this mess?” Mr. Carr, the Vietnam veteran, asked. “It’s a lot easier to screw things up than to make them better.” Maureen Dowd Sucks (Again) As the posts below indicate, I've been waiting for the Sunday Times since Tuesday evening around 8 PM (PST). Wasn't the first thing on my mind, certainly, but at some point I did want to hear how Frank Rich and the others reacted to the Obama victory. Rich's main point is that we're a better country than we (and the Rovian Republicans) think we are. Thomas Friedman wants foreign leaders, giddy over an Obama victory, to remember to back Obama when things get tough: when we try to extricate ourselves from Iraq without collapsing the entire structure, or when we have to put pressure on Iran to keep them from developing nuclear weapons. Nicholas Kristof, echoing what I've long felt, wonders if Obama's victory is as much a victory for another embattled minority group, intellectuals, as it is for African-Americans. And Maureen Dowd? She begins her column not poorly: I grew up in the nation’s capital, but I’ve never seen blacks and whites here intermingling as they have this week. That made me want to read on. Until the very next sentence: Everywhere I go, some white person is asking some black person how they feel. Really? I thought. Surely not everywhere you go. Surely there are white people in D.C. who realize how condescending that is. Surely there are white people in D.C. who are happy enough to bask in their own joy without probing into the joy of perfect strangers — as if an Obama victory went beyond their ability to understand or experience. As if it wasn't for them as well. But Ms. Dowd finds them. Or at least writes about them. A white customer quizzing his black waitress. White women quizzing their black bartender. A white-haired white woman and a UPS delivery guy. Dowd herself and her mailman. Each instance involves a black service-person and a white customer. Nice. Where does she live again? Maybe she needs to get out more. Or further. And the point of her column? It comes in the second-to-last graf: But is it time now for whites to stop polling blacks on their feelings? Jesus. So Maureen Dowd writes a column in which a group of people act in a suspect manner to impart the lesson that this group of people probably shouldn't act in this suspect manner. Can someone please put Maureen Dowd out of her (and our) misery? Please? Karim Sadjadpour Quote of the Day “If you’re a hard-liner in Tehran, a U.S. president who wants to talk to you presents more of a quandary than a U.S. president who wants to confront you,” remarked Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment. “How are you going to implore crowds to chant ‘Death to Barack Hussein Obama’?" —from Thomas Friedman's column "Show Me the Money." Frank Rich Quote of the Day I recommend everyone read the entire column, but here (to me) are the highlights. It explains why we all felt so good Wednesday morning: On the morning after a black man won the White House, America’s tears of catharsis gave way to unadulterated joy. Our nation was still in the same ditch it had been the day before, but the atmosphere was giddy. We felt good not only because we had breached a racial barrier as old as the Republic... For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. If I had a dollar for every Democrat who told me there was no way that Americans would ever turn against the war in Iraq or definitively reject Bush governance or elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, I could almost start to recoup my 401(k)... ...Even the North Carolina county where Palin expressed her delight at being in the “real America” went for Obama by more than 18 percentage points. The actual real America is everywhere. It is the America that has been in shell shock since the aftermath of 9/11, when our government wielded a brutal attack by terrorists as a club to ratchet up our fears, betray our deepest constitutional values and turn Americans against one another in the name of “patriotism.” What we started to remember the morning after Election Day was what we had forgotten over the past eight years, as our abusive relationship with the Bush administration and its press enablers dragged on: That’s not who we are.So even as we celebrated our first black president, we looked around and rediscovered the nation that had elected him. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama said in February, and indeed millions of such Americans were here all along, waiting for a leader. This was the week that they reclaimed their country. Obama Quote of the Day - for Patricia From the president-elect's first press conference earlier today. The economy, jobs, Iran, were all dealt with. Then this. With respect to the dog, this is a major issue. I think it's generated more interest on our Web site than just about anything. We have — we have two criteria that have to be reconciled. One is that Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypoallergenic. There are a number of breeds that are hypoallergenic. On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog, but, obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me. So — so whether we're going to be able to balance those two things I think is a pressing issue on the Obama household. The “mutts like me” line. Jesus, I love this man. Sullivan Hammers Krauthammer I had this argument, even at the time, with people who were nominally paying attention to events, both political and financial, but who weren't obsesssing as much on the polls as I was. I remember when Obama was down to 220+ electoral votes on fivethirtyeight.com, the panic I felt, the relief I felt when his numbers began to go up before the Lehman Bros. collapse. Those who weren't obsessing didn't get this. They attributed Obama's surge to the economic collapse when it began before — around the time the shine began to wear off of Gov. Palin. Lord knows Lehman didn't help McCain, but then McCain didn't help himself, either. Despite Krauthammer, an argument can be made that with a better VP choice, with better debate performances, and with a steady campaign that seemed to anticipate events rather than reacting wildly to them, McCain, at the least, would've had a better shot. But to pull that off (particularly the “anticipating events” part), both he and Steve Schmidt would have had to be completely different people. Anonymous Quote of the Day One other thing: this is a country whose President-elect's middle name is Hussein. That is a fact to be celebrated. I received an email from a young friend, an entrepreneur in Kabul, this morning. He said, "We are all smiling now," and he attached a Pakistani press clipping--the Taliban greeted the new President and said they were ready to commence talks. Patricia Quote of the Day In an e-mail to Jeff and Sullivan... "I have a slight headache but I can't think of anytime I've been happier. There were tears and cheers at our place. Andy, who had gone door-to-door in Ohio for Obama, was in tears. And Laurion's parents came up from the Bahamas just for the election. His dad. who's black, said to me as he left, 'I'm so proud of your country. This is very special day.'" Quote of the Day at Arnellia's "Our community, we're used to the legal system letting us down," he said. "I'm used to [things] going wrong. I distrust the system so much, but this is the first time I've seen the system work in my life, and I'm 40 years old. That's harsh, but it's true. It's a relief. It's a relief to say, 'Finally. Something right happened.' But not right just for me, for everybody." — David Hall, 39, in Jim Walsh's MNPost piece "Jubiliation at Arnellia's." Quote of the Day It amazes me how commentators, especially conservative commentators, can argue that (a) Obama is a socialistic avatar and a radical redistributionist and yet (b) that his election doesn't mean that the voters have been pulled to the left or bestowed a liberal mandate—that the U.S. is still (this week's reigning buzzphrase) "a center-right country." My Election Day One day I'll live blog one of these things (World Series, unprecedented presidential elections), but here's the retroactive version: 5:30: Woke up, showered, coffee, etc. Read Andrew Sullivan. Wrote a bit. 6:30: Left our place and walked in the rain to the T.T. Minor Elementary School to vote. My first time voting there. Usually my polling location is within five or six blocks of my home but this was over a mile away. Seems a bit screwy but Seattle often seems a bit screwy. Got wet despite the umbrella. Rain forecast for the entire day, with thunderstorms in the afternoon. 7:05: Arrived at the school to find a line of about 100 people. Again: new. Usually it's just me and the old ladies in the basement of the church. The school is a sweet elementary school (Andy's daughter goes there) and has kids' names on all of the lockers. The woman in front of me commented on what great names the kids had — not the dull Marys and Davids of our childhood — and I pointed out one name and said, “Yeah, when I was growing up, 'Isis' was just a heroine on a Saturday morning TV show.” She then surprised me by repeating the whole “zephyr winds” line and we got to talking about “Shazam” and “H.R. Puffenstuff” and how the creators of the latter must've been high while making it (a magic talking flute?), and how the star of the show, Jack Wild, had played the Artful Dodger in the 1968 musical Oliver! and may have been the best thing in the movie. I was pretty sure he'd been nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor. He also sang the film's most memorable song: “Consider Yourself.” This woman then began to sing the song to herself. Consider yourself...one of the family. 7:45: Voted. (Psst. Barack.) 7:55: Walked to Broadway on Capitol Hill. The rains had stopped. Passed a garage on John Street between 12th and 13th where the owner had painted the famous “Barack Hope” poster on the door. Painted it well, I should add. 8:05: Arrived at Starbucks ahead of the precinct captain, Stuart. Phoned him. He said he was still at campaign headquarters on Pine — that there were tons of people there — but he had our packet and would meet me in about 10 minutes. 8:05-8:15: Sat in the back of Starbucks on a couch. Starbucks was giving away free coffee to anyone who voted and the woman at the table in front of me, overhearing the barrista talking about it, said to her friend, who was sitting on the couch next to me, “Oh, is it election day?” I thought: “And that's why we have a GOTV effort. Some people just don't know.” Then the woman asked the man who was gonna win: He: Well, Obama's ahead nationally but the electoral college is close. It might come down to Hawaii. Me (butting in): If it comes down to Hawaii, Barack wins. Hawaii always goes Democrat and he's from there. No way he's losing Hawaii. He: No, I'm just saying it might be close. Me: Uh huh. She: I've heard he might have trouble anyway. Because he's against the second amendment and all. Me: He's not against the second amendment. She: (Exchanges meaningful glance with the man as if to say, “Lookee here who's been brainwashed.”) She (to He): So how long have you been hypnotizing people? He: Oh, about 45 years. They then went on to have a serious talk about hypnosis. 8:15: Stuart arrives. Hallelujah. 8:15-9:15: Stuart and I walk the precinct that he's walked four times in the last month, usually alone, getting out the vote. We only had about 20 names left on his list, and a couple were his neighbors with whom he'd just spoken. They'd voted. Off the list. Getting down to the bare nub. The goal. Stuart was from Chicago, had lived in Seattle for...8 years or so? I'd met him the night before and given him shit about his Chicago Cubs cap. “You know, Barack's a White Sox fan,” I said. He smiled and said, “Well, I think we have room in the party for both Cubs and White Sox fans.”`Some part of me was actually worried about that Cubs cap: That it might transmit its losing ways into the campaign. I wondered who the Steve Bartman of the Barack campaign might be. 9:15: Stuart and I finished the packet, we said our goodbyes, and I walked the packet over to Obama's Capitol Hill headquarters on Pine. It was getting chillier but the rain wasn't coming back. In fact, the sky was beginning to clear. Nice. Campaign headquarters was packed. I'd arrived planning to phone-bank into the early afternoon but looked at the second floor, where phone-banking was supposed to take place, and thought it made more sense to split. They had more volunteers than they knew what to do with. Again: Nice. On the walk home, ran into our neighbor, Laura, who was on her way to vote. 10:00-4:00: Got our place ready for what I continually called a “gathering.” Didn't want to jinx us with the word “party.” 4:00: First results. McCain leads in the electoral college 8-3: Kentucky vs. Vermont. Damn! 4:15: Andy and his girls arrive. Mathilda, the youngest, wears wings. I ask her if that was her Halloween costume but she says, No, she went as Dora. 4:30 and on: More people arrive. Jeff and Sullivan, with two kids. Chasing games ensue throughout the condo. Charges of “schnookering” are made. Balloons are blown up. Balloons are played with. All evening. Around 25-30 people show up. At some point we order Indian food. I drink: beer and saki and red wine and champagne. By which time the gathering has become a party. I began to use the word: party. You know the rest. I was worried about Virginia, initially, but when Pennsylvania broke early and clean for Obama, I thought: Good sign. By the tme Ohio broke, giving Obama 207 electoral votes, Jim and I did the math. The three western states, California, Oregon and Washington, would give him 280. It was all over but the shouting. Then came the shouting. Today: A new day. Welcome. GOTV in America GOTV in Pennsylvania Spent a good part of yesterday at home making phonecalls for Barack Obama as part of his campaign's Get Out The Vote effort. Their online set up is pretty smart, and allows a volunteer to choose which (leaning, toss-up) state to call. I chose Pennsylvania, for obvious reasons, and it mostly went OK, although at least 90 percent of my calls resulted in 1) leaving messages, 2) wrong numbers, or 3) nobody home, which is different than 1) in that there was no answering machine or service to leave a message on or with. The phone just rang and rang and rang. A throwback to the '70s. The most interesting person I talked to was an 80-something year-old woman who was voting for Obama, and who complained about all of the mail and robocalls she was getting from the McCain camp. “I'm not a Republican!” she kept saying indignantly. She also implied that FDR helped her father get a job during the Depression. Apparently he told his kids, and he had 12 of them, before he died, “If any of you vote Republican I'll roll over in my grave.” She was proud of that. The most interesting polling location? “Prison Training Academy” in Philadelphia. My friend Andy, who was doing the same all weekend, got me on board yesterday and probably immediately regretted it, since I called him about five times with various questons. During one of those calls we got to talking about McCain's robocalls and what a nuissance they were. Andy said that whenever he left a message he always used the voter's name so they'd know it wasn't a robocall. That's when it hit me. Why McCain uses robocalls. Because he doesn't have people like us. Yet another difference between the two campaigns. McCain uses a dehumanizing technique to dehumanize his opponent. Obama uses actual volunteers from around the country to make sure everyone gets out and votes. My First Blog Post Eight years ago, either the night before or a few nights before the 2000 election, I read Hendrik Hertzberg’s “Talk of the Town” column in The New Yorker before going to bed and panicked. I couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t gotten involved in the campaign much — I was a freelance writer, struggling to keep my head above water during a time of great prosperity and opportunity — but I was definitely for Gore, and not simply because I was a Democrat, but for all the reasons Hertzberg laid out in his column. What I didn’t know, what Hertzberg began to let me in on, was how bad it had gotten, and how culpable the media was in making it bad, which is to say close. Too close to call. We had to wait until the U.S. Supreme Court decided for us, by a 5-4 vote, on December 12, 2000: a date which will live in infamy. (For more on this, please read Boies v. Bush v. Gore, about Gore’s lawyer David Boies, which I edited for New York Super Lawyers magazine this fall.) That evening, instead of sleeping, I got up, turned my computer back on, searched online for the Hertzberg article (futilely, for this was 2000), and then proceeded to type the whole damn thing up and send it to everyone I knew. I suppose it was my first blog post. READ this, I told everyone. SEND IT to everyone you know. We've come a long way baby since then, and mostly, like the old Springsteen song says, down down down down. It's amazing to consider the country Bush inherited and the country he leaves behind. Only the most blinkered Republican fuckstick would consider the last eight years anything less than an unmitigated disaster. We can't re-do that choice but we can do this one right. My god, what would it be like to have a smart man, a really smart man, in the White House? Here's the Hertzberg column I sent out eight years ago. Read it and weep. Read it and hope: After the polls close next week, we will learn what Presidential politics in the year 2000 has been “about.” Specifically, we will learn whether it has been about “issues” or “personality.” If the campaign turns out to have been about “issues,” then the Democratic nominee, Al Gore, will be elected, because he is the superior candidate in point of both command and positions... Vice President Gore has shown himself to be, in comparison with the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, more fiscally responsible (because he proposes to spend somewhat less of the chimerical surplus than does Governor Bush), more socially responsible (because he proposes to spend more of that surplus on social needs such as education and health care and divert less of it to individual consumption), and more egalitarian (because his plans for changing the tax code, combined with his spending plans, would ameliorate inequalities of wealth and income while Bush’s would exacerbate them). Gore’s foreign policy would be more energetic in its promotion of democratic values than Bush’s, and probably more so than President Clinton’s. Bush has offered few clues to what his foreign policy might be, except to say that he would build a missile-defense system whether or not it was technically workable or strategically advantageous, and that he opposes the American military presence in Haiti (where, at last count, we had 29 soldiers) and in the Balkans, where a unilateral withdrawal would have the effect of weakening the Western alliance and America’s role within it. As for the superiority of Gore’s command of the issues, this is not a matter of opinion — or, if it is, everyone’s opinion is the same, even (to judge from his defensive jokes) Bush’s: Gore knows more, understands more, and has thought more, and more coherently, about virtually every aspect of public policy, domestic and foreign, than Bush has... Bush’s point of superiority, then, is in the matter of “personality,” and it is striking how narrowly that word seems to have been defined for electoral purposes. Personality apparently excludes, if not intelligence itself, then such manifestations of it as intellectual curiosity, analytic ability, and a capacity for original thought, all of which Gore has in abundance and Bush not only lacks but scorns. Personality apparently excludes courage: Gore put himself in harm’s way during the Vietnam War; Bush did not. Gore’s tendency to embellish anecdotes, especially about himself, is real and undeniable. Even so, some of his alleged lies have turned out to be strongly rooted in factuality. He did not “create” the Internet, obviously, but he was one of a tiny handful of politicians who grasped its significance when it was in its infancy, and he did take the lead in writing legislation to spur its development. In the debates, Bush uttered inaccuracies that, unlike Gore’s, falsify the underlying essence of his point — as, for example, when he said that Gore was outspending him in the campaign (when the reverse is true, to the tune of $50 million), and that he fought to get a patient’s bill of rights passed in Texas (when he actually vetoed one such bill and allowed another to become law without his signature), and that his health-care proposal would “have prescription drugs as an integral part of Medicare” (when this is precisely what Gore’s plan would do, while Bush’s would dismantle Medicare as we know it in favor of a system of subsidized private insurance). Still, there’s no denying that a large number of people find Gore irritating; to prove it, there are polls, to say nothing of the panels of “undecided voters” — that is, clueless, ill-informed citizens who even at this late date cannot summon the mental energy to make up their minds — assembled by the television networks into on-camera focus groups. Gore can be awkward and tone-deaf, and he sometimes has trouble modulating his presentation of himself, and he plainly lacks the instinctive political exuberance of a Bill Clinton or even the slightly twitchy easygoingness of a George W. Bush. Gore is aggressive, assertive, and intensely energetic, qualities once counted as desirable in a potential President but now evidently seen by many as disturbing. At a time of domestic prosperity and tranquility, much of the public seems to have developed a thirst for passivity, a thirst that Bush is eager to slake. This may explain the paradox that while Gore was widely judged the substantive winner of all three of the televised debates, he lost the battle in the post-debate media echo chambers, and perhaps partly as a result, in the opinion polls. In the final debate, Gore stretched the rules, while Bush complained and turned beseechingly to the moderator for help. To caricature them both, Gore was a smart bully, Bush a hapless tattletale. Neither attribute is attractive, but it may turn out that fear of the first will outweigh contempt for the second. In that case, “personality” will definitely have triumphed over “issues,” and the transformation of the Presidency of the United States into the presidency of the student council will be complete. — Hendrik Hertzberg All Hail Hendrik Hertzberg! Still, these guys are so good they often come through. Loved Rich’s piece last week and particularly loved Hertzberg’s latest “Talk of the Town.” Everything you wanted to know about socialism but were afraid to ask. “You” being you. Or possibly Joe the Plumber. It’s more than John McCain’s comment to the daughter of a doctor who, during the 2000 campaign, complained we were getting too close to socialism in this country (“...when you reach a certain level of comfort,” he told her, “there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat more”), or the fact that Sarah Palin’s Alaska, which has no sales or income tax, funds itself with huge levies to oil companies and then gives what’s left back to (or just “to”) its citizens. Talk about spreading the wealth. And these two are basing their entire presidential campaign (this week) on attacking Barack Obama for similar economic plans? Their hypocrisy is overwhelming. One wonders, for the thousandth time, how they sleep. Hertzberg fires this: The Republican argument of the moment seems to be that the difference between capitalism and socialism corresponds to the difference between a top marginal income-tax rate of 35 per cent and a top marginal income-tax rate of 39.6 per cent. The latter is what it would be under Obama’s proposal, what it was under President Clinton, and, for that matter, what it will be after 2010 if President Bush’s tax cuts expire on schedule.More comprehensively, he gives us this, which has always been my argument: Of course, all taxes are redistributive, in that they redistribute private resources for public purposes. But the federal income tax is (downwardly) redistributive as a matter of principle: however slightly, it softens the inequalities that are inevitable in a market economy, and it reflects the belief that the wealthy have a proportionately greater stake in the material aspects of the social order and, therefore, should give that order proportionately more material support.Ex-mothereffin-actly! On HuffPost, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, of all people, who supported Hilary Clinton earlier this year and is now supporting John McCain, has an anti-Obama post in which she raises the same stupid fears. I’m not sure what her game is — is she really that greedy or does she merely want McCain to win in ’08 so Hilary can win in ’12? — but she trots out that familiar Republican talking point against higher taxes for the wealthy: Today, the top 1% of earners contributes 40% of the nation's $2.6 trillion tax intake and the bottom 50% pay 2.9% of our nation's total needs.I can’t think of a better argument for a more steeply progressive tax system than this. If the top 1 percent, paying at a rate similar to mine, already pay 40 percent of our taxes, think how much money they’re making. If these people are lucky enough to have the skills that allows them to prosper in the kind of system we currently have, then they should be paying even more to keep that system running smoothly. And they haven’t. It’s time the bastards paid up. “Idiot Wind” is a startlingly good song for the way the McCain camp has attacked Obama this fall. Line after line hits home: Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out but when they will I can only guess... I haven't known peace and quiet for so long I can't remember what it's like... I noticed at the ceremony, your corrupt ways had finally made you blind I can't remember your face anymore, your mouth has changed, your eyes don't look into mine... The awful thing about the attacks is that you don't need to know anything about Obama, or about McCain, to know they're bullshit. You just have to know something about the world. A communist...and a Muslim? How is that possible? A secret socialist, who wants to make government all-powerful...and a secret terrorist, who wants to destroy government from within? How is that possible? The inanity (Sean or otherwise) is overwhelming. Unafraid to Listen An editorial in The Washington Post today condemns the latest guilt-by-association attack by John McCain and his campaign. The latest version involves an Arab-American scholar and Columbia professor, Raschid Kalidi, who holds, the Post says, complex views of the Middle East situation, and who was the subject of a toast at a dinner party by Barack Obama in 2003. Barack apparently said that Mr. Kalidi “offers constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.” By the end of the editorial, the Post quotes Mr. Kalidi saying he's waiting for this latest McCain-inspired “idiot wind” to blow over, and the Post agrees. But first they write this: It's fair to question why Mr. Obama felt as comfortable as he apparently did during his Chicago days in the company of men whose views diverge sharply from what the presidential candidate espouses. Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position. I'm not a fan of “Duh” but... Duh! Seriously are we that pathetic? Are our own points of view so fragile that they can't bear the scrutiny that listening to someone else's views requires? I'm reminding of something James Baldwin said about living in France and Turkey: “Whenever you live in another civilization you are foced to examine your own.” This examination is good and necessary if you are ever to improve your own society. The people who do not engage in it — fellow non-travelers like George Bush and Sarah Palin — have limited, absolutist world views that are not only dispiriting, but, in world leaders, positively dangerous. Both Palin and Bush don't have the intellect, or intellectual curiosity, or humility about one's intellect that true intellectual curiosity fosters, to be world leaders. We've already seen what happens when they get into positions of power. John McCain isn't much better. Plus he's got a dangerous temperament. Plus he's obviously sold his soul to the devil with this campaign. He's leaving behind a stink that we may never get out. And that's if he loses. If he wins, every campaign, at every level, will be flinging the same shit. We'll be covered in it. Here's my point. This latest McCain-inspired controversy is actually one of the best reasons to vote for Barack Obama. John McCain, like Sarah Palin and George Bush, is rarely the smartest person in any room he walks into — and he doesn't need to hear what you have to say. Barack Obama is almost always the smartest person in any room he walks into — and he still wants to hear what you have to say. My god. How refreshing. Good Talking Points Memo feature here on the number of conservatives who have dismissed McCain and/or endorsed Obama, and the number of newspapers who have done the same, specifically because of McCain's VP pick. You have a favorite? Mine's still Colin Powell, although I give Chris Hitchens props. The Six Narratives of John McCain Interesting piece by Robert Draper in yesterday's NY Times Magazine on the various narratives of the McCain campaign. The subhed says it all: “When a campaign can't settle on a central narrative, does it imperil its protagonist?” In this way it's easy to blame McCain's chief campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, who encouraged John McCain to get away from “straight talk” in favor of “talking points,” and who encouraged him to use (or exploit) his P.O.W. status, and who favored picking Sarah Palin for VEEP and who pushed for suspending the campaign on Wednesday, Sept. 24 in the wake of the financial crisis, and who was, after all, the author of all of these various narratives, in which they tried to remake Obama as a “celebrity” or a “non-partisan pretender” or “a Washington insider” and then suffered the misfortune of not having Obama play along. So, yes, it's easy to blame Schmidt. But of course the bigger fault lies with John McCain. In the parlance of this low, dishonest decade, he's the decider, and he decided to take this path, or these paths, and so he is where he is. I believe conservatives used to call this kind of thing “accountability.” Reading, in fact, my main thought was this: Who wants a president of the United States who can be pushed around by the likes of Steve Schmidt? New Yorker Quote of the Day - I "Kristol was out there shaking the pom-poms." —from Jane Mayer's article on how John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate in the Oct. 27th New Yorker. More precise, it's a piece on how she wound up on everyone's radar. Blame those National Review/Weekly Standard luxury cruises that stopped off in Juneau in 2007. "The Governor was more than happy to meet with these guys," her aide said, and they were more than happy to meet with her. Starbursts followed. William Kristol was particularly smitten, to the point where, in a Fox News discussion on possible VEEPs this June, Chris Wallace told Kristol, "Can we please get off Sarah Palin?" Others beat the drums, and some beat those drums right next to John McCain. I suppose the real money quote is near the end: "By the time he announced her as his choice, the next day, he had spent less than three hours in her company." Yikes. McCain Endorses Obama? More Obama stuff. Nicholas Kristof writes what everyone who thinks two feet beyond their face has known from the start (but it’s still nice to read) and The New York Times endorses Obama for president. They’ve also included this nifty little gadget on every Times presidential endorsement since Lincoln. From Lincoln to Obama. Talk about framing the issue. The Times’ endorsement is hardly a surprise — they haven’t endorsed a Republican since Ike in ’56, and this hardly seems the year to break tradition. Tradition's breaking the other way: Not just Colin Powell but former Republican governors Arne Carlson and William Weld and former Bush press spokesperson Scott McClellan. Not to mention National Review scion Christopher Buckley and 40 newspapers that backed Bush and all of these people. Not sure how Rush Limbaugh bloviates against these. Despite the polls, I’m assuming nothing. I know the Republicans will be throwing everything they can at Obama and hope something sticks. In recent weeks, the two biggest charges against him are that he’s a) a terrorist, and b) a socialist. We know why these words are chosen — both are pejorative in the minds of Americans — but they are, in the sense that the McCain camp uses them, mutually exclusive. In general, I suppose, one can be a terrorist-socialist (tearing down to build up?), but the McCain camp is implying that Obama will both destroy our government from within (leaving it in ashes) and build it up from within (leaving it stronger than ever). Jesus, dudes, pick one. You can’t have both. Oh. My. God. I don't know why I'm voting for this man. He keeps making me cry. I’d also recommend this Ron Howard video. I grew up on “Andy Griffith” and “Happy Days” so appreciate what he went through to go back there. I await the sequel, in which he re-sings "Gary, Indiana" and gets us all to eat his dust. Jim Walsh and the Wellstone World Music Weekend The following column was written by my friend Jim Walsh a year after the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone in Oct. 2002. It was a bad time. Our country gave into fear, it gave into lies, it set us on the path we're currently on. How does that path feel now? In two weeks, we may be able to begin to get off this path. We may be able to elect a leader who offers smarts,and hope, and unity; a leader who can make friends out of our enemies rather than enemies out of our friends. But it's still two weeks away. The McCain camp is stirring up old fears, promulgating new fears, disseminating misrepresentations and outright lies. They're throwing whatever shit they can against the wall and hoping some of it sticks. Here's to not giving into fear and lies. Here's to hope, and smarts, and unity. And here's to Joe Henry, Vic Chesnutt, Dan Wilson, the Tropicals, Prince, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, Green Day, Jenny Owen Young, Leonard Cohen, Guns N' Roses, Nirvana, Joan Armatrading, Randy Newman, Loudon Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright, Jonathan Richman, Teddy Thompson, Antony, Iron & Wine, R.E.M., The Beatles, Paul Simon, A3 and Nina Simone. And here's to the Mad Ripple. An E-Proposal From Me to You By Jim Walsh I am standing in the northwest corner of Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, in front of a silver monument that looks like a heart, a broken heart really, and I am thinking about how wrong the world has gone, how Minnesota Mean it all feels. I’m thinking about how much everyone I know misses the man I’ve come to visit, how sick I am of sitting around waiting for change, and about what might happen if I ask you to do something, which is what I’ll do in a minute. Like most Minnesotans, I met Paul Wellstone once. It was at the Loring Playhouse after the opening night of a friend’s play. He and Sheila were there, offering encouragement to the show’s director, Casey Stangl, and quietly validating the post-production festivities with his presence: The Junior Senator from Minnesota and his wife are here; we must be doing something right. The year before (1990), I’d written a column for City Pages encouraging all local musicians and local music fans to go vote for this mad professor the following Tuesday. He won, and, as many have said since, for the first time in my life I felt like we were part of something that had roots in Stuff The Suits Don’t Give A Shit About. That is, we felt like we had a voice, like were getting somewhere, or like Janeane Garofalo’s villain-whupping character in “Mystery Men,” who memorably proclaimed, “I would like to dedicate my victory to the supporters of local music and those who seek out independent films.” After the election, Wellstone’s aide Bill Hillsman told me he believed my column had reached a segment of the voting populace that they were having trouble reaching, and that it may have helped put him over the top. I put aside my bullshit detector for the moment and chose to believe him, just as I choose at this moment to believe that music and the written word can still help change the world. When I introduced myself to Wellstone that night as “Jim Walsh from City Pages,” he broke into that sexy gap-toothed grin, clasped my hand and forearm and said, with a warm laugh, “Jiiiiim,” like we were a couple of thieves getting together for the first time since the big haul. I can still feel his hand squeezing my forearm. I can still feel his fighter’s strength. For those of you who never had the pleasure, that is what Paul Wellstone was--a fighter—despite the fact that the first president Bush said upon their first encounter, “who is this chickenshit?” He fought corporate America, the FCC, injustice, his own government. He fought for the voiceless, the homeless, the poor, the little guy—in this country and beyond. He was a politician but not a robot; an idealist, but not a sap, and if his legacy has already morphed into myth, it’s because there were/are so few like him. He was passionate, and compassionate. He had a huge heart, a rigorous mind, a steely soul and conscience, and now he is dead and buried in a plot that looks out over the joggers, bikers, rollerbladers, and motorists who parade around Lake Calhoun daily. Paul and Sheila Wellstone and six others, including their daughter Marcia, were killed in a plane crash on October 25, 2002. I remember where I was that day, just as you do, and I don’t want to forget it, but what I want to remember even more is October 25, 2003. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to start something right here, right now, and we’re going to call it Paul and Sheila Wellstone World Music Day. It will happen on Saturday, Oct. 25th. On that day, every piece of music, from orchestras to shower singers, superstars to buskers, will be an expression of that loss and a celebration of that life. It will be one day, where music—which, to my way of thinking, is still the best way to fill in the gray areas that the blacks and whites of everyday life leave us with—rises up in all sorts of clubs, cars, concerts, and living rooms, all in the name of peace and love and joy and all that good stuff that gets snickered at by Them. Now. This is no corporate flim-flam or media boondoggle. This is me talking to you, and you and I deciding to do something about the place we live in when it feels like all the exits are blocked. So: First of all, clip or forward this to anyone you know who still cares about grass roots, community, music, reading, writing, love, the world, and how the world sees America. If you’ve got a blog or web site, post it. If you’re a musician, book a gig now for Oct. 25th. Tell them you want it to be advertised as part of Paul and Sheila Wellstone World Music Day. If you’re a shower singer, lift your voice that day and tell yourself the same thing. If you’re a club owner, promoter, or scene fiend, put together a multi-act benefit for Wellstone Action! <http://www.wellstone.org> . If you’re a newspaper person, tell your readers. If you’re a radio person, tell your listeners. Everybody talk about what you remember about Wellstone, what he tried to do, what you plan to do for Wellstone World Music Day. Then tell me at the email address below, and I’ll write another column like this the week of Oct. 25th, with your and others’ comments and plans. This isn’t exactly an original idea. Earlier this year, I sat in a room at Stanford University with Judea and Michelle Pearl, the father and daughter of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by members of a radical Islamic group in Pakistan in February of last year. After much talk about their son and brother’s life and murder, I asked them about Danny’s love of music. He was a big music fan, and an accomplished violinist who played with all sorts of bands all over the world. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Pearl was also a member of the Atlanta band the Ottoman Empire, and his fiddle levitates one of my all-time favorite Irish jigs, “This Is It,” which I found myself singing one night last fall in a Sonoma Valley bar with a bunch of journalists from Paraguay, Texas, Mexico, Jerusalem, Italy, and Korea. The Pearls talked with amazement about the first Daniel Pearl World Music Day <http://www.danielpearl.org> , the second of which happens this October 10th, which would have been Pearl’s 40th birthday. I told them about attending one of the first Daniel Pearl World Music Day activities at Stanford Memorial Church, where a lone violinist silently strolled away from her chamber group at the end, signaling to me and my gathered colleagues that we were to remember that moment and continue to ask questions, continue to push for the dialogue that their son and brother lived for. I vowed that day to tell anybody within earshot about Daniel Pearl World Music Day, and later figured he wouldn’t mind a similar elegy for Wellstone, who shared Pearl’s battle against hate and cynicism. Wellstone didn’t lead any bands, but he led as musical a life as they come. He lived to bring people together, to mend fences: Music. When he died, musicians and artists were some of the most devastated, as Leslie Ball’s crest-fallen-but-somehow-still-beaming face on CSPAN from Williams Arena illustrated. Everyone from Mason Jennings to Larry Long wrote Wellstone tribute songs in the aftermath, and everyone had a story, including the one Wendy Lewis told me about the genuine exuberance with which Wellstone once introduced her band, Rhea Valentine, to a crowd at the Lyn-Lake Festival. Imagine that, today. So ignore this or do whatever you do when your “We Are The World” hackles go up. I’d be disappointed, and I suppose I wouldn’t blame you; in these times of terror alerts and media celebrity, I’m suspicious of everything, too. But I freely admit that the idea of a Wellstone World Music Day is selfish. That day was beyond dark, and to have another like it, a litany of hang-dog tributes and rehashes of The Partisan Speech and How It All Went Wrong, would be painful, not to mention disrespectful to everything those lives stood for and against. No, I don’t want anyone telling me what to think or feel that day, or any day, anymore. I want music that day. I want to wake up hearing it, go to bed singing it. I want banners, church choirs, live feeds, hip-hop, headlines, punk rock, field reports, arias, laughter. I want to remember October 25, 2002 as the day the music died, and October 25, 2003 as the day when people who’ve spent their lives attending anti-war rallies and teaching kids and championing local music and independent films got together via the great big antennae of music and took another shot. I am standing in the northwest corner of Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis. In front of the silver broken heart, three workers stab the fresh sod with shovels and fumble with a tape measurer. Flowers dot the dirt surrounding the statue base. I pick up a rock and put it in my pocket. The sprinklers are on, hissing impatiently at the still-stunned-by-last-autumn citizens who work and hope and wait and watch beyond the cemetery gates. The sprinklers shoot horizontal water geysers this way and that. They are replenishing patches of grass that have been browned by the sun. They are telling every burned-out blade to keep growing, and trying to coax life out of death. The Final Debate — Who Disappointed A day late and a couple of billion dollars short, but here’s my thoughts on who disappointed during that final debate and why: Bob Schieffer. Particularly the moral equivalency implicit in this question: “Both of you pledged to take the high road in this campaign yet it has turned very nasty. Senator Obama, your campaign has used words like ‘erratic,’ ‘out of touch,’ ‘lie,’ ‘angry,’ ‘losing his bearings’ to describe Senator McCain. Senator McCain, your commercials have included words like ‘disrespectful,’ ‘dangerous,’ ‘dishonorable,’ ‘he lied.’ Your running mate said he ‘palled around with terrorists’...” Please. Barack Obama’s negative ads focus on what’s wrong with John McCain’s proposed policies, and are mostly truthful. John McCain’s negative ads (and stump speeches) focus on what's wrong with Barack Obama, and they are mostly outright lies and innuendo. There is no equivalency. Everyone with an open mind knows who’s muddying the waters. McCain’s camp has even admitted that that’s their strategy. Why should journalists pretend otherwise? I’ve said it time and again: Objectivity is not stupidity. This should be a journalistic mantra. Wake the fuck up. The answers to the “running mate” question. Overall, of course, Barack's my guy, the smartest, most inspiring presidential candidate I’ve seen during my lifetime. And I know he’s preternaturally calm, and that’s part of the reason he is where he is. But when Schieffer lobbed that softball to him about running mates, and why his was better than the other, he should’ve smacked it out of the park. I mean out of the park. Instead, he turned even more factual, more logical. Drove me crazy. I mean, c’mon. At least bring up the fact that Sarah Palin doesn’t even do press conferences, that we’re in the unprecedented situation of possibly electing someone to the second-highest office in the land who hasn’t talked to the press yet. He doesn’t have to say it’s fascist, which it is. He just has to say it’s undemocratic, which it is. I was also a little disappointed that he didn’t take John McCain more to task for McCain’s response to Schieffer’s above question. Which brings me to... John McCain. Yep. After everything we’ve seen from his campaign, how could he disappoint me more? Yet he managed to do it. Kudos. The first time was here: One of [those negative attacks] happened just the other day, when a man I admire and respect — I've written about him — Congressman John Lewis, an American hero, made allegations that Sarah Palin and I were somehow associated with the worst chapter in American history, segregation, deaths of children in church bombings, George Wallace. That, to me, was so hurtful.... I hope that Senator Obama will repudiate those remarks that were made by Congressman John Lewis, very unfair and totally inappropriate. OK. McCain’s campaign implies that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a terrorist, “evil,” and when John Lewis calls him on it, McCain has the nerve to be affronted? But it’s more. If you’d asked me five years, 10 years ago, to name someone who was a hero to me, someone alive and whom I didn’t know personally, I would’ve named John Lewis. He grew up poor in Mississippi. He wanted to be a minister and used to preach to the chickens as he was feeding them in the morning. He wound up going to college in Nashville and became one of the leaders of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, which was the first protracted, organized effort at direct action — confronting an unjust law rather than simply ignoring it — of the civil rights movement. He was one of the leaders of the Freedom Rides, and was among those attacked in Montgomery, Ala., by a white mob who objected to the integrated Greyhound bus in their midst. (There’s a famous photo of him, with Jim Zwerg, a white student from, I believe, Wisconsin: Zwerg has his bloody fingers in his mouth (checking his teeth?), while Lewis looks, well, preternaturally calm, despite the blood splattered on his suit and tie.) He was the first president of SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and he was among the speakers during the March on Washington in August 1963. If memory serves, he even argued with the March’s founders because he wanted to use the term “black” rather than “Negro” but the founder’s thought that too radical. For the past 30 years, he’s represented his district in Georgia in the U.S. Congress. So when John McCain began dragging John Lewis’ name through the mud on national television, I had to restrain myself from battering my own television in anger. Sen. McCain: There’s a reason John Lewis has equated you with some of the worst aspects of the civil rights movement. Look to yourself. Then there was that moment, near the end, during the abortion back-and-forth, when McCain used air quotes around “health of the mother.” I’m not a woman but even I was offended. Can’t imagine how women felt. The mainstream (corporate, idiotic) media. To me the debate was no contest. One guy was cranky, the other was calm. One guy was petty, the other guy had a largeness of spirit. One guy tried to keep us divided, the other tried to bring us together. (Check out, for example, Barack’s answer to the abortion question.) Even on a superficial level: One guy was red-eyed, blinking, with an unnatural smile, the other guy was handsome, cool, with a natural smile. No contest. The polls afterwards indicated it was no contest. Voters preferred Barack Obama overwhelmingly, by the biggest margins in any of their three debates. And yet the pundits. Ah, the pundits. Are they in some kind of vacuum of stupidity? Are they straining for objectivity? Do they want to make more of a contest out of this presidential race? Do they want to give one to poor John McCain? Because they didn’t see it. Either they missed it, or they pretended reality was something other than what it was. So much of the press, even a day later, was about how John McCain “went on the attack,” and “made the debate about...” blah blah blah. They couldn’t get enough of “Joe the Plumber,” yet another ignoramus John McCain has dragged onto the national stage. Here’s a guy, not even a licensed plumber, who owes back taxes, and who, in every interview I’ve heard, reiterates Republican talking points. He almost feels like a plant. He complains that Barack Obama’s tax plan would raise his taxes. It won’t. In fact, he’ll probably get a tax break. And yet “Joe” still won’t admit it. He says Barack tap-danced around the issue “almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr.” He said this to Katie Couric when she called him Thursday morning. He said it on national TV. People at CBS laughed when he said it. Jesus Christ. How much more stupid can we get? But for all that disappointment, it was still the debate I wanted. Barack looked good, McCain looked bad, and we’ve got less than three weeks to go. U.S. Presidents on Film I’ve got a piece up on MSNBC today about portrayals of U.S. presidents on film — to coincide with the release of Oliver Stone’s W. Here’s a quick synopsis of some of the films I had to watch for the piece. Worth the time: 1. Thirteen Days (2000): Focuses on the Cuban Missile Crisis through the eyes of Kenny O’Donnell (Kevin Costner), special assistant to the president, whose biggest worry, at the story begins, is his son’s report card and Jackie’s party list. Then the world nearly ends. Watch the film and you can count the ways it nearly ends: If JFK had listened to the Joint Chiefs or if he had listened to Dean Acheson or if Bob McNamara hadn’t come up with the quarantine alternative or if General LeMay had gotten his way (“The big red dog is diggin’ in our backyard and we are justified in shooting him!”) or if the Russian ships hadn’t turned back or if the administration hadn’t come up with the plan to ignore Khrushchev’s second letter in favor of his first…well, then you might not be reading this. These days, almost everyone on the right, and a few on the left, invoke Neville Chamberlain as the diplomatic bogeyman. Get bullied and World War II results. JFK and his team repeatedly invoke The Guns of August: the book about how misunderstandings between countries led to WWI. Presidents reading. Imagine that. 2. Path to War (2002): John Frankenheimer’s last film, about how, step by step, LBJ got us involved in Vietnam. What’s intriguing about this version of history is how early the designers of the Vietnam War, particularly Robert McNamara (Alec Baldwin, shining), realized a victory wasn’t a sure thing. There’s a powerful scene, just after McNamara talks with his aides about how many losses we’ll probably sustain for such-and-such a period, when a Quaker, Norman Morrison, sets himself on fire outside McNamara’s Pentagon office to remind everyone what a loss of a life is. Ultimately the film is a semi-sympathetic portrayal of Johnson. He listened to the wrong advice, probably against his gut instinct, and stuck us there for 10 years and lost his (and our) Great Society along with 50,000 American lives. It’s another example of the U.S., the most powerful country in the world, getting involved where they shouldn’t, and against their own better instincts, because of a combination of hubris and the fear of appearing weak. Helluva cast: Baldwin, Michael Gambon (as LBJ), Donald Sutherland, Philip Baker Hall (who played Nixon in Secret Honor), Frederic Forrest and one of my favorite character actors, Bruce McGill, who plays CIA Chief George Tenet in W. 3. The Day Reagan was Shot (2001): A surprisingly good Showtime film from the early 2000s. Actors who have to play well-known figures should study Richard Crenna here. He merely suggests Reagan, he doesn’t imitate him. The film is sympathetic to Haig, too, who is played by Richard Dreyfuss, who would go on to play Dick Cheney in W. What I learned: Reagan came close to dying that day in 1981; and the federal government was more or less in chaos; and the White House was unable to even secure outside lines when they needed to. The usual bureaucratic pissing matches are fun to watch: FBI vs. Treasury; Haig vs. Weinberger. The film is both comic and scary. At one point, for example, the “football,” or the briefcase with the nuclear launch codes, goes missing. 4. Secret Honor (1984): I first saw this when it came out, or at least when it came to the University of Minnesota in January 1985, and I wondered if it would hold up. Does. It’s a one-man show, all Phillip Baker Hall, bless him. Nixon, drinking in exile, lurches between defending himself and attacking, vituperatively, profanely, his many enemies. “I was just an unindicted co-conspirator like everyone else in the United State of America,” he rails at one point. As for that secret honor? According to Altman’s Nixon, the people that put him in charge, the Committee of 100, wanted him to continue the Vietnam War, to nab a third term, and to use China against the Soviets and then “carve up the markets of the rest of the goddamned world.” Nixon fell on his sword rather than let this to happen. So Altman’s take was similar to Stone’s later take. Both imply that while Nixon may have been a bastard, the people behind him? Man, you don’t want to go there. 5. Nixon (1995): I got stuck with the director’s cut. Interestingly, the reinstated scenes on an HDTV show up blurry, or blurrier, so let you know exactly what was cut. And why. Because most of these scenes focus on that Oliver Stone paranoia of “the system” being like a “beast.” They deserved the cutting room floor. That said, the theatrical version is quite good and fairly sympathetic to Nixon. So interesting. Hollywood gives us sympathetic Nixons and LBJs but coldhearted Thomas Jeffersons. Love Anthony Hopkins in the title role, but Joan Allen (sorry, darling) is way too sexy to play Pat Nixon. Money quote: “People vote not out of love but fear.” 6. The Crossing (1999): An A&E film. A little slow but a fascinating look at the low point of the American Revolution. It’s the moment when, out of desperation, we went on the attack, the surprise attack, and salvaged our last chance at independence. 1. Truman (1995): Gary Sinese is great but it’s a dull, conventional film (from HBO) about the man who, we’re told time and again, was “as stubborn as a Missouri mule.” Sample line from a speech during his 1948 whistle-stop tour. “I am for the people and against the special interests.” Hey, me too! In the end, too much life to be portrayed in too little time. And, sorry Gore Vidal, but no mention of the creation of the National Security State in 1947. Yeah, big shock. 2. Jefferson in Paris (1995): One gets the feeling the filmmakers wanted to suggest the leisurely pace of 18th century society, as Stanley Kubrick did with Barry Lyndon, but here it just comes off as dull. Nolte’s Thomas Jefferson, meanwhile, is a remarkably cold and hypocritical man. 3. Wilson (1944): Another reluctant president. Another pure man. The only presidential biopic to be nominated for best picture. Also helped kill the presidential biopic since it bombed at the box office. 4. The Reagans (2003): Before Josh Brolin played W., his father, James Brolin, played Reagan. All in the family. Good quote from Republican operatives in 1964 talking amongst themselves: “His lack of political knowledge, c’mon fellas, just makes him seem more a man of the people!” Republicans have been following that script ever since: Reagan, Quayle, W., Palin... 5. Sunrise at Campobello (1960): Former Navy secretary and vice-presidential nominee FDR contracts polio but makes his political comeback at the 1924 Democratic Convention. From a popular play, but onscreen (sorry) it just sits there. 6. Abraham Lincoln (1930): D.W. Griffith’s last film. Ponderous, folksy, monumental, dusty. Like Truman in Truman, Lincoln is portrayed as a man without ambition. Here’s an idea of what the film is like: At one point, late at night, Lincoln (Walter Huston) paces in the White House only to stop and proclaim: “I’ve got it, Mary! I’ve found the man to win the war! And his name is…GRANT!” And that, kids, is how presidential decisions are made. 7. DC 9/11: Time of Crisis (2003): The worst. Two Minute Review: W. (2008) Oliver Stone’s W. is like our 43rd president’s greatest hits. Here he is chug-a-lugging at Yale and here he is finding Jesus and here he is failing at oil rigs, and oil drilling, and running for Congress. Here he is choking on a pretzel. Stone intercuts these familiar incidents with the familiar arguments, dramatized over presidential lunches and Oval Office meetings and cabinet meetings, that led us into Iraq. It’s straightforward storytelling — particularly for Stone. Hell, it’s almost breezy. The two hours go by like that, and Josh Brolin, in the lead, is amazing. He gives us a complex portrait of a very simple man. It’s a father-son film. “You disappoint me, Junior,” Herbert Walker tells him early on. “Deeply disappoint me.” He tells him, “You only get one bite at the apple,” but W. keeps biting and missing. He drinks, carouses, goes after girls. He can’t find himself. Even after he finds Laura, and Jesus, and helps his father get elected the 41st president of the United States, he’s disappointed. Greatness escapes him. Hell, mediocrity escapes him. You go in wondering if Stone’s portrait of W. will be different from our own image of W. and it isn’t. What you see is what you get. Yes, he’s that thick, that muddled, and yet that certain. The film implies that certain Machiavellian types (Rove, Cheney) manipulate W. into going where he already wants to go (into politics, into Iraq), and it feels true, but it’s not like we’re learning anything here. I learned, or re-learned (did I ever know it?) that W. speaks Spanish but that’s the only time I remember being surprised by the title character. Since so much of the story is familiar, since, like the subject, there’s not much there there, we might have to wait years before we figure out if the movie is any good. It really is too close to us to gauge. It’s a tragedy, certainly, and the tragedy is that in trying to win his father’s love, or outdo what his father did, or make up for his father’s great loss, W. — yes, aided and abetted by a motley crew — put us on a calamitous national and international path... and yet still can’t think of one thing he did wrong. That lack of introspection is his tragedy. The rest of it is ours. Canvassing for Obama in Youngstown, OH My friend Andy Engelson, a father of two, an editor in Seattle, and one of the nicest people I know, spent the first weekend in October canvassing for Obama in Ohio. Here’s what he found… After flying into Columbus and driving three hours east, I arrived in Youngstown in the early evening. This is a former steel town, and enormous empty steel mills fill the Mahoning River Valley. Most of the city is perched on the hills above the valley, and evidence of a broken economy is everywhere: boarded-up businesses, crumbling homes, a nearly empty downtown. But the campaign office was a hub of activity—filled with local volunteers with union T-shirts, OSU Buckeye sweatshirts and Obama buttons. The volunteer coordinator (who works long, long hours) was a bubbly college student from Long Island. She quickly put me to work calling volunteers to set up door-to-door canvassing over the weekend. You may have heard about the strength of Obama’s “ground game”—a vast grassroots network of volunteers. It is truly impressive. Both in Philadelphia (where I canvassed for Obama in April), and in Youngstown, everyone who volunteers is quickly trained, put to work and effusively thanked. Every person we call who is voting for Obama is asked to volunteer, and those who say yes get a follow-up call. During the next afternoon, I headed out to the local Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target and other big-box stores to register voters. I had done this in Seattle, and in Youngstown I succeeded in signing up about a dozen new voters. Unfortunately, after a while, a cranky middle manager came out of Wal-Mart and told me “You can’t gather signatures here!” I told her I was simply registering voters but she wasn’t sympathetic. Too bad these companies, which profit so much from working people, don’t want them to exercise their right to vote. The next day, it was into the neighborhoods to canvass. I was paired up with Beverly, a woman from Buffalo, who, like me, had arrived for the weekend to volunteer. She told me she has a 26-year old son, also named Andy, once ran for city council as a Republican, but is an avid supporter of Obama. She was particularly impressed with his leadership and speaking skills, and felt the need to convince others. She’d lost her own election, but it had given her experience going to door-to-door and talking to voters. A number of years ago, she was a Buffalo Bills cheerleader, and there’s still a bit of that spirit in her as we went door to door in Youngstown urging people to vote for Obama. Youngstown is definitely in hard times. In many neighborhoods we visited, it seemed as if every other home was abandoned: broken windows, vines growing up the sides of the house or trees fallen in the yard from Hurricane Ike. There are still some jobs in Youngstown—GM has a plant not far from town—and you will find pockets of nice homes. But often, just across the street, you’ll see the burned-out shell of a school or a group of men sitting on a doorstep drinking beer from 20-ounce cans in paper sacks. In Ohio, voters can go to any Board of Elections building and vote anytime between now and Nov. 4. The campaign was pushing this hard in order to get everyone eligible out to vote and reduce lines on election day. You may remember the news from 2004, when in parts of Ohio there were eight-hour lines at polling places. What I enjoy most about canvassing is talking to undecided voters. The conversations we had were positive, instructive and encouraging. Generally, these undecided voters are white, working class and over 60. One woman and I talked a good 10 minutes about the economy, about people not getting medical care because they don’t have insurance, about the situation in Youngstown. People here are amazingly upbeat and friendly despite the circumstances. Occasionally, I’d meet less-than-friendly people. I also had one very negative confrontation. It was late in the day, and I knocked at the second-to-last house on my list. I heard a gruff “WHO IS IT?” from behind the door. I said I was a volunteer with the Obama campaign and inquired about a young voter on my list who lived there. Silence. So I said goodbye and left some campaign literature at the door. As I was walking back to the sidewalk, the man burst out a side door and literally came running at me, red in the face. A young black man was running up behind him, but unable to hold this guy back. Just inches from me, the man, a white man with a beard and shirt with a motorcycle logo, shouted “Who the HELL are you?” He was shaking with rage. I told him again who I was and after a brief pause he yelled at me,“Just keep walking! NOW!” I did just that, moving slowly away. I met up with Beverly, who’d been working another street, and we drove back to the campaign office in the fading light. It was scary to say the least. Had I flinched I think the guy would have struck me. What may have triggered the outburst was an incident in the neighborhood several days before. Two young African American men had posed as campaign workers just up the street, then robbed the home at gunpoint. So frustrating. Two stupid kids had hurt our efforts and inflamed racial tensions in this hard-hit town. Afterwards, we reported the encounter to the campaign office, and they agreed to stop canvassing in that immediate neighborhood. But nothing was going to stop me from going out the next day. On Sunday, I was invited by my hosts to attend a prayer breakfast at their church—the oldest African American church in Youngstown. Everyone was dressed in their finest, and the program featured members of churches talking about what had happened over the past year. There were presentations on what the church was doing in the community for children, for the elderly, and for those who were sick or homebound. A guest speaker joked about being riveted to CNN, and then talked about how many people in the community were worried about the future but were finding solace in the community of the church. There was plenty of singing, clapping, and a huge breakfast of eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits, and grits. Afterwards, my host, Goldia, introduced me to the pastor, and, he shook my hand for at least a full minute. I was humbled to be so welcomed. Then back to the neighborhoods. We visited 200 or more homes over the course of the weekend. We talked to many undecideds, most of whom were worried about the economy. Youngstown is already dealing with a recession, they’re already “ahead” of the country in that regard. In fact, many, of the voters on our lists had already moved away. Either they’d been unable to make payments or they’d left Youngstown for good. It’s clear Youngstown’s problems will not be fixed overnight. Perhaps there’s not even much Obama can do outright. But I do think a fairer tax policy, some efforts to boost new energy industries, and getting more folks covered by health care is a start. The last eight years have not been good to this town. It reminded me how much is riding on this election. After a day knocking on doors in brilliant sunshine, Beverly returned to Buffalo and I spent the evening training a new volunteer, Ann, who had driven to Ohio from Los Angeles and would be volunteering in Youngstown until election day. If only I had the time to do that! I can’t say enough about how people respond to one-on-one contact with volunteers. People are appreciative and want to talk about the issues and hear about your personal reasons for supporting Obama. Even Republicans supporting McCain were appreciative. I talked to an older man named Jim while I was registering voters outside Walgreens. We had a friendly conversation. Even though he supported McCain, he thanked me for coming out from Seattle. It was those sorts of conversations that make me realize we are not as divided as the media portrays us. One of the things that draws me to Obama is that “agree to disagree” philosophy that has been missing from the national discourse for some time. And there’s a real satisfaction when you make a connection. That happened back in Philadelphia, when an older woman took me into her home and confessed that she would vote for Obama (rather than Clinton) but didn’t want her neighbors to know. She told me how, as a recently widowed woman, she was struggling to make ends meet. In tears, she told me how heating oil had cost her dearly the previous winter, and how she’d had to keep the thermostat below 60 to afford it. She’d voted for Reagan but was now more excited about the Obama campaign than any since Bobby Kennedy’s in ’68. She felt Obama actually gave a damn about people like her and was excited to see so many young people inspired by the campaign. And she was thankful, I think, that someone had taken the time to listen to her story. More than anything, though, this campaign has helped me. Helped me see what people are going through in places less fortunate than my own. Helped me see what issues are truly important to people. It has shown me that even in difficult times, people maintain a sense of humor and a friendliness that is truly inspiring. It also helped me meet people like Frank and his wife Mary. They are in their late 60s and have lived in Youngstown most of their lives. Frank suffered a stroke a few years ago so Mary asked if Beverly and I would come in and briefly talk to him: “It would mean so much to him. He can understand everything you say, but he can’t say anything.” We came into the home, and Mary introduced us as two volunteers working for the Obama campaign. “Frank, they’ve come here to visit you and ask if you’re going to support Obama. What do you think of Obama, Frank?” Sitting at the kitchen table in a wheelchair with his head cocked to one side, he eyed us for a long moment. Then he slowly raised his hand and formed his shaking fingers into an OK sign. Norman Mailer and the 1964 Republican Convention The excerpts of Norman Mailer’s letters in The New Yorker led me back to his piece, “In the Red Light: A History of the Republican Convention in 1964,” from Cannibals and Christians, which I first read over a decade ago. I remember I didn’t particularly like it. Norman went off on too many tangents, he reduced too many groups — “Goldwater girls ran to two varieties,” etc. Sometimes this stuff felt close to truth and sometimes it just felt hollow and mean. Parts of it still feel hollow and mean but most of the article feels shockingly contemporary. It makes the 1964 election feel like the first half of a bookend whose second half we may be fashioning. So an Arizona senator is running for president by appealing to the worst elements of his party. The Midwestern and western elements of that party viciously attack the eastern establishment, the media, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “Indeed there was a general agreement that the basic war was between Main Street and Wall Street,” Norman writes. There’s a down-home folksiness in the candidate’s voice: “I think we’re going to give the Democrats a heck of a surprise,” he says. There’s a callback to Christianity: “The thing to remember is that America is a spiritual country, we’re founded on belief in God, we may wander a little as a country but we never get too far away,” he says. At the convention, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco of all places, a senator from Colorado, Dominick, gives a speech in which he quotes a New York Times editorial from 1765 which rebuked Patrick Henry for his extreme ideas. Norman writes: Delegates and gallery whooped it up. Next day Dominick confessed. He was only “spoofing.” He had known: there was no New York Times in 1765. Nor was there any editorial. An old debater’s trick. If there are no good facts, make them up. Be quick to write your own statistics. There was some umbilical tie between the Right Wing and the psychopathic liar. Even so, for a time Norman considers voting for Goldwater. There are elements of LBJ and the Democratic party he can’t abide — its modern, clinical quality — and he thinks it may be worse to die a slow, suffocating death than to go out with Goldwater in a blaze of glory. But then: One could not vote for a man who made a career by crying Communist—that was too easy: half the pigs, bullies and cowards of the twentieth century had made their fortune on that fear. I had a moment of rage at the swindle. Cuba comes up, and Norman writes: One could live with a country which was mad, one could even come to love her (for there was agony beneath the madness), but you could not share your life with a nation which was powerful, a coward, and righteously pleased because a foe one-hundredth our size had been destroyed. Again and again, from a distance of 44 years, Norman hits you upside the head with the truth. Goldwater lost that election, he lost big, but in later years even the much-hated media would see that convention, and that loss, as the birth of the modern Republican party; they’d bend to Goldwater and see him through orange-colored glasses. Read this, though, and there’s no doubt about the elements he was stirring up. So it feels like a bookend. Two Arizona senators. The first attacking the Civil Rights Act, the second attacking what may be the culmination of that Act. A friend of mine once said, “When I was a teenager I realized that you could either be successful or you could be right,” and in the early 1960s the Democratic party decided to be right, finally right, on the issue of civil rights and on the promise of the Declaration of Independence, and since then the Republican party has been successful largely on the back of that decision. But maybe not now. Maybe this period, in which I’ve lived my entire life, can finally be bookended. Ended. Maybe. Musical Quote of the Day Swimming like there's no tomorrow Living like there's no regret Looked up and saw the sorrow Too far out Too far out This is what they said would happen We were warned We were warned We were too far out —from the song "Too Far Out" by The Tropicals The VEEP Debate: America's Cocktail Waitress I'm glad people watched. 69.9 million viewers. I wish she'd done worse. I want her off the national stage. She doesn't belong there. She doesn't belong there even if everything is going right, and it sure as hell ain't. We're in the middle of a perfect storm of crises — Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, banking crisis, mortgage crisis, unemployment. Our national debt is surging past $10 trillion, which is twice the amount it was when George Bush took office. Remember that healthy surplus he inherited that he promptly gave away in Santy-Claus checks and tax breaks for the wealthy? $10 trillion! And that's before the bailout. And there's still 40-plus percent who think Sarah Palin should be vice president and possibly president of the United States? To add what? To offer what? A platitude while you lose your job? A wink and a smile while you lose your home? You listened to her hold onto her talking points for dear life and thought, "What kind of ego does it take to be so blinded to your complete lack of qualifications for a job? And not just any job but the job of leading our country through the greatest crises it's faced since the Great Depression and WW II? How dare she? How dare he?" I'll never forgive John McCain for putting her on that stage. Here's what I don't get. Most of us have to suffer through unqualified bosses — the world is rife with them — and yet, given the chance, the American people keep electing unqualified bosses, someone who obviously isn't smart enough for the job. The Republicans keep giving us these people: Reagan, Quayle, W., now Palin. Just when you think it can't get worse, it does. Enough. Enough. Remember when The National Review was run by smart people? Here's what its current editor, Rich Lowry, said about Palin's performance Thursday night: I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. I can think of no better response than what one of Andrew Sullivan's readers wrote: In reaction to Rich Lowry, I'm sure I'm not the only woman who, upon reading his words, sat up a little straighter and said, "Is he kidding? Is he goddamn kidding me?" Is this the kind of reaction the women in this country should want men to have to the possible first female Vice Presidential candidate in history? Holy hell. I thought Palin's performance at the debate was downright embarrassing and on top of that I have to read this clown's blog, stating more or less that Palin gave him an erection? Little starbursts my ass. Here's what I thought when Palin "dropped" that first wink at us: "Did she just wink at us like she was America's cocktail waitress?" Rich Lowry is on the verge of slapping Sarah Palin on the ass and asking her for another of those fantastic whiskey sours. Please. Please. Please. Get her off the stage. Now. People are watching. P.S. Joe Biden kicked ass. The Real Joe Sixpack I first saw this on Andrew Sullivan's site and teared up — particularly at the beginning when everyone starts standing. Oliver Willis calls Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO delivering the speech, his hero for the day. He is, and more. In facing up to our great national horror we may be finally overcoming it. Literary Quote of the Day "George F. Will writes: 'Bush's terseness is Ernest Hemingway seasoned with John Wesley.' "Well, one is hardly familiar with John Wesley's sermons, but I do know that to put George W. Bush's prose next to Hemingway's is equal to saying that Jackie Susann is right up there with Jane Austen. Did a sense of shame ever reside in our Republican toadies? You can't stop people who are never embarrassed by themselves." —Norman Mailer, in a letter to The Boston Globe, March 13, 2002, and reprinted in a section of the Oct. 6 New Yorker. The last sentence in particular made me wonder what Norman would've made of Sarah Palin. We had a good debate party here on First Hill last night, lots of folks, drinks, kids running around and chasing the cat, poor Jellybean, who hid most of the evening but responded well in the quiet afterwards. No ill effects at basically being the tiny Paul McCartney being chased by grasping and clomping Jellybeaniacs everywhere. As for the debate itself, I thought both sides did well, but my guy — Barack, in case you haven’t been paying attention — did better. He was smart, articulate, tough but civil. He looked presidential. John McCain was rude and crotchety and refused to even look at his opponent. And while he demonstrated extensive foreign policy expertise, nothing he said, either about foreign affairs or the economy, indicated any change in the direction we’ve been going in, disastrously, for the last eight years. So basically: Barack refuted the concerns that undecideds had about him (that he wasn’t up to the task) while McCain exacerbated the concerns that undecideds had about him (that, in terms of policy, he was an older and more crotchety version of Bush, and will offer nothing in terms of change). - Andrew Sullivan’s live blogging of the debate - Footage of a Fox News(!) focus group of independents that gave the debate to Barack - An article on why and where Barack won. By a 62-32 margin, voters felt he was more in touch with their needs and concerns. But here’s the bigger number: “The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on “understanding your needs and problems” before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on “prepared to be president” to a +21.” - Finally, Michael Seitzman over at HuffPost has a great post about what exactly it is that Barack is bringing that is so appealing and that we haven’t seen in national politics, or even national life, for so long: Grace. NY Times Offers Lack of Leadership Christ, the NY Times editorial did the exact same thing Gail Collins just did. They started off with a good, deserved swipe at Pres. Bush: It took President Bush until Wednesday night to address the American people about the nation’s financial crisis, and pretty much all he had to offer was fear itself. But then they say this about our absent leadership: Given Mr. Bush’s shockingly weak performance, the only ones who could provide that are the two men battling to succeed him. So far, neither John McCain nor Barack Obama is offering that leadership. Really? Both? Obama isn't offering leadership? So you keep reading and discover that the brunt of the article is about how badly McCain has handled things: First, he claimed that the economy was strong, ignoring the deep distress of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have already lost their homes. Then he called for a 9/11-style commission to study the causes of the crisis, as if there were a mystery to be solved. Over the last few days he has become a born-again populist, a stance entirely at odds with the career, as he often says, started as “a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution.” After daily pivoting, Mr. McCain now says that the bailout being debated in Congress has to protect taxpayers, that all the money has to be spent in public and that a bipartisan board should “provide oversight.” But he offered not the slightest clue about how he would ensure that taxpayers would ever “recover” the bailout money. Mr. McCain proposed capping executives’ pay at firms that get bailout money, a nicely punitive idea but one that does nothing to mitigate the crisis. And that is about as far as his new populism went. What is most important is that Mr. McCain hasn’t said a word about strengthening regulation or budged one inch from his insistence on maintaining Mr. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. Their complaints about Obama, meanwhile, are hardly complaints: Mr. Obama has been clearer on the magnitude and causes of the financial crisis. He has long called for robust regulation of the financial industry, and he said early on that a bailout must protect taxpayers. Mr. Obama also recognizes that the wealthy must pay more taxes or this country will never dig out of its deep financial hole. But as he does too often, Mr. Obama walked up to the edge of offering full prescriptions and stopped there. In other words, McCain is running around with his head cut off, flip-flopping and flop-sweating all over the country, while Obama offers exactly what we need but somehow doesn't go far enough, and this, in the NY Times' mind, equals a lack of leadership from both? Somebody get me rewrite. Please. Bush and the Hail Mary Candidate Gail Collins has a great graf on Bush's speech last night: There is, in a way, a kind of talent required to tell the nation that it’s teetering on the brink of disaster in a way that makes the viewers’ attention wander. Bush’s explanation about how the rescue bill would unclog the lines of credit made the whole thing sound less important than a Liquid-Plumr commercial. Unfortunately, she then goes off and condemns both presidential candidates — as if Barack's level-headed response to this crisis somehow equalled McCain's frenetic and sometimes desperate (and now "hail mary") response. Not sure why she does this. Is she straining for objectivity? She's a columnist; she doesn't have to be objective. Besides, as I've said often and I'll keep saying until the MSM gets it, objectivity doesn't mean stupidity. It also doesn't mean that if one side is constantly and glaringly wrong that you search for some piddly little thing the other side got wrong to balance the report. Sometimes the report is unbalanced. Sometimes, so too is the candidate. Movie Quote of the Day "It would be the easiest thing for me as president to ask for a declaration of war. A man on a horseback is always a hero. But I wouldn't have to do the fighting. Some poor farmer's boy, or the son of some great family would have to do the fighting — and the dying. When I ask them to do that, I want to be very sure that what they're dying for is worthwhile." — Pres. Woodrow Wilson (Alexander Knox) after the sinking of the Lusitania in Wilson (1944) Movie Quote of the Day "I often think of something Woodrow Wilson said to me. 'It is only once in a generation that people can be lifted above material things. That is why conservative government is in the saddle for two-thirds of the time.'" —Franklin (Ralph Bellamy) to Eleanor Roosevelt (Greer Garson), in Sunrise at Campbello (1960) Mark Antony in Oxford Town Good, sad post byJoseph Romm on what people want to hear during the presidential debates and why the Dems always screw it up. It goes back to Mark Antony in the Roman Forum: "I am no orator, as Brutus is/ But — as you know me all — a plain blunt man." Gourevitch on Palin I assume Philip Gourevitch went to Alaska in July to write a piece about Ted Stevens' indictment and attempted comeback — a piece that was subsequently disrupted by the imbecilic vetting from the McCain vice-presidential selection committee. The result, which appears in the Sept. 22 New Yorker, is mostly about Sarah Palin. On the plus side, Gourevitch interviewed Palin before she entered (and then, like a skittish animal, was shielded from) the national spotlight, so he's got quotes that didn't have to be run by or through or into Rick Davis. Palin is surprisingly up front about earmarks, for example, the bete noir (except for You-Know-Who) of the McCain campaign: “The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship. ... There isn’t a need to aspire to live without any earmarks. The writing on the wall, though, is that times are changing. Presidential candidates have promised earmark reform, so we gotta deal with it, we gotta live with it, understanding that our senior senator, especially—he’s eighty-four years old, he is not gonna be able to serve in the Senate forever." Palin's Access: Beyond Disgraceful Andrew Sullivan on the Republican vice-presidential candidate and the press: The press is beginning to resist the incredibly sexist handling of Palin by the McCain campaign. There is a simple point here: any candidate for president should be as available to press inquiries as humanly possible. Barring a press conference for three weeks, preventing any questions apart from two television interviews, one by manic partisan Sean Hannity, devising less onerous debate rules for a female candidate, and then trying to turn the press into an infomercial for the GOP is beyond disgraceful. Fight back, you hacks! Demand access. Demand accountability! It's our duty. If we cannot ask questions of a total newbie six weeks before an election in which she could become president of the country, then the First Amendment is pointless. Grow some! The Big Red Dog is Wanted Dead or Alive Two days later, for the same article, I watched Thirteen Days, the 2000 account of the Cuban Missile Crisis starring Kevin Costner as Kenny O'Donnell, JFK's special assistant, and Bruce Greenwood in an understated and suggestive turn as our first telegenic president. (I should add that, for all the faults of the film, Timothy Bottoms did a fine job as Bush in DC 9/11.) So it's early in the crisis and the joint chiefs are recommending bombing Cuba back to the stone age. Even former Secretary of State Dean Acheson is recommending same with a foreknowledge of consquences that is truly frightening: We warn, we strike, they strike back in Berlin, NATO kicks in. "Hopefully," he says, "cooler heads prevail." On the third day, General Curtis Le May gets into the act with this rationale: "The big red dog is diggin' in our backyard and we are justified in shooting him..." Afterwards, JFK and his advisors, who are looking for the alternative, which, of course, turns out to be the quarantine or blockade of Cuba, joke about the general's language — the reduction to homey metaphor of an act that might end the world — and I realized, for the zillionth time, that for the last eight years we've had the General Le Mays not only running things but giving rationales for our actions: "Wanted: Dead or Alive," etc. We've had no real leadership. We've had no one demanding more evidence and looking for alternatives. We've had no cooler heads. We've rushed in where angels fear to tread. Hell, the General Le Mays of the Bush administration have been the cooler heads. So, as bad as things are, and they're pretty bad, thank God we didn't have Bush and his team in place in October 1962. Why 'DC: 9/11' is the New 'Reefer Madness' I thought of this while watching, DC 9/11: Time of Crisis, a Showtime movie from 2003, written and produced by British-born Hollywood conservative Lionel Chetwynd, which first aired, amid controversy, in September 2003. I know. Life’s short, why waste two hours? Unfortunately I’m writing an article about presidents on film to coincide with the release of Oliver Stone’s W., and DC 9/11 is part of the price you pay. But I quickly began to see the humor. SNL came to mind when Pres. Bush, on Air Force One, switches to commander-in-chief mode and starts barking orders at Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “Hike military alert status to Delta! That's the military, the C.I.A., foreign, domestic, everything! And if you haven't gone to Defcon 3, you oughtta.” He barks orders at a submissive Cheney. He tells everyone, over and over, that Osama bin Laden will pay: - “We’re gonna hunt down and find those folks who committed this.” - “Whoever did this isn’t going to like me as president.” - “We’re going to kick the hell out of whoever did this. No slap on the wrist this time.” But it wasn’t until Rumsfeld raises the specter of Saddam Hussein that I saw the true brilliance of DC 9/11. This is a movie that actually glorifies the worst foreign policy decisions we’ve ever made. It’s like finding a 1964 film celebrating the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. It’s like, dare I say, something by Leni Riefenstahl. Just not, you know, artistic. Here’s the dialogue from the Sept. 13 cabinet meeting after Rumsfeld raises the question of Iraq: Powell: The mission is the destruction of al Qaeda. Hussein isn’t your man.There are more meetings. Bush becomes more certain, more messianic. Rendition and domestic spying are implied. You’re either with us or with the terrorists. In the Sept. 15 meeting, Powell warns Bush that if we go after someone besides al Qaeda our allies may fall away and leave us isolated. Bush replies: Rumsfeld: He is if we’re talking about terrorism in the broadest sense. We know he never stopped developing weapons of mass destruction... Cheney: Al Qaeda lacks weapons. That’s why they used our own aircraft. You put Hussein and bin Laden together...? Bush: Is that an immediate threat? Cheney: The enemy is clearly more than UBL [bin Laden] and the Taliban. If we’re including people who support terrorists, that does open the door to Iraq. But unlike bin Laden, we know where to find them. “At some point, we may be the only ones left standing. And that will have to be OK. That’s why we’re America.”Powell says bin Laden attacked us, not Saddam, and Wolfowitz replies: “Only because he was unable. But he’s got the arms. He’s been developing everything from nuclear weapons to smallpox to anthrax. A whole range of weapons of mass destruction. ... All he’s lacked is the means to deliver those weapons to our shores. Well, UBL has shown him he’s got a system of delivery.” Here’s what’s awful. The reason our foreign policy mistakes were disastrous are there in the script for anyone to see — and they were visible back then. 9/11 did require a new playbook. We were attacked by a loose organization that could hide, rather than a nation-state that couldn’t. Yet our ultimate response was to attack a nation-state because, in Cheney’s words, “We know where to find them.” Which is the very reason we shouldn’t have attacked them. That was the old playbook. It’s still the old playbook. And we still don’t get it. DC 9/11 is either so funny it’s sad or so sad it’s funny. It should become a cult classic like Reefer Madness: a propaganda film that, through its over-the-top idiocy, proves its opposite. It’s also a good reminder of what once constituted conservative spin. Remember Bush as action hero? As cowboy? “[Saddam] is surely developing WMDs,” Bush says. “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” Bush says. We’re going to “rid the world of evil,” Bush says. “This will decidedly not be another Vietnam,” Bush says. "You want to see a REAL liberal media, Otis?" Nicholas Kristof's column this morning on how well the Republican slime machine is working — 13 percent of registered voters think Barack Obama is Muslim, while the "End Times" people literally think he's the anti-Christ — brought back that New Yorker cover controversy from two months ago. I'd argue my post back then wasn't prescient but historical; anyone who paid attention in '04 knew it would happen. Since then the New Yorker has given us their anti-John McCain cover: He's rich, playing Monopoly; his wife carries a glass of wine. So in one cover they dress up Barack and Michelle Obama as what they aren't (America's enemies) and in the other they dress up John and Cindy McCain as what they are (rich bastards) and call it even. Barack becomes who Americans want to kill, McCain who Americans want to be. Thank you, liberal media. Seriously, everytime I hear that phrase, "liberal media," I want to deck somebody. I think of Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor in the original Superman, talking to Ned Beatty's dimwitted Otis: "You want to see a liberal media, Otis? You want to see a REAL liberal media, Otis?" Imagine that. The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, the network news, CNN, all as politically motivated as FOX News and Rush Limbaugh. As it is, this media, the corporate kind, is still being played by the Republicans, who slime the entire process until you just want to retch. But hold onto these facts: - Republican stupidity and arrogance got us into Iraq. - Republican greed and mania for deregulation got us into our current fiscal crisis. - The Republican slime-machine is destroying our political process. Hold onto these facts and please wake the @#$%&!!!! up. Tom Toles is Genius He's got a good one today on the 180-degree flip-flops of the McCain campaign, but it's the editorial cartoon yesterday, particularly the coda, that got me. Brilliant. Our country in a nutshell: Things to Read Before the Next Great Depression A few bits and pieces collected from the Web: - Chris Kelly has another so-funny-it's-sad piece about the current level of our political debate: specifically, John McCain, who implies the other guy thinks he's messianic, saying he will put an end to both evil (War on Terror) and now greed (banking crisis, uncapitalized thus far). "John McCain will not only take on special interests and Washington insiders, he'll fundamentally alter human nature. ... Or maybe he's just a desperate shell of a man, babbling glorp." - Please read Bob Cesca's piece on why, given the collapse of our foreign policy, our economy, our status in the world, this race is still close. Before I read Cesca, I would've assumed the race was still close becaue of race, but he's got a better point. There's a lot of noise in the right-wing media that never reaches my ears, but that noise is constant and overwhelming and unaccountable. It says what it wants. And right now it's saying some pretty nasty shit. Also known as lies. Often about race. - David Brauer has a piece on MinnPost about my hometown newspaper, and the paper my father worked at for 30 years, that's sad but indicative of the current state of newspapers. Strib editor Nancy Barnes sent staff an e-mail about political coverage, a warning to remain objective, but then added this: "If you are involved in a political story, please look at it from several different perspectives and ask yourself: 'If I were running, would I find this fair and balanced?'" Brauer rightly adds, "I doubt the last thing Ben Bradlee said to Woodward and Bernstein was, 'Ask yourself:"'If I were president, would I find our Watergate coverage fair and balanced?''" Exactly. Being objective doesn't mean being stupid. My Name is Erik Lundegaard and I Approve of This MessageMonday September 15, 2008 Who is Barack Obama? Atticus Finch For most of the year, Republicans have tried to negatively define Barack Obama. They compare him to the most empty aspects of our own society and the most violent aspects of global society. They twist everything, and lie about anything, and in doing so reveal exactly who and how desperate they are. In the face of these attacks, Barack has remained calm, articulate, resolute. His anger, when it comes, is not the anger of a man with a hair-trigger temper, like John McCain, but the righteous anger of someone who knows that not only he, but our entire system, is being wronged. And it got me thinking about who this reminds me of. We know how John McCain defines himself — as a maverick — but anyone who’s been paying attention knows how empty that slogan is. He’s a follower at this point. He’s following the lead of Steve Schmidt, his campaign manager, who once followed the lead of Karl Rove. Whatever smear works, whatever lie works, no matter how sleazy, that’s what they’ll do. So regardless of what John McCain once was, he has now been reduced to the role of a not very bright man surrounded by extremely malicious people. The same malicious people, I should add, who have surrounded another not very bright man, George W. Bush, for the last eight years. But they keep pumping out the myth. The chest-thumping, Paul Fistinyourface myth of the stupidly aggressive American. In a magazine interview, John McCain even compared himself to TV hero Jack Bauer of “24,” until he was reminded that Bauer’s main (and suspect) means of gathering information — torture — is what John McCain suffered under for five years. But I guess torture is good as long as we’re the torturers. I guess bullying is good as long as we’re the bullies. That’s what half the country seems to think anyway. Barack, it’s true, is no bully. Here he is after the Republicans mocked him for his community service: And here’s his response after Gov. Palin suggested that habeas corpus and the U.S. Constitution don’t matter: Barack Obama is tough but ethical. He’s someone who can make friends out of our enemies rather than — as the Republicans keep doing — enemies out of our friends. So who does Barack remind me of? He’s a civil rights lawyer who taught Constitutional law and is bringing up two girls the right way. When bullies gather, he stands up for what’s right, he stands up for the rule of law, he stands up. He’s an honorable man running an honorable campaign. You’ve already read the headline so you already know my answer. Barack Obama reminds me of Atticus Finch, the hero of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and, according to the American Film Institute, the greatest hero in American movie history. Here’s Scout on Atticus: “There just didn't seem to be anyone or anything Atticus couldn't explain.” Here’s Atticus to Scout: “If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” This is the very lesson that chest-thumping Republicans have mocked for the last seven years. And where has it gotten us? Wasting billions pursuing the wrong people in the wrong places. Republicans aren’t interested in understanding. They’re not even interested in talking. You can almost imagine this bit of dialogue between Atticus and Scout taking place between Obama and a certain Republican vice-presidential candidate: Atticus: Scout, do you know what a compromise is? Scout: Bending the law? Atticus: Um, no. It’s an agreement reached by mutual consent. We’re still in this midst of our own mythic internal struggle, aren’t we, between the violent and often lawless aspects that John McCain represents, and the tough but ethical rule of law that Barack Obama represents. I would’ve thought this battle was over by now. I would’ve thought rule of law triumphed long ago. Apparently not. Even Atticus, that great hero, lost his case. He proved his case but the trial was rigged from the start by our own overwhelming prejudices, by our need to see things as they are not, by our need to buy into the lie. Are we a better country now? Or do we still need to see things as they are not? Do we still need to buy into the lie? Up to you. OK, Everyone Read Andrew Sullivan Everyone. The full piece is here. This is merely the overture: For the past two weeks serious commentators and columnists have been asked to take the candidacy of Sarah Palin for the vice-presidency of the United States seriously. Formerly sane people have written of the McCain campaign’s selection of this running mate as if it represents a new face for Republicanism, an emblem of can-do western spirit, a brilliant ploy to win over Clinton voters, a new feminism, a reformist revolution, and a genius appeal to the religious right. I’m afraid I cannot join in. In fact I cannot say anything about this candidacy that takes it in any way seriously. It is a farce. It is absurd. It is an insult to all intelligent people. It is a sign of a candidate who has lost his mind. There is no way to take the nomination of Palin to be vice-president of the world’s sole superpower - except to treat it as a massive, unforgivable, inexplicable decision by someone who has either gone insane or is managerially unfit to be president of the United States. When, at some point, the hysteria dies down, even her supporters will realise that, by this decision, McCain has rendered himself unfit to run a branch of Starbucks, let alone the White House. Movie Quote of the Day "His lack of political knowledge, c'mon fellas, just makes him seem more a man of the people." Palin: Worse than We Thought Perhaps restoring my faith in the mainstream media, The NY Times has a front-page story today on the style of politics Sarah Palin has practiced both as mayor of Wasilla and governor of Alaska. It ain't pretty. It's actually worse than we thought. She fires professional people for personal reasons and hires unqualified friends in their place. Her cronyism makes George W. Bush look like a stern judge of character. Examples: - When there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency. Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages. Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people. “I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ " The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin’s voice. The governor’s husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend. “I understood from the call that Todd wasn’t happy with me hiring John and he’d like to see him not there,” Mr. Harris said. The mayor quickly fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. “He told us they only wanted two,” recalled Esther West, one of the three, “and we had to pick who was going to be laid off.” The three quit as one. In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters. And this doesn't even get into the firing of Wasilla's Police Chief, Irl Stambaugh, because he intimidated her, nor the 'Troopergate' scandal currently being investigated in Alaska, in which Palin and her husband allegedly pressured state officials into firing a state trooper who was divorcing her sister. Some woman of the people. More bad news. She "puts a premium on secrecy and loyalty" and "is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated" and unavailable. Again, she's out-Bushing Bush here: - Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process. When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show. And this is the woman John McCain thinks is good enough to be a heartbeat away from the most important job in the world?? At a time when we need the smartest, most open and most diplomatic person possible to steer us through the various crises, both domestic and international, the Bush administration is leaving us??? You talk about bad judgment. Let's hope the American electorate's judgment is better. Fallows on the Toxic Traits of Palin/Bush Here's a great post by James Fallows on why Gov. Palin's ignorance abou the Bush Doctrine could have dire consequences for this country. Highlights: Sarah Palin did not know this issue, or any part of it. The view she actually expressed — an endorsement of "preemptive" action — was fine on its own merits. But it is not the stated doctrine of the Bush Administration, it is not the policy her running mate has endorsed, and it is not the concept under which her own son is going off to Iraq. How could she not know this? For the same reason I don't know anything about European football/soccer standings, player trades, or intrigue. I am not interested enough. And she evidently has not been interested enough even to follow the news of foreign affairs during the Bush era. A further point. The truly toxic combination of traits GW Bush brought to decision making was: 2) Lack of curiosity That is, he was not broadly informed to begin with (point 1). He did not seek out new information (#2); but he nonetheless prided himself (#3) on making broad, bold decisions quickly, and then sticking to them to show resoluteness. We don't know for sure about #2 for Palin yet -- she could be a sponge-like absorber of information. But we know about #1 and we can guess, from her demeanor about #3. Most of all we know something about the person who put her in this untenable role. Lies, Damn Lies and John McCain Like the Best Show Ever My friend Craig, below and in the New York Times, discusses how most Americans reacted to 9/11 as if it were just something that happened on TV, which, for most of them, is exactly what it was. We seem to be reacting to the presidential election in the same way. As if it’s just a show. As if there’s no connection between us and these characters except in how they entertain us. The Biden pick? So boring. We saw that coming. Yeah, six terms in the U.S. Senate. Yeah, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But he talks too much, doesn’t he? That’s kind of funny. Let’s make a joke about that. Otherwise get him off stage. The Palin pick? How exciting! Boy, did that jazz things up! Did you see how everyone was against her, and saying shit about her experience and all, and then she gave that speech and showed them? Wow, that was great! Such twists and turns in the storyline. It’s like “Lost,” you know? I gotta keep watching to find out what happens. And her family? Who knows what’s going on there? We can talk about them forever. That great line she had about selling the plane on e-Bay? What do you mean it was a lie? And how she fought the Bridge to Nowhere? What do you mean she supported it? Wow, this woman will say anything to stay on! I gotta keep watching. And now this interview thingee with Charlie Gibson. Yeah, she didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is. Who does? Yeah, when she sent her son off to war, she said 9/11 was responsible for Iraq or whatever. But how cool was that when she started talking about a war with Russia! Like, a real war! Take those commies, man. I mean, Obama’s all blah-blah-blah about the Constitution and shit, but she kicks ass! Seriously, I thought they were gonna kick her off the show weeks ago, and now she might even win it? This is like the best show ever. John McCain and Steve Schmidt are going to burn in hell for all eternity Did you read this? Did you see the new McCain ad? It's called “Education” and it slams Barack Obama for not doing enough about education; then it delivers the whopper. In the real world, in Illinois, Barack Obama supported legislation to educate kids about pedophiles. The McCain ad calls this “sex education for kindergartners.” From Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton: “It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls — a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn't define what honor was. Now we know why.” Begala and Willis to Media: Just State the Facts, Jack Paul Begala on the media's he said/she said problem. When it comes to facts, demonstrable facts — i.e., Gov. Palin supported the bridge to nowhere, she was up to her ears in earmarks as mayor — it's part of the media's job to state these facts. It's not a matter of partisan debate. Or, if you want, we can go back to the John McCain-has-no-genitalia discussion. That was a fun one. Obama to Palin: “Don't Mock the Constitution” I’m the editor of several Super Lawyers publications around the country, including those in Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, Wisconsin, Illinois, Washington, D.C., and New York — and in the New York issue, which comes out later this month, we’ve written profiles of three of the big civil liberties lawyers in the city: Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Arthur Eisenberg of the NYCLU and Manuel Vargas of the Immigrant Defense Project. The piece, written by Jessica Centers, mostly focuses on their work post-9/11. The various attacks on civil liberties that they’ve fought. The attacks that they keep fighting. So I’ve been immersed in this stuff, at an editorial remove, for a few months now. Which is why Sarah Palin’s line in her acceptance speech about how Barack wants to “read terrorists their rights” really pissed me off. At first I didn’t get it. What was she talking about? Then it hit me. Oh my god, she’s talking about the Guantanamo Bay detainees. She’s talking about how the Bush administration, and apparently Gov. Palin herself, or at least her (former Bush) speechwriters, feel it’s OK, and in fact demand, that the U.S. military have the right to grab any foreign national, in any place, put them in military prison, and deny them the right to meet their accusers: To know why they’ve been grabbed. To know why their life has been reduced to a life inside a small box. In a perfect world this wouldn’t matter, because everything would be perfect: The suspects would be the right suspects, the military would make no mistakes, everything would be fine, And America would be safer. But it’s not a perfect world, and this entire fiasco is making America less safe. Today Sen. Obama struck back, as eloquently as ever. First he said that to read terrorists their rights, you have to catch them first, and the Republicans haven’t been very good at that. Then he launched into a defense of habeas corpus, which has been around at least since the Magna Carta. From the Washington Post: Calling it “the foundation of Anglo-American law,” he said the principle “says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, 'Why was I grabbed?' And say, 'Maybe you've got the wrong person.'” The safeguard is essential, Obama continued, “because we don't always have the right person.” “We don't always catch the right person,” he said. “We may think it's Mohammed the terrorist, but it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You might think it's Barack the bomb-thrower, but it might be Barack the guy running for president.” ”The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It's because that's who we are. That's what we're protecting,“ Obama said, his voice growing louder and the crowd rising to its feet to cheer. ”Don't mock the Constitution. Don't make fun of it. Don't suggest that it's not American to abide by what the founding fathers set up. It's worked pretty well for over 200 years." God, I love this man. McCain: Reckless, Nutty, Irresponsible Check out Andrew Sullivan's piece for the Times online. Highlights: There is one reason the job of vice-president exists. In a system with a single executive, you need someone to fill in if the president is incapacitated or dies. ...The pick is also the first presidential-level decision a candidate has to make. You learn a lot about the candidate... In Joe Biden, Obama revealed his core temperamental conservatism. It was a safe choice of someone deeply versed in foreign policy, and with roots that connected to the working class white ethnics he needed. It wasn't flashy; and was even a little underwhelming; but it was highly professional. What we have learned about John McCain from his selection of Sarah Palin is that he is as impulsive and reckless a decision-maker as George W. Bush. We know this not because of what we have learned about this Pentecostalist populist since she exploded on the scene last Friday morning (and God knows we have learned more than we ever wanted). We know it because of how McCain made the decision. He wanted his best friend, Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic vice-presidential candidate for Al Gore. That pick would have been remarkable for its bipartisan nature, would have impressed independents, and signaled a centrist presidency centered on foreign policy. It would have been bold while not being rash. But McCain is in charge of a party that is now, at its core, religiously motivated. Joe Lieberman, for all his political talents, is Jewish, pro-choice on abortion, gay-inclusive, and domestically liberal. McCain faced an insurrection in his party base if he picked him. Without the evangelical base, he wasn't going to win. So last week, McCain picked someone he had only met once before. I repeat: he picked someone he had only met once before. His vetting chief sat Palin down for a face-to-face interview the Wednesday before last. It's very hard to overstate how nutty and irresponsible this is. Would any corporate chieftain pick a number two on those grounds and not be dismissed by his board for recklessness? The Easily Intimidated Sarah Palin But the brunt of the article is her clash with Wasilla’s Chief of Police, Irl Stambaugh, who created Wasilla’s police department a few years earlier. Stambaugh was in favor of two things that got him into trouble with Palin: - He backed an ordinance requiring Wasilla to close their bars at 2:30 a.m. (weekdays) and 3 a.m. (weekends), instead of the usual 5 a.m., because folks in nearby Anchorage, where the bars closed at the earlier hours, often drove to Wasilla to keep their buzz on, and drinking and driving, as we know, don’t mix. The Wasilla City Council rejected the ordinance by a 3-2 vote. Palin, then with the Council, voted with the majority. - Stambaugh opposed an NRA-backed state legislative proposal that would allow concealed weapons in banks and bars. He called the proposal (which was vetoed by then-Gov. Tony Knowles) ridiculous. “Bars, guns and booze don’t mix,” he said. So did Palin fire Stambaugh at the bidding of the NRA? Probably not. The article implies that she fired him for a more troubling reason: He intimidated her. He’s 6’2”, 240. He always tried to sit, and use a soothing voice, when talking with her, but when he finally got canned, this was part of her official rationale: “When I met with you in private, instead of engaging in interactive conversation with me, you gave me short, uncommunicative answers and then you would sit there and stare at me in silence with a very stern look, like you were trying to intimidate me.”I hope voters realize that if she feels intimidated by Putin, or Ahmadinejad, or new Pakistani President Zardari, all of whom won't try to use a soothing voice around her, firing them won’t be an option. McCain: Rash and Not Bright. Sound Familiar? As always, Frank Rich is worth reading and today he focuses on the haste with which John McCain makes his decisions and declarations. Here’s the money graph in easy-to-read list form: - In October 2001, he speculated that Saddam Hussein might have been behind the anthrax attacks in America. - That same month he out-Cheneyed Cheney in his repeated public insistence that Iraq had a role in 9/11 — even after both American and foreign intelligence services found that unlikely. - He was similarly rash in his reading of the supposed evidence of Saddam’s W.M.D. and in his estimate of the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. (McCain told MSNBC in late 2001 that we could do with fewer than 100,000.) It wasn’t until months after “Mission Accomplished” that he called for more American forces to be tossed into the bloodbath. The whole fiasco might have been prevented had he listened to those like Gen. Eric Shinseki who faulted the Rumsfeld war plan from the start. “Often my haste is a mistake,” McCain conceded in his 2002 memoir, “but I live with the consequences without complaint.” Rich then asks, as if it needed asking, "Well, maybe it’s fine if he wants to live with the consequences, but what about his country? Should the unexamined Palin prove unfit to serve at the pinnacle of American power, it will be too late for the rest of us to complain." How Palin was for Obama before she was against him Interesting piece by Philip Gourevitch on an interview Sarah Palin gave two weeks ago...back when her name had dropped off the list of potential veep candidates and she was freer to speak her mind. Overall, her talk is less doctrinaire and more bipartisan than the speech (written by former Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully) she gave Thursday. She talks about how she's fine with the fact that Barack Obama was doing so well in Alaska, how his campaign themes echoed hers, and how she "always looked at Senator McCain just as a Joe Blow public member, looking from the outside in." She's still a hard-right Republican — pro-life even in the case of rape or incest — but she's somewhat open-minded on other issues. Now a lot of people are saying that it doesn't matter that Gov. Palin didn't write her own acceptance speech — that that's how politics works, and has worked, for decades. But here's the difference. Professional speechwriters tend to tailor speeches to the tastes and beliefs of the politician they work for. The politician usually has a hand, sometimes a firm hand, in what's being said. One gets the feeling that didn't happen with Palin. All you have to do is compare her open-mindedness two weeks ago with the Rove-like nastiness in her acceptance speech to realize that, with the exception of her personal story, she was basically a broadcaster, broadcasting someone else's words, on Thursday night. It wasn't her. It's almost a cliche now, particularly in political circles, but you gotta ask: Which is the real Sarah Palin? Drill Now! Drill Now! Drill Now! Here's a link to Andrew Sullivan's live-blogging of McCain's speech last night. It's good stuff. These entries in particular: 10.39 pm. His speech makes me feel a lot better as a depressed old-fashioned conservative. But it's striking how all the things that make me feel good seems to go down flat with this crowd. 10.46 pm. Drilling for oil gets the biggest applause. This is why I can't feel at home in this party. I mean: I'm actually open to this policy and agree with McCain on the all-of-the-above approach, including nuclear — but this obsession with more domestic oil just seems weird to me. I guess I'm a cosmopolitan. I'm also reminded of their flat reaction to McCain's comment near the end about how, knowing war, he hated war. They seemed disappointed. For all their supposed hatred of Hollywood (huglely misplaced), they wanted the Hollywood ending. Good guy triumphing amid blood and guts. Instead he handed the audience a flower. What a downer. The Shakers (Hopefully Not the Movers) Sen. McBush/Gov. Earmark First, R.J. Eskow has a good piece on "The 15 Counterpunches" to the various lies and hypocrisy of the RNC. The key elements: 2. She's Pork Barrel Palin. She's always been an expert in draining earmark money off the hardworking taxpayer. She submitted $197 million in earmarks — more per person than any other state — in her current budget. And the citizens of her little town got fifty times as much federal pork as the average American! How'd she do it? She hired a DC lobbyist. That's right: A K Street shark to fill her Main Street coffers — and advance her career in the bargain. ... If you don't like the way Washington does business, you don't like her. What's the difference between Sarah Palin and an old-style GOP crony? Lipstick. 5. McCain's economy will be more of the same. If you like the economy we've got, vote McCain. Every time a Republican runs for office he pretends he'll do things differently. Bush said the same things in 2000. Look at McCain's voting record. Wonder what McCainonomics would look like? In the words of the old ad, you're soaking in it right now. I also like John Seery's piece, same site, about Sarah Palin's speech. The key thought: What I saw on that stage was the personification of small-minded smugness, an utter lack of humility, a kind of self-righteous entitlement based on little more than puffed-up narrowness. She struck me not as plucky but, rather, as stunningly immodest — to the point of arrogance... Finally, from Oliver Willis' excellent site, there's this reader comment regarding Barack's response (see below) to the various right-wing attacks on his "community organizer" background. It really hits the nail on the effin' head: All smart responses to dumb attacks. And we need to return Smart to the White House. The Community Organizer This is great. This is exactly what he should be saying. Comments came during a speech to factory workers in York, Pa.: "You wouldn't know that this is such a critical election by watching the convention last night. I know we had our week, and the Republicans deserve theirs, but it's been amazing to me to watch over the last two nights. "You're hearing a lot about John McCain, and he's got a compelling biography as a prisoner of war. You're hearing an awful lot about me, most of which is not true. What you're not hearing is a lot about you. "The thing that I'm insisting on in this election is we can't keep playing the same political games we always play where we attack each other and we call each other names. They've had a lot of speakers. And if they had a bunch of ideas, you'd think they would have put 'em out there by now. And so the question is, what's their agenda? What's their plan?" Things to read and watch while the culture wars start up again If you need to laugh at the hypocrisy of the Republican party, The Daily Show is there for you. Also Gail Collins has a good column on Palin's speech. And just came across this guy: Oliver Willis. Here's his 10 Things You Need to Know about John McCain. No. 7 is particularly scary: Many of McCain’s fellow Republican senators say he’s too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He’s erratic. He’s hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.” Meanwhile, a reminder of Barack's original rationale for opposing the Iraq War in 2002, and why we need smart back in the White House: “I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world and strengthen the recruitment arm of al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.” – Barack Obama, 2002 Talkin' RNC Blues Sounds like a great show last night at the Parkway Theater near Lake Nokomis in South Minneapolis. My friend Jim Walsh hosting Billy Bragg, Tom Morello, Ike Reilly, others. David Carr taking notes. Read about it here. I'll post Carr's stuff when it arrives. UPDATE: As promised, Dave Carr's piece. Who's Whining Now? So the McCain camp says that criticisms of Sarah Palin are sexist. Here. So John McCain pulls out of a CNN interview with Larry King because earlier CNN anchorwoman Campbell Brown asked McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds about Palin's command experience, and kept pressing when he didn't answer, and McCain felt this was "over the line." Here. Quick question: When did the GOP begin to exhibit all the traits they've publicly deplored over the last three decades? Talk about a nation of whiners. The Smart Candidate Here's the bad news: the experts agree that you can’t patrol it all. They live in fear of the nightmare scenario, “The Armageddon Test,” for which the second part of the book is named: Terrorists exploding a nuke in a large western city. The Brits have their experts trying to prevent this, the U.S. has theirs. One gets the feeling that an undue burden has been placed on these men while the rest of us dick around. Never have so few done so much for so many watching “American Idol.” At one point, Suskind interviews Saad al-Faqih, a surgeon from Saudi Arabia, who is on the U.S.’s list of those who have provided material support to al Qaeda, and who says that the goal of 9/11 was “always to create deep polarization between America and the Muslim world,” and that 9/11 mastermind Ayman Zawahiri “understood precisely the cowboy passions of the American establishment.” Another money graph: Of course, not everything went as planned. The swift fall of the Taliban and the elimination of nearly 80 percent of al Qaeda’s manpower in Afghanistan surprised both bin Laden and Zawahiri, who expected America to fall into a quagmire as the Russians had in the 1980s. By the middle of 2002, they were both dispirited, on the run, living in caves, with their top lieutenants scattered. “Which is why Iraq was the greatest gift,” Saad says. “It proved to the world that it was, in fact, always America’s mission to get Muslims, especially when your stated reasons for that invasion were shown to be hollow.”As for the future? Al Qaeda’s goals include what Zawahiri calls “the pacification stage,” where the U.S., disconsolate, withdraws from the world. Suskind doesn’t really buy the possibility of this, although the U.S. has always had its isolationist elements; then he asks himself this key question: “I wonder what bin Laden and Zawahiri are hoping the United States won’t do?” Exactly. What is the smart response? So far, our response hasn’t been smart at all. Which leads me to the “60 Minutes” broadcast last night. Steve Kroft interviewed Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Kroft came at them, and specifically at Barack, with a lot of frivolous questions — beer and bowling — and then he came at him with some frivolous but volatile questions. Was he tough enough for the job? Why didn’t he mention that he was black during his acceptance speech? Shouldn’t he be further ahead in the polls than he is? For this last, Obama said: This is gonna be a rough, tough battle. The Republicans don't govern very well but they know how to campaign. And, you know, what I would expect is that it's gonna take-mid-October before a whole lot of people start making up their minds. And there's nothing wrong with that. This notion that somehow this should be a cakewalk and I should just walk into the election with a 10, 15 point lead, I think doesn't give the American people enough credit. They wanna get this thing right.To the black question: Yeah, I think people noticed that.As for tough enough?: The fact that I don't go out of my way to call people names, or try to take cheap shots, and that I try not to throw the first punch, but to see if I can find a way to work together with people, sometimes leads people to underestimate what I've got. I think it's fair to say that if I couldn't not only take a punch, but occasionally throw one, I wouldn't be sitting here.And I came away thinking: This man is so smart. No matter what Steve Kroft threw at him, he turned it into a smart response. Which is exactly what we need. During the next four years, when the worst elements of the world throw what they can at us, we need the smart response, instead of the response, full of cowboy passions, that plays right into al Qaeda’s hands. "F**k it. We're going in." The cover story in this morning’s New York Times Magazine, by Peter Baker, presumably an excerpt from his upcoming book, concerns Bush’s final days in office, and the beginning of the article focuses on the McCain campaign’s attempt to distance itself from this most unpopular president. At the end of the first section, Mark Salter, McCain’s campaign advisor, says this about the President: “You feel bad for the guy if you think about it.” This leads to the first line of the second section: George Bush does not want anyone feeling bad for him. Allow me to back up for a second. Yesterday I came across the money portion of Ron Suskind’s The Way of the World. Suskind is writing about all the end-arounds the Bush administration performed in the lead-up to the Iraq war: ignoring George Tenet and the CIA to get the 16 words into the State of the Union address; using the CIA chief of station for Germany to muzzle German fears about the unreliability of Rafid Ahmed, or “Curveball,” who was feeding the administration misinformation about Saddam’s biological weapons operation; and, finally, not just ignoring but actually reversing the findings of the CIA Paris chief, who was told, in a clandestine meeting with Naji Sabri, Saddam’s last foreign minister, that Saddam didn’t possess WMD. Then Suskind gets to the big one. In a casual conversation with an American intelligence officer in a Washington restaurant, and subsequently confirmed in face-to-face meetings with the former director and current assistant director of MI6, Suskind discovers that the Bush administration knew Saddam didn’t possess WMD before they went to war. They didn’t suspect. They knew. In the months before the war, it seems a British agent, Michael Shipster, met with the head of Iraqi intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush, who confirmed everything we subsequently found to be true: Not just that Saddam didn’t have WMD but why he was unwilling to say so publicly. And it all made sense. Here’s Suskind talking with the unnamed American intelligence officer: I ask if the intelligence was passed to CIA and the White House. “Of course. Passed instantly, at the very highest levels.” “And what did we say,” I ask. “Or, I guess, what did Bush say?” “He said, Fuck it. We’re going in.” Don’t know if that’s a direct quote or not. Either way, it’s probably a good thing George Bush doesn’t want anyone feeling bad for him. 38.4 Million Obama Fans Can't Be Wrong Meanwhile, Barack’s acceptance speech, before 38.4 million people Thursday night, was about nothing but the serious business of getting us out of the serious mess we’re in. I had friends call me from California and Minnesota to talk about the speech. They were pumped. Here’s the part that got me: We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.Amazing. He talked about bridging our divisions and then gave concrete examples. And not just any concrete examples. He gave examples involving four of the most volatile issues in our country: abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage and immigration. And I agreed with every one, every comment. This is a serious, common-sense response to the absolutism that has infected our country, not just over the last eight years, but over the past several decades. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in a hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. You know, passions may fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. For my brother-in-law, Eric, who is deeply involved in community projects, this was the big moment: What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me; it's about you. It's about you. ... You have shown what history teaches us, that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.Both excerpts hearken back to why Obama originally (and immediately) appealed to me. Unlike 99.9 percent of the politicians out there, including John McCain, he’s not saying, “Here’s what I’ll do for you.” He’s saying, “Here’s what we can do together.” I think that’s hugely appealing. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want their life to have more meaning, and Barack is offering a path to that. He’s all about unity, no matter how divisive the issue. He’s all about what we can do when we work together. He’s a serious man for a serious time. John McCain? I’m sorry, but he feels like a clown in comparison. Trotting out the same old divisive B.S. Sputtering the same old catchphrases. Injecting the same old fears. Focusing on everything that doesn’t matter: Britney, Paris, Sarah. There’s no doubt who’s taking this presidency business seriously. The big question is: How serious are the rest of us? If It's "Thrusday," McCain Must Be Speaking My colleague, Garth, pointed out this error on the Republican Web site. I'm sure it'll be fixed soon, if not already, and obviously it doesn't have much to do with McCain himself since he barely knows about the Internet let alone how to write for it. But if there's a perception out there that you're the "dumb" candidate, and "dumb" isn't as heartwarming as it was in, say, 2000, before we saw the kinds of shit "dumb" could get us in, then this isn't the kind of error you want to make. As Garth says, maybe he opted for "Thrusday" because Thursday is the start of football season and he knew his acceptance speech couldn't compete. UPDATE: Saturday, 8:00 a.m.: Still not fixed. UPDATE: Sunday, 9:00 a.m.: Still not fixed. UPDATE: Monday, 7:20 a.m. Still not fixed. Is no one going to the GOP site? Can't anyone in the GOP spell? I don't think William F. Buckley is rolling over in his grave over this, but he's definitely rolling his eyes. UPDATE: Monday, 10:21 a.m.: Fixed! And it only took 72 hours since Garth first noticed it. It's this kind of attention to detail, this kind of speedy, tech-savvy recovery, that makes the GOP the party that it is. "We're Amazingly Incompetent or We Lied" Related to the post below, here's a quote I read over lunch from Ron Suskind's The Way of the World. The speaker is an FBI man and a conservative Republican. He's talking to the author in June 2007: "People don't realize in America how little underlying credibility the United States now has in the world, espcially on this matter of WMD, which, of course, has been driving everything. We went to war—the most important thing a country does—based on WMD, and we were wrong. That means either we're amazingly incompetent or we lied. Take your pick. Now, I think we lied, most people do, because no one could be that incompetent. But until we come clean—and here we are years later and we don't even care enough as a country to figure out what really happened—we're sunk." Pages 169-70. We get to the lying later. The Power of Our Example But, I admit, I’ve been blown away by both Bill and Hillary Clinton at the DNC this week. Listening to her, I thought, “If she’d been this good during the campaign, she might’ve been the nominee.” Listening to him, I thought, “I’d vote for him again in a second.” Her speech was good, but this bit put her over the top: This is the story of America. Of women and men who defy the odds and never give up. How do we give this country back to them?The electricity that infused the convention center at that moment was overwhelming. I could feel it through the TV set and into my home in Seattle. I got shivers. My friend, Jim, another Obama supporter, called it “Obamaesque.” By following the example of a brave New Yorker, a woman who risked her life to shepherd slaves along the Underground Railroad. And on that path to freedom, Harriett Tubman had one piece of advice. If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If they're shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going. Even in the darkest of moments, ordinary Americans have found the faith to keep going. Bill, meanwhile, did what every good writer, and every good lawyer, does: He boiled his case down to the specifics and presented them with charm. But, from all that, this was the line. Whoever came up with it deserves a raise: Barack Obama knows that America cannot be strong abroad unless we are strong at home. People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.That’s it, isn’t it? The U.S. has spent most of its history, from “Shining City on a Hill” through the Marshall Plan and the Peace Corps, relying on the power of our example. There’s a lot of grime beneath that myth but it’s a myth worth adhering to. We do what we do; if others follow, that’s up to them. Since 9/11 we've acted the opposite, and those seven years have shown us the limits of our power. We’re exhausted, deeply entrenched, trapped. We’ve made more enemies than ever before. The more we use the example of our power, the more we have to use it. And the world’s a big place. The power of our example? That’s an unlimited power source. Why you can't take toothpaste on an airplane The day is July 27, 2006, when, in a move calculated to win some iota of support from African-Americans for the upcoming mid-term elections, Pres. Bush signs the Voting Rights Act reauthorization a year early in a ceremony on the White House lawn. It’s also the day Khosa is taken into custody by the Secret Service for fiddling with his iPod while waiting for a car to pass through the White House gates. He’s dragged into an interrogation room inside the White House, made to give up the names of friends and acquaintances, then let go with warnings. His friends and acquaintances will all be checked out. So will he. “We know everything about you and where to find you,” one Secret Service agent tells him. His crime? Fiddling with his iPod while Pakistani. But the bigger issue, in the first two chapters, involves the backstory to the British government’s capture of a major terror cell in the suburbs of London, which was plotting to hijack airplanes and head for the U.S. East Coast. “The second wave,” Bush and Cheney had been warning us about. MI-6 was cautious. Suskind writes: “The Brits, after their experience in Northern Ireland, were starting to believe that the key was to treat this not as a titanic ideological struggle, but rather as a law enforcement issue. This required being patient enough to get the actual evidence —usually once a plot had matured — with which to build a viable case in open court.” Bush? Not so open. Not so cautious. Suskind implies that when Tony Blair refused to speed up arrests to suit Bush’s timetable — that is, the August before midterms — Bush nodded to Cheney, who dispatched the fourth-ranking CIA officer to Pakistan to alert the authorities there to Rashid Rauf, the Pakistani contact for the terror cell. Once Rauf was arrested, the terror cell panicked, and the Brits, who were apoplectic that their carefully constructed strategy had been knocked over, had no choice but to round them up... before they had enough evidence to put them away forever. And The White House got to say how they had been right all along “about everything.” Suskind gets us into the heads of both Bush and Cheney, which is a little odd, you wonder which sources could possibly get us there. But these early chapters make you realize both a) how real the terrorist threat is, and b) how politically motivated and short-sighted the Bush administration response has been. It’s a scary world, but all the scarier for who we elected to protect us. "Bush II" by William Shakespeare That’s not the main reason I bought his book, though. I bought it because Ron Suskind is the guy who wrote the 2004 New York Times Magazine article that, through a smug Bush aide, introduced the phrase “the reality-based community” to the world. I remember how the article stunned me. I remember how it made me better aware of what we were up against. That certain Republicans were willing to overthrow centuries of rational thinking to keep winning elections. The money quote: The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” ... “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” Gotta be Rove, right? I’ve only read the prologue of The Way of the World but I’m already glad I bought it. In the first pages Suskind gives a better reading of the presidential failures of George W. Bush than I’ve read anywhere else. And I’ve read a lot about the presidential failures of George W. Bush. Bush came to power, Suskind says, relying on his gut, his instinct. “What he does,” Suskind writes, “is size up people, swiftly — he trusts his eyes, his ears, his touch — and acts… Once he landed in the Oval Office, however, he discovered that every relationship is altered, corrupted by the gravitational incongruities between the leader of the free world and everyone else.” Other presidents have fought against this corruption, this alteration. Ford arranged Oval Office arguments between top aides. Nixon ordered subordinates to tell him something their superiors didn’t want him to hear. There was good old-fashioned eavesdropping and wire-tapping and polling. But W. continued to rely on his instinct, making him, to Suskind, a tragic figure worthy of Shakespeare: “A man who trusts only what he can touch placed in a realm where nothing he touches is authentic.” Or more brusquely: “...you can’t run the world on instinct from inside a bubble.” "Dear Fellow Republican" The Republican National Committee sent me a census the other day addressed to a “fellow Republican.” I know. I assume they sent it to as many people as possible. Maybe they even want people to fulminate against the enclosed “Republican Party Census Document” and its leading questions. It’s not a census, after all, but a push poll, so the goal is to get the words repeated, to get them out there, so they can reside in the brains of unsuspecting passersby. Here’s my version. Has the same basic gist with half the calories: HOMELAND SECURITY ISSUES 1. Should Republicans do everything in their power to make you so scared of the world that you’re willing to give up your most basic rights? 2. Do you support the use of force against any country chickenhawk Republicans say shit about? Shit to include: WMDs, smoking guns, underage gymnasts. 3. Should guffawing Republicans continue to make you scared of Mexicans? And Negroes? And the Irish? 1. Should greedy Republicans continue to use the phrase “massive tax hikes” when referring to taxes on the wealthiest of the wealthy (i.e., Republicans)? 2. President Bush’s idiotic tax cuts for rich bastards (known as the “Idiotic Tax Cuts for Rich Bastards” law) is set to expire. Should we make it permanent? Should we put in the Constitution? Should we make it the 11th Commandment? 3. Shouldn’t we balance the budget already? And by “we” I mean “your great great grand-children.” Ha! 1. Are you still scared of Mexicans? Good! 2. Do you still hate trial lawyers? Yes! 3. Red tape? The other side likes it! You and I know better. Here’s a beer. 1. Homos? The worst! 2. What if we implied the other guys wanted to serve partial-birth aborted fetuses in government-run school lunch programs? Would it make you rent Soylent Green again? 3. You know what those other guys want to do? Ban God. But look at this muscle. Me stop them. 1. Hey, isn’t that a Mexican right outside your house? Vote now! 2. The United Nations? Losers! 3. The seeds of democracy? Yum! 4. Yes or no: All countries not the U.S. are alike. (Answer: Who gives a shit?) 1. Look at this penis. Should we pass a law that says it's the best one ever? 2. I can run faster than you. Yes, I can. I already ran around the world, you just didn’t see me. 3. Would you join the Republican National Committee by making a contribution today? Like, a zillion dollars. OK, $35. OK, Other. 4. Look at this muscle. No, wait. No, look from this side. The questionnaire includes a business reply envelope with the following printed on the outside: “By using your own first class stamp to return this envelope, you will be helping us save much needed funds.” So if you get one of these, do what I did. Mail it back. Without the stamp. Empty. Reagan v. Founding Fathers Another good observation from Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter: As John Patrick Diggins, a Reagan biographer, astutely observes, the Founding Fathers believed that "The people are the problem and the government the solution" while Reagan convinced us that the people are virtuous and that government's the problem. "It worked," Diggins notes. "Reagan never lost an election." G.O.P.: The Party of Stupid Everyone needs to read Paul Krugman's column today, particularly this graf: What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratificatio

Canadian business school deans visit Israel Peggy Cunningham didn’t waste much time before briefing members of Dalhousie University’s business school about her trip to Israel. Cunningham, dean of the Rowe School of Business, told her colleagues and others at the Halifax university that Israel earned its reputation as “startup nation” through entrepreneurship and in part, by the quality of its research institutions. She suggested Israeli successes in innovation and high-tech companies could be studied and applied in Nova Scotia. And in an email exchange with The CJN, she said Nova Scotia and Israel have much to learn from each other. Cunningham was part of a group of 11 deans of Canadian business schools who visited Israel recently under the auspices of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and the Israeli Embassy in Ottawa. Business schools at the University of Ottawa, McGill, the University of Manitoba, the University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University and Ryerson and Memorial universities were among those represented. They were accompanied by Dylan Hanley, CIJA’s associate director of university studies. Prior to her departure for Israel, Cunningham said she was “more aware of Israel’s political issues than its business climate. Thus the visit totally changed my views. Learning about Israel’s success with regard to high-tech innovation was very powerful, but it was also valuable for me to see the complexity of the business environment, from small family businesses to large international businesses.” In briefing notes she distributed at the university, Cunningham pointed out Israel ranks third in the world for entrepreneurship and produces more than 4,000 high-tech startups. “It is number 1 with regard to the quality of its research institutions. It has 18 per cent of all life-science patents in the world, and it is number 1 in terms of patents for medical devices. It has also outpaced the world with regard to job creation, surpassing the European Union, Brazil and China. Exports make up 40 per cent of its economy.” Surveying the academic scene, Cunningham noted students generally attend following military service and are more mature than their Canadian counterparts. She suggested three Israeli universities – the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the University of Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion University, are seeking international students. “I am going to further explore the idea of offering a tour for top achieving students from our four schools. We learned a lot on our tour, and students would, too. Many of the entrepreneurship programs we saw were the result of close collaboration between business and government. Israel focuses on information technology and knowledge management. There is a growing focus on ‘clean tech,’ water conservation and realization there is a requirement to think about environmental and social sustainability. Thus, such a trip would provide a rich learning venue for [our] students.” Cunningham suggested other exchanges could include hosting Israeli academics as visiting scholars. “We have invited Dov Zohar from the Technion to be a visiting scholar, and would welcome others as well,” she said. “We are creating a new program for top performing students who will be able to compete to go on a trip similar to the one we went on, with some course work taken at Israel universities,” she also stated. That’s the kind of result that CIJA was banking on. “In the last few years, our strategy has been to work on bridge-building between Canadian and Israeli universities,” said Hanley. Much of the discourse on campuses has been hijacked by “a small number of angry anti-Israel voices… We’re taking the high road. This is about collaboration and bridge-building in areas that are natural.” Israel is well-known for its innovation in high tech, medical devices, environmental solutions and renewable energy, said Hanley. For their part, Canadian business schools are among the best in the world. “We’re hoping to see exchange agreements, programs, academic collaboration, study tours and studying abroad,” Hanley said. In a statement, the Israeli Embassy in Ottawa, said, “One of our goals at the embassy is to expose [Israel’s] success story to Canada’s business, political, cultural and academic communities. “Our hope is to build partnerships in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurialism between Canadian and Israeli institutions that will have a long-term impact, mutually benefiting the citizens of both countries.” Israelis are well-known for spawning innovative new businesses in high tech; Canadians have expertise in energy and resource management. Perhaps these are areas where exchanges could results, Hanley suggested. So far, CIJA has been happy with the feedback from the participants. For her part, Cunningham went hoping “to learn more about the universities, areas for potential partnerships and entrepreneurial success. My expectations were exceeded,” she said.

Watch Gerson on this week's "Para Que Lo Sepas" commentary, which airs on NY1 Noticias every Monday at 5 PM and runs every hour through Tuesday until 5 PM. More Kelly Missteps? By Gerson Borrero New York, NY, February 2, 2012 The nearly fatal shooting of 29 year old Police Officer Brennan, of New Hyde Park, N.Y., in the line of duty Tuesday night on the premises of a public housing development in Bushwick, Brooklyn made it abundantly clear the risk that New York's Finest face each minute of the day. By all accounts, PO Brennan should be dead. The point-blank shot allegedly fired to the back of the head by suspect, 21 year old suspect Luis Ortiz, should have added a widow to the extended family of the NYPD and left a baby girl to grow up reading about how her Daddy was gunned down by a habitual criminal. “The officer, when I visited him this morning, was going in and out of consciousness,” said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly in a Press Conference on Wednesday. “That’s because of the morphine, I’m told. As we said last evening, he is extremely lucky.” And hours after trauma surgeons had removed the bullet from the base of the PO Brennan's skull, he remained at Bellevue Hospital Center in critical but stable condition. The investigation by detectives is on going. In the meantime, we wonder if, unfortunately, this officer was shot by a bullet from his own gun? According to a retired NYPD detective, told TBR that, "The bullet held-up by Kelly at the press conference appears too big to be a .38 cal. which was the type of gun recovered from an area near the suspects residence." Our source also noted: "That was the first time I have ever seen a bullet recovered from an officer being displayed to the press!" The former detective expressed the following concern to TBR, "I wonder how they now handle the "chain-of -custody" issue? Usually, a doctor will hand over a recovered bullet to an officer or the detective handling the case. They, in turn, voucher it and are able to testify, at a later date, that it was the same bullet recovered by the doctor." Which in this instance, raises the question as to whom the doctor may have given the bullet to? Did the doctor who removed the bullet give it to the person standing behind Commissioner Kelly and who handed it to Mr. Kelly at the press conference? After holding the bullet up so that cameras could capture the visual, the Police Commissioner seems to returns the vial containing the bullet back to the same person. Could the sequence of the handling of the bullet press conference have an adverse impact on the eventual case against the alleged shooter? Obvious problems with the chain-of-custody may develop and an astute defense attorney can argue that, given all the people who handled the bullet, it is impossible to determine whether it was the same one removed from the officer," is what the retired detective told the Borrero Report. We just hope that the ex-NYPD detective is wrong. From our friend Mary Murphy at WPIX-TV Suspect Who Fatally Shot NYPD Cop In Face In Custody Wanted For The Murder of Police Officer Peter Figoski STATEMENT BY POLICE COMMISSIONER RAYMOND W. KELLY At 2:15 this morning police officers from the 75th Precinct responded to a 911 call of a burglary in progress at 25 Pine Street in East New York reported by the owner there. The owner, who resided on the first and second floors, reported hearing what he thought was a break-in in the basement apartment, occupied by a 25-year old tenant. The first two officers to respond encountered a robbery victim and his neighbor in the basement apartment. The two assailants, including the gunman, had tried unsuccessfully to flee from the rear of the location. Failing that, they hid in a side room as the first responding officers walked past them and began interviewing the tenant and his neighbor. The two suspects then made their way to the front door to escape. Meanwhile, Police Officer Peter Figoski, who was part of the back-up team that responded, was at the bottom of the stairs leading from the street to the basement apartment door when he was shot in the face by one of two assailants. His partner, Police Officer Glenn Estrada, was already struggling on the street level in front of the house with a second suspect, when he heard the shot and observed the gunman run by him. Officer Estrada released the man he was struggling with and pursued the gunman, capturing him after a foot pursuit of several blocks at the corner of Fulton and Chestnut streets. A sliver 9mm Ruger semi-automatic pistol was recovered under a parked car on Chestnut Street near Fulton Street. It appears that one round had been discharged from the weapon. The shell casing had stove-piped, or jammed, in the chamber of the gun. Ten live cartridges remained in its magazine. We also recovered a black ski mask on the sidewalk about 15 feet from where the gun was found. The tenant reported first hearing the two suspects pounding on the basement door, and then entering, as he went to the door to investigate. The tenant, an employee of a nearby bodega, said that there were two men, a male Hispanic and a male black who was wearing a ski mask. They initially claimed to be police officers, the tenant said. They then demanded money and jewelry. They knocked the tenant down, and one of the men struck him in the head with a firearm. As he was lying on the floor of his apartment, he heard what he believed were police officers entering the location, a struggle, and then a shot ring out. The robbery victim said his assailants stole an inexpensive watch and $770 in cash. The tenant is currently being treated at Brookedale hospital for head injuries. The gunman, Lamont Pride, 27, of Brooklyn, has 5 unsealed prior arrests, including several for drug possession and sale. Pride was wanted on an outstanding warrant for aggravated assault in North Carolina. The second suspect ran from the scene and still being sought. Officer Figoski has been an active police officer with over 200 arrests, nearly half felony arrests. He has 12 medals awarded, including 8 for exceptional police duty. We are all praying for him. His partner, Officer Estrada, was also treated here at Jamaica for an injury to his right shoulder sustained in his confrontation with both suspects. I want to commend Officer Estrada, who had the presence of mind to focus on the man with the gun, and the courage to chase him down and capture him. I also want to commend the staff here at Jamaica for their outstanding assistance to our officers tonight and for the great work they do in this community every day. The New York City Police Department is asking for the public's assistance in identifying and locating the following individual who is a person of interest in connection with the Murder of a New York City Police Officer in the confines of the 75 pct. He is described as a Male Hispanic, 24-30 years old. Black hair and light skin complexion. Wearing a light colored T-shirt, and dark pants. The individual was last seen walking Westbound on Fulton St from Chester St. Click HERE for video. Anyone with information in regards to the whereabouts of this individual is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crimes Stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577. All calls are strictly confidential. Arab Spring in the Caribbean? New York, NY, October 27, 2011 Maybe the quest for freedom in the Arab world will remind US leaders that a group of their own citizens clamor for the right to self-determination. At least one prominent American, former presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, is aware of that clamor. Recently, appearing with Curtis Sliwa on New York radio station AM970 The Apple, Buchanan, on to discuss his most recent book “Suicide Of A Superpower,” said of the current political status in Puerto Rico: “I believe that the Puerto Rican people should decide their own destiny. I do not believe they should be made a state because I think then we would be required to become a bilingual country where you would have to have earphones and instant translation in Congress. I think they are…they are of a Spanish culture and history and heritage, so what I would do as regard to Puerto Rico I would say, ‘the statehood is out, the present Commonwealth status is fine if you want to keep it and if you want independence, if the...if you set-up an established way to elect and choose independence the United Stated will let you have independence and we will have permanent association.’ So, I am against statehood, I am in favor of the Commonwealth if they want to keep it, and I would agree to independence and nationhood for Puerto Rico if the Puerto Ricans wanted that. They have been good friends but there's no doubt we seized that island by force from Spain in 1898 as a result...as we seized the Philippines and eventually we let the Philippines go. I don't think what we did in the Philippines was very just, incidentally, but we let...we did a wonderful job after that and we let them go and I think the Puerto Rican people should always have the right to be independent and free of the United States if a majority of them choose to do so.” Come on President Obama, how about some US assets to assist in that liberation? New York, NY, October 25, 2011 For those who may believe President Barack Obama announced something new or momentous in his recent statement that all combat troops would leave Iraq by the end of this year, we provide you the agreement between the United States and Iraq crafted during the George W. Bush administration. The document makes clear that the withdrawal of all US forces from all of Iraq had already been agreed to in 2008. Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq State Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr. Calls For Unity New York, NY, October 25, 2011 Open Memo to My Senate Caucus Colleagues To: Members of the New York State Senate Puerto Rican/ Latino Caucus From: Senator Reverend Ruben Diaz Date: October 24, 2011 Re: Our Show of Unity This memo is to congratulate my Senate colleagues who serve as Members of the New York State Senate Puerto Rican/Latino Caucus: Senator Adriano Espaillat, Chair; Senator Gustavo Rivera, Vice-Chair; and Caucus Members Senator José Peralta, Senator Martin-Malavé Dilan, and Senator José M. Serrano. I congratulate all of you for showing real unity on behalf of our Caucus and our community by not attending the so-called Legislative Hispanic Unity Conference that was organized by our Senate Majority (Republican) Leader Dean Skelos. Most importantly, I have to admire our Caucus Chairman, Senator Adriano Espaillat for his leadership. I have to admire our Caucus Vice-Chair Gustavo Rivera for being forthright in the media last week by stating:“I will not be attending the conference. If the majority leader and the Senate Republicans were serious about addressing the issues affecting Latinos, they would have asked their Latino counterparts in the Senate to help them organize a conference that reflects the issues that are impacting Latinos throughout the state such as immigrants’ rights issues as well as the need to extend the millionaire’s tax so that New York State is able to continue funding important services like education, housing, and healthcare that are so critical to our communities.” I have to admire our Caucus Member Senator Jose Peralta who told the press: “It’s a dog-and-pony show that they’re putting together so that they can say that they actually put something together. As opposed to when we’re up in session and we’re actually pushing for legislation that matters to Latinos – like immigration, like housing, like safe streets, like good schools and good jobs – and when we have an opportunity do actually move those pieces of legislation forward, when we have an opportunity to actually do something productive for the Latino community…then it doesn’t take effect. There is no dialogue.” The number of Hispanic elected officials in New York State continues to grow with more than 50 Hispanic elected officials in office today. This includes two Hispanic Members of the U.S. Congress, One Borough President, six State Senators, Ten Members of the State Assembly, and 11 Members of the New York City Council. It is also proper to note the many elected district leaders, state committee members, and many others of Hispanic descent, throughout the state. To find out that out of so many Hispanic elected officials, only two attended Senator Dean Skelos’s publicity event this weekend certainly demonstrates a great show of unity among Hispanics who did not attend. This speaks volumes!!!! I understand that only two Hispanic elected officials attended. They are Assembly Member Guillermo Linares and Assembly Member Naomi Rivera. But rumor has it that Assemblyman Linares is pursuing Republican support so that Congressional districts might be more geared to his needs and I have no idea what Assembly Member Naomi Rivera’s intentions were by attending Senator Dean Skelos’ event and not joining the rest of the Hispanic elected officials. It was mentioned that Roberto Ramirez attended Senator Dean Skelos’ event, but he is no longer an elected official. Roberto Ramirez is a hired consultant and it is believed that he served as part of the consulting firm for the event. Again, I congratulate you all and all New York State Hispanic elected officials that stood up for their community. Please feel free to contact me at (718) ###-#### to discuss this further. Columbus: Discoverer or Destroyer? New York, NY, October 13, 2011 Read this article by Miguel Sarmiento and then decide. Christopher Columbus: A deadly and accidental tourist By Miguel Sarmiento Regardless of whether he was Jewish or Catholic, or how you may choose to refer to him—Christopher Columbus, in English; Cristoforo Colombo, in Italian; Christophe Colomb, in French; Christoph Kolumbus, in German; Christoffel Columbus, in Dutch; or Salvador Fernandez Cristóvão Zarcus Colombo, in Portuguese—the man died convinced that in each one of his trips he was on his way to India and, contrary to the meaning of his name, he left behind a trail of pain and death unlike any other in human history. Today, 519 years later, there are those who celebrate this accidental and bloody Caribbean cruise tourist, and there are those who wonder whether theactions of this individual and those of his subsequent minions will forever go unpunished. His first name, Christopher, means "He who carries Christ within" and his last name, Columbus, means "Dove," known as the universal symbol of peace. This sailor did not in any way give justice to his namesake for in the name of his “Christ within,” he committed what would undoubtedly be the equivalent of Crimes against Humanity if judged before the International Court of Justice today. His travels remind me of an advertisement slogan used to promote tourism to a Colombian city. That slogan stated, "A pleased tourist brings more tourists." Upon his return home, this clueless sailor expressed total satisfaction, and so much was he pleased that millions of Europeans followed his Pinta, Nina and Santa Maria to the Americas. Then they, in the name of several European Crowns, proceeded to commit the most egregious genocide that human history has ever witnessed. In his journal, Columbus described the peoples of the continent he had landed on as follows: "They bear no arms and do not know what they are. I showed them a sword, and out of sheer ignorance, they held it by the wrong side and got cut ... They will make perfect servants ... With fifty men we can subjugate them all, and make them do whatever we please." Immediately after, Columbus took on the unspeakable task of enslaving and abusing the Natives. Bartolome de las Casas—a holy man to some, to others a reporter of the atrocities committed by his countrymen, blinded by greed and endless ambition of wealth that by far exceeds that of today’s Wall Street investors—in a 1552 report entitled "Brief account of the destruction of the Indies,” told the Spanish Crown: THE KINGDOM OF NEW GRANADA "Beyond Santa Marta and Cartagena, there is a land inhabited by once happy and good and passive people living in emerald and gold rich territories. To these provinces, named the New Kingdom of Granada- after the tyrant who first came to these lands who was himself a native of the kingdom of Granada, many wicked and cruel men came. They were expert butchers and shedders of human blood, very familiar and experienced in these sins also committed in many other parts of the Indies. Their wickedness has been immeasurable, and the aggravating circumstances such that they exceed those committed in all of the other Provinces combined. I beg Her Royal Highness receives and reads this brief report with the mercy and kindness with which Her Highness often treats the works of her subjects, for the public good and prosperity of the thy Kingdom. For after bearing witness and understanding the injustice placed upon those innocent peoples, who are being annihilated and torn without just cause or reason, but the mere greed and blind ambition of those committing such nefarious deeds, Her Highness must effectively plead and persuade His Majesty to deny whoever asks to embark in such harmful and detestable enterprise, to put an end and perpetually silence so much terror, that from now on, no one be bold enough and dares to ever act in such way after being so appointed.” New Granada, known today as Colombia- named after the sinister tourist, remains as indifferent to the subsistence existence and abuse of its original inhabitants, and its leaders acting as the conquerors of which Bartolome de las Casas speaks of. It is difficult to understand why so many countries celebrate the encounter of these two worlds. We should instead declare this day, one that will live of infamy, a day to mourning. It is difficult to understand why we have parades and our nations celebrate it. For instance, in Costa Rica it is called the ‘Day of the Cultures.’ In Uruguay it is known as ‘Day of the Americas’. Colombia, Chile, Argentina, USA and Mexico refer to it as ‘Columbus Day’ and the ‘Day of Race.’ Ironic, no? Perhaps we should call it ‘The Day of the Annihilation of a Race.’ At least in Venezuela they have a better and much more appropriate name for it; they call it ‘The Day of the Indigenous Resistance.’ Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it ‘The American Holocaust’ ... Or, better yet, following Christopher Columbus’ Judeo-Christian roots, and what his name implies, we could call it ‘European Day of Atonement, Reparations and Compensation to the Native Peoples of the Americas.’ The reason for the atonement is that Christ died on the cross to atone for mankind’s sins...The problem with this solution is that there is not enough timber in the world to make a cross big enough to hang on it the sins committed by past and present conquerors. Nevertheless, I agree with Chilean Nobel Prize winner, Pablo Neruda, when he wrote: "But from the barbarian’s boots, from their beards, from their helms, from the horseshoes, like small pebbles... dropped bright and immaculate words that stayed and shined here ... the language. We ended up losing... We ended up wining ... They took the gold and lefts us the gold ... They took everything, and left us all... They left us... the words." To which I say, Amen! New York, NY, October 5, 2011 Our friend Wayne Barrett of The Daily Beast has an excellent article describing the company Texas Governor and wannabe president Rick Perry keeps. Like our abuelas would say "dime con quién andas y te diré quien eres" (tell me who you walk with and I'll tell you who you are). Read Wayne's column here: "Perry’s Other Hunting Buddies." EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL ACTION NETWORK CALLS ON COMMUNITY TO "START SNITCHING" IN LIGHT OF THE SHOOTING OF NEW YORK GIRLS BASKETBALL STAR TAYSHANA MURPHY--- NAN and its Anti-violence committee to step up fight to eradicate horrendous culture of violence in NY. New York, NY (Sept. 13, 20011)- Tamika D. Mallory, National Executive Director of National Action Network (NAN) is calling upon community members to start "snitching" about gun violence and call for the perpetrator in the shooting of 18 year old basketball star Tayshana Murphy to come forward. According to Ms. Mallory, "The culture of violence has become an epidemic that is accepted to not only members of the community but by elected officials across the state of NY. No one has immunity from this issue. We must all do our part to end this genocide. The National Action Network and Tamika D. Mallory have been on the forefront of speaking out against gun violence across the country and the organization has hosted "National Days of Outrage against gun violence" and partnered with the NYPD to host gun buyback programs. The violence, however, still rages on and NAN is urging community members not to sit back and bear witness while contributing to the demise of their own people. The National Action Network is reaching out to the family of Tayshana Murphy to lend support in this difficult time and shed light on the travesty of gun violence and hosted the family of Denise Gay who was shot Labor Day weekend, allegedly by a police bullet. Marty Markowitz Audio File September 1, 2011 Click HERE to hear Marty's message. New York, New York August 29th, 2011 A bit of self-promotion, but check out this New York Observer story about the "Tweets" of a self-described "Jewryican." GOVERNOR CUOMO ADVISES NEW YORKERS TO PREPARE FOR PROPERTY DAMAGE AND LOSSES AS HURRICANE IRENE APPROACFor Immediate Release: August 26, 2011 GOVERNOR CUOMO ADVISES NEW YORKERS TO PREPARE FOR PROPERTY DAMAGE AND LOSSES AS HURRICANE IRENE APPROACHES Encourages New Yorkers to Review Insurance Information, Keep Emergency Claim Numbers Readily Available, Watch out for Scams Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today urged homeowners to prepare for the potential economic impact of Hurricane Irene by reviewing their insurance policies, gathering emergency claim numbers, securing insurance information and watching out for potential scam artists looking to take advantage of the potential disaster. "Homeowners should do everything they can to prepare their property to prevent damage. But there are things you can do before the storm to make it easier to deal with damage from a hurricane if it does happen," Governor Cuomo noted. "Consumers should consider taking steps to protect themselves now. Developing a home inventory, assembling information on your insurance policies and understanding what to do should a disaster affect you are things that can better prepare anyone against losses from a storm." Benjamin Lawsky, Superintendent of Department of Financial Services, who oversees the Department of Insurance added, "Our Department stands ready and prepared to help and protect New Yorkers' assets. New Yorkers should take prudent measures now, before the storm hits, to ensure they can quickly and easily file claims for any damage." The Governor listed the following practical suggestions: Review Your Insurance Policies Make sure you know what is covered by your policy and what is not covered. Call your insurance agent or company if you have any questions. Remember that flood damage is not covered by standard homeowners or renter's insurance and must be covered under a separate flood insurance policy. Flood insurance does not go into effect for 30 days, so it is too late to obtain this insurance for Hurricane Irene. But if your area could be subject to flooding, you should consider obtaining this protection for the future. It's Not Too Late to Create a Home Inventory It's important to have a detailed list that catalogs the belongings in your home with such information as cost and date of purchase. A sample inventory form is on the Insurance Department's website: http://www.ins.state.ny.us/homeown/pdf/home_invchklst.pdf. If you don't have time to create a comprehensive list of the items in your home, then quickly videotape and/or photograph every room. The more detail you include, the easier it will be for your insurance company to evaluate your loss. When making your list, make sure to open drawers and closets, and don't forget to take stock of what's in your garage and storage buildings. Photograph a newspaper or magazine in at least one of the pictures to document the date the photos were taken. Consider keeping a duplicate copy of your inventory and photo record at a location away from your home. This could be with a relative or trusted friend where the information is accessible yet away from the potential disaster area. Collect and Store Your Insurance Information Keep copies of your insurance policies with your home inventory records. Make sure to have a copy of the policy declarations page listing all of your coverages, as well as your insurance cards. It's important to have 24-hour contact details for your insurance agent and insurance company, along with your insurer's website and mailing addresses. It's a good idea to store this information in a waterproof, fireproof box or safe, and if you need to evacuate your home, don't forget to take this information with you. Prepare for the Worst There are steps you can take to help mitigate some of the damage caused by a hurricane or tropical storm. If your home is equipped with storm shutters, make sure you can quickly put them in place. Clear your yard of debris that could become projectiles in high winds and trim dead or overhanging branches from trees surrounding your home. It's also a good time to make a quick review of your home to make sure the roof sheathing is properly secured, that end gables are securely fastened to the roof, and that doors and garage doors are latched properly. For personal safety, identify the nearest storm shelter and have an evacuation plan for your family. Also, make sure you have hurricane survival supplies including: bottled water, a first aid kit, flashlights, a battery-operated radio, at least three days of non-perishable food items, blankets, clothing, prescription drugs, eyeglasses, personal hygiene supplies and enough cash for at least three days. If you are forced to evacuate your home, turn off all utilities and disconnect appliances to reduce the chance of additional damage and electrical shock when utilities are restored. For more information about how to prepare your family and home for the threat of tropical storms or hurricanes, visit the American Red Cross' website or download their Hurricane Safety Checklist. After the Storm The days following a natural disaster can be confusing and stressful, but it is important that you focus on filing your insurance claim(s) as quickly as possible to help protect your financial future. The first step to getting your home restored is to contact your insurance company and/or agent with your policy number and other relevant information. Be aware that your policy might require that you make this notification within a certain time frame. Take photographs/video of the damage before clean-up or repairs. After you've documented the damage, make repairs necessary to prevent further damage to your property (cover broken windows, leaking roofs and damaged walls). DO NOT have permanent repairs made until your insurance company has inspected the property and you have reached an agreement on the cost of repairs. Be prepared to provide the claims adjuster with records of any improvements you made prior to the damage. Save all receipts, including those from the temporary repairs. If your home is damaged to the extent that you cannot live there, ask your insurance company or insurance agent if you have coverage for additional living expenses. Ask what documents, forms and data you will need to file the claim. Keep a diary of all conversations you have with the insurance company and your insurance agent, including names, times and dates of the calls or visits and contact details. Be certain to give your insurance company all the information they need. Incorrect or incomplete information may cause a delay in processing your claim. If the first offer made by the insurance company does not meet your expectations, be prepared to negotiate. If there is a disagreement about the claim, ask the company for the specific language in the policy in question and determine why you and the company interpret your policy differently. If you believe you are being treated unfairly, contact the Insurance Department at: www.ins.state.ny.us. You can file a complaint about an insurance company at: Protect Yourself From Home Repair Fraud Home repair fraud increases exponentially following a major storm. Protect your investment by getting more than one bid from contractors and requesting at least three references. Ask for proof of necessary licenses, building permits, insurance and bonding. Record the contractor's license plate number and driver's license number, and then check for any complaints with the Better Business Bureau. Finally, be wary of contractors who demand up-front payment for repairs. If the contractor needs money to buy supplies, go with the contractor and pay the supplier directly. The Insurance Department's online "Homeowner's Resource Center" offers detailed information and a number of useful tools consumers may find helpful. It can be found at the following location on the Insurance Department's website, http://www.ins.state.ny.us/hmonindx.htm. The Insurance Department will activate the Insurance Emergency Operations Center to work with insurance companies to help consumer with claims as soon as the storm is over. The Department has already notified homeowners' insurance companies to prepare. In addition, the Department is contacting health insurers and requesting that they make accommodations for consumers who are forced to leave their homes because of the storm and as a result have to seek health care from out-of-network providers. Consumers should contact their insurance company, agent or broker to get answers to specific questions about their policies. Consumers who need further help should feel free to contact the New York State Insurance Department's Consumer Services Bureau at 1-800-342-3736 which operates from 9:00 AM. to 4:30 PM., Monday through Friday. Disaster related calls only should go to the disaster hotline at 1-800-339-1759, which will be open starting Monday from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM for as long as needed. GOVERNOR CUOMO CONVENES EMERGENCY CABINET MEETING REGARDING HURRICANE IRENEt For Immediate Release: August 26, 2011 Governor Continues Deployment of State Resources for Emergency Storm Assistance Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today convened an emergency session of his Cabinet to review plans to protect New Yorkers and mitigate the potential effects of Hurricane Irene. The Governor is continuing to coordinate the state government-wide mobilization of resources to prepare for the storm. On Governor Cuomo's orders, the following actions are being implemented immediately: · The New York Army and Air National Guard will deploy up to 900 soldiers and airmen and over 100 vehicles to support civil authorities; those troops have already begun to report · The Metropolitan Transit Authority will institute a system-wide shut-down when trains and buses begin their final runs starting at approximately noon on Saturday; the shut-down will include subways, buses, Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and Access-A-Ride · If sustained wind speeds exceed 60 mph, all of the following bridges will be closed to all traffic: George Washington Bridge, Tappan Zee bridge, all bridges operated by the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, and the following Hudson River bridges: Bear Mountain Bridge, Newburgh-Beacon, Mid-Hudson (Poughkeepsie), Kingston-Rhinecliff, and Rip Van Winkle (Catskill) · The New York State Thruway and possibly other major highways will also be closed if sustained wind speeds exceed 60 mph; further closings will be announced as the storm progresses · LIPA will have 2,500 line workers and tree trim personnel available throughout the weekend for emergency repair work, its largest emergency roster ever · 175 extra ambulances and personnel will be deployed in regions expected to be hit the hardest by the storm "We have moved quickly to initiate our emergency plans, to work with our federal and local partners, and to identify, prepare, and put into place one of the most aggressive activations of New York State government ever assembled in the face of a possible natural disaster," Governor Cuomo said. "We are fully committed and we are preparing for the worst." Specific plans include: · Office of Emergency Management: OEM is working with the National Weather Service to track the storm and coordinate resources. The state's Emergency Operations Center in Albany has been activated since Wednesday and staffed around the clock. Senior OEM management is being deployed to the anticipated problem areas downstate to improve coordination with local government response. Command vehicles have been deployed to Nassau and Suffolk counties and OEM will make additional deployments of personnel and resources as needed. · Division of Military and Naval Affairs: The New York Army and Air National Guard will mobilize and deploy approximately 900 soldiers and airmen and over 100 vehicles on Saturday to support civil authorities on Long Island, New York City, and the Hudson Valley as directed by the Governor. The plan the National Guard is executing at the direction of Governor Cuomo calls for: 230 soldiers and airmen will be stationed with high-axle vehicles and high-tech satellite communications equipment at the Farmingdale Armed Forces Reserve Center by Saturday evening. These troops will remain in place at the center to ride out the storm and then immediately respond to aid civil authorities as directed. This task force will include 120 military police soldiers from the 206th Military Police Company in Latham; 50 transportation soldiers from the 1427 Medium Truck Company in Queensbury; 30 Air National Guard civil engineers from the 109th Airlift Wing at Stratton Air National Guard Base in Scotia; 10 soldiers assigned to the Signal Detachment at Joint Forces Headquarters in Latham who will operate high-tech satellite communications equipment known as the JISCC (Joint Incident Site Communications Capability); 20 military police soldiers from the 102nd Military Police Battalion in Auburn, who will be equipped with Humvees and high-axle military trucks from around the state that can traverse flooded areas. Approximately 290 soldiers will be stationed at Camp Smith near Peekskill and will be prepared to move to Long Island after the storm passes over and transportation routes are reopened. This task force will include 45 military police soldiers from the 102nd Military Police Battalion in Auburn; 65 military police soldiers from the 222nd Military Police Company in Auburn; 60 transportation soldiers from the 1569th Transportation Company in New Windsor; 120 Air National Guardsmen from three Air National Guard Wings. 225 soldiers will be placed on duty to augment the National Guard's Joint Task Force Empire Shield in New York City, or to assist local governments in the lower Hudson Valley. These soldiers will be based at the Harlem Armory in New York City and Camp Smith near Peekskill. This task force will include 75 soldiers from C Company, 1st Battalion 69th Infantry headquartered at Camp Smith; 75 members of the New York Air National Guard from bases across the state; 75 soldiers from the 369th Support Brigade in New York City. 140 soldiers and airmen will be on duty in Latham, Camp Smith, and other locations to provide logistical support and command and control for the National Guard Task Force. Additionally, a total of 12,466 airmen and soldiers, more than 680 vehicles, 16 Army National Guard UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, 4 Ch-47 Chinook helicopters, 10 C-130 cargo aircraft, and 6 HH-60 Pavehawk rescue helicopters are ready to respond if called upon for assistance, surveillance, search and rescue, and post-storm damage assessment. · Division of State Police: The State Police have approximately 600 troopers statewide that could respond to Troop L (Farmingdale), Troop K (Poughkeepsie), and Troop F (Middletown), as needed. Aviation staging will occur at Stewart Airport and aircraft from upstate have been moved to prepare to deploy in the storm area. The State Police have helicopters and airboats available for immediate response. SCUBA teams will be deployed as missions require. Troop Emergency Management personnel are working closely with County Emergency Managers and local police. State Police Aviation assets are on standby. The State Police will maintain its presence in all other areas of New York State. · Department of Correctional Services: The Department operates facilities located within the hurricane's projected path in New York City. There are no correctional facilities located in Nassau or Suffolk counties. All of the correctional facilities have been equipped with proper generators, water storage tanks, and sufficient supplies of food to last well beyond the storm's duration. · Fire Prevention and Control: The State Fire Mobilization and Mutual Aid Plan has been activated. Staff is being deployed to Long Island, New York City, and the Southern Hudson Valley, as well as the State Emergency Operations Center. The Fire Operations Center is operating 24 hours a day. · Thruway Authority: Severity of winds will be constantly monitored and when sustained wind speeds exceed 45 mph, tandem, commercial, and large vehicles will be prohibited on the Thruway and on the Tappan Zee Bridge. If sustained wind speeds exceed 60 mph, all traffic will be prohibited on the Thruway and Tappan Zee Bridge because of the effect on driver vehicle control. Maintenance personnel are performing inspection and cleaning of drainage systems to minimize flooding and pooling. Debris removal equipment, including chainsaws, chippers, loaders, and trucks, are being prepared for use. Equipment will be pre-deployed today based on the forecasted track of the hurricane. Emergency generators at Authority facilities and travel plazas have been fueled and tested. Fuel tanks at highway maintenance sections and travel plazas will be filled to insure adequate supplies for response forces and the public. Traffic control devices are being pre-deployed. Bridge Authority: The Authority is conducting constant monitoring of wind conditions at its six bridges. The Authority has extra staff to monitor wind conditions and to respond to emergency situations. Particularly vulnerable are empty box trucks and trailers, which should avoid all bridges during a high wind storm. The Authority will issue a wind advisory at 30 mph and restrict box trucks, tractor trailers, and other high profile vehicles at 40 mph. Notification to the traveling public urging them to stay off the roads or to find alternative routes will begin immediately. If sustained wind speeds exceed 60 mph, all of the following bridges will be closed to all traffic: George Washington Bridge, Tappan Zee bridge, all bridges operated by the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, and the following Hudson River bridges: Bear Mountain Bridge, Newburgh-Beacon, Mid-Hudson (Poughkeepsie), Kingston-Rhinecliff, and Rip Van Winkle (Catskill). The pedestrian "Walkway Over the Hudson" park in Poughkeepsie will be closed by 5:00 pm on Friday and will not reopen until after the Authority's Chief Engineer has had an opportunity to inspect the structure. · Department of Transportation: DOT has begun preventive maintenance and debris removal and is distributing flood control equipment. Equipment in active work zones is being secured, additional erosion protection is being addressed as necessary, barges are secured, and plans for post-storm clean-up are being developed. DOT will have 450 staff, more than 75 dump trucks, and dozens of other equipment and vehicles assigned to the storm effort, much of it marshaled on Long Island. DOT will relocate its construction barges to Coast Guard-approved locations and is stockpiling portable signs, barricades, light towers, arrow boards, and portable VMS signs for delivery to storm-hit areas. Maintenance crews will be available for weekend callouts to ensure that state highway lanes are open to traffic and to keep roads clear for emergency vehicles. · Metropolitan Transportation Authority: The MTA will institute a system-wide shut-down when trains and buses begin their final runs starting at approximately noon on Saturday in the interest of public safety and to ensure that the system can be operational for use after the storm. The shut-down will include subways, buses, Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and Access-A-Ride. The MTA will continue to focus on providing whatever service can be maintained safely and on preserving lines, equipment, and other resources so that the system can recover from the storm as quickly as possible. More than 1,370 managerial, supervisory, and hourly employees have been called in to supplement the MTA's usual weekend staffing levels. Approximately 200 subway trains, 3,321 buses, and 100 Access-a-Ride vehicles are being moved from low-lying storage locations. 10 subway emergency dispatch vehicles equipped with chainsaws and special tools are staffed and standing by throughout the weekend and 7 extra bus tow trucks will be in service. 26 pieces of heavy track maintenance equipment and their personnel are on duty. 8 emergency generators are on standby for deployment for subway station lighting or power failures. The Bridges and Tunnels Division has an additional 15 standby generators fueled and ready for use. The Subways Division has inspected 72 critical subway pump rooms, 17 track pumps, track drains in 16 flood-prone areas, 34 direct sewer connections, and sump pumps at 216 substations. The Bridges and Tunnels Division has examined and cleared more than 3,500 roadway drains and scuppers and 56 pumps at the Queens Midtown Tunnel and Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. The LIRR is equipping 17 work engines with emergency equipment, 44 diesel and dual mode engines with couplers, and checking generators and equipment in 14 electric yards and 7 diesel yards. · Port Authority of New York & New Jersey: The PA has more than 200 heavy-duty vehicles available at its 5 airports to deploy as needed, plus dozens of police vehicles, including mobile command centers and heavy-duty rescue equipment. More than 1,000 staff and contractors are available to assist customers as needed in every area of airport operations. The PA has hundreds of cases of bottled water, diapers, cots, blankets, and pillows available to provide to stranded passengers if necessary. The PA has dozens of airport shuttle buses that can assist in the movement of passengers if needed. At least one food vendor in every terminal will remain open 24 hours so that food is available at any time. The PA will also deploy Central Office staff throughout the terminals during overnights when passengers are stranded to monitor conditions and provide whatever assistance may be needed, such as finding hotel rooms or ground transportation. · Department of Health: DOH is receiving 175 ambulances from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Of the 175 ambulances, 50 (40 Basic Life Support and 10 Advanced Life Support) are being turned over to Fire Department of New York City. The remaining 125 ambulances will be deployed as necessary throughout the region. DOH is coordinating with all hospitals and healthcare facilities in the areas with the most potential for evacuation. DOH advised facilities to implement emergency response plans and work with local emergency management and response partners. · Office of Mental Health: Starting Friday, all 327 patients and staff at the South Beach Psychiatric Center in Staten Island will be evacuated to the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. The medically fragile and secure unit will be the first moved with their staff. OMH staff will be at Creedmoor to accept the patients into the cleared units. Records will move with patients. Family members of all patients have been contacted. 10 youth patients will be moved to the Queens Children's Psychiatric Center. The co-located Alcohol Treatment Program is going to Kingsboro Psychiatric Center and the co-located Office for People With Developmental Disabilities program is moving to the Connelly Center of the Staten Island Developmental Disabilities Services Office. OMH is working with New York City officials to secure transportation. All OMH facilities are reviewing their emergency management plans with special attention to their evacuation plans and are stocking necessary resources for the storm's duration. ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT · Department of Environmental Conservation: All DEC conservation officers and forest rangers – approximately 200 in total – will be mobilized for duty during the storm and are prepared to deploy 5 ranger airboats normally stationed upstate. The law enforcement and rescue boats – totaling 32 in various sizes and capabilities – are already deployed throughout Long Island, New York City and the Hudson Valley. DEC will establish an Incident Command Team to maintain situation awareness of all resources and personnel. DEC Spills Response Unit is preparing to respond to petroleum and chemical spills. Water engineers have notified waste water treatment plants to prepare for flooding and loss of electricity. Adirondack Park and Catskill Preserve Campgrounds will be closed and evacuated by noon on Saturday. DEC advises everyone to stay off the trails in the Adirondack Park and Catskill Preserve. DEC has preemptively closed areas to shellfish harvest due to the storm's possible impact on water treatment facilities. · Public Service Commission: The PSC is monitoring implementation of the utilities' emergency plans for electric, natural gas, steam, water and telecommunications services. The PSC has activated its toll-free call center – 1-800-342-3377 – to assist customers this weekend and has provided staff to support the state's Emergency Operations Center. The PSC is focusing on deployment of utility crews to respond to storm conditions. Utility crews are also on their way to New York from Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois to provide additional assistance. · New York Power Authority & Long Island Power Authority: NYPA is in the process of repositioning 3 transmission crews – each crew has between 5-7 workers – as well as trucks and equipment from the Massena and Utica areas closer to Long Island and New York City. These workers specialize in high- and medium-voltage transmission lines and could also be made available to assist with any needs with low-voltage distribution lines. NYPA is readying over 100 staffers for any technical support needed by LIPA and other utilities, including project managers, construction managers, and engineers. NYPA will open its Emergency Command Center at its headquarters in White Plains on Saturday to closely monitor the storm's impact on NYPA facilities and to continue to assist LIPA and National Grid and Con Ed. LIPA is closely coordinating with National Grid to ensure it is fully prepared on Long Island. NYPA is monitoring the effects of storms on power generation capacity. LIPA anticipates 2,500 line workers and tree trim personnel will be available throughout the weekend for emergency repair work – its largest emergency roster ever – relying on arrangements for mutual aid crews from other utilities as the storm passes and on contract crews from as far away as Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, and Mississippi. NYPA is making additional two man crews of 10-14 lineman available to LIPA, making a total of 5 crews available including about 30-35 lineman. Transmission crews are being repositioned. Environmental health and safety engineers as well as other technical staff are already located downstate. The transmission crews will total approximately 15-20 high- and medium-voltage transmission line operators. Over 100 engineers, construction managers, and project managers are being made available to assist LIPA and the utilities. LIPA has secured 950 on-island electric and tree removal contractors and 1,200 off-island personnel. · Office of Parks, Recreation & Historical Preservation: Staff is preparing emergency equipment, proactively lowering lake levels at park facilities with dams, and coordinating with the National Weather Service. All camping reservations at Wildwood and Hither Hills (Long Island) for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday arrivals, as well as Palisades (Rockland, Orange, and Ulster) and Taconic (Putnam, Dutchess, and Columbia) regions have been cancelled. Any campers remaining in the campgrounds as of Saturday evening will be evacuated. LIPA will be staging vehicles and equipment at Belmont Lake State Park (Long Island) beginning Saturday morning. · Office of General Services: The Capitol Roof and all other construction projects will be secured by the close of business Friday. Emergency construction contractors are on alert and OGS staff is on call to be deployed to any state property that experiences damage. OGS has hired 30 part-time civil engineers to assist the state Office of Emergency Management with post-hurricane damage assessments. The Triple Waltz Cuomo-Christie & the NY/NJ Port Authority Continue Their "Dance" New York, NY, August 18, 2010 Governors Andrew M. Cuomo and Chris Christie continue their phony “outrage” regarding the recently proposed Port Authority toll increases. Now, they have the nerve to attempt to portray themselves as the knights that come to the “rescue.” Give us a break! Read the letter they jointly sent to Port Authority honchos. IS IT A FOUR LETTER WORD? NYS QUINNIPIAC POLL WILL REVEAL THE ONE WORD THAT BEST DESCRIBES GOV. CUOMO According to a press advisory we received, Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, will discuss the results of a poll of New York State voters asking their opinions of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo. Those polled were asked, among other things, for a one word description of the governor, along with how he compares to other elected officials, including President Barack Obama, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. The poll will be released tomorrow in Albany. One word description? If taken after the Port Authority toll increase debacle, they may well be four letter words! Stay tuned... RATE THIS! New York, NY, August 8th, 2011 "Credit rating agencies are a critical gatekeeper in the financial markets; they are relied upon for the accuracy of their analysis." Barbara J. Johnson Alaska Pacific University All of a sudden, after having played fast and loose with their ratings resulting in untold millions, if not billions, in profits for them, S&P wants to play it straight and call it as it sees it. Could it be atonement for past sins, or placing a death nail in the coffin of a president Wall Street has never wanted? Read one of the conclusions from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: "We conclude the failures of credit rating agencies were essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction." "The three credit rating agencies [Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s (S&P), and Fitch] were key enablers of the financial meltdown. The mortgage-related securities at the heart of the crisis could not have been marketed and sold without their seal of approval. Investors relied on them, often blindly. In some cases, they were obligated to use them, or regulatory capital standards were hinged on them. This crisis could not have happened without the rating agencies. Their ratings helped the market soar and their downgrades through 2007 and 2008 wreaked havoc across markets and firms.......without the active participation of the rating agencies, the market for mortgage-related securities could not have been what it became." Page 25, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report - January 2011 And the Password Is? “Grave Inconvenience!!” New York, NY, July 23, 2011 As reported Thursday by the BorreroReport, same-sex couples hoping to get married on Sunday will have to receive a waiver, pursuant to section 13-b of the NYS Domestic Relations Law, of the usual 24 hour waiting period between the time a marriage license is issued and the time the actual marriage ceremony may take place. However, it appears that to make absolutely sure that none of the couples walk away without being actually married (or that none of the politicians looking for photo-ops with all the new happily married gay couples are disappointed) the New York City County Clerk has placed, on-line, a fill-in the-blanks waiver application. The on-line application does not ask the applicant the reason for requesting the waiver instead, in what many may call “coaching,” the application is pre-printed with the reason why the waiver is requested. Paragraph 5 of the application states that the waiver is sought because the couples will suffer “Grave inconvenience.” Couples would be asked to provide a reason for requesting a waiver and, if it falls within the reasons contemplated by the Domestic Relations Law, they could be issued one by a judge. Presumably, if section 13-b is followed, the couples would have to show that any of these conditions exists before obtaining the waiver, - One of the parties is in danger of imminent death - Reason of other emergency public interest will be promoted thereby - Delay will work irreparable injury or great hardship upon the contracting parties or one of them The Domestic Relations Law, however, is clear that “Grave inconvenience”is not one of the reasons for which a waiver may be granted. So, with perhaps a bit more than a “wink-and-a-nod,” the cookie-cutter form insures that each and everycouple requesting a waiver will be swearing on an oath that they are suffering “Grave inconvenience.” Hopefully, for those requesting the waivers, they will first read section 210.10 of the New York State Penal Law which, for their benefit, we re-print in its entirety: § 210.10 Perjury in the second degree. A person is guilty of perjury in the second degree when he swears falsely and when his false statement is (a) made in a subscribed written instrument for which an oath is required by law, and (b) made with intent to mislead a public servant in the performance of his official functions, and (c) material to the action, proceeding or matter involved. Perjury in the second degree is a class E felony. "We are going to enforce the law - and any group that thinks they are above the law is sadly mistaken." "If people obeyed the law, there wouldn't be any reason to sue...“ "The best thing would be people obeyed the law." The quotes above, all by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, would have one believe that he would take a great interest in making sure all of Sunday’s same-sex weddings are conducted by the letter of the law, yet, as a City hall spokesperson told the BorreroReport yesterday as they washed their hands of the issue, “[t]he decisions on waivers are made by members of the judiciary..” Obey the law? You decide. Hizzoner’s Marriage Foul-Up City Hall claims marrriage waivers are "routinely" granted by judges New York, NY, July 21, 2011 On Tuesday, weeks after the NYS Senate approved changes in the Domestic Relations law allowing for same-sex marriages, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, held a joint press conference announcing the creation of a lottery system for couples wanting to be among the first to be married when the law takes effect on July 24th. According to the Mayor’s press release, judges will also be available to “review requests to waive the 24-hour marriage waiting period normally required under State law.” The press release, however, makes no mention of the strict requirement in the state law under which such “waivers” may be issued. A review by the BorreroReport of Section 13-b of the New York State Domestic Relations law reveals that waivers to the 24 hour waiting period after a marriage license is issued, may only be granted if certain specific conditions are met by the couples wishing to marry. Essentially, as per the law, couples may receive a waiver to the 24 hour waiting period if they are able to show and swear, before a judge, that they meet any of the following conditions:- One of the parties is in danger of imminent death- Reason of other emergency public interest will be promoted thereby - Delay will work irreparable injury or great hardship upon the contracting parties, or one of them Assuming the judges who preside over Sunday’s much anticipated same-sex ceremonies follow the law, it appears few, if any, same-sex couples will actually be married that day. Consequently, most, if not all, of the jubilant lottery winners may walk away with a marriage license but no marriage certificate.The press release issued during the conference also details the steps to be followed by those wishing to be part of the 764 couples to be chosen via the lottery.Normally closed on weekends, the offices of the City Clerk in each of the five boroughs will be open this coming Sunday, and judges will be available to officiate over the marriage of the selected couples.City Hall press spokesperson, Marc LaVorgna, advised the BorreroReport that the 24 hour waivers were being issued pursuant to the previously mentioned Section 13-b of the Domestic Relations law. He stressed, however, that, “The decisions on waivers are made by members of the judiciary and we cannot and will not influence those decisions made by the judges.” He further added, “I would note that we understand that such waivers are routinely granted to people who request them.” In their quest to score political points with what many perceive is a powerful and influential special interest group, Bloomberg and Quinn may very well, literally, have left them at the altar.

Colours at the break of day at 6.45 am on 4 November 2012 and on 7 November 2012: Together with 9 other bloggers and thanks to Tigerair Philippines and the Philippine Department of Tourism, I found myself on a dream trip to Boracay in July 2013. Read about the fantastic experience I had at Boracay Island Escapade or on my blog. A finalist in the Singapore Blog Awards (SBA) for four years, The Long and Winding Road has been named as the best photography blog in the SBA for two years running in 2011 and 2012. To also read about my (and 9 other bloggers') wonderful experiences in Macau courtesy of the Macau Government Tourist Office and Tiger Airways, click on the graphic below: My experience on this site:Macau Tower Fireworks! Streets of Happiness Wine, Fast Cars and Butterflies Where old meets new The House of Dancing Water Sky 21, a Luxury Destination Minus 8 degrees Celcius in Macau Coloane Village and Egg Tarts Colours of Macau Taipa, Food Street and Pork Chop Buns A sequel in May 2013: At least nine Dragon (or Snake) Kilns were once found along the 13th to 18th Milestones of Jurong Road, attracted by the availability of Jurong White Clay - ideal material for clay latex cups. The cups were fired by the kilns to feed a huge demand from the rubber estates in the area. Over the years, most of the kiln closed due to the vanishing demand as the estates gave way to urban development. Only two, both of which have stopped operating commercially, have survived. The area the two, the Jalan Bahar and Thow Kwang kilns, are in is slated for development as a CleanTech Park, and the future for these kilns now looks bleak. Articles relating to the Dragon Kilns: Viva Bukit Brown Bukit Brown Voices Trailer for BUKIT BROWN VOICES. The a short independently-made documentary tells the story of Singapore's oldest Chinese cemetery on the cusp of major change. Filmed during what is the last Qing Ming (grave sweeping) festival for some families whose ancestors are buried there, we hear their thoughts and memories about what the place and the customs they practise mean to them (a Film by Su-Mae Khoo & Brian McDairmant of Two Chiefs). A Road, but not the End of the Road 19 Mar 2012 : Announcement on Road Alignment through BBC 05 Mar 2012 : Speech by MOS(ND) Tan Chuan-Jin during Budget Debate 20 Nov 2011 : Bukit Brown Road Project 'Can't Wait': LTA 12 Sep 2011 : Announcement on Construction of the Road 19 Jun 2011 : ST: An Uphill Struggle Saving Bukit Brown 18 Jun 2011 : URA Reply to Letter to ST on Destroying Natural Habitat 11 Jun 2011 : URA Reply to Letter to ST on Shutting Window to History The out-of-this-world 54 ha. Bay South Garden of the massive Gardens by the Bay was officially opened by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on 28 Jun 2012. It opening its doors to the public the following day attracted huge crowds on opening weekend. The series of posts here are from several media previews, opportunities to photograph the gardens before it was opened to the public, and of the official opening during which I had a better view of the completed Cloud Forest - one of two cooled conservatories at the garden. Two photographs that I took prior to the opening were among 20 that were selected for a roving exhibition. Oct 2012 : An Autumn Harvest by the bay Jun 2012 : Official Opening Jun 2012 : Where Wonder Blooms May 2012 : In the merry month of May Apr 2012 : Ascent into the Clouds Nov 2011 : New Light in the Old Harbour Nov 2011 : Sneak Peek at the Gardens Share your personal memories on the Singapore Memory Portal - an initiative by the National Library Board (NLB) as part of the Singapore Memory Project (SMP). The SMP is a national initiative started in 2011 to collect, preserve and provide access to Singapore’s knowledge materials, so as to tell the Singapore Story and aims to collect 5 million personal memories by 2015. Meet on a little street in Singapore ... my posts on asia! Jun 11: A Tearful farewell to Romance Jun 11: That One Man Isn't Alone Apr 11: Sea of Light Jan 11: Wonderland without Glasses Sep 10: Keeping Track of Time Aug 10: Tides of Yesterday Nov 09: School Days in Singapore School Days in Singapore was ranked #2 among the top ten stories of 2010 on asia! Beyond the Slumber (Sembawang - 27 Mar 2011) Highlights of a heritage tour of Sembawang, with a focus on the Sembawang that I was familiar with in the 1970s. The two and a half hour tour included a visit to the last kampung mosque in Singapore, as well as to several other points of interest in Sembawang. Information relating to the walk and some of what we saw or were transported to can be found in the post “Sembawang beyond the Slumber”. One Hundred Steps to Heaven (Central - 26 Feb 2011) I took participants on a walk with the NLB up a hundred steps to the heavenly world of Mount Sophia that was home to the fairy-tale like mansions such as Eu Villa (demolished in 1981). We also explored the neighbouring Mount Emily, the site of Singapore’s first public swimming pool and along with that, some of the areas that were once part of a Jewish and then Japanese quarter. Information relating to the walk and some of what we saw or were transported to can be found in the post “One Hundred Steps to Heaven”. A Journey through Time (ToaPayoh - 20 Nov 2010) I took an enjoyable walk back in time with several participants in a heritage trail at the Toa Payoh Library, to a Toa Payoh that was taking its first steps as the first planned satellite town. Details of some of the places we visited can be found in the post “A journey through time: a heritage trail through Toa Payoh”. Courtesy of the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB), I had the opportunity to have a 4 day adventure in Hong Kong with 9 other bloggers. To read our collective Hong Kong Travel Blog entries, please click on the icon below: |Lin Li on A journey through time: a heri…| |percy on Colours of dawn 31 May 20…| |Edmund Arozoo on Retracing the “Ice Ball…| |Skeptical on Stumbling upon a Tiger’s…| |Mr Kim on Stumbling upon a Tiger’s…| |A longtime reader on Stumbling upon a Tiger’s…| |aaron on Stumbling upon a Tiger’s…| |Is this really some… on Stumbling upon a Tiger’s…| |kdcrazie27 on Stumbling upon a Tiger’s…| |Stumbling upon a Tig… on Stumbling upon a Tiger’s…| |Monique on The unkempt beauty of Coffee…| |Monique on The unkempt beauty of Coffee…| |Nick Jacobs on Remembering the ultimate expre…| |evershineoptical on Toa Payoh on the Rise| |Jerome Lim, The Wond… on Opening up a backdoor|

Awhile back, The Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating and deeply saddening article exploring the reasons behind the Kennedy Family’s staunch pro-abortion position. Believe it or not, Ted Kennedy used to be pro-life. So how did he and all the other prominent Kennedys swing so far in the wrong direction? For that matter, what about some of the other Catholic pro-abortion zealots in (or recently in) high public office, such as Nancy Pelosi, Mario Cuomo, and Tom Daschle? What happened to them? (NB: I originally posted this blog entry on January 2, 2009. Given all the chattering right now from Catholics who feel they can vote for pro-abortion candidates with impunity and without compromising their Catholic identity (and without committing sin), I post it again because of its pertinence to the late Ted Kennedy’s life and legacy, such as it was.) This article alleges that it was was an intentional, systematic, concerted effort on the part of a group of dissenting Catholic theologians (including Fr. Richard McCormick, Fr. Charles Curran, Fr. Joseph Fuchs, Fr. Robert Drinan, and Fr. John Courtney Murray), who spent a good deal of of time with the Kennedys in the mid 1960s employing bogus moral theology arguments to convince them they could “accept and promote abortion with a clear conscience.” Once this was accomplished, these same Judas priests undertook to literally coach the Kennedy’s on what to say and how to vote in favor of abortion in their public lives. Given the Kennedys’ enormous influence over American politics, it’s diabolically logical for those dissenting Catholic theologians to have targeted this renowned and respected Catholic family for “conversion.” They were in the perfect position to persuade other Catholics, and even many Protestants, that it’s okay to be pro-abortion. And this strategy worked so well that, today, it is virtually impossible to find a Catholic politician holding national public office who is pro-life. Thanks to these dissenters and those Catholics they duped, “Catholic” is synonymous with “pro-abortion” in politics. Read here how this hideous transformation was accomplished: Ms. [Caroline] Kennedy’s commitment to abortion rights is shared by other prominent family members, including Kerry Kennedy Cuomo and Maryland’s former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Some may recall the 2000 Democratic Convention when Caroline and her uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy, addressed the convention to reassure all those gathered that the Democratic Party would continue to provide women with the right to choose abortion — even into the ninth month. At that convention, the party’s nominee, Al Gore, formerly a pro-life advocate, pledged his opposition to parental notification and embraced partial-birth abortion. Several of those in attendance, including former President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, had been pro-life at one time. But by 2000 nearly every delegate in the convention hall was on the pro-choice side — and those who weren’t simply kept quiet about it. Caroline Kennedy knows that any Kennedy desiring higher office in the Democratic Party must now carry the torch of abortion rights throughout any race. But this was not always the case. Despite Ms. Kennedy’s description of Barack Obama, in a New York Times op-ed, as a “man like my father,” there is no evidence that JFK was pro-choice like Mr. Obama. Abortion-rights issues were in the fledgling stage at the state level in New York and California in the early 1960s. They were not a national concern. Even Ted Kennedy, who gets a 100% pro-choice rating from the abortion-rights group Naral, was at one time pro-life. In fact, in 1971, a full year after New York had legalized abortion, the Massachusetts senator was still championing the rights of the unborn. In a letter to a constituent dated Aug. 3, 1971, he wrote: “When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception.” But that all changed in the early ’70s, when Democratic politicians first figured out that the powerful abortion lobby could fill their campaign coffers (and attract new liberal voters). Politicians also began to realize that, despite the Catholic Church’s teachings to the contrary, its bishops and priests had ended their public role of responding negatively to those who promoted a pro-choice agenda. In some cases, church leaders actually started providing “cover” for Catholic pro-choice politicians who wanted to vote in favor of abortion rights. At a meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass., on a hot summer day in 1964, the Kennedy family and its advisers and allies were coached by leading theologians and Catholic college professors on how to accept and promote abortion with a “clear conscience.” The former Jesuit priest Albert Jonsen, emeritus professor of ethics at the University of Washington, recalls the meeting in his book “The Birth of Bioethics” (Oxford, 2003). He writes about how he joined with the Rev. Joseph Fuchs, a Catholic moral theologian; the Rev. Robert Drinan, then dean of Boston College Law School; and three academic theologians, the Revs. Giles Milhaven, Richard McCormick and Charles Curran, to enable the Kennedy family to redefine support for abortion. Mr. Jonsen writes that the Hyannisport colloquium was influenced by the position of another Jesuit, the Rev. John Courtney Murray, a position that “distinguished between the moral aspects of an issue and the feasibility of enacting legislation about that issue.” It was the consensus at the Hyannisport conclave that Catholic politicians “might tolerate legislation that would permit abortion under certain circumstances if political efforts to repress this moral error led to greater perils to social peace and order.” Father Milhaven later recalled the Hyannisport meeting during a 1984 breakfast briefing of Catholics for a Free Choice: “The theologians worked for a day and a half among ourselves at a nearby hotel. In the evening we answered questions from the Kennedys and the Shrivers. Though the theologians disagreed on many a point, they all concurred on certain basics . . . and that was that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion.” But can they now? There are signs today that some of the bishops are beginning to confront the Catholic politicians who consistently vote in favor of legislation to support abortion. Charles J. Chaput, the archbishop of Denver, has been on the front lines in encouraging Catholics to live their faith without compromise in the public square. Most recently in his book “Render Unto Caesar,” Archbishop Chaput has reminded Catholic politicians of their obligation to protect life. The archbishop is not alone. The agenda at November’s assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops included a public discussion of abortion and politics. The bishops’ final statement focused on concern about the possible passage of the “Freedom of Choice Act,” and referred to it as “an evil law that would further divide our country.” The bishops referenced their 2007 document, “Faithful Citizenship,” which maintains that the right to life is the foundation of every other human right. In it, they promised to “persist in the duty to counsel, in the hope that the scandal of their [Catholic congregants’] cooperating in evil can be resolved by the proper formation of their consciences.” You’re invited! Join me on a grace-filled Catholic pilgrimage to the historic California Missions, this October 2-9. We’ll journey in the footsteps of Saint Junipero Serra. Most Rev. James Wall, Bishop of Gallup, NM, will be our chaplain for this trip, and I’ll be giving special presentations on the life of Saint Junipero, the history of the California Missions, and the miraculous apparition of Our Lady of Guadelupe. Come and enjoy a peaceful, relaxing, thoroughly Catholic, educational, and spiritually energizing exploration of the very foundations of the our Faith in Old California. Travel Package includes: † Pilgrimage Chaplain with Daily Mass and Devotions offered along the pilgrimage route † Roundtrip Airfare from most Major USA cities (incl. airport taxes, subject to change) † Hotel accommodations 4 star for 7 nights (such as the Hampton Inn by Hilton or similar) † Breakfast & dinner daily – 16 meals † Professional English Speaking Tour Escort & local Guides † Daily sightseeing as per itinerary † Deluxe motor coach transportation † Entrance fees per itinerary † Service charges, gratuities, and luggage handling Fictitious Garage Band Names from the “Patrick Madrid Show” The Kentucky Clerks 5 Dudes and a Chicken The Gender Binary Artificial Vomiting Machine Full Blown Trolls Battle of the Buns Sausage Biscuit Rage Incident The Meat Bees The Swedish Toddlers Sandwiches of Shame The Metallic Cage Fighters Monkey Head Transplants Puppets of the Patriarchy Bobo Doll Experiment Blame the Robot (album cover) Nacho Thief (Nacho Thieves) Ultra Cool Dwarfs Ethical Permission Slip (Album Cover) Amish Haircut Attacks (Originally posted in early 2011) A claim made in this article doesn’t surprise me a bit: “A survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found that Facebook is cited as evidence in 66 percent of divorces in the United States. Also, more than 80 percent of divorce lawyers reported they “have seen an increase in the number of cases using social networking evidence” during the past few years.” In fact, this may even understate the extent to which Facebook, like other useful and entertaining new-media communication platforms, is contributing to marital infidelity and other marriage problems. Rather than restate what these articles say about what happens when married men and women develop private (or, worse yet, clandestine) online relationships with members of the opposite sex, I’ll just offer three common-sense suggestions that seem to me to be a set of bare-minimum rules of prudence for those who (like I) use Facebook regularly and who don’t want it to cause problems for their marriage. It doesn’t take a genius to see that Facebook can be a great thing when used wisely, or a stick of dynamite when used foolishly. Rule 1: Your Facebook should be a completely open book for your husband or wife. You need to “password-protect” your marriage. No joke. This means that your husband or wife should be able to log onto your Facebook account at a moment’s notice, any time of the day or night, especially when you are not there. Aside from, perhaps, planning a surprise party for your husband, if you are keeping anything “secret” from him in terms of your online interactions with other men, you are heading down a slippery slope. How to avoid it? Simple: He should know your password and, of course, if he has a Facebook account, you should know his. This rule isn’t intended to foster “snooping” or paranoia, but it will help you ensure transparency and honesty with your husband or wife when it comes to your dealings with others online. Guys, knowing that your wife can at any time read anything you write on your Facebook page will have a very clarifying effect on what you write. In other words, abiding by this rule will help you avoid situations in which you might be tempted to say something you wouldn’t want your wife to see. One solution (aside from cancelling your Facebook page altogether) is to simply share one Facebook page between the two of you. Doing this can help fire-proof your marriage against an unscrupulous old flame. Rule 2: Don’t flirt on Facebook. Not even a little bit. Not even in jest. What you think of as harmless could actually be a stumbling block of temptation to someone else. We all know what it’s like when something we’ve written in an e-mail, something intended to be completely innocuous and friendly, is misconstrued by the recipient as snarky or mean. Correcting negative miss-impressions resulting from misunderstood text can be tricky. Just imagine how much more difficult it can be to fix a problem caused be someone who thinks you’re flirting with her, especially if she is receptive to it and starts reciprocating. And ladies, my hunch is that this is even more true in reverse. Your intentions may be entirely innocent, but under the rightwrong circumstances, a man could easily misconstrue your witty repartée in a way you didn’t intend it. Don’t be brusque, of course, but do be circumspect in what you say. We all have to remember that Big Things start out small. When it comes to temptations to flirt on Facebook, the safest course by far is simply to refuse to let the small things get started in the first place. Rule 3: Don’t waste time on Facebook. This doesn’t mean don’t use Facebook, but definitely don’t waste time on it. And as someone who uses Facebook, I know this is easier said than done. Most of us in the modern digital age know from experience the temptation to fritter away valuable time online. Facebook can be a huge and even dangerous time-drain. Why dangerous? Because if you aren’t careful, wandering aimlessly from page to page, profile to profile, picture to picture, can quickly lead down the path of undue curiosity that can just as quickly lead to lustful thoughts, which can, if you’re not careful and willing to discipline yourself, lead to worse things. The old adage is certainly true: “Idleness is the devil’s workshop.” Or, as the famous wit wit Samuel Johnson once wrote: “If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.” To elaborate on this growing problem of Facebook-caused marriage troubles, here’s a sample from the first article. It’s well worth reading, sharing with your spouse, and then implementing rules like the ones above in order to help yourself avoid potentially disastrous problems. If you’re single, Facebook and other social networking sites can help you meet that special someone. However, for those in even the healthiest of marriages, improper use can quickly devolve into a marital disaster. A recent survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found that Facebook is cited in one in five divorces in the United States. Also, more than 80 percent of divorce lawyers reported a rising number of people are using social media to engage in extramarital affairs. “We’re coming across it more and more,” said licensed clinical psychologist Steven Kimmons, Ph.D., of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill. “One spouse connects online with someone they knew from high school. The person is emotionally available and they start communicating through Facebook. Within a short amount of time, the sharing of personal stories can lead to a deepened sense of intimacy, which in turn can point the couple in the direction of physical contact.” Though already-strained marriages are most vulnerable, a couple doesn’t have to be experiencing marital difficulties in order for an online relationship to blossom from mere talk into a full-fledged affair, Kimmons said. In most instances, people enter into online relationships with the most innocent of intentions. “I don’t think these people typically set out to have affairs,” said Kimmons, whose practice includes couples therapy and marriage counseling. “A lot of it is curiosity. They see an old friend or someone they dated and decide to say ‘hello’ and catch up on where that person is and how they’re doing.” It all boils down to the amount of contact two people in any type of relationships –including online – have with each other, Kimmons said. The more contact they have, the more likely they are to begin developing feelings for each other. “If I’m talking to one person five times a week versus another person one time a week, you don’t need a fancy psychological study to conclude that I’m more likely to fall in love with the person I talk to five times a week because I have more contact with that person,” Kimmons said. . . . (continue reading) The Crusades = Jihad? Nice try, but no dice. Maybe you saw or heard about that notorious National Prayer Breakfast speech in which Mr. Obama attempted to equate the Catholic Crusades with violent, murderous Muslim jihad (watch video specifically at 2:00 mark). Well, nothing could be further from the truth. He said, “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.” Maybe you aren’t sure how to explain why there really is no moral equivalence — ZERO — between the Crusades and violent jihad. #fact Well, this powerful 5-minute info-graphic video does it better than anything I’ve seen yet. Please watch this video, have your children watch it, and share it far and wide on your social media sites. It’s that important. We need to set the record straight for the sake of truth. Also, I explained in greater detail what the Crusades actually were (and what they weren’t) on my radio show this morning (February 6, 2015). Over the last 25 years or so, I’ve noticed with bemusement an unfortunate trend in the United States in which an increasing number of lay people arrogate to themselves the title of “spiritual director.” I regard this as unfortunate because, except in certain rare exceptions, lay people are simply not qualified or competent to serve as spiritual directors. Even lay people who have some formal training in theology do not, by virtue of that fact, have the requisite qualities necessary to be spiritual directors. I’ve seen some real messes result from lay people attempting to give spiritual direction to others. For example, Regnum Christi (RC), the lay movement associated with the embattled Legionaries of Christ religious order of men, had for years appointed numerous goodhearted, sincere, and wholly unqualified RC lay women to be “spiritual directors” for other RC lay women in the absence of a priest. As you might imagine, problems and misunderstandings ensued. Eventually, at least here in the U.S., the Legionaries and RC leaders abandoned the moniker “spiritual director” in favor of the less dubious “spiritual guide.” My guess is that virtually all lay people who style themselves as spiritual directors (including those who are regarded as such by others, even by some deacons and priests), are really just confusing spiritual direction with counseling. That such a benign confusion is prevalent these days shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, upwards of three generations of Catholics nowadays are, by and large, woefully under-catechized in the doctrinal and spiritual teachings of the Catholic Faith. This is not to say that those goodhearted and sincere lay men and lay women who present themselves as spiritual directors are necessarily themselves woefully under-catechized (although some may very well be), but their laudable service to others, insofar as they seek to offer helpful advice of a spiritual nature, does not make them spiritual directors in the classical Catholic sense of the term. Don’t get me wrong. By all means, Catholic lay people should strive to offer good counsel and spiritual advice when the need and opportunity arises. Counseling can be done informally or formally, such as in the case of a man or woman who is properly trained in the art of counseling (for example, having earned a master’s degree in that field). But counselling and spiritual direction are not the same thing. It’s proper and good for lay people to engage in the former though, in my view, not the in latter. Now, since I am confident that my remarks here will elicit some push back from those who are convinced spiritual direction is indeed suitable for lay people, I’d like to advert to the wise and erudite advice on this question from the late Father Jordan Aumann, O.P. (1916-2007), who wrote Spiritual Theology, a masterful explanation of the ways and means of the spiritual life, including what to look for in a spiritual director. While he doesn’t come right out and declare that spiritual direction is not a suitable domain for lay people (except, as I’ve said, under certain, rare circumstances), I think you’ll see that the cumulative force of his explanation militates inexorably toward that conclusion. PERHAPS NO WRITER HAS OUTLINED with such clarity and precision the technical qualities of a good spiritual director as have St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. She states that a good spiritual director should be learned, prudent, and experienced. St. John of the Cross also maintains that a director should be learned, prudent, and experienced, and he places great emphasis on experience. Learning. The learning of a spiritual director should be extensive. In addition to having a profound knowledge of dogmatic theology, without which he would be exposed to error in regard to matters of faith, and of moral theology, without which he could not even fulfill the office of confessor, the spiritual director should have a thorough knowledge of ascetical and mystical theology. He should know, for example, the theological doctrine concerning Christian perfection, especially regarding such questions as the essence of perfection, the obligation to strive for perfection, the obstacles to perfection, the types of purgation, and the means of positive growth in virtue. He should have a detailed knowledge of the grades of prayer, the trials God usually sends to souls as they advance from the lower to the higher degrees of prayer, and the illusions and assaults of the devil that souls may encounter. He also needs to be well versed in psychology so that he will have an understanding of various temperaments and characters, the influences to which the human personality is subjected, and the function of the emotions in the life of the individual. He should also know at least the basic principles of abnormal psychology and psychiatry so that he will be able to recognize mental unbalance and nervous or emotional disorders. A priest should realize that, if he is not competent to direct a particular soul, he should advise the individual to go to someone who possesses the necessary knowledge. A priest incurs a grave responsibility before God if he attempts to direct a soul when he lacks sufficient knowledge. In recent times, with the wider dissemination of knowledge of mental illness, the priest must especially be warned that, as regards the field of psychiatry and the therapeutic methods proper to that branch of medicine, he is a mere “layman” and is incompetent to treat mental sickness. If he suspects that a penitent is suffering from a mental illness, he should direct that individual to a professional psychiatrist, just as readily as he would expect a psychiatrist to refer spiritual problems to a clergyman. Prudence. This is one of the most important qualities for a spiritual director. It comprises three basic factors: prudence in judgment, clarity in counseling, and firmness in exacting obedience. If a spiritual director lacks prudence, he is usually lacking several other virtues as well. Prudence enables an individual to do the right thing under given circumstances. Spiritual direction is not concerned with the general doctrine of spiritual theology, nor with theoretical situations that one may imagine, but with the individual soul placed in concrete circumstances at a given moment or in a given phase of spiritual growth. The director is not called upon to make decisions regarding general doctrine; most people could find such answers in any standard manual of spiritual theology. The director’s role is precisely to recognize the particular circumstances of a given situation and to give the advice needed at that moment. In order that the advice be prudent, a spiritual director must have the empathy by which he is able to place himself in the given circumstances and must have the patience to listen attentively. Of the various factors that militate against prudence, the following are especially common: lack of knowledge of the various states of the ascetical and mystical life, lack of understanding of human psychology, prejudice in regard to particular states of life or particular exercises of piety, lack of humility, excessive eagerness to make a judgment. The second characteristic of prudence in the spiritual director is clarity in the advice given to the one directed and in the norms of conduct prescribed. In order that he may be clear in his direction, he must. possess clarity in his own mind. In speaking to the soul he is directing, he should avoid any vague or indecisive language, but should always express himself in concrete and definite terms. He should resolve problems with a yes or a no and, if necessary, he should take the time for further deliberation before making his decision. If a soul perceives that the director is not sure of himself, it will lose confidence in him, and his direction will lose all its efficacy. Moreover, the director should always be sincere and frank, without any partiality or selfish motives. It would be a serious fault if a director were to avoid offending the person directed lest that person should go to some other priest for direction. Those priests who place great importance in attracting and retaining a large number of followers are, by that very fact, disposing themselves to failure as spiritual directors. The director should never forget that he acts in the name of the Holy Spirit in directing souls, and that he must endeavor to treat those souls with kindness and- understanding, but with firmness and utter frankness. The director must also take care that he does not become the one who is directed. Some persons are extremely competent in’ getting their own way in everything, and even the director is in danger of falling under their power. For that reason, once the director is certain of his decision and the course that should be followed; he should state his mind with unyielding firmness. The individual must be convinced that there are only two alternatives: to obey or to find another director. But the director should not forget that he should never demand of a soul anything that is incompatible with its state of life or vocation, its strength, or present condition. He should realize that there are some things that can be demanded of advanced souls but could never be required of beginners; that some things would be perfectly fitting in dealing with a priest or religious but not with a lay person. Excessive rigor does nothing but frighten souls and may cause them to abandon the road to perfection. There is, therefore, a world of difference between firmness in demanding obedience and an excessive rigidity that discourages the soul of the penitent. Experience. This is one of the most precious qualities of a good spiritual director. Even if he is less perfect in knowledge and somewhat deficient in prudence, experience can make up for these deficiencies. This does not mean that the experience of the director must necessarily flow from his own spiritual life, for he may obtain the benefits of experience from his observation and direction of others. As regards the personal experience of the director, if it is a question of the guidance of the average Christian, he needs little more than the experience any priest can obtain from the faithful fulfillment of his duties in the sacred ministry. If it is a question of advanced souls who have already entered the mystical stages of the spiritual life, it is desirable that the priest himself have some experience of those higher stages. If he lacks this, a delicate sense of prudence, coupled with competent knowledge of the mystical states, will suffice in the majority of cases. But personal experience alone is not sufficient to make a spiritual director as competent as he ought to be. There are many different paths by which the Holy Spirit can lead souls to the summit of sanctity. It would be a serious mistake for a director to attempt to lead all souls along the same path and to impose on them his own personal experiences, however beneficial they may have been for himself. The spiritual director should never forget that he is merely an instrument in the hands of the Holy Spirit and that his work must be entirely subjected to the Holy Spirit. If, through a lack of understanding of the variety of divine gifts and the multiplicity of roads to perfection, he were to force all souls to travel by the same road, he would become a veritable obstacle to the workings of grace in the soul. Moral Qualities of a Spiritual Director . . . (continue reading) Here are the musical pieces by Karl Jenkins that I’ve been playing on my Morning Show today. Something truly great to enjoy as you proceed through the sacred Triduum on the way to Resurrection Sunday. Over the last couple of months, more or less out of the blue, many people began contacting me to ask what I think of a gentleman named Charlie Johnston, a Catholic who’s made some startling predictions about dire events in the near future. Is he authentic? they asked. What do you think of his predictions? etc. Some express skepticism, some seem gripped by fear and anxiety, and still others seem calm and convinced. A few days ago, I was able to spend about half an hour on my radio show chatting with Charlie. He strikes me as down to earth, low-key, congenial, credible, and sincere. As you’ll hear in our on-air discussion (see link below), he says he has received countless instructions and warnings about the future from a holy angel. I’ve only recently become aware of Charlie and his message, and though I’ve read several of his blog posts and watched a video of an informal presentation he gave recently to a small group of Catholics in which he elaborates on his predictions, but I haven’t met him in person and, therefore, can only draw conclusions from what I’ve read and heard thus far. This is why I asked him to discuss things further on my radio show. I wanted to know more and, to the extent possible, see more clearly into his message of a coming global “storm” of strife and upheaval with which God will chastise and purify mankind. I’ll be candid. Whenever someone pops up claiming to be a “seer” or to have “visions” or receive “locutions,” my default reaction has always been (and remains) one of firm skepticism. Self-proclaimed seers and loctutionists abound, and my practice has been simply to pay them no attention. There have been countless false prophets (see Matthew 24:24), but there are also authentic prophets, which is why I also believe that careful, prayerful discernment is always required whenever the possibility arises that a given message may be authentic. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1) If someone indeed is blessed by God with supernatural interventions, that fact will become evident in due time in his/her life and in the messages themselves, just as a false prophet will be found out in due time for the same reasons (see Deuteronomy 18:20-22). More importantly, the truth will eventually become evident through the Spirit-guided discernment of Holy Mother Church. As the Rabbi Gamaliel declared of the nascent Catholic Church in the book of Acts 5:38-39: [I]f this plan or this undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God! In Charlie Johnston’s case, I remain open and willing to hear more. Only God knows. I do not trust in my own meager powers of discernment. So, anyway, here’s my interview with Charlie. “As soon as worldly people see that you wish to follow a devout life they aim a thousand darts of mockery and even detraction at you. The most malicious of them will slander your conversion as hypocrisy, bigotry, and trickery. . . . “Philothea, all this is mere foolish, empty babbling. These people aren’t interested in your health or welfare. ‘If you were of the world, the world would love what is its own but because you are not of the world, therefore the world hates you,; says the Savior. We have seen gentlemen and ladies spend the whole night, even many nights one after another, playing chess or cards. Is there any concentration more absurd, gloomy, or depressing than this last? Yet worldly people don’t say a word and the players’ friends don’t bother their heads about it. “If we spend an hour in meditation or get up a little earlier than usual in the morning to prepare for Holy Communion, everyone runs for a doctor to cure us of hypochondria and jaundice. People can pass thirty nights in dancing and no one complains about it, but if they watch through a single Christmas night they cough and claim their stomach is upset the next morning. Does anyone fail to see that the world is an unjust judge, gracious and well disposed to its own children but harsh and rigorous towards the children of God? “We can never please the world unless we lose ourselves together with it. It is so demanding that it can’t be satisfied. “John came neither eating nor drinking,” says the Savior, and you say, “He has a devil.” “The Son of man came eating and drinking” and you say that he is “a Samaritan.” “It is true, Philothea, that if we are ready to laugh, play cards, or dance with the world in order to please it, it will be scandalized at us, and if we don’t, it will accuse us of hypocrisy or melancholy. If we dress well, it will attribute it to some plan we have, and if we neglect our dress, it will accuse of us of being cheap and stingy. Good humor will be called frivolity and mortification sullenness. Thus the world looks at us with an evil eye and we can never please it. It exaggerates our imperfections and claims they are sins, turns our venial sins into mortal sins and changes our sins of weakness into sins of malice. “‘Charity is kind,’ says Saint Paul, but the world on the contrary is evil. “Charity thinks no evil,” but the world always thinks evil and when it can’t condemn our acts it will condemn our intentions. Whether the sheep have horns or not and whether they are white or black, the wolf doesn’t hesitate to eat them if he can. “Whatever we do, the world will wage war on us. If we stay a long time in the confessional, it will wonder how we can have so much to say; if we stay only a short time, it will say we haven’t told everything. It will watch all our actions and at a single little angry word it will protest that we can’t get along with anyone. To take care of our own interests will look like avarice, while meekness will look like folly. As for the children of the world, their anger is called being blunt, their avarice economy, their intimate conversations lawful discussions. Spiders always spoil the good work of the bees. “Let us give up this blind world, Philothea. Let it cry out at us as long as it pleases, like a cat that cries out to frighten birds in the daytime. Let us be firm in our purposes and unswerving in our resolutions. Perseverance will prove whether we have sincerely sacrificed ourselves to God and dedicated ourselves to a devout life. Comets and planets seem to have just about the same light, but comets are merely fiery masses that pass by and after a while disappear, while planets remain perpetually bright. So also hypocrisy and true virtue have a close resemblance in outward appearance but they can be easily distinguished from one another. “Hypocrisy cannot last long but is quickly dissipated like rising smoke, whereas true virtue is always firm and constant. It is no little assistance for a sure start in devotion if we first suffer criticism and calumny because of it. In this way we escape the danger of pride and vanity, which are comparable to the Egyptian midwives whom a cruel Pharaoh had ordered to kill the Israelites’ male children on the very day of their birth. We are crucified to the world and the world must be crucified to us. The world holds us to be fools; let us hold it to be mad.” — — Saint Frances de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life The Real (and Imaginary) Pagan Roots of Halloween By Brian Saint-Paul THE FIRST THING I NOTICED ABOUT JAY was that he was dressed like a woman. I also saw he was wearing combat boots and carrying a bag full of candy. But then I went back to that part about him being dressed like a woman. Jay had always been a curious fellow. Like the time he lost his pet tarantula, sending the neighborhood kids into an arachnophobia that would last for generations. But Jay had outdone himself this time, standing at our door, dressed in what appeared to be an army nurse’s uniform, and slathered in enough makeup to make Tammy Faye Bakker wince. Being a sensitive 9-year-old, I tried mightily to stifle my laughter (key word: tried), as I handed him a Snickers bar. Nevertheless, Jay was unfazed, marching off satisfied into the night, his candy bag a little bit fuller. For many of us, Halloween is an anomaly: a celebration without a discernible purpose. Other holidays make sense. Labor Day offers some respite for workers, Veterans’ Day honors those who fought for their land, Presidents’ Day recalls those who have led our nation. Yet Halloween seems to do nothing more than guarantee a steady clientele for children’s dentists and give folks like Jay an outlet for exotic behavior. A brief glance into the history of the celebration, however, raises a troubling question. Many Christians, when confronted with the pagan background of Halloween, wonder if it’s the kind of thing in which they should be getting involved. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help that Christian bookstores (usually Fundamentalist) are full of inaccurate, sensationalistic accounts of the origins of the celebration. Jack Chick, author of numerous anti-Catholic tracts, and hysterical Fundamentalist par excellence, gives his version of Halloween’s history in his tract, The Trick: “[Halloween] came from an ancient Druid custom set up for human sacrifices on Halloween night. Druids offered children in sacrifices. They believed that only ‘the fruit of the body’ offered to Satan was for the ‘sin of the soul.’ The trick or treat custom was created by the Druids. “When they went to a home and demanded a child or virgin for sacrifice, the victim was the Druids’ treat. In exchange, they would leave a jack-o’-lantern with a lighted candle made of human fat to prevent those inside from being killed by demons in the night. When some unfortunate couldn’t meet the demands of the Druids, then it was time for the trick. A symbolic hex was drawn on the front door. That night Satan or his demons would kill someone in that house.” There are about as many errors here as there are vowels. First, human sacrifice, despite the shrill claims of some, was rare if not nonexistent in Druid practice, and played no part in the Halloween tradition (Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade, “Druids”). This goes for the candles “made of human fat,” as well. Second, the Druids didn’t worship Satan. Theirs was a nature religion centered around the seasons, similar to modern day Wicca. Satan is a figure in Christianity, not paganism. Third, the popular use of jack-o’-lanterns had absolutely nothing to do with the human sacrifice exchange program that Chick describes here. So, with the fantasy aside, what’s the real history of the celebration? Halloween comes from the pagan feast of Samhain. From the evening of October 31 to the end of November 1, the ancient Celts would celebrate the beginning of winter and the conclusion of the harvest. During this time, it was believed, the curtain between the living and the dead was temporarily lifted, and the spirits of the past would roam the countryside, getting into mischief (Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life, Jack Santino, University of Tennessee, 1994, XV). These supernatural creatures could be placated with edible treats or frightened off with bonfires and carved turnips. All the while, the people paid homage to Samhain, the god of the dead. As time passed, the feast lost its religious significance and became the secular holiday we have today. It’s true, some of the old vestiges remain. Kids dress up like ghosts, goblins and Power Rangers, and go out looking for candy. The carved turnips have become pumpkins, and the bobbing for apples, an ancient method of divination, has become a popular party game. Nevertheless, October 31 is no longer widely held to be a day of religious observance. So, how did the feast of Samhain become Halloween? For hundreds of years, Christianity was persecuted by the pagan officials of the Roman Empire. Catholics were routinely rounded up and killed or tortured for the Faith. Over time, the persecutions ended and Christianity was recognized as a legal religion with the Edict of Milan in 313. A few years later, Catholics actually gained the upper hand, becoming the official state religion near the end of the fourth century. With this new situation, the Catholic Church sought to demonstrate in a dramatic way the victory of Christ over the false gods of paganism. The old shrines were emptied of their statues of pagan deities, replaced with symbols of Christian worship. The temples became churches and the practices of the former religion either discontinued or Christianized. Finally, the holidays and feasts celebrating pagan gods were replaced with days recognizing the victory of the True God. One well-known example of this is Christmas, where the feast of the sun god on December 25 was replaced with a celebration of God the Son. It’s difficult for us nowadays to appreciate the powerful statement this Christian-ization process communicated. Imagine if, in the most frigid days of the Cold War, the United States had been invaded and defeated by the Soviet Union. Destroying the Statue of Liberty certainly would’ve been a blow to the American people, but the Soviets had a still more dramatic action available: they could bedeck the statue in the red and yellow of the Soviet flag, replacing American symbolism with that of the USSR. What stronger way to demonstrate the victory of one system over the other? Such was the case with the Church’s conversion of pagan shrines, temples and holidays. And so it was with Samhain. As Christianity spread throughout the British Isles, it encountered this strange celebration of the dead. Following in the tradition up to that point, the Church chose to replace it with a Catholic holiday. So, by the ninth century, All Saints Day had become a feast-day to be celebrated by the entire Church. Instead of honoring the dead spirits of pagandom, All Saints Day was a time to remember the faithful Christian departed of past ages. In fact, according to Pope Urban VI, the day was intended to make up for any deficiencies in the celebrations of the various saints’ feast days throughout the year (Catholic Encyclopedia, “All Saints Day”). The night before All Saints was known as All Hallows Evening, which became shortened to Hallowe’en. While Christians took part in the festivities of the evening before, the primary focus of the celebration was November 1, the feast of the saints. In this way, the pagan core of Samhain was stripped from the event, and replaced with solid Christian practice. The conversion of pagan holidays is actually quite biblical. The Jews, under the direction of God, appropriated numerous pagan feasts: feasts of the New Year, combined with the harvest (Numbers 29:1-6; Leviticus 23:23-25), the feasts of the New Moon (1 Kings 20:4-29; Numbers 28:11-15; Nehemiah 10:33-34), grain and fruit harvest feasts (Deuteronomy 16:9-12; Exodus 23:14-16, 34:22) and the rite of new branches (Nehemiah 8:14-15). The people of God have often planned their Jewish and Christian celebrations to coincide with pagan feast days. Obviously, as the verses mentioned above indicate, God didn’t think this was corrupting true worship, or giving into paganism. So the Christian who takes part in Halloween and All Saints Day is just following in the footsteps of God-approved practice. No problem there. A few objections are often raised at this point. A claim is sometimes made that Halloween is the most important day of the “Satanic calendar,” and that Christian participation is tantamount to taking part in the Devil’s high holy day. In fact, Jack Chick, in another one of his tract masterpieces, Boo!, says, “to Satanists and witches, Halloween is no joke. It’s their most solemn ceremony of the year.” Bob (1951-2003) and Gretchen (1953-2014) Passantino, Evangelical Christians and experts on Satanism, reject this argument, pointing out that the Satanist’s own birthday is, to him, the most un/holy day of the year (“What About Halloween?” a paper produced by their ministry, Answers in Action). Next, we’ll hear that Halloween so trivializes evil, demons and the devil, that they are reduced to mere fairy tales — imaginary beings used to frighten and titillate children. While the danger of this is certainly present, it nevertheless can be remedied by a good Catholic upbringing. We ignore the real existence of Satan at our own peril, for he “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). The reality of evil forces should be foundational in the catechesis of every Christian. We can hardly blame Halloween if it isn’t. Far from being a threat to the Christian faith, Halloween actually provides an excellent opportunity for witnessing to it. On what other day is one’s attire the subject of so much attention? Imagine a group of kids going out not as Barney or some sports hero, but as their favorite characters from the Bible or Church history. An army of Davids, St. Marys and St. Josephs can make an awfully big impression at a costume party. Another possible avenue for evangelization is at the doorstep itself. Try handing out a good Catholic tract along with the candy (just don’t forget the candy part, or there might be rioting). As Catholics, we are called to use every opportunity to share the Gospel, “in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2). In the end, the issue of whether or not to let one’s kids participate in Halloween comes down to personal discretion. The celebration in itself is fairly harmless: kids go out (under supervision, hopefully) dressed up as their favorite superhero/monster/politician and gather candy. Obviously, things can get out of hand. If a child wants to go trick-or-treating dressed as the Antichrist, it’s probably time to draw the line. This is where the parents’ guidance is essential. Nevertheless, whatever meaning Samhain used to hold as a pagan observance, it has no longer. Time has turned October 31 into a secular event, and Christians can take part with a clear conscience. But we’re not done yet. Our brief look into the history of Halloween has uncovered some interesting dirt on the methods of some anti-Catholics. Numerous enemies of the Church charge that the Catholic Faith as a whole has been corrupted by paganism. Loraine Boettner, author of the odiously inaccurate Roman Catholicism, writes: “After Constantine’s decree making Christianity the preferred religion, the Greek-Roman pagan religions with their male gods and female goddesses exerted an increasingly stronger influence upon the church . . . Many of the people who came into the church had no clear distinction in their minds between the Christian practices and those that had been practiced in their heathen religions. Statues of pagan gods and heroes found a place in the church, and were gradually replaced by statues of saints. The people were allowed to bring into the church those things from their old religions that could be reconciled with the type of Christianity then developing” (Roman Catholicism, Grand Rapids: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1964, p. 136). Fundamentalists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others argue similarly today in trying to demonstrate the alleged pagan corruption of Catholicism. In looking at the methods by which they reach their conclusions, three prominent errors are found again and again: 1. Their scholarship is often poor, making their conclusions largely or even completely inaccurate. 2. They assume that if a Catholic doctrine or practice is similar to a pagan one, the Catholic Church must have taken it from paganism. 3. They neglect the fact that some pagan practices (like Halloween) can be Christianized and used in the service of the Cross. Let’s look at examples of each error. Fundamentalists like Jack Chick aren’t exactly known for their academic excellence. Too often, they begin with a conclusion and then go looking for historical or Biblical confirmation. We saw an excellent example of this earlier with Chick’s history of Halloween. Critics of the Church will often misrepresent Her beliefs in order to show a connection between Catholicism and paganism. Alexander Hislop, author of The Two Babylons: The Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife (Loizeaux Brothers, 1959), does this very thing with the Catholic understanding of justification. In order to link the Catholic Gospel with that of paganism, he wrongly claims Catholicism teaches one is justified by works in the chapter entitled, “Justification by Works”). Not content to merely misrepresent Catholic belief, he also lapses into some rather amusing blunders: “Will any one after this say that the Roman Catholic Church must still be called Christian, because it holds the doctrine of the Trinity? So did the Pagan Babylonians, so did the Egyptians, so do the Hindoos [sic] at this hour, in the very same sense in which Rome does” (Ibid, 90). Anyone with even a light familiarity with the pagan triads Hislop alludes to knows that they consisted of three different gods, not one God in three persons. The various pagan religions held a position very similar to modern day Mormonism, that there are three primary gods, distinct from one another in being, but joined in purpose. This is a form of polytheism, a view the Catholic Church has always condemned. Hislop’s statement that pagans held to the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity is laughable. This claim would, incidentally, also condemn as pagan the Trinitarian doctrine of Evangelical Christians and the mainline Protestant churches. Oops. One error that occurs over and over again is the faulty assumption that a similarity between Catholic and pagan practices implies a connection between the two. Ralph Woodrow’s book, Babylon Mystery Religion, is full of such “parallels,” one of which links the roundness of the Eucharistic host to the roundness of the sun, which pagan Mithraists worshipped. Add to this the apparent sun beams shooting out of some monstrances and you have a fine example of Catholics inadvertently worshipping the sun god. (Babylon Mystery Religion: Ancient and Modern, Ralph Woodrow Evangelistic Association, Inc., 1966, p. 121). (Note: Interestingly enough, Woodrow has recently come out with a new book, The Babylon Connection, wherein he recants much of his former material, showing the inaccuracies in the first book. For this, he should be given much credit.) This method of finding parallels, if followed consistently, ends up coming back to haunt those who use it. For example, among some of the ancient pagan tribes of the middle east, there was a fascinating ceremony performed by the nomads. They would slaughter a lamb and smear its blood on their tent posts, so that those who slept inside would be protected from the destroying angel who came in the night (A Feast in Honor of Yahweh, Fides Publishers, Inc., 1965, p. 37). Sound familiar? Of course, this ceremony bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Passover, where the blood of the pure lamb would be poured onto the door posts of the Jewish homes, so the angel of death would pass over onto the homes of the Egyptians (Exodus 12:1-13). According to the methodology of our Fundamentalist friends, this must mean the ancient Jews stole their Passover ceremony from the pagans. If Passover is corrupted by its apparent pagan origins, then down comes the whole notion of Jesus as the perfect Passover sacrifice. You see where faulty methodology takes us? But there’s more. The famous comparative religionist, Sir James George Frazer, in his classic work, The Golden Bough, found some interesting similarities between Christianity and paganism. Apparently, numerous pagan religions have a god who dies and is resurrected. One notable example is the Egyptian god, Osiris, who is murdered, buried and resurrected from the dead (The New Golden Bough: A New Abridgment of the Classic Work, Sir James George Frazer, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961, pp. 183-185). Does this mean the Christian Faith derived its belief in the death and resurrection of its God from the pagan religions of Egypt? Of course not. Despite what some anti-Catholics would tell us, just because two beliefs are similar doesn’t mean there is any relationship between the two. Another excellent example of this is the symbol of the swastika (also known as the gammadion). This symbol has been found to exist in the ancient cultures of India, Denmark, Greece, Belgium, Tibet, Gaul, Macedonia and just about anywhere else where people had hands with which to write. However, in each place, the symbol was understood differently. The meaning behind the swastika of the Third Reich is vastly different than that understood in ancient Tibet. Just because these cultures share the same symbol doesn’t mean they’re interrelated. Nazi Germany had very little to do with ancient India. We cannot, then, assume that just because Catholicism shares some symbol or practice with paganism, that the thing necessarily has a pagan beginning. Still, while it’s true that some Catholic practices do have pagan precursors (we’ve already seen how the early believers Christianized the pagan holidays and temples, just as the Jews did in the Old Testament), this was born out of Christian victory over paganism, not compromise with it. Additionally, there are other Biblical precedents for God endorsing the use of some pagan practices. Among the Jewish people, we see the casting of lots (1 Chronicles 25:8; 1 Samuel 14:40-45; Nehemiah 10:34) and the offering of water libations (1 Kings 18:33-36), both prominent in the paganism of the time (Maertens, 28, 72-74). If indeed God frowned upon any practice that was pagan in origin, He wouldn’t have prescribed them for His people. But, as the Bible proves, He did prescribe them. For Christians, paganism is a dirty word, and it should be. Any religion that denies the One True God in favor of idols, nature-worship, or self-worship is a religion to be avoided. But this is all the more reason to bring paganism to the foot of the Cross. Jesus has won the victory over the false gods of this world, and so their practices and traditions should be brought into service for Him. Those who disagree do so in the face of the Scriptural and historical evidence. It’s time to let God use whatever means He wishes to further His own glory. Our God is sovereign, and He can do whatever He wants. [N.B.: This article originally appeared in the Sept./Oct. 1998 edition of Envoy Magazine and is reposted here with permission of the editor of Envoy, who happens to be me.] I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do not understand why it is part of the church year.Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic.When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema.If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.For example, note what the Reformation has done for our reading texts like that which we hear from Luke this morning. We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God’s free grace. And therefore we are better than the Catholics because we know they are sinners. What an odd irony that the Reformation made such readings possible.As Protestants we now take pride in the acknowledgment of our sinfulness in order to distinguish ourselves from Catholics who allegedly believe in works-righteousness.Unfortunately, the Catholics are right. Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of — or perhaps better, because of — the world’s fragmentation and divisions. Unity, after all, is what God has given us through Christ’s death and resurrection. For in that death and resurrection we have been made part of God’s salvation for the world so that the world may know it has been freed from the powers that would compel us to kill one another in the name of false loyalties. All that is about the works necessary to save us.For example, I often point out that at least Catholics have the magisterial office of the Bishop of Rome to remind them that disunity is a sin. You should not overlook the significance that in several important documents of late, John Paul II has confessed the Catholic sin for the Reformation. Where are the Protestants capable of doing likewise? We Protestants feel no sin for the disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to confess our sin for the continuing disunity of the Reformation. We would not know how to do that because we have no experience of unity.The magisterial office — we Protestants often forget — is not a matter of constraining or limiting diversity in the name of unity. The office of the Bishop of Rome is to ensure that when Christians move . . . (continue reading)

(Excerpted from “By Faith Alone: The Story of Rabbi Yehuda Amital” by Elyashiv Reichner (translated by Elli Fischer. Maggid Books, 2011). It says in Psalms (145:18): “God is near to all those who call Him – to all who call Him in truth.” Anyone who truly calls, whether religious or not. Neither I, as a Rosh Yeshiva, nor my students and friends, your comrades-at-arms, represent God any more than you do. Whose prayer comes nearer to God – the prayer of someone like me who was trained in it from childhood, or your prayer, which you discovered in the heat of battle? Only God knows…a sincere prayer that originates in the depths and flows forth from there, even if the words are stammered, is heard at the highest heights. King David wrote in one of his psalms (ibid.130:2), “God! Listen in to my voice (HaShem shema be-koli); may Your ears be attentive to the sound of my supplication.” A great Hasidic master once pointed out that it does not say “listen to my voice (shema koli),” rather “listen in to my voice (shema be-koli)” – listen to what is hidden within the notes of my voice, what I could not articulate in words. Speech to Yom Kippur War combat soldiers, HaMa’alot MiMa’amakim, 5734 (1973) The 5734 (1973–74) academic year, the sixth year of Yeshivat Har Etzion, began normally. More than two-hundred students were studying in the yeshiva that year, and it had become one of the most outstanding and popular Zionist yeshivot. On the eve of Yom Kippur, Rav Amital delivered a discourse, as he did every year, on a theme of the day. He cited the prophecy of Yeĥezkel (33:1–3), which warns the people of impending war if they do not repent: Son of man, speak to your countrymen and say to them: When I bring the sword against a land, the people of that land take one of their number and appoint him their watchman, so he sees the sword advancing on the land, and he blows the shofar to warn the people. Later in that chapter (v. 11), a well-known verse appears: “Say to them: As I live – declares the Lord God – I do not desire the death of the wicked, but the wicked man’s turning from his ways. Turn back! Turn back from your wicked ways! Why should you die, O House of Israel?” Some of the students saw this, in retrospect, as a foreshadowing of what happened the next day. War broke out on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. Many students were called to report to their units even before the fast ended, and they went to take leave of the Rashei Yeshiva. They left the yeshiva’s minyan and convened their own, completing Ne’ila early. They were led in their prayers by Moshe Tal, a fourth-year student and a newlywed, having been married less than two months earlier. At the yeshiva’s main minyan, Rav Amital gave an emotional speech before Ne’ila. He quoted the Rambam’s Hilkhot Melakhim (7:15) regarding one going out to battle: Once he enters the heat of battle, he should rely on the Hope and Rescuer of Israel in its time of distress. He should know that he is doing battle for God’s sake, and he should place his life in his hand. He should not be afraid or scared; he should not think of his wife or children, but rather should erase their memory from his heart, and turn his attention from everything else to war. These words made a profound impression on the students. Right after the end of the holy day, R. Yoel Bin-Nun, then Alon Shvut’s security coordinator, among other things, urged the students not to wait for their orders, but to report to their units independently. He even shared with the students his assessment that the Bar-Lev line, the string of fortifications along the Suez Canal, had already fallen – and was reprimanded by Rav Amital, who expressed faith in the IDF’s steadfast durability. On the other hand, Rav Amital was not euphoric, either. When one of the students proposed reading the Song of the Sea, which expresses gratitude to God for His miracles, Rav Amital rejected the idea, saying: “Slow down. First let’s hear what’s happening.” The yeshiva – which was about to break for Sukkot anyway – was emptied of students, and Rav Amital went home to Jerusalem. It was not long before terrible tidings began to arrive, one after the other. During the first twenty days of the war, Yeshivat Har Etzion lost eight of its students… In most cases, Rav Amital heard about the loss of the student immediately, sometimes even before the parents. The tidings wounded him deeply, but outwardly he kept conveying optimism. One external sign attested somewhat to what was going on in his soul: after quitting for several years, he started smoking again during the first days of the war. It was a long time before he quit smoking again. A student who was a guest in Rav Amital’s house that Sukkot experienced more evidence of what Rav Amital was going through. One night, as they slept in the sukka, he heard Rav Amital moaning in grief, heartrending moans that reminded him of the whimper of the shofar. Yoel Amital, who was called up on Simĥat Torah, later asked his father how he felt and what he had to say about the loss of his eight students. Rav Amital sorrowfully answered his son: “What did the Alter of Slabodka say after the events of 1929, when so many of his students from Yeshivat Ĥevron were killed? He cried.” In addition to the eight students who fell, several yeshiva students were wounded in the war, some of them severely. Meeting them was also traumatic for Rav Amital. Yehuda Schwartz, a member of the first class, was very critically wounded on the Golan Heights the day after Yom Kippur. Five days after being wounded, Rav Amital and Yedaya Hacohen went to visit him at Rambam Hospital in Haifa. Schwartz recalls: Rav Amital didn’t recognize me. I was completely bandaged and the prognosis was very bleak. He knew it was me only because he saw my wife sitting next to me. I couldn’t see the Rav because my eyes were covered, but they told me that he was worried by what he saw. Some say that he started smoking again because of that visit with me. The next time he came to visit, my legs were covered by a device designed to keep the sheets away from the burns on my body. Rav Amital saw the device and became very alarmed. He thought that something terrible had happened to my legs and immediately lifted the sheets to see that everything was okay. The first day that I was able to put on tefillin, I called him to tell him the news. I could feel him crying into the phone. Immediately after Sukkot, Rav Amital informed Rav Lichtenstein that he was incapable of functioning as a Rosh Yeshiva for the time being, handing over all authority. Once ĥoref zeman (winter session) began on the first of Ĥeshvan, Rav Amital barely visited the yeshiva. Instead he traveled frequently to the front, to visit his students. The few students who remained studying in the yeshiva characterized Rav Amital during that period as the yeshiva’s ‘foreign minister’. In his travels to the front, Rav Amital found some healing for his wounded soul. Wherever he went he encouraged his students, but he also drew strength from them. Once, on a radio show, he recounted the experience of his first encounter with his combat-soldier students, during a lull between battles: We came to them as Rashei Yeshiva, but there were moments that we were cut down to size in their presence, and we stood like students before their masters, awestruck by their greatness… we stood dumbfounded in the presence of students who, a few days earlier, were engaged in resolving the Talmudic debates of Abaye and Rava and clarifying Talmudic discussions, and now they were waging war with all their heart and soul, believing that they were indeed fighting God’s wars and that God was fighting for them. I would not be exaggerating if I said that we felt that we were breathing the air of the Tanakh. The students also experienced something special when Rav Amital came to visit them on the front, during battles. R. Hillel Raĥmani, a member of the yeshiva’s third class who was then fighting on the Golan Heights, describes the meeting with Rav Amital as a spiritual experience: Right after Sukkot, he came with several other rabbis. We gathered in the synagogue and Rav Amital asked to speak last. When he got up to speak, everyone felt like he was going to prophesy, not merely speak. I have no idea what he spoke about. I don’t remember a single word. But it was truly prophetic. He spoke with all his heart. I think that just a few minutes earlier he was informed that Rafi and Avner fell, and he was caught up in an extraordinary storm of emotions. He spoke about the war, about vision, about the Jewish people. Silence descended on the whole crowd. This was not just another speech by a Rosh Yeshiva, but something much more… During the cease-fire, the nature of Rav Amital’s visits to his students changed. The students, and many other soldiers, even those who were not religious, wanted to hear words of spiritual encouragement from him and from other rabbis who came to visit. “It turned out,” Rav Amital recounted, “that when it comes to thirsting for God’s word, the differences between soldiers who are yeshiva students and other soldiers, religious and non-religious, become somewhat blurred.” He began shuttling from unit to unit to meet combat soldiers, to hear their experiences, and to strengthen them with words of encouragement. When he returned from his visits to the front, he would encourage the soldiers’ families in the home front. R. Ya’akov Fisher, a member of the yeshiva’s third class who fought on the Northern Front against the Syrians, got married dur- ing the months of the war. About a week before the wedding, Rav Amital came to visit his unit. “He understood that there was no chance that I would be released to go home for my aufruf on the Shabbat before the wedding, so he lifted my spirits. When he got home, he called Tzippy, my fiancée. Instead of telling her that I would not be home for Shabbat, he said, ‘Don’t worry. The equipment compartments of the tanks are filled with candy. The guys will make him a great aufruf. It’ll be fine.’” The harsh result of the war impacted Rav Amital on the personal level, but his spiritual worldview was not altered, at least not for the first few years … * * * Two years after the Yom Kippur War, in November 1975, Rav Amital lost two other students. Bentzi Leibowitz and Naĥum Fenigstein, members of the yeshiva’s seventh class, were traveling to spend Shabbat with friends at Yeshivat HaGolan in Hispin and were killed in a terrorist attack. A month after their deaths, the yeshiva held a memorial service for the pair. As he walked into his home after the ceremony, the tele- phone rang with more terrible news: during a security drill held by the yeshiva after the ceremony, Yitzĥak Lavi, a member of the yeshiva’s fifth class, was accidentally shot and killed. Just seven years after its founding, the yeshiva had already buried eleven students. The deaths of his students etched themselves deep in Rav Amital’s heart and affected his personality. On the thirtieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, speaking at a memorial service on Mount Herzl, Rav Amital described the deep impression that the fallen left on him: At the memorial service held for the yeshiva’s fallen, I made a supreme effort to characterize each and every one of them. It wasn’t simple. I labored hours upon hours to know and remember all of them. I tried, and I was more or less successful. The families can tell you. But I want to tell you: I internalized everything. It became part of my personality. They live inside me. God, Knower of thoughts, Examiner of hearts, knows that there are elements of my personality that I internalized from what I remembered of them. I have been passing them onward for thirty years now, and so these elements yet live. In this respect, they are my teachers. My personality has been enriched. There is a small measure of comfort, he continued, in the fact that the fallen have become part of the personalities of those who knew them: Fifty years ago, I knew an old man, a Holocaust survivor, in Reĥovot. He came to me and begged me to procure a tape recorder for him. “Why do you need a tape recorder?” I asked him. He replied, “I’m the only one who remembers a certain tune for Tefilat Tal, the Prayer for Dew. If I pass on, nobody will know the tune.” The tune is still playing. Don’t take it lightly. As someone who passed through the abyss of the Holocaust, I say to you: Tens of thousands of people perished together with their memories…Those who fell in the Yom Kippur War left a book of memories that is occasionally opened. They live on within us, and we pass on everything we learned from them. To read more about the legacy of Rabbi Yehuda Amital, see By Faith Alone, available at www.korenpub.com or at your local Jewish bookstore. Maggid Books is a division of Koren Publishers Jerusalem.

Despite spending a good deal of my personal and professional life delving into the complicated morass of identity and diversity (and how identities intersect), questions related to my perception of myself as a leader, a Jewish leader, and a Jew by choice are challenging. Attempting to separate the three pieces of my identity — who I am as a leader, who I am as a Jew by choice, and who I am as a leader in the Jewish community — or to understand which part of who I am came first, has reduced each aspect to a degree that feels significantly less than the sum of its whole and less than authentic. The sum, in my case, is driven by an inherent passion for repairing the world. Even before I knew about the concept of tikkun olam, I had chosen to live an introspective life. I would experience a bit of a jolt, a pause, whenever an external reality created a moment of dissonance with my internal vision of how things ought to be. Much like the kabbalists, I believed that we and the world in which we live are in various states of disrepair and that our task in life is to bring our world back into a state of repair and to strive, along the way, to create a more connected and less fragmented sense of self. This path brought me to Judaism, to leadership, and to the opportunity to become a leader within the Jewish community. I did not choose to be Jewish; rather, I chose to build a meaningful and enduring connection between my soul’s deepest desires to create a better world and and the community in which I knew this desire would be shared, celebrated, nurtured, and fulfilled. Leadership, for me, is a necessary and natural outgrowth of this same desire. Assimilating into the Jewish community — especially as a leader — has had some challenging moments. Ironically, those moments are the same moments when I feel the most Jewish. After the matriarch Sarah’s death, Avraham wanted to buy a burial plot from the children of Het. During the negotiation, he articulated what had been and continues to be a central feature of Jewish identity: He said, “I am an alien and resident with you (ger toshav).” Jews have held this tension — of feeling both part of a community and separate from it — for millennia. As a Jew by choice, I am uniquely aware of what it means to be both “part of and separate from” at the same time; as a Jew, I exist in that paradoxical space alongside members of my chosen community. I’m reminded of my alien status most often because of the reactions other Jews have to my last name, “McGrath.” The assumptions about my origin don’t bother me; they engender an opportunity to discuss the compelling beauty and strength that I have found within Judaism, which is why I accepted my rabbi’s advice not to change my last name. But I am frustrated by moments when my identity as a Jew and my knowledge of things Jewish is challenged simply because of my name. Sometimes I handle that frustration well, sometimes not as gracefully. More often than not, I do feel that I must work harder than other Jews to demonstrate what I know or to prove myself a credible member of the tribe and a contributor to the community. Recently, frustration has come full circle to opportunity. Just as maintaining my last name created opportunities for rich discussions about Judaism, I now realize that these moments create equally rich times for challenging the assumptions that people have about who and what is Jewish. On a good day, I meet those challenges head-on and, I hope, change some perspectives. On a bad day, I allow others to define who I am, which is never comfortable. Although the option to change my name in order to “pass” as a Jew remains, I remember the conversation I had with my rabbi many years ago. When she asked me why I wanted to change my name, I answered, “There are no Jewish McGraths.” Her reply? “There will be!” She was right. There are — at least one for now. And if my unique perspectives on what it means to be a Jew by choice and my leadership have any influence to create change, it will be this: to contribute to building a vibrant, inclusive Jewish community where all Jews — the McGraths and Cohens alike — are welcomed in Jewish homes, synagogues, schools, and summer camps. As a leader, a Jewish leader, and a Jew by choice I could think of no better goal to pursue or example to set. This is my tikkun olam.email print

JERUSALEM (AP) — When Stella Knobel’s family fled World War II Poland in 1939, the only thing the 7-year-old girl could take with her was her teddy bear. For the next six years, the stuffed animal never left her side as the family wandered through the Soviet Union, to Iran and finally the Holy Land. “He was like family. He was all I had. He knew all my secrets,” the 80-year-old said with a smile. “I saved him all these years. But I worried what would happen to him when I died.” So when she heard about a project launched by Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and museum, to collect artifacts from aging survivors, she reluctantly handed over her beloved bear Misiu, Polish for “teddy bear,” so the memories of the era could be preserved. “We’ve been through a lot together, so it was hard to let him go,” said Knobel, who was widowed 12 years ago and has no children. “But here he has found a haven.” The German Nazis and their collaborators murdered 6 million Jews during World War II. In addition to rounding up Jews and shipping them to death camps, the Nazis also confiscated their possessions and stole their valuables, leaving little behind. Those who survived often had just a small item or two they managed to keep. Many have clung to the sentimental objects ever since. On Sunday, Knobel’s tattered teddy bear was on display at Yad Vashem, one of more than 71,000 items collected nationwide over the past two years. With a missing eye, his stuffing bursting out and a red ribbon around his neck, Misiu was seated behind a glass window as part of the memorial’s “Gathering the Fragments” exhibit. The opening came as other Holocaust-related events took place around the world. In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 60 years to the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Israel’s main Holocaust memorial day is in the spring, marking the anniversary of the uprising of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, against the Nazis. To coincide with the international commemorations, Israel released its annual anti-Semitism report, noting that the past year experienced an increase in the number of attacks against Jewish targets worldwide, mainly by elements identified with Islamic extremists. At Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the lessons of the Holocaust have yet to be learned. He accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons with the goal of destroying Israel. “What has not changed is the desire to annihilate the Jews. What has changed is the ability of the Jews to defend themselves,” he said. Yad Vashem showcased dozens of items, each representing tales of perseverance and survival. They included sweaters, paintings, diaries, letters, dolls, cameras and religious artifacts that were stashed away for decades or discarded before they were collected and restored. Yad Vashem researchers have been interviewing survivors, logging their stories, tagging materials and scanning documents into the museum’s digitized archive. Aside from their value as exhibits in the museum, Yad Vashem says the items are also proving helpful for research, filling in holes in history and contributing to the museum’s huge database of names. “Thousands of Israelis have decided to part from personal items close to their hearts, and through them share the memory of their dear ones who were murdered in the Holocaust,” said Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev. “Through these examples, we have tried to bring to light items whose stories both explain the individual story and provide testimony to join the array of personal accounts that make up the narrative of the Holocaust.” For 83-year-old Shlomo Resnik, one such item was the steel bowl he and his father used for food at the Dachau concentration camp. His father Meir’s name and number are engraved on the bowl, a reminder of how hard they had to scrap for food. “We fought to stay alive,” he said. Approaching the glass-encased display, Tsilla Shlubsky began tearing. Below she could see the handwritten diary her father kept while the family took shelter with two dozen others in a small attic in the Polish countryside. With a pencil, Jakov Glazmann meticulously recorded the family’s ordeal in tiny Yiddish letters. His daughter doesn’t know exactly what is written and she doesn’t care to find out. “I remember him writing. I lived through it,” said Shlubsky, 74. “Abba (Dad) wasn’t a writer, but with his heart’s blood he wrote a diary to record the events to leave something behind so that what had taken place would be known.” She said it pained her to part with the family treasure. “I know this is the right place for it and it will be protected forever,” she said. “Now is the time and this is the place.”

|Document:||Jewish Displaced Persons and Refugee Cards, 1943-1959| |Description:||This is a collection of registration cards of Jewish survivors who registered with the Emigration Department of JDC in Munich and Vienna after World War II for help in emigrating to countries other than Israel. The database includes individual cards from 1945-mid 1950s for 51,554 Displaced Persons in Munich and 25,374 Displaced Persons in Vienna.| |Migration Location:||Dp Camp Ebelsberg| |Location of Birth:||Kisvarda, Hungary| |JDC Migration Office:||Austria, Vienna| |Ancestry Record ID:||HSSqhBDqTboXPw== EncryptionTail_V2| Documents will open in a new window.

Police in Zurich have clashed with protesters, following the city's annual May Day rally to mark Labour Day. Hundreds of demonstrators pelted police with missiles, prompting police to respond with rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon.This content was published on May 1, 2001 - 15:29 Violence broke out towards the end of the official May Day celebrations, when a crowd of protesters with their faces covered scuffled with police following a speech by a controversial Palestinian resistance figure, Leila Khaled. Police used water cannon, rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the protesters. A spokesman said 30 arrests were made. There were no reports of injuries. The Zurich authorities had been prepared for violence after riots last year, in which six police officers were injured and 40 demonstrators were arrested. "We will not tolerate any violent outbursts," the head of the municipal police department, Esther Maurer, said before the rally. In her address, Khaled said the Palestinian people were being "systematically massacred". She said Israeli policies were damaging the Palestinian economy to the point where people were living in bitter poverty. She also called for support for Palestinian self-determination and for a boycott of Israeli goods. "We have an apartheid regime in Palestine," she said. The only way out of the current situation, she said, was a political solution guaranteeing the Palestinians basic political rights. She said that until this happened, the struggle would continue. Khaled was formerly an active member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, which hijacked and blew up a Swissair jet in September 1970. She was invited to speak by the 1.May Committee, a federation of 80 left-wing groups, "to show solidarity with oppressed people". But the decision was criticised by some trade unions and also Jewish groups. The president of Zurich's Jewish community, Werner Rom, denounced the organisers as "ill-advised". According to police estimates, 6,000 to 7,000 people took part in the official Zurich rally. The organisers said the number was closer to 10,000. Around 5,000 people took part in a May Day parade in Basel, while fewer than 2,000 gathered in the capital, Bern. swissinfo with agencies This article was automatically imported from our old content management system. If you see any display errors, please let us know: firstname.lastname@example.org

Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was indicted for covering up Iranian officials’ involvement in the 1994 Buenos Aires Jewish Center bombing, intends to run for the office again this year, two sources told Reuters. The decision to put Kirchner on trial dates back to the accusation made in 2015 by the late Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor charged with investigating Iran’s alleged role in the AMIA bombing. Nisman claimed that Kirchner had set up a “parallel communication channel” with Iran in order to avoid incriminating senior Iranian government officials and members of Hezbollah in the bombing. Nisman was found shot to death in his apartment in January 2015, the day before he was scheduled to present his allegations to the Argentine Congress. His shooting has been ruled a homicide after initially being called a suicide. The election run, if confirmed, would make Kirchner the first and most high-profile challenger to Macri, who is expected to run for a second term but whose leadership has faced heavy criticism after rampant inflation last year and a falling economy hit voters hard. A spokesman for Kirchner’s party did not directly confirm that she would be a candidate when asked by Reuters, but said any government from her faction would look to bolster the purchasing power of workers to support the domestic market. “She will be (a candidate) because she does not have any other option,” said one source, a strategy advisor to Kirchner, asking not to be named because the run was not yet public. A second source close to the former president also said she would run and that she was the best candidate to lead the country. Kirchner was indicted last year on charges that her administration accepted bribes from construction companies in exchange for public works contracts. Kirchner has denied the charges and said she never received any illicit money. As a senator, she has immunity from arrest, but not from prosecution. Source » jpost

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) strongly applauds the fact that the first Senate bill of the 116th Congress, the “Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019” (S.1) is legislation supporting Israel and US-Israel relations. It was introduced yesterday by Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), James Risch (R-ID), Cory Gardner (R-CO), and Mitch McConnell (R-KY). ZOA Director of Government Relations Daniel Pollak, ZOA president Morton Klein and ZOA Chair Mark Levenson stated: “It is a tribute to the importance of the relationship with Israel that the first Senate bill of the year will be legislation concerning the Middle East and supporting America’s greatest ally, the Jewish State of Israel. There were four bills that were in various stages of completion as the year ended, and the Majority Leader of the Senate has brought them together for expedited consideration in the new Congress. ZOA applauds this newest bill supporting Israel, fighting anti-Semitism and bigotry, and protecting US interests. “We strongly thank and praise Senators Rubio, Risch, Gardner and McConnell for moving so quickly to address this important unfinished business from the previous Congress. We hope that the bill will be quickly passed by the full Senate and that the House will pass the same legislation soon. The most important of the four pieces may well be to authorize state or local governments to adopt and enforce measures against entities engaged in commerce- or investment-related BDS activity. Other pieces of the “Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019” would codify the 10-year Memorandum of Understanding on US military assistance to Israel, extend war reserve stockpile authority and authorize the transfer of defense articles to Israel in time of need; reauthorize US defense cooperation with Jordan; and impose new sanctions on entities providing financing to the Syrian government while protecting humanitarian efforts to help Syrian civilians.”

Israel's 1967 borders are "indefensible" and the nation can never return to them, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on the second day of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference in Washington on Tuesday morning. "Tomorow in Congress I'll describe what a peace bewteen a Palestinian state and a Jewish state could look like," he said, "but I want to ensure you of one thing: It must leave Israel with security, and therefore Israel cannot return to the indefensible 1967 lines." This remark was met by loud applause and cheers from the audience.RELATED:Netanyahu speech eyed for sign of US-Israel riftCantor blames conflict on refusal to accept Israel Netanyahu spoke admirably of the words of Abraham Lincoln and pointed out the vast similarities between American and Israeli culture, noting that both are cultures of learning and ideas. Lincoln's writings resonate, he said, because "They're rooted in ideas, first championed by our people - the Jewish people." This is the reason, Netanyahu said, that Jerusalem must remain undivided. the cradle of our civilization, and the modern state of Israel was founded precisely on these eternal values," he said, adding that this civilization was born and fostered in "our eternal capital: The united city of Jerusalem." "I want to thank the President and Congress for providing Israel with vital assistance so that Israel can defend itself by itself," he said."Support for Israel does not divide America, it unites America." Israel wants peace, Netanyahu said, but it cannot have peace until it has a peace partner. "It's time that we admitted another truth: This conflict has raged for nearly a centuty because the Palestinians refuse to end it. They refuse to accept the Jewish state." Moments before calling on Hamas to release Gilad Schalit, Netanyahu implored the audience to audience that no peace deal could happen until the Palestinians acknowledged their partner in the process. "I repeat; we can only make peace with the Palestinians if they're prepared to make peace with the Jewish state," he said. Netanyahu had warm words for the protesters in many of Israel's neighboring cities who were rallying for democracy. "What the people of Israel want is for the people of the Middle East to have what you have in America, what we have in Israel: democracy." Democracy, however, required much more than a single election, the prime minister pointed out, adding that true democracies provide equal rights for women, gays, and practitioners of all religions. Netanyahu said that Arab nations' desire for democracy is showing the world that upheaval and conflict have nothing to do with the Jewish State. "Events in the region are opening peoples' eyes to a simple truth: The problems in the region are not rooted in Israel," he said, continuing, "It's time to stop blaming Israel for all the regions' problems." The prime minister's address came a day after US President Barack Obama addressed AIPAC where he defended his formulation for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal and made clarifications that put his comments more in line with Israeli positions. Obama reiterated statements from his Middle East speech on Thursday that a Palestinian state should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, which had sparked outrage from many in the pro-Israel community. Speaking to AIPAC Sunday morning, Obama emphasized that “by definition, it means that the parties themselves – Israelis and Palestinians – will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.” He added, to extended applause, “It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years. It allows the parties themselves to take account of those changes, including the new demographic realities on the ground.” After meeting with Obama at the White House on Friday, Netanyahu flatly rejected any return to the 1967 borders, the basis – along with agreed land swaps – for a deal with the Palestinians as laid out in the US president's Middle East “While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines,” Netanyahu said, sitting alongside Obama in the Oval Office. “These lines are indefensible, because they don’t take into account certain changes that have taken place on the ground, demographic changes.” Netanyahu also ruled out any return of Palestinian refugees to Israel proper or that Israel would negotiate with Hamas, branded a terrorist organization by both US and Israel. "Tomorow in Congress I'll describe what a peace between a Palestinian state and a Jewish state could look like, but I want to ensure you of one thing: It must leave Israel with security, and therefore Israel cannot return to the indefensible 1967 lines." Hilary Leila Krieger contributed to this report.

(3 of 3) Kennedy found new issues to throw himself into. In 1970 he introduced his first bill to establish a system of universal health-care coverage. He confounded people who thought of him as a doctrinaire liberal by pushing for airline deregulation and for required sentencing of convicted criminals. He promoted arms-control talks with the Soviet Union but also devoted himself to the cause of Soviet dissidents and would-be Jewish émigrés. It was Chappaquiddick as much as anything else that sabotaged his most serious attempt at the White House: his fight in 1980 to push Carter aside. Almost three decades later, that campaign is still a bit of a puzzle. His ideological differences with Carter never seemed great enough to justify a challenge to a sitting President of his own party. His main complaint was that Carter wasn't moving forward fast enough on health care, "the great unfinished business on the agenda of the Democratic Party," as he called it. In a televised interview on Nov. 4, 1979, just three days before he would launch his campaign, Kennedy gave CBS News correspondent Roger Mudd a notoriously rambling answer to the simple question "Why do you want to be President?" The man who had spent years on a trajectory to the White House still couldn't say exactly why. In the end, Kennedy won 10 primaries. Carter took 24, then sailed into the propellers of Ronald Reagan in the fall. But that failed campaign liberated Kennedy. He gave the best speech of his life at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, the speech of a man who had no intention of exiting the public stage. Because the White House was never again a serious option for him, he was free to concentrate once and for all on legislating. It was the dawn of the Reagan Revolution, and the Republicans had just retaken the Senate not an easy time to be the torchbearer for liberalism. But Kennedy assumed the role gladly. He became not only a dogged defender of the faith but also an even more adept player of the congressional game. In the '80s, he teamed repeatedly with the unlikeliest of allies, conservative Utah Republican Orrin Hatch. It was Hatch and Kennedy who got the first major AIDS legislation passed in 1988, a $1 billion spending measure for treatment, education and research. Two years later, they pushed through the Ryan White CARE Act to assist people with HIV who lack sufficient health-care coverage. But if Kennedy knew how to play ball with the other side, he also knew how to play hardball. When Reagan tried to put Robert Bork on the Supreme Court, it was Kennedy who led the ferocious and ultimately successful liberal opposition. Kennedy wasn't nearly as prominent in the next major battle over a court seat, the 1991 nomination of Clarence Thomas by George H.W. Bush. Even in the best of times, Kennedy's reputation for womanizing would have made it awkward for him to sit in judgment when Thomas was accused by Anita Hill of sexual harassment. But the Senate hearings on Thomas started at a particularly bad moment for Kennedy, just months after one of the messiest episodes in his public life. In March, while visiting the family compound in Palm Beach, Fla., Kennedy had roused his son Patrick and his nephew William Kennedy Smith out of bed so they could join him for drinks at a local bar. Smith returned to the compound that night with a young woman who would later accuse him of raping her. He was eventually acquitted after a nationally televised trial in which Kennedy was called as a witness. But the image of the capering Senator leading two younger men out to play reawakened all the old misgivings about Kennedy, women and alcohol. The man who had once been Prince Hal, the reluctant heir to the throne, was in danger of turning into Falstaff, the aging reprobate. Kennedy pulled himself back from that brink. In the summer of the same year, a decade after his divorce from Joan, Kennedy re-encountered Victoria Reggie, a 37-year-old lawyer and gun-safety advocate who had briefly been an intern in his Senate office. Now she lived in Washington with her two children from a previous marriage. Soon they were dating, and a year later they were married. The new marriage transformed Kennedy, giving him a feeling of contentment and stability he had not enjoyed for years. It was a newly energized Kennedy who moved on to the legislative accomplishments of the '90s, like the Family and Medical Leave Act. When the Republicans retook Congress in 1994, it was Kennedy who would push Bill Clinton from the left when Clinton's old soul mates from the Democratic Leadership Council were urging him to move right. "The last thing this country needs," he said then, "is two Republican Parties." Yet when the next President turned out to be a Republican, Kennedy still found a way to work with him on shared goals. Kennedy spearheaded the effort to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, a priority for George W. Bush. But they later parted ways over what Kennedy felt was Bush's failure to adequately fund the program. And on other issues, there could be no common ground. In 2002, Kennedy was one of the 23 Senators who voted against authorizing the Iraq war. Years later, he would call it the "best vote" he ever cast in the Senate. But by that time, there had been a lot of good votes votes that left the country a changed place and a better one. Nobody talks about Camelot anymore. They struck the scenery long ago. Without Ted, the Kennedy legacy would be mostly beautiful afterglow, just mood music and high rhetoric. More than either of his brothers, he took the mythology and shaped it into something real and enduring. On the weekend of his Inauguration in 1961, John Kennedy gave Ted, the last born of the Kennedy siblings, an engraved cigarette box. It read, "And the last shall be first." That was almost 50 years ago. Neither of them knew then in just what ways that prophecy might turn out to be true.

pro-Israeli policy has gone hand-in-hand with his wooing of the Canadian Jewish community and the demonizing of the Canadian Arab Federation (which includes Arab Christians, such as its president, Khaled Muammar), as well as shunning mainstream Muslim organizations.No need to "demonize" the CAF. The Jew/Zion-loathing outfit is capable of displaying its devilry all on its own--even though it has Christian members and even (especially) with a Christian at the helm. As for the "shunning," Harpoon doesn't list which "mainstream" outfits have supposedly gotten the Harper cold shoulder, but if ISNA (a Muslim Bro offshoot) and CASMO (that bunch of clock-gifting Khomeinists) are among them, way to go, Steve! Update: As a personal aside, it never ceases to astonish me how quickly Harper-loathing Jews (and, despite all the so-called "wooing," trust me, they are legion) fall back on anti-Semitic tropes in criticizing him. Just the other day, for example, old friends (old Socialist friends) were heard to remark that the "real" reason for Harper's Jew-wooing is--stop me if you've heard this before--the Jews have so much money. Funny, that's exactly what David Duke says, too. Update: Just noticed that the Star mispelled Hezbo-boosting Khaled's last name. It's "Mouammar." Update: BCF on Harper Derangement Syndrome. And Khaled's HDS in all its hideous glory on twitter.

Wayne State hosting diverse leadership program for Middle Eastern studentsAugust 6, 2008 Wayne State's Center for Peace and Conflict Studies is hosting the Student Leaders Program, funded by a $278,000 grant from the U.S. Department of State's Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). One of six universities chosen for their exceptionally diverse communities and dedication to intercultural education, WSU will provide the venue for 18 of the total 116 international participants. The program combines classroom seminars and field activities that illuminate various approaches to inter-cultural living and illustrate the importance of civic engagement and social service. Dr. Frederic S. Pearson, professor of political science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at WSU, said the goal of the program is to give participants both the skills and inspiration for spearheading positive change in their own countries. "Detroit is a wonderfully appropriate city for people from abroad to experience issues of diversity, civic engagement, and leadership," he said. "We feature wonderful leadership legacies such as that of our hero Rosa Parks, and also great stories of inter-ethnic understanding and success." Field activities already partaken by participants include a visit to the Jewish Community Center of Metro Detroit for insight on civic activities, and a trip to Wayne County Prosecutor Kim Worthy's office for a deeper understanding of the American justice system. In addition, a visit to Mayor of Dearborn John B. O'Reilly's office provided perspectives on the immigrant experience characteristic of many Dearborn residents. "Coming into the program, the students had a great deal of knowledge and excitement about the U.S. but still are surprised by many things they see and experience," Pearson said. "They did not have the full awareness of American perspectives and customs, so an experience like this gives them a rich background that will help them interpret the perceptions and historical experiences in this country that make up our society." Weekly classroom objectives will address the complexities of pluralistic communities, dispute resolution, and conflicting perspectives between the Middle East and the West on topics of leadership and civil society, and will include lecturers and student participants from Wayne State University, Henry Ford Community College and Lebanese American University. The program will continue from now until mid-August, and will include week-long visits to both Chicago and New Orleans for additional inter-cultural community exposure and leadership training. Wayne State University is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. - Contact: Julie O'Connor - Voice: (313) 577-8845 - Email: email@example.com - Fax: (313) 577-3626

Cyril of Alexandria, Against Julian. Book 2 (beginning) 1. We thought that it was by no means unjustified, that it was even useful and necessary to say before all what is the chronological sequence of the characters, and also what idea each has of God: therefore we have carried out with much precision the exposition of these details. We could be reproached for this by saying: "Why then, having undertaken to defend Christian doctrines and taking in mind to oppose a victorious argumentation to the blasphemies of Julian, did you not decide to engage from the start in that way? Why on the contrary have you diverted the energy which began your exposition into a different goal, to launch into genealogies and to undertake a study of Hebraic and Greek doctrines?" So let us remove the objections that have been made to us about this choice, by affirming that we intentionally directed our matter towards this digression. Indeed, (Julian), following the example of the Babylonian Rhapsaces, doesn't hesitate to utter in unrestrained language his mocking remarks against the glory of God, and after tossing impious vociferations against our holy religion he quotes the wise ones of Greece unceasingly, crowns their condemnable opinions with all possible praise, desperate to attack the crowned teachings of the Church, to smile at the books of Moses and to put in the dock all these holy people; therefore we were fully justified in accumulating, before passing to the refutation, material which enables us to show in a clear way that the works of the greatest of all, Moses, were prior to those of the wise Greeks, and, moreover, that the Christian faith as it has been transmitted, appears incomparably superior to their dogmatic positions. It was thus, and not differently, that next books could avoid too long digressions and avoid appearing to deviate sometimes very far from the the subject. But enough now on this point. 2. It is now necessary to come to (Julian's) own book. We will reproduce his text word for word, and will oppose our own arguments to his lies in the appropriate order, because we realize that it is necessary to firmly neutralize them. But, as I said, from his open mouth without reserve he spreads every kind of calumny against our common Saviour Christ, and pours against him ill-sounding remarks: I will abstain from responding with similar details, and, advising the wise party to ignore that in his words which risks dirtying the spirit by simple contact, I will endeavour to combat this (method of) 'combat', by denouncing on all occasions his habit of scoffing which speaks wrongly and irrelevantly without ever being able to arrive at saying a true thing. It also should be known that in his first book he handles a great mass of ideas and does not cease turning and turning over the same arguments in every direction; some developments which are found at the beginning of his work, he also advances in the body of the book and at the end: he thus reveals a kind of disorder in the articulation of his discussion, and, fatally, those who want to argue against what he says seem constantly to be repeating themselves instead of finishing them once for all. We will thus divide his text according to an appropriate classification, we will gather his ideas by categories and will face each of them not on several occasions, but only once, the with appropriate explanations and following the rules of the art (of speaking). Thus, at the beginning of his book against us, he says: It is, I think, expedient to set forth to all mankind the reasons by which I was convinced that the fabrication of the Galilaeans is a fiction of men composed by wickedness. Though it has in it nothing divine, by making full use of that part of the soul which loves fable and is childish and foolish, it has induced men to believe that the monstrous tale is truth. 3. By 'Galilaeans', he means the Holy Apostles, I think, and by a 'fantastic account' the writings of Moses, the predictions of the holy saints and their declarations inspired by God. However, without his knowledge --- let us say rather: not without intervention of the divinity --- he has made this idea the basis of his own superstition! In fact there are two Galilees, one in Judaea, the other on the borders of the Phoenician country; and it is written indeed in the Gospels about our common Saviour Christ that it is while walking on the edge of the Sea of Galilee, of Lake Tiberias, that he recruited his disciples. However God said by means of one of the holy prophets: "What are you to me, Tyre and Sidon, and you Galilee, entirely populated with foreigners?" In the same way the divine Isaiah exclaims: "Country of Zabulon, land of Nephtalim, and all you others who live by the edge of the sea, Galilee of the Gentiles! The people sitting in shadow saw a great light..." So in Judaea, one cannot just imagine the presence of Galilaeans, since there are also all the Gentiles there: 'Galilee of the Gentiles', says Isaiah. It cannot well or clearly be seen which adversaries the book of Julian aims at in all suitability and veracity: is it us, or himself in company with the believers in the stupid superstition that he loves? Because this is also Galilaean! Well indeed, it can't be doubted for one moment that the direction of the expressions employed by Julian agrees with the nonsense of the Greeks. 4. Where indeed to find all such an apparatus of fables, those vain words, this tasteless and irresponsible jumble of fads of every kind, if not among them and them only, who, twisting their subtle inventions, try to give to falsehood the colours of truth? So strong, so widespread among them is the turpitude that the elite of their spirits, the men cracked to philosophize extremely appropriately on the world which surrounded them, have raised loud cries against the undivine transports of their poets, and affirmed openly that they should abandon their charlatanism. In fact, Plato does not approve those poems, i.e. the homeric poems, which display the gods and goddesses convicted of libidinous passions, abused by quite human cupidities, and in addition prone to tears, deploring the death of those of their blood and breaking out like pansies in 'Woe is me!' because they want to save someone from death and are unable to do so, humbling themselves on the contrary before the fates, and yielding to Destiny, apparently more powerful than the Master of the gods, he that they call 'supreme Zeus'! But I will not delay in saying all that I could still say on this subject; not wanting to appear to allow myself to be diverted from what is suitable, I will return to the point which my subject designates. 5. If there is a plot, it is a plot of the Greeks: it is they who undertook to use the fantastic to guarantee the truth, and not in all simplicity of spirit, but indeed with impious intentions and the satisfaction of wrongdoing! It is they who gathered against the inexpressible glory of all-powerful God this hateful 'fiction', which set up this 'deception', like some trap aimed at simple souls. They have in effect mislaid the whole earth by pretending that the sky and the elements in general were God. As the very wise Paul writes: "While calling themselves wise, they fell into madness, and altered the glory of imperishable God by giving him the appearance of perishable man, birds, quadrupeds, and animals." However, to run with his ideas, we will not throw against others the criticisms which he formulated and will indeed let them attack the Holy Apostles, even the very wise Moses himself and the holy prophets; but when he comes to the bar, will he clearly show what is this 'fiction implemented by malice', of what nature is this 'fantastic account' about which he speaks, in what consists the 'fondness for a fable, the puerile side' of the Christian religion! Did Moses write for us tales, when he professed one God by nature and in truth, unbegotten, eternal, imperishable, without quantity, invisible, immutable, imperceptible, God who is life and who gives life, who is science and power, creator, King and Lord of the universe? Did he deviate from the truth, the word of the holy prophets, who stick step by step to the doctrines of Moses? Will we find a teaching different in the holy Apostles? Certainly not! 6. And then, how can he affirm that the beliefs of Galilaeans do not have in them anything divine, that they are in addition hazardous fables, monstrous fictions? Who would refuse to admit that there can nothing better for men than to know clearly and without error the Craftsman and Lord of the world, one in nature and in truth? Our adversaries themselves, I know, would affirm that the most beautiful remarkable part of philosophy is contemplative philosophy: thanks to it, the spirits which their wisdom considers the best even to see go to great pains, and as much as is possible for men to do, to grasp the divine nature. Since he says that he himself is persuaded of this, would he teach us from where and from whom he obtains this certainty? Because finally it is not necessary that he flatters himself to be the only one with knowledge. If he was convinced of it himself, if that is enough for him to show without possible dispute — as at least he thinks and affirms --- that Christianity is not worth anything, I will not hesitate to say that this is pure drivel in him, and that he just amuses himself to attack us alone! We will not submit ourselves to such a hostile judge! If on the other hand he considers that the declarations of the critics against anyone must be founded in truth and without lies, then, that he does not say that this is just his conviction; he argues with facts! However it is indeed he himself, and not us, who he must hand over to justice for the invention of fables, and he is extremely likely to be convicted! What he said will persuade some of us: let us let him speak: 7. Now since I intend to treat of all their first dogmas, as they call them, I wish to say in the first place that if my readers desire to try to refute me they must proceed as if they were in a court of law and not drag in irrelevant matter, or, as the saying is, bring counter-charges until they have defended their own views. For thus it will be better and clearer if, when they wish to censure any views of mine, they undertake that as a separate task, but when they are defending themselves against my censure, they bring no counter-charges. So it is necessary for those who you put on trial to be dumb? You require that the defendant be condemned without being able to break silence, and, without saying a word about your arguments, agrees to confirm the charge against himself! However, to refuse us the right to say anything of your theses is the act of a man who fears the controversy and is not unaware of the unpleasant weakness of his position. If our man, in examining the Christian religion, does not approve it on all points and decrees the crown of the supreme honours to the Greek superstition, I admit that he treats both equally; but if he takes pleasure in the speeches which he allows against us and gives the palm to his erroneous designs while opposing to us, as higher than ours, the Greek religion, how can he ask us to keep silence on and not to make any allusion to this religion, when, in our desire to defend the cause of our own beliefs, it is of that subject precisely that we speak? 8. If, renouncing the right to attack what you write, I had adopted the intention to mention only Greek realities, I could affirm: "His book on this subject is acceptable, and remains within the limits of probability"; but when would we defend ourselves, when we make a point of answering each one of its declarations, how does he still have the right to reproach us for our efforts to plead the cause of our religion while exposing the infamous impiety of the Greeks? Colours can be seen more clearly when there is contrast. "The light is seen in darkness", it is written, and in the same way, I believe, the beauty attached to the virtues appears to simple souls only through the ugliness of their opposites. What inclines to me to give to the Good the palm of victory is the hideousness of the Evil: and for this reason (Julian) has indeed reason to fear the arguments of his own camp, and refuses shamefully the right to produce it on the day, going so far as to impose silence on those which he puts on trial in this lawsuit! Here now is how he opposes other objections to us: 9. It is worth while to recall in a few words whence and how we first arrived at a conception of God; next to compare what is said about the divine among the Hellenes and Hebrews; and finally to enquire of those who are neither Hellenes nor Jews, but belong to the sect of the Galilaeans, why they preferred the belief of the Jews to ours; and what, further, can be the reason why they do not even adhere to the Jewish beliefs but have abandoned them also and followed a way of their own. For they have not accepted a single admirable or important doctrine of those that are held either by us Hellenes or by the Hebrews who derived them from Moses; but from both religions they have gathered what has been engrafted like powers of evil, as it were, on these nations----atheism from the Jewish levity, and a sordid and slovenly way of living from our indolence and vulgarity; and they desire that this should be called the noblest worship of the gods. The same man who poured out his smear against us to the readers, that if they wanted to contradict him, they must "must proceed as if they were in a court of law and not drag in irrelevant matter, or, as the saying is, bring counter-charges" promptly sets himself to compare the views of the Greeks and the Hebrews on the divine! But this technique of comparing and opposing, at what does it aim? What can be Julian's aim, when he brings together the disagreements between the Hebraic or Christian beliefs and the Greek ones? 10. We can't pretend that he is giving up his accusation, and his need to smear, in order to submit himself to the equitable judgement of his readers, so far as to want to take from them the definition of the best and the worst! In his position, it seems, the only way to find partisans for his ideas about the divinity is to abuse the Christian religion by giving it the worst of it in a confrontation with Greek religion. But such a defeat is impossible for those who know the weakness of error and the force of truth. But we must be on our guard: in telling the legislators to impose silence on us, and to prohibit the least remark about his own cause when we speak about ours, he falls victim to his own prohibitions. Since he cross-examines us, and wants to know what on earth made us give up the Greek religion for that of the Hebrews, well then, let's ask him back the same question! "Why have you yourself given up the Christian religion, and run away from the truth to embrace a lie? Why did you stupidly give preference to the most appalling superstition -- I mean that of idol-worshippers -- over a precise and certain teaching, and then think that you decided well when you have in fact drawn on yourself the final infamy? Does he want to know the real reason which made us give the Greek religion in order to hold in honour that of the Hebrews? We will borrow his own words to reply to him. Here's what he actually writes: 11. Now it is true that the Greeks invented their myths about the gods, incredible and monstrous stories. For they said that Kronos swallowed his children and then vomited them forth; and they even told of lawless unions, how Zeus had intercourse with his mother, and after having a child by her, married his own daughter, or rather did not even marry her, but simply deflowered her and then handed her over in marriage to another. Then too there is the legend that Dionysus was rent asunder and his limbs joined together again.... This is the sort of thing described in the myths of the Greeks! What a defense to present! So what's the point of making a lot of noise and pretending to correct us when we have almost kicked out of existence the babbling of the Greeks, so ugly and improbable, and accorded preference to the truth? The divine Moses and after him the chorus of the holy prophets, the Apostles and the Evangelists, they sing the glory of God, one by nature and in truth; they invite us to imitate them by ripping away the myths from ourselves --- all the unbelievable forms and sleazy ideas -- and involving us in a way of life which attracts admiration. Nothing of what they say is invented, nothing in their ideas demands an incredible explanation. It is a fact that our beliefs agree with the preaching of Moses and with those of the holy prophets, and that the direction of the evangelical and apostolic teaching coincides with the ideas of our predecessors: at the proper time we will give some plain proofs of this. 12. But since (Julian) asserts -- on what head I don't know! ... -- that there is nothing serious or useful in our beliefs, well! let him prove it! Surely he isn't going to leave his assertion bare and without proof? Because anyway, how can there NOT be something serious in our beliefs? Don't we find precision and meticulousness in how Christians talk about God and the creation of the world? Don't the holy scriptures supply us with impeccable and irreproachable morality? Moreover, how can we not be struck by this obvious truth, that no other way, to my knowledge, is able to rightly address the supreme philosophy? Whether it is contemplative or even practical, our philosophical reflection can claim every kind of praise, and the followers of Greek wisdom themselves admire it. It is thus not true that "the Hebraic doctrines taught us atheism" -- that's exactly what he wrote! --- what is true to say, is that the Scripture inspired by God has enabled us to condemn Greek ignorance. Moreover atheism is rather more a description of their beliefs, which do not know the God who is one by nature and in truth: how isn't this evidence on both sides? He also claims that "we took with Greek unconcern to a way of dissolute and nonchalant life", by calling our custom to eat of all without prohibition and to abstain from no food the "careless insouciance" of the Greeks. So these people present as the supreme act of piety, and compare it to the perfection of all virtues, the refusal to consume this or that food! 13. Well! how can they make these things the criterion of purity? Everything comes from God; is perforce good which has its Being from kindness, and he that is most holy and pure could not have created anything that would soil us. And in fact what effect could a food have on those who consume it? What sort of stain could it introduce in them? I believe that what we need to condemn is that which is likely to contaminate someone -- and, very generally, the things that can produce such an effect are the things that we must condemn; adulteries, fornications, scandalmongerings, lies, smears, greed, etc. But the Greeks -- who didn't take any notice of vice of this sort, however -- affect temperance at the table, sometimes renouncing this meat or that, without denying themselves any extravagance! Further, they enjoy honouring sovereign Zeus by voluntarily giving themselves the same appetites as his, and they honour the sovereignty of Aphrodite. THE CREATION OF THE WORLD (Julian) reproaches us for innumerable things, but mainly he has a go at the most wise Moses, by attacking his writings without moderation. He affirms that when composing the book about the creation of the world, everything he said was untrue and that he was satisfied just to gather old fairystories, that he paid no attention to things that seemed to deserve full attention, and finally that he just wrote poor centos, while imagining that he was saying things which were wise and good to hear. Yet Julian is paralysed with amazement before the ideas of the learned Greeks in this field, and, more than very other, he crowns with acclamations and applause the doctrines of Plato. 14. He throws about insults immoderately, but still let's pass over that for the moment! On the other hand, I will try to establish, as much as I can, that he is badly wrong to take up such grand airs in connection with Greek chatterings. It is necessary, I believe, to present afresh, by extracting them from the works of the Greeks, the various doctrines which they have judged good to profess about the creation of the world, and to oppose the cosmogony of Moses to them: the readers will thus see the verbose subtlety and drivel of these thinkers, as well as the pure source of truth which is in the writings of Moses. Plutarch, who had some fame in his own time, speaks thus about the universe in book 2 of his collection of Theories on Nature: "Pythagoras was the first to name the mass of the universe the 'Cosmos', according to the order which rules in it. Thales and those who hold his doctrines profess that the universe is unique; Democritus, Epicurus and his master Metrodorus say that there is an infinity of worlds within infinity, completely by chance; Empedocles that the circle of the sun defines the limits of the cosmos; Seleucus believes in an unlimited universe, while for Diogenes the Whole is infinite, but the universe is limited. The Stoics set out a difference between the Whole and the universe: the Whole is that which includes the infinite vacuum, while the universe is the cosmos without the vacuum - so that the universe and the cosmos are one and the same thing." 15. Later the same author continues thus about the form of the cosmos: "The Stoics believe that it is spherical, others conical, others still ovoid. Epicurus opines that some worlds are spherical, and others of a different shape." On the question of knowing if the universe has or not a soul, Plutarch expresses himself thus, again by giving the theories of the Greek philosophers: "In general all have claimed that the universe has a soul and is governed by providence; but Democritus, Epicurus and those who hold to ideas about the atoms and the vacuum deny it a soul and assert that it is governed not by providence but by an irrational nature. For Aristotle, it is completely excluded that the universe has a soul, reason or thought, or even that it is governed by providence: in fact there are actually celestial regions with these qualities, because they contain spheres endowed with soul and life, while the regions close to the ground are stripped of it; they take part in an established order, but by accident and not by nature." Enough on this chapter. But as these thinkers had it in mind to work out at the end of it all whether the cosmos was or was not perishable by nature, they also gave their conclusions on this point: Pythagoras and the stoics held that the universe, created by God, was however corruptible insofar as its own nature went; indeed, perceptible by the senses because likewise corporeal, it was nevertheless to be preserved from destruction thanks to providence and to the safeguard exerted by God. For Epicurus, the universe is perishable because it is also subjected to birth, like an animal or a plant. For Xenophanes, it has no birth but is eternal and imperishable. Aristotle regards the sublunary part of the universe as subjected to external influences: it is in these areas that terrestrial things are perishable. 16. Readers, now you have heard and understood what drivel all this is! Opposing their opinions one to another, vociferating this or that, mixed up anyhow, without nuances, self-reflection, just at their pleasure; how can this avoid the impression that they are just guessing at the truth rather than knowing it? Indeed, some prefer just one universe, others a plurality; some of them believe that this universe is subject to creation, but others are opposed totally to this and opine on the contrary that the universe is imperishable and was not created; some say it is governed by a divine providence, others do without providence and allot the harmonious movements of the elements to automatic mechanisms and accidents; some say that the universe has a soul, others deny that it has a soul or a spirit. In short you could imagine that their theories on each detail are just tossed together, like mixed drinks! But our man has put Plato apart from the others, and he especially likes to linger over his doctrines. However I will say at once that Plato and Pythagoras offer more reasonable ideas about God and the cosmos than the others, because they collected their teaching or rather their knowledge during their stays in Egypt, where the very wise Moses is held in great regard, and where his doctrines are held in reverence and admiration. It is however claimed that Plato contradicted himself in his opinions, and that Aristotle, who was his disciple, not chose to adhere to the ideas of his Master, but to attack him thoroughly and to contradict him! Porphyry tells us that in expressing his ideas on the sky, Plato professed that the material part of it was composed of the four elements, the bond between them being a soul. "Also," Porphyry continues, "it is still today of a mixed nature, and it has received its name by misuse of terminology". 17. Porphyry speaks here, I believe, as an etymologist, and affirms that the sky is called 'ouranos' because it is visible [in Greek: 'oratos']: i.e. the sky was so-called because it is 'seen'. Aristotle had a different opinion on this subject ---- and how could he not, since he does not regard the sky as a compound, still less containing four elements, but considers it like a fifth type of body, independent of the first four and without anything in common with them? Plato himself, professes that the world has a soul and that it is a living being endowed with intelligence; he subordinates it to providence. But his disciple, to return to him, did not think so. He rejects completely the idea that the universe has a soul, is intelligent, or is governed by providence. Under one scheme, it is defined as created and corruptible by nature at least; the other treats the idea of birth as ignorant, and says on the contrary that it is imperishable and uncreated. Another divergence: the skilful and illustrious Plato defines three principles of Everything: God, matter and Idea; God is a creator, matter is substance, Idea is the model of any thing created. Aristotle, once again, is opposed to him, without any point of agreement. To start with, he refuses to regard Idea as a principle, in his thought and writings, and supposes two principles: God and matter. Still let us say that if Plato supports the theory that there are three principles which make up Everything, God, matter and Idea, he also introduces a fourth which he names the 'universal soul'. Moreover, after having said that the matter is uncreated, he claims that it is thereafter subjected to creation; as for the definition of Idea, after having presented it as a substance itself, he starts to battle against his own theories, since he affirms that it exists in the thought of God, and that it thus does not have a separate existence, i.e. subsistence. 18. So which one do we give our approval to, when we seek the truth, when we seek to start along on the irreproachable way from which every error is banished? Which of the thinkers quoted can we declare innocent of the wrong of telling a lie? Which do we reward as not having stumbled in some detail? Or rather how can we grant a right to teach others, to those who have traveled so far from the truth that they disagree not only with each other but even with themselves? The very wise Julian approves and admires this state of affairs! He scoffs at the writings of Moses and, throwing reason aside, he dares to oppose those of Plato to them, while speaking as follows: At this point of our study, if you please, we will compare the utterance of Plato. Observe then what this philosopher says about the creator, and what words he makes him speak at the time of the generation of the universe, in order that we may compare the cosmogony of Plato with that of Moses. Thus we can perceive who was the better and who more worthy of God, Plato the idolater, or he of whom the Scripture says that God spoke with him face to face: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters. And God called the firmament Heaven. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass for fodder, and the fruit tree yielding fruit. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven that they may be for a light upon the earth. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to rule over the day and over the night." 19. In all this, you observe, Moses does not say that the deep was created by God, or the darkness or the waters. And yet, after saying concerning light that God ordered it to be, and it was, surely he ought to have gone on to speak of night also, and the deep and the waters. But of them he says not a word to imply that they were not already existing at all, though he often mentions them. Furthermore, he does not mention the birth or creation of the angels or in what manner they were brought into being, but deals only with the heavenly and earthly bodies. It follows that, according to Moses, God is the creator of nothing that is incorporeal, but is only the disposer of matter that already existed. For the words, "And the earth was invisible and without form" can only mean that he regards the wet and dry substance as the original matter and that he introduces God as the disposer of this matter. About Moses there might be many things to say and lengthy expositions made to he who wants to safeguard our reverence for him. He heard God say to him without ambiguity, "I know you out of all humanity, and you have found grace in my eyes!" The manifold virtue that was in him, and the power of the miracles that he worked in Egypt, make a shining demonstration. Indeed he was shown submitted to God almighty, and assisted him in the revolt which He brought about in his servants against the blindness of the Egyptians. What kind of man Plato was, even in the absence of direct testimony, is proclaimed enough by his passage from Athens in Sicily. It is claimed that, not appreciating his flatteries, Dionysius sold him, inflicting on him, as if he wasn't a free man, the most suitable punishment for a slave. But let us give up this argument for a moment, to return to the main subject. 20. The divine Moses does not appear before our eyes as one who composed doubtful stories, nor one who launched himself out on this road from simple ambition. He had in mind primarily to contribute to making lives led better. And in fact he did not attempt to discourse subtly on the nature of the things, by speaking about what the first principles are named, or about the elements which proceed from it; these things are, in my opinion, too obscure, and inaccessible to some minds. His goal was to form the spirits of his contemporaries with the doctrines of the truth: because they were being misled and had taken to worshipping each according to his imagination. Their extreme ignorance made them ignore the one God, God by nature, and to worship his creations. Some thought that the sky was god, others the disc of the sun; there were even some wretched enough to allot the glory of the supreme nature to the moon, the stars, the earth, to plants, to the watery element, birds, or to brute animals! They had come to this, and such a terrible sickness had affected all the inhabitants of the earth, when Moses came to their help and revealed himself as the initiator into knowledge of great value for all. He proclaimed clearly that there exists by nature only one Creator of the universe, and radically distinguished Him from all other realities which He had merely brought into being and existence. Considering what was useful, and as clearly as possible, neglecting every excessively subtle point, he restricted himself to deal only with that which was strictly essential. 21. How was it useful to him to say what is the nature of the waters, and how they were present at the beginning, or to probe the deeps and the nature of the heavens, to detour into the mode of existence of the angels? It would be difficult for anyone to cover such subjects, which I think that no one understands anyway! Would anyone even be able to do it (thanks to a knowledge lent by God, who had been there tell him), or been able to understand a so subtle speech - or rather one so inaccessible to the spirit? In fact, we find among men, at the time when the book of the very wise Moses was written, an ignorance which exceeds even that of the Greeks. That which should have made possible for those people to understand fully the glory of God was lost, it is obvious from the account, in the pit of the deepest stupidity. As the Scripture inspired by God says, the men of that time should have had some idea of the Creator and maker of the universe from the beauty of things created. But they reached such a degree of wrong thinking that the things that should have led them to the knowledge of the truth shows that they were disposed instead to follow a lie. The very wise Paul bears a witness worthy of trust to this idea by writing, "Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their linking and their senseless minds were darkened." 22. This declaration could touch those who invented the vulgar superstitions, coarse and completely unreasonable; the men, for example, to which as I said the book of Moses was addressed. They are revealed as filled up full of stupidity, as we will realize easily by studying the body of doctrines of their successors. Plutarch, an extremely subtle man, wrote on this subject in book I of his collection of Theories on nature: "See from where they drew their idea of God: unceasingly the sun, the moon and the other stars, following courses which pass under the earth, rise with always the same colors and identical dimensions, at the same places." And further in the same book: "The concept of God is defined thus: an intelligent and fiery breath, lacking form but changing at will and making themselves resemble any thing. Men, in the beginning, conceived an idea like this starting from the beauty of the spectacle which they had before their eyes, because no beautiful thing is born randomly and fortuitously; it needs art to create it!" I will add to this quotation that which Hermes Trismegistes has written To his spirit (that's the title of the book): "Thus, do you say, God is invisible? What a heap of blasphemies! Who is more visible than Him? If He created, it is so that this is seen in everything. The excellence of God, his virtue, it is to be visible in everything!" 23. We will find agreement on this point from the accuser of our pious religion, Julian! He professes that the knowledge of God is not taught, that man acquires it by himself; here what he writes: Our first proof that this is not learned, that it is innate to mankind is the devotion to the divine, a general characteristic of mankind, in private life and in public life, in the individual and in the community. In fact we have faith in something divine, however vague. But to give specific details on this something is a difficult thing for anyone, and even those who know it cannot do so fully. To this idea, common to all mankind, is added another: we all have a nature so dependent on the heavens and the gods that are seen there that, even if someone imagines a different god to ours, he always assigns him the heavens as his residence: it is not that he banishes him from earth; but he so to speak establishes the King of the All in the heavens as in the most honourable place of all, and conceives of him as overseeing from there the affairs of this world. So we see how those pagans who can't endure the crasser errors (worthy of charlatans, and if I might say so, of serfs) and who have abandoned the popular way of looking at things, have not been entirely deprived of the true concept of God. They have worked out what must be the superiority of power of Him who can bring so vast and wonderful a creation under the control of harmonious laws. 24. As for the rest under discussion here, they didn't recognise God through his creation. They were lured away, losing all human common sense. Not content just to worship the heavens, the earth, the moon and the others stars, they also installed in sacred enclosures representations (of them) in varied forms. They engraved there the silhouettes, not only of men, but even of unintelligent animals, of birds and other beasts, and they gave these idols the titles of 'gods' and 'saviours'! How can we not admire the wisdom of Moses? He concealed from the men of that time everything that was complicated, deep, difficult to assimilate, in order to reveal to them instead what would enable them to recover sane ideas, and something which had the virtue to put them on the right road to an irreproachable teaching -- I mean a teaching of an all-powerful God. In the same way we would congratulate for very good reasons the schoolmaster who puts himself at the intellectual level of his pupils, in order to lead them by the hand, step by step, towards discovering sacred truths, without putting to them, at the very beginning, any too elaborate ideas, or any very hard to grasp. At the same time we would refuse to recognise Moses as worthy of praise, who acted in the same way? But Julian, if Moses doesn't seem to you to have said anything worth hearing, do you want us to look at the teaching which is dearest to you? Let's see rely as best we can on the meticulous Theogony of Hesiod! 25. This poet indeed pretends to hear the voice of the gods and makes as if he were possessed by the Muses (as if that were a significant or desirable thing!) "Tell me (he writes) how at first the gods and the earth were born, The rivers, the infinite sea which swells and foams, The sparklings stars, and the immense sky over all." Further, he tells of the birth of chaos and night, without saying how it occurred: "First the earth gave birth to the starry sky, its equal, Able to entirely cover it..." After revealing that the sky was the son of the earth, he adds that the latter, married to the sky, gave birth to the seas, then "Koeos, Krios, Hyperion, Japet... " and also Theia, Rheia, Themis and Mnemosyne. He adds Phoebus to this list, 'golden-crowned', as he calls him, then Tethys. In his opinion, the last of all these children was Kronos. On top of this he piles up a complete hotchpotch of whimsical and incoherent stories. Perhaps Julian will claim that Hesiod has made up all these fairy-tales as a poet does: in fact maybe he blushes at the fables of Hesiod! But then why did these take some of it from the hierophant Moses, who composed a clear and accurate work, based on real facts? In fact he affirmed that God created the sky and the earth, the sun and the moon, the stars, light, animals which fly and those which swim, various brute beasts, the splendour of vegetation, edible fruit and the grass of the meadows. 26. See how the text of Moses very wisely cuts short the error which the ancients fell into: don't they name the heavens Zeus, the earth Demeter, the sun Apollo, and the moon 'the noisy goddess with the rod of gold', i.e. Artemis? In a word, allotting according to their imagination a share of glory to each creature of God, they adored these creatures as divinities. However the description made by Moses of the creation of the world was clear, easily comprehensible, without anything lacking in its great exactitude. And that's what we're going to have to show. "In the beginning," he writes, "God created the heavens and the earth." So he denies that matter shared with God the time before the beginning, eternity; or that it was uncreated, as some say. He doesn't present something that didn't exist at one time as coinciding with and coexistant with the eternal; he doesn't confuse the temporary, something which was brought into existence with difficulty, with that which is from time immemorial; something that changes to something which is always itself; nor something which is corruptible with that which is incorruptible! On the contrary, he makes creation happen in a moment, the principle that refers to things brought into existence, because starting from nothing it was brought to be what it is according to the divine will. What he certainly does not say, is that matter existed already, had already been invented, and that God limited himself to being its director and workman, giving form to what was amorphous, and only imposing on matter different qualities, dimensions and volumes. On the contrary he says that, thanks to a secret and unutterable power, in the beginning God brought into being what was not and did not exist in any way whatever! 27. As for the way in which he made creation happen, we do not have the means to say. I affirm that it is beyond any way of expression known to us: how indeed could what exceeds understanding be explained? In my opinion, the approach imagined by the supreme Being and the way that leads to an understanding of his enterprise will be always as inaccessible to our human condition as we are by nature lower than this Being himself. When Moses said, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth", understand that he condenses and summarizes in some way all the details in a single word, when he describes the genesis of all creation. Then, he attempts to say somehow how this creation was put in order and how all the things created were assigned the role in life which they have. Moses also states that that God created through the all-powerful Word: in fact his creator-Word of the universe is God himself and proceeds from God by nature. "God said," Moses continues, "Let there be a firmament!" and this firmament instantaneously becomes real by the operation of the Word, and God gives it the name of 'heaven'. "God said: Let the dry land appear!" and the waters gather in a single body. God said moreover: 'Let the sun be!' and it was; and so for the moon, the stars, the day, the terrestrial and aquatic animals, and the birds. But by nature the elements themselves cannot draw from their own resources the possibility of escaping corruption, on the contrary, they need the hand of He that maintains them in good condition: this is the sense of the words of Moses: "the breath of God was moving over the waters." Indeed the breath of God vivifies anything, because He is life also by nature, as He proceeds from the life of the Father; everything needs Him, and there is no other means for anything to obtain existence in order to be what it is. 28. So contemplate, as I have just said, the firmament firmly established by the Word and the firm ground emerging after the gathering of the waters in a single body; contemplate the green earth full of grass and trees, and the vital forces included in them which makes possible for them to conceal their transitory nature with the virtue of eternity, to last and remain; see the luminaries of the firmament, created by God only for the purpose of lighting what is on earth, to mark the moments of time, the days, the years! Moses adds that the earth accepted the order to give rise to the brute animals, the Creator on his side distributing to each its form, size and conditions of existence. And when everything in the world had finally been created, when nothing for lacking to supply the needs of man, then, and only then, did the Creator begin to think of the way in which He was going to realise man himself. Because the creation of man, unlike the other creative acts, could not be improvised. The supreme being, in the conception of some and actually, is just grandeur and perfection -- some even say that it is the loss of any spirit, any language, any admiration: however He decided to form the animal in His own image, as much as could be made. Also, having every reason to ensure that this, which must be in His image and resemblance, namely man, did not appear weak, contemptible or different enough from the other animals, He chose to create him only after serious reflection. 29. However, it will be said without inaccuracy, that nothing could escape the divine spirit, since He knows everything indeed before it is born; why then did God reflect, even though He knew in advance the nature of man? The incomparable Moses, as I said, affirms that it was in conformity with the divine economy that man was to some extent honoured by the deliberation of the Creator; he shows that his creation was not done quite simply, might one say, not just like any other: everything happens as if God had taken a particular care of this action. The expression is undoubtedly forced --- but I grant that it appears quite sensible; we affirm that the man is most important of the animals, and was made to resemble He that created him. The irresistible will of God brought into existence the whole of creation: it is not difficult, I think, to convince ourselves of this, even if we only read what Julian's Masters of Superstition wrote. All of them believed that it was right to think and say that everything was somehow created by God, spiritual realities or physical realities, invisible things or visible things. They were unanimous in confessing that everything is in the hands of the King and Lord of the universe; Plato even ascribes these words to him: "Gods of the gods, works of which I am the Creator and the Father..." [Extract from the Timaeus; see ch. 33 below]. But we have already quoted the Greeks on this point, and I want to avoid repetition. I will however mention the words of Hermes Trismegistus in his book To Asclepius. 30. This says: "Osiris exclaimed: Then, O very great Good Genius, how did all the earth appear? And the great Good Genius answered: According to a preconceived plan and, as I said, by draining; the body of water received from the Lord the order to draw itself together, the whole earth appeared, muddy and shaken by tremors; the sun then began to shine, spreading its heat without pause, and made the earth dry, which stood within water, surrounded by water." Another passage reads: "the Creator and Lord of the universe shouted: Let the earth be, let a firmament appear! and all at once the earth was, the first element of creation. " So much for the earth; about the sun Hermes speaks as follows: "Osiris said: Thrice great Good Genius, from where did this large sun appear? and the other answered: Osiris, do you wish us to relate the birth of the sun, the way in which it appeared? It appeared by the providence of the supreme Master! The creation of the sun by the supreme Master was done by the operation of his holy and creative Word." In a similar way, Hermes writes in book I of his Detailed Commentary to Tat: "the Lord of the universe shouted at once by his holy, spiritual and creative Word: Let the sun be! and, at the very moment he said it, the fire which proceeds from an ascended nature --- I understand by this, the unmixed fire, the brightest, most effective and fertile that may be --- was attracted to Nature thanks to the breath which animated it, and was gathered by his care towards the high parts, far from water." 31. Everything was created on the orders of God and by the operation of the creative Word: that, man must think, and it is in conformity with the truth to say it. But how, and by what means it was so, God alone knows! God distributes to each thing created this or that type of being according to His good pleasure. He determines the mode of existence of each. To be convinced of this, it is only necessary to listen to Moses: "Let there be a firmament! and it was so", and again: "Let the waters gather in one place and let the dry ground appear!" Such formulas determine the exact nature of each thing which is brought into being. However, once again, Hermes Trismegistus the Greek raises the subject; he puts into his work God saying to the creatures: "I will impose to you as an obligation, you who are subject to me, this commandment which was given to you by my Word; make it your law!" Indeed, as I have just said it, the Creator allotted a natural law to each creature, and those appear, at the discretion of God, to have received some arbitrary type of existence, or to have not received it. This would be the direct and sincere way to present things, but Julian is dazzled beyond reason by the views of Plato and writes: Now hear what Plato says about the universe : "Now the whole heaven or the universe,----or whatever other name would be most acceptable to it, so let it be named by us,----did it exist eternally, having no beginning, or did it come into being, and had some beginning? It has come into being, because it can be seen and handled and has a body. All such things are things we can touch, and such things can be understood by thought based on using our senses." And further on "So, according to reason and probability, we must say that this universe is an animal possessing a soul and intelligence, and in very truth, it owes its beginning to the providence of God." 32. We see then clearly what he -- who, for Julian is the "divine and very wise Plato" -- says: the whole world -- his words -- is submitted to begin sometime, to have a beginning. It can be handled, seen, and has a body, and can be understood by thought based on using our senses, and was created by the providence of God! Julian depends entirely on Platonic tricks of speech, and he spins crowns of praise unceasingly to Plato. But he was mistaken just like Plato; none of his ideas is beyond criticism, and it could be said that he turns around with any wind. We'll go without delay and highlight an example, thanks to a new quotation of his, here: Let us compare one thing with another, and no more: what kind of creation does the God of Moses do, what kind that of Plato? "God said: Let us create man in our image and our resemblance; and to have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the animals, and of all the earth, and all the animals which walk on the earth. And God created man, He created him in the image of God; male and female He created them, and God blesses them, saying: Grow and multiply, fill up the ground, bring it under control, rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, over all the beasts and all the earth." 33. Listen now to the speech which Plato gives to the Creator of the universe: "Gods of the gods, the works of which I am the Creator and Father will be indissoluble as long as it be my will; because if all that was made can be unmake, to want to unmake what was well arranged and which is in good condition is the deed of the malicious! Also, since you were created, let you be neither immortal nor very indestructible: however, you will not be destroyed, you will not fall under the blow of a mortal destiny, since your lot is to depend on my will, a bond stronger and more sovereign still than those which bound you to your birth. However learn the instructions that I give you. There remain still three mortal races to be created; as long as they do not exist, the heavens will be imperfect, because it will not contain all the races of living beings. However, if I created them myself and communicated life to them, they would be like gods; so in order that they are just mortals and that this All is truly the All, devote yourselves according to your nature to the creation of living beings, by imitating my power as I showed it at the time of your creation. And, those of them whom it is advisable for them to bear the same name as the immortals, which is called 'divine' and which guides those among them who always agree to obey justice, and to you others, I will give you the seed and the principle. For the remainder, mixing the mortal with the immortal, manufacture and generate living beings, give them food to make them grow, and at their death receive them back again!" 34. So this brave man, full of ardour in his attacks against us, derides the creation of man --- i.e. that which the incomparable Moses has revealed --- and regards as negligible the idea that human nature is created with the image and resemblance of God! But what sensible person would disagree that this is one of those ideas which best constitute an embellishment? Is there anything better than to say that we are marked with the divine image? And don't we affirm that the divine substance is that which is most elevated, most sublime in the refulgence of its inexpressible glory, that this truly constitutes the whole of the forms and beauties of virtue? Who would not be struck with the obviousness of what I have just said? So why does Julian sneer at such exceptional realities? Why does he deride that right to dominate the universe with which the thinking and reasoning animal, the one most similar to God of all those which populate the earth, i.e. man, was honoured? Moreover nature itself agrees with the accounts of Moses; but Julian makes no argument from probabilities, and purely and simply denies this view of things, holding only to the words of Plato! He also expresses his admiration, and that in a quite ill-considered way, before the harangue which the philosopher made up, I don't know how, and in which the supreme God is supposed to address himself to created 'divinities' who do not deserve such a name. 35. It is necessary, I think, also to answer him on this point. If Plato is inventing some fiction and, as is the habit of poets, lends to the character of God the words which he considers appropriate to him, he badly missed the mark, and we could sharply scold him for not knowing how to handle a prosopopy appropriately! If on the other hand he claims to have heard the voice of God, then to hell with his drivel! It is impious to claim that God the master of the universe allowed false divinities to share a glory which is his, and his alone, since He said: "I will not give my glory to another, nor my virtues to graven images!" Come! in few wordslet's oppose the truth to the writings of Plato, as follows. I wish indeed that we could agree that the spiritual powers On High, born of God, were honoured with the name of 'god', since we say that there are in heaven those who bear the names of 'gods' and 'lords'; and besides we ourselves received the honour of such a title, when God spoke thus to us: "I said: You are gods, and you are all the sons of the Almighty." But, in this case, there is an explanation which is essential, and this declaration of God on this subject could be well the most obvious proof of his benevolence. In fact, when the Creator of the world had made the thinking and reasonable creature, according to His own image and His own semblance, in His great kindness He honoured it with the name of 'god': and there was nothing wrong with this, since we also are accustomed to giving, say for example to a portrait of a man, this same name of 'man'! 36. Therefore the thinking and reasonable creature, because God holds it in greater regard than those lacking reason and thought, seems to have received in part a higher glory since the denomination of 'god' haloed it with gold; in any case, absolutely no other creature was named 'god'. In fact, like the universe, the sky is not a living being in the true sense of the expression, it is not even endowed with a soul. Even if none of our writers went so far as to guarantee these positions, it would be enough to support them, in the absence of others considered 'sages', to refer to the disciple of Plato in person, Aristotle. This last said, as we have already affirmed, that the universe is in no way endowed with a soul, nor reason, nor thought. In these cirumstances, the force of truth has prevented Julian from claiming that the universe --- or the Whole, as it could be, to employ the proper term of Plato --- is endowed at all with a soul or even thought, since there are in his camp, as I said, a group of those who touch him more closely on this point than his most resolute contradictors! It is not likely that God gave the mission of creation to gods completely stripped of soul or thought: this arises from the nature of the problem itself, if it is subjected to suitable examination. Who can imagine the Creator of the world entrusting to other divinities the creation of the three races? Would one speak of hesitation on his side, or of total contempt for our destiny? Such attitudes are in my opinion completely foreign to the supreme Essence! 37. Because, if the Creator is good, how could he express hesitation towards some task? "It was --- Plato also affirms this --- actually a kindness; however a good being does not nourish ill will towards nothing." As for claiming that God showed scorn, that would amount to allotting vanity and attributing arrogance to Him. However, how could he allow himself to reign over beings whom he judged as unworthy for him to create? Or how is it that he takes pleasure from our worship if he couldn't be bothered to create us in the first place? That He demands that we honour Him, that He requires obedience and understands that human nature is like his in every kind of virtue, it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to bring a thousand veracious testimonies drawn from the inspired Scripture. But as Julian grants especially his confidence to those of his own kind, I recall that Porphyry wrote in book II of his work On Abstinence from animal flesh: "Let us also therefore sacrifice, but let us sacrifice as appropriate, to God who rules the whole universe, as a sage has said. No material offerings, no clouds of incense, no formulas of consecration! Because there is no material body which does not appear from the start impure with respect to the immaterial one. Therefore the word itself, when it passes by words, is inappropriate for God, nor the interior word, when soiled by the evil of the soul: let us adore him through the purity of silence, the purity of thoughts which we form on him! Thus uniting ourselves to God and assimilating ourselves to him, we must offer to him the holy sacrifice of our intellect, which will be at the same time a hymn to his glory and the path of our safety. However it is in the absence of passions and the contemplation of God that achieves this sacrifice." 38. So God wants us to honour him, and that by the holiness of our life, we will conform ourselves to him on the spiritual level, by engraving his beauty in our souls. But then, tell me Julian, how can he demand this attitude of us, if he has almost abandoned us to other creators, and stripped us of the privilege of being made by him which he gave to all other creatures? What leads him to provide for things here below if they are, as Plato says, given as playthings to other divinities? Because he exercises his providence, and his care and benevolence extend to the smallest things; to learn this we can listen to one who knew God as his father: "Are not two sparrows sold for an as? However not one of them will fall to the ground without the consent of our Father." Perhaps Julian will declare the formula inadmissible because false --- because he contorts himself furiously against God! --- but will this receive a good reception from people of his group, I mean people as deceived as him? Thus Alexander, the disciple of Aristotle, has written in his treatise On Providence: "To say that God refuses to grant his providence to things here below, is to go resolutely against the concept of God: because one needs a certain ill will and a nature completely perverted not to do good when one can do it; both one and the other ideas are foreign to God, in him is found neither both nor either of them. So it remains that God can and will exercise his providence on the things here below; however it is obvious that he exercises this providence if he can and wishes to do so. Nothing then, among things fortuitious, could in good logic exist without the divine decision and will." 39. Some claim that Plato himself shared this thesis, and it is public knowledge that Zeno of Citium and the Stoics assert it. So from their testimony it results that human things are the object of providence on the part of the Almighty, the single and natural God of the universe. --- "And then, will someone say, what can we conclude from that?" --- well, it is appropriate for a God, exercising of his own wish his providence, not to deprive the human race of his most precious gift, which is to be created by Him, and not to see the job allotted to creators themselves created and which are divine only in name and not by any other measure --- if it is true that it will always be repugnant to the divine glory to allow others the power to create and invite nothing-beings to do it. Because it is impious to claim that the appropriate and privileged character of the divine and unutterable nature can belong naturally to such or such of the creatures which it created. In fact these features are indeed appropriate only to the divine nature and to it alone, and display its glory to a supreme degree. Inaccessible to a creature --- I mentioned this above --- are the exclusive privileges of being single and supreme, and we affirm that one of these privileges is to be able to act as creator and to bring beings from nothing into existence. Under these conditions, how could a nature resulting from birth and creation, destined inevitably for corruption by the same laws which are its being, hold the active role of God? 40. In fact, if to create is regarded as a form of knowledge in God, one cannot present as irrational the gift of the creative capacity made by God to his creature: doesn't it sometimes happen to us that we create things starting from something already made, while using suitable know-how? If on the other hand, as I said, the fact of creating in the way that God does constitutes an ability and capacity pertaining only to an exceptional nature, and exceeds the measure of a creature, why do those people belittle the privilege of the supreme nature, and grant according to their good pleasure to beings created and promised to corruption? After which, persuaded that they have in their heads an idea of genius, they denature instead the words of God, by claiming that the Uncreated has confided to created beings the power to bring into existence what is specific to him only. --- OK, they say, but then it follows that a thing created by God should be stronger than death and corruption! --- Thus, friends, it is from jealousy towards certain beings that the Creator refused to give them the best part, that on the contrary He condemned them to a worse, one could say, by not being willing to create them! Apparently, He has avoided the fate which prohibited Him from creating mortal beings --- perhaps even He was unaware of this fate completely? If they claim that God was in ignorance, the creature knows more than Him: the creators, they affirm themselves, were perishable beings! If on the other hand, giving up this position, they accept that God knew, how then would a good being refuse to do what he knows to be good? Because in the end it is quite true that the immortal one is preferable to the mortal! [To be continued] This text was transcribed by Roger Pearse, Ipswich, UK, 2006, 2007. All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely. |Early Church Fathers - Additional Texts|

ARC serves as an educational foundation within the community ARC dedicates on-going exhibition space to community groups working with under-served populations or individuals that use art primarily as a means of self-expression and/or healing. A forum is created to generate cultural, social and political awareness vis-à-vis artwork and ideas that would otherwise go unnoticed by the general viewing public. For the last ten years, ARC members have been working with a local residence for women survivors of domestic violence and their children. The results of our on-going creative expression workshops culminate in an annual exhibition of the women’s work in Special Events at ARC Gallery. - View our past special events in the Exhibitions Archives section. - If you would like to apply, please download a Special Event Exhibition application. Introduces graduate and undergraduate art students to the cooperative gallery structure including exhibition development, grant writing, publicity work and much more. Scholarship recipients are paired with a member/mentor who provides guidance and direction as well as opportunities to participate in all traveling, exchange and member shows. If you would like to apply, please download a Scholarship application. ARC promotes artistic and cultural exchange with cooperatives throughout the world. In the last five years such transformative interchanges took place with: Le Genie de la Bastille ~ Paris, France, Patriothall Gallery ~ Edinburgh, Scotland, Galerie der Gedok ~ Hamburg, Germany, Atelierhof ~ Bremen, Germany, Sydney College of the Arts ~ Sydney, Australia and Red Head Gallery ~ Toronto, Canada. Closer to home, domestic swaps occurred with Amos Eno ~ New York, NY, eye lounge ~ Phoenix, AZ, Gallery 10, Ltd. ~ Washington, D.C. and SPARK Gallery ~ Denver, CO. If your art cooperative is interested in an exchange, contact us at firstname.lastname@example.org ARC members provide informal tours of current exhibitions for small to medium-sized groups (5-20 max.) Please contact the gallery at email@example.com prior to a group visit to make sure there’s no conflict in scheduling. There is never a gallery admission fee. Artists share their passion for travel in talks held at the gallery after hours. Witness the alchemy that can happen when images and discoveries are sought after, allowed to ferment, and then given whatever is necessary to emerge. Visit our News & Events section for the next scheduled ARTinerary. ARC rents space during non-gallery days/hours for seminars (C.G. Jung Center and Council for Jewish Elderly); workshops (Chicago Artists’ Coalition); and/or professional meetings (Women’s Caucus for Art, Chicago). If your organization is interested, please email us at firstname.lastname@example.org. ARC reaches out, and is invited in, to the community in numerous ways through collaborations with other non-profit organizations, arts organizations, community groups, supporters of the arts, neighborhood residents, businesses and volunteers. Recent events include: CAN-TV’s filming and broadcast of “ARC Gallery Walkthrough;” the Dept. of Cultural Affairs’ Artists at Work Forum, panel discussion, “Not the Old Boy’s Network,” on the relevance of women’s art organizations today, at the Chicago Cultural Center; “Movin’ On Mon Amour Fundraiser and Erotic/Love Art Auction;” and ARC’s 33 years of Archives gift of deed to The Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryerson Library, compliments of Joanna Gardner-Huggett, ARC advisory board member and art historian. We invite you to the visit the websites of all of our Community Partners. - Art Deadlines List - Art Opportunities Monthly - C.G. Jung Center - Chicago Artists’ Coalition - Chicago Artists’ Month - Chicago’s Office of Tourism - Council for Jewish Elderly (CJE) - Chicago Artists Resource, - INTUIT: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art - The Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryerson Library, - The Feminist Art Project - The Venus Council - Women’s Caucus for Art, Chicago - Woman Made Gallery

Tuesday, February 3. 2009 Posted by Joerg Wolf in Transatlantic Relations on Tuesday, February 3. 2009 Even America's most loyal and important ally is not as much appreciated as it used to be in Washington. The UK-US special relationship is being reconsidered in both Britain and the United States. In an article about the British army's lack of soldiers, lack of money and lack of conviction, The Economist writes: Alex Harrowell with A Fistful of Euros takes issue with the assumptions behind the accusation that Britain is "Europeanised:" He also asks a tough rhetorical question, which our regular commenter Don Stadler, an American living in London, has been asking many times in the exact opposite way: I think the UK understands that to succeed in Afghanistan and elsewhere the United States and NATO need support from its European allies as well. More British troops will not lead to success. Moreover why should Britain continue to carry the burden, if other Europeans are not helping? Besides, what has Britain gained from its "special relationship" with the US in the last three decades? Last month, British Defense Secretary John Hutton has called upon NATO allies to pull their weight and share the burden in Afghanistan. In one of the most outspoken speeches from a British defense minister in years, Hutton reprimands some EU members for a lack of commitment to global security interests. Atlantic-community.org published excerpts of his speech: UK Slams Poor European Commitment in Afghanistan Display comments as (Linear | Threaded) John in Michigan, USA - #1 - 2009-02-03 12:00 - Alex Harrowell (or Joerg?) should know better than to ask "tough rhetorical questions" that have easy, rhetorical (sadly!) answers: The NATO treaty's self-defense provision was never activated in the case of former Yugoslavia, but it was activated in the case of Afghanistan. For any region that claims with such strident shrillness to believe in international law, that should make all the difference. "NATO declared that the alliance had been invoked back in September 2001, and was told that its assistance was not required" It seems to me the understanding that "assistance was not required" back in 2001 was probably a confusing, frustrating, but ultimately wise face-saving measure for both sides. This face-saving measure would presumably have been necessary because most of the European components of NATO where unable to provide very many useful (meaning, not restricted by unrealistic caveats) forces of the type that were needed in the early (non-peacekeeping/reconstruction) phase of the Afghanistan campaign. Also, most European governments needed time to prepare their publics to accept any involvement at all. Had the US asked for immediate assistance, and been declined, it would have exposed a major rift in the alliance, which would have emboldened the opposing forces. This face-saving measure managed to preserve the image of post-9/11 unity, and postpone the airing of NATO's dirty laundry, at least until after the Taliban had fallen. Harrowell continues, "the US withdrew much of its own forces in Afghanistan for use in Iraq...it is no coincidence that, as Antonio Giustozzi writes in Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop, the Taliban resurgence began in 2003." I am delighted to hear praise for US special forces; reading the European press, particularly, the socialist organs, one gets the impression that they are all blood-thirsty baby-killers who are creating ten terrorists for every one they kill. So Harrowell valued their contribution and wanted them to stay and fight in Afghanistan; if only he had told us that sooner. Perhaps he did, but his voices got drowned out by all the anti-US hate speech? Certainly it was no coincidence that the Taliban and al-Qaeda resurgence began after those forces were thoroughly routed in a semi-conventional small war. They had no-where to go but up. And maybe US redeployment into Iraq played a role, but not necessarily the way he assumes. For with the benefit of hindsight, if the Taliban resurgence began in 2003, it really started gaining steam in 2007. Is it a coincidence that this was just when al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia was being dealt a humiliating defeat in Iraq? The US focus on Iraq actually pulled significant jihadist resources away from the Afghanistan battlefield. After all, if you're a Deobandi (which bin Laden is, but seemingly only when its convenient for him), Afghanistan and Pakistan is your main fight; but if you are a Salafist (which is where most of the money and the trans-national, 9/11-capable operatives seem to come from) you can't afford to ignore a battle with the infidel in the heart of the ancient Caliphate. What became a two-front war for the US, also became a two-front war for the jihadists. Ideally, upon their retreat from Iraq, jihadis would have encountered a capable, trusted ISAF force and a strong central government in Pakistan. They would have been, if you'll forgive the expression, caught between Iraq and a hard place. That now seems unlikely, due to factors such as ISAF underperformance and the Bhutto assassination. But my hope is that, as these jihadist forces re-deploy back to Afghanistan, we will find that they are greatly weakened, and less welcome. How will they explain Iraq to their Afghan brothers? Time will tell. As to the main topic of the post, certainly it is a concern. But, I am far more concerned about the future of NATO as a military alliance, than the future of the US-UK special military relationship. If in some future circumstance, the UK forges a new political consensus that a war must be fought, its armed forces will be able to re-learn counter-insurgency and small wars as quickly as we have in Iraq. Possibly, even more quickly than that. Don S - #2 - 2009-02-03 15:15 - That second quote was from Alex Harrowell, not myself I believe. It is a good question, which I will answer here: The Bosnian war was not fought in American interests, but primarily in European interests. The US came unwillingly, because we did not see the Balkans as a proper US sphere of interest. We came and did 80% of the fighting, because our strongest allies (Britain, Germany, France, and most of NATO) called. The war is long finished, so OF COURSE we complain that Europe still won't muster the small forces needed to keep order in that area and demands US involvement in something which was never our deep concern! I agree with Alex about the simile between Bosnia and Afghanistan, but let's look at the European response to Afghanoistan, shall we? The British came in full force, there is little doubt of that. So did the Canadians and possibly the Norwegians and Dutch to a degree. Possibly also some of the Eastern Europeans, I'm not as familiar with the actual details of what they committed and when, but it was substantial in the case of Poland and perhaps some others. The remainder of NATO (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, etc) came slowly, rteluctantly, with tiny forces, and often although not always refusing combat missions (the French forces are small relative to the Canadians (much less the Brits or Americans) but seems to be as willing to actually fight). This cannot be said of the Germans or some others, alas. Bottom line: the Yanks came to Bosnia reluctantly and fought your ferking war for you; the Euros (and most particularly the Germans) came to Afghanistan late, reluctant, with small contributions, and have avoided the dangerous jobs. The analogy is a good one, but the response was not.... Marie Claude - #2.1 - 2009-02-03 20:13 - Nah, Don, the US, and, primaly, Ms all to not bright wanted to interven there, cuz, those Eurabians are so little aware of the need of expension of that super Albanian country, muslim (umm the great desing was from great Brezinzski : a green belt !!!), in a political corrected language, though really, "jihadism", in a normal language, and guess while hiting the Serbs, she though that she was hitting the commies !!! so whatever the Europeans thought or made, it wasn't of the "enlightened plan from DC !!! what a mess !!! h t t p ://4international.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/the-real-srebrenica-genocide-the-mass-murder-of-serbs-in-srebrenica-and-gorazde/ some delicate interest there : h t t p://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19960514/ai_n14053484 though no need to think it was that bad !!!! h t t p://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/pearl123199.htm John in Michigan, USA - #2.1.1 - 2009-02-03 23:38 - "Ms all to not bright" valiant attempt at word play, you only missed by a little. Should be "Ms all not to bright" = Albright. We intervened in the region for the same reason we intervened in Somalia: to try and prevent genocide. Foolish, perhaps, but that was the main reason. Of course, once there, we pursued other interests as well. That is to be expected. But we would not be there at all, were it not for the attempted genocides. John in Michigan, USA - #2.1.2 - 2009-02-04 00:38 - I should have also said, I think you make some interesting points, particularly in the last article which points out that former Yugoslavia was fairly tame compared to Rwanda. Presumably, the late Daniel Pearl would have included Darfur on the list with Rwanda, had he lived to write about it. Also, the Serbs were not along in this misconduct, there was plenty on the Islam side, and it is possible we (NATO) backed the wrong side or should have opposed both sides more fully. The fact is that by the time NATO got involved, the Muslim-sponsored atrocities had become less common, and the Serb-sponsored atrocities more common. It is certainly very frustrating that, in Islamist circles, NATO and particularly the US is often blamed for the mass death of Muslims in former Yugoslavia, when in fact, NATO was there in part to protect Muslims when their fellow Muslims in the middle east would not or could not. Nevertheless, I maintain my position that the main reason for the NATO intervention was concern over mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and possible genocide. Other geo-political and financial interests existed, but they were not what drove the intervention. Marie Claude - #18.104.22.168 - 2009-02-04 17:57 - well, some specialists said that the US didn't want to be left outside this conflict, and the main decisions were imposed by the Clinton's bons offices from the beginnings, and that the EU followed their line as domesticated good boys !!! In the actual conflict islam vs christians, seems that the not to bright person advantaged Islam, while it would have been raisonable to support the Serbs and avoid to demonise them (which was conveniently forecasted before the bombings) ; if you'd look at my first link, you would have marked that they were as much and "really" massacred, but none cared to denounce the "good" muslim "martyrs" !!! Now, I am not thanking the Clinton administration, it has set the premises of the next european conflict, big muslim Albania, which is a "mafiosi" state against what is left as christian in this new virtual entity Joe Noory - #22.214.171.124.1 - 2009-02-06 15:47 - Specialists? Don't you mean the ubiquitous commenters in the French media with no shortage of exxagerations to call attention to themselves? The US ended up in a "quagmire" in the former Yugoslavia because the Europeans begged and begged and begged to take care of their security problems for them. Without that, the "major European powers" were fully prepared to live with the guilt of letting mass murder continue 400 km from Vienna because acting against it MIGHT cost a few lives. Even now in Kosovo, support for "EULEX" is 10% American, there are still US troops in every intervention area of the former Yugoslavia, and there is no sign of them ever being able to leave because the European planners are unable to "nativize" any area that they've been in charge of even for a decade. They will in effect become permanent colonial governors of another part of Europe due entirely to the culture of the continent being unable to get past etnocentrism or propagating the concept of how individual liberties and citizen stakeholding can make for a better self-governing society - all the while lecturing the rest of humanity about not being color blind/etc/etc. joe - #2.2 - 2009-02-04 13:44 - Don S Just to clean up one thing. The USAF flew 98% of all combat sorties. The other 2% were primarily flown by the Brits. I am not sure where you got your 80% number. I would like to see a link to that. If you remember this was to be the euro’s finest hour. They were going to handle this. For the US not to allow them to do this was a huge mistake. When the US finally engaged all the euro’s could do was piss and moan. What the US learned from this was NATO as a command structure was broken and still is. The political masters in places like Berlin, Rome, Brussels, etc wanted to approve target lists, dictate how the war was to be conducted, etc. From this experience the US made a decision never to go down this road again. From a practical point it clearly demonstrated how pathetic the euro’s had allowed the state of their defense forces to deteriorate. Simple things like air-to-air and ground to air communications could not be conducted except in the clear. This lead to a typical solution for the euro’s, a study committee within NATO to address these problems. Like most things from the euro’s there were lots of talk and little action. The main problems high lighted in the Bosnian operation remain broken today in Afghanistan as it relates to interoperability. Germany typifies our so-called allies. It does not have the men, equipment, training, or leadership to conduct combat operations. Even more important it lacks the political will and moral courage to do so. The US needs to realize only with a clear and present direct threat to the fatherland Germany will at best stand aside and allow the US to do the heavy lifting. Lacking this threat Germany’s most likely course of action is to undermine US efforts. Marie Claude - #2.2.1 - 2009-02-04 18:00 - stop mourning, Nato was first ment to help the US to keep their hegemony, umm yeah, to protect us, but of what !!!! Stalin never intended to invade us, he need this free world hole pit to make business, with whom ???? the US of course John in Michigan, USA - #126.96.36.199 - 2009-02-04 20:29 - Yes, that was so clever of Stalin, to arrange for his own agricultural production to fail, so that he could remain dependent on Western food aid and be unable to invade. Brilliant! Marie Claude - #188.8.131.52.1 - 2009-02-04 23:24 - Actually he said so, when he was asked if he wanted to adhere to the Marshall plan either( he, Russia need it badly !!!), and finally rejected it to stay independant of the "manipulative" state departemental american policies, umm, yes, how clever !!!LMAO Pat Patterson - #184.108.40.206.1.1 - 2009-02-05 01:43 - Actually Stalin and Molotov rejected the draft plan and didn't even stick around for the negotiations. Plus there was that little matter of the Soviets overthrowing the elected government of Czechoslovakia that meant that most of the foot dragging on implemention vanished in Europe overnight. Hegemony? Then why did the US push for and end to tariffs and greater political unity among the Europeans? joe - #220.127.116.11.1.1.1 - 2009-02-05 05:38 - Actually Stalin was quite sly. Note how the US and UK ended up with the french. PAT OT I now understand why David is hot to raise taxes. He and his fellow travellers don't really pay them. They leave it to suckers like you and I to do so. Great gig. Anonymous - #18.104.22.168.22.214.171.124 - 2009-02-06 00:18 - Joe what I wrote elsewhere, but still can fit my reply to Joe "I recall you that Roosvelt was collaborating with the Vichy regime (which did had an US diplomatic representation) and nazy Germany until Germany sunk one of your merchandises ship !!! bizarre also with Stalin !!! as we say here it’s called soaking up at all the hayracks !!!or (running with the hare and hunt with the hounds)" even, also quite anti-semit : http://kimel.net/fdr.html "the British had already shown their interest to defend but themselves, after having experienced the mighty Germans in Belgium and then refused to fight on the continent anymore, thus helping the Frenchs to carry on. (ie the retreat of Dunkerke") http://www.newsweek.com/id/178822 Marie Claude - #126.96.36.199.1.1.2 - 2009-02-06 00:29 - "Then why did the US push for and end to tariffs and greater political unity among the Europeans?" Did they ? I thought it was Jean Monet the "father" http://www.eu-oplysningen.dk/euo_en/spsv/all/2/ Pat Patterson - #188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206 - 2009-02-06 09:58 - Well I'm not to sure what the reference to Claude Monet's son has to do with this thread so I must assume you meant Jean Monnet. Monnet is certainly credited with the impetus to beggar the German coal industry and delay German economic recovery through price and output controls. But the creation the ECSC was much later and foisted continued French meddling in the German economy till 1981. The Marshall Plan called for greater cooperation and open markets in 1947. Marie Claude - #220.127.116.11.18.104.22.168.1 - 2009-02-06 19:05 - oh yeah, couldn't be made by the stoopid Frenchs, but by great America, and, surprise, her german protegés, LMAO, only serious people are allowed to claim to initiate legends, BAaawoah !!!! Pat Patterson - #22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199.1.1 - 2009-02-07 02:21 - Well, it actually was another Frenchman, Schulman, who provided the intellectual framework and the political muscle to create the ECSC in 1950. While Monnet is generally credited with the idea of a monetary and trade area which closely modeled what was attempted and was only partially implemented by the Marshall Plan years before. But in the immediate postwar period he was lukewarm to such ideas and did everything possible to keep Germany weak, arranging for France to control the Saar, and rebuilding France as rapidly as possible. France was smart enough to see the handwriting on the wall and figured they better be in front of the parade as opposed to following along with a broom and can. Marie Claude - #188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206.1.1.1 - 2009-02-09 01:31 - Well, it actually was another Frenchman, Schulman, Schumann !!! But in the immediate postwar period he was lukewarm to such ideas and did everything possible to keep Germany weak, arranging for France to control the Saar, and rebuilding France as rapidly as possible. France was smart enough to see the handwriting on the wall and figured they better be in front of the parade as opposed to following along with a broom and can. Alors que l’Allemagne se reconstruit plus rapidement que la France, il imagine, en 1950, de souder les destins des deux pays par une mise en commun de la production du charbon et de l’acier, matières premières de l’industrie de guerre. Il élabore le projet de Communauté européenne du charbon et de l’acier (CECA) dans sa maison d’Houjarray. ("l’Allemagne se reconstruit plus rapidement" France at the same moment was at war in VietNam, and at the beginnings of Algeria War) 1950-1957 : de la CECA au Traité de Rome Son idée de mise en commun des productions de charbon et d’acier, soumise au ministre des Affaires Etrangères Robert Schuman, est rendue publique le 9 mai 1950, sous l’appellation de "Déclaration Schuman". Le texte représente l’acte de naissance de l’Union Européenne et stipule que "L’Europe ne se fera pas d’un coup, ni dans une construction d’ensemble : elle se fera par des réalisations concrètes créant d’abord une solidarité de fait". Cette union de l’Allemagne, de l’Italie, de la Belgique, des Pays-Bas, du Luxembourg et de la France, est officialisée par le Traité de Paris, signé le 18 avril 1951. La suppression des droits de douane et des restrictions à la circulation de ces matières premières prend effet le 23 juillet 1952. Jean Monnet est le président de la CECA de 1952 à 1955 mais, après l’échec du plan de Communauté européenne de défense (CED) en 1954, il démissionne de la Haute Autorité de la CECA et crée le Comité d’Action pour les Etats-Unis d’Europe. Ce mouvement, qui rassemble syndicats et politiques des six pays, milite pour une fédération européenne plus ambitieuse dans sa dimension politique. En 1957, à l’origine du projet de coopération nucléaire EURATOM, il participe étroitement aux négociations de préparation du Traité de Rome, signé le 25 mars, et au projet d’élargissement de la Communauté au Royaume-Uni. L’année 1975 marque sa retraite politique : Jean Monnet dissout son Comité et rédige ses mémoires. Il meurt dans sa maison d’Houjarray le 16 mars 1979 ; ses cendres reposent maintenant au Panthéon. Une résolution des chefs d’Etats et de gouvernement, réunis en Conseil européen à Luxembourg le 2 avril 1976, a décerné à Jean Monnet le titre de "Citoyen d’honneur de l’Europe". Version imprimable Don S - #3 - 2009-02-03 15:21 - Oh yes, one more thing: The US is STILL supplying about 30% of the force patrolling Bosnia, 11 years after. Anyone who believes that German noncombatant forces will still be in Kabul avoiding combat two years from now is - an optimist. They are constantly moaning about how much they want to leave; sooner than later they will put actions to words. When that time comes, the US will STILL be providing 30% of the force in Bosnia, while also providing forces to replace all the European NATO contingents slinking away..... And President Obama will be attending European Carnevale celebrations sporting SS uniform and toothbrush mustache, as President's Clinton and Bush did before him.... Marie Claude - #3.1 - 2009-02-03 20:19 - Don there is a big american base in Bosnia, very useful for the diverse american traffics across the old world and ME, this isn't only for a Nato purpose, just a strategic place !!! Pat Patterson - #3.1.1 - 2009-02-09 22:10 - Yeah, a huge American base in Tuzla which shares the runway with the the Bosnian and Herzegovian authorites that run the international airport. That huge contingent of American servicemen consists of three US airman, some 160 private contractors of various nationalities and 1,000 or so soldiers providing security and operating Predator drone missions over the Med, the Black Sea, Iraq and Afghanistan. But of course America can exert it hegemony over the innocent Serbs via 3 US airmen directing air traffic. Don S - #220.127.116.11 - 2009-02-10 12:58 - Pat, the US doesn't even need the 3 air traffic controllers to exert it's hegenomy, it's the mind-rays, I tell you! The whole thing reminds me of the song 'Uneasy Rider' many years ago. About a little visit by a 'long-hair' to the 'Dew Drop Inn'. When visiting Europe one needs to keep in mind that many of the natives believe in things which cannot be verified by science OR logic! joe - #4 - 2009-02-05 05:35 - Actually Stalin was quite sly. Note how the US and UK ended up with the french. PAT OT I now understand why David is hot to raise taxes. He and his fellow travellers don't really pay them. They leave it to suckers like you and I do so. Great gig. Pat Patterson - #4.1 - 2009-02-05 07:22 - I would think if the choice was between Bulgaria and France then the US got the far better bargain. John in Michigan, USA - #4.1.1 - 2009-02-05 09:18 - I resemble that remark! (I am 1/4 Bulgarian, my last name is Hadjisky) Marie Claude - #5 - 2009-02-05 22:48 - the results of the US policies in Kosovo : http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/102qnsba.asp yeah, and what's new pussy cat ??? still the the same ol cheat, Biden's relay... http://byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2008/08/obama_picks_prime_serbhater.html God, help the Serbs !!! Pat Patterson - #5.1 - 2009-02-06 10:19 - I would certainly agree that the Serbs need help if they continue to peddle stories that are simply not true. The link to Byzantine Sacred Art is just a rehash of articles from any number of Serb apologist, mainly the government of Serbia supported Serbiana, and conspiracy web sites. Let's be clear there is no record of Biden saying anything about Serbs in concentration camps in the Congressional Record or in any primary source any where. And I would challenge Marie Claude to find one. Sen Biden does indeed support Albania and an independent Kosovo but has never been a lobbyist, a felony in the US, for either. Perhaps if the Serbs had merely stopped killing and dispossesing its fellow citizens because of ethnicity or religion they might actually have held on to some of their territory and not ended up as well-deserved pariahs. Marie Claude - #6 - 2009-02-06 19:12 - I am afraid that you are wrong about the whole story, though, officially it's not an american problem, uh, those stupid europeans can't understand how nice it is to live with pacific mafiosi muslim Albanians, got to remember "seven", there will much more crual scenari that can be written if my links on't convince you (I have more in store), and you could get an eye on "jihad watch" John in Michigan, USA - #6.1 - 2009-02-06 20:55 - MC, Are you talking about [url=http://www.jihadwatch.org/]Robert Spencer's site[/url]? There is some excellent information there. Spencer has studied the Koran closely, with a critical eye, and also follows current events closely. However, in my opinion (and this is only a small complaint), Spencer tends to take a little too literally the Muslim claim that they follow the Koran exactly in every word. All fundamentalists claim to follow their religion exactly, but none of them do at all times or over the long term. I prefer [url=http://www.danielpipes.org/]Daniel Pipes[/url] approach, which has a lot in agreement with Spencer but is more empirical or observational. Perhaps you will enjoy reading Pipes as well as Jihad Watch. I'll grant you, Spencer has much better coverage of the Albania/Kosovo/etc/ question than Pipes. Of course, to even mention either of these two sites proves that you and I are the worst sort of racists, according to some people. Such is life. Marie Claude - #6.1.1 - 2009-02-07 01:49 - I know both sites, Robert Spence is more percutant, he bases his dires on facts ; I had hard times to adhere at the beginnings, but it is blurring our face to ignore what is hidden behind facts Pat Patterson - #18.104.22.168 - 2009-02-07 02:12 - OK, then link to one source, other than these Serb sites, that refers to an actual honest-to-God quote(newspaper, interview, Congressional Record, testimony etc,) that exists other than in that great echo chamber of the internet. Show me where, as the site claims, that Sen. Biden committed a felony and was a lobbyist for the Albanians? Or suggested anything about concentration camps other than to condemn the ones the Serbs were operating. Come one, put up or shut up! BTW, Jihad Watch has lately run into some problems as a blogger in Canada found that one of the sources of funding for the site came from the American Council for Kosovo which in spite of the name is a front for the Serbian Radical Party. It's founder is currently on trial in The Hague for war crimes. But aside from that there is not, on the Jihad Watch site, one single mention, except for in the comments, about concentration camps for Serbs or Biden as a lobbyist. http://www.kejda.net/2008/08/08/robert-spencers-connections-the-james-jatras-file/ Marie Claude - #22.214.171.124.1 - 2009-02-09 01:22 - OK, Kejda is from Albanian origin, what did you expect her to say ??? I notice she is an Obama partisan too, and that Mr Spencer isn't so it is a "truth" vs another's, or many others', cuz there are many people there that swear on their "truths" Pat Patterson - #126.96.36.199.1.1 - 2009-02-09 06:33 - And you didn't even bother to check for the correct spelling after my typo, try Robert Schuman next time. And a specific response to what Kejda argued would be pertinent rather than a shoulder shrug and an ad hominem. And if you had bothered to check Kjeda is considered Jewish and not as you imply Muslim. Marie Claude - #188.8.131.52.1.1.1 - 2009-02-09 13:01 - yeah, I check all your stuffs :lol: I know she is of 75% american jewish that voted for Obama Pat Patterson - #184.108.40.206.220.127.116.11 - 2009-02-09 18:21 - How does one become 75% American if you are born in Albania and were raised Jewish? If you don't know then don't just make stuff up. Kejda just recently became an American citizen and lives in NYC with her husband, Michael, who as far as I know is also Albanian though possibly is an American citizen now. Which makes them both 100% American. BTW did you ever find any specific proof of your touting the Biden story or are you simply going to keep badly changing the subject. If, as you claim, there are many truths, then perhaps you could provide one of those truths rather than the opinion of one of the hundreds of pro-Serb sites that are funded by the Serbs? But I will not expect much except another volte face. Marie Claude - #18.104.22.168.22.214.171.124.1 - 2009-02-09 19:53 - papy get a life Pat Patterson - #126.96.36.199.188.8.131.52.1.1 - 2009-02-09 21:59 - I would but it seems I constantly have to make sure that some people stop putting their fingers in electtic outlets because it feels good for a few seconds. Plus still no links about the concentration camp or the Biden charge? Marie Claude - #184.108.40.206.220.127.116.11.1.1.1 - 2009-02-10 02:59 - OK Papy you won !!! http ://www.srebrenica-report.com/index.htm http ://www.srebrenica-report.com/hoax.htm http ://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19960514/ai_n14053484 http ://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4jqqc_greater-albania_politics http ://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/pearl123199.htm http ://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1859738079/ref=ase_robertspencer-20/103-1603172-8127010?v=glance&s=books http ://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE0D9173BF936A25757C0A963958260 Pat Patterson - #18.104.22.168.22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199 - 2009-02-10 03:14 - All that work and still not one link that substantiates the charge that Biden was a lobbyist or that he called for concentration camps for the Serbs. Do you actually take the time to read the comment thread and respond to specifics or just simply try to bury an embarassing comment in a mountain of superfluous citations? At least this time a couple of the links went to reputable sites but alas the rest are the same apologetics from Serb nationalists ala Milosevic. Marie Claude - #188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206.220.127.116.11.1 - 2009-02-10 11:58 - nah, I don't care lol um, the links didn't represent a lately work, got them since a few years, umm, funny, some others find them percutant enough, I suspect that you are Pat the Grumb ; as far as joe Biden, ie Jihad watch lol Marie Claude - #18.104.22.168.22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199.2 - 2009-02-10 14:27 - http ://www.4biden.com/news/98/ http ://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/022115.php/ http ://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/023777.php Pat Patterson - #188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206.220.127.116.11.2.1 - 2009-02-10 20:32 - Ok, aside from reminding me what an idiot Julia Gorin is where is the concentration camp claim or the equally despicable claim that Biden was a lobbyist for Albanian Muslims? Either you can back up that claim or not? The 2nd link acknowledges one charge made by Kejda, referred to by a Muslim name at Jihad Watch, in that Spencer and Jatras admit to getting money from a Serbian group that is run by the Serbian government. With Jihad Watch and most of the other Serb apologist groups the view of their reliability has suffered mightily since Gorin engaged in a series of charges that Michael Totten and LGF were in cahoots with the Muslims and the Americans and the Israelis in covering up Albanian atrocities. The problem Spencer has is that this info was publicized and most people acknowledged the brutality of the war and judged that the Serbs were far more complicit in the killing of civilians, breaking its laws and promises and ethnic cleansing. Marie Claude - #18.104.22.168.22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199.2.1.1 - 2009-02-12 20:35 - ok, your version vs many experts versions, being lately on LGF ? bizarre this conspiration !!!! what do you think I am going to trust ? Pat Patterson - #188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206.220.127.116.11.18.104.22.168 - 2009-02-12 22:06 - No, I said that Gorin had made a fool out of herself by engaging in a series or arguments with Totten and Johnson by misrepresenting her expertise and trying to raise doubts about Totten's first hand experience in Kosovo, Serbia and Albania which he was more than open about the fact that he wasn't able to see everything. I made no claim about experts and I know who you will trust simply by your constant referral to opinion sites rather than linking to any primary sources. Marie Claude - #22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199.188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206.1 - 2009-02-13 03:43 - check my links above !!! duno what you call no experts, (and I'm not quoting R Spencer, though for you Kejda is one) Pat Patterson - #220.127.116.11.18.104.22.168.22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199.1.1 - 2009-02-13 07:23 - But I suppose it's ok to belong to a Facebook that calls for the forcible removal of all Turks from Anatolia and killing all the Muslims ranks in reliability with the WSJ and the NYT. I guess we shouldn't judge by the quality of the company Spencer keeps? Oops! http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32745_Robert_Spencer_Joins_Genocidal_Facebook_Group John in Michigan, USA - #188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206.220.127.116.11.18.104.22.168.1.1.1 - 2009-02-13 08:32 - Wow. Ripped from the headlines. There's a reason they call politics Byzantine. I will certainly be following this story. This looks like a good time to re-examine Spencer's work and to see if perhaps there have been hints that it is all "speaking in code" and what he really wants is some sort of bloody reconquest. But keep in mind, people like him who work so close to the coal-face, have huge egos. It might be that he got genuinely fooled by whoever convinced him to join this facebook group, and is too vain to admit it. We will see. John in Michigan, USA - #22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199.188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206.1.1.2 - 2009-02-13 09:09 - "too vain to admit it" Oops he has admitted it. Spencer thinks he was the victim of an Internet "prank". Furthermore, he claims to have only been a member of Facebook for "[url=http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024805.php]a few months ago and haven't spent much time with it[/url]". So he is new to it. The basic concept of "friends" on Facebook seems simple to me, but the exact etiquette of any site can take quite a while to figure out. Spencer may be guilty of nothing more than failing to properly vet his facebook invitations. Still, he could have been more gracious about getting caught. I'm keeping my opinion that Spencer has a huge ego. I recognize the disease, don't we all :-p Pamela - #220.127.116.11.18.104.22.168.22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199.188.8.131.52 - 2009-02-14 16:03 - "Spencer thinks he was the victim of an Internet "prank". ' Bull. Go over to the thread Pat linked to on LGF. Read the links that medura and others have posted about Spencer's writing. And as of yesterday, Facebook has banned the group in question - but Spencer STILL has noot withdrawn from other Facebook groups that Cato pointed out. Spencer's ONLY response has been to accuse Cato of violating Facebook's TOS (which he hasn't) and tried to get him banned. Spencer has actually tried to make the argument that Vlaams Belang is not really a racial supremist group. I've been in on this debacle from the beginning. Spencer once posted on LGF that he hoped these groups would eventually 'come around' but for the time being, in Europe, they are the only anti-Islamist game in town. I asked him 'when?' do you expect them to come around? He had no answer. John in Michigan, USA - #184.108.40.206.220.127.116.11.18.104.22.168.22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199.1 - 2009-02-14 18:53 - medura = Medusa = Kejda Gjermani? OK I will read these comments and of course the ones from Cato the Elder. As I suggested in my earlier comment, both this story and my opinion of it, are developing. Pamela, you and Pat seem to have been following this for quite a while, so I can understand how to you this story isn't new or "developing". So maybe I should say that the current chapter of this story, is still developing. Any additional links you have are greatly appreciated. Pat Patterson - #188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206.220.127.116.11.18.104.22.168.22.214.171.124.1.1 - 2009-02-14 22:15 - Kejda Gjermani posts as Medaura. I hadn't seen her comment as Medusa anywhere so I can only assume that some that are unhappy with her research have made a slight alteration. As to Spencer I followed his site for a few years but found there to be three insurmountable problems. He misrepresented documents that had been submitted to the UN as UN studies. The continued tiresomeness of constantly blaming everything bad as the fault of all Muslims rather than specific groups. And that he and Jatras represented the American Council for Kosovo but were actually fronting for the Serbian National Council of Kosovo which is headquartered in Belgrad and receives it funding from the Serbian government. To be perfectly honest I don't really have a real philosphical objection to the source of their funding. But considering the attempts to hide or dismiss these sources makes both enterprises suspect. Pamela - #126.96.36.199.188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206.220.127.116.11.18.104.22.168.1.2 - 2009-02-15 11:28 - I have probably over 100 links tracking this. It would take you a year to read it all. But Charles put up another thread with 2 links yesterday evening that sums up some things you should be aware of. Especially read kejda's on the Jatras file (kedja is medaura) http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32780/comments/#cc6714577 Pamela - #22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199.188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206.220.127.116.11.1.3 - 2009-02-15 14:35 - Here's the best background-in-one-piece I can give you - from Kejda again. JihadwatchWatch: Robert Spencer’s amorous flirt with European Fascism http://www.kejda.net/2008/11/07/jihadwatchwatch-robert-spencers-amorous-flirt-with-european-fascism/ Marie Claude - #18.104.22.168.22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199.188.8.131.52.184.108.40.206.1.3.1 - 2009-02-18 20:21 - woah, it's Spencer fest :lol: Well I also find that he pushes a bit too much into the corner, though we get aware of the facts through the articles, and the comments part is often "educative" too David - #220.127.116.11.18.104.22.168.2 - 2009-02-10 01:44 - "I know she is of 75% american jewish that voted for Obama" I think she's implying that there was overwhelming Jewish support for Barack Obama, and therefore Obama is part of a grand conspiracy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Actually, there was also overwhelming black and latino support as well, so we have an Afro-Hispanic-Semitic conspiracy against ....what? Pat Patterson - #22.214.171.124.126.96.36.199.2.1 - 2009-02-10 05:03 - What, Pres Obama is an agent of ZOG? I thought it was the Masons, either Ancient Free and Accepted or Prince Hall. It's so hard to keep up these days. Hmmm, since both white and black Masonic groups are in accord now maybe they have decided to take their orders from AIPAC. Unless of course they are Albanian and then everybody knows what they are. riffraff - #188.8.131.52.1.1.2 - 2009-05-30 01:44 - kedja says on her own website Nationality: Albanian Likely Ethnic Makeup: At least 25% but less than 50% Ashkenazi Jewish The rest is Albanian, but may contain traces of polish, greek, and other nuts she has written elsewhere she did not know of any Jewish 'heritage' until she was grown there is no way to verify anything she claims about herself she is a Albanian muslim apologist-probably muslim herself are you one of her sock puppets? London - #7 - 2009-02-09 18:47 - Pat Patterson - #7.1 - 2009-02-09 18:51 - Joerg-You've been spammed! BTW is "pommer" a pear in German as well as English? Pat Patterson - #8 - 2009-02-13 04:54 - Still waiting for a response to the original charge that Biden was a lobbyist and the quote concerning concentration camps. Its pretty well established that there was not the level of genocide that some newspapers claimed but that was more than likely the result of the ineptness of the Serbs and not from lack of trying. Or is it some plot that the bulk of the ICJ investigations concern actions of the Serbs rather than any of the other groups that the Serbs lost a series of wars too. Serbia is ripe for this kind of nationalistic self-pity considering that they view themselves as the legitimate rulers and had the strongest army at the beginning of the new Balkan Wars. They couldn't possibly have lost so it must be either the UN, or NATO, the Muslims, the Pope or the Jews that "...stabbed them in the back." Google the Site

Please refer to my 12:14 post, US, concerning the 'thousand' issue. Thank you for your response. I am now examining my mind on this. I believe part of my problem is that I am confusing literal with physically observable, and allegorical with spiritual. I could not see a literal dragon and chain, etc. Thank you for your prayers, Lurker. Just a follow up scan to brain surgery. I believe I'm alright. Will know soon. I am an amill who believes that the events in the OT, purportedly describing the atmosphere in the proposed millennium, are the latter days describing the results of being in Christ. Isaiah 2, 11, 65 and so forth. Can't thank you enough for sticking with me on this. I still have a lot of work to do in this arena. I feel like I'm trying to jump out of the water, while I'm treading it. I pray that I am communicating this well enough. I am not sure what the error on my part is, in specific. I do believe that my principles were correct, but my application may have not been. I'm still sliding passed my own understanding, or misunderstanding, like two self-contained planes, never making contact. It almost itches. Have a lot of work to do (that, and a CAT scan this morning). For the motivation to this, I am indebted to you, Christopher 000, and you, Lurker. Not being able to understand your post to me, Lurker, I was up all night, reading it time and again, until... Like I said; lots of work to do. I'm not sure what you mean, Frank. Your 11:07 post was addressed at 7:18. To answer my post at 8:13, you went off to sheep and doors, after I demonstrated that the 'rules of comparison' did not apply. I didn't understand the relevance. Why did you go there? Here is a brief scenario. Ever since the fall, the world has been in the grasp of the wicked. He is the god of this age. The prince of the power of the air. In order to our salvation, the Lord Christ made a supernatural 'intrusion' into our world, that never would have happened in the natural course of history. Satan was overcome, bound, put on hold, if you will, and could do nothing to thwart the plan of God in this regard. I have no doubt but that he thought he was upsetting God's plan by manipulating the authorities to kill the Son of God, not realizing that this was the plan. He was completely bound by the Lord, to be utterly impotent to do anything but comply with the Lord's design, despite the fact that it appeared, at that time, to believer and unbeliever alike, that Satan had triumphed. Mission accomplished by our Lord, He ascended into heaven, Satan is 'released' to go on about his intended work of the destruction of the church. His time is 'short' it is said. 2000 years in the spiritual realm is nothing. OK? Nowhere in your 12/31/12 do you address this passage, US. And I am truly sorry that you went through all that trouble, because I asked that when you find the many places where the term is used, and you believe it is not literal; tell me why. And as far as the verses you posted; I never even hinted that I had a problem with: 2.000 pieces of silver; 7,300 men; 1,400 chariots; 1,000 cubits eastward, or any such thing. Ps. 50:10, 68:17, 91:7, 105:8. These are the usages I was asking you to examine, as well as others like them. I am not a little astounded that you do not know of this interpretation of the 144,000. Virtually everyone I have heard expound this has this in mind. 12 tribes of Israel x 12 apostles x 1000 (generally known as a number of completion). The JW's believe that is all that is going to be in heaven. I'm not sure I comprehend your post, Lurker. Christians slain and their souls are with Christ. 'Absent from the body, present with the Lord'. First resurrection. Dead live again. In a spiritual realm. I do not understand the quandary. I do not understand why this must be literal, when nothing else in this entire scenario is. When the term thousand is used in scripture, it virtually never means a thousand, literally. As a matter of, I am hard pressed to find anywhere that it does. The term itself is indefinite. There are even places where a specific number of thousand is figurative. Ps. 68: 91:7 etc. Why everyone insists that of all places where thousand is used, this must be the only place it is literal, I cannot comprehend. And the 144,000 is almost universally believed to represent the entire number of the elect in all ages (Jehovah's Witnesses excepted). There is no reason to take this thousand literally. Search the scriptures, and when you find those places where the term thousand is used, and you believe it is not literal; tell me why. I'm not even going to use the word, 'pope'. I've already proved that he has no right to exist. I'm not sure if I understand this. Is this guy referring to leaders who strip the people of their wealth, and arrogate it to themselves; or those who through hard work and a knowledge of what to do with their money, far outdistance their fellows? Forcing the necessity of 'like' or 'as', on this scripture to mean something, is an imposition on the Word of God, and this 'rule' is contradicted hundreds of times in the bible. Please don't make me enumerate them. This entire scenario is spiritual: dead Christians in heaven; Angel binding dragon, where there is no reference to time, only activity. Again, this is using the scripture to define scripture. Not my reasoning, not current events, nothing but God's word. My hermeneutic is using scripture to interpret scripture. No one has refuted my explanation of the term 'no more', the binding of Satan, or anything else. Again, the 'rule' set up for the interpretation of 'thousand', is not followed in scripture. When my post is waved away, not by bringing me to bar of scripture, but merely labeling it as obfuscation, wrong, or presupposition; I took that as mocking. Forgive me if that was not the intention. I am full of alacrity toward our continued communications. As far as me being RC; you can't be serious. Long ago, I was the one who completely destroyed even the concept of the existence of a pope. But again, no one wanted to hear it. I even pursued everyone to answer the challenge. I got nothing. On the side; do we believe that the 144,000 is 144,000? All the derogation in the world does not refute what I have said. So far, I have seen no rebuttal. No presuppositions. The only analogy I have used is to explain my reasoning. I have checked these posts and found none of them using the Word of God, with the exception of those that support what I am saying. All others have merely declared me wrong, while providing no scriptural evidence to contradict me. As I said years ago, 'Some may receive laughter for answers and mocking for reasons; but I am not among them.' I need something from the Word of God. What have I said that is not in accord with, not the end time scenario in vogue, but the bible? I see everyone is still trying to read according to literal, earthly, interpretation. What I would recommend is a reading of 1Corinthians 2;9-16. The words 'no more' should not be disturbing to anyone; particularly in the light of the qualifier, 'until'. Where would be the mischief to say, 'I will put you in prison that you may be able to do thus and such no more, until you are freed'? Very good, jpw. There is no thousand year reign of peace on earth. One of the problems I see everyone having is attached to the idea that whatever happens that we believe is evil, must mean that Satan is not bound. Remember that Jesus coming into the world is a completely ahistorical event. This never would happen as a course of natural events. There was something to accomplish. During that time, in order to that end, Satan is bound to do what God wills, whether the devil will, or no. The kings of the earth and their armies are now gathering to fight against Christ. The heavenly city (us) is now being compassed about across the earth. We talk about this continually. The 'fire that comes down from heaven and consumes them', is the return of the Lord, 'in power and great glory' and 'in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God'. Our 'rapture' and the destruction of the wicked Whew! That was scary. Had to have my son come to the rescue. Remember, the binding of Satan in the image is representative. We all know that the great work of our Lord will not be put off, nay, not even altered. Hence, the Jewish rulers, who did not want to murder Jesus at the Passover, had no power to prevent it. We needed Satan to subject our Lord to His trials to fulfill prophecy. But he could not hinder the accomplishment of our salvation. He was absolutely powerless. In our view, Satan had free reign to move men to crucify the Lord; not knowing that he was bound by God to do His will in the accomplishment of God's design. Had he known that he was doing God's will in order to our salvation, do you think he would have done it? 'Released' immediately after the fulfillment of such, he has been deceiving the nations ever since. For some reason, I've been shut out. I'm on my iPhone. I want to answer all questions, but I don't know if I'm getting through. To answer Rufus, how about ONE thousand. And John, anywhere Satan is spoken of as being made impotent, cast out, or his work being destroyed, is him being bound. All heading toward or at the cross. Ah, dear brothers; this is so important, but it is too difficult on my phone. I must somehow regain access. I personally believe that the administration is not smart enough to have any grand design behind all of this. Though they think they're on top of all of it, we know that they are being led by the nose. Nevertheless; once the law of the land supplants the Word of God... we are seeing first hand that 'the elements of reason have no power to secure their just application'. No, no, no. The problem we have here is that no one is using God's word to interpret God's word. A thousand does not mean a thousand. It virtually never does. Particularly when it comes to time. But in other uses as well. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Really. Is that all? A day with the Lord is as a thousand years. So God ages? The list of the uses of this number to describe: a. An indefinitely large number b. Forever or eternity c. Until something is perfected or fulfilled goes on and on. Even the dictionary defines it as an indefinitely large number. We use it even in common language the same way. Look these up. Only the Lord can bind Satan, cast him out, destroy him who had the power of death. He was bound by Jesus while He was here and at the cross. How long thereafter was it before Satan began to deceive the nations again? Almost immediately. Let the scripture interpret scripture; not us from outside sources and ideas. Long ago, I believed this nonsense, along with everyone else... until I read the bible and not Hal Lindsey, C Ryrie, and the rest. The thousand years in the Revelation has about as much to do with a reign of Christ on earth, as the statement Jesus made to Peter has to do with the papacy. There is no relation. It is very straightforward. No complications. The definitions of these statements concerning the rapture, the millennium, etc., are given throughout scripture many times. They have nothing to do with what we have made them. When you finally see what they do mean, it is amazing that we could ever have come up with this. and a blessing to understand. I tried to explain this years ago, but no one wanted to hear it. Now I've only been reading the bible for a little over thirty years; but I have yet to find one word in all of the scriptures that even hints at what everyone calls the millennium. Personally, I do not even give that concept enough credence to say that it doesn't exist. Someone want to help me out? Anyway, that was not the point of this article. It would seem In Chicago, this is called population control. Stay your assault, John Yurich. Perhaps that was the spelling intended. There is no impetus, much less mandate, for the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Many Protestant churches have no Xmas eve services. What does that mean? Perhaps xRC 'celebrates' the resurrection with the Lord's supper. I perceive no assertion of continued non-attendance, merely a relief that not attending these 'mandated holy days', is not adjudged a mortal sin. Praise God for a converted one, and instruct with love and meekness.

EMMYS WILL TRY AGAIN ON NOV. 4 The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences is hoping maybe the third time will be the charm, scheduling the 53rd annual Primetime Emmy Awards for Nov. 4. Ceremonies originally scheduled for Sept. 16 were rescheduled for Oct. 7 following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The October ceremonies were canceled on a few hours' notice, following the announcement that the United States and Britain had launched air strikes against military and terrorist targets in Afghanistan. The TV academy announced Wednesday that it will hold the ceremonies at the Schubert Theater in Los Angeles on Nov. 4, which is the first Sunday of TV's November sweeps period. Finding a suitable air date was a two-pronged problem for CBS. The November primetime schedule is already crowded with high-profile programming for the ratings sweeps, but the network had been counting on the Emmys telecast to provide an opportunity to promote its upcoming shows. SURVEY SAYS: AUDIENCES REJECT VIOLENCE According to a new survey commissioned by the Entertainment Industry Council, entertainment consumers put gun violence last on the list of features that would attract them to watch a movie or TV show -- and first on the list of turn-offs. The EIC is a nonprofit group founded in 1983 by entertainment industry professionals "to provide information, awareness and understanding of major public health and social issues among the entertainment industry and to audiences at large." "You would think, from just the prevalence of guns on the screen, that the entertainment industry must think they're filling some kind of need," said the EIC's Barbara Lurie in an interview with USA Today. "But audiences don't want that kind of bang for their buck -- literally." Lurie is the council's director of programs and research. Researchers interviewed 462 people for the survey -- 55 percent of them were adults and 45 percent were teens. The paper said teens were slightly less turned off by gun violence than the grownups. What do audiences want? The survey says humor is number one, followed by special effects, adventure and mystery. COPPOLA PUTS OFF NEW YORK MOVIE According to a report in Daily Variety, Francis Ford Coppola has called a delay in production of "Megalopolis," described as a futuristic epic about the rebuilding of New York after a disastrous incident. Coppola has reportedly been working on the project for 15 years, and had planned to start filming this summer -- but has now decided to rewrite the screenplay and start production next fall. In an interview with Variety last year, Coppola said the New York he wants to show in the movie is like the "New York of 15 years ago, when the city was badly in debt and desperate for renovation." The two main characters in the story are the mayor, who wants to preserve the city's heritage, and an architect-planner who wants to replace the old with the new. The conflict actually bears some resemblance to what happened in New York in the 1950s and '60s when developer Robert Moses spearheaded development of expressways and modern buildings, and largely changed the character of the city. Variety reported that Coppola has told friends that the Sept. 11 terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center twin towers further convinced the "Godfather" director that "Megalopolis" needs to be made. "I feel as though history has come to my doorstep," he is quoted as having told friends. WHOOPI PICKS UP TWAIN PRIZE "Our dear Mr. Twain put it best when he said, 'Humor is the good-natured side of a truth,'" said the Oscar-winning actress. "I am deeply honored to join the ranks of Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters and Richard Pryor, who, along with the great Samuel Clemens, are some of the most fabulous truth-tellers of our time." Reiner, Winters and Pryor are the other comedians who have been honored with the Twain prize. Billy Crystal and Robin Williams -- who shared hosting duties with Goldberg for years on the annual "Comic Relief" fund-raising telethon -- helped celebrate the occasion at the Kennedy Center, which was taped for a two-hour telecast over PBS on Nov. 21. Goldberg was nominated for an Academy Award for "The Color Purple" in 1985. She won the supporting actress Oscar for "Ghost" in 1990. She played Guinan for five seasons on the "Star Trek: The Next Generation." She currently stars in the syndicated hit game show, "Hollywood Squares" which she also produces. Goldberg stars in the upcoming TNT movie, "Call Me Claus," scheduled to air Dec. 2. AFTER ALL, WHAT'S A PRODUCER FOR? Macy isn't endorsing Bloomberg's candidacy, just his approach to movie producing. Bloomberg produced Macy's new movie, "Focus," based on an Arthur Miller novel about a Brooklyn couple who are mistakenly identified as Jews by anti-Semitic neighbors during the last days of World War II. Unexpectedly finding themselves on the receiving end of persecution, the couple align themselves with a Jewish immigrant who faces a similar struggle. Macy told the New York Post Bloomberg is the best producer he's ever worked with. "That is, he wrote the check (for $6 million) and we saw him at the wrap party and that's it," said Macy. "That's great producing." Macy said "Focus" director Neal Slavin is pals with Bloomberg. He said Slavin told Bloomberg it was "an important film," and after reading the screenplay, Bloomberg told Slavin, "You're right, go make it." Macy is best known as the star of such movies as "Jurassic Park III," "Pleasantville" and "Wag the Dog." He was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar, and won the Independent Spirit Award, for "Fargo" in 1996. Laura Dern and Meat Loaf Aday join Macy in the cast of "Focus," which opens a limited engagement this Friday. According to various reports in Hollywood, Russell Crowe is being courted to star in "The Cinderella Man," as Jim Braddock, who beat Max Baer to become the heavyweight boxing champion in 1935, and lost the title in 1937 to Joe Louis. Braddock was called the Cinderella Man because he came more or less out of nowhere take the title from Baer in a 15-round decision. Crowe, who won the best actor Oscar earlier this year for "Gladiator," is due in U.S. theaters at Christmas in director Ron Howard's new movie, "A Beautiful Mind," playing the brilliant but troubled math genius John Forbes Nash Jr. Lasse Hallström ("Chocolat," "The Cider House Rules") will direct "The Cinderella Man." There are also reports that Renee Zellweger is considering starring in "Down With Love," as a feminist writer who becomes romantically involved with a womanizing journalist. Zellweger is set to co-star with Catherine Zeta-Jones in the upcoming movie version of the Bob Fosse musical, "Chicago." FORMER 'NYPD' BLUE STAR STRIKES DEAL WITH CBS Nick Turturro -- who rose from officer to detective as James Martinez in seven years on the ABC-TV drama, "NYPD Blue" -- has signed deal that could land him in a primetime series on CBS-TV. Turturro had a deal with CBS last year too, developing a pilot that the network eventually chose not to pick up. His next major appearance is in the upcoming TNT movie, "Monday Night Mayhem," in which he plays TV football producer Chet Forte. His brother, John Turturro stars as Howard Cosell in the TV movie account of Cosell's rise to the level of broadcasting legend on ABC's "Monday Night Football." The screenplay is by New York Times TV critic Bill Carter, who adapted his own book for the project. Carter did similar duty on the 1996 HBO movie, "The Late Shift," the story of the late-night TV rivalry between Jay Leno and David Letterman.

As I have mentioned on this blog, I was raised Reform (in a kosher home) and am now Shomeret Shabbat and belong to a Modern Orthodox shul, although I would have no problem belonging to a traditional egalitarian Conservative shul. I am not a strictly halakhic Jew, in other words, but my practice may be described as Orthodox-style, and I believe in a personal God Who gave us commandments and in Divine Providence. My instincts for social justice, however, are sometimes shocked by my experiences in a Modern Orthodox community, and this morning was no exception. On account of said practice, I needed to find out the sof z'man kriyat Sh'ma this morning (the last time to say the Sh'ma prayer; yes, there is a time limit). I wasn't sure if Daylight Savings Time affected this. So, I went on to the Orthodox Union website (www.ou.org, natch). Right before I had gone on the website, my browser flashed the cover of the New York Times website, with its latest horrible news on the massive casualties and nuclear disaster of the Japan tsunami. I am feeling some despair about what has been going on in the world in 2011. I'm not sure what I want (or can) do about it other than pray and give charity, but that's for another post. When I went to the OU website, I saw the following headline: "OU responds to Terrorist tragedy in Israel." Over Shabbat, a Palestinian breached the security of the West Bank settlement of Itamar and stabbed five people, including a BABY. I find this sick and disgusting, of course, and I find it even more sick and disgusting that the coverage of this tragedy has been less than, um, ideal, as the victims have often been described as nameless "settlers" and their story buried on page 15 or something. If an Israeli civilian had gone into an Arab village in the West Bank and killed five people, that would have been on page 1 for at least a week. And I am no fan of settlers or settlements. That being the case, we are talking about five people here. And how, exactly, can the OU respond to that? What about Japan? People there need food, clothing, radiation detectors, etc. I am sure there are more than five expatriate American Jews who might need something. I know that every life is important, and I believe that, but this struck me as particularism and refusal to engage with the rest of the world run amok. So I went to the website of the Union for Reform Judaism and saw this headline: "Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan In response to the tragic devastation of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011, the URJ has partnered with a number of North American Jewish organizations to form the Jewish Coalition for Japan Relief." This struck me in my kishkes, as they say, as the far more appropriate headline, although I would have been pleased as punch to see both websites having both headlines. I guess you can take the girl out of Reform Judaism . . .

Thank you for your time and your noble intention to give readers of “Politika” answers to very sensitive issues that characterize the positions of Orthodoxy in the modern world, namely – as you feel and know well – answers to very interesting questions about the Church of Ukraine. We admit that among the Serbian public, your explanation for this situation and your arguments have not been presented to a satisfactory degree. In contrast to this, the view and attitude of the Russian Church is constantly repeated in the Serbian media, and readers are fully familiar with them. With this interview, I am taking the opportunity to clarify your positions and recent actions. In this interview, we would like to start with some general issues, and then move on to more specific questions. Interviewer: How would you describe the position of Orthodoxy in the modern world? What is your role as Ecumenical Patriarch? I have in mind the Serbian theologian Stojan Gosevic, who once expressed the view that “if there was no Ecumenical Patriarchate, we should have to create it.” Could there be Orthodoxy without the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople? Ecumenical Patriarch: First of all, thank you for your effort and your concern in visiting the Ecumenical Patriarchate and giving us, through this interview, the opportunity to communicate with the pious clergy and the Christ-loving Serbian people. The position of Orthodoxy in the modern world is no different from what it was in previous years, beginning with the Upper Room at Pentecost. We may have new information today, socially, scientifically, etc., but the purpose and mission of the Church have not changed. The Church is the Ark of salvation and truth, as the Triune God revealed to the world. It is the place where the transformation of man is accomplished and his union with God is achieved. The Church, in other words, is “the Kingdom of God” in the world. Everything else that we see today, which can impress us and cause admiration, such as such as philanthropic, cultural, social, academic, or developmental works, as important as they may seem, do not cease to be ancillary to the basic purpose and goal of the Church. And, of course, they can by no means replace the sovereign and primary mystical and soteriological character of our Orthodox Church. Regarding the role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the world and in the Orthodox Church, I would prefer instead of formulating an answer to urge all your good readers to look at ecclesiastical history, the Sacred Canons, the teaching of the Fathers, and Holy Tradition, and they will find out what the role and responsibility of the Ecumenical and Apostolic Throne are. We, as humble servants and followers of the Apostle Andrew, do nothing more than what the Sacred Canons have bequeathed to us. This phrase of the well-known Serbian theologian Stojan Gosevic is verified by the acts of the Ecumenical Councils and the Tradition of our Church. Whatever the Ecumenical Patriarchate has it owes to the Church. We are not a self-created entity, but one that has developed through the Holy Spirit. Interviewer: The world seems to be fully globalized. Does this globalization affect Orthodoxy, its essence and its coherence? On the other hand, is the general fluidity of all values forcing some Orthodox communities to mutate into ghettos? Ecumenical Patriarch: Globalization is a phenomenon that modern scholars identify with modernization and development. Some theologians identify it with secularism. It is essentially about the liberalization of all modern social parameters, such as, for example, economics, communication, culture, trade, which are unexpectedly and unaccountably disseminated across borders. When all this occurs in the place where these changes were created or they are assimilated in their own way, then we are talking about the identity of peoples, but when all these are presented as ideals and attempts are made to impose them on other peoples, then we are talking about globalization. Globalization within the Church is transformed into universalism in Christ. As we have said, while globalization seems to be a tendency to bundle everything together, universalism, on the contrary, respects and honors the identity and particularities of each people, but also of every individual in particular. Thus the Orthodox Church in general, and our Ecumenical Patriarchate in particular, does not seek to transform the variety of the gifts of the peoples of the world into something homogeneous and uniform, governed by one authority and one mentality, and following a specific cultural and national line. The Church operates on the basis of freedom, love and unity, in the diversity of spiritual gifts and particular characteristics. However, what creates a problem in the Church and in our personal lives is the secularization that comes from globalization. The modern tendency of secularism is nothing more than a form of globalization that seeks to put them in flux and adapt them to specific national or cultural ideologies. When this happens in the Church, then its coherence is affected, but not its essence. Another aspect of this is the attitude of a nation towards Orthodoxy, and still another, the notion that the Church is the exclusive property of a nation or of certain nations. Respect for and preservation of our identity is natural and necessary. But to limit Christ to specific national contexts, this ultimately results in rejecting Him. Also, to place the nation before the Church leads inexorably to denying the existence of the Church and its universal character. When we therefore transgress our boundaries, as the Fathers of the Church have defined them, and try to impose our own, that is, our own characteristics and our identity, then unfortunately we create a form of “ghetto,” as you say. Interviewer: I would like to move on to more straightforward questions, hoping that you will not be disturbed by my sincerity and directness. For more than a century, the subject of autocephaly tormented the unity of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Will this organization, which you call a “new structure of the Church” in Ukraine, help to prevent this dispute from widening? To the groups of former schismatics gathered around Filaret Denysenko and Makarios Maletic, you offer not only forgiveness but also a “reward” for their behavior. Have you thought, Your All-Holiness, about how much will the decision to grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine will affect the situation (the struggle and the suffering) of the Orthodox in that country, and that Orthodoxy may lose more believers than the Ecumenical Patriarchate predicted? Ecumenical Patriarch: As you rightly say, the question of autocephaly has been tormenting Ukraine for more than a century. If we go in the past, we will find that there were intense and concerted efforts to free the Kievan people, clergy, monks, and the local hierarchy from the ecclesiastical manipulation of the Patriarchate of Moscow. These efforts began as early as 1325, when the seat of the Metropolitan of Kiev was permanently transferred to Moscow, which events are recorded in history and are no longer disputed. There have been several attempts at autocephaly in the past, which have not been successful. We believe that God does everything according to His own plan. So God’s time came also for Ukraine. Regarding whether the granting of autocephaly will ultimately help with the issue of unity, we are sure that granting it was a prerequisite. Until yesterday, most of the Ukrainian people were outside the Church. This was something that hurt us. That is why, in the past, we made a lot of efforts to remedy this problem. For example, on our own initiative, we set up a joint committee of hierarchs from the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Patriarchate of Moscow, in order to find a solution. Ultimately, this committee almost never operated under the Patriarchate of Moscow, and so the problem has continually grown. Some used the misnomer of schismatic and thus comfort their conscience that everything is all right. But when one of our brothers is described as a schismatic or heretic, much less when an entire population of millions of people are out of the canonical Church on the grounds of schism, then we urgently and without any delay call for a spiritual and apostolic awakening, because “if one member suffers, all suffer together” (I Corinthians 12:26). For some, the existence of schism in Ukraine was the best excuse to give up this godly people, denying their responsibilities before God and history. For us, however, it was a motivation and a call from God to find solutions that are salvific and unifying, in order to re-establish this people in the sanctifying grace of the Church. What we did, therefore, was our apostolic duty and what the Holy and God-bearing Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils did, who constantly created the conditions, exercising an unconditional ecclesiastical economy, to bring those outside of the Church into its bosom. I would also like to see the issue of unity in this spirit. It is not a “reward” for the hierarchs Filaret and Makarios, as you say in your question. The issue of Ukraine should not be personalized. People will be leaving this world at some point. If the whole affair concerned only these two persons, be sure that the Church would have operated in a different manner. Today, because of the love of Christ and the unity of the Church, these persons were recognized only as bishops, not for the place they held. We could speak of rehabilitation if the Ecumenical Patriarchate had accepted Filaret as Patriarch and Makarios as Metropolitan of Lviv. But that did not happen. The issue of Ukraine should therefore be seen globally, ecclesiologically and soteriologically. Beyond all the personalities and national interests, it is important to address the problem. Today, the whole Orthodox people of Ukraine are in good canonical standing. There is a precondition for unity and sharing in the common cup. Now, if some do not accept this, they will have to ask themselves who is breaking the unity. Interviewer: As you know, there is a lot of contradictory information about the Ukrainian issue in the media. Some people view your actions as paternally inspired, while others as an expression of ambition for power and as an intention that will lead to a “blatant violation of Canon Law.” Have you thought about the traumatized spirituality of Eastern Europe after the communist period and whether there are influences of imperialist American ideas in your actions? Some years ago, in the presence of the heads of all the Orthodox Churches, you promised that you would not interfere with the problems of the Churches in Ukraine because this was an internal issue of the Russian Church. As we have learned from leading theologians of Constantinople, primacy does not presuppose the structure of a pyramid in the Church, but the agreement of one with the many, according to the 34th Canon of the Holy Apostles, which says that the first does nothing without the consent of the many (meaning the synod). Ecumenical Patriarch: We, as much as our many obligations allow us to do so, are watching the various publications on the Ukrainian issue, and we often feel sorry for the misinformation and the falsification of truth. Nevertheless, we believe that eventually the truth will prevail. It prevails and shines forth. With the passage of time, the intentions of the Mother Church and of me personally, which were purely ecclesiological, canonical and soteriological, will become clear. Of course, there is no question of being controlling or expressing ambition, or even worse, of a “blatant violation of Canon Law,” as you put it in your question. Ukraine has gained its autocephaly. Nothing was added to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, nor to the Ecumenical Patriarch. There was no motivation of self-interest or ulterior motives. We just did our ecclesiastical duty. The grace of God has conferred on us the ministry of the first see of Orthodoxy for almost thirty years. From now on we do not await anything human and secular. We pray daily for the grace and mercy of God in our lives and in our Church. Therefore, what is written and said about ambitions and power interventions does not apply. Nor was there, of course, pressure from certain states for Ukraine’s autocephaly. But I must affirm to you that several Heads of State congratulated the Ecumenical Patriarchate on this decision. Some with letters and others with public statements. When a state praises a decision by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, it does not mean that this state has made it happen. Our Church operates freely and free from external interference and secular pressure. With regard to some of our earlier statements on non-intervention in Ukraine, we did, on the basis of the circumstances and information at that time, make that decision. However, the information changed in the course of time. Apart from the fact that for 30 years Moscow has managed to do nothing but enlarge the split among the Ukrainian people, we have the new conditions that have been established in Ukraine after the Crimean occupation in 2014. At the same time, we have the decisions of the Ukrainian Parliament in favor of autocephaly and the Ukrainian government’s request for ecclesiastical independence. And most importantly, there were requests from Metropolitans Filaret and Makarios for a review of their cases. This has occurred many times in the acts of the Church and is normally defined as a “court of appeal.” Any Orthodox bishop who is condemned by his Church and considers that he has been wronged has the right, on the basis of the 9th and 17th Canons of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, to appeal to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and ask for his case to be re-examined. When, then, the Ecumenical Patriarchate then studies in synod the decisions taken against these bishops, it does not “intervene bluntly” in the territory of other Churches, as some say, but does what the Sacred Canons dictate. If you look at our ecclesiastical history, you will find infinite examples of such incidents, namely, priests and other clergy who felt they were wronged by their local Synod and appealed to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Therefore, the study and the solution to the Ukrainian question was also made in the light of the existence of the court of appeal. Certainly, we also take into account the 34th Canon of the Holy Apostles, but this rule refers to the bishops of each nation, who should recognize their head as their head and do nothing without consulting him, and correspondingly, the first bishop should not act without consulting his bishops. This Canon attempts to ensure unity and harmony in the local Church. It is not a Canon concerning the relations of the local Churches, but the internal governance of a local Church. Therefore, it does not refer to the relationship of the Ecumenical Patriarch with the other Churches. These relations and the position of Constantinople in the Orthodox Church were determined by the Third Ecumenical Council and were consolidated by the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon. Those who know Canon Law and who study the Sacred Canons know very well what the position and responsibility of the Ecumenical Patriarch is in the Orthodox Church. Interviewer: The Ecumenical Patriarchate recently published a document demonstrating that in the 1686 ruling the Church of Constantinople did not give the territory of the Metropolis of Kiev to the Patriarchate of Moscow, but only the permission to ordain the Metropolitan of Kiev. This document was really unusual, as for the first time it was felt that the Patriarchate of Constantinople had a canonical argument. In the turmoil of Ukraine, there was a question: does the fact that the Moscow Patriarchate was never given a Tomos in relation to Ukraine set aside more than 300 years of patriarchal care of the Patriarchate of Moscow for this country? Ecumenical Patriarch: It is a fact that there is no regular canon, that is, a Patriarchal Tomos or a Patriarchal and Synodical Act of Concession of the Metropolis of Kiev to the Patriarchate of Moscow. The documents are clear, and the letters of Patriarch Dionysios, sent in 1686, are very clear. Not only do they not grant the Metropolis of Kiev to Moscow, they also set as a basic prerequisite that Kiev will continue to commemorate Constantinople as its canonical authority. Those who have elementary ecclesiological and canonical knowledge understand that it would not be possible to grant the Metropolis of Kiev to Moscow but the Metropolitan of Kiev would continue to commemorate Constantinople. Unfortunately, the Patriarchate of Moscow unilaterally abolished this agreement. It ended the commemoration of Constantinople because it knew that this was the visible sign of the normal jurisdictional reference of the Metropolitan of Kiev to Constantinople. It is also known that before the letters of Patriarch Dionysios were sent, our Russian brothers attempted to ordain Metropolitans of Kiev, but they always encountered reactions from the clergy and the people of Little Russia, who in no way wanted Moscow. Indeed, the Patriarch Nikon of Moscow (1652-1658) improperly appropriated the title of the Patriarch “of Great, Little and White Russia,” which demonstrated the expansionist spirit that had overtaken him. However, the texts of 1686 are not the first canonical texts that the Ecumenical Patriarchate presented, as you say in your question. If you look at the Tomos granting autocephaly to your sister Church of Poland in 1924, you will find that special mention is made of the Metropolis of Kiev. The Tomos for Poland specifies in particular that the detachment of the Metropolis of Kiev and its annexation by the Moscow Church was not carried out in accordance with canonical provisions. That is, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, 238 years later, did not cease reminding people of this abnormal occupation of the Metropolis of Kiev by the Patriarch of Moscow. Of course, this status quo has been in place for more than 300 years. But that does not mean that normalization has occurred. There is no law that tells us that sin and uncanonical activity are normalized and healed with the passage of years. As far as we know, “what was groundless in the beginning was attested at the time of the mistake.” Interviewer: There are some who argue that the Ecumenical Patriarchate entered a foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction and granted autocephaly. Does the Church of Constantinople have a right or privilege to intervene voluntarily wherever it wants, and above all, in the territories of other Churches? Why, in this case, was autocephaly not granted after consultation with the other Orthodox Churches? Ecumenical Patriarch: From what we mentioned earlier, you realize that we have not entered a foreign ecclesiastical province. We had granted the permission for the ordination of the Metropolitan of Kiev to the Patriarch of Moscow, and this with specific conditions that were not respected on the part of Russia. The Ecumenical Patriarchate has never done such things throughout its history. We do not have expansionist inclinations. I urge you to study ecclesiastical history from the Fourth Ecumenical Council and beyond. You will find that the Church of Constantinople continually decreases and decreases. At the same time, read the decisions of the Synod that took place in the Church of Panagia Paramythia here in Constantinople in 1593. This Synod set the boundaries of the newly-founded Patriarchate of Moscow. Study whether the limits set by the Holy Fathers are the same as those of the present sister Church of Russia. Here is a question: can each Church self-expand its territorial boundaries, even to the detriment of another? We, as the Ecumenical Patriarchate, did not intervene. As we mentioned earlier, the issue of Ukraine was timely. The Mother Church suddenly did not decide to deal with a non-existent problem. The fact that some were familiar with the idea of schism and did not care about the enormous ecclesial problem that existed does not relieve us of responsibility for its solution. Regarding the granting of autocephaly in consultation with the other Orthodox Churches, this was not done because it is not a tradition in our Church. All Tomes of Autocephaly granted to the newly-created Autocephalous Churches (Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Athens, Warsaw, Tirana and Presov) have been granted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, without any consultation or consideration at a pan-Orthodox level. And it really is a surprise that the Churches who received their own Tomos of Autocepaly only with the signature of Constantinople are today questioning how it is possible for the Ecumenical Patriarchate to grant unilaterally a Tomos of Autocephaly to Ukraine. The answer is clear: in the same way and the same process that granted ecclesiastical independence to all the newly-created Churches. Interviewer: As you know, the Synod of the Serbian Church said there would be no communion with Filaret Denysenko and Makarios Maletic. Following the granting of autocephaly, it is not certain that the two schismatic groups in Ukraine have joined and do not continue to fight each other, and even Filaret Denysenko openly demonstrates that he does not plan to respect promises and agreements. Two questions are thus raised: did you have the right to lift or reduce the ecclesiastical excommunication and accept schismatics condemned by other bishops? Is there a way for Filaret to retain the title of Patriarch, and can you do anything about it? Critics of your decisions claim that Filaret goes to different places and operates with patriarchal insignia, although it has been agreed that he would not do so, and is portrayed as a “Patriarch,” having reduced the role of Archbishop Epiphanios to that of a “foreign minister.” I was amazed at the election by the Ukrainians on December 15, 2018, by the Unity Council of the same day, of young Epiphanios, who came from the “party” of Filaret, as the head of the Ukrainian Church, and not of Simeon, the Metropolitan of the canonical Ukrainian Church. Ecumenical Patriarch: There are no more schismatics in Ukraine, because the Church has restored them. And we consider it a great blessing of the grace of the Holy Spirit that so many millions of people have entered into canonical regularity again. If you refer to the Proceedings of the Ecumenical Councils, you will see that what the Church of Constantinople did is not a new and unprecedented act. The Fathers were always anxious to create the conditions for unity and reintegration into the Church. Having the worst information before them, they were trying to get the best result. So to your question about whether we could perform this restoration, I answer straight to you: of course we could, since there were no dogmatic differences. We have already referred to the 9th and 17th Canons of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, which entitle the Ecumenical Patriarch to take care of such matters. We did not discover this right, or rather this great ecclesiastical responsibility, but we received it. And the Holy Fathers who introduced it knew well why they did it. As far as Filaret is concerned, the Church recognizes him as Metropolitan of Kiev. Now, within the Church of Ukraine, we do not want to intervene unless we are asked. Therefore, for us there is Filaret the Metropolitan of Kiev. The Patriarch of Kiev does not exist and never existed. But again I think we should not personalize the issue. Not all of Ukraine is Filaret. Interviewer: Some people often claim that Patriarch Bartholomew, as “the Pope of the East,” considers that there is no one to which he has to explain or validate his decisions because the power of the Patriarchate of Constantinople comes from the Ecumenical Councils. Many believe that the new Tomos of Autocephaly of the Church of Ukraine is not acceptable because of the theological ideas and constructions within it, especially those that say that you are the head of this Church. In a way, the public has gotten the feeling that you are against the Slavs. You recently said that “our Slav brothers do not accept the lead of the Mother Church.” What did you mean by that? Ecumenical Patriarch: There is no “Pope of the East” in the consciousness of the Orthodox Church, or, of course, in our own thought and humble ministry. The Ecumenical Patriarch does not operate unilaterally and of his own will, but cooperates and co-decides with the Holy and Sacred Synod. But it is a fact that the Ecumenical Councils have given responsibilities and obligations to the Church of Constantinople that the other Churches do not have. And this has not been entrusted to the Mother Church by one Ecumenical Council or a single Canon. It is not, therefore, a fortuity or a contextual conjuncture of those times. There are many Sacred Canons and several decisions of the Ecumenical and Local Synods that confirm these privileges. We cannot change this reality, nor do we have that right. These privileges of the Ecumenical Patriarchate are not related to any secular power, but to a spiritual ministry and responsibility. It is a high ecclesiastical and spiritual work. Having the experience of the ministry in the Patriarchal Throne for almost three decades, I can assure you that the cross of the Constantinople is its precursor. I love the Slavs and appreciate their devotion and their faith. But that some of them do not accept the lead of the Mother Church; that is a fact. This refusal, however, does not affect our love for them. We love them and we will continue to love them. Do not forget that the Ecumenical Patriarchate granted the Tomos of Autocephaly to Ukraine, a Slavic people. We would not have given such privileges unless we loved them. Besides, ordinary Slavic people have often shown us their love and respect. The Tomos given to Ukraine is also not a text that was created to confirm the privileges of Constantinople. On the contrary, it is a canonical and technical text, following the tradition of the Mother Church. There is nothing in the Ukrainian Tomos that is not included in other Tomes. What you are saying, that “Constantinople is the head of the Church,” is written precisely in the Tomos given to Moscow in 1590. Many elements of the Tomos of Ukraine also exist in the Tomos of Autocephaly of Serbia. This is, therefore, not a new text. Just the old ones received their Tomes and thanked God, having no difficulty accepting that the Orthodox Church had a First Throne. Today, some people are studying the Ukrainian Tomos individually and not in good spirit. However, this text does not constitute a foreign or a new text compared with the Tomes of the rest of the Autocephalous Churches. There is unity, relevance and continuity. This is how the Ecumenical Patriarchate works. Interviewer: It is said that, historically speaking, that autocephaly was granted only in areas that were distinct provinces of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Is that true? Also, can the territorial boundaries and the political structure of a region be a measure of the religious determination and responsibilities of the Church? Ecumenical Patriarch: As mentioned above, all recognized Autocephalous Churches received their autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, not because they were once in its jurisdiction but because the Church of Constantinople, on the basis of the Sacred Canons, has the supreme authority and the right to deal with issues of other local Churches. What is claimed, that every local Church can grant autocephaly to a territorial area within its jurisdiction is not canonically the case and such a tactic never prevailed in the practice of the Orthodox Church. Obviously it is claimed by some because they want to reduce the role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This, however, does not express ecclesiastical reality. The Patriarchate of Georgia, for example, has never been in our jurisdiction. But from Constantinople it received autocephaly and patriarchal status. Regarding geopolitical changes and territorial borders and how far they affect Church decisions, the Church’s acts teach us that these changes do not determine its decisions, but, yes, they sometimes influence them. More specifically, one of the conditions for the granting of autocephaly is the constitution of the state. But that does not mean that whenever there is a state formation, there is also autocephaly. Other canonical and ecclesiastical conditions are required. The Church of Serbia acquired its autocephaly when it acquired a geographic state entity and the ruler of Serbia in 1879, along with the local hierarchy, demanded their ecclesiastical independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Serbia, however, had all the other ecclesiastical and spiritual prerequisites. It did not acquire its autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate solely because of its state structure and constitution. Interviewer: As the First-Throned Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has the strongest connection with the Serbian Orthodox Church, which has quite different borders from those of the countries within its territory. Anti-ecclesiastical and neo-communist structures, which are often unscrupulously supported by local authorities, are trying to support the autocephaly of many small regions, such as Macedonia and Montenegro. What would you say to the Macedonian and Montenegrin Serbs in Macedonia? Are your responsibilities also coming to Slovenia, as the media say? Milutin Stancic, a believer from the Orthodox Archbishopric of Ohrid (headed by Archbishop Ioannis, who belongs to the Serbian Orthodox Church), would like to ask something like this: “Do you intend to divide the Tomos you gave to the Church of Serbia, to which the Church of Macedonia belongs first?” Can you make another decision? Ecumenical Patriarch: Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation here. They identify the case of Ukraine with Skopje and Montenegro, and this is done artificially because they want to turn the Church of Serbia against the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Indeed, as far as we know, many hierarchs of the Serbian Church keep their distance from Ukraine, fearing that what has been done there will be repeated in Montenegro and Ohrid. But we assure you that things are not like that. The Church of Serbia had specific geographical boundaries. When the statehood of Serbia expanded, the Serbian brethren approached the Ecumenical Patriarchate and called for the ecclesiastical affiliation of these new territories to be transferred to their jurisdiction. The Ecumenical Patriarchate answered positively and handed over these lands with a Tomos, something that did not happen with the Church of Russia, which trampled upon the territories of the Ecumenical Patriarchate without having received any canonical assignment. The difference, therefore, with Ukraine, both in a canonical and ecclesiological way, is that Russia entered and occupied the Metropolis of Kiev without ever having been granted it, while Serbia has gained everything that belongs to it in a canonical and ecclesiological manner. This means that the Ecumenical Patriarchate will not alter the status of the Church of Serbia and its boundaries without any consultation and cooperation. The Ecumenical Patriarchate never interferes with the territorial boundaries of other Churches unless there is a request and a major ecclesiastical need. With regard to the Slovenian publications, which have come to our attention, we are sorry, because they serve specific purposes. We urge those interested to read the Tomos of Autocephaly of Ukraine, in order discover there that the newly founded Autocephalous Church of Ukraine has no canonical rights over the Ukrainians outside of the Ukrainian state. The Ukrainian faithful who are in the territories of established and recognized Churches belong to the local Bishops, and the Ukrainians of the Diaspora, under the 28th Canon of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, belong to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Thus the Ukrainians in Poland belong to His Beatitude Brother Sawa and respectively the Ukrainians of Slovenia belong to the local Bishop of the Patriarchate of Serbia. There is no circumstance in which the newly established Church of Ukraine will send bishops beyond its limits. This, therefore, that was published about the installation of bishops in Slovenia is false. Interviewer: Many still claim that today’s Orthodox Church of Ukraine has greater autonomy from Moscow than that of the autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Constantinople. Do you think that, instead of the usual and expected autocephaly, that you gave the Ukrainians fewer privileges and less independence than what the canonical Church of Ukraine enjoys under the Patriarchate of Moscow? Ecumenical Patriarch: The autocephaly given to Ukraine is complete and is not different from what the other newly-created Autocephalous Churches received. Interviewer: The issue in Kosovo and in Metohija is the biggest concern for the Serbs, as many churches and monasteries have been destroyed and basic human rights have been jeopardized. Ecumenical Patriarch: The Ecumenical Patriarchate and we personally are strongly against the desecration and destruction of every religious building. This, of course, includes Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim places of worship, which are unfortunately subject to vandalism and desecration simply because they are in areas where there are differences in the religious beliefs, traditions and practices of monotheistic communities. We have visited several monasteries in Kosovo, Metohija, Gracanica and Dekan, which were built with the blood and faith of pious Orthodox Serbs. These are a proud building block of rich Serbian history and truly rank among the most beautiful monasteries in the world. They are, in fact, invaluable religious heirlooms of the pious Serbs and of human artistic creation, as well as of the world’s civilization as a whole. Their destruction has led to their classification among the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. We fully sympathize with our beloved Serbian brothers and we share in their pain and frustration. Through this genuine, authentic and fraternal solidarity, we come closer to them and they to us. We wholeheartedly praise their constant and unceasing devotion, which we personally experienced and encountered on our previous visits to Serbia, and our prayer is to see very soon the complete restoration of these holy places. And if God allows it, we will visit Belgrade next fall, where we will celebrate together the 800-year anniversary of the elevation of Saint Sava as Archbishop of Serbia. We have already received an invitation from Patriarch Irenej, to which our answer was: “Whenever the Patriarch invites us, we always respond with great pleasure.” Interviewer: In the Orthodox world, over the centuries, the Throne of Constantinople played a coordinating role among the Orthodox Churches. How can he play this role today? What is the future of this issue? Ecumenical Patriarch: Indeed, the Ecumenical Patriarchate was called upon in the past, with a sense of responsibility to coordinate and to decide on inter-Orthodox issues. It will continue its mission and its course in history, having a coordinating and deciding role, depending of course on the details and circumstances of the times. As it has been said recently, the Church of Constantinople is “ruling and suffering.” The Phanar is “empty-handed and renewing.” We live in these two qualities of the Ecumenical Throne. Our Patriarchate has a mysterious character that does not like and has no patience for people whose aspirations and visions are based on numbness, the megalomania of restricted logic and the commonality of material emotions. That is why it is difficult for us to understand those who are trapped in futility and secularism. Here, in the First Church, a great mystery was accomplished, which goes beyond human logic and is understood only in the light of the faith and the synergy of heaven and earth. Here the principle of doctrine was founded, theology began here, here the wisdom of our Fathers was recorded, the Ecumenical Councils were here, the principle of our Sacred Traditions was here, the Sacred Canons were established here, monasticism was experienced and flourished, here the Christianization of the peoples was organized, and here was blessed the ecclesiastical status of all the newly created local Orthodox Churches, among them Serbian. All this richness and wealth neatly defines our patriarchal course, as it has determined the course of our venerable predecessors, and I am sure it will inspire the course of our successors. With what the Orthodox Church bequeathed to us, we are moving toward the glory of Christ, the unity of the Churches and the salvation of the people. With the grace of God, we have begun in this way, and our desire is to finish in this way.

In many ways today is already the first day of a new year. Christmas is the de facto midwinter festival after all, and we’re already a week into the actual solar year. I wonder aloud, was December 25th chosen because it was the halfway point between the logical (but pagan-associated) solstice and the incorrect but well-established Roman new year? So to start the year I will deal with some unfinished business. I’ve been promising to return to the topic of calendar reform since… January, gawd. As you’ll no doubt remember, I reached the conclusion that it would be nice if we could have one that keeps time with both the sun and the moon. The obvious problem here is that in reality, the periods of day, month and year just don’t divide into one another evenly. Why should they, after all? They’re just rocks spinning around in space. The trick then is to find approximated versions of these periods that fit together neatly enough. Many civilisations have tried only to give up. Islam settled on a fully lunar calendar, which is why it is about 11 days shorter than the solar Christian one. That itself still has a vestigial lunar element; its months were originally in time with the moon, but various reforms have broken this almost beyond recognition. Not though, beyond repair. They managed to square the solar cycle by adding an extra day every four years; we just need a similar idea to fix the months, so that the waxing and waning of one moon fits precisely into each. Because that would be cool. I put a lot of work into this, and figured out that it could be done quite easily. The real month is very close to being 29.5 days long, so we could simply have alternating calendar months of 29 and 30 days. No problem! OK, months of that length don’t fit evenly into a year. There will be twelve and a bit between every winter solstice. But that’s the whole point – there aren’t an even twelve months in a real year, and trying to make it be that way has wrought a world where we all have to memorize a stupid rhyme. We just need to accept that and then we can move on. But what we do want is for the months to stay, at least approximately, at the same time of the year; April will always be Spring, September Autumn, and so on. And as it turns out, just two “leap months” in every five years is sufficient to keep them aligned with better than 98% accuracy. Add a couple of minor rules and the cycles can be kept in time for thousands of years. I checked this out thoroughly, even using spreadsheets to painstakingly project the cycles centuries into the future. Incredibly, it stays in time. It seems almost too simple. Why had no one thought of this before? Well of course, someone had – quite some time ago. After several days of calculations, I realised I’d basically just reinvented the Jewish calendar. It’s a fine piece of astronomical workmanship with roots going back to the very beginnings of civilization, and has been successfully keeping sun and moon in harmony for a very, very long time. Why don’t we use it, or something like it? I strongly suspect, simply because it is Jewish. We should though.

Homemade XO Chinese Sauce Recipe Everybody needs a little XO on their Chinese pork For many Jewish families, Christmas means enjoying each other’s company over Chinese food and movies (among the only businesses open in otherwise eerily abandoned ghost towns on Christmas Eve and Day). At his nationally recognized West Newton bistro Lumière (accolades from Bon Appétit, Food & Wine and Saveur), Michael Leviton is recreating this long-standing Jewish Christmas tradition featuring interpretations of Chinese food using local, sustainable ingredients and classic French techniques on Christmas Eve. Leviton's homemade XO sauce, a salty-savory-sweet Chinese condiment made from caramelized dried seafood and sausage, is a great match for pork belly, scallops and a range of other Chinese dishes. You’ll notice that the XO sauce calls for house-dried seafood, but the home chef can buy this all at a well-stocked Asian market or by hunting around online Asian food sites. - Cover the dried seafood with boiling water and rehydrate overnight in the refrigerator. - The next day, drain the water from the seafood. Render the fresh sausage carefully, going for a deep golden brown without burning. Pour off the fat except for 1/2 cup. - Meanwhile, purée the seafood in a food processor until finely chopped. Reserve. Once the sausage has caramelized, add the red pepper and cook 30 seconds, then add remaining ingredients including the reserved 1/2 cup sausage fat (but not the sesame oil) and cook very slowly, stirring frequently. The idea is to lightly caramelize the entire mixture slowly over 20-45 minutes. - Once desired coloration has been achieved, add sesame oil. Combine well and adjust seasoning. Try out these Chinese dish recipes on Food Republic: Food Republic Newsletter Throughout May we will be offering wall-to-wall grilling coverage including grilling tips, gear advice and interviews with immortal Grilling Gods. Grilling Month Giveaway All month we're giving away an amazing lineup of grilling-related items. Come back every few days to enter and win.Enter the Contest »

From Bertha Alyce: Mother exPosed Transcript From the time I got my first Brownie camera, I was fascinated by photography. I didn’t think I’d ever understand its magic since girls were only supposed to marry and bear children. But when I was twelve, I decided to start photographing mother. She was the person in my life from whom I was the most alienated, and yet about whom I was the most curious. Many of my conflicts with mother revolved around the issue of beauty. The day after she and daddy went to a party, she would tell me about the men who asked her to dance, which people told her she looked pretty, who said they liked her dress or her hair. Even then, I knew I hated this litany. She always had to be center stage. At my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah party, she wore a sari with a red dot on her forehead. Alison couldn’t decide if she thought it was neat to have such a hip grandmother, or if she resented having the attention taken away from her. Everyone thought mother was beautiful. I didn’t see it. I photographed her almost constantly until she died, but I almost never exhibited the photographs. I couldn’t. They looked angry. It wasn’t until a couple of years after she died when I started to miss her, that the pictures began to look entirely different to me. From Bertha Alyce: Mother exPosed. Video by Gay Block, 2003. Credit: © GAY BLOCK How to cite this page Jewish Women's Archive. "From Bertha Alyce: Mother exPosed Transcript." (Viewed on July 26, 2016) <http://jwa.org/node/18872>.

Abomination, apologetics, apostasy, Biblical Authority, Christ, christianity, christians, Death, Disobedience, Doctrine, False Gospel, Jesus Christ, Knowledge, Last Days, Lies, Only Son of God, Scripture, Solid Scripture, Truth, Word of God We are having a great time studying the book of Titus and I want you to open your Bible, if you will, to Titus chapter 3. I believe we come into one of the most challenging and relevant sections of this brief epistle as we approach this last chapter. I want to begin this morning to address the first eight verses. And I want to look at those verses under the title, “The Christian’s Responsibility in a Pagan Society.” Before we look particularly at the text, I want to say some things that I trust will create a setting for our understanding of it. America is a pagan society. I think all of us have come to the place reluctantly where we can see that that is in fact the case. We have experienced as a nation over 150 years of strong Christian biblical influence. But that is rapidly declining. People still attend religious services. They still say they believe in God when they are polled. But there exists a kind of practical atheism and at best a situational morality. For the most part, whatever vestiges of Christian religion still pervade our culture are weak and compromising if not cultic and apostate. Some have said in years past that we are living in a post- Christian America. Perhaps it could be better said, we are living in a sub-Christian America. We want to say we’re Christians, we just don’t want to commit to what Christianity is. Our Christianity has become hollow. We are clearly pagan but we wear the mask of religion. Our nation is now affirming through its leaders, through its congresses, its legislative bodies, its courts and its judges a distinctively anti-Christian agenda. Anything and everything that is distinctively Christian is being swept away under the aegis of equal rights, moral freedom. And as believers, frankly we tend to resent this. The Christianity that once was part of the fabric of our nation that created some cultural props to hold us up and to give us a biblical morality and some divine standard in which to judge behavior is now gone. Cultural Christianity, whatever it was, is dead. Biblical morality is assaulted constantly. Moral freedom reigns as God. Materialism, family breakup and breakdown is epidemic. Abortions go on. Sexual evils, drugs, crime, pagan education is flooding our nation like the Mississippi River. And we can’t come close to coping or dealing with this flood of evil. We have torn down all of the standards and now we can’t figure out what is right so we don’t know what to teach anybody so we can’t control behavior in the early years of childhood. We now have a generation of people who have taken the agenda and are running with it. We don’t have enough standards to control them. We don’t have enough police to arrest them. We don’t have enough courts to process them. And we don’t have enough jails to keep them in. For those of us who watched the great revival of the seventies, and I believe it was, when we saw the tremendous movement that started out known as the “Jesus Movement,” a sweeping movement of campuses and young people, we saw those great movements of students toward Christ, we saw mass baptisms in the oceans. We thought it was all going to lead us to days of glory and blessing. We saw Bibles being translated so that we could have them in a fresher English translation. We saw the proliferation of books and publishers and tapes and new music and there was a definite wind of the Spirit of God blowing in our country. And those were wonderful days. But the revival of the seventies and the early eighties has turned into the debauchery of the nineties. And the change is sad. And we feel the sadness. And after a while we begin to feel resentment. We don’t like what the President is doing. We don’t like his agenda. We don’t like his decisions. We don’t like what our governor and even our mayor is saying about homosexuality. We don’t…we don’t like the kinds of things that our senators and our congressmen are doing. We’re not happy with the decisions they are making. We are repulsed by the verdicts that are being rendered in courts that are exonerating people of criminal intent and act and letting off people who have no intended ill. I should say…who are judging people who had no intended ill and letting off people who are guilty of things we think are heinous. We aren’t happy with the agenda all the way down, whether it’s the judicial branch or the legislative or the executive branch. We are tired of the evolution of freedom to the point where anybody can do absolutely anything. We are angry that perversion is legalized in our country and the will of God is blatantly rejected. It’s one thing to have sin, it’s something else to redefine it as acceptable human behavior. And I really believe that these are times that can…that can breed not only a sadness in the life of Christians but even hostility. And I sense that in conversations and meetings I have in various places with people that, first of all, we were sad at the trends and now we’re a bit angry about it. And then we get even angrier when they decide to raise our taxes so we can fund more of this agenda. And we fear for ourselves and mostly we fear for our children and we fear for our grandchildren, don’t we? And the worst we know is yet to come and it’s going to come on our children’s children. And the question that I want to pose to you this morning is this…how are we to respond now that our society is so pagan? How are we to react? What is a proper Christian response in a pagan culture? Paul answers that very question in Titus 3:1 to 8, that is precisely the issue here. Titus, as you know, is on the island of Crete. He is there to set in order the things that remain in the churches. There were at least a hundred cities on this island. We don’t know how many of them had churches, but many. He has a very great responsibility to set the church in order to ordain godly leaders against a very corrupt culture. Cretans, you’ll remember, according to chapter 1 verse 12, were basically designated by a prophet of their own as liars, evil beasts and lazy gluttons. Unquestionably they were engulfed in idolatry and all of the extant paganism that made up the Greek and Roman world of the time. Titus then had these churches as little pockets of righteousness in a sewer of paganism and needed to instruct them about how to react to the culture around them. Very important. Now just a footnote before we read the text. I hear a lot of talk today about the church impacting culture. Coming back from Atlanta where I went to the Christian Booksellers Convention this week I read a couple of books on the plane, both of them had to do with confronting our culture, effecting and impacting our culture. But frankly, folks, that’s not our goal. That is not our goal. It sounds like a noble goal and I’m sure there are people who can see certain noble aspects of it and there may be some. But our goal is not to impact our culture by changing their moral values. Our goal is not to impact our culture by creating traditional values, family values through legislation or judicial process. Our goal is not to make sure that the United States of America adheres to a national policy that equates to biblical morality. That is not our goal. We are not involved in altering social morality. We are not involved in upgrading cultural conduct. We are interested in people becoming saved. That is our only agenda. If we’re going to change our culture we’re going to change it from the inside out. You see, the church has one mission, we are a nation of priests. And a priest had one simple function, to bring people to God, to usher them into His presence. It is the only thing we are in the world to do. Frankly, if people die in a communist government or a democracy, it really doesn’t matter if they end up in hell. If they die under a tyrant or a benevolent dictator, it doesn’t matter if they end up in hell. If they die believing that homosexuality is wrong or believing that homosexuality is right and end up in hell, it doesn’t matter. If they die as a policeman or a prostitute without Christ, they’re going to end up in the same place. Whether they die moral or immoral will make no difference in their eternity. Whether they stood on the side of the street with the pro-abortion rights group and screamed for legalizing and maintaining legal abortions, or on the other side of the street against abortion and screamed to stop the killing, if they didn’t know Christ they’re going to end up in the same place. Right? That isn’t the issue, the issue is salvation…the issue is salvation. And the sad reality is that when the church gets a moralizing, politicizing bent it usually has a negative impact on its evangelization mission because then it makes the people hostile to the current system and they become the enemies of the society rather than the compassionate friend. If we are going to see our nation transformed, it has to be done from the inside out, that’s our agenda. And so we’re here to preach Christ and to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified. But behind that preaching must come some manner of living, some kind of life that makes our message believable. It is to that which Paul addresses himself in chapter 3, let’s read it. “Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be uncontentious, gentle, showing every consideration for all men for we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy statement. And concerning these things I want you to speak confidently so that those who have believed God may be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men.” I want to start with that last line…”these things are good and profitable for men.” What are you talking about, Paul? What are you saying? What I’m saying is if you live this way it’s going to benefit everybody around you. It’s very important how you conduct yourself. In what sense is it good and profitable for men? Go back to chapter 2. In chapter 2 he was also talking about Christian conduct and he says in verse 5 that we are to so live that the Word of God may not be dishonored, verse 8, that our opponent may be put to shame having nothing bad to say about us. And the end of verse 10, that we may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect. What’s the point? We want to so live as to exalt the Word of God, shut the mouths of the critic and put on display God’s saving power. We want the world to know that God is a saving God, that God transforms people. And how can we convince them of that? By showing them our transformed lives. Right? We are to be displaying God’s saving power. Now remember that chapter 3 follows this wonderful discussion in chapter 2 verses 1 to 14. And in that section of verses 1 to 14 of chapter 2, Paul was also telling Titus that he needed to instruct the church about their behavior. But in that chapter it was the behavior among Christians. And how we conduct ourselves together as Christians is going to give a testimony to the world of God’s saving transforming power when we live holy, gracious, loving, wise, kind lives, all of the things that he said in chapter 2. It is very evident that we are not like everybody else to the watching world, that is going to make the Word of God honored, that is going to silence the critics and that is going to adorn the doctrine of God as a saving God, one who can totally transform people. So the way we live within the church and among ourselves is crucial as a platform for our proclamation. Then in chapter 3 he’s concerned not with how we live among each other in the church, but how we live in the society. How we live among non-Christians, how we live in our culture. If we’re going to make God’s saving power manifest, we have to make it manifest in our relations with Christians and with non- Christians. And never is the time more crucial for careful Christian behavior than when believers are engulfed in pagan culture. I mean, that’s how it was, you understand don’t you, in Paul’s day? There was no cultural Christianity. There was no Christianity until he introduced it. In the Gentile world it was just blatant comprehensive paganism with all of the trappings that Satan could develop into it. It was totally and exclusively with the exception of a few Jews a Satanic system. All the existing religion, all the existing ideology, philosophy and thought, all the existing law and order, all the existing values, mores were derived from a non-Christian system. It was thoroughly pagan until Paul arrived. And the clash was so great that it cost him and many others their lives. Paul knew what it was like to live in a thoroughly pagan culture, far more pagan than what we experience because in our country there is a great force of truly regenerated people. And he knew what it was to be in a world of abusive deadly inequality and slavery. He knew what it was to be in a culture of tyrants, petty dictators who were murderous. He knew what it was to be under abusive leadership. He knew what it was to see a society engulfed up to its ears in sexual perversion, the breakdown of the family. We read in some ancient documents about people who had 26 and 27 wives and or husbands, depending on the situation. The world was literally flooded with idols, petty gods. People were heavily taxed and the tax collectors were extortionists who took what wasn’t justly due them. If anybody complained they would take their life as soon as look at them. And the world was full of terrorists, people who were going around executing those who had done something against them. Even in the Jewish world there were the Zealots, the Sacarei(??), the guys who carried the daggers and came up behind the authorities in Israel and stabbed them to death, terrorism was everywhere. It was an ugly world. And Paul never ever says in any of his letters, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, we need to moralize our pagan culture. We need to impact our culture some how.” No, all he ever said was, “We need to evangelize it.” And he wasn’t calling for any kind of protest. He wasn’t calling for any kind of contention or any kind of war against the existing mentality, he was calling for the preaching of the gospel that transforms the life. But it wasn’t just the preaching, it was the living within the church and outside the church that gave a platform that made the message believable. You see, what God had done for the Christians in Crete He wanted to do for a lot of other folks, too. And the conduct of the believers there was crucial to that saving work, that saving enterprise. So he tells Titus to instruct the people with authority. Remember that in chapter 2 verse 15? With authority regarding their duty in a pagan world. Now first, let’s look at verse 1. He says just two words, “Remind them.” And I want to point out to you that he’s simply saying this isn’t anything new. Obviously he had covered this in the past, certainly the folks knew the responsibilities they had for living in a pagan culture but they needed to be reminded. And that is a duty that belongs to everyone who stands behind the sacred desk, as it were, and proclaims the truth to God’s flock. We are basically here to remind you of what you know. Present imperative means it’s a regular ongoing continuing duty of reminding them. And he wants to remind them of the necessity for behaving themselves in a pagan society. Now what he does in these eight verses is sum it up by asking them to remember four realities…four great realities. It is wonderfully organized around these realities. First, remember your duty. Second, remember your former condition. Thirdly, remember your salvation. And fourthly, remember your mission. And if you will remind the people of those four things, it will keep their behavior, as Peter put it, excellent among the pagans. Remember your duty and he outlines them in verses 1 to 2. Remember your former condition and he outlines that in verses 3 to 4, actually verse 3. Then he says remember your salvation, verses 4 through 7. And finally in verse 8 he reminds them, remember your mission. And if you keep those things in mind, they become the motivation for living excellently in a pagan world. I wish I could give them all to you this morning…well I could but I won’t, so you have to come back next week for the last. But let’s take point one…remember your duty. What is our duty? We may be hurt. We may be disappointed. We may be angry as we watch the vestiges of Christian influence die. We may be angry at what we see happening in the courts and in the congresses and the executive offices of our land. What is our response? We may not agree with the decisions that they are making. Here’s what he says. “Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be uncontentious, gentle, showing every consideration for all men.” Seven virtues are listed there. Seven virtues. Now listen to this. It doesn’t matter whether your ruler is Caesar, Herod, Pilate, Felix, Fetus, Agrippa, Stalin, Hitler, Winston Churchill, Bill Clinton, it doesn’t matter who it is, he says be subject, you teach them to be subject. Rulers were tyrants. They lacked integrity. They were murderous. They were not noble. Governments made laws and maybe all the laws weren’t equitable, just and fair. But he says you be subject to rulers, to authorities. He is reiterating a very very commonly given biblical principle, Matthew 22, the Pharisees were always trying to trap Jesus. They want to trap Him publicly because they wanted to discredit Him publicly and turn some element of the population against Him. So they sent disciples to Him along with the Herodians and they said in verse 16, “Teacher, we know that You’re truthful and You teach the way of God in truth and defer to no one for You’re not partial to any.” And that was a whole lot of sinful flattery. “Tell us therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to give a poll tax to Caesar or not?” Now what they’re trying to do is to get Him to say it is or it isn’t. If He says it is lawful, all the Jews are going to hate Him because they hate Caesar, they hate the poll tax, they hate the whole idea of being in occupied country ruled by a bunch of pagans. If on the other hand He agrees with the Jews and says no it is not right, it is not lawful before God to pay tax to Caesar, don’t pay your tax, then they’re going to tell the Romans. One way or the other they’re going to get some element of the power of the populace against Him. But Jesus perceived their evil intent and He said, “Why are you testing Me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the poll tax. They brought Him a denarius. He said to them, Whose likeness and inscription is this? They said to Him, Caesar’s.” And you know what? They hated to use those coins because anything with an image on it constituted…what?…an idol. And they hated that. And, of course, Caesar was a god. And this was idolatry to them. They hated not only the idea of taxation but they hated the idea of the inherent idolatry in it, a graven image made after a god. It was a violation of the first commandment. But Jesus was so wise, He said to them, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” And He upheld both. He said on the one hand pay your tax, on the other hand this had nothing to do with God, you must give to God what is God’s. The point for us today is Jesus paid His tax, even with the inherent idolatry. He said pay your tax. What were they doing with that tax? Things that surely Jesus was not pleased with. But the general overall thrust of government was positive and Christians are to submit to it. Go to Romans 13 and here you have the most comprehensive statement about this from the Apostle Paul, the first few verses of chapter 13. Verse 1, “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities.” That’s just plain and simple blanket statement. Everybody is in subjection. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a democracy or communist form of government, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a monarchy or whether it’s a dictatorship, you’re in subjection…good, bad, whatever form, you’re in subjection to the governing authorities. Then he gives you seven reasons why. Reason number one, government is designed by God. “There is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God.” God has designed human government. He has designed it to exist in a number of forms and it is there because of His design for the control of human life. So submit. God designed it. Secondly, reason number two, resisting is resisting God, verse 2, “He who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God.” Reason number three, resisters will be punished. End of verse 2, “Those who oppose will receive condemnation upon themselves.” So you submit to the government…why? It’s designed by God, resisting is resisting God and resisters will be punished. Reason number four, government is designed to restrain evil. Verse 3, “Rulers are not a cause for fear for good behavior but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you’ll have praise from the same.” In other words, government is designed to restrain evil. Fifthly, it’s designed to promote good. Verse 4, “It is a minister of God to you for good. If you do what is evil, be afraid.” Reason number six, government is empowered to punish. It is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. And that’s why it doesn’t bear the sword for nothing. God has given it the right of capital punishment. That’s what bearing the sword means, God has even given government the right to take a life. And then finally in verse 5 the seventh reason, submit to the government for conscience’s sake, not just because you fear the wrath that’s going to come if you disobey but for the sake of conscience because it’s right. So, submit to the government. Why? It is designed by God, resisting is resisting God. Resisters will be punished. Government is designed to restrain evil and promote good. Rulers are empowered to punish and do it for conscience’s sake. Then the sum of it, verses 6 and 7, “So pay your taxes,” verse 6 says, “for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.” And then verse 7, “Render to all what is due, tax to whom tax is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.” The whole point is God has put government in place and you are to submit to it. Now he gives all those reasons. The one reason he doesn’t give is the evangelistic reason so that we can live and demonstrate that this world is not an issue to us. What’s the difference how much tax we pay? That’s not our concern. It is not our concern to be worried about legislation. It is not our concern to be worried about what the President does. It is our concern to live holy lives and call people to Christ. And our citizenship is in another world. We are only strangers and aliens here. We’ll do whatever we’re asked so that we do not mar our testimony because that is the greater and compelling issue. First Peter 2 adds the very important note of evangelism. In 1 Peter 2 verse 9 says, “We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation and we are to proclaim the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.” In other words, we are to demonstrate what salvation look like. We’re to show people what a saved person is. How do we do it? Verse 12, “Keep your behavior excellent among the pagans.” What do you mean by that? Verse 13, “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution whether to a king as one in authority or governors as sent by him for the punishment of evil doers and the praise of those who do right. This is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. Honor all men…verse 17…love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.” How you live in a pagan culture is crucial to proclaiming the excellencies of the one who saved you, to demonstrating your transformed life, that’s the issue. Now that takes us back to Titus again. The Apostle Paul is saying you need to be subject to rulers and authorities for evangelistic reasons. Back down to the bottom of verse 8, “This is good and profitable for the watching world.” Then he says you need to be obedient, verse 1, to be obedient, the second one. You are to obey whatever it is they say. You say, “Are we ever to disobey?” Yes. There’s one occasion when we disobey, that is when they ask us what the Bible forbids us to do or when they ask us not to do what the Bible commands us to do. And the best illustration of that, as you know, is in Acts chapter 4. They told the Apostles not to preach. You remember they summoned them in Acts 4:18, commanded them not to speak or teach. Peter and John said to them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge.” You judge whether we obey you or God. “For we cannot stop speaking,” they said. Chapter 5, they flogged them, whipped them, verse 40, ordered them to speak no more. They went on their way from the presence of the council rejoicing they had been considered worthy to suffer and verse 42, every day in the temple from house to house they kept right on teaching, preaching Jesus as Christ. There comes a point in time when the state turns against the church and tells the church not to do what God has mandated to do, then we have to obey God and suffer the consequence…be it prison or death. The only time we disobey is when we have been mandated by Scripture to do something we are forbidden to do or not to do something we are being compelled to do. We are obedient. Then he says, at the end of verse 1, “Remind them to be ready for every good deed.” This is so good. Remind them to be ready for every good deed. This is aggressive goodness. This isn’t reluctant saying, “Well I’m not going to make an issue, I’m going to dutifully grit my teeth and pay my tax, I’m going to keep my anger under control.” No, this is…this is an internal eagerness…the word ready means eager…eagerness to do every conceivable good deed. Approach life no matter how volatile the culture is against Christianity, no matter how pagan it is to the very core, how engulfed in idolatry and sin it is, we aggressively pursue every good thing as Galatians 6:10 says, “We are doing good to all men, especially those of the household of faith.” By the way, this is in direct contrast with the behavior of false teachers. Look back at chapter 1 verse 16. Remember the description of false teachers, they are detestable, disobedient and worthless for any good deed. One of the things, beloved, that sets believers apart from false teachers and their followers is the eager goodness in the lives of believers that demonstrates transformation, that demonstrates new birth, salvation, the life of God, the power of the Spirit, righteousness, virtue. We’re to be known in society for our goodness, for our aggressive goodness. Then in verse 2 he moves on in his list of seven virtues, “To malign no one.” Not even one person is the idea. It’s the verb blasphemeofrom which we get the word blaspheme, it means to slander or to treat with contempt. We must confront sin. We can confront sin. We can confront the sinner because of his sin, we must call sinners to repentance but we do not stoop to blasphemy, slander, cursing and speaking contemptuously of people. I don’t appreciate that when Christian people do that with regard to leaders. That’s not the Christian approach. We may not like what they do but we must remember, folks, the condition they are in. Do we forget that they are blinded in their minds by the god of this world? How else do you expect unconverted people to act than like unconverted people? And how do unconverted people act? They act under the influence of Satan and his current system and they’re just carrying out the only agenda they can comprehend. Maligning them is unacceptable. Look at 1 Timothy for a moment, chapter 2. First Timothy chapter 2 verse 1, here was Timothy in Ephesus, another corrupt idolatrous city. He says to Timothy, “I want to urge you that entreaties and prayers and petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” Listen to that. We’re to be tranquil, that’s peaceful, quiet, godly, dignified. And what is our attitude toward the President and the Congress and the judges, the kings and everybody in authority? We pray for them. This is what God wants us to do, to pray for them constantly, making petition, prayers, entreaties for those in authority that God will work in their lives, that God will save them because God, it says in verses 3 and 4, is a saving God who has sent, verses 5 and 6, Jesus Christ to provide salvation. God wants to save and we want to pray for their salvation. Don’t malign them, pray for their salvation. Then he says to Titus another interesting thing that Christians are to be uncontentious, amachos, not fighting. We’re not to fight, we’re to be peaceful, friendly, don’t quarrel with government, don’t fight leaders. We’re not to be combative. That’s not the agenda for us. We’re not even of this world. This isn’t even our country, in a sense. We’re just kind of sliding through. It’s so easy to be contentious and hostile and angry about what happens in the pagan culture in which we live, and especially if it elevates our taxes or if it changes our neighborhood or our culture or whatever it is and we get angry about that. We don’t like to see God denied His proper place and Satan exalted to be the leader of everything. But we are not to be contentious, we are not to fight. This is a passing world for us. All we can do is reach out as we move through and by the grace of God touch some life with the saving gospel both by what we say and what we are. Then he says we’re to be gentle. It’s a beautiful word, epieikes, it means to be reasonable and forebearing. I think the simplest synonym is kind, considerate of human weakness, very patient with sinners. One writer says, “Sweet reasonableness.” Not cantankerous, not argumentative, not angry, not hostile, sweetly reasonable, graciously kind, gentle. And then he closes in verse 2 with the last of the seven, “Showing every consideration…showing every consider…” that’s the word meekness in the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:5, prautes, meekness. We’re meek, that’s power under control, you’ll remember. Never asserting one’s rights, is what it means. Never fighting for one’s rights. Christians don’t do that. We’re not in a fight for our rights. We don’t have any political agenda. We don’t have any legislative agenda. We’re not after any rights. We don’t want any particular rights with this society, we’ll just live for Christ come what may. It refers to patient trust in God. We commit our lives to Him. Second Timothy 2 says if we live like this, meekly, gently, God may use us to lead people to repentance and the knowledge of the truth, 2 Timothy 2:25. You see, everything we do has an evangelistic goal. And as we live in this world, subjected to the authorities and the rulers, obedient to all the things that they lay out that don’t directly violate Scripture, as we are eagerly pursuing every imaginable good deed within our society as we malign no one, fight with no one, but rather are patient with sinners, gentle, kind, we’re going to demonstrate salvation because only transformed people can act like that. And then he closes in verse 2 by saying, “For all men…for all men.” You need to do this before everybody. That little phrase is very important. It appears a number of times in 1 Timothy and I want to point them out to you and we’ll close. First Timothy chapter 2 verse 1, why does he say for all men? Why does he throw that in there? Because “all men” has become an important term in Paul’s mind. First Timothy 2:1, “Prayers…he says at the end of verse 1…should be made on behalf of all men.” Why? Verse 4, “Because God desires all men to be…what?…saved.” Verse 6, “Christ Jesus who gave Himself as a ransom for all.” God desires all men to be saved, and then he says to believers, live your lives this way for all men to see. That’s consonant with God’s saving purpose. First Timothy 4:10 says, “God is the Savior of all men.” All men need to see our testimony. They need to see the transformation. Titus 2:11, “The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all men.” See, he repeats that phrase again and again and again. God loves all men. God desires that all men be saved, he says. God wants you to pray for all men. The grace of God has appeared to all men. You live your life before all men so that they can see the transformation. Only Christians can live like that. That’s our duty. That’s how we have to live. Father, thank You for our time this morning in Your Word. We want to be Your people. We want to live for Your glory. We want to exalt You. We want to adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. We want the world to know that You’re a saving God because they can see saved people, transformed people. Help us to so live not only in the church but in the pagan world in a way that they see that we’re different. We are submissive. We’re obedient, kind, considerate, eager to do what is good. We’re just transcendent, it’s as if we really didn’t care what happened in this life, we don’t even belong here. We just want to gather souls for the world to come. Lord God, may the world who watches see transformed people and believe in Your transforming power. As You have saved us, may You use us to bring many more to the same salvation. Amen.

Welcome to East LA Weekly In this issue, we look at the burial grounds built over a century ago by the ethnic communities that once called East LA home. We have an update on the fire that destroyed the Nuevo Amanecer housing development. And we've got a nice place for you to get your much-needed flu shot. We welcome your feedback. Please contact me with ideas and suggestions at email@example.com. Antonio Mejías-Rentas, Editor | East LA Weekly - Delivered to your inbox Wednesday mornings A history crawl through East LA cemeteries Behind chain link and wrought iron fences, the tombstones of Chinese, Russian and Serbian immigrants, Mexican Catholics, Eastern European Jews and others can be seen for more than a mile along Eastern Avenue. Welcome to East L.A.’s Cemetery Row. Here, between Olympic Boulevard on the south and Second Street on the north, there's a unique concentration of burial grounds, including the Chinese Cemetery, four Jewish cemeteries and the largest of them all, Calvary Cemetery. There may be no better way of exploring East L.A.'s rich and diverse history than visiting these graveyards. While many were built because of racist and discriminatory practices, they're a testament to the variety of ethnic and religious groups that found homes and formed communities in East Los Angeles. Just in time for Halloween and Día de los Muertos, local historian Schmuel Gonzales, better known as Barrio Boychick, will be conducting a tour of three of the ethnic cemeteries next Sunday. The three-hour visit promises to delve into the facts and folklore of a cluster of small burial grounds between First and Second Streets, surrounded and separated by the 60 and 710 Freeway interchange. Here’s a brief history of these three: Serbian United Benevolent Society Cemetery The Serbian cemetery was built in 1908 for a community of immigrants, mostly from Montenegro, Vojvodina and Hercegovina. Mostly bachelors, the Serbian immigrants first settled on Bunker Hill, but as they began to marry and start families, they looked east for a place to settle down. Once a member of the community bought land in East LA, others followed. A church and community hall were built right after the cemetery, and the area became the center of the Southern California Serbian community. In recent years, the Serbian Cemetery has also acquired some notoriety as the home of a small flock of roosters and hens that happily roam the manicured lawns, fed and taken care of by the cemetery’s groundskeeper. Russian Molokan Cemetery On the other side of Second Street, the Russian Molokan Cemetery was built as a burial ground for members of a Christian sect that separated from the Russian Orthodox church in the 17th century and began migrating to America around 1905 to escape religious persecution. Many of them settled in Baja California’s Valle de Guadalupe, becoming Spanish-speaking wine producers, but the majority settled in East Los Angeles, close but separated from a larger enclave in Boyle Heights. Many of the East LA Molokans were farmers and shopkeepers, but some of them worked as extras in Hollywood movies and were active in a successful strike for better wages. Like many other groups, the growing Molokan community was eventually displaced by freeway construction. The Molokan cemetery in East LA is now overshadowed by a larger Molokan cemetery in the City of Commerce. A much larger final resting place on the other side of the 60 Freeway, the Chinese Cemetery at Eastern and First Street is an important marker in the history of the Chinese American community that began forming in Los Angeles in the 1850s. They were barred from burial at any location except a potter's field at Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights. There, families had to pay $10 per plot. When the county acquired the potter's field in 1917 and began running out of space, it displaced the nearly 900 Chinese buried there, compensating each family with $2 per body. Around that time the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association bought the East LA site to establish its own cemetery, which officially opened in 1922 and is where some of the displaced bodies were eventually buried. East LA numbers remain at steady incline As LA County continued reopening businesses this week, new East LA cases climbed at a steady pace, with the number new daily cases averaging about 22 for the last two weeks. Here are the latest East LA numbers: - Eighteen new cases were reported on Tuesday. - As of Tuesday, a total of 6,476 cases have been reported in the community. - In the last seven days, four new deaths were reported. Total number of deaths is now 108. Free flu shot clinic coming up A free flu shot clinic will be held from 1 to 4 pm. on Oct. 15 at the East Los Angeles branch of the County Library. Vaccines will be made available to people 6 months of age and older. No health insurance required. The local branch is one of eight LA County Library locations that will hold the free clinics over the next few weeks, in conjunction with the Department of Public Health. Go here for details. Three-alarm fire destroys Whittier Boulevard shops Nearly half a dozen storefronts were destroyed or heavily damaged by a Sunday night fire on the south side of Whittier at Arizona. According to the County Fire Department, the blaze originated around 8:20 pm at Casa Olympic, a former popular discount outlet. Flames burst through the roof of the unoccupied building, but no injuries were reported. The cause of the fire was under investigation Tuesday. It was unclear from news reports if Casa Olympic was still in operation, but other businesses destroyed by the fire included a small driving school and a jewelry store. Nuevo Amanecer update Sunday’s Casa Olympic blaze happened less than three weeks after a suspected arson engulfed the nearly complete Nuevo Amanecer affordable housing project at First and Rowan. On Tuesday, the developer of the 61-unit project said a juvenile had been arraigned in connection with the fire. East LA Community Corp. president Manuel Bernal said 13 families living near the construction project who had been displaced by the fire were being assisted by the Red Cross -- and that ELACC is continuing raising funds for them through its donation page, which does not specifically mention the blaze. “We have removed all the physical hazards, the streets are clear again, and local businesses have re-opened," said Bernal's statement. "We are now in the process of removing debris and working with our insurance company, relevant government agencies, and project partners to assess what we need to begin rebuilding.” City Terrace cleanups scheduled Volunteers are needed at three upcoming Sunday morning cleanups organized by the community-based City Terrace Project. The first is this Sunday, Oct. 11, with subsequent cleanups scheduled for Nov. 8 and Dec. 6. Those interested are asked to gather by 9 am in front of the City Terrace Library, 4025 East City Terrace Drive, and bring their own broom and face mask. The cleanup will continue through 11:30 am. Hand sanitizer, gloves, trash bags and drinking water will be provided. Participants at Sunday’s cleanup should be ready to sign waivers for pictures and video shots that will be taken for documentation. Sheriff promotes Banditos ‘code of silence,’ report claims A report by LA County Inspector General Max Huntsman released Monday accused Sheriff Alex Villanueva of promoting a "code of silence" around secret societies within his department. The report specifically calls out the deputy group identified as the "Banditos," saying that about 30 members of the clique disrupt day-to-day operations at the East LA Sheriff's Station by creating tension between deputies who are members and those who are not. "Substantial evidence exists to support the conclusion that the Banditos are gang-like and their influence has resulted in favoritism, sexism, racism and violence,'' the report said. Villanueva refuted the findings of the report, claiming it left out important facts and was politically motivated. Thanks for reading the East LA Weekly! Don't forget to contact me with ideas and suggestions at firstname.lastname@example.org. See you next week!

By Sabina Zawadzki Gunman’s Neighborhood Is Infamous Underbelly of Copenhagen (Reuters) — Every Dane knows of Norrebro, the Copenhagen neighborhood where police shot dead the gunman suspected of carrying out attacks on a synagogue and a free speech event that shocked the country. Blighted by protests and gang warfare, the area is a cauldron of cultures and ethnicities in sharp contrast to more homogenous regions… 99 years ago, she was born on the Lower East Side (and she still remembers everything) Is Elon Musk Jewish? Jewish, Asian and taking over Broadway: meet the next great musical star-in-the-making This punk rock legend survived the Holocaust — and she’s still singing and fighting In Case You Missed It ‘A clarion call’: Buffalo’s Jewish community responds to mass shooting The gunman killed Black people. But his focuses more about Jews. ‘Whose religious freedom?’: Scenes from a Jewish rally for abortion rights France’s newly-appointed prime minister is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor

Earlier this afternoon, I joined the thousands of people who lined Fifth Avenue to see POPE BENEDICT XVI riding in his POPEMOBILE. Above are some scenes during and after the procession. The Popemobile rolled along Fifth Avenue from St. Patrick's Cathedral north to the papal residence on 72nd Street. The procession began at 1:15 p.m., after he celebrated Mass for priests at the cathedral and has lunch with New York Cardinal Edward Egan. The Popemobile was invented after an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981, so people could see the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics without endangering him. Benedict's vehicle, a Mercedes-Benz, is one of two models he uses. The tradition dates back centuries to when popes were carried through the streets on a special chair. The pope also addressed the United Nations General Assembly and visited a Jewish synagogue yesterday. Tomorrow the pope will visit Ground Zero (World Trade Center site) and will also celebrate mass at Yankee Stadium.

We are entering the action packed month of Tishrei, many festivals occurring and also events in Jewish history. I will firstly briefly touch on some of the festivals taking place in this month. The 1st and 2nd of Tishrei comprises of the two days of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, this festival is related in the Torah, in Parshat Emor (Vayikra 23:24-25) and Pinchus (Bamidbar 29:1-6). Before the festival, it is customary to go through a process of annulling all vows and asking for forgiveness to people whom one may have wronged during the course of the year or life (Yoma 87). It is customary to eat apple with honey in this festival, too promote a ‘sweet’ new year. We most notably blow the ‘Shofar’ (Ram’s horn) on this festival. This festival is followed the next day by the ‘Fast of Gedaliah’ (Tzom Gedaliah), this fast laments over the assassination of the righteous governor of Yehuda, his name was Gedaliah. His death ended Jewish rule and completed the destruction of the First Temple. The Jewish nations fasts on the anniversary of Gedaliah's death (Nedarim 12a) The 10th of Tishrei features the festival of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, a day one has to fast for 25 hours, if one is sincere, it is a day when transgressions can be atoned. Most of the day is spent praying in Synagogue, one may not wear lather shoes, no marital relations are allowed, no washing or bathing and one may not use perfumes. Much information on the procedure of this festival in the Temple period is featured in Parshat Acharei Mot (Vayikra 16:1-34). This festival is followed by Succot, between 15th - 21st Tishrei, it is one of the three Pilgrimage festivals, blessings over the four species are made and one ideally should dwell in the shelter of a Sukkah. This festival is completed with the festivals of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. This takes place on the 22nd of Tishrei. The month is packed out with happenings in Jewish history; it was on the 1st of Tishrei that Adam and Eve were created, according too commentators of Parshat Bereishit (Vayikra Rabbah 29:1). The first sin and repentance also took place on this day, after Adam and Eve transgressed due to eating from the tree, they were banished from the Garden of Eden, and death was brought about to the world, however they did repent. The Matriarch, Sara, passed away on this day, as related in Parshat Chaya Sara (Bereishit 23:1), however in the previous Parshah, Vayeira, we learn about the Binding of Isaac on the alter that took place on 1st of Tishrei, as Avraham was ready to sacrifice Yitzchak, on G-d’s command. This Torah portion is read on Rosh Hashanah (Bereishit 22:1-24). The 1st Tishrei is also the day when the ‘Daf Yomi,’ was started by Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lubin, its goal is that one is able to complete learning the entire Talmud in seven years. This was instituted in the year 1923. The 3rd of Tishrei, as I mentioned before, marks the anniversary of the death of Gedaliah. The 5th of Tishrei is the day, when the great Talmudic sage, Rav Akiva, died as a martyr by the cruel Romans. The First Temple dedication celebrations started on the 8th of Tishrei, lasting for 2 weeks, ending with the finishing of Succot. The First Temple would stand for 410 years. The 10th Tishrei, as well as being the day of repentance, marks the anniversary of the date when Moshe came down from the heavenly realms with the second tablets, achieving forgiveness for the Jewish people because of the sin of the ‘Golden Calf,’ as related in Parshah Ki Tisa. The 19th of Tishrei marks the passing of the great Vilna Gaon, in the English year 1797. The 25th Tishrei marks the death of the Chatam Sofer and the 29th Tishrei was the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Abarbanel, who was one of the leaders of the Spanish Jews at the time of the 1492 expulsion, he wrote many commentaries on the Torah that we use today. Hope you all have a fantastic month and a happy and healthy new year! Michael Zaroovabeli from Ohr Sameach Yeshiva in Israel.

Zionist history's murder mystery The JC Essay Arlosoroff, sitting at centre, after convening the meeting of Arab and Jewish leaders at the King David Hotel. Eighty years ago this coming Sunday, Haim Arlosoroff was gunned down during a Friday-night walk with his wife on the Tel Aviv beach. He was 34 and a rising star in the Zionist firmament. He was a respected political thinker - in the words of his biographer, Shlomo Avineri: "the critical student of Marx, Kropotkin and Nietzsche, a product of Russian populism and German Romanticism". His death robbed the future state of a great talent and a potential prime minister. Arlosoroff's journey to Tel Aviv started in the Ukraine in 1899, where he was known as Vitaly. Facing bloody pogroms, his family fled to East Prussia to escape murder and pillage - and, in Germany, Vitaly became Victor. He became an activist in the non-Marxist pioneering Zionist party, Hapoel Hatzair. In 1921, he visited Palestine and the disturbances of that year brought home to him that a national movement existed among the Arabs of Palestine. He castigated those Zionists who ignored it, as being "like a doctor who denies the existence of a malady in an obviously sick person because the microbes he finds in the blood of the patient are different from those he is used to seeing under the microscope". Following his appointment as head of the political department of the Jewish Agency in 1931, Arlosoroff attempted to find a way to defuse the rising tension between Jew and Arab. He discovered that a cash-strapped Emir Abdullah, who ruled the East Bank of the Jordan, was amenable to the idea of selling land to the Zionists from the unpopulated tracts of his country. Arlosoroff did not regard all British officials in Palestine as antisemites. Most, he believed, were clueless about Zionism and ignorant about Jewish immigration. "The worldwide Jewish question interests them as much as last year's snow," he said, arguing that many a British administrator became pro-Arab because the figure of the Arab better reflected the imagery of the ruled in the colonial psyche. Such views led to disputes with Ben-Gurion and other labour Zionist luminaries. Before her marriage to Goebbels, Magda had been Arlosoroff’s lover in Germany After Arlosoroff's murder, suspicion immediately fell on his ideological adversaries in the newly emergent Revisionist movement of Vladimir Jabotinsky. The finger was pointed at one of its leading intellectuals: writer Abba Ahimeir, a recent defector from Hapoel Hatzair. Ahimeir not only joined the Revisionist movement but became the leader of its maximalist wing. In November 1927, he wrote an article entitled: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" He noted that Rabbi Hillel's saying had been converted into the slogan of Sinn Fein - and said that this should be the Zionist pathway as well. In this and subsequent articles, he argued the case for Italian fascism, at a time when it was not antisemitic. Passionately anti-Communist, Ahimeir began to sympathise with the national dictatorships that were spreading across Europe. As a teacher of the leaders of the youth group, Betar, he attracted a group of committed followers. Affronted by the continuing Arab disruption of Jewish services at the Western Wall - and without informing the official leadership of Betar in Palestine - they organised a disciplined march to the Wall. The following day, however, a Muslim demonstration took place that ended with the dispersal of Jewish worshippers and the burning of prayer books, with little interference from the police. This was the catalyst for the disturbances of 1929 and the slaying of many Jewish civilians by Arabs - and many Arabs by British troops. Ahimeir labelled those killed, "martyrs to the building of the Jewish homeland" and asked whether Jewish youth was prepared to do something about this. Young Jews in Palestine and the diaspora such as Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir rallied to the maximalist call. Ahimeir's network formalised itself by creating Brit Ha'Biryonim, named after the zealots of the Second Temple period. For some the biryonim were recalled as the assassins of the perceived enemies of the Jews, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Significantly, Jews with "moderate" views were especially deemed worthy of assault. Yet it was Lenin rather than Mussolini who was held up as the exemplar. During one of his lectures to the Brit Ha'Biryonim, Ahimeir commented: "We reject the doctrines and philosophies of Lenin and his followers, but they were correct in their practical path. This is the path of violence, blood and personal sacrifice." Ahimeir and his acolytes became a thorn in the side of the British and an irritant for the Zionist establishment. Arlosoroff's killing presented the authorities in Palestine with a golden opportunity to liquidate the maximalists. In the eyes of Brit Ha'Biryonim, Arlosoroff was responsible for the controversial transfer agreement allowing Jews leaving Nazi Germany to depart with some of their belongings. Ben-Gurion had taken a pragmatic view that the Zionists should not provoke the Nazis by initiating "an irresponsible battle against Hitler". Five weeks after the assassination, the police seized the Revisionist archives and some of Ahimeir's writings. They discovered his unpublished script, The Scroll of the Sicarii, dedicated to two well-known assassins of the past, Charlotte Corday and Fanni "Dora" Kaplan. Ahimeir argued that the legacy of the biryonim was that history changes its course because of "the work of negative heroes - not the divine but the satanic". Ahimeir suggested that history seemed to permit killing if it was deemed to be for the public good but criminal if conducted for private reasons. He gave the examples of Julius Caesar, William of Orange and Tsar Alexander II. All this was in the realm of intellectual theorising. The British, however, viewed it as concrete evidence. On the night of the assassination, Ahimeir was lecturing in Jerusalem. The central figure in the case, Avraham Stavsky, had recently arrived in Palestine and was lodging with Ahimeir. That night, Stavsky was staying at the Turjeman hotel in Jerusalem. The police said he had slipped out, travelled to Tel Aviv, committed the act and returned swiftly. Another accused, Ze'ev Rosenblatt, said he had been at a social gathering in Kfar Saba. Ahimeir was seen as the inspiration while Stavsky and Rosenblatt were charged with the actual murder. Ahimeir claimed he and his co-defendants were "the Dreyfus and Beilis of our generation". Initially, Stavsky was sentenced to death but the evidence proved flimsy and the accused were released on appeal. But suspicion between left and right deepened. Mapai, the leading labour Zionist party, viewed the Revisionists as fascists. The right saw Mapai as ideologically subservient and willing to use dirty tricks to entrap leading nationalists. Although opposed to the radicalism of Brit Ha'Biryonim, Jabotinsky came out in open support of the arrested. While describing Arlosoroff as "an honest, quiet, hard-working Jewish patriot", he described the case as "a lie which has no legs to stand on". Despite an inability to make the charges stick, the extensive police searches located incendiary material. Although the charges relating to Arlosoroff were formally dropped on May 16 1934, Ahimeir was charged on several counts of sedition a few weeks later and sentenced to 21 months in the Jerusalem Central Prison. Jabotinsky suspected that the killers had been Arabs, and that it had been part of a chain of events, starting with the mass killings of August 1929 and ending more recently with arson in the Balfour forest. In early 1934, Abdul Majud, a Jaffa Arab claimed responsibility for the killing together with Issa Ibn Darwish. It was portrayed as a fumbled attack to ward off Arlosoroff so that they could sexually assault his wife. A few weeks later, Majud retracted this, stating he had been bribed by the Jewish defendants in prison. He was never cross-examined in court. In the 1970s, it was suggested that Joseph Goebbels had sent Nazi agents to murder Arlosoroff. Before her marriage to the Nazi leader, Magda Goebbels had been Arlosoroff's lover in Germany. Brought up Catholic with a Jewish stepfather, Magda had even worn a star of David, given to her by Arlosoroff, and attended Zionist meetings. Their ways parted but, weeks before his death, Arlosoroff visited Berlin where he came across a marriage photograph of his old flame, arm-in-arm with Goebbels. One opposition paper carried the headline: Nazi Chief weds Jewess. After the initial shock, Arlosoroff began to view Magda as his conduit to Goebbels with the aim of securing an arrangement for the transfer of German Jewish assets to Palestine. According to the German writer, Anja Klabunde, Arlosoroff did talk to Magda and they arranged to meet again. This meeting never took place, but Arlosoroff later received a message from Magda to warn him that he was in danger and should leave Germany immediately. Despite an inquiry initiated by Begin in the 1980s, all theories remain within the confines of conjecture. An accidental bungling? A well-planned assassination? Unlike contemporary TV drama, this mystery remains unsolved. As time recedes, it is unlikely we will ever know the identity of the killers of Haim Arlosoroff. Colin Shindler's 'History of Modern Israel' has been published by Cambridge University Press in an updated second edition

After 26 years as the high-profile rabbi of Orlandos Congregation of Liberal Judaism, Larry Halpern left Central Florida earlier this year in large part to support the career of the woman he loves. Halpern said there were other, unspecified reasons for his departure, but he did acknowledge that the move gave his wife, Rabbi Ariel Stone-Halpern, the opportunity to achieve her goal to get back into the pulpit. Rabbi Stone-Halpern is the new associate rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel, a reform synagogue in Portland, Ore., with a membership of 1,000 families. Since Larry Halpern assumed the pulpit at the Congregation of Liberal Judaism in 1970, the temple grew from 150 families to nearly 800 families and embarked on a $1.3 million expansion campaign. A hallmark of his pastorate was the observation and celebration of life cycle events: birth, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, funerals and holidays. Beyond the walls of his synagogue, Halpern was equally active in Jewish affairs. He established the Jewish chaplaincy program at Rollins College and was the only rabbi to serve as president of the Jewish Federation of Central Florida. He also led campaigns in support of Soviet Jews and of Israel. Halpern was also a civic and political activist who was frequently in the spotlight. He served on the Mayors Commission on Civil Rights in the early 1970s and later founded the Mayors Commission on Human Rights. He served on the committee that brought public radio to Central Florida. In 1995 Halpern joined with a group of like-minded clergy to establish a local chapter of the Interfaith Alliance, an ecumenical organization, which the rabbi said was needed to create a religious response to that of the right. Despite Orlandos conservative atmosphere, Halpern said he always found there were people who were willing to work with me not as many as I would have hoped willing to struggle and reach out. Last December, Halpern announced that he was leaving the Congregation of Liberal Judaism to move to Atlanta, and earlier this year he was feted by a gala sendoff dinner in June at the Marriott Expo Center that drew numerous community leaders. One of the speakers at the dinner was the Rev. Jim Armstrong, of the First Congregational Church in Winter Park. Larry Halpern represented all things good in this community, Armstrong said in a recent interview. He championed the causes sometimes unpopular that extended ministries of compassion and understanding to the oft-neglected and oppressed. He believed in civility in discourse and respected the views of those with whom he disagreed. He is sorely missed in Central Florida. For a while, Halpern busied himself with plans to establish a Jewish funeral home in Atlanta, teaching classes at the Atlanta Jewish Community Center and a local Reform synagogue. But plans for the funeral home didnt work out, Halpern said, and when Ariel Stone-Halpern was offered the pulpit in Oregon the couple moved again. What was unspoken but widely understood in the Orlando Jewish community was that Ariel Stone-Halpern could not expect to get a pulpit in Central Florida, for a number of reasons. At 33, she is more than two decades younger than her husband. Larry Halpern had officiated at both her conversion to Judaism when she took the name Ariel and at her bat mitzvah. She had served as a rabbinic intern at the Congregation of Liberal Judaism in the mid-1980s, before attending seminary. In 1989, when Halpern the father of two grown children divorced his wife of 25 years and began dating Stone, some in the congregation disapproved. The couple married in 1995. For one of the few times in nearly 30 years, Larry Halpern was not busy working on his sermons for this weekends High Holidays. During the holiday services, Ill be sitting in the congregation, kvelling over my wife, he said, using the Yiddish term for brimming with pride. I even volunteered to be an usher. Halpern still maintains his ties to the Orlando community, flying into town in August to conduct a bar mitzvah for old friends. As for the future, Halpern said he is looking for work in the Portland area. He said he would absolutely be willing to share a pulpit, even as associate rabbi to his wifes senior position. Shes the best rabbi I know.

“On Friday evening, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek gave a lecture in a bookstore in Central Tel Aviv teeming with familiar faces of leftwing activists. It was hosted by Udi Aloni, an Israeli-American artist and BDS activist, who just completed a book entitled What Does a Jew Want, which is edited by Zizek. Many seem to have come with the expectation to hear Zizek rip into Israel and use his wry wit and charisma in such a bourgeoises Tel Aviv setting to endorse the BDS Movement. Indeed when Udi Aloni introduced Zizek, he identified himself as an activist on behalf of BDS and said he chose the bookstore as a venue in order to not cooperate with any formal Israeli institution. However, Zizek did not officially endorse or even talk much about BDS – and when he did it was because he was prompted to during Q&A. His two clear statements about BDS were that a) he is not 100% behind it and b)he supports a movement that is initiated jointly by Palestinians and Israeli here in the region. Rather, Zizek spent almost two hours with the crowd’s undivided attention talking about antisemitism, capitalism and the place of the Jew in the world. He warned that antisemitism is “alive and kicking” in Europe and America and asserted that the State of Israel should worry more about Christian right antisemitism rather than wasting its energy on self-proclaimed Jewish anti-Zionists. He said that the Christian Zionists in America are inherently antisemitic and that Israel’s willingness to embrace their support is baffling. After establishing the deep-rooted vitality of antisemitism, he mentioned that he has no patience for those who excuse Arab antisemitism; that even the most oppressed and poor Palestinian should not be tolerated for being antisemitic. He also spoke about his well-known argument regarding Zionist antisemitism, whereby Zionists use antisemitic language towards fellows Jews in accusing them of not being Zionist enough. This was his main critique of Israel – its witch hunt against those Jews it finds not “Zionist enough.” Raincoat Optimist comments: “What to some might appear like Zizek withholding sympathy for Palestinians, is in actual fact highlighting the paternalism and snobbery of some pro-Palestinians, who believe those who are lesser off than them should be pitied, left to their own devices, and if they express antisemitic views, well, who can blame them, ‘eh, after all they don’t know any better do they, they’re poor – and as all people know poor people are stupid and don’t deserve to be told they’re wrong to blame the Jews for their plight.”

Parent Support Services As a parent, it is not easy to suddenly be dependent on the advice of others to raise your child. However, since there are so many treatment options, it can help to have the advice, experience and support of a team that you trust and who will be patient with you as you make decisions for your child. This team can consist of a variety of people: family members, friends, social workers, therapists, teachers, classroom aides and medical specialists. It can be extremely helpful to speak with a professional to not only discuss your child’s challenges, but also to strategize and ensure that your own needs are being met. Remember: you are the primary advocate and decision maker. The Greater Atlanta Jewish Abilities Alliance (JAA) Parent Listserv (formerly the Amit Parent Listserv) is a great way to connect with other parents who have navigated the same system and challenges. The JAA Parent Listserv is also a great venue for finding resources and recommendations in a non-threatening environment. FOCUS offers parent support groups, workshops and a newsletter for parents to share information and resources in the community. Georgia Parent Mentor Partnership helps families and schools work together to improve outcomes for students with disabilities. You can also contact Georgia Parent to Parent, which offers a variety of services to Georgia families of children with disabilities. Your parent partner can offer advice and assistance, and also serve as a sounding board for your concerns and frustrations.

Exhlbitions are listed by city, then alphabetically by venue. Please send details oi shows to our ottices at least ten days belore publication. Art listings compiled by Kathleen Morgan I ART EXPOSURE GALLERY 19 Parnie Street. 552 7779. Mon—Sat 1 1am—6pm. Gallery Christmas Show Until Thurs 26 Jan. More than 300 paintings by artists from all over Scotland are on display and for sale. priced £30—£300. Also featured: sculpture. jewellery. ceramics and unframed work. I ART GALLERY & MUSEUM, KELVINGROVE 357 3929. Mon—Sat 10am-5pm; Sun Ham—5pm. Cafe. [D]. Voluntary guides are available free of charge to conduct parties or individuals round the main galleries. Ask at the enquiry desk. I ARTBANN 24 Cleveden Road. 334 6180. By appointment only. Where Skies Are Blue Until 30 Jan. Paintings by Alexander Goudie. created during a recent visit to France. I BURRELL COLLECTION 2060 Pollokshaws Road. 649 7151. Mon—Sat 10am—5pm; Sun 11am—5pm. [D]. Admission free. New Treasures Until Mon 23 Jan. Recent acquisitions in Glasgow museums are on display. I CCA 346—354 Sauchiehall Street. 332 7521. Mon—Sat 1 1am—6pm (Thurs/Fri until 7pm). Cafe. [D]. Hopeless Sat 21 Jan—4 Mar. An exhibition of works exploring painful aspects of human experience and the role of art in communicating them. including video pieces by Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader and English artist Georgina Starr. See preview. Suicide llotes Sat 21 Jan—4 Mar. An installation by Erika Rothenberg and Tracy Tynan. displaying suicide notes obtained from an anonymous source in the Los Angeles Police Department. See preview. Art Unlimited Until Sun 15 Jan. A new generation of artists are questioning the notion of unique art. following the example of their 60s predecessors. This exhibition brings together contemporary work by Christine Borland. Damien Hirst and Jenny Holzer and some 60s pieces by Joseph Beuys. Roy Lichtenstein and Christo. I COLLINS GALLERY University of Strathclydet. 22 Richmond Street. 552 4400 ext 2682. Mon—Fri 10am—5pm; Sat noon—4pm. [D]. Pleasure oome Sat 14 Jan—ll Feb. Paintings by Christopher Cook. I COMPASS GALLERY 178 West Regent Street. 221 6370. Mon—Sat 10am—5.30pm. Christmas Exhibition Until 31 Jan. Paintings. prints. ceramics. jewellery and sculpture. I CRANHILL ARTS GALLERY 18 King Street. 552 2540. Tue—Sat 10am—5pm; Sun 1—5pm. Clyde Built Until Tue 24 Jan. The remains of the Clyde‘s shipbuilding industry are captured in an exhibition ofcontemporary photographs by Cranhill Arts Project and drawings by members of the Drumchapel Draw Group. I CYRIL GERBER FINE ART 143 West Regent Street. 248 1322. Mon—Sat 9.30am—5.30pm. The Winter Collection Until 31 Jan. A selection of paintings. drawings. sculpture and decorative objects. I THE FRINGE GALLERY l8 Castlemilk Arcade. 631 2267. Mon—Sat 10am—5pm. Bittersweet Mon 16 Jan—4 Feb. An exhibition by Stella Tobia and Linda Neilson. in which Tobia explores the combined effects of sight and smell on triggering memory and Neilson takes a light-hearted look at the relationship between the teenage fan and the pop star. I GLASGOW FILM THEATRE 12 Rose Street. 332 8535. See Film listings for Robert Hamilton Until 31 Jan. A skywards look at Glasgow’s buildings by photographer Robert Hamilton. I GLASGOW PRINT STUDIO 22 King Street. 552 0704. Mon—Sat 10am—5.30pm. Sale Until Sat 21 Jan. On sale are works by studio artists. I GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART 167 Renfrew Street. 353 4500. Mon—Thurs 9.30am—8.3()pm; Fri 9.30am—5pm; Sat Callum Innes Until 3 Feb. Gallery I. Intense. minimal paintings from one of Scotland‘s most successful abstract I HUNTERIAN ART GALLERY University of Glasgow. 82 Hillhead Street. 339 8855 ext 1 5431. Mon—Fri 9.30am—5pm; Sat 9.30am—5pm. The bequest of William Hunter. a student of Glasgow University in the 1730s. who left a substantial collection of books. prints and other curiosities to the university. Colour And Line Until 28 Jan. An exhibition exploring live centuries of colour woodcuts — the artform's aesthetic and technical history. The display's centrepiece is a set ofJohn Baptist Jackson's 1740 chiaroscuro woodcuts. I INTERMEDIA 65 Virginia Street. 552 8651. Tue—Sat noon—6pm; Thurs 11am—8pm. La Festa Del Maiale Sat 14 Jan—3 Feb. Glasgow-based artist Stephen Skrynka‘s exhibition includes a video letter recording life in the Southern Italian village of Castiglione. where his mother grew up. Its culmination is the ‘celebration of the pig' festival. involving the whole village in the killing and processing of each other's pigs. I LILLIE ART GALLERY Station Road. : Milngavie. 943 3247. Mon—Fri 10am— 5pm; Sat/Sun 2—5pm. Scottish Photographic Circle Annual Exhibition Until Sun 22 Jan. I MCLELLAN GALLERIES 270 Sauchiehall Street. 331 1854. Mon—Sat 10am—5pm; Sun llam—5pm. [D]. Collection Until 5 March. £2 (£1). About 100 works from an outstanding private collection of modern art. including pieces by John Bellany, Steven Campbell. Ken Currie. David Hockney and Alison Watt. See preview. I EWAN MUNDY FINE ART 21 1 West George Street. 248 9755. Mon—Sat 10am—5.30pm. Mixed Exhibition Until 13 Feb. .' I MUSEUM OF TRANSPORT Kelvin Hall. Dumbarton Road. 357 3929. Mon—Sat 10am—5pm; Sun lIam—5pm. A museum : crammed with buses. trams. fire-engines. ' ships and other transportation. devoted to the history of transport. I NS GALLERY 53 Cresswell Street. 334 4240. Mon—Sat 10am—5.30pm; Sun noon-5pm. Pam Carter: A New Perspective Sat 14 . Jan—6 Feb. Work by Carter. a Glasgow I School of Art graduate inspired by two 1 years in the Seychelles. Carol Moore Sat 14 Jan—(i Feb. Recent ' pastels by the Glasgow-based artist. ] Nancy Smillie Until Tue 17 Jan. This exhibition of watercolours. drawings and oil paintings brings together a range of Smillie‘s work from the last decade. 1| I PEOPLE’S PALACE MUSEUM Glasgow ] Green. 554 0223. Mon—Sat 10am—5pm; ! Sun 11am—5pm. [D]. Cafe. . Once a museum dedicated to the working ', class. now a repository for all sorts of ‘ ephemera connected with Glasgow’s 1. history - from old cigarette packets to i suffragettes‘ campaigning material. An American Passion: The Kasen Summer 3 I PROJECT ABILITY 18 Albion Street. 552 2822. Mon—Fri 10am—5pm. Christmas Exhibition Until Fri 20 Jan 1995. A group show at this centre for developmental arts. with work by professional artists engaged by Project Ability to lead projects. I PROVAND’S LOROSHIP 3 Castle Street. 552 8819. Mon—Fri 10am—5pm: Sun The only surviving medieval house in Glasgow. built in 1471. Period room displays range froth 1500 to 1918. I OUEEN’S PARK SYNAGOGUE Falloch Road. Battlefield. 632 1743. Open Sun 2—5pm. Worth visiting to see 22 pictorial stained glass windows by John K. Clark based on the symbolism of Jewish festivals. I ST MUNGO MUSEUM OF RELIGIOUS LIFE AND ART 2 Castle Street. 553 2557. Mon—Sat 10am—5pm; Sun 11am—5pm. Free. [D]. A museum of world faith. featuring a zen garden. priceless art works from the world‘s six major religions. Dali‘s (‘hrisr oj'Stti/u John oft/w Cross and the story of religion in Scotland through words and pictures. To Lite! The Jewish Year In The Art or Dora Holzhandler Until 26 March. Inspired by Jewish mysticism and her childhood in Paris and London. Holzhandler illustrates festivals. holy days and Jewish celebrations in her paintings. I SCOTLAND STREET SCHOOL MUSEUM 225 Scotland Street. 429 1202. Mon—Sat 10am—5pm; Sun 2—5pm. Cafe. [D]. *‘Back Numbers Until 12 Feb. An exhibition of magazines and comics from ; yesteryear. taken from a National Library of Scotland collection. I SPRINGBURN MUSEUM Atlas Square. 557 1405. Mon—Fri 10.30am—5pm: Sat 10am—4.30pm; Sun 2pm—5pm. [D]. Exploitation Earth Until 10 Mar. Showcases and displays with an environmental theme. 100 Years of the Picture Postcard Until Fri 13 Jan. A11 exhibition exploring the compact art of the postcard through the decades. I STREET LEVEL 26 King Street. 552 2151. Mon—Sat 10am—5.30pm. f Momentary Views: Contemporary Images From The Landscapes Sat 21 Jan—l8 Feb. A11 exhibition of work exploring landscape from numerous perspectives. 1995. Work by a group of Moscow and St Petersburg-based artists exploring the memories of parents and grandparents through experimental photographic techniques. Curated by the Professor of Art at Winchester School of Art. Brandon Taylor. the exhibition includes work by Victoria Buivid. Ludmilla Fedorenko anti Gennedi Gushehin. I TRAMWAY 25 Albert Drive. 422 2023. Wed—Sun llam—5pm. Footballers Sat 21 Jan—26 Feb. Project Room. Roderick Buchanan's photographs of Glasgow five-a-side teams who choose to wear the colours of two of the world‘s Catch the best Art this lortnlght. I Callum Innes intense, minimal paintings from one of Scotland’s most respected abstract painters. Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow. I Aboriginal Art oi the Western Desert The ancient art form developed in Aboriginal culture and its relevance in today’s art galleries are explored in this exhibition. The F ruimzarket Gallery, Edinburgh. l Turner Watercolours A chance to lose yourself in the world of J. M. W. Turner in this annual exhibition of the artist’s watercolours from the National Gallery’s collection. National Gallery of Scotland. Edinburgh. I An American Passion: The Kasen Summer Collection John Bellany, Steven Campbell. Ken Currie, David Hockney and Alison Watt are some of the biggies in this exhibition of about 100 pieces from an outstanding private collection of modem art. MttLellan Galleries. Glasgow. I Footballers The glamour and humour of five-a-side football in Glasgow is captured in an exhibition of photographs by Roderick Buchanan. Tramway, Glasgow. best teams — Inter Milan and AC Milan. Living Together: An Interactive Culture Sat 21 Jan—26 Feb. Stephen Willats was a pioneer of interactive art and developed the Metafilter in the 1970s. It has been rebuilt as the centrepiece of this exhibition. exploring the identity of the individual in society. I TRANSMISSION GALLERY 28 King Street. 552 4813. Tue—Sat Ham—5.30pm. Eugenio Dittborn Until 21 Jan 1995. Airmail art by the Chilean artist. See preview. I BOURNE FINE ART 4 Dundas Street. 557 4050. Mon—Fri 10am—6pm; Sat IOam—Ipm. Alexander Inglis MBE RSW 1912-1992 Until 28 Jan. An exhibition of paintings and collages by Inglis. I CAMEO CINEMA Home Street. Tollcross. 228 4141. Bar opening hours. Check cinema for details. Julie Read and Lindsay Perth Until 31 Jan. A11 exhibition of prints. mixed media paintings and photographs by Read and Perth. I CENTRAL LIBRARY George IV Bridge. 225 5584. Mon—Fri 9am—8.30pm; Sat 9am—1pm. Architecture: New Female Graduates Until 3 Feb. Work by six female architecture graduates from Edinburgh College of Art. I COLLECTIVE GALLERY 22—28 Cockburn Street. 220 1260. Tue—Sat 11am—5pm. , Somewhere Over The TV Sat 14 Jan—4 Feb. A collaborative multi-media installation by Nina Pope and Karen J. Guthrie. using natural materials and technology. The work aims to challenge conditioned sensory and cerebral perceptions of reality and space. 5B The List 13—26 January 1995

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Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 507 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens and Julia Turner with the audio player below. On this week’s Slate Plus, Stephen, Dana and Julia discuss what object they would make bigger if they could. Go to Slate.com/cultureplus to learn more about Slate Plus and join today. This week, the critics are live from S&S Farm Brewery in Nassau, New York, with musical accompaniment by the Hold Steady’s Franz Nicolay. First, the gabbers discuss Samantha Bee’s recent use of the c-word on Full Frontal, the reaction from both sides of the political aisle, and when that word is, or isn’t, acceptable. Next, they talk about the movie Book Club, in which a group of women start reading Fifty Shades of Grey and experience romantic and sexual awakenings as a result. The cast, which includes Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenbergen, is stellar, but is the movie true to the “book club” conceit? Finally, the critics examine the literary legacy of Philip Roth and dive into his book The Ghost Writer with help from the audience Links to some of the things we discussed this week: - “Ivanka Trump, Samantha Bee, and the Strange Path of an Ancient Epithet” by Katy Waldman in the New Yorker - The N Word documentary - “Samantha Bee and the War of Words” by Rebecca Traister in the Cut - “How Samantha Bee Survives” by David French in National Review - Book Club - “The Very Fact That a Movie Such as Book Club Exists Is a Dream Come True” by Jeffrey Bloomer in Slate - “Philip Roth, Towering Novelist Who Explored Lust, Jewish Life and America, Dies at 85” by Charles McGrath in the New York Times - “What Made Philip Roth the Great American Postwar Novelist” by Stephen Metcalf in Slate - The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth Dana: Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday Julia: the word fingerspitzengefühl Stephen: The Watchtower by Elizabeth Harrower Outro: The Red Haired Strangers You can email us at firstname.lastname@example.org. This podcast was produced by Benjamin Frisch. The production assistant is Daniel Schroeder.

Esther 2:19-3:15 is a passage incredibly rich in plot development and suspense. We will analyze these as we look at the characters. The main players are Mordecai (Queen Esther’s cousin) and Haman (the king’s newly appointed chief official). Both Mordecai and Haman are close to a royal figure at the Medo-Persian Court. The secondary characters, enumerated below, are numerous, and some are critical to the plot: - Queen Esther - King Ahasuerus - the doorkeepers Bigthan and Teresh (2:21, 23) - the king’s servants within the king’s gate (3:2, 3, 4) - the Jews /people of Mordecai (3:6, 10, 11, 13) - the virgins gathered at the palace (2:19) - the king’s scribes (3:12) - the king’s couriers (3:15) - the city of Shushan (3:15) - the king’s satraps/governors of each province/officials of all people (3:12) - those who do the work [of killing the Jews] (3:9) - all the people [in the kingdom] (3:8, 12, 14). Two plots are present in this passage. First, we learn that two of the king’s eunuchs, the doorkeepers Bigthan and Teresh, got angry with the king and sought to take his life. This became known to Mordecai, who told Esther, who told the king. The matter being confirmed, the eunuchs were hung and the event written in the book of Chronicles. In this first plot, Mordecai is a hero who saved the king’s life. It is noteworthy that the author breaks the narrative for a parenthesis meant to inform us that Esther had not mentioned her Jewish origin at the palace. A second plot is built upon Mordecai’s refusal to obey the king’s command to bow down and pay homage to Haman—the king’s right hand in the kingdom—despite the servants’ daily rebukes. Eventually, they told Haman, who immediately took action. An irony between these two plots is easily evident: Mordecai was able to save the king’s life because the murder plot of two servants within the king’s gate (two doorkeepers) came to his awareness. Later, the servants within the king’s gate brought Mordecai’s behavior to Haman’s awareness. The hero who saved the king’s life is now a villain accused of disobeying the king’s command—a grave mistake that could easily cost him his life. When Haman found out about Mordecai, he became filled with anger. In response to this Jew’s defiance, he devised a plot by which not only the culprit would be punished, but also his entire people would be annihilated. Not much is revealed about what the king’s servants and Haman knew about the Jews, but whatever they did know is critical in this story. First, we learn that the servants told Haman Mordecai’s behavior “to see whether Mordecai’s words would stand; for Mordecai had told them that he was a Jew. (3:4) Soon after, we learn that Haman sought to destroy all the Jews in the empire, “for they had told him of the people of Mordecai.” (3:6) Clearly, the Jews were a feared people, and a unique group among all the nations of Medo-Persia. The intensity and extent of Haman’s revenge betrays his severe wrath: Three words are used to describe the retaliation against the Jews, confirming their doomed fate: they were to be destroyed, killed, and annihilated (3:13). The merism (figure of speech) “young and old”, indicates the extent of this retaliation meant to extinguish the entire Jewish people. No Jew was to be left alive in Medo-Persia. In order to obtain the king’s permission to carry out his genocidal plan, Haman portrays the Jews as enemies of the empire. Genocidal plans always begin with incriminating a group of people, and a reason must always be provided. In this case, Haman misrepresents them as a people whose “laws are different from all other people’s, and they do not keep the king’s laws” (3:8). In other words, the Jews were portrayed as rebellious enemies of the empire. Not insignificant is the fact that Haman offered the king money in exchange for his permission to exterminate the Jews. So inconsequential were their lives to a mighty king over vast regions that, without further inquiry into the matter, the king hands his signet ring over to Haman, giving him the freedom and authority to do as he pleases. Essentially, Haman bought the lives of the Jews. Key Locations and Dates |within the king’s gate||2:19| |within the king’s gate||2:21| |in the book of the chronicles||2:23| |in the presence of the king||2:23| |within the king’s gate||3:2| |were within the king’s gate||3:3| |throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus||3:6| |among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom||3:8| |into the hands of those who do the work||3:9| |into the king’s treasuries||3:9| |from his hand||3:10| |into all the king’s provinces||3:12| |in every province|| The passage is rich in spatial and temporal markers, some of which have special significance. For example, we notice that the phrase “within the king’s gates” is repeated four times, signaling its importance in the story. Indeed, it is “within the king’s gate” that the two major events take place: (1) Mordecai discovers the gatekeeper’s plot to kill the king, and (2) Mordecai refuses to bow down to Haman, causing his wrath and a genocidal decree. Another idea repeated four times through spatial markers is “all the provinces/the whole kingdom.” The two ideas are closely connected since what happens within the king’s gates has repercussions over the whole kingdom. Likewise, the temporal markers invite reflection. An interesting marker is the word “daily” (3:4). We know that the king’s servants who were within the king’s gates admonished Mordecai daily for not bowing down to Haman. This expression implies both that Mordecai refused to pay homage every day, and that the king’s servants observed and reproved him regularly, which he further disregarded regularly. |when virgins were gathered||2:19| |a second time||2:19| |as when she was brought up||2:20| |in those days||2:21| |while Mordecai sat within the king’s gate||2:21| |when an inquiry was made||2:23| |after these things||3:1| |when they spoke to him||3:4| |when Haman saw||3:5| |in the first month, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus||3:7| |the day and the month||3:7| |until it fell on the twelfth month||3:7| |on the thirteenth day of the first month||3:12| |in one day,||3:13| |on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month||3:13| Another intriguing temporal marker is the expression “until it fell on the twelfth month” (3:7). This is curious as it implies that the lot was cast several times until it fell on a specific date. Typically, casting the lot involves a degree of randomness, yet in this situation, Haman seems to have a specific day and month in mind when he wanted the genocide to occur. Also notable is the repetition of the phrase “on the thirteenth day” (3:12, 13). On one hand, we learn that “on the thirteenth day of the first month” (3:12) Haman wrote the decree to annihilate the Jews in Medo-Persia. On the other hand, we are told that “on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month” (3:13), the entire Jewish population in the empire was to be destroyed. The Jews were given one year of life before their complete and utter destruction, which was to take place “in one day” (3:13). An interesting similarity between this passage and chapter 1 can be drawn. In both chapters, an individual in position of power gets filled with wrath because someone refuses to obey the king’s command. In anger, that individual issued a decree that would affect all those like the disobedient person within the entire Medo-Persian Empire. Below is a more detailed comparison: |Chapter 1||Chapter 3 |King Ahasuerus gets angry with Queen Vashti because she disobeys the king’s command to show her beauty to his drunken company.||Haman, the king’s right hand, gets angry with Mordecai because he disobeys the king’s command to bow down to him.| |The king issues a decree to be made known to all the provinces and in languages||Haman issues a decree with sovereign authority, which is to be made known to all the provinces and in all languages.| |Because of Vashti’s behavior, male authority was enforced over all the women in Medo-Persia.||Because of Mordecai’s behavior, all the Jews Medo-Persia were to be killed.| The king and Haman seem to share a revengeful attitude when disobeyed, and the extent of their retaliation has repercussions over the entire empire. Clearly, power is crucial for them, and its strategic use has the potential to hold large numbers of people in fear and submission. The Jews are at great risk of perishing from the face of the earth—or at least from Medo-Persia, which was no small empire. Will there be a solution to this genocidal plan? After these events King Ahasuerus promoted Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him and established his authority over all the princes who were with him. (Est 3:1 NASB)

For the October meeting of the Society, we got the chance to see inside the recently re-opened Grade II listed St. Mark’s Church, adjacent to Swanswell Park, with its remarkable mural by Hans Feibusch. Reverend Tim Eagles, Curate at the Church, welcomed forty members and visitors to the meeting and explained about the mission of this City Centre Resource Church. The Church is not a traditional Parish Church, but working closely with the Bishop of Coventry to help evangelise the city and transform society. There is a particular focus on engaging students and young people. Architect Graeme Beamish told us about the history and architecture of this Grade II listed Church. Graeme was the Architect employed by the Diocese when the Hospital vacated the premises to survey the building and look at options for its future. Coventry Society Secretary, John Payne, told the story of Hans Feibusch, who painted the renowned mural at the Church. Hans was a successful and well known Jewish artist who fell afoul of the Nazi regime and was one of the artists denigrated in Goebbels’s infamous Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937. He emigrated to Britain in 1933 and developed a reputation for painting murals in British Churches, painting the mural at St. Mark’s in 1963. He died in 1998 just four weeks short of his 100th birthday. John also displayed a collection of materials about Feibusch, including books (one of which was signed by Feibusch himself), postcards, newspaper cuttings and other materials which he has donated to the Church. We were very pleased to have Stephen Cooke in the audience. Stephen was the son of Rev. Christopher Hamel-Cooke, the last vicar of St. Mark’s before it closed in 1972. Stephen remembered Hans Feibusch and told us amusing stories about the “tiny German artist” who stayed with them whilst he painted the mural. The society is proud to have played a small part in securing the future of this building and its remarkable mural. In addition to making Coventry aware of the mural through a social media and publicity campaign, we also opened the building for Heritage Open Days between 2012 – 2015, put on an exhibition about the mural and requested Historic England to include the details of the mural in the Listing particulars of the building. The photo shows Society Chairman, Paul Maddocks, Secretary John Payne and Stephen Cooke, son of the last vicar of St. Mark’s in front of the Feibusch mural. More about the Church on our website here.

When Paulette Nehama came to the United States from Greece as a new bride in 1958, she brought just a few treasured possessions. Today, she still remembers losing one of them — her mother’s recipe for biscottakia me amygdala, or biscotti with almonds. “I was so heartbroken that I cried and cried,” she says. “Losing the recipe felt like I had lost my mother.” Nehama quickly wrote to her mother in Greece, imploring her to send the recipe. It came on the very thin airmail paper used in those days. Now a Bethesda resident for 55 years, Nehama still has that letter preserved in a clear protective sleeve. Food stains, rips and yellowed tape are visible evidence of its use. Written in Greek, of course, her mother’s recipe used glasses, coffee cups and handfuls as measurements. Nehama worked out more-standard measurements and still makes the twice-baked cookie. Her childhood home in Greece always had some ready to serve with strong coffee or tea to anyone who stopped by for a visit, which meant lot of extra biscottakia, also called paximadakia, had to be made for such Jewish holidays as Rosh Hashanah. The holiday, marking the Jewish New Year, begins on Sunday at sunset. Born Paulette Mourtzoukos in Volos in 1933, she and her family descended from Romaniote Jews, some of the first Jewish residents on the European continent, with evidence of their existence dating to the 2nd century B.C. Although they had their own customs, foods, religious traditions and language (Judeo-Greek), the Romaniote were largely absorbed by the Sephardim, Spanish Jews expelled from Iberia beginning with the Inquisition in 1492. More than 100,000 Sephardim settled in the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Greece for nearly 400 years. She has very fond memories of Volos, a beautiful port city that sits midway between Athens and Salonika/Thessaloniki. Before World War II, about 2,000 Jews lived comfortably there. At Rosh Hashanah, neighbors gave each other baskets of pomegranates from their yards with wishes for “chronia polla, kai kali chronia,” or “many years and good years.” The first taste at the start of the holiday — and to break the fast for Yom Kippur 10 days later — was of honey sprinkled with pomegranate seeds, symbolic of wishes for a sweet year of abundance. Her family always had baklava, honey-soaked layers of phyllo and nuts, or kadaifi, or often both, to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. Her favorite, “because it’s crunchier,” kadaifi wraps the distinctive shredded phyllo dough around the chopped nut filling and is soaked in sweet syrup while still hot from the oven. Apple preserves called mylo tou koutaliou were another traditional Rosh Hashanah dish in Nehama’s childhood home. The name means “apple spoon sweets” because they were traditionally served on individual spoons with a glass of water to welcome guests. The preserves were made from seasonal fruits — apples in the fall, grapefruit or orange peel in the winter, strawberries or very small tomatoes in the summer. When Nehama was 7, the Nazis took over Volos, replacing less-restrictive wartime Italian rule. Her family fled to Athens, where they hid in several places for many months. After the war, when she went back to school, she attended an American high school outside Athens. She went on to receive a degree in social work in 1956. The next year, Nehama met her future husband, Isaac, at the wedding of his brother, Sam, in Athens. Isaac had fought as a partisan during the war, and Sam was the only other survivor of the family, the rest having perished at Auschwitz. Isaac had left Greece in 1948 to study in the United States and was already a U.S. citizen. After marrying in 1958 and settling initially in Indiana, the couple had three daughters — Sarah, Maya and Nicole — and five grandchildren. Isaac died in 2014. Although her mother was an excellent cook, “I had no interest in going into the kitchen and learning from her,” Nehama says. “Even when I was engaged, my mother used to say, ‘What are you going to cook for your husband?’ But I said that everyone in the U.S. opens a can to make dinner.” She says she is surprised that Isaac didn’t divorce her after the first year because “everything tasted awful.” The turning point came when he gave her two bound volumes of Gourmet magazine. “One time I made coq au vin and, by mistake, it turned out perfect,” she remembers. “Isaac praised me saying how good it is, tender and so on. That boosted up my morale. So from that time on, I started cooking and decided I liked to do it.” Nehama started asking for more recipes from her mother and sister, who remained in Greece, and she carefully followed their detailed instructions. She also started reading cookbooks and became comfortable hosting big parties at home. “I would roll and stuff grape leaves for 30 or 40 people and make spanakopita [spinach pie], tiropita [cheese pie], fassolya [green beans], Greek soups and lentils for a crowd.” She even taught Greek cooking at the Jewish Community Center in Rockville, a class called “From Athens with Love.” She cherishes one cookbook in particular, “Jewish Holidays and Traditions,” produced in 1993 by the women of the small Jewish community in Volos. The book features residents’ recipes and recipes from people, like Nehama, who live around the world but have roots in that centuries-old community. Still passionate about cooking, Nehama passed her Greek recipes on to her daughters, who now make the dishes. Every year at Rosh Hashanah, she buys a pomegranate for each daughter, as well as one for herself and in memory of Isaac. Like the baskets of pomegranates shared by neighbors so many years ago in Volos, it’s an expression of love and of hope for prosperity. And this year, as always, she will welcome the New Year with the taste of honey and a lifetime of sweet memories. Barocas is a writer, caterer, teacher and filmmaker in Washington. Makes 36 to 44 pieces These twice-baked Greek cookies are so much like Italian biscotti that the Greeks also call them biscottakia. To heighten the orange flavor, Bethesda resident Paulette Nehama replaces the cognac used in her mother’s original recipe with fresh orange juice or Grand Marnier. MAKE AHEAD: Store the cooled biscotti in an airtight container for up to several days. If they soften, reheat on a baking sheet in a 350-degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes, until crisped. Adapted by Susan Barocas, from Nehama. 5 large eggs ¾ cup sugar 1 tablespoon baking powder ½ cup fresh orange juice or orange liqueur 2½ cups flour Finely grated zest of a small orange, about 1 tablespoon, or more to taste 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups skin-on, whole raw almonds (may substitute 2 cups walnut halves; see NOTE) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Use cooking oil spray to lightly grease bottom of a 9-by-13-inch glass baking dish. Combine the eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl; use a handheld mixer on low speed, then increase to medium, beating so the mixture is well blended and a little foamy. In a small bowl, whisk the baking powder into the orange juice or liqueur, stirring so there are no lumps. Pour that mixture into the beaten eggs and sugar; beat on medium speed just until incorporated. With the mixer running, add the flour one-quarter cup at a time, blending it thoroughly before the next addition and stopping to scrape down the bowl, as needed. Once the dough is smooth, use a wooden spoon or spatula to stir in the zest and vanilla extract, then stir in the nuts a few at a time, making sure that they become evenly distributed. Spread the dough evenly in the baking dish, redistributing the nuts as needed (you want them in each piece). Bake (middle rack) for 15 to 20 minutes, or until lightly colored and soft to the touch, but springy in the center; a tester inserted into the center should come out clean. Transfer the baking dish to a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes before running a knife around the edges of the pan to loosen the cake. Invert the soft-baked biscotti slab onto the wire rack; let cool completely. Reheat the oven to 350 degrees. Invert the biscotti slab onto a cutting board (so the original top side is facing up). Use a very sharp knife to cut strips from a short side, about ¼ inch thick. Cut each strip in half, so you have a total of 36 to 44 pieces. The almonds or walnuts should show nicely. Lay the biscotti pieces on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake (middle rack) for 12 minutes until they begin to color, then turn them over and bake for an additional 5 to 8 minutes, until both sides are browned. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, at which point they should be crisp. NOTE: If you use walnuts, mix them with 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon. More from Food:

Does Syria have a future or is this Arab country doomed? The answer is not any clearer following the Geneva II peace talks.To be sure, convening the meeting was a major achievement in itself. For the first time in three years of war, officials of the Assad regime and opposition leaders sat in the same rooms, conversing for more than a week. That alone might offer a modicum of hope.It was billed as a follow-up to Geneva I, held in June 2012, when world powers agreed on a goal of establishing a transitional governing body in Syria with “full executive powers.” That body, to be formed by “mutual consent,” would include “members of the present government and the opposition.”One Syrian group came prepared, with a blueprint for peace, the Syrian Transition Roadmap. Developed over the course of a year by some 300 Syrians, the roadmap calls for political reforms, including a parliament that is representative of all Syrian citizens, a new constitution, economic reform and an overhaul of the country’s notorious security services.“The roadmap gives us the hope after all that has happened in Syria,” says Radwan Ziadeh, a leading Syrian dissident and president of the Syrian Expert House, the group that prepared the roadmap. Available in Arabic and English, it is a rare document emerging from the revolutions across the Arab world.Ziadeh, who was centrally involved in drafting the roadmap, views it as a bright spot at a time when “everyone lost hope with the revolution for dignity, human rights and democracy for all.”Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN and Arab League Special Envoy for Syria, praised the roadmap in September as a “much needed initiative that could prove most useful to the negotiators in Geneva.”Unfortunately, Geneva II ended in deadlock. No serious discussion of transition took place. Even more tragically there was no breakthrough on delivering humanitarian aid to Syrian cities besieged by Assad’s forces.The situation has become so desperately chaotic that the UN recently announced it would no longer keep track of the death toll, which is estimated at over 130,000. Regime violence did not let up even during Geneva II. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that nearly 500 Syrians were killed by the regime during the talks.Nonetheless, the Assad regime came to Geneva ready to portray itself as the victim. In his speech on the opening day of the conference, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem launched into a tirade against the “terrorists” threatening Syria. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon objected to both Muallem’s tone and disregard for time limits, and repeatedly but unsuccessfully sought to interrupt him.Even Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was reportedly embarrassed by his Syrian ally and counterpart, but apparently not enough to press Assad to alter course. Until Moscow changes its unqualified material and political support for Assad, the violence is not likely to end, unless Assad himself is persuaded, for the sake of Syria, to relinquish power.Still, amid the endless tragic news coming from all quarters of Syria, the transition roadmap remains an inspiration. There are Syrians who are genuinely committed to saving their country, eager to embarking on what will be a long, difficult path to end the war, establish peace and build a functioning democracy.“The stepping down of the head of the existing regime, Bashar al-Assad, will mark the beginning of the transition in Syria,” states the Syria Transition Roadmap. That goal is advocated by the US and other world powers. Washington should endorse the Syrian Transition Roadmap now.Brahimi’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, resigned only two months after Geneva I, largely out of frustration with Assad. Leaders like Assad “tend to believe in the world they create,” Annan told The New York Times at the time. In Assad’s world, it is outsiders and terrorists who cause Syria’s problems, and terrorists come in all ages, including the first group of children arrested and tortured in March 2011, the incident that launched the uprising against the regime.Brahimi is not yet giving up. With the support of Ban Ki-moon he is eager to bring the parties back together in Geneva soon. With a mounting death toll, millions of refugees testing the patience and resources of Syria’s immediate neighbors and other countries, and Syria’s education and healthcare systems in urgent need of repair, a heavy dose of realism is needed. The roadmap, a proposal by Syrians for Syrians, is worthy of consideration.The writer is the American Jewish Committee’s director of media relations.

The Jew; being a defence of Judaism against all adversaries, and the attacks of Israel's advocate [publ. by the American society for meliorating the condition of the Jews], ed. [really written] by S.H. Jackson レビュー - レビューを書く 他の版 - すべて表示 according acknowledge allow answer appears applied Assyria become behold believe Bible blessing bring brought called cause chap child concerning consequently consider continued converted covenant David death destroyed doubt earth evidence expect explained fathers fear Gentiles give given Gospel hand hath heart Hebrew holy ians intended Isaiah Israel Israel's Advocate Jerusalem Jesus Jewish Jews Judah king kingdom knowledge land language least light literal Lord manner Matthew meaning Messiah Moses mountain nature never object particular pass passage person plain present pretend priests promise prophecy prophet prove reason received religion saith seed sense serve Society speak spirit spoken stand suppose taken tell thee thing thou tion translated true truth unto verse virgin whole worship writings 155 ページ - And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, " Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths : " for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 376 ページ - Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land : And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all : and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all... 164 ページ - I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth... 208 ページ - Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is '• risen upon thee. For behold the darkness shall cover the earth, "and gross darkness the people : but the Lord shall arise upon "thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee, and the Gentiles shall " come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising... 130 ページ - After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. 365 ページ - The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light : they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined... 258 ページ - The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Shar'on, they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our God. 162 ページ - And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people... 372 ページ - And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, And shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, And gather together the dispersed of Judah From the four corners of the earth. 210 ページ - And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest : but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind : and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee ; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life : in the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even!

Nobody cares about art? When ideology and historical revisionism mingle in a sculpture memorising victims of Nazi Germany in Hungary, the controversy about ‘Who is a victim and who is not?’ becomes too hot to erect the monument in day light. The German eagle dominating the statue of Hungaria – at first sight, it looks like a young innocent girl standing against the widely recognised symbol of strength. Announced at the end of 2013, the monument was erected in central Budapest last summer, with the alleged intention of Viktor Orbán’s government to honor all the victims of the German occupation of Hungary during WWII . The message of the monument is simple and significant – Hungarians could not resist Nazi Germany and, therefore, should be resolved of blame of the terrors of WWII. However, not all Hungarians think so. After the idea about erecting the monument leaked to the public, months of protests against this Memorial did not help the Hungarian government to realize that the public does not agree with the idea of absolving the Horthy regime of its responsibility for the death of nearly one million Hungarians, including two-thirds of Hungary’s Jewish population. That is why the Memorial was put up during a warm summer night on the July 20th last year when no one was expecting. The Memorial to the victims of the German occupation is just the most recent example of Orbán’s government’s way of dealing with history. The Memorial is placed on Szabadsàgtèr, one of the most famous parks in Budapest, which has a significant place in Hungarian national memory. During the interwar period different commemorations of the Trianon treaty were held here. Among them, probably the most picturesque one was that of children planting trees in the soil brought from the territories that Hungary lost after the war. The place is even more significant with all the reconstructions (of memory) going on just few meters north around the Parliament building. The main idea of the works on the Parliament surroundings is to re-build this central space of the city as it was during the interwar period. Another sign that the scars of Trianon are still raw is the flag of the Székler people, a group of ethnic Hungarians who live in Transylvania, that is put up next to the Hungarian one on the Parliament building. However, even though Orbán’s government still holds the majority among the voters, a part of Hungarian society fights the battle against reconstructing the past in the present. Protests around the Memorial are still very active. The loudest opponents are the opposition parties (Socialists, Democratic coalition, Hungarian Liberal Party), as well as numerous NGOs, academic institutions and other actors of the civil society. Even a counter-memorial has been put up. This civil memorial reminds peaceful pedestrians in the area of the victims of the Horty regime. And it also reminds all of us that places of memory have the symbolic power only if we give it to them.

‘Bureaucrats in the UK’s Labour Party are trying to rig an important internal election against the left and Palestine solidarity activists. Left-wing Liverpool area councilor Jo Bird – who is also a Jewish Palestine solidarity activist – has been suspended as a party member. Before news of her suspension broke on Friday, Bird was a leading candidate for elections to Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee in April. But under party rules her suspension, unless quickly reversed, means she will be ineligible for the position. Critics have called it an attempt to rig the election against the left and the Palestine solidarity movement. Jewish Voice for Labour said that “the timing of this suspension is deeply suspicious and has the hallmarks of a deliberate attempt to undermine members’ wishes.” The group is asking local constituency parties to continue nominating Bird.’ Read more: Labour attempts to rig internal election

An anti-Semitism protest march is to be held in Malmo after Israeli participants at the Eurovision song contest were threatened. The far-right Ataka party emerges as kingmaker following Bulgaria parliamentary elections, having captured 7% of the popular vote. A Budapest court has given prison sentences to three men who verbally abused visitors to the WJC Plenary Assembly held last week in the city. Re-elected WJC President Ronald S. Lauder: "In the 77 years of the World Jewish Congress there have been few gatherings as important as this one.” Reaction by the World Jewish Congress to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speech at the opening of the WJC Plenary Assembly in Budapest, 5 May 2013. In Hungary, the head of the local Raoul Wallenberg Association became a victim of anti-Semitic abuse and his nose was broken by thugs.

Mexican standoff: the battle of Chichen Itza Since being named as one of the Seven New Wonders of the World, the Mayan temple has been the focus of an ownership dispute between a local family and those who want it to be returned to the people. David Usborne reports from Yucatá* Wednesday 07 November 2007 Even before the sun has begun to heat the pale stones of the Temple of Kukulkan pyramid and the adjacent Great Ball Court, the daily invasion of the Chichen Itza, the archeological jewel in the heart of Mexico's Yucatá* peninsula that – 1,000 years ago – was one of the largest city-states of the Mayan world, has begun. They traipse in not via the visitors' entrance but via litter-strewn paths through the surrounding woods. By the time the actual tourists arrive, either from their rooms in the few nearby hotels or on day-trip buses from the beaches of Cancun two hours away, this first human onslaught will be complete. They are the hundreds of vendors who every day erect their stalls all across the site, hoping to scrape a living selling so-called handicrafts which, in fact, are mostly kitsch souvenirs made in China. Even the barely aware visitor will sense that all is not quite as it should be at Chichen Itza. Its 100 acres can, on some days, feel like a seething bazaar of hawkers and child beggars. Serenity is elusive as you try to conjure in your mind the magnificence of what once stood here, or appreciate the ancient skills involved in placing the temple in direct correlation to the rays of the sun during the spring and autumn equinoxes, or in erecting the El Caracol Observatory to track the movement of the stars. The problem is partly one simply of Chichen Itza struggling to cope with its newfound fame. It is four months since it was designated one of the Seven New Wonders of the World in a global competition that invited people to vote via the internet. The other sites to win the honour included the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal and the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. The Chichen Itza archaeological park is now at risk of being overwhelmed by a new influx of tourists – and of vendors hoping to lighten their wallets. What most visitors do not know is that beneath the crisis of the vendors is a far more profound struggle over who is actually in charge of the park. As they file through the turnstiles, they are setting foot not on government property but on land owned by the Barbachanos, a prominent Yucatá* family. Since the results of the Seven Wonders vote was announced in July, Chichen Itza has been plunged into a dispute over its ownership, pitting the Barbachanos against the federal government. The row is as bitter as any Mexico has seen in decades, and echoes the raw class warfare that triggered the national revolution of 1910. The story of Chichen Itza's guardianship is already long and tangled. Barely 100 years ago, it was little more than a cattle ranch. True, the wider world knew of its special significance thanks to the US archaeologist John Lloyd Stephens and the British illustrator Frank Catherwood who, in 1843, stumbled on the ruins – then mostly buried in the jungle – and published a book, Incidents Of Travel In Yucatá*. But it was only in 1894 that Edward Thompson, the American consul in the city of Merida, bought the land and began concerted excavations, sending treasures to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. Thompson soon found himself accused of illegal smuggling and the Mexican government summarily expropriated his home, the Hacienda Chichen, and all his land on which the temples stood. Years later, after Thompson had died back in the US, a new government dropped the original charges and returned the property to his heirs. They, in turn, decided to sell it in 1944. The buyer was Fernando Barbachano Peon, a grand-nephew of a former governor of Yucatá*. His commitment to opening up Chichen Itza to the outside world, which included building two hotels just beyond the limits of the site, earned him a reputation as the first pioneer of tourism, not only in Yucatá* but across Mexico. His legacy, you would think, would earn the whole family the eternal gratitude of the nation. However, that is far from the mood today. Within days of the Seven Wonders vote, the secretary of the parliamentary culture committee, the left-winger Jose Alfonso Suarez del Real, publicly demanded that the land be returned to the people. He even used the toxic word expropriation. "This has unleashed a national polemic," he said recently. "We are all asking, 'How can a Wonder of the World have owners?'" It is a battle to which the outcome is uncertain. On one side is the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which for years has overseen the management of the site as a tourist destination, as well as continuing excavations. On the other are the various heirs to the Barbachano's estate at Chichen Itza, who originally celebrated its designation as a new world wonder but now find themselves under siege as a direct result of it. Their choices are bleak: agree to sell the land to the government for a deflated sum, accept a land-swap deal or see their property simply seized without compensation. It does not help that the different Barbachanos cannot agree on what to do. The disputed landed is divided between three Barbachano heirs. They are Fernando Barbachano Herrero, owner of the smartest of the nearby hotels, the Mayaland; Hans Thies Barbachano, who inherited the largest chunk of the site from his grandfather; and Carmen Barbachano. She is the current owner of the Hacienda Chichen, which these days is a charming 20-room hotel on the edge of tourist park. She had expected to pass it to her niece Belisa Barbachano, who manages the property. Seated in a flowing white dress as the evening sun casts shadows on the front terrace of Hacienda Chichen, Belisa professes ignorance as to the exact negotiating positions of her relatives, with whom, she says, she communicates only rarely. For her, however, the thought of the INAH and, therefore, the government taking her home away, for money or not, is offensive in the extreme. "I would think for anyone in Mexico this would be trulyunacceptable and not just for us," she says. "The land has been sold over and over and over again. We are not asking to keep something that we got in some kind of dubious manner." The insult is made worse, she argues, because of the love shown by the Barbachanos in looking after the land over the years. She describes the efforts she and her husband have made to restore the ecology of the property with a massive tree-planting programme, and her social work with the neighbouring Mayan communities. And what, she asks, have the Barbachano family ever done to bring detriment to the ruins? "We have always respected the site. We have never engaged in anything inappropriate as regards our responsibilities," she says. "We could have built 2,000-room resorts here like in Las Vegas but we have not." Indeed, the family has done nothing to violate a 1972 presidential decree which made clear that, while land at historical sites across Mexico may be in private hands, any archaeological treasures situated upon them belong to the government and are therefore controlled by the INAH. Quickly, the conversation turns to the current conditions in the park and, in particular, the daily overrunning of it by vendors. "For my guests, going there can be an exhausting experience because of those people, pushing, asking for money. Really, it is a disgrace," she says. But if Ms Barbachano blames the INAH for failing to control the vendors and to better look after the park, the officials see it rather differently. Closeted in a tiny room down a dark corridor from the main visitors' entrance, the director of the INAH's Chichen Itza field office, Eduardo Perez de Heredia, protests that with talks under way, polemics from either side are not going to help. "We want things to be solved for the benefit of everybody and we want to find common ground," he suggests diplomatically. "The situation is very difficult. It's not about good people and bad people". But when it is suggested to him that the Barbachanos have indeed done a good job of looking after the ruins, he harrumphs: "They are not looking after it. We are looking after it. The Barbachanos are not specialists in looking after antiquities like these. We are." The problem of the vendors is for him a symptom of the muddled ownership question. He says that transferring the land rights to the INAH "will help with the vendors issue but it is about much more than that". He adds: "At least we won't have any more confusion of responsibilities. Everything will be much easier if everybody knows who owns it." Suggest, however, that successive governments have not perhaps had the best record when it comes to balancing a hunger for tourist dollars with a respect for the land and the environment – think of the over-concentrated development of Cancun, or the wrecking of the reef off Cozumel – and he looks briefly puzzled, saying: "The government can do atrocious things sometimes but private owners can do atrocious things too." However strenuously they might argue that they have been good stewards of Chichen Itza, the Barbachanos know politics and popular sentiment still lingering from the revolution are not on their sides. Listen, for example, to Guillermo Canul, a Mayan guide in the park for 30 years, who describes the Barbachanos as "friendly" and adds that "everything the government controls is not so good, because corruption is bad". And yet he is clear about what should happen here. "The government should have this land," he says. "Otherwise it is the same old story: the rich have the land and kick the poor people from it." As for Belisa Barbachano, she is unwilling to predict whether this time it will be her family that gets kicked off by the government. "They may or they may not, it's in God's hands," she adds. "I cannot live my life in fear of what comes next." That's some guestlist! Stunning images show huge dynastic wedding between Ultra-Orthodox Jewish families which attracted 25,000 guests Terror at Woolwich barracks: Attacker tried to behead and disembowel British soldier Anonymity order lifted for triple child killer David McGreavy jailed in 1973 World news in pictures Far-right French historian, 78-year-old Dominique Venner, commits suicide in Notre Dame in protest against gay marriage - 1 Terror at Woolwich barracks: Attacker tried to behead and disembowel British soldier - 2 Mothers' diets may harm IQs in two-thirds of babies - 3 Gay couple beaten in park urge MPs to moderate language on gay marriage - 4 After woman sells virginity for $780,000, here are the results of our prostitution survey BMF is the UK’s biggest and best loved outdoor fitness classes Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.

The Shotgun Blog Tuesday, November 23, 2010 VIDEO: "Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story" Stop whatever you're doing and watch this right now. This charming documentary on the debt was created by Martin Durkin and aired on the UK's Channel 4 earlier this month. It is one big refutation of the Broken Window Fallacy, a crash course in the political economy of Frédéric Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt, and gives the lie to the popular notion that the Cameron-Clegg coalition are actually making reductions in state spending: (h/t Trevor Loudon) Thursday, July 15, 2010 Argentina legalizes same-sex marriage Argentina becomes the first South American country to fully legalize same-sex marriage today. Argentina's lower house voted in favour of legalizing same-sex marriage in May. The Senate followed suit in a close 33 - 27 vote after 15 hours of debate on Thursday morning. The legislation gives same-sex marriages the same legal status, rights and protections as opposite-sex marriages, including the right to adopt children. Amongst other things, the legislation declares that "marriage provides for the same requisites and effects independent of whether the contracting parties are of the same or different sex." The legislation was endorsed by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, but faced strong opposition from the Catholic Church. While tens of thousands of Argentinians protested the legislation on Tuesday, opinion polls of the country showed support for gay marriage. That support was, however, limited to marriage, not to the adoption of children, which was opposed in opinion polls. Not all Catholic priests lined up behind opposition to gay marriage. Father Jose Nicolas Allesio of St. Cajetans in the city of Cordoba publicly supported gay marriage. His very public and outspoken support for the measure has rankled the Catholic Church in Argentina, leading Archbishop Carlos Jose Nanez of Cordoba to begin "canonical proceedings" against the renegade priest. Same-sex civil unions had been legal in Buenos Aires since 2002, which was followed by several cities in Mexico and Brazil. Civil unions are legal in Uruguay. Image: Supporters of same-sex marriage rallied on Congress during the debate. Tuesday, July 13, 2010 Female Czech MPs pose for a calendar What to make of this news?: Czechs elected more women to parliament than ever before, electing 44 women in the May elections. To celebrate this, and to highlight the fact that there are women politicians, the centrist Public Affairs party, which ran on a platform promoting transparency (ahem), has launched a 2011 calendar. That calendar features four female MPs from the Public Affairs caucus, as well as a Public Affairs candidate for mayor of Prague. Some interesting quotes via the Telegraph: "We want to draw attention to the fact that we have women in politics," said MP Lenka Andrysova, who appears in one shot in a thigh-high dress kneeling on a shelf. "Women's political influence is growing. Why not show we are women who aren't afraid of being sexy?" said Marketa Reedova, Public Affair's 42-year-old candidate for the Prague mayor's office. We've assembled some pictures from the calendar (profits from the calendar will, of course, go to charity). UPDATED, with a pic of our own Kim Campbell, former prime minister, just cause (h/t @Bobby_OK): Kim Campbell as Justice Minister, former prime minister of Canada, image hosted, inexplicably, by the Library and National Archives of Canada... Thursday, May 13, 2010 Blue Tory anger at David Cameron The Telegraph is reporting that the ‘right-wing’ section of the British Conservative Party is unhappy with the Liberal Democrat coalition deal. They have a right to be unhappy, not just with the deal but with the election in general. David Cameron followed what we would call in Canada a Red Tory strategy (they would say Wet Tory in the UK). Basically he presented a moderate front that is suppose to reach out to people that don’t traditionally vote Conservative. Specifically he was interested in gaining seats in Scotland, a region that is full of anti-Tory sentiment to such a great extent that there is legitimate fear that a Tory government could lead to Scottish separation by its very existence. In the cause of winning Scottish and ‘moderate voters,’ David Cameron reversed classic Conservative positions on Europe, watered down Conservative economic ideas, and blatantly almost rudely distanced himself from Margaret Thatcher. Really it was a pointless exercise. Scottish Labour Party acted like it was running against Lady Thatcher not Mr. Cameron and the Scottish people voted to keep a neo-Thatcher from coming to power, even though Mr. Cameron is not a neo-Thatcher in any sense. At the same time traditional Tories, that would have wanted Mr. Cameron to defend Lady Thatcher’s legacy, were annoyed at the Conservative leader. The proof is in the pudding. Labour has not been so unpopular in nearly thirty years and yet David Cameron failed to win outright. If it hadn’t been for the unpopularity of Gordon Brown and the tiredness of the Labour government, it is almost certain that David Cameron would have lost. So the Red Tory strategy fell flat once again and now the Blue Tory (if I can call it that) section of the party has to swallow yet another pill: coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I posted yesterday that there was some good in the Con-Lib coalition policy agenda. The civil liberty aspects of the deal alone will warm my heart to the new government. Still there are things that have conservatives legitimately irked. The greatest of these is the increase of the capital gains tax, which runs against all conservative economic theory for the last forty years. If David Cameron had tried to raise capital gains tax while holding a majority he would likely have faced a back bencher’s uprising. Basically Conservative MPs and grassroots are both being told to hang tight for the sake of government. But governing is not the sole cause of a political party; the Conservative Party is more than a mere vehicle for David Cameron to win power. It is also an organization of ideological perspectives with a policy agenda. Mr. Cameron should keep in mind that there is a limit to how much a leader can ignore that agenda. Friday, May 07, 2010 Nigel Farage defeated Former leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, a small government Eurosceptic party, has been solidly defeated. Nigel Farage came in third recieving 17.4% of the vote. It would have been nice to have him to balance the newly elected Green Party member. Wednesday, April 28, 2010 Gordon Brown calls supporter bigoted This is the most entertaining gaffe of the whole campaign: My favourite part is that the Telegraph is reporting that the woman, a lifetime supporter of the Labour Party, felt that the conversation went well. Wednesday, April 21, 2010 Gordon Brown should be given first chance to govern in a hung Parliament As a hung Parliament appears more and more likely in the UK election, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party have been a bit shy about saying what sort of deal they will make. The Labour Party has indicated that they are interested in working with the Lib-Dems, but the Lib-Dem leader, Nick Clegg, is not going to reveal his strategy until his hand is dealt. The outcome of the election, popular vote and seat distribution, is still very much up in the air. Really, the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems are wise to refuse to speculate. One issue that I have with Nick Clegg’s current position on a hung Parliament is his assertion that Gordon Brown should not be allowed an opportunity to make a deal before he is removed from office: Senior civil servants have made it clear that, in the event of a hung parliament, Mr Brown would remain as Prime Minister, even if he did not have the most seats, and would be given time to try to stitch a deal together. The Lib Dem leader said: “It would be preposterous for Gordon Brown to end up like some squatter in No 10 because of some constitutional nicety.” It is not just a constitutional nicety. Like most of the British unwritten constitutional rules, there is a sound practical reason for giving the current Prime Minister a chance to govern. Consider what happened in Belgium in 2007. The various political parties could not bridge regional or ideological differences to create a coalition government. The result was that the Belgium state did not have a government for more than a year. Now this may sound awesome to a libertarian, but really what it meant was that civil servants, not elected politicians, were forced to make the policy decisions that could not be put off. The UK system has a built in method to avoiding this problem. The fact that Mr. Clegg bashes this method reflexively shows a certain shallowness in his political philosophy. Mr. Clegg is making his name by calling for democratic reform, but reform for reform sake is not a good thing. Any reformer must be prepared to acknowledge and defend what is good about an institution as they struggle to change what is bad. Wednesday, April 14, 2010 UK Conservatives and 'People Power' The British Conservative Party is talking a good talk. They are claiming that the prime difference between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party is that Labour believes in ‘state power’ and the Tories believe in ‘people power.’ As someone who strongly defends the principles of personal responsibility and individual liberty, I like this kind of language. The question is: does the Conservative manifesto live up to the Tory leader David Cameron’s Recently the Hayekian influenced Institute for Economic Affairs has said that neither the Conservatives nor the Labour Party have promised to do enough. The IEA is calling for a fundamental change in the way public finances operate to deal with the dire condition of the public debt. The Conservatives and Labour Party are debating how much to nibble while large bites are needed to save the public purse. So what does that have to do with ‘people power’? It raises the question of what we can expect the government to be able to do and what do we need it to do. Mr. Cameron seems to be suggesting that we don’t need the government for much, because it is we the people that can best run our lives. It is we the people that can best direct us towards prosperity. Yet if this is so, why nibble? Why not take a bite? The Labour Party response is pretty predictable. According to the Telegraph article that was linked above: Last night Lord Mandelson, who is running Labour’s election campaign, said: “When the Tories say 'we’re all in this together’, what they really mean is 'you’re on your own’.’’ Which really tells you how much the Labour Party trusts people to live their lives without a civil servant telling you what you need to do. Yet are the Conservatives really that much better? Do they really think that we still need this disastrously large government spending? As Publius here at the Western Standard recently said: The difference between David Cameron's Conservatives, and Gordon Brown's Labour, is the speed at which they would drive Britain off the cliff. Friday, January 15, 2010 Communist Party of China official reviews Avatar 1. The first element of any war is human. Learn from the Na’vi, have a winning spirit, and don’t be afraid of any advanced weapons. 2. The Na’vi’s system of hereditary rule proves that democracy is not universally applicable. 3. Na’vi’s collectivism has won over capitalism. 4. Loyalty has to be put in the number place in any appointment of key personnel. Defeat of the human race is due to the irresolute thinking of Jake. 5. The human race’s army has not united resolutely under the leadership of Colonel Miles Quaritch, as a result there is internal struggle. Unity is iron, unity is steel! 6. Dr. Grace Augustine shows the weaknesses of intellectuals, which are not to be trusted. 7. Forced demolition in China is relatively civilized; we haven’t used the army yet. 8. Anyone watching Avatar for the second time will be subject to 20% luxury tax. 9. Increase our effort in research & development. Start Avatar programs in provincial / ministerial levels or above. What we need to emphasize is: useful idealism is materialism. 10. Planet Pandora is an inseparable part of our motherland. Thursday, January 14, 2010 'We can’t go on like this' Talks like a Thatcherite. Walks like a Red Tory. The simple, emotional phrase is likely to have been chosen by central office because pollsters heard it on the streets or in focus group sessions, as ordinary people expressed their exasperation with New Labour or their sense that Britain’s finances cannot be allowed to deteriorate further. However the line was also used repeatedly by Margaret Thatcher, both when she was an Opposition politician and Prime Minister. She said it in a speech to the Conservative Party conference in 1976, as she called for the country to live within its means. “We can't go on like this. We are paying ourselves more than the value of what we produce. We are spending more than we earn.” Sunday, June 14, 2009 Is Iran more republican than America? Iranians took to the streets again today to protest Friday's contested election results, while defeated reformist candidate Mirhossein Mousavi continued to level accusations of electoral fraud. Critics of the regime, however, continue to stress that presidential elections are of little consequence since real power in the Islamic Republic is held by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "On the nuclear question, it's very clear that the ultimate decision maker is Ayatollah Khamenei," said Mahsen Milani, an Iranian expert at the University of South Florida, in an interview with Fox News. "The central question of security or war and peace is not in [Ahmadinejad's] domain. It's unambiguously in the domain of the supreme leader." This is because Iran has a unique quasi-democratic system of government. While the country does hold presidential and parliamentary elections, all of the candidates have to be specifically approved by the Guardian Council. The council is composed of 12 members, six of whom are appointed by the supreme leader, while the other six are nominated by the head of the judicial system of Iran, who is appointed by the supreme leader as well. The supreme leader has many other powers: According to Iran's Constitution, the Supreme Leader is responsible for the delineation and supervision of "the general policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran," which means that he sets the tone and direction of Iran's domestic and foreign policies. The Supreme Leader also is commander-in-chief of the armed forces and controls the Islamic Republic's intelligence and security operations; he alone can declare war or peace. He has the power to appoint and dismiss the leaders of the judiciary, the state radio and television networks, and the supreme commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The quasi-democratic nature of Iran's government has led many to question the legitimacy of the system itself. "They try to keep people occupied with this fake political system on the outside while they run a corrupt government in the background, and to entertain this system is to just indulge in their corruption," said Iranian-American Keyvan Mehrabi in an interview with FrontPage Magazine. "Iran is not a democracy. Don't forget that." Despite the fact that Iran may not be considered a true democracy, it does appear to fit the definition of a republic. The word "republic" is often used to describe a state that is not led by a monarch. Political philosopher Nicolo Machiavelli argued that there are really only two types of states. "All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principalities," wrote Machiavelli in The Prince. Yet, the term is often used in political science to describe a system of government similar to the Roman Republic. One that is a combination of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. In the Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius, Machiavelli advocated a republican form of government and he uses the Roman Republic as his example of the ideal form of government. Machiavelli admired the Roman style of government for a number of reasons. First, it's what led Rome to become a flourishing empire that withstood the test of time. If un-contained political conflict often results in a change in the state's system of government, then systems that have endured a long time must clearly do a good job of containing said conflict. Secondly, republics are designed to divide power between various groups within society. For example, the Roman Republic divided power between the one, represented by the Consul, the few, represented by the Senate, and the many, represented by the Tribunes and Assemblies. Similarly, the Iranian constitution shares power between the supreme leader, the aristocracy (represented by the Guardian Council and other appointed bodies), as well as the people (represented by parliament and the president). The American presidential system was also designed in a similar manner with the president, Senate, and House of Representatives representing the centers levels of power respectively. In fact, while the U.S. constitution guarantees "every State in this Union a Republican form of Government," it does not guarantee democracy. Yet, the seventeenth amendment to the U.S. constitution transformed the Senate into an elected body and the distinction between those who reflect the interests of the aristocracy and those who represent the people has become increasingly blurred. The American system of government makes it difficult for small parties and independents to get elected and a high percentage of seats in congress see very little turnover. In effect, the political elite have become the new aristocracy, leaving one to wonder who's left to defend the interests of the people. Does this make Iran more republican than the U.S.? Not if the accusations of electoral fraud are true. The supreme leader already has a tremendous amount of control over who is able to run in elections. If he has used his power to determine the outcome of the election as well, then the people are left without representation and the entire system is exposed as a sham. Thursday, June 04, 2009 Obama attempts to build support in the Islamic world with a speech in Cairo U.S. President Barack Obama attempted to "seek a new beginning" in the relationship between America and the Islamic world with a speech in Cairo on Thursday. To his credit, the president addressed many of the issues that have divided Muslims and the west, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America's use of torture tactics, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Iran's nuclear weapons program. Obama is a great orator and there was little doubt in my mind that he would deliver a good speech full of high-minded rhetoric. But as the old saying goes, actions speak loader than words. The true test of Obama's plan to reach out to the Muslims will be shown by his Middle East policies and not his words. Unfortunately, more often than not, Middle East policy is a zero sum game. Iran's nuclear weapons program comes into direct conflict with Obama's naive vision of "a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons." Israel's desire for peace and security conflicts with the desire of Hamas to drive all the Jews into the sea. Likewise, Obama's goal of ending Islamic extremism does not mesh well with bin Laden's desire to wage jihad on America. Obama did address America's relationship with Israel, an alliance that has made it many enemies in the Islamic world. "America's strong bonds with Israel are well known," said Obama. Will he be able to continue this relationship without further inflaming Muslims? Resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict is a noble goal and one that should be taken up by any administration. This is an issue, however, which has been on the agenda of many other presidents, all of whom have tried and failed to implement a lasting peace in the region. Is Obama so naive as to believe he will succeed where so many others have failed? America's relationship with Israel has already been strained by the administration's insistence that Israel halt the development of settlements and adopt a two state solution. Trying to balance America's new relationship with Islam while supporting its traditional allies, such as Israel, is a goal that is unlikely to succeed. Eventually, Obama will be faced with the geopolitical realities of the situation in the Middle East and will be forced to pick sides. First, he will have to reconcile his goal of "two states where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security" with the fact that a hostile terrorist organization controls the Gaza Strip and is unlikely to live in peace with either Israel or Fatah. More importantly, Obama will eventually have to deal with the situation in Iran. The Iranian president has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and the Islamic nation is currently pursuing weapons that would make this possible. There is little doubt that Israel will not allow this to happen. If the U.S. is unable to halt the Iranian nuclear weapons program, Israel will be forced to take military action in order to prevent it. It is also in America's national interest to prevent the Iranians from getting the bomb. Israel will ask for American support in such an endeavour and the president will be forced to choose between acting in the best interest of America and its allies and building a stronger relationship with the Islamic world. It is hard to tell what effect the speech will have at this point in time. Improving the relationship between Islam and the west and bringing peace to the Middle East are great foreign policy goals. However, until such words are backed up by innovative policies, they are nothing more than empty rhetoric. You can watch the full speech via the player below. Tuesday, May 19, 2009 Where fiscal conservatives and libertarians part ways A textbook example from the news: Today the OSCE criticized the Irish government for a proposed bill that will curtail free speech by reintroducing the crime of ‘blasphemous libel’*. Why would the Irish be introducing this bill just now? Because a referendum on the matter is ‘too expensive’: Last month Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern announced that he would propose a new crime of blasphemous libel in an amendment to the Defamation Bill. The new section of the Bill will state: “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000.”… [the OSCE's] Mr Haraszti has written to Mr Ahern and to the Oireachtas committee debating the Bill, calling for it to be passed without the blasphemy provision. “I am aware that the new article is meant to bring the law into line with a constitutional provision dating from 1937,” said Mr Haraszti. “Nonetheless, it violates OSCE media freedom commitments and other international standards upholding the right to freely discuss issues of religion.” He added: “It is clear that the Government’s gesture of passing a new version of the ‘blasphemy article’, even if milder than the dormant old version, might incite new court cases and thereby exercise a chilling effect on freedom of expression.” Mr Ahern insists he is obliged to take account of the offence of blasphemy, which is provided for in the Constitution. Article 40.6.1 of the Constitution states that the “publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law”. A spokesman for the Minister said he had two options, either to amend the Constitution, or amend the law. The spokesman said Mr Ahern was “bemused” by criticism of his proposed amendment. “He has to do it because he is the Minister for Justice and he cannot wilfully ignore the Constitution. Unlike the commentariat, the Minister does not have the option of wilfully ignoring the Constitution,” the spokesman said. “He is the Minister for Justice and he is advised by the Attorney General that he has to have regard to the offence of blasphemy.” Mr Ahern, he added, felt that in “the current economic environment” it was not appropriate to go to the people seeking to amend an article of the Constitution. That last bit about the 'current economic environment' - those aren’t empty words from Ahern's spokesman. The Irish government is doing the right thing, cutting back in a big way (€1.5bn), and raising taxes in an even bigger way (€1.8bn) – the net effect will be something like CAD$1,000 for each man, woman, and child in the Republic. Rather than digging a hole for future generations, they’re digging out of a hole right now. Take a read through Irish emergency budget and see. For libertarians and fiscal conservatives, this is the kind of budget, and the kind of responsible action on the economy that we’re all looking for. But at the cost of free expression? Let’s take Ahern at his word – that the government is in such poor shape that it has to go forward right now with banning blasphemy. Would fiscal conservatives accept this as a worthwhile trade-off? Would libertarians? Or is this the precise spot where the two sides part ways? Monday, May 18, 2009 Obama tries to pressure Netanyahu into adopting a two-state solution: is it viable? Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was in Washington Monday to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama. The key issues on the leader's agenda were how to deal with Iran and its suspected nuclear weapons program and whether or not Netanyahu will endorse Obama's two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. As always, Middle East politics is extremely complex, so it's a good idea to look at some of the different perspectives on the viability of a two-state solution, as well as the other potential solutions that could take its place. Daniel Doron lays out the case against a two-state solution in Forbes: The creation of yet another dysfunctional Palestinian Arab state will not only mortally threaten Israel, its irredentist nature will inflame the region. As importantly, it will continue making the personal and communal life of Palestinian Arabs unbearable. Remember what happened in Gaza after Israel vacated it: the wanton destruction of the hot houses Israel left behind to enable the Gazans to make a better living from agriculture; the rule of oppression and mayhem Hamas has instituted in Gaza; the continued impoverishment and immiseration of their hapless citizens. Is this the kind of government America wants extended to the West Bank? But this will inevitably happen as a result of the premature formation of a Palestinian state. Within a very short time, it will disintegrate and be taken over by the extremist Hamas movement. As in Gaza, a Hamas West Bank government, an Iranian proxy, will quickly launch missile attacks against Israel. From the West Bank, however, the missiles will not hit a sparsely inhabited Negev but the densely populated heartland of Israel, the greater Tel Aviv metropolitan area. They will hit Israel's only links to the world, Ben Gurion International Airport and the ports of Haifa and Ashdod. This does not mean that Obama's favoured two-state solution doesn't have its supporters. Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland, claims the two-state solution is the only solution: It is the only realistic alternative since the Israelis will not accept a one-state solution and the Palestinians will not acquiesce in their conditions. The collapse of the two-state option would stress Israeli relations with all its neighbors and test its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Indeed, it could lead to another Palestinian Intifada, fuel militancy and have serious ramifications for Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel. The impact would be felt beyond the region, as the Palestinian issue remains the prism through which many Arabs and Muslims view the world. Likewise, Benny Morris argues that while the two-state solution is a "practical nightmare," a one-state solution is even less likely to succeed: If Arab expressions in the early years of the 20th century of fear of eventual displacement and expulsion by the Zionists were largely propagandistic, today -- in view of what has happened -- they are very real. And if Jewish fears in the 1930s of Arab intentions to push them "into the sea" -- to destroy the Zionist enterprise and perhaps slaughter the Yishuv -- were, if heartfelt, unrealistic (as it turned out), today they are very real, as are Jewish fears of a nuclear Holocaust at Islamic hands. These fears and hatreds make a shared binational state, in which each community inevitably would seek to dominate the other, if only to prevent the other's domination of itself, inconceivable. Meanwhile, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi made the case for a one-state solution in The New York Times: A just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but it lies in the history of the people of this conflicted land, and not in the tired rhetoric of partition and two-state solutions.… In absolute terms, the two movements must remain in perpetual war or a compromise must be reached. The compromise is one state for all, an “Isratine” that would allow the people in each party to feel that they live in all of the disputed land and they are not deprived of any one part of it. Of course, being the Middle East, there is no shortage of ideas on how to solve this conflict. The idea of a three-state solution is becoming increasingly popular. Three-state solutions involve either creating separate states for Gaza and the West Bank, or giving the territories back to Egypt and Jordan respectively, as John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, suggests: Let's start by recognizing that trying to create a Palestinian Authority from the old PLO has failed and that any two-state solution based on the PA is stillborn. Hamas has killed the idea, and even the Holy Land is good for only one resurrection. Instead, we should look to a "three-state" approach, where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty. Among many anomalies, today's conflict lies within the boundaries of three states nominally at peace. Having the two Arab states re-extend their prior political authority is an authentic way to extend the zone of peace and, more important, build on governments that are providing peace and stability in their own countries. "International observers" or the like cannot come close to what is necessary; we need real states with real security forces. However, in an op-ed piece in The Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick contends that a three-state solution would only serve to weaken the governments of Egypt and Jordan, while increasing the security threat against Israel. Instead, she believes that a new policy paradigm is needed, one that would see an increase in Israel's control over the territories: The option of continued and enhanced Israeli control is unattractive to many. But it is the only option that will provide an environment conducive to such a long-term reorganization of Palestinian society that will also safeguard Israel's own security and national well-being. While it is vital to recognize that the failed two-state solution must be abandoned, it is equally important that it not be replaced with another failed proposition. The best way to move forward is by adopting a stabilization policy that enables Israel to secure itself while providing an opportunity for Palestinians to integrate gradually and peacefully with their Israeli, Egyptian and Jordanian neighbors. Personally, I still think the two-state solution is the most viable long-term solution. However, as I wrote awhile back, I have become quite jaded by the whole process: I am not so naive as to believe that I can come up with a workable solution to such a complex problem. As the fighting continues in Gaza, the situation in the Middle East is becoming analogous to the Kobayashi Maru, the no-win scenario that Lieutenant Saavik is faced with at the beginning of The Wrath of Khan. Can you really blame me for being so pessimistic about the whole situation? Saturday, April 11, 2009 Southern Avenger: The Radical Right & Mark Sanford Here are two wonderful commentaries from our favourite Old Right commentator, Jack Hunter, via Taki's Mag: The Radical Right: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 Newt Gingrich is popping too many preemptive pills According to this news article, the Newt did not waste any time before rattling his electromagnetic sabres: Only hours after North Korea launched a rocket, Newt Gingrich was on television saying the United States should have preemptively attacked the nuclear-armed country – with an electromagnetic pulse. "We do not appreciate the scale of threat that is evolving on the planet," the former House Speaker said on Fox News Sunday. "And North Korea is a totally irresponsible dictatorship run by a person who is clearly out of touch with reality." Newt's reality-TV style realism aims at the prophetic: "One morning, just like 9/11, there's gonna be a disaster," the former Georgia congressman said. "And people are going to look around and say 'Gosh, why didn't anyone think of that?' Well I'm telling you, the time to think about it is before the disaster, and not after." Pressed by Fox host Chris Wallace, Gingrich mentioned a few preemptive possibilities for stopping North Korean: "There are three or four techniques that could have been used, from unconventional forces to standoff capabilities... I'd recommend look[ing] at electromagnetic pulse...which changes every equation about how risky these weapons are." An electromagnetic pulse is a short, high-intensity burst of electromagnetic energy which can damage electronic and electrical equipment. Now there's an idea for the sequel to Team America -- Newt and Kim Jong Ill battle it out in a Stars-Wars-like scene with electromagnetic pulses, neon swords, and cowboy boots. Who says satire isn't another means of telling the truth? Students in Moldova protest Communist victory Shotgun blogger Alina writes of her despondency at the recent win for the Communist Party in Moldova. But there's reason to feel a glimmer of hope and optimism: Students in Moldova aren't taking the victory for statism lying down, and have started a mass protest. According to the BBC: Students in Moldova have attacked the country's parliament in protest at the victory of the governing Communist Party in Sunday's general election. Witnesses say crowds poured into the building through smashed ground-floor windows and shortly after hurled furniture out and set it alight... At least part of the motivation for the protest is the belief that the election "was fradulent": Representatives of opposition parties are among the protesters. They believe the election result was fraudulent. The Mayor of Chisinau, Dorin Chirtoaca, who is deputy head of the opposition Liberal Party, said the protests were justified "because people did not vote for the communists in such large numbers". The communists won 50% of votes in the election declared "fair" by observers. They were followed by the centre-right Liberal Party with almost 13% of the votes, and the Liberal Democratic Party with 12%. Reports from the country say local television stations are off-air and the national radio station is broadcasting folk music. No reports about the protest have been included in its radio news bulletins. You read that right: they're playing folk music while parliament is besieged, and while other Moldovans are escaping their country for better opportunities and more freedom elsewhere in a "mass emigration". People are voting with their feet. So keep your chins up, fellow anti-statist liberty-lovers, at least some young people in Moldova are clamoring for less state, and more freedom. Friday, February 06, 2009 Won't somebody think of the children I don't want to be 'that guy', but it needs saying: "Won't somebody think of the children?" Here's what I'm getting at -- around the world, fiscal conservatives are standing up and opposing big-government stimulus packages in the name of the next generation. Down in Australia, where they are in a similar position to Canada economically, a big spending government is being checked by Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull. He's currently using their Triple-E senate to block a $42 billion dollar stimulus package. Here are his reasons: [The PM] has made not one hard decision since coming to office. He has wanted to be Santa Claus -- everybody gets a prize. The problem with everybody getting a prize today is that our children will be carrying a very heavy penalty in the years to come. This is why we will vote against this package. That is why we do not support a further round of cash handouts. We know this will not be popular. But it is the right thing to do. Somebody has to stand up for future generations, and not cruel their chances in life by weighing them down with staggering levels of debt. Malcolm Turnbull isn't alone though. Even British Tory leader, David Cameron, is coming around: I believe there is something morally repugnant about this Labour Government sacrificing tomorrow for the political convenience of today. And, I believe, so does the vast majority of this country. For the first time in generations, parents are looking at their children and questioning if they will have a better life than they themselves had. A few years ago, you could count on Stephen Harper and his Conservatives to say things like that. No more, and unfortunately there's no sign of any party on the horizon that can be called conservative. So in the meantime, we'll have to make do with admiring them from afar. Here's Malcolm Turnbull's speech in full: Sunday, January 18, 2009 Filibuster: The unwatched pot Monday, December 15, 2008 Putin's War on Democracy On Saturday I mentioned that a new anti-Putin coalition was building in Russia. I ended the blog post by expressing a hope that the Kremlin won't use draconian or violent tactics against this new opposition movement. It did not take long for me to be disappointed. Over the weekend two anti-Kremlin rallies were broken up by the police and around a hundred people were arrested. Neither BBC nor CNN reported that the rallies were violent or disruptive. BBC did report that United Russia supporters did participate in a violent protest outside the building of an opposition conference. After I wrote my post on Saturday some people expressed concerns that perhaps some of the opposition leaders were not the most freedom loving people in the world. I admit that I do not know all the political parties or their platforms, and so I do not judge what parties are best for Russia. To enter into that sort of discussion is to miss the point. The problem in Russia is the process. The last election was pretty universally declared dishonest. Putin has a history of using violence to oppress opposition voices in both the Duma and the press. A former University professor of mine expressed doubts that even the polling data we see in Russia is honest. The only companies that have a license to put political polls in the field are friendly with Putin and his allies. The beauty of representative democracy is that it creates a peaceful means by which the political elite and compete for power. If that process lacks legitimacy violence becomes the only power base and peace, order, and freedom all get lost in a sea of coups and counter coups. For Russia to end its long history of suffering either bloody autocrats or chaos, they have to develop a democratic political culture. Russia does not have a history of democratic norms. Sadly Putin has done all he can to prevent such norms from taking root. Sunday, December 14, 2008 Sarah Palin named "Most Controversial Celebrity" of 2008 Sarah Palin has just been named the “Most Controversial Celebrity” of 2008 by Showbiz Tonight, beating out two-time winner Britney Spears. The Western Standard covered Palin as closely as good taste would allow and I can’t really understand what’s so controversial about the Alaskan governor and former Republican vice presidential candidate. Was it that sexy college t-shirt photo? Perhaps it is her down syndrome son Trig who she chose not to abort? Her expensive campaign wardrobe, which she says she never asked for and didn't keep? What about her rather conventional Christian views? Or could it be her love of guns and hunting? There's nothing controversial here. Troopergate, of course! I almost forgot about Troopergate. OK. Fine. I guess she is somewhat controversial. But is she really a celebrity? And is this new obsession with the political class healthy? I think I like the Hollywood-obsessed America better than the politically-obsessed America, an era ushered in by President-elect Obama and the attractive and fashionable Palin. I wonder if Lindsay Lohan said anything stupid today? Posted by Matthew Johnston Saturday, December 13, 2008 A new hope in Russia One of the major problems with Russia is the lack of alternative to Putin, Medvedev, and the United Russia Party. The Yeltsin years discredited liberalism in Russia and the various democratic parties have not been able to get their act together. The outrageously large victories enjoyed by Putin and his allies may be suspicious, but you have to consider that there is basically no one else to vote for. In fact in the Duma elections the ‘none of the above’ option on the ballot routinely wins plurality. This is why I am excited to learn that the democratic parties in Russia are uniting and forming a new political force. They are calling themselves Solidarity. It is being headed by Garry Kasparov, who for a long time now has been the most successful critic of the Kremlin. I only hope that Mr. Kasparov doesn’t soon face trumped up charges. Wednesday, December 10, 2008 All politicians do bad things It’s not a matter of getting the “right” person in place; it’s a matter of refusing to give ANY person the amount of power politicians and bureaucrats currently enjoy. There is no way someone can “do good” in a position where they are expected to make certain groups happy and to do so with one tool and one tool only, force. That is government. We are stupid to think good intentions can somehow make coercion a “nice” and effective way to achieve social progress and harmony. (I recommend reading chapter 10 of F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom to see why there are systematic reasons that “bad” people end up in high levels of government. It’s not by chance.) Here’s a great post on the topic by the The Austrian Economists’ Steve Horwitz: So the big news today is that the governor of Illinois has been caught doing explicitly what most politicians do with more subtlety every single day: selling off their power to the highest bidder. I can’t help but note that yet another politician is indicted on corruption charges at the very same time we are handing over unprecedented power to the political class as we partially nationalize the banking system and, apparently, the Big Three auto companies. I simply do not understand how those who are in favor of giving government all of these new powers because they sincerely believe that doing so will work out the way their blackboard designs intended can keep a straight face. What kind of cognitive dissonance must it take to believe that the people YOU are handing power over to are “not like” Ted Stevens or Rod Blagojevich? How deeply must one be in denial or engage in rationalization to believe that they are “different?” How blind must one be to think that trillions of dollars in bailout money won’t go to the highest bidder (as the lobbyists line up on K Street…) in a process different only in its wink-and-a-nod courtesies than Blagojevich’s auctioning off of a Senate seat? For me, the key insight of public choice is the same insight that underlies Austrian economics: it is the institutional framework that is the key to understanding the choices people make and the unintended outcomes they produce. As I said to a class last week: “Governments can’t act like businesses because businesses only act like businesses because they operate in the institutional environment of private property, monetary exchange, and competition.” In the same way, getting politicians to stop selling off their power isn’t a matter of ethics or psychology, rather it’s about changing the rules of the game such that they do not have as much power to sell. Unfortunately, the current bailout mania is changing those rules in utterly the wrong direction. Look at it this way: the bailouts are already becoming just a legal form of essentially the same behavior for which the governor has been indicted. Why should we ever accept “Oh, but he’s different” as an answer to the claim that explicit bribery and selling off power are just a less subtle form of politics as usual? (Cross-posted at the SFEblog) Thursday, December 04, 2008 Libertarian Bob Barr opposes US domestic troop deployment, warns of "culture of militarism" Salem-news.com is reporting that the US government plans to deploy 20,000 troops – a full division – to domestic law enforcement. Former Republican congressman and Libertarian Party leader Bob Barr opposes the plan and the growing “culture of militarism” in America: "When combat troops are used for domestic law enforcement, rights are inevitably violated and tragedies occur, such as when the military was improperly activated to assist in the tragedy at Waco, Texas in 1993. This domestic use of the military resulted in the loss of some 80 men, women and children," says Barr, the Libertarian Party's 2008 presidential nominee. "The government's plan to deploy initially 20,000 uniformed military personnel inside the United States goes against everything we have learned about using soldiers as police officers. Not only do these plans appear to be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act—which forbids the use of the military in law enforcement on non-federal property—but it also opens up the American public to dangerous Constitutional violations." Barr says his concerns are greatly heightened by the conclusion reached by the current Bush Administration in a classified 2001 Department of Justice memo. The memo stated that the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures, does not apply to the U.S. military when it engages in “domestic” operations. It gives new meaning to the antiwar cry to “bring the troops home.” Be careful what you wish for. Tuesday, November 25, 2008 The power of words The CCP's continuing battle against words had me thinking about the Moon report, and its recommendation to get the CHRC out of the anti-wordsmithing business. I found the reaction of Justice Minister Rob Nicholson particularly puzzling (Reuters): At this month's policy convention of the governing Conservative Party, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson voted for a resolution to have the commission get out of policing hate speech on the Internet. But, mindful of his government's minority status in Parliament, he reacted cautiously on Monday: "We'll have a careful look at it... I'd like to get some input from the (House of Commons) justice committee." To be fair to Nicholson, Randall Palmer (the Reuters author) added the minority government context. Still, if the lack of a majority is keeping the Harper government from acting, it shouldn't. In fact, the best political move out of this is to make the repeal of Section 13 a confidence vote. I don't expect the NDP to be much help, but the Bloc and the Grits will be facing serious crosswinds. For the Liberals, it was one of their own (Keith Martin) who first presented this as a private member's bill. Would Martin (who was a CA member and was elected this time be a mere 72-vote margin) see this as a time to re-cross the floor, and give the Grits another embarrassment? Or even worse (for the Libs), will a leadership candidate take a chance and come out in favor of the bill, thus splitting the party? Meanwhile, the Bloc may think at first they can skate by this, but a free-speech issue garnering national attention in the middle of a Quebec election that could be Mario Dumont's last stand may not play as they think it will. If Dumont is able to make this Le Cri de coeur Partie Deux, The Bloc's PQ cousins may have a serious problem. Finally, the Conservatives only need a dozen votes to get this out of Commons, and Martin should give them at least one. The rest will likely come from Blocquisites worried about the provincial election, or Liberals skittish about another election or having the party split open. Either way, the odds would favor the Conservatives to pick up enough votes or absetentions to get a Section 13 repeal through. Monday, November 24, 2008 The CCP's next accidental rehabilitation project It was almost a decade ago when the Chinese Communist Party pulled off the impossible: they actually turned Prince Charles into a sympathetic figure. Today, they take on an even bigger challenge: reviving Guns 'N' Roses. Friday, November 21, 2008 Beijing admits the situation is "grim" They're just hoping no one ntoices that they have no idea what to do next. Thursday, November 20, 2008 Antiwar groups fear Barack Obama may create hawkish Cabinet The LA Times is reporting today that: Antiwar groups and other liberal activists are increasingly concerned at signs that Barack Obama's national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views on other important foreign policy issues. If these antiwar groups had read the October 2008 edition of Reason Magazine, this news would be less surprising. Here’s what columnist David Weigel had to say about Obama’s foreign policy views: He has called for, or retroactively endorsed, interventions in Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and Sudan. He has advocated a humanitarian-based foreign policy for his entire public career. Since coming to the U.S. Senate in 2005, he has built up a brain trust of academics and ex-Clintonites who, like him, challenge the logic of the Iraq war but not the logic of wars like Iraq. John McCain looks at American military power and sees a way to "roll back" rogue states. Obama looks at American military power and sees a way to solve international and intranational conflict, regardless of the conflict's immediate impact on national security. McCain seeks to aggressively confront imminent threats. Obama wants to do the same, while forestalling threats of tomorrow with just as much military vigor. If antiwar groups were was looking to Obama to restore the American non-interventionist tradition, they picked the wrong candidate. Posted by Matthew Johnston The tragedy as farce Beijing continues the Moscow-70s-rerun. Wednesday, November 19, 2008 Communist China is now America's largest creditor The CCP now has the economic power to do tremendous damage to the American economy and/or exact painful geopolitical concessions from the leader of the free world. Tuesday, November 18, 2008 More from those free-marketeers in China The regime is now demanding factories get government approval before making lay-offs. I would cluck-cluck about the supposedly "free-market" Communists being exposed, but as an American, well . . . Monday, November 17, 2008 Continuing on my two obsessions that no one else seems to care about . . . Communist China continues its Brezhnevization. Meanwhile, for those of you still angry over the federal Conservatives abandoning private health care, there is still one leader willing to embrace the badly needed heresy: Mario Dumont. Sunday, November 16, 2008 Gary Johnson for President in 2012: Keeping drug policy reform on the Republican agenda Canadian libertarian publisher Marc Emery doesn’t trust President-elect Obama on drug policy reform, and wants to see former two-term New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 as an insurance policy. Johnson is a tax fighter, a Ron Paul supporter, an opponent of the war in Iraq and, most importantly to Emery, the highest ranking elected official in America to have opposed the war on drugs. Can Johnson finish the job Ron Paul started and successfully win the Republican nomination for libertarian-conservatives in 2012? Read Marc Emery's column "Gary Johnson for President in 2012" here for the answer. And here's an excerpt from the column for those of you pressed for time: If Obama wants to keep arresting African-Americans all day long for pot and drugs, that is unacceptable. If he wants to maintain the status quo and leave us with hollow words like "hope" and "change", then the honeymoon will be over fast. These are desperate, rough times ahead and a soothsayer in the White House, no matter how handsome and acceptably black, is not going to be able to suppress the legitimate aspirations of millions of people in jail or with family in jail because of the drug war. If drug law reform is way down on the list of the Democratic Congress and Obama’s agenda then its not a moment too soon to start considering a mainstream candidate for whom drug-law reform is much higher on the list. That's Gary Johnson. Gary Johnson smoked pot, enjoyed it, became Governor, served two terms, doesn't smoke pot now or recently, and wants to legalize it. Obama called his pot use a youthful mistake and has recanted, during the 2008 campaign, his 2004 promise to legalize pot. Nonetheless, I am confident President Obama would probably sign any bill brought before him from Congress that does legalize pot, that's why the new Congress must be lobbied to get on board with the Barney Frank-Ron Paul Marijuana Decriminalization Act. I am more optimistic than ever before about getting drug law reform done with the Democrats and Ron Paul Republicans (Broun, McClintock, Paul, Bartlett, Flake, Rohrabacher) in this next session. Saturday, November 15, 2008 The saga of the Ron Paul third party bid that never was Nolan Chart columnist and Ontario Libertarian Party deputy leader George Dance has provided an excellent summary of the Ron Paul third party bid that never was. Dance documents the speculation and weak denials that Paul would run as the Libertarian Party candidate for president if he lost the Republican nomination, which was certain. You can read his excellent and thorough treatment of the subject here, but the stories goes something like this: Paul was asked by Republican brass to agree not to run as a third party candidate, should he lose the nomination, on the condition that he be allowed to participate in state primaries and the all-important national debates. Paul didn’t disclose these No-Third-Party agreements and allowed speculation to run rampant as to whether or not he would run as the Libertarian Party candidate for president. His campaign team may have even encouraged some of this speculation. Some argue he didn’t disclose these agreements because he wanted to keep the media interested in his campaign for the Republican nomination and wanted to keep donations coming in from Libertarian Party members who clung to the hope that Paul would eventually be their candidate. Paul eventually made it clear that he would not accept the Libertarian Party nomination and said “I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican." Libertarians were naturally disappointed, but, again, at no point did Paul’s campaign disclose the No-Third-Party agreements which precluded him from running. Why? In answer to this nagging question, Western Standard general manager Kalim Kassam suggested Paul may have been under a non-disclosure agreement at least until the November 4th vote. Here’s what Dance had to write about Kassam’s conclusion: At this point, of course, all judgements have to be tentative. I find myself in agreement with Kalim Kassam's comments on the revelation at Canada's Western Standard: It's not difficult to see why this information wasn't made public before the press conference at which Ron Paul made his presidential endorsements: of course the GOP would prefer it never to see the light of day, and until that point Paul could coyly respond to inquiries that he had "no plans" to mount a third party run while not completely ruling it out, keeping the media interested and the major parties on their toes.... Then again, who am I to know? Maybe the GOP also had a non-disclosure agreement which gagged the Paul campaign from talking until after the November 4th election. I wouldn't be surprised, would you? Remember Occam’s razor: All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best. Friday, November 14, 2008 US blocks Chinese food imports The melamine scandal is faced, so it doesn't hit home. How long before Canada does this? Thursday, November 13, 2008 Bravo to Rogers The Chinese dissident TV station New Tang Dynasty Television is now on the air in Canada. Truth be told, I really didn't give Rogers enough credit on the post itself (actually, I never mentioned them), but I want to make up for it here. It takes a lot to resist the CCP and its lure of "1.3 billion customers" - especially in the Great White North, where the Liberals still insist on doing Beijing's bidding. Thank you, Rogers. Wednesday, November 12, 2008 If you think you had a bad Remembrance Day... . . . try looking at the one the Chinese Communists had. Meanwhile, I see the PQ and the Q-Liberals are insisting that the other stinks on the economy (Whistler Question)., Of course, they're both right. Monday, November 10, 2008 Perhaps this will disabuse the CCP admirers The Chinese Communist Party has, IMHO, gotten far more praise on this blog than it deserves for supposedly "free-market" policies - much of which has been a ruse. I await the condemnation from these folks as the cadres have now decided to unload 15% of the nation's GDP on pork-barrel projects and other nonsense. Meanwhile, thanks to this, I will once again resume my role as Chief of the ADQ apologists (American division). Friday, November 07, 2008 The Obama draft begins An open letter to America's youth: Dear high school and college aged students: We're sorry about this, American young people, but President-Elect Barack Obama demands your service. You, too, can learn to balance school, after-school jobs, and extracurricular activities with 50-100 hours of annual community service. Especially you kids unlucky enough to have poor parents who can't afford to send you to a private school. You'll have to save for college while cleaning toilets, working for ACORN, and picking up trash along the highway. Your wealthier friends, on the other hand, will just be able to skip the whole "mandatory volunteerism" thing by transferring to private schools. Maybe the government will let you do your time with a libertarian or conservative organization. Yeah, good luck with that, you miserable proletariat schlubs. Again, sorry about this. But America needs you. Barack Obama needs you. We hope you understand. The Western Standard Thursday, November 06, 2008 Fraser Institute: Harper government faces hurdles with a Barack Obama administration Despite Canadians’ stated preference for a Barack Obama presidency, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have his work cut out for him to convince the president-elect not to pursue polices that will negatively affect Canada, concludes a new study from independent research organization the Fraser Institute. “On all the key economic and bilateral issues between our two countries, including trade, energy, border management, and defence, an Obama administration poses a major challenge to Canada’s immediate interests,” said Dr. Alexander Moens, author of Canada and Obama: Canada’s Stake in the 2008 US Election and a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute. “Prime Minister Harper has a very large hurdle ahead of him in terms of trying to gain Obama’s attention, build a relationship, and advance Canada’s interests.” In the new study, Moens, a political science professor at Simon Fraser University and expert on Canada-U.S. relations, breaks down the main policy issues of Canadian interest facing the two North American neighbours, and examines how an Obama presidency is likely to approach them. His conclusion is not reassuring for the Canadian economy, which relies heavily on exports to the U.S. The complete study is available at www.fraserinstitute.org. “There is no indication Obama will change the American approach to border security, and he has been critical of Canada’s production of what he calls ‘dirty oil.’ Combined with Obama’s lack of foreign affairs experience, it will be a challenge for Canada to get on his agenda,” Moens said. Moens points out that Canada did not feature in the Obama campaign except in the NAFTA flap, when a Canadian memo was leaked to the press in which an aide to Obama indicated that Obama was less critical of NAFTA than his campaign rhetoric would suggest. For the past several years, Canada and the U.S. have been moving to integrate markets in the two countries, initially under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and more recently through the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). The ability for transactions to occur freely across the border has been a key engine of Canadian growth in the past two decades. In 2007, Canada’s trade with the United States amounted to 67 per cent of its overall trade, or 40 per cent of GDP. But these gains could disappear if the new U.S. administration embraces more protectionist policies. “Given Obama’s expressed hesitation for free trade agreements and his promises to seek more labour and environmental conditions in agreements such as NAFTA, Canada will likely face more than security demands from the new administration in bilateral negotiations on deepening trade,” Moens said. “But Obama is a highly intelligent person, and a master politician. If Harper can persuade him that the United States will benefit from good relations with Canada, he may adjust his policies.” The other key issue facing Canada is the likelihood of Obama bringing forward a carbon cap-and-trade system. Canada is particularly sensitive to arbitrary caps on carbon set in Washington which would most likely lead to American industry demanding import tariffs or levies on Canadian energy products and manufactured goods. Because carbon policies lead to trade distortions, Canada can only minimize its losses if it joins an American cap and trade system. Any difference between the two markets on these regulations will likely hurt the Canadian export sector. Moens concludes that because of the challenge of getting Canada on Barack Obama’s agenda and getting Canadian interests acknowledged, Prime Minister Stephen Harper needs to meet early with the new president and exert maximum effort to build a personal relationship of trust and respect. And he suggests the Prime Minister concentrate on three main issues: 1. Renew efforts to open bilateral, rather than trilateral (with Mexico), discussions on trade and border issues. Canadian steps toward more border staffing and deeper cooperation on homeland security as well as joint projects on accelerated infrastructure (bridges and roads) could be a start. 2. Reconsider the decision to withdraw Canadian Forces from combat operations in Afghanistan in 2011. This issue should be put on the bilateral table to find a common strategy with the Obama administration on how to achieve long-term security and stability in Afghanistan using both military and diplomatic means. 3. If the new Administration and Congress launch a cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions, Canada should lobby for a single Canadian-American approach, rather than separate Canadian and American policies. Such an accord must give special protection for the oil sands industry to give it time to move towards more steam-assisted gravity drainage, the use of nuclear power to generate steam, and carbon sequestering. Despite Obama’s popularity among Canadians, Moens points out that the Canadian public remains leery of working closely with the United States and it remains to be seen if public opinion will change under an Obama administration. “Canadians are almost evenly split on the operations in Afghanistan and they showed little support for the SPP initiative to deepen trade relations. Any Canadian government will face a tough challenge explaining why it is in Canada’s national interest to move towards closer trade integration and border efficiency, as well as to bring the integrated energy markets even closer,” he said. Wednesday, November 05, 2008 What the new Administration could do (if it wanted) There are many reasons why I was disappointed (and deeply worried) about Barack Obama's victory. The Bush Administration made sure policy toward Communist China was not one of them. In fact, the Obama Administration could win many converts with a genuinely anti-Communist policy. Here's how. Take up thy cross and follow Obama Late last night, after the election was called for Obama, CNN political analyst Roland Martin used Biblical analogies in looking at the problems facing the new president. All Americans, needed to rally together, he argued, citing the Biblical example of Nehemiah who could only rebuild the temple when all the Israelites realized that they had to work together. Moreover, Mr. Martin added, Americans must not assume that Obama can solve these problems alone. They must "take up that cross" (his words) and help him. (Perhaps "Take up thy cross and follow Obama" is in an extremely new translation of the Bible that I have not seen yet. ) No pressure, Barack, he just compared your new job to the road to Calvary! This is just another example of the messianic undertone that has underlay the U.S. media coverage of Obama. Conservative bloggers such as Jonah Goldberg have spotted it. It goes almost without saying that had Sarah Palin, a devout Pentecostal, used Biblical language during the campign, reporters would have eaten her alive. I'd say to the new president--if people are thinking of you in such terms, then may God help you. Literally! I am certain that you will need it. UPDATE: A "Roland S. Martin", who may well be the CNN correspondent himself, adds in the comments: "I used the religious language because I have a masters in Christian communications: my wife is an ordained minister; and I gave a sermond on Sunday with Nehemiah 2 as the scripture and the title was "It's About Us; Not Him" I did note that Mr. Martin was careful to say that Obama would lead Americans. But, the president elect is a mere mortal politician. We do need to give him permission to fail...as I ruefully suspect he will. Such language as used on election night, I still suggest, does not help Mr. Obama. I also note that the words "Take up thy cross and follow me," are spoken by Christ himself in the Bible, so what, indeed, would "take up that cross" remind you of? Thursday, October 30, 2008 Georgia Straight "poised" to report that Dewey Defeats Truman? Today's issue of The Georgia Straight, Vancouver's weekly alternative newspaper, has let the cat out of the bag about next Tuesday's U.S. elections. A photo of Barack Obama is featured on the front cover with the legend "Our Best Bet: Barack Obama is poised to become the most powerful man in the world. So what does this mean for Canada?" Their feature story, by Doug Sarti, does qualify the cover stance by noting "if" Obama wins. Yet the fact that newspaper devotes two pages of speculation about what Obama might do as president (such as appointing Arnold Schwarzenegger as Secretary of Energy, for example) implies that the newspaper is acting as if it obvious that Americans must realize that they have to stop guzzling "the Bush Kool-Aid". So, they might as well run this story now. Although this is not as egregiously obnoxious as the newspaper in New Mexico that reported "Obama Wins!", The Georgia Straight is being a bit disrespectful towards U.S. voters who have yet to cast their ballots. John McCain, the latest poll numbers report, is catching up to Obama. If he manages to pull off an upset next Tuesday, I'll bet the Straight's editors will wish that they had paid Mr. Sarti a "kill fee" and held the "What can we expect from President Obama" story, just in case. Better to be careful and wait than to look foolish, eh? Wednesday, October 29, 2008 The CCP's latest effort to make farmers feel better falls flat. Tuesday, October 28, 2008 The devolution of tyranny The Chinese Communist police force long ago became strike-breakers for the cadres; now they've become a security force for the the Chinese Mafia. Monday, October 27, 2008 We're just not into you That's the message the CCP has been sending the Chinese people for years; it just became crystal clear over the weekend. Friday, October 24, 2008 It's not often one sees more resolve from Europe than America, but it does happen on occasion. Thursday, October 23, 2008 The next four years . . . . . . and why they could be a lot of trouble . . . . . . no matter who wins November 4. Wednesday, October 22, 2008 Somebody finally goes after the surrender to North Korea John McCain rips the Bush Administration here. Still plenty of time for anyone in Canada to say something . . . . . . anything. Tuesday, October 21, 2008 The new theme for the CCP.

South Africa's leading artists, Irma Stern and Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef, had very different visions of the country they both loved passionately. Stern engaged her subjects up close and personally through expressive color and brushwork, preferring the genres of still life and portraiture, while for Pierneef it was the great vistas of the African veld, rendered with an architectonic sensibility, that attracted his attention. Bonhams' sale of South African art on October 17 embraces this duality with a variety of strong works by each artist. Stern offers compelling images of fruit carriers, washerwomen, a rare glimpse of the backyard of her home in Rosebank, Cape Town, and a range of evocative portraits. Pierneef, on the other hand, reveals majestic landscapes (such as the Simonsberg near Stellenbosch and Kransberg near Rustenberg) with a sheer scale that is almost overwhelming. The counterpoint offered by these two very different artists – a Jewish émigré entranced by Africa's color and inspired by its people, and an Afrikaner for whom the land was deeply invested with identity – imbues the upcoming sale with both variety and vitality. Irma Stern painted a number of images depicting labor – carrying water, harvesting fruit – but instead of creating narratives, these are rich symphonies of color and rhythm. 'Washer Women' (£200,000-300,000), painted in 1925, is a case in point. The bent arms of the washer women alternate with the directional flow of the water to create a dynamism of blues, greens, whites and browns. The tall agave plants that rise from the earthy hues of this hilly landscape suggest that the scene is set in the Eastern Cape, most likely Pondoland, which Stern visited in the early 1920s. In Stern's image 'Backyard' (£120,000 to £180,000) one can see behind the white expanse of The Firs, Irma Stern's home and studio for 38 years: a woman - presumably Stern's housemaid - bends to retrieve another piece of laundry to hang on the line. Significantly, though the objects and interiors of The Firs can be glimpsed in several of Stern's paintings, the external view presented by this painting is highly unusual. Both works were included in the Irma Stern Memorial Exhibition at London's Grosvenor Gallery in 1967. The exhibition, noting her acclaim in South Africa, was a formal assertion that a range of works from her dynamic career should be shown to an international audience, as described in the catalog essay: "In South Africa she became accepted as the single most important artist born and active in the country. Indeed because of her success in South Africa, London and other major art centers were denied the opportunity of seeing her work regularly during her life time. This exhibition, therefore, whilst noting that Irma Stern was a great South African and a painter of special historical importance in her own country, makes the claim that she deserves to be seen and evaluated on a wider horizon. Here then is the first opportunity to study works covering her entire artistic life..." In October, Bonhams will provide another opportunity to glimpse the impressive range of Stern's career. The South African landscape was Pierneef's first love, as evidenced in two particularly powerful works in the upcoming sale. 'Kransberg, Rustenburg, Transvaal' (£300,000-500,000) was acquired directly from the artist by the Geological Survey for presentation to director Dr L.T. Nel on his retirement in 1955. Pierneef chose to paint the Kransberg mountain for its particularly geological subject matter, which he felt was appropriate for this commission. The influence of the Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings by Cézanne (1839-1906), painted towards the end of the nineteenth century, is evident here. Like the French artist, Pierneef uses the trees in the foreground as a framing device. Similar to Cézanne's mountain, Pierneef paints a huge rock formation in the center of the work and it is this feature to which our eyes are first drawn, subtly guided by the acacia trees. Pierneef's 'View in the Stellenbosch Valley, with Simonsberg and the Hottentots Holland beyond' (£100,000-150,000) will speak to the heart of anyone who ever loved the Cape. Better known for its exquisite wine, parts of the Stellenbosch Valley were planted with tobacco and wheat during the 1950s. In this image, a combination of crops provides a pastel-hued patchwork, while beyond the fields the blue-hued Simonsberg and Hottentots Holland mountain ranges – less starkly-rendered than those of much of Pierneef's earlier work – add to the sense of vastness in the image. An atmosphere of peace and orderliness pervades the scene, undisturbed by any signs of human presence or activity. Despite their differing esthetic and thematic approaches, Pierneef and Stern continue to provide two of the most significant windows onto South African life and landscape in the twentieth century. NOTES FOR EDITORS Bonhams, founded in 1793, is one of the world's largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques. The present company was formed by the merger in November 2001 of Bonhams & Brooks and Phillips Son & Neale. In August 2002, the company acquired Butterfields, the principal firm of auctioneers on the West Coast of America. Today, Bonhams offers more sales than any of its rivals, through two major salerooms in London: New Bond Street and Knightsbridge; and a further three in the UK regions and Scotland. Sales are also held in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Carmel, New York and Connecticut in the USA; and Germany, France, Monaco, Hong Kong and Australia. Bonhams has a worldwide network of offices and regional representatives in 25 countries offering sales advice and appraisal services in 60 specialist areas. For a full listing of upcoming sales, plus details of Bonhams specialist departments go to www.bonhams.com

The actor who played Harry Potter may be the richest and most famous human of his generation on the planet, but during an interview at the Four Seasons hotel, Daniel Radcliffe, now just 24, exuded none of the cockiness one might expect of a celebrity best known for demolishing Horcruxes and slaying an evil dark lord in the Potter films. Radcliffe’s signature expressive, preternaturally blue eyes, as well as his pale, translucent skin and delicate features, suggest the aura of an iconic medieval saint (minus the Potter spectacles, of course). But his manner comes across as sincere, amusing and kinetic — he speaks a mile a minute and exudes a restless energy. And, as he is known to do, he humbly made a self-deprecating remark or two. Radcliffe described how projects need to scare him a bit to prove challenging, and joked about his slight stature — 5-foot-5. Since he plays Allen Ginsberg, the gay, Jewish Beat poet in John Krokidas’ new film, “Kill Your Darlings,” opening Oct. 16, Radcliffe also described his own scribbling of as many as 100 poems while on the Potter set, an endeavor he now regards “with a mixture of slight embarrassment and the occasional pride. They were lots of romantic poems, not that I showed them to any of my girlfriends; I wouldn’t have dared,” he said with a laugh. He did, however, publish several of those poems under the pen name Jacob Gershon, which he cobbled together from his middle name and the Anglicized version of his Jewish mother’s maiden name, Gresham (his father is a Protestant from Northern Ireland). He said he likes the similarity of “Gershon” to the biblical Gershom, Moses’ firstborn son, whose name in Hebrew means “foreigner.” “In our home, there was no religion,” Radcliffe said, “but as a young child I was quite inherently religious, though it was mainly feelings of guilt that caused my fervor. It was while studying world religions around age 14 that I became an atheist. The word God doesn’t mean anything to me, and I’ve never had anyone explain it in a way that made any sense to me.” Radcliffe said, however, that he is “proud to be Jewish,” that he has a Jewish humor book at home and that he loves Jewish jokes — when prompted, he told one about two elderly women who encounter a flasher and remark, of his coat, that the lining is terrible. “That’s an old joke from the rag trade that my grandmother used to tell,” he said, explaining that his Polish and Russian Jewish forebears practiced that trade and that his great-great-grandfather made his fortune by producing greatcoats for British soldiers during World War I. To prepare to play the teenage Ginsberg, circa World War II, Radcliffe avidly read the poet’s diaries and work, and he cites Ginsberg’s “Kaddish,” in which the author laments the death of his mentally ill mother, as particularly inspiring. “I came to understand what Allen went through with his mum, and that he spent time with her in institutions,” he said. “It must’ve been quite frightening to see your mother like that, and that must’ve led to a sense of not wanting to see her, and then to a huge amount of guilt about those feelings. “The mother relationship is always such a very important one for men, and particularly, it must be said, for Jewish men,” he continued. “The mother was such a strong figurehead in Jewish homes at the time and presumably must’ve been in the homes of Ginsberg’s friends. And for him not to have had that was one of the aspects that made him feel different from everyone else around him.” Radcliffe said as a Jewish-Irish student in his thoroughly Anglican grammar school, he also felt uncomfortably “different,” which was one reason he was eager to escape to the Potter film sets. Playing Ginsberg is a departure for the actor, his first major Jewish role, set during World War II and spotlighting the young Ginsberg as he leaves his childhood home in Paterson, N.J., for Columbia University, where he comes of age both artistically and sexually. The transformation comes courtesy of his seductive classmate, Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), who introduces the awkward student to the downtown New York hipster life, to the future Beats William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) and Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), as well as prodding him to buck authority in his poetry. Everything changes when Carr is accused of murdering David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), an older writer who had a stalkerish infatuation with Carr, and the fallout thrusts Ginsberg into a moral dilemma that, as shown in the film, is the most difficult of his young life. Also at the Four Seasons, Krokidas explained why he had sought out Radcliffe for the role: “Ginsberg, at the time, was the dutiful son taking care of his emotionally ill mother, Naomi, and he was always the good boy. And yet in his journals and inside his own head, he believed he had so much more to offer the world than people assumed. I thought that Daniel Radcliffe the person might identify with that.” Radcliffe, who first got the role of Harry Potter at age 10, readily agreed: “I can relate to the idea that people know just a tiny part of you, or one aspect of your personality, and they think they know who you are,” he said with intense earnestness. “Basically, it’s a case of people being obsessed just by the icon. For example, I always get asked the question, ‘What did it feel like to have grown up on screen?’ But I didn’t grow up on screen; I grew up making films. The private moments of my growing up are all my own — none of them appeared on camera, thank God.” Radcliffe has been anxious to prove that he can traverse the difficult terrain between child and adult star, a journey he began in earnest when he decided, at 14, while filming “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” that he wanted to make acting his lifelong profession. To that end, Radcliffe and his team of advisers realized that he needed to begin to take on new (and very different) roles even before the Potter series ended. And so, in 2007, the actor starred in the independent film “The December Boys,” as well as in a Broadway production of the stark psychological drama “Equus,” the latter requiring the boy wizard to perform grueling scenes in the nude. He recalled, with a smile, that one headline in advance of the opening of that play read “something like, ‘Crash! What’s that? The sound of a career coming to a grinding halt’ ” — despite which Radcliffe’s performance earned glowing reviews. He then expanded his repertoire with the Broadway musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” the 2012 horror film “The Woman in Black” and “A Young Doctor’s Notebook,” a bitingly satiric British television series, now showing in the United States on the Ovation network, based on a short story by the Soviet Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov. In the latter, Radcliffe plays a morphine-addicted young physician opposite Jon Hamm, who plays an older version of his character and with whom he appears bathing in a tub in one scene. The fiercely ambitious and prolific Radcliffe’s upcoming films include “The F Word,” a romantic comedy opposite Zoe Kazan, and the dark fantasy thriller “Horns,” in which his character literally sprouts horns. “Kill Your Darlings” will further distance Radcliffe from Potter, as in it he appears in his first explicit gay sex sequence, which prompted The Hollywood Reporter to crow, “The boy wizard never pinned his knees behind his ears.” “To be honest, that review did make me laugh,” Radcliffe said. But the scene was hardly gratuitous, he insisted. “John said he’d never really seen a very authentic loss-of-virginity scene for gay men on screen, and he wanted to get it right. So it’s not necessarily a steamy scene, as it’s being portrayed in some articles. It’s about vulnerability as much as anything else, and the fear and excitement that goes along with your first time.” It’s true that Radcliffe has shed his trousers in a variety of recent projects: “If it’s called for, I don’t mind taking off my Keds,” he said, matter-of-factly. “It’s not something I seek out, but I’m not going to be one of those people who complain about not wanting to do what’s in the script.” Krokidas, for his part, felt it was important to cast a Jewish actor as Ginsberg “because the film depicts one of Judaism’s greatest literary figures of the 20th century.” But, he recalled, he wasn’t initially sure Radcliffe was a member of the tribe and panicked when he realized, “There’s going to be sexuality in the film and how am I going to have him take his clothes off if he’s uncircumcised? And, this is so mortifying — I actually texted Dan, and he confirmed that he is indeed Jewish from the waist down.” There are also several sequences in which Ginsberg encounters anti-Semitism, including one where his Southern roommate declares, “You Hymies are really all about work.” “John and I talked about the prejudice that Ginsberg would have faced on a very casual, day-to-day kind of basis,” Radcliffe said of those scenes. “In my mind, Allen’s response to that would be to just internally go to that place of, ‘F--- you, I’m smarter than you.’ That’s his defense mechanism, and it’s probably mine as well.” Does he believe viewers ever will be able to separate him from his most famous character? “I’m always going to be associated with Potter; it was the way I was introduced to multiple generations of people,” he said. “So it’s going to be a while before people don’t associate me with that. “But,” he added, “I’m very proud to be associated with it. As long as it doesn’t prevent me from getting other work, then it shouldn’t be a problem.” “Kill Your Darlings” hits theaters on Oct. 16. We welcome your feedback. Your information will not be shared or sold without your consent. Get all the details. Terms of Service JewishJournal.com has rules for its commenting community.Get all the details. JewishJournal.com reserves the right to use your comment in our weekly print publication.

ABROAD; A Berliner's Portraits of People and Her Familiar, and Foreign, Home By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN Published: January 8, 2009 BERLIN -- Not all culture is global yet. Outside aging lefty circles in Greenwich Village or the Berkshires, the photographer Gis? Freund mostly causes head-scratching in the United States. Among other reasons, she published unflattering pictures of Eva Per?n Life magazine in 1950, troubling the Argentine dictator and ruffling diplomatic relations, so the State Department officially declared her an ''unwanted person.'' She wasn't Robert Capa or even Margaret Bourke-White. She wasn't a great photojournalist, but she was a gifted pioneer. Starting in 1935, when Andr?alraux enlisted her to document the First International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture, she left behind memorable portraits of Louis Aragon and Vita Sackville-West, Boris Pasternak and Stefan Zweig, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce (the last two in color, when color film was still new). More than half a century later, some of these portraits can look a little dated, but there's Joyce relaxing with his grandson in a park, cane slung across chest like a military sash; and Malraux, wind-swept in collar-up overcoat with runty cigarette between lips. (A French postage stamp was based on it, without, for politically correct reasons, the cigarette.) Freund actually read what her subjects wrote, she moved in their circles, and her best photographs convey both an intimacy and an insider's romance with a bygone world between the wars. Her hometown is celebrating her now. She was born in Berlin in 1908, fled Germany in 1933, then had some shows and books published here during her later years that returned her to local attention. (She died in 2000.) Her portraits currently occupy the exhibition hall at the Willy Brandt Haus. The Ephraim-Palais has some of the lesser-known pictures she shot when she returned briefly to visit postwar Berlin in 1957 and 1962, as a kind of prodigal daughter, estranged but open-eyed. These are more interesting, in a way. Freund was hoping to find lost landmarks of her childhood. Instead, she discovered a place largely unfamiliar, and her photographs steer blessedly clear of melancholy and moralizing; they're cool, matter of fact, not art but honest and true. True to an exile's experience. She and the writer Walter Benjamin became friends in Paris. Writing about his own Berlin childhood, Benjamin once recalled how living abroad had made it ''clear to me that I would soon have to bid a long, perhaps lasting farewell to the city of my birth.'' He added, ''Several times in my inner life I had already experienced the process of inoculation as something salutary.'' That's roughly what Freund's photographs suggest too: her attempt to inoculate herself against the vicissitudes of time through the lens of a camera. She wrote a letter on her return to Berlin, in slightly broken English peppered with German and French: ''I came to the result that not only the Berliners have paid for whole Germany but also that only the innocent have suffered, because all those of my friends (otherwise they wouldn't have been my friends) who had fought Nazism, had been in KZs'' (concentration camps). She added: ''The few survivants of our generation, they are now the most 'anr?ge' '' (disreputable) ''crowd for the fact that they hadn't been Nazis and are therefore '?rt?'' (isolated) ''by the Americans as not reliable.'' It was the same, she noted, in the Communist zone. It took an outcast to know one. Her father, a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer and art collector, gave Freund a Voigtlander 6 x 9 camera when she was 17 and a Leica in 1929, the year she graduated from a secondary school for working-class girls. She had decided to quit her upper-middle-class surroundings to attend the Waldschule Eichkamp, and she lived there with her teacher. After that, at Freiburg, then Frankfurt, during its heyday with Theodor Adorno, Karl Mannheim and Norbert Elias, she studied sociology and art history, protested against the Nazis, photographed the protests (her close-up pictures, attempting to go beyond just documents, convey urgency, above all); and, with the Nazis nearly at her door, she left for Paris, Leica in hand. In Frankfurt she had researched the roots of photography, a subject not yet widely taken seriously but very dear to Benjamin. The two of them would retreat from the Biblioth?e Nationale in Paris to play chess and drink coffee. In her portraits he's always the bookish Jew, with soup-straining mustache, poring over a manuscript through wire-rim spectacles. Benjamin quotes Freund in his ''Arcades Project.'' ''We can only imagine what it must have meant to that epoch suddenly to see before it, in so lifelike a form, the celebrated figures of the stage, of the podium -- in short, of public life,'' Freund wrote, and Benjamin repeated, about the earliest photographs. That's how she described the effect of her own portraits as well. Red-faced, in red jacket and slicked hair, Joyce suddenly emerges from the thickets of his prose; Pasternak, at the writers' congress, is no longer the disillusioned Communist (''the weeping Bolshevik'' was Nabokov's phrase) but a handsome, beaming poet. Later, during the '60s, Freund would make portraits of Le Corbusier looking unusually quizzical and Robert Lowell terse in a Paris cafe. She did her best work before the war but occasionally, as in these cases, produced a striking portrait after it. But the postwar Berlin photographs, mostly from 1957, are a thing apart. They show Berlin before the wall went up. That city was as different to her as Berlin is now to those who remember the wall. She was measuring the distance between the old city of her childhood and the one she found in the mid-'50s, as we do today between the war-battered city before the wall and the sprawling, confusing capital that Berlin has become. Her photographs document the construction sites, the bombed squares and the old tenements with clothes hanging from clotheslines, the classic Berlin scene made popular at the turn of the century by Heinrich Zille. She took a picture of a Jewish kindergarten and of a young woman in Capri pants eating ice cream outside a dress shop that could have been in Paris or New York. She was struck by a store with a sign in the window for American chickens (heads and feet removed, it said) and by fashionable young mothers pushing strollers in West Berlin. A group of young men in turtlenecks and V-neck sweaters caused her to note that the new German generation seemed both antimilitary and lost. Then there's her photograph of the new Hansaviertel in the west, a postwar housing development that represented modern, capitalist Berlin. The picture has no clear vanishing point. It's almost incoherent at a glance. Its openness was a metaphor. Benjamin had written about how he hoped, through inoculation, that ''the feeling of longing would no more gain mastery over my spirit than a vaccine does over a healthy body.'' He added, ''I sought to limit its effect through insight into the irretrievability of the past.'' Bygone Berlin was irretrievable. Its future was a stranger to the past. That's still largely the case. That was what the Hansaviertel represented. Freund's photographs spoke to this city and to Europe at midcentury, and to her own condition. They're not really a thing apart. They're her self-portrait. PHOTOS: A 1957 work by Gisčle Freund, part of an exhibition of her postwar photography in Berlin.(PHOTOGRAPH BY STADTMUSEUM BERLIN)(pg. C8); A 1957 Gisčle Freund photograph of the Hansaviertel, a postwar housing development in West Berlin. Two exhibitions of her work are now under way in Berlin, the city of her birth.(PHOTOGRAPH BY STADTMUSEUM BERLIN); A 1957 photograph of kindergartners in Berlin, one of Freund's works taken during a return visit to the city.(PHOTOGRAPH BY STADTMUSEUM BERLIN); Artist portraits from Freund's days in Paris: left, Simone de Beauvoir in 1952; above, Henri Matisse in 1948.(PHOTOGRAPH BY WILLY BRANDT HAUS); (PHOTOGRAPH BY STADTMUSEUM BERLIN); Left, a 1958 photograph of a convention hall in Berlin; above, a 1950 self-portrait.(PHOTOGRAPHS BY STADTMUSEUM BERLIN; WILLY BRANDT HAUS)(pg. C8)

For many the miracle of the Virgin Birth is one thing, but lifelong abstinence from sexuality is impossible to accept. The lives of monastics and ascetics around the world and throughout history attest to the fact that it is possible. Sexual purity is only one of many challenges set for these spiritual warriors, and for many, perhaps most of them, it is not the greatest. Mary’s Vow of virginity was before the Annunciation: Two important facts are depicted in this verse. First, already at this moment: Mary is a virgin betrothed to Joseph, meaning that she is at the first stage of Jewish marriage. She is truly married to Joseph but not yet living with him, for she has not arrived at the second stage of marriage known as the "coming together," when husband and wife typically would begin to live in the same house and consummate the marriage. Second, Mary has been told by Gabriel that at some time in the future she will bear a son who will be the royal Son of David, the Messiah-King. Notice the future tense: "You will conceive in your womb and bear a son" (Lk. 1:31, emphasis added). So far, Gabriel gives no indication that the conception will take place right now or in the immediate future. In fact, the timetable is quite open-ended. Without giving any time specification, the angel simply informs Mary that she will conceive this child at some time in the future. In this light, Mary’s question seems rather peculiar: ... If Mary is planning on consummating her marriage with Joseph in the near future, the answer to her question should be obvious. While she does not right now have the power to conceive a child (since she doesn’t yet "know" man sexually), if Mary intends to know Joseph after the coming together, then she evidently will be able to have a child at that point. Therefore, if Mary is planning on consummating her marriage with Joseph, her question ... simply does not make sense. (source) This view has been held by theologians such as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Bonaventure and even Martin Luther. Luther wrote on the Virginity of Mary: It is an article of faith that Mary is Mother of the Lord and still a virgin. ... Christ, we believe, came forth from a womb left perfectly intact. (Weimer's The Works of Luther, English translation by Pelikan, Concordia, St. Louis, v. 11, pp. 319-320; v. 6. p. 510.) Luther also wrote on February 2, 1546 that Mary was "a virgin before the conception and birth, she remained a virgin also at the birth and after it." Calvin also upheld the perpetual virginity of Mary, as did the Swiss reformer, Ulrich Zwingli, who wrote: I firmly believe that Mary, according to the words of the gospel as a pure Virgin brought forth for us the Son of God and in childbirth and after childbirth forever remained a pure, intact Virgin. (Zwingli Opera, Corpus Reformatorum, Berlin, 1905, v. 1, p. 424.) Zwingly wrote in January of 1528: "I speak of this in the holy Church of Zurich and in all my writings: I recognize Mary as ever virgin and holy." Reason for the belief that Mary was virgin after the birth of Jesus: Pope St. Siricius said that God the Father reserved the womb of the Blessed Mother solely for his only-begotten Son. St. Ambrose and St. Thomas Aquinas assigned a spiritual meaning to Ezekiel 44:2: "Then said the LORD unto me; This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the LORD, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut." (Ezekiel 44:2). Mary is the gate, and Jesus was the only one to enter it. This has always been interpreted by the Fathers of the Church to be a typological reference to the Virgin Mary and the Incarnation. When we consider that God took flesh from the Virgin's womb, it is not difficult to imagine that this womb would remain virgin. The place where the saviour of this world was nourished was not to be used by any one else.:-- Base source. Further reading here and this source: To say that they had sexual relation after birth of Jesus, Son of God, is to suggest something else that is greatly implausible...: that neither Mary nor her protector, Joseph, would have deemed it inappropriate to have sexual relations after the birth of God in the flesh. ... Mary became the vessel for the Lord of Glory Himself, and bore in the flesh Him whom heaven and earth cannot contain. Would this not have been grounds to consider her life, including her body, as consecrated to God and God alone? Then Why Would Mary Marry?: A variety of accounts have been offered: - Perhaps since remaining a single woman was not as socially feasible in the ancient world of Judaism as it is today, marriage would have provided economic stability and social protection for Mary. Perhaps the marriage was arranged. Perhaps marriage would free Mary from other men seeking her hand in marriage and thus protect her vow. Perhaps God led Mary to marriage because in His providence, He wanted to protect her reputation for the future when she would conceive by the Holy Spirit. (source) John Paul II wrote the following in a 1996 papal document: We can wonder why she would accept betrothal, since she had the intention of remaining a virgin forever . . . It may be presumed that at the time of their betrothal there was an understanding between Joseph and Mary about the plan to live as a virgin. Moreover, the Holy Spirit, who had inspired Mary to choose virginity in view of the mystery of the Incarnation and who wanted the latter to come about in a family setting suited to the child’s growth, was quite able to instill in Joseph the ideal of virginity as well. If Mary had told Joseph of her vow of virginity (as surely she must have), then we are led to conclude that, since Joseph agreed to marry her, he too must have made a vow of perpetual continence (i.e. to refrain from all sexual relations even within marriage). Surely his wife's miraculous conception and birthgiving (confirmed by the angel in dream-visions) and the sight of God incarnate in the face of the child Christ would have been enough to convince him that his marriage was set apart from the norm. Within Mary's very body had dwelt the second Person of the Trinity. If touching the ark of the covenant had cost Uzzah his life, and if even the scrolls containing the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets were venerated, certainly Joseph, man of God that he was, would neither have dared nor desired to approach Mary, the chosen of Israel, the throne of God, to request his "conjugal rights"! (source)

Short videos from Colorado Inside Out TV: Brian Williams suspended, but Al Charlatan remains on the air, 2/13/15; Persecution of bakers for free speech about gay issues, 1/30/15. The First Amendment Guide to the Second Amendment. 81 Tennessee Law Review 419 (2014). Media Errors in Coverage of Boulder High School: Falsehoods, Distortions, and Omissions by Bill O’Reilly and “Caplis & Silverman”. June 13, 2007. Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911. July 1, 2004. Media Bias in the Coverage of Gun Control: The Press Evaluates the Popular Culture. Book chapter by Dave Kopel evaluates media bias in the 1970s. Sorry, Wrong Number: Why Media Polls on Gun Control are so Often Unreliable. 9 Political Communication and Persuasion 69-91 (no. 2, April-June 1992). With Gary A. Mauser. Massaging the Medium: Analyzing and Responding to Media Violence without Harming the First Amendment. 4 Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy 17 (1995). Round Table Discussion: Violence in the Media. David Kopel, Eleanor Acheson (Asst. U.S. Atty. Genl. for Policy Development), Charles W. Guswelle (Kansas City Star), and others. From University of Kansas Law School symposium. Covering the Screen in Blood. Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein attempts to square his anti-gun convictions with his bloody, gun-riddled movies. America's 1st Freedom. April 2014. Uncovering anti-Israel Propaganda with Philippe Karsenty. French media critic and elected official Philippe Karsenty joins Dave Kopel to discuss how one of the biggest anti-semitic hoaxes of all time was uncovered. In 2004, Mr. Karsenty set in motion a nearly decade long legal battle to blow the cover off a French TV station's deliberate hoax involving footage of a dying boy named Muhammad al-Durrah. The footage was shown on national TV and helped perpetuate anti-Jewish and anti-American terrorism for years to come. Aug. 16, 2012. 31 minutes. Media coverage of the Aurora murders. Kevin Dale (Denver Post) on CPT12 "Devil's Advocate" show. July 27, 2012. Don't turn Aurora killer into celebrity. USA Today. July 19, 2012. Excerpt read by Neil Conan on National Public Radio, July 23, 2012. Analysis in Come non parlare di una strage, Il Post (Italy). July 22, 2012. Kopel and Piers Morgan agree: Thursday would have been the better day for a gun control debate. CNN. July 19, 2012. Transcript. CNN Reliable Sources. Howard Kurtz bemoans "a troubling thing that television does," namely the rush to "turn such an atrocity into ideological fodder while the victims are still being treated." As an example, plays Morgan/Kopel interchange, with Morgan insisting a gun control debate must take place on the night of the crime. July 22, 2012. Transcript. Video. Kopel joins academics and religious leaders in joint letter against Obama administration's unconstitutional mandate for abortion pills. Feb. 27, 2012. Brown v. EMA casts doubt on the “weapons effect” justification for gun control. Volokh.com. June 27, 2011. Dog Wars and the First Amendment. Volokh.com. April 26, 2011. It's Howdy Bloomy Time. Biased media coverage of a report about Mexican guns from Michael Bloomberg's gun control lobby. America's 1st Freedom. Dec. 2010. Glenn Beck factual error. On local voting by non-citizens. Volokh.com. October 26, 2010. Rosary ban likely illegal, say Volokh and Kopel. Volokh.com. October 26, 2010. Media drove the Maes bike story, but parked for Hickenlooper. Media ignore mayor's desire to "wean" Coloradoans off automobiles. WhoSaidYouSaid.com, Oct. 25, 2010. Time.com corrects report on Betsy Markey’s health-care vote. WhoSaidYouSaid.com, Oct. 18, 2010. Denver Post erred in covering reckless charges against U.S. Chamber. When partisans make felony accusations with no evidence, newspapers should not give the charges credence. WhoSaidYouSaid.com, Oct. 16, 2010. Which pollsters are most accurate? When reporting on polls, media should consider 538's data about pollster accuracy. WhoSaidYouSaid.com, Oct. 6, 2010. I did NOT disrespect Jay-Z. Volokh.com. September 18, 2010. Trimming Citizens. Efforts to restrict the free speech rights which had been protected in the Citizens United case. America's 1st Freedom, June 2010. Big First Amendment win in United States v. Stevens. Volokh.com. April 20, 2010. Speech Freed! The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United restores the free speech of civil rights groups, such as the NRA. America's 1st Freedom. April 2010. Self-hating Wolverine. Hugh Hewitt. Volokh.com. March 30, 2010 Does CHL Ban in Churches Violate the First Amendment? The Volokh Conspiracy. Sept. 29, 2009. Independence Institute cert. petition in campaign finance case. Volokh.com. September 22, 2009. New Challenge to McCain-Feingold. Kopel explains the Citizens United case, and the Supreme Court's oral argument. iVoices.org. Sept. 15, 2009. 11:16. Two Gentlemen of Verona, at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. The Volokh Conspiracy. July 20, 2009. Did Heller matter? The New York Times says it did not, but Kopel details the Times' numerous omissions. Dave Kopel's Second Amendment Podcast. April 3, 2009. MP3. Gun Rights and the Constitution: Was Heller Insignificant? An examination of last week's New York Times article, which overlooked most of the Second Amendment victories which have flowed from Heller. The New Ledger. March 26, 2009. We'll lose more than a paper. Farewell to the Rocky Mountain News. Final edition of the Rocky Mountain News. Feb. 27, 2009. Journalistic Stages of Grief. Brief essay in the Columbia Journalism Review on the closing of the Rocky. Feb. 27, 2009. La Voz best of the bunch. Examination of seven Spanish language newspapers published in the Denver are. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Feb. 21, 2009. Dying newspapers, vanishing coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Feb. 7, 2009. Rocky, Post go all out for inaugural. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Jan. 24, 2009. ProPublica's shaky facts. Article on hydraulic fracturing in natural gas extraction is full of errors. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Jan. 10, 2009. Follow-up: My response to ProPublica's defense of its article. Opinion Pays its Own Way. Economic changes at newspaper may lead to more "news" articles which are really opinion pieces that are provided for free to the newspaper. The non-profit organization ProPublica is showing how to do this. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Dec. 27, 2008. blog: Boys go to ESPN to get more stupider. 12/22/08. Web, not bias, offing papers. Craigslist and declining literacy are why newspapers are in mortal peril. Ideological bias is a real problem, but not main threat to survival. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Dec. 13, 2008. The media-violence link. New Dutch study suggests newspapers, TV wise to show discretion. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Nov. 29, 2008. Evaluating Rocky, Post pre-election polling. The papers were right on the President and Senate race, but wrong on almost all the ballot issues. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Nov. 15, 2008. Election chaos online. The Denver Post's online ballot tool is imperfect, but much than that of the News. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Nov. 1, 2008. Columnist has his own paranoid style. Rocky Mountain News columnist (and University of Colorado law professor) Paul Campos used the famous essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", by historian Richard Hofstadter as the template for a column criticizing Republicans. Kopel's column suggests that--at least based on the evidence within Campos's column--"the paranoid style" was more accurate as a description of Campos's own approach. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Oct. 18, 2008. CAIR's complaints about DVD hollow. Fringe group not worth notice media gives it. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Oct. 4, 2008. The media should not have wasted space covering the Council on American-Islamic Relations' bogus complaints about the movie Obsession, which warns of the dangers of radical violent Islamists. Post's bloggers beat Rocky's tweeters. Twitter's limitations a detriment to reporting. Also, the News Truth Patrol gets mixed up by the Bush doctrine, and RockyTalk Live overstates Palin's popularity. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Sept. 20, 2008. Media's hypocritical fixation on Palin a boon to McCain. Culture wars now a factor in campaign. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Sept. 6, 2008. Was MLK a Republican or not? Rocky Mountain News. Aug. 29, 2008. Also, the specialized press at the Democratic National Convention, and under-coverage of Obama's ground game advantage. Text and Twitter your way to victory. Rocky Mountain News. Aug. 28, 2008. Obama's brilliant use of social networking. Full Picture of Obama Emerging. Rocky Mountain News. Aug. 27, 2008. What the media hasn't told you about the socialist, racialist, Barack Obama Sr. Plus bogus claim from Time that older Jewish voters who don't back Obama must be racist. Interfaith Speakers Raise Questions. Rocky Mountain News. Aug. 26, 2008. Sister Helen Prejean and the head of the Islamic Society of North America. Al-Jazeera analysis of Biden severely flawed. Rocky Mountain News. Aug. 25, 2008. Also covers "rum, Romanism, and rebellion." In its obsession with Polis, Times misses other news. Newspaper blinded by gay candidate's success. Rocky Mountain News. August 23, 2008. Political websites for the insatiable. A survey of some of Colorado's best political websites. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. August 9, 2008. Papers mishandle Bruce allegations. Now, they should name his accuser. Also McCain's dog-whistle in TV ad appeals to anti-Tancredo voters. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. July 26, 2008. McCain protester coverage limited. Obama campaign's restrictions overlooked. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. July 12, 2008. Dailies' Haditha coverage admirable. More even-handed than national media. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. June 28, 2008. Privacy concerns at Post. New database listing state employees names and salaries is a bad idea. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. June 14, 2008. Dailies shrug off Libertarian confab. The American Spectator and The Colorado Independent provided the best coverage of the Libertarian Party presidential nominating convention in Denver. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. May 31, 2008. At 'Westword,' the sh-- must go on. Substance too often makes way for scurrility. Plus, pets and the housing "crisis," credulous coverage over possible Denver-Tokyo non-stop flights. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. May 17, 2008. Barr, Limbaugh go too far. Radio hosts talk of riots in Denver. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. May 3, 2008. Regrettably, Rhodes returns to radio. Progressive shock jock less than thoughtful. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. April 19, 2008. McCain preachers merit scrutiny, too. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. April 5, 2008. Do Rocky, Post give Dems a break? Analysis of two recent scandals says they do. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 22, 2008. Too often a crutch. Studies important enough to mention in a story should be cited. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 8, 2008. Analysis of Katy Human's flawed Denver Post article about what "studies have shown" about subsidized health insurance for children. And more general problems about use of "studies have shown" without citation to the studies. Relying too heavily on press releases. Rocky failed to get the other side of issue. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 23, 2008. Miscoverage of the effect of man-made chemicals on human and animal reproduction. Also, another falsehood from Maureen Dowd, and Gannett's effort to take over the Colorado State University newspaper. Polls have their place. Though sometimes off-base, they add spice to the political season. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 9, 2008. RedBlueAmerica.com off to a promising start. Web site promotes understanding of both sides. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 26, 2008. Politics from the Stump to the Web. A few tips for navigating the '08 campaign. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 12, 2008. Let news figures comment further. Google News leads the way for local media. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 29, 2007. Reducing the risk of copycat killers. How papers can avoid glorifying perpetrators. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 15, 2007. Columnist's howl replaces reason. Virulent attack on Tancredo by Paul Campos unsupported. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 1, 2007. Note: this article briefly and favorably mentions a column about the Annapolis Conference; the author of that column was David Ignatius, not David Sirota. Do endorsements by papers matter? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 17, 2007. Paltry Denver Access? For some Rockies fans, that's what PDA stood for during World Series. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 3, 2007. Also, increased CO2 emissions from inefficient E-85 fuel. Photo illustrating story clouds issue. Brown cloud not the result of CO2 emissions. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 20, 2007. Plus more global warming coverage, the Coors-Miller merger, the Udall-Schaffer race, and public opinion on the death penalty. Stories about slain 'shield' lacking. Media miscoverage of Rachel Corrie and her terrorist-assisting International Solidarity Movement. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 6, 2007. It's how you use the space you have. Longer stories offer better chance for depth. Plus, corporate welfare for movie companies, coverage of ex-gays, and the Duke rape hoax. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 22, 2007. New Post Web site uses Internet well. Weblogs best part of PoliticsWest.com. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 8, 2007. Surveillance tactic. Radio host Dan Caplis's plan to videotape patrons of a swingers club is a terrible idea. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 25, 2007. A plus and a minus in the Post. Two stories about consequences of immigration reform hit and miss. Also, Kopel laments the continued shrinking of printed newspapers. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 11, 2007. Case against flying not so airtight. Debunks the claim that long-haul air travel produces more CO2 than driving the same distance in a SUV. The column also criticizes newspapers which published pre-publication reviews of the new Harry Potter book. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 28, 2007. Newshounds.us keeps tabs on Fox News. Similar watchdogs good idea for other networks. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 14, 2007. Plus, Colorado's most influential political blogs, and the Post's non-correction of a ridiculous statement wrongly attributed to Colin Powell. Media reaching out. And here are a few tips for how you can take advantage of the trend. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 30, 2007. A-Rod's indiscretion has no place on front page. Denver dailies wisely shun lurid tale. Plus: media ignores success of new Colorado anti-illegal immigration law; theatre critics underplays spy threat during the 1950s; new Issue Paper on O'Reilly, Caplis & Silverman falsehoods about Boulder High. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 16, 2007. Talk-show hosts amok. If most parents aren't upset, why do Caplis, Silverman carry on so? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 2, 2007. Falsehoods and misinformation in the campaign against Boulder High School by Bill O'Reilly and the Caplis & Silverman Show. On the hustings. The good and the bad of Rocky's, Post's campaign trail coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 19, 2007. Plus the lie that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. Why Reveal Who's Concealed? What possible motive could some arrogant anti-gun newspapers have for publishing the names of Right-to-Carry permit holders? America's 1st Freedom, May 2007. by Paul Gallant, with David B. Kopel and Joanne D. Eisen. Echoes of abortion fraud. Were 1967's legislators, like 2007's Rocky, duped by false figure? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 5, 2007. Airing, publishing killer's photos, rants reckless. Publicity a fresh inducement to mass murderers. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 21, 2007. Hits and misses for dailies as Tancredo enters race. Announcement coverage merely adequate. Also Diana Carman's bigotry about talk radio fans; misleading summary of academic research on taxi deregulation; false legitimacy for "female circumcision". Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 7, 2007. Internet humming with Nacchio trial coverage. Blogs, Web sites rife with insight, info. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 24, 2007. Coulter and Campos: Two sides of the same coin. One's right, one's left, but both often too shrill. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 10, 2007. A service to homebuyers. Though flawed, Post's cautionary tale valuable. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 24, 2007. Climate report too quickly embraced by journalists: Post columnist, others strangely unskeptical. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 10, 2007. criticizes the press for its overly credulous reporting of the latest output from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The column also looks at media coverage of a bill to mandate HPV vaccines for 6th grade girls; the factoid that only 2% of rape accusations are false; and the lingering influence of Michael Bellesiles on "The Mini Page." Big changes mean a smaller Rocky. City-side columnists see a major shift in location. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 27, 2007. Plus columnist Bill Johnson's libel of the Swift executives, and the unnoticed evidence that the legislature's crackdown on illegal aliens is causing them to leave Colorado. Daily stubbornly refuses correction. Review of Owens governorship included mischaracterization of ex-Rep. Schaffer. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 13, 2007. Plus a survey of some of Colorado's best weblogs. Tech glitches mar electronic editions. Online replicas of print News and Post prove difficult to read and navigate. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 30, 2006. The 'other' Tancredo ignored. From local media, you'd never know he's a big Taiwan backer. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 16, 2006. Columnist is out of his depth. Campos forgets rules of civil discourse in effort about war. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 2, 2006. Also: the hypocrisy and deceptive omissions of Colorado Media Matters.Media crossed line in Haggard 'outing'. Radio, dailies, TV yielded to their basest instincts in abetting attack on privacy. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 18, 2006. News out of joint on marijuana. Slang misuse, failure to check assertions hurts its coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 4, 2006. Fair, balanced? Not our dailies. Think tank study finds News, Post toe the establishment line. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 21, 2006. Only press itself can stop copycats. Killers, suicides thrive on publicity given those who perpetrated earlier crimes. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 7, 2006. Ballot Builder has a ways to go. RockyMountainNews.com's service a nice try, but no cigar. Plus, coverage of Rosie O'Donnell's hate speech. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 23, 2006. CU prof ethical in dealings with law. JonBenet Ramsey case maven was right to help police apprehend suspect Karr. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 9, 2006. Owens the master in JonBenet case. Governor has artfully manipulated media with his pronouncements about slaying. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 26, 2006. Were front-page photos staged? Images from Qana raise issue of whether media were manipulated. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 12, 2006. Beauprez's gun policy mangled. Plus, stem cells, Microsoft suit against software pirates, bait-and-switch ads. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 29, 2006. Deficient stories hinder debate. Incomplete reports don't help our grasp of immigration issue. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 15, 2006. Epic battle for press freedom. In 1905, News owner took on a compromised supreme court. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 1, 2006. Failing to get the poop on Ensz. Post, News come up short on dog-feces-in-mail-slot story. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 17, 2006. Plus, Paul Campos misreads InstaPundit, Diane Carman falls for General Motors trolley car hoax, and The Nation wrongly charges the Colorado Rockies baseball team with racism. Climate alarmism a perennial. Study: Journalists have often blown hot and cold on issue. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 3, 2006. Plus, local media ignore Owens' call for illegal alien amnesty. Churchill report finds News on top. Web site had more extensive coverage - and quicker - than its rival at the Post. Also, media bashing of Colorado Springs and its elected officials and congressional candidates because of their un-p.c. stands on some social issues. Plus chess and poker coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 20, 2006. Dailies fall flat in full rally coverage. Essential aspects of story go unreported, hard questions unasked by News, Post. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 6, 2006. Dailies are reliably pro-illegals. Critics little cited; columnists of one mind about the issue. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 22, 2006. Tattered Cover again Shows Grit. Plus, polling on illegal immigration; Palestinian Authority financial crisis. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 8, 2006. So much left out of Saddam stories. Documents, videos potentially explosive, but News, Post coverage only minimal. Plus, the lies of Mahmoud Abbas and Scott Ritter. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, March 25, 2006. Imam's critic shortchanged. Coverage of Sheikh Ekrima Sabri gave his record a pass. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, March 11, 2006. Alternative Media. Kopel MP3 podcast. March 8, 2006. Media skip other side of Sharpton. 'Hate-crime perpetrator' given a pass by Denver dailies et al. in CU appearance. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 25, 2006. Cartoon quarrel deadly serious. Free world must decide - will it submit to de facto sharia law or assert its rights. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 11, 2006. Did blogosphere influence vote? Corruption inquiry covered only on Web might have tipped Canadian election. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 28, 2006. Plus New York Times deception on Niger uranium, and media refusal to cover local abortion rally. Criticism of bias study is silly. Source of funding-right or left-needn't negate evidence. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 14, 2006. New study detects media's liberal tilt. Professors find most media 'significantly to the left of the average U.S. voter'. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 31, 2005. Report cards preview shaky. Without evidence, Post leaps to conclusion of unreliability. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 17, 2005. News restrained to a fault over CU. 'Nationally advertised disaster' of rabble at game scarcely noticed by Denver daily. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 3, 2005. Book on CU scandals imperfect. Slim citations, faulty reporting mar worthwhile "Buffaloed". Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 19, 2005. Post reverts to its one-time hysterics. Extremist rhetoric, deceptive reporting (by News, too) colored coverage of Ref C. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 5, 2005. Cheater prospers, after all. Contrast coverage of Briscoe, Romo: the wrong message. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 22, 2005. Case of the phantom protester. News columnist Bill Johnson and the anti-abortion picketer. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 8, 2005. U.S. Web firms aid in repression. Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft complicit in China's stranglehold on information. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 24, 2005. New Orleans city officials off hook. 'Stunningly incompetent' Mayor Nagin given a pass by Denver's News, Post. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 10, 2005. Also: cartoonists push junk science; paper promote illegal Internet gambling; News omits key fact in Gaza story. Sheehan's radical views little noted. Despite heavy coverage, nation's press strangely reluctant to report all she says. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 27, 2005. New Web site math challenged. Odds are that Colorado Pols won't be taken very seriously. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 13, 2005. Media-blasting book vanishes. Publisher drops exposé of CU coverage after lawyer's letter. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 30, 2005. Plus scientific research on human embryos, and the famine in Niger. Withholding news has merit. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 16, 2005. When the media should put more important interests ahead of the right to publish certain facts. The trouble with columnists. Local opinion brokers struggle with facts, reality in their work. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 2, 2005. Tragedy in Africa gets scant notice. Denver dailies, like others around U.S., find little room to cover continent's woes. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 18, 2005. Ethiopian genocide against the Anuak. Zimbabwe genocide by starvation. Congo civil war and genocide. Sudanese genocide. Hyperbole Taints Gitmo Coverage. Comparing death-free Guantanamo to murderous gulags grossly misleading. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 4, 2005. Plus slanted coverage of gay rights, and media blindness about the Iran nuclear weapons program. Newsweek's bad streak hits home. First the Quran debacle, then magazine's dubious elevation of a local high school. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 21, 2005. Plus an error-ridden article about the 1992 Amendment 2 anti-gay rights ballot initiative. Israel's 57th year of independence is covered solely with a biased A.P. story whitewashing the 1948 Arab war against Israel. Confusion over Charter Schools. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 7, 2005. Post story slanted against charter schools. Plus Guiliana Sgrena and Wayne Laugesen. And an explanation of "write-thrus." Shameless dailies run deceptive ad. 'Bait-and-switch' in wake of pope's death misleads readers, exploits the faithful. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 23, 2005. Plus: undercoverage of Benedict XVI's intellectual record. Over-coverage of failed anti-American demonstration in Baghdad. Papal coverage here magnificent. But Catholics don't get a 'free ride' as veto of controversial bill runs afoul of Post. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 9, 2005. On Balance, Post has Less. Recount of columnists tips the content scale to News. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 26, 2005. Plus the FBI "terrorist" list and gun sale checks, and a misleading photo of the olden days at the Rocky Mountain News. CU's academic culture ignored. Post columnist nearly alone in probing 'dysfunctional' milieu. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 12, 2005. Plus the academic freedom cases of Phil Mitchell at CU, and George Forsyth at CSU. And the unfair treatment of Liquor Mart, and the Baby 81 hoax. Post less gullible in Baby 81 hoax. It carried only 2 stories to the News' 9; AP reports rife with unsupported 'facts'. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 26, 2005. Plus media non-coverage of U.N. sex abuse, and coverage of the Saudi high school in Virginia that produced the man accused to trying to assassinate President Bush. Media Uneven in Churchill Rumpus. Westword first, but News, KHOW best as blogs, other news outlets play catchup. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 12, 2005. Bill Moyers and the Politics of Delusion, 1/31/05. Optimism in Iraq sniffed at here. Mostly positive pre-election poll of Iraqi voters given short shrift in Denver. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 29, 2005. Post misses boat on Hefley move. Even News barely notes role of rules in congressman's loss of ethics panel chair. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 15, 2005. Plus fraud in the real estate section, and coverage of Sri Lanka. Gadfly's Web site rough, effective. Zinna's Jeffco Exposed needs work, but attempted trick shows some are rattled. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 1, 2005. Global Warming Debate Heats Up. There's more - and less - to the story than most media would have us believe. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 18, 2004. Junk Science: Take it with a grain of salt. MSNBC.com, Dec. 6, 2004. The greatest junk science stories of the year. Dutch descend into barbarism. Denver dailies soft-pedal the killings of newborns under Groningen Protocol. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 4, 2004. Plus analysis of coverage of the democracy movement in the Ukraine, the UN scandals, and the Alabama state constitutional referendum. Arafat coverage. Stories in wake of Palestinian leader's death misleading and morally bankrupt. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 20, 2004. Political ignorance plays no favorites. Study says many voters 'know-nothings'; 2004 election winners, losers recapped. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 6, 2004. Archbishop takes his media lumps. Leader of Denver's Catholic community a lightning rod for nation's pundits. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 23, 2004. CBS peddling bogus draft fears. Local papers do better job of finding truth behind Dem-inspired red herring. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 9, 2004. Citizen journalists bring CBS to heel. Balance of 'information power' shifting after bloggers pounce on memo fiasco. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 25, 2004. Dailies Overlook Military Advances. Revolutionary developments in strategy, tactics given scant attention in Denver. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 11, 2004. Vets' end run irks traditional media. Bush-loathing press frustrated at inability to squelch Swift Vets' anti-Kerry efforts. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 28, 2004. Kerry's Cambodia Troubles Ignored. Denver dailies assail candidate's foes but cold-shoulder the issues they raise. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 14, 2004. Dailies best when covering Denver. News, Post just can't beat the Internet for national and international reporting. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 31, 2004. Press loath to tell rest of Wilson story. When diplomat's report is disputed, headlines vanish. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 17, 2004. Also, review of a terrible book review of What's the Matter with Kansas? Dailies' strengths, weaknesses ID'd. News best for full picture on Iraq, but for crucial legal issues, Post is tops. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 3, 2004. Media's Reagan tune has changed. Glowing coverage of ex-president's death in sharp contrast with earlier treatment. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 19, 2004. Coverage of anti-military protests and other foreign policy issues, from June 1982. Press accentuates negatives of Iraq. Media's obsessive lingering on problems neglects the many positives of situation. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 5, 2004. Plus NPR bias, Israel coverage. A Dementor Short. Mugglewear Casual mars Harry hat trick. Reason Online. June 4, 2004. Review of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie. Air America: the good and the bad. 'O'Franken Factor' rivals best right-wing programs, but 'Rhodes Show' is awful. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 22, 2004. Possibly big U.N. scandal slighted. News better at covering investigation into potential oil-for-food program corruption. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 8, 2004. Exaggeration-itis afflicting papers. Economic, political characterizations fall victim to lack of perspective at News, Post. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 24, 2004. Record gas prices, "ultraconservatives," and "the extreme right." Ordinary journalistic standards still prove elusive in CU story. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 10, 2004. It's not what's on TV, it's TV itself. Too much television time creates children uninterested in self-restraint or empathy. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. March 27, 2004. Media goes all fuzzy on protest. Lack of specifics, perspective on figures used by Auraria students hurts coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, March 13, 2004. Plus Nelson Rockefeller's divorce, dubious statistics about "hate crimes" against homosexuals, and attacks on George Bush's campaign advertisements. Press ambushes CU football coach. Denver media unapologetically subject Barnett to raw character assassination. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 28, 2004. KOA's Dan Caplis a radio treasure. Lawyer/talk-show host is go-to guy for invaluable insights on Colorado stories. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 14, 2004. Plus the "imminent" canard about Iraq. Americans with Disabilities Act coverage. Post gets medical pot story right. Dispute over Hayden man's possession of marijuana is not yet in federal court. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Jan. 31, 2004. Facts don't muddy columnist's views. Sports writer apparently untroubled by historical accuracy, nonexistent sources. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Jan. 17, 2004. On Denver Post sports columnist Mark Kiszla. Plus Washington Post coverage of the FBI's warning about suspicious people with almanacs. Newsom Wins One. A First and Second victory. National Review Online. Jan. 8, 2004. Fourth Circuit rules that school cannot prohibit student from wearing NRA Shooting Sports Camp t-shirt. Blogs unearth dubious sources. Theories finger military for earthquake, illness, but who's behind these stories? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Jan. 3, 2004. The junk scientist behind the hysteria over depleted uranium and other falsehoods about the U.S. military. News columnist scores a coup. Report on Baghdad anti-terrorism rally one more Iraq item ignored by others. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Dec. 20, 2003. Plus coverage of the trendy restaurant named for the genocidal tyrant "Mao," bogus statistics about the homeless, and the new government in Switzerland. Sloppy advocacy journalism ID'd. Thinly veiled support for identity-theft legislation takes form of story at Post. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Dec. 6, 2003. Plus, the disgraceful Associated Press story whitewashing Paul Robeson's love of Stalin and hatred of America. And a column by Bill Johnson giving a very incomplete account of a young man's suicide. It's not hard to spot the fallacies In columns and news stories. City's dailies promulgate 'facts' that are anything but. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Nov. 22, 2003. False claims that most of the people counted as "homeless" are all living on the street; that the partial-birth abortion ban lacks an exception for maternal life; and that most victims of war are women and children. Plus the amazing errors of Supreme Court history in a recent column by Steven and Cokie Roberts. Implication goes too far in column. Strong suggestion that woman underwent partial-birth abortion likely misled readers. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Nov. 8, 2003. Also, Ann Telnaes' anti-Christian hate cartoon, and asbestos litigation reform. Déjà vu in a liberated Iraq. Winning the war is half the battle; what's harder is winning hearts. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Oct. 25, 2003. All sides support jury rights idea. Dailies say 'conservative groups' behind concept, but ranks of supporters diverse. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Oct. 11, 2003. Plus defamation by the Anti-Defamation League, and the Denver Post's fabrication of an "appearance of impropriety" about Governor Owens' chief of staff. Ultimately, Fox is not the problem. European dismay with trends in U.S. misdirected at television news network. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Sept. 27, 2003. Columnists jump on Owens' woes. Marital troubles of governor, wife become grist for two commentators. Also looks at Cruz Bustamante's connection to MEChA. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 13 , 2003. West Nile fails to stir DDT debate. Mosquito-borne illness kills Coloradans but merits of banned pesticide ignored. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 30 , 2003. Readers fishing for perspective. Post wire story left out important facts about low cancer risk of farm salmon. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 16 , 2003 Other nations censor speech critical of homosexuality as "hate speech," 8/5/03. Religious matters get PC treatment. Dailies go with the flow, but each knows which side its bread is buttered on. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 2 , 2003. The media's fawning treatment of three nuns in the Plowshares movement who were recently sentenced to federal prison for vandalizing a defense facility. The column also looks at coverage of the Catholic sex abuse scandals, and at coverage of St. Juan Diego, the Mexican Indian who saw the Virgin of Guadelupe in 1531. Hunting/fishing coverage on rise. Denver dailies in dead heat; Boulder's Camera excels at other outdoor sports. Plus the identity of advice columnists, and chess coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 19, 2003. Distortions mar Bighorn stories. Culturally biased coverage of the new Indian monument at Little Bighorn. Plus factoids about war deaths, and bogus claim that Colorado death penalty is racist. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 5, 2003. Two points about WMDs neglected . Did Clinton and those who authorized Resolution 1441 lie about Saddam, too? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 21, 2003. Plus a look at Swiss and French newspapers. Gray Gun Stories. The New York Times' dishonest and mean-spirited coverage of the gun issue. National Review Online. June 9, 2003. With Paul Blackman. New standards for accuracy should be set up immediately. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 9, 2003. New York Times resignations, Maureen Dowd's lie, Microsoft market share, trans fats. Dowd's elision elicits derision. When she twisted quote by president, New York Times columnist went too far. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 24, 2003. Plus the lack of diversity at the New York Times, second-hand smoke, and "lynching" in South Carolina. Anti-Israel bias by Chris Hedges of the N.Y. Times. Volokh.com. 5/23/03. Crown jewels: UK newspapers. Aside from a few unworthies, Great Britain's dailies offer some fine reading. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 10, 2003. News tars Hootie with Klan brush. Controversial golfing figure is unfairly associated with racist organization. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 26, 2003. Also looks at media's popularity during Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, plus more on "war activists" and the Denver Mayoral race. blog: "Heywood Jablome" hoax, 4/22/03. 'Peace activist' or 'war activist'? Media should take greater care in their labeling of participants in conflicts. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 12, 2003. Also examines the Pearl Jam controversy, and the racist attack on Don Mares. Bowling Truths. Michael Moore’s mocking. National Review Online. Apr. 4, 2003. Deconstructing the dishonest documentary. In Gulf War II, old giants are passé. In early days of Iraqi war, Denver's 7 was the clear leader in news coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 29, 2003. Plus Rachel Corrie, Supreme Court gay rights case, hockey playoffs, and censorship of sports stars. Devil's in details about uninsured. Biased coverage by newspapers often revealed in facts that went unreported. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 15, 2003. Deconstructing the "41 million uninsured Americans" factoid. Plus immigrants and Medicaid, abortion protests as "racketeering," and misuse of "alleged." Tancredo ill used by News reporter. Congressman has a bad idea, but writer shouldn't let personal bias color his story. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 1, 2003. Fencing the Mexican border. Iraqi stock market. Jihad demonstrators. NPR station can't handle diversity. Affordable housing. Russian nuclear facility. Relying on dailies not enough today. Internet supplements papers whose space constraints limit global coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 16, 2003. Arab celebrations of Columbia tragedy. Franco-German support for Saddam WMD program. Gay rights polling. More on the Communists behind many anti-war protests. Media trip up in protest coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 2, 2003. Media ignore the Communists organizing anti-war protests. Phony media claims that Bush is promoting a special SUV tax break. Other side of the equation missing. Some recent science-related stories have fallen short when it comes to balance. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, January 19, 2003. Discusses global warming, polar glaciers, Clean Water Act, Bush tax cuts, sex abuse of nuns. Media were real Christmas Grinch. Gloomy headlines told inaccurate story about the reality of holiday retail sales. Also, discusses anti-gun sneers by sportswriters, and sportswriters who don't understand odds calculation. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 5, 2003. Readers take Ken, Cal to woodshed. Post regulars Hamblin, Thomas garner most votes in 'Can the Columnist' contest. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 22, 2002. Reader challenge: Can the columnist. Too liberal? Too right-wing? Or just bad? Which opinion writers would you dump? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 8, 2002. Column also reviews The News about the News: American Journalism in Peril, by Leonard Downie and Robert Kaiser. Papers could drop Dowd with ease. She and fellow N.Y. Times columnist Nicholas Kristof are second-raters of late. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 24, 2002. Column also reviews Todd Gitlin's book Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. Political pollsters among big losers. Opinion trackers for News, Post seemed to be off target more than usual this year. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 10, 2002. Fox 31 misleads on 'sniper' rifles. Despite news segment's claims, it takes more than mouse click to obtain firearms. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, October 27, 2002. Shot Through the Heart. Anti-hunting propaganda on Showtime. Review of "Bang Bang, You're Dead." National Review Online. Oct. 16, 2002. With James Swan. 'Raines of Error' blights NY Times. News, Post only make matters worse by unquestioningly reprinting its stories. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, October 13, 2002. Dailies' stories on Tancredo slanted. Denver Post, particularly, indulged in 'bad journalism in service of liberalism'. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 29, 2002. Islamic extremists in U.S. overlooked. Domestic Muslims who sympathize with al-Qaida, other terror groups little noticed. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 15, 2002. Dailies ignoring Zimbabwe crisis. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 1, 2002. Mugabe prepares for genocide. Complex issues, one-sided stories. Media excel at presenting one side of a debate. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 18, 2002. Campaign finance "reform," bilingual teachers, African debt, vaccinations. Reading on reading between the lines. A few books that can help one become a more discerning consumer of the news. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 4, 2002. Suicide Statistics. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 28, 2002. Smoking hottest hot-button issue. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 14, 2002. Media too often politicize courts. Sometimes cases are actually decided on merits, without any political overtones. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 7, 2002. Paper blowing scientific smoke. Post's coverage of possible smoking ban in Fort Collins comes up short on 'facts'. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 30, 2002. Elliptic articles leave us in dark. Incomplete stories obscure more than they reveal, doing disservice to readers seeking bigger picture. Earl Hilliard's primary; the terrorist attack on an Israeli kindergarten; global warming and the EPA's illegal use of junk science. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 16, 2002. Meth lab video fearmongering. TV program pits neighbors against each other in government's crackdown on illicit drug factories. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 2, 2002. AP twists truth about Fortuyn: Wire service's characterization of slain politician completely at odds with his actual stated positions. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 19, 2002. Post, News flay reputations of 2. Character assassinations of right-wing politicians span globe, cross bounds of ethical journalism. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 5, 2002. Analysis of coverage of Pim Fortuyn and Tom Tancredo. Independent Gay Forum analysis of this article. Two hysterical drinking stories. Wire reports about college students and alcohol mixed ridiculous assumptions, sloppy journalism. RockyMountain News/Denver Post, Apr. 21, 2002. Mideast stories lack critical info. Too many witnesses and 'experts' go unidentified in Times and AP stories carried by Post and News. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Apr. 7, 2002. Post treatment of study shoddy: Daily apes public health department's viewpoint without giving report a thorough examination. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, March 24, 2002. Pearl's history barely reported. News, Post give little notice to crucial importance of slain Journal reporter's religious background. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 10, 2002. Post columnist incites outrage. Woody Paige's anti-Mormon diatribe incenses thousands of readers and ends in profuse apologies. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post,Feb. 24, 2002. Farmers' plight given its due. Oregon conflict among 2001's wrongly neglected stories, site says, but Denver dailies did cover it. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 10, 2002. Dailies shoot from hip, miss. Mischaracterizations of D.C. gun-control group bespeak sloppy reporting, editing at newspapers. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 27, 2002. Speak No Evil. The European Union revives the offense of Seditious Libel. Chronicles. Feb. 2002. With Paul Gallant & Joanne Eisen. Abuse of Power. Jailing journalists, and the Vanessa Leggett case. National Review Online. Jan. 22, 2002. With Paul Blackman. Broncos items lay papers bare. Recent coverage of Denver's most popular pro sports franchise exposes strong suits, frailties. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 13. 2002. And now . . . the rest of the story. In omitting critical facts, media sometimes commit greater sin than outright mistakes. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 30, 2001. News' bias clear in story of teen. Paper upholds 'sanctity of the gays-as-victims script' by giving contrary evidence short shrift. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 16, 2001. Rumors: Quash one, fuel one. While debunking Harry Potter author's Satanist 'quotes,' News promotes drug's 'role' in deaths. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post,Dec. 2, 2001. 'Israel lobby' a clear misnomer. Intimations by News international editor of an Israeli-controlled 'propaganda corps' ring false. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 18, 2001. Up with the People. Reviewing NBC’s Uprising. National Review Online, weekend edition. Nov. 10-11, 2001. With Glenn Harlan Reynolds. Objectivity takes holiday at Post. So-called analysis package on proposed 'kid tax' slanted heavily in favor of measure's proponents. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post,Nov. 4, 2001. Capturing the War. Denver newspapers do their part, but it takes others and the Internet to cover wide world of terrorism. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 20, 2001. CSAP Tantrum a Baseless Snit. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 7, 2001. News changes terrorism tune. Different tone imbued paper day after fawning New York Times article on former terror bomber. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 23, 2001. Image Problems Exile "Maury." Channel 9 boss says program is 'embarrassing,' but station still carries other low-brow programs. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Sept. 9, 2001. Redefining Justice. Houston journalist Vanessa Leggett is jailed by the FBI. National Review Online. Aug. 27, 2001. Post Puts Books on Top Shelf. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Aug. 12, 2001. Police Shootings Need More Scrutiny. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. July 29, 2001. Let's Give Utah a Little Credit. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. July 15, 2001. Real Censorship Story was Buried. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. July 1, 2001. Papers Couldn't Catch a Code. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. June 17, 2001 ADL Story Play Unjustifiable. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. June 3, 2001. Post Marijuana Editorial Wrong. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. May 20, 2001. Post's Bias Gets a Shot in the Arm. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. May 6, 2001. Orwell in Italy. National Review Online. April 25 , 2001. With Carlo Stagnaro. Old media gets government to crack down on Internet journalists. The Strangely Passive Media. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. April 22, 2001. West Wing Finance. Does West Wing count as a contribution to the Democratic Party under McCain-Feingold? The answer takes us back to Theodore Roosevelt's corrupt election campaign of 1904. National Review Online. Apr. 10, 2001. Cesar Chavez Sans Perspective. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Apr. 8, 2001. The Campaign-Finance Struggle. The solution to the campaign finance mess is to kill corporate welfare, not to undermine the First Amendment. National Review Online. Mar. 21, 2001. Dead Ringers. When it comes to Olympic shooting sports, TV is in blackout mode. National Review Online Weekend, Sept. 23-24, 2000. Anti-Gunners Target Gun Ads, 1st Amendment. The Blue Press,Aug. 2000. In Italiano. The Day They Came to Sue the Book. The courts take out a contract on free speech. Reason. Aug./Sept. 1999. Ineffective Reform. Campaign Finance Laws Keep Missing Target. Rocky Mountain News. June 16, 1996. Polls: Anti-gun Propaganda. Certain pollsters who support repressive gun laws claim to have found increased public support for such laws. Are such polls accurate? Or are they typical of the manipulation of data which has long been the practice of pro-control pollsters? The American Guardian. Share this page: Follow Dave on Twitter. Search Kopel website: Make a donation to support Dave Kopel's work in defense of constitutional rights and public safety. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily representing the views of the Independence Institute or as an attempt to influence any election or legislative action. Please send comments to Independence Institute, 727 East 16th Ave., Denver, CO 80401 Phone 303-279-6536. (email)webmngr @ i2i.org Copyright © 2015

Judas Magazine Focusing Mainly on Issue 1 from 2002 Judas Magazine was a critical magazine about Bob Dylan. Edited by the redoubtable Andrew Muir and Keith Wooten. Content is from the site's archived pages, mainly focusing on Issue 1 articles. Judas! magazine was more than just another Dylan fanzine, fine though all those are. It was a professionally published Dylan magazine, edited by Andrew Muir and produced by Keith Wootton, with regular contributions from professional writers and journalists in addition to well known writers from the 'Dylan world'. The first issue was published April 2002. There were 20 issues in all. The aim of the magazine is for everything in it to be of undoubted quality and relevance to the serious Dylan fan. In other words, something the reader can trust, look forward to receiving and will want to keep. Proposing A Toast To The King The Heylin Interview Sounding Like A Hillbilly Things Come Alive Life And Life Only On The Road Again Bow Down To Her On Sunday Me And Mr. Jones The Sad Dylan Fans By Mark Carter Proposing A Toast To The King by Gavin Martin ‘I feel like Bob Dylan slept in my mouth,’ Elvis Presley in a between song aside live in Las Vegas 24th August 1969. ‘Only one thing I did wrong, stayed in Mississippi a day too long,’ Bob Dylan ‘Mississippi’, ‘Love And Theft’, released September 11th, 2001. Earlier this year I asked Sir Paul McCartney what he thought when he considered the perpetual live performance schedule Bob Dylan has maintained for over a decade. What would drive an extremely wealthy musician, a gentleman of a certain age, to keep up such a work rate? As ever McCartney had a ready, though perhaps too hasty, response. ‘Lack of a good woman, that’s the only reason for staying on the road at our age,’ he told me. There may be some truth in that; perhaps the failure of his marriages to Sara Lowndes and Carolyn Dennis and the lack of a stable single-partner relationship since have provided a spur for Dylan’s travels. But, seeing Dylan perform at the incandescent, endlessly inventive heights he’s scaled over the three decades I’ve been watching him, it’s hard not to conclude that, whatever the reasons behind why he’s doing it, Dylan has found a deep purpose in his nightly toil. To see Dylan in full flow - from the raging torrents of electric fury, to the calm exultant moments when the musical interplay or three-part harmonies with Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton recall backwoods settlers or clapboard gospel house meetings - is to see a fabulous carnival of Americana unfold, cross-cutting and enveloping time itself. He has subsumed and lived through so many epochs and influences - slave songs, blues truths, the white heat of 60s electric transformation, the fascination with Sinatra-style phrasing and 30s crooning. A 60-year-old man who has survived illness, hard living, the peculiar demands of being a cult icon in the culturally saturated Ground Zero 21st century, embodying all these elements and reinvigorating them, is both fascinating and inspirational. A Dylan performance is an encounter and a reckoning with many characters and personalities; in this respect a Bob show can summon up a similar feeling to watching old Elvis live footage. The feeling can come at any point during the show. When he carouses gleefully into something as frivolous as ‘Country Pie’, slams into the rangy almighty bleakness of ‘Watchtower’, or beseeches and implores the muse or a higher power to come forth on the sacred bluegrass stormer ‘Wait For The Light To Shine’, Dylan is unabashedly celebrating a tradition, the tradition of individuality, wedded to a fond regard for and acute insight into the community from which such individuality springs. It is the same tradition that Elvis embraced with magisterial sweep. It was undoubtedly restrictions imposed by Colonel Tom Parker that prevented Elvis from ever leaving America to perform around the world, but Dylan traverses the globe with almost evangelical fervour. Eventually suffocated by a lifestyle which left him artistically impotent, Presley became a prisoner of his fame. He left the world as an icon, but his premature death deprived us of a fuller understanding of the world, and the humanity that nourished and influenced him. Freed from outside control, the ‘Dear Landlord’ who would put a price on his soul, Dylan’s command of his music and artistic destiny and his ability to recreate and add to his legacy by being so ‘on form’ in his 6th decade ensures he expands on the legacy of the onetime rock 'n' roll king. Sure, an early Dylan death, or even an end-of-the-century expiration might have suited the requirements of those sad fuckers who think over 40s/50s/60s something per-formers shouldn’t make rock 'n' roll. Or, even worse, the empty-headed romantics who find glamour in early deaths. Those who think there’s a sacred link that ensures the good - Hank, Gram, Jimi, Buddy - die young, and that in a corrupting, energy-sapping business a shock early farewell is the only way to preserve dignity. What a sadly narrow-minded and reductive view of a culture which has always celebrated life, freedom and omnipresent beauty. Like any child of the 50s drawn to the myriad possibilities thrown up by America’s musical melting pot, the young Robert Zimmerman was set free and transformed by the Memphis flash. It’s such a truism now that it’s easy to be blasé about the miraculous way music makes connections that would otherwise be impossible to imagine. Where else could the souls and fates of a dirt-poor son of the south and a middle-class product of the Midwest Jewish Diaspora become so entwined? Presley accelerated the culture by introducing the cool, glamour and daring which were a life-changing rebuke to McCarthy era racist America. The qualities that came through in Elvis TV appearances and in the records beamed into distant outposts by the magic of the airwaves became a potent catalyst in Dylan’s voracious intake of art, movies, literature and music. The Elvis quote that begins this piece is delivered in an offhand, jocular fashion but it contains an almost Dadaesque truth; in the nine years that Elvis had been away from the American stage, Dylan had been the prime figure to utilise and explore the cultural space Elvis had created. Dylan’s genius took many forms, but his natural grasp of alchemy - adding surrealism, folk protest, the intensified barbed verse/prose of Ginsberg and Burroughs to the arena Presley declared open for business - must rank among his greatest attributes. As a performer and writer Dylan interconnected with a whole other school of learning, enabling him to adopt a chameleon approach to his public image that Elvis must have envied. A captive of a dispiriting formula movie production line for most of the 60s, Presley remained socially and politically remote from Dylan and the era’s counterculture. The Vietnam War and The Beatles’ impact on America’s youth seemed to make Elvis a conservative God-fearing relic from a bygone era. But the counterculture hegemony had its own in built parsimony, shortsightedness and prejudices. As Elvis’s rampant afterlife has shown, his stature as a conservative relic was sorely over-hyped. Sure, he was a hopelessly confused drug-addled right-winger, but that shouldn’t be confused with artistic death. Indeed, the idea that Las Vegas became a kind of living tomb for him is loudly and triumphantly refuted by the astonishing performances on the 4CD Elvis Live In Las Vegas box set released in 2001. In the earlier performances on the box set, recorded in 1970 and 1972, Elvis connects not just with his own past (and by extension the country, blues, gospel shouters and smooth-voiced crooners that influenced him) but also bonds deeply with recent pop. The funny, irreverent and illuminating between-song raps have the charm and candour of a storytelling showman raised on travelling fairs and tent shows. In his version of ‘Release Me’ he tackles the song as if it was a composition that deserved to hold The Beatles ‘Strawberry Fields’/’Penny Lane’ single off the top of the British charts, which certainly wasn't the case when Englebert Humperdinck’s sickly original did just that in the UK in March 1967. His versions of Ray Charles’s ‘I Got A Woman’ and Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’ show an affiliation with his 50s peers that encompassed both love and competitiveness. And there can be no doubt that when Elvis disciple John Fogerty heard his hero sing ‘Proud Mary’ his heart must have nearly burst with pride. Prior to his 1968 TV Comeback and his return to the live stage in Las Vegas Elvis had happened upon a Dylan song, ‘Tomorrow Is a Long Time’, on the Odetta Sings Dylan album. The song had not been released as a Dylan performance when Elvis recorded it in May 1966, but he completely understood its simple timeless poetry and elegant melodic flow. The performance was one of the most meaningful and beautiful by Elvis in a period when quickly knocked-out tat was the norm. You can hear the warmth and relief in Elvis’s voice as he sinks into a song that is spun from the same mastery of American folk culture, the seamless blend that exists only in music that inspired him. Though neither the rumoured May session of 1971 or the 1972 duet on ‘If Not For You’ discussed in John Bauldie and Michael Gray's All Across The Telegraph compilation probably ever took place, the connection between Elvis and Dylan has always remained strong. In 1977 Dylan reacted badly when a man he never met but whose art had provided the basis for much of his life died. He later said that when he heard the news of Elvis’s death he ‘had a breakdown. If it weren’t for Elvis and Hank Williams I couldn’t do what I be doing what I do today.’ You can’t know what it’s like to be a frontier artist unless you actually are one yourself. Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend have spoken about the sense of devastation and emptiness they felt when Jimi Hendrix died. I wonder if Dylan felt something similar when Elvis went, if he heard the king singing that song ‘Its your baby, you rock it’. A cursory look at Dylan’s career after Elvis died suggests someone trying to do justice to the memory and legacy of his forbear. Elvis's death coincided with the final chapter in the very public fracture of Dylan’s marriage to Sara Lowndes. Explicitly in the song ‘Sara’, allusively in many songs on Blood On The Tracks and Desire. With the sprawling much-derided movie Renaldo and Clara the relationship was laid bare with unnerving candour and, at least publicly, put to rest. It’s possible to view subsequent developments, the At Budokan album and the greatest hits tour, as Dylan’s equivalent to Elvis’s Las Vegas stint. Jerry Scheff from Elvis’s band joined on bass, while the girl backing singers recalled Elvis’s gospel muses The Sweet Inspirations. Presley had struggled to attain spiritual contentment while he was alive, a joy that can be heard most clearly in his gospel sides. Perhaps this fact was totally unconnected with Dylan’s conversion to Christianity, perhaps not. Perhaps it’s a measure of how completely absorbed Dylan has to be in a music and the culture that bred it (in this case sacred gospel music) to do it justice. I first saw Dylan play live at Wembley Stadium in 1984, a sluggish muggy Saturday afternoon, the Real Live Mick Taylor band in a stadium setting. I found it so weird, unbelievable in a way, that up there was my teenage hero onstage. When I was a kid hearing Bob’s 60s music in the 70s he seemed, like Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and countless others must have to him when he was growing up, like a creature from another planet. I never thought I’d get to see him, and subsequently I’ve come to feel blessed that I’ve had the chance to see Bob frequently, but, as is often the way with stadium gigs, on my first encounter Dylan seemed remote, going through the motions. Now I rationalise the memory - like any marathon runner in it for the long haul Dylan needed to pace himself, so perhaps he was already thinking of what lay ahead. If, as Mikal Gilmore recently suggested, Dylan lacked direction for most of the 80s, then for me the equivalent of the Elvis 68 Comeback TV special took place away from the cameras with the G.E. Smith band’s appearances in London and Dublin at the end of the 80s. The 80s had been a terrible stagnant period in rock history, the only living evolving embodiment of music from the source that I had apprehended was Van Morrison’s wondrous spiritual odysseys. Van and Bob – buddies, touring partners, that’s another story altogether but when I saw Bob at Dublin and Wembley something cracked open, something Van hadn’t touched when I’d been seeing him. It came out of the cold metallic edge of the sound, the music’s frenzied rush with Dylan sneering and cackling into the whirlwind, unleashing one apocalyptic blast after another. It was the zeal and vibrancy I’d sought but only initially found in punk, filtered through mesmeric multi-levelled songs. Songs that were on this evidence inexhaustible, always ready to offer up new treasures and rewards if treated with vigilance and respect. From that point on Dylan live shows became an all-bets-are-off, transforming experience. Some have complained about the ragged quality of the early 90s shows, the supposedly drunken meander of Hammersmith 1991 and his much criticised 6 night run at the same venue in 1993. I was there that1s not what I heard or experienced. There was Dylan in loose limbed good natured mood, a curious and irascible old cove, somehow maintaining a mystique, an unknowability that seems to be an essential part of his armour outliving his own myth. Wherever he wandered off the beaten track he was still able at every single performance to pull something extraordinary out of the hat, cast a new and unexpected light on one of the jewels on his own ‘highway of diamonds’ or do something unique and loving to a song by one of his early friends and influences, Tomorrow Night sticks out. I’ve heard certain critics give forth at the bar, surrounded by a coterie of friends and maybe even (God knows do critics have such things) admirers as they joylessly pick the show apart. These scholars of Dylan have a sneering know it all attitude and a way of reading the numerous blips and diversions that are intrinsic to Bobart. These would, if adhered to, suffocate his music. Dylan is all about making new discoveries even in songs that aren’t his own, songs as old and worn as Tomorrow Night where the very titles etch and explore the distance and relationship between the eternal road warrior/wandering minstrel and his audience. Dylan, the kid who claimed to have hopped out of Hibbing all those years ago to join a carnival, has engaged in a life-long study of the mechanics of performing, and the beautiful symmetry of his art means that there are moments when the songs speak of nothing so much as his undying fidelity to the song itself. What has kept Dylan going out there, spending endless nights on the Lost Highway, if not the song? The song is the sacred ground where Dylan the performer and Dylan the fan - dig the frame of references, the unending glee that courses through his performance and it’s clear Bob’s as big a fan as anyone in the house at any Dylan show - comes face-to-face with his fans and influences. And of course, Dylan has not only been able to learn from the dangers of Elvis’s life lived as an icon but has also been able to master his own fate by having the song-writing talent, perhaps the greatest song-writing talent in American history, that Elvis never had. What has kept Dylan going? The wind, the rain, gravity, many things, but partly a raging ego. It’s good fortune for the world at large that Dylan remains hungry, fascinated, bowled over by his own songs, the way they can comment on and shape the world, the way they defy time and space to find new meaning and pointed relevance in each successive era. The events of history may change but these songs he’s written are like mercury, always finding a new level, a way of fitting into current events and settings. I have had some of the most remarkable and unexpected experiences of song-meaning transference at Dylan shows. To hear him play ‘Maggie's Farm’ in the Brighton Conference Centre, beside the hotel where ex-Premier Margaret Thatcher almost met her end in an IRA bomb blast, was a cauterising and incantatory moment. Why should this be so? I mean ‘Maggie’s Farm’ certainly wasn’t written about Thatcher, but the song is its own magical little world. Played with the zeal and urgency Dylan brought to it that night, it could mean whatever you want it to mean. Of course with his own Russo-Judaic background and his keen awareness of the Scots, Irish and African songs and communities that feed the great river of American music, Dylan is an international performer in a way that Presley never was. He’s taking his art out into all manner of places that The King never knew existed, setting up his stall of magical potions anywhere and everywhere he can. I love that image of Dylan in the Howard Sounes book where he’s at a party and Maria Muldaur asks him to dance, and he says ‘I’d dance with you, Maria, but my hands are on fire.’ The young Dylan as a giddy can’t-keep-still manic ball of energy, the current of musical creativity running through him. Look at a few of the places Dylan has played during the so-called Never Ending Tour. With an orchestra in Japan, on the banks of the river Mersey in Liverpool, at a sport hall in Belfast, a boxing arena in New York and a cultural centre in Prague. Take a look at the itineraries of his tours and you realise that getting out there and doing it every night, playing music and investigating the songs is for him a cleansing exercise good for mental, spiritual and physical health. But in these new contexts its also a means of exploration and discovery; who knows what possibilities or secrets the songs will offer up in the next town or at tonight’s show. There’s no need for him to worry about what warped meanings, individual dramas or peculiar memories and meaning his audience take from the show. When it’s over he’s back on the road, ‘heading for another joint,’ a new audience waiting. The latter will no doubt be peopled by ever-younger faces. (This is the unwritten demographic increasingly obvious at Dylan shows. Last time he came here and toured in 2000 ‘his people’ regularly took younger less familiar faces from the back of the queue. A ploy rewarded with young faces suffused with joy at the end of the show, charging the venue with a mood of awe, optimism and renewal. And no wonder, name me another 60-plus-year-old performer who is so accessible in a live and in person situation, able to radiate cool and charisma without being an embarrassment, and I’ll show you Willie Nelson.) Still, the setting and local history can do strange things to a song, or at least my interpretation of a song. Like when I saw Dylan perform over three nights at the Palace of Culture in Prague in 1995. It was said that a back problem had prevented strapping on a guitar, so every night he took the stage holding the mic with one hand, finger pointing towards the roof, singing ‘Down In The Flood’. Now that song, written during the Basement sessions, relates to a non-specific scene plucked from American settler history. But in Prague it seemed to be about something else entirely. It was a strange few days. Between shows I’d wander the city, which had only recently been tagged as ‘the Seattle of Europe’ on account of the ever-increasing US student population who came to stay after the fall of Communism. I happened upon a photo exhibition by Dennis Hopper, shot during the early 60s. The juxtaposition of the ancient whitewashed cellar and the monochrome images of the 60s, James Brown beaming, surrounded by bikini-clad Californian girls, was striking. But not as striking or as haunting as the old Jewish town. During the war the Jewish population of Prague was almost completely wiped out. Terrazin concentration camp is located a short drive from the city, and the sense of loss and desolation hung heavy in the air on a walk through the old graveyard or the synagogue closed by the Nazis, attacked again in 1967. And a common sight there in the antique and book shops in the collections of religious relics was the Torah. The sacred Jewish symbol, a finger pointed heavenwards? Am I reading too much into it? Possibly, but that’s how songs work for me and Dylan is the master of the song. Why has Dylan been able to go on long past the point where Elvis gave up the ghost? It’s the difference between being the director rather than the actor in the movie of your life; being a songwriter Dylan writes his own script. When he sings he can grapple with fate, destiny, politics and the price of love, sometimes all of them at once. He has dug deep into his and America’s past to define the present and ponder the future, an ongoing process highlighted by the World Gone Wrong and Good As I Been To You albums, the sleeve notes he wrote for the former illustrating the righteousness of his quest perfectly. Dylan is the song scientist attuned to the levels of prophesy, intrigue and resonances that exist there. Is there an ending? So many of his friends and collaborators (Doug Sahm, George Harrison, Jerry Garcia) have gone in recent years, but Dylan keeps on mapping out euphorias and nightmares. He can’t help himself, he’s a cultural avatar, a living giant who will not be held to ransom by his past, who must keep driving forward. When I consider the phenomenal depth, velocity and sheer fecundity of Dylan’s art it’s easy to see rock 'n' roll as a finite culture. I mean after Elvis, after Bob, who’re you gonna put up as a contender? Sure ‘enjoyable acts’, ‘useful performers’ have come along since Bob first rocked the world, but comparing many (any) of them to Dylan is like comparing the recently discovered new planet 2001 KX76 – actually little more than a boring lump of frozen rock – to the sun or the moon. Thankfully Bob’s steadfast promise to stay true to his art is repeated again and again in song. From the vow to keep on keeping on in ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ (a song held for so long at the same position, 5th song into the set, that it became a rallying point or staging post for whatever was to follow) to the warm wry resignation of ‘Mississippi’, birth state of Elvis, fount of so much American music. And his songs, whether old like ‘It’s Alright Ma’ or new like ‘Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum’ cross time to stay true to the world and remain actively engaged with it. As the comic tragedy of the Clinton presidency was played out ‘Its Alright Ma’ sounded like a prescient up-to-the-minute commentary, riven with horror, haunted with paranoia, coursing with new life. And to see Dylan now in his pomp, his enthusiasm is infectious, I get renewed excitement for all types of music, music he doesn’t even touch – hip hop, techno, African, Latin, anything. Because the all-consuming energy and curiosity with which he approaches a performance rub off, you want to find out what more music can do to explain this world, or introduce you to new ones. I’m the sort of dimwit who uses songs to understand the world. A song is a dead text, it only comes alive when it’s inhabited by a performer. Ray Charles singing the beautiful ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’ is one of the most meaningful songs I know, an actualisation of long cherished truth which lies at the centre of everything from Joyce’s Ulysses to the Song of Solomon. It is easy to hear the song as a way of addressing the nature of the uncertainty, abandonment and heartbreak that Dylan felt when Elvis died. ‘I can't stop loving you/I've made up my mind/To live in memory of the lonesome times...’. Certainly, the way Colin Escott describes Elvis keeping on his toes in Las Vegas could easily have been written about present-day Dylan. ‘He recognised that he must mix it up. The show must be constantly reinvented, partly because there were returnees and partly because he needed to challenge himself and his band. He ran the gamut of American popular music; he had been listening intently to music since the mid 40s and knew 1000s of songs.’ When he got ill just after recording Time Out Of Mind Dylan told reporters when he left hospital that he had thought he was going to meet Elvis. He has said that during the recording of Time Out Of Mind he felt the presence of Buddy Holly, one of the first performers he ever saw, looming over the album, ‘guiding it in some way.’ Bob Dylan the giddy skinny guy who couldn’t dance with Maria Muldaur because his hands were on fire is still alive inside him. As he recently explained to Mikal Gilmore in a Rolling Stone interview, ‘I can’t really retire now because I haven’t done anything yet. I want to see where this will lead me because now I can control it all.’ What keeps Dylan going? A sense of duty and honour, a patriotism to the only America worth a damn – the America of Coltrane and Burroughs, Guthrie and Charley Patton, the need to keep the past alive, to keep the past in the present. Dylan’s mission, whether he sings sacred or secular, is profoundly spiritual. He knows that, as his friend and Sun Records founder Sam Phillips said when he heard Howlin’ Wolf, this is ‘where the soul of man never dies’. And in his songs what sport there is to be had, what a feeling of immortality matched to the ever-present sense of mortality. The ever unwinding narratives full of cul de sacs, wrong turns and offhand revelations. Songs full of snares, jarring reflections, dark alleys that stretch into the night, brilliantly illuminated clearings where you do no more and no less than confront your own soul. And always coming back to something sweet, something simple, pledging his time to you and the song. So much Bob to listen to, so little time. Recently, I’ve been listening to the bootleg of his Seattle 6th October 2001 show, the second show to feature songs from "Love And Theft". ‘It is time for Bob to park “Masters of War” away,’ says the sleeve note. ‘The notion it is the presence of weapons that cause war is obviously naive and misguided. Would Bob say the Boeing guys who designed the 757 or 767 are "Masters of War" since those planes were used in attacks?’ argues the writer. Sure 'Masters of War' was written long before the terrible events of September 11th but the song's central truths and the burning accusation contained in lines line ‘You that build the death planes/You that build all the bombs’ still hold true. Wars in our time rage before and after the Twin Towers collapse; the petrochemical and military-industrial complex are still the beneficiaries, humanity still the loser. Never mind the fact that, prior to the Twin Towers going down, Bush was widely seen as one of the weakest presidents in American history, elected and financed by less than scrupulous means. Bob’s inability to let the past rest is a rebuke to what Gore Vidal calls the United States of Amnesia. There are treasures aplenty on the bootleg live album, but the song I’m playing now is ‘Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You’. I love what he does with his voice here; apart from reinventing himself as an electric guitar player in recent years Bob has also proved to be the most imaginative vocalist alive. His phrasing rivals Sinatra as he uses a whole bag of tricks – lacerating spite, nonchalant indifference, gruff declamations, searing firepower – to put his mood across. He delivers the lyric here in a gasping, breathless fashion, as if he were off to meet Elvis or Woody but came back, ailing but determined to reassert himself. As the band takes the melody at a slow waltz pace the line about the ‘poor boy on the street’ sounds more than ever like a ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ acknowledgement. But the whole tenor of the performance sounds like he’s restating the promise - making explicit the obvious connection to the audience. The song fades out with guitar solo taking the place of the words. Bob plays a cyclical riff parlayed and buffeted by the band but the riff extends, ever renewing, coming back again and again. The waltz tempo hots up but the dance continues. He can dance now, Maria, he can really move. To paraphrase another great Jewish poet, Leonard Cohen, dance on maestro. Dance us to the end of love. This article is dedicated to John Bauldie for the warm companionship and helpful introductions to so many lovely people in Prague, 1995. Sounding Like A HillBilly: 'Moonshiner' by Robert Forryan I’ve been a moonshiner For seventeen long years. I’ve spent all my money On whisky and beer. I go to some hollow And set up my still, An’ if whisky don’t kill me Then I don’t know what will. I go to some bar room, And drink with my friends, Where the women can’t follow And see what I spend. God bless them pretty women I wish they was mine, Their breath is as sweet as The dew on the vine. Let me eat when I’m hungry Let me drink when I’m dry, Dollars when I’m hard up Religion when I die. The whole world’s a bottle And life’s but a dram, When the bottle gets empty It sure ain’t worth a damn. The most exquisite version possible of the traditional song known as, among other things, “Moonshiner”: a version in which he so fully inhabits the persona of the Old Derelict narrator (the grace-kissed soul as well as the voice of the man) that it is eerie…’ Michael Gray, Song & Dance Man III ‘What’s extraordinary about this recording of “Moonshiner” is how Dylan summons up the strength of characterisation to cram decades of experience, disillusion and resignation into his voice, while his subtle guitar and understated harmonica work perfectly to support the edge-of-the-grave moonshiner’s vocals. It’s ironic that this recording was made when some traditionalists were complaining that the 22-year-old Dylan couldn’t even sing properly (remember the jibe of the coffeehouse owner recounted in “Talkin’ New York”: “come back some other day – you sound like a hillbilly. We want folk singers here”).’ John Bauldie, The Bootleg Series booklet. The thoughts which follow come about as a result of e-mail correspondence between myself and Andrew Muir in which we had both expressed admiration for the performance of ‘Moonshiner’ which appears on The Bootleg Series set. It was then that I decided that I wanted to write about the song, though I had no idea what I wanted to say. It is easy to like a Dylan performance (easier than hating one), much harder to say anything of interest about it. For there are few things as dull as a eulogy. So much Dylan writing, and I do not exempt myself from this criticism, drifts into endless adjectives, similes and metaphors leading nowhere. The only point of writing for a magazine is to communicate – and to communicate you must have something to say which, in turn, means having thoughts to convey. So often it seems that adjectives, similes and metaphors become excuses not to think. They are so often meaningless. What I mean is that I come not to praise ‘Moonshiner’ but to talk about it and to see what happens. This is always referred to as a traditional song, so we don’t know how or where this song originated, or if it was once the creation of one individual. I’m not convinced that it meets the Woody Guthrie criterion: ‘You can’t write a good song about a whore house unless you’ve been in one’. I’m not sure I agree with Guthrie’s unimaginative views and I doubt that the author of ‘Moonshiner’ ever distilled moonshine. Whether he or she ever did or did not, I can well understand why this song reached out to the coffeehouse generation on the cusp of the Sixties. Moonshining was foreign to their experience, as foreign as Woody’s dustbowl ballads and talking blues. But there was something about the old, mythic America that appealed to that generation; my generation. We had been brought up on Western films and TV cowboy series. We bought into the concept of rugged authenticity and its natural superiority to sophisticated urban culture (even though the latter was our inevitable destination). We learned our liberal values and our sympathy for the outsider from so many Westerns where the lone stranger stood up for truth and justice against the baying mob. I am convinced that the Hippie movement owed some of its attraction to the fact that it echoed our assumptions about Native American Indian culture. For those movies had taught us to admire the 'noble savage' and to believe that his values were superior to those of our parents. In Westerns the bad guys were the bigots. You never heard the hero say: ‘The only good injun is a dead injun’. So, as we slid into late adolescence, the authenticity and ethnicity of folk music represented a natural home. And songs that spun tales of early, rural America or that evolved out of an oral culture were simply irresistible, if they were good songs. They still are. All of which explains why ‘Moonshiner’ endured. It appears to have been performed and recorded by many artists and is known under other titles, among them ‘Moonshiner Blues’ and ‘The Bottle Song’. It often features on albums of folk material, being a particular favourite among those who compile collections of Irish drinking songs. The Clancy Brothers have recorded it as ‘Moonshiner Blues’ and their upbeat, party-style presentation - so different from Dylan’s - is a typical performance of this song. Dylan’s is the only slow version I have heard and it struck me as odd that Dylan could make something so beautiful out of this subject. What could possibly be attractive about a derelict, drunken moonshiner? As Debbie Sims wrote in Issue 4 of Homer, the slut: ‘For “moonshiner” read alcoholic because, although romantically put and sweetly sung, this is a song about a man whose whole life has been dominated by drinking and being drunk’. As I typed those words, I realised I knew little about moonshining, so I did some investigating. I knew that moonshine was some kind of illegally distilled whisky, but that was about all. I know more now. Moonshine can be traced to Ulster immigrants who settled in the Appalachian mountains in the eighteenth century. They brought their own poteen-making methods with them, which evolved into moonshining. They were Protestants with a historical attachment to William of Orange. Hence they were known as King Billy’s men which, eventually, metamorphosed into Hillbillys – reflecting their political affiliations and their Appalachian homes. In his book Almost Heaven: Travels Through The Backwoods of America, Martin Fletcher seeks out moonshiners in Rabun County, Georgia, ‘the last real stronghold of moonshining in America’. He meets a law officer whose father and grandfather were both moonshiners. ‘There weren’t no other jobs back then. Had it not been for moonshining we would have starved. That’s what bought shoes for our feet.’ Fletcher goes on: ‘There was something distinctly comic about moonshining in Rabun County, Georgia. Everyone knew which families made moonshine… where they got their supplies and which welding shops made their stills. The moonshiners were mean but they were characters… when caught in the act, moonshiners considered themselves honour-bound to try to scarper through the woods even though most were now old men and often inebriated by their own product’. Moonshining goes on in the hills because they need to be near streams so that the stills can receive the cold running water they require. ‘The supplies and equipment are considerable. You need 800 pounds of sugar plus corn, yeast, malt and water to make 1,000 gallons of “mash”. You need several large wooden or plastic barrels in which to ferment the ‘mash’ and turn it into “beer”. You need the still itself – a copper or steel tank big enough to hold all the ‘beer’. You need bricks or breeze blocks to line a furnace beneath the still, 100-pound propane cylinders to boil the alcohol from the ‘beer’, car radiators in which to condense the steam and containers for the ensuing 100 gallons or so of moonshine’ – which is generally 95% proof. Fletcher describes moonshiners as ‘an endangered species’. Moonshiners were making moonshine long before it was illegal. In 1794 farmers in Western Pennsylvania rioted at news of a proposed tax on whisky. ‘There was something almost romantic about these old rogues, and America would be a less colourful place without them’. The first version of ‘Moonshiner’ I ever heard was by Bob Dylan on the Gaslight Tape from October 1962. In my early days of tape collecting names like the Gaslight and the Finjan Club and the Minneapolis Hotel simply dripped with nostalgia for the years of the Folk Revival. One imagines that this was not a one-off performance, but that it was a song Dylan had learned and that he carried with him as a usable item – a song to be pulled out when needed or when he was sufficiently interested. The real subject of this essay is the outstanding ‘official’ recording of 12 August 1963 which appears on The Bootleg Series. As John Bauldie said, maybe there is a mystery attached to why it was recorded just then, since Dylan was clearly focussed on producing albums of original material. Nevertheless, he achieves an immaculate performance in what seems to have been a single ‘take’. This suggests he was very familiar with the song by this time. There is a story about the Japanese artist, Hokusai: it is said that he painted a lion every day in the hope of one day painting the perfect lion. I like to imagine that Dylan had been striving to perform the perfect ‘Moonshiner’ and, having done so on 12 August 1963, he felt no need to ever perform the song again. In my dreams. There are, inevitably, differences between this later version and the Gaslight recording. Most obviously, on the earlier live recording there is no harmonica. Also, the first verse is reprised at the end, making four verses in all. And the second and third lines of the third verse become: ‘Moonshine when I’m dry, Greenbacks when I’m hard up…’ In terms of the actual performance, the guitar work from the gaslight sounds less accomplished, the voice deeper. There is less stretching of vowels and emphasis is placed on different words, which is hardly surprising. It’s as if he’s still wearing the song in, like a new pair of shoes that are too tight-fitting. Everyone says of The Bootleg Series recording of ‘Moonshiner’ that Dylan sounds as old as the moonshiner himself. Andrew Muir once said he sounded as ‘aged as the oldest cask whisky’. I think this is true, and I love the performance, but if you listen carefully I think you will find that the voice truly ages towards the end of the first verse when it breaks on the words ‘don’t kill me’. Until then he’s still a young man. The language of ‘Moonshiner’ intrigues me. I wonder exactly how old the song is and how much these lyrics are traditional and whether they have been adapted by Dylan at all? One somehow doubts that the lyricist ever was a moonshiner – there is something too poetic and too self-reflectively modern about the words for that to be believable. The sly character of the old man is cleverly drawn. Moonshining being illegal he necessarily practises the art of deceit. This aspect of his nature is doubly alluded to in that the still is hidden in a hollow, and by the fact that he chooses to drink where: ‘The women can’t follow And see what I spend…’ Women? Surely he means wife? Don’t men habitually try to hide their pleasure-spending from their women, be it on alcohol, books, CDs or football? Or does this line allude to a further deceit of an adulterous or bigamous nature? The following lines: ‘God bless the pretty women I wish they were mine…’ seem to indicate that faithfulness is not on his agenda. In fact, it seems that there is no area of life in which this moonshiner is to be trusted. The lines that I always lovingly return to when I’m away from the CD player and playing the song in my mind are these: ‘Their breath is as sweet As the dew on the vine…’ I think that a woman’s breath is not the feminine quality that would most appeal to the average male nose (how many people really have sweet breath anyway?). Debbie Sims contrasts the breath of the women with that of the moonshiner and suggests that the contrast is a part of their attraction to him. But surely, it is the scent of a woman that is more alluring than her breath? And what is truly attractive about dew is not its smell (does it have a smell?) but its visual beauty as, say, it is caught and tinted by the sun, or its gentle dampness – and dew, that foggy, foggy dew, has long held a sexual connotation in folk music. But in this performance breath is sweet, for, as John Bauldie pointed out, these are what Dylan himself called ‘exercises in tonal breath control’. Listen to the way he extends the ‘a’ in that first line, or ‘all my’ in the third line. The way Dylan uses his breath here is as sweet as… it’s just sublime. Even more sublime than the lovely ‘Copper Kettle’ in which he revisited the moonshining theme in 1970. In the end, it’s the performance that matters. He doesn’t sound like a hillbilly, this is a folk singer we hear. Bow Down To Her On Sunday by John Gibbens Among the reviews of The Nightingale’s Code, my ‘poetic study’ published by Touched Press in October last year, one common note was sounded. Whether the reviewer was appreciative (Paula Radice in Freewheelin’), dubious (Jim Gillan in Isis) or dismissive (Nigel Williamson in Uncut), the same point got picked on by each of them to demonstrate my occasionally – some said, and some said chronically – wayward thinking. This egregious fallacy was my suggestion that ‘To Ramona’, in its title, refers to the Tarot, and in particular to two cards, the High Priestess and the Wheel of Fortune. I’ll restate my case in a moment. Here is how Paula Radice responded to it: ‘I can accept… Gibbens’s view that the cycle of the first seven albums (up to the “cycle” accident!) turns around a midpoint of “To Ramona” on Another Side Of Bob Dylan… Where Gibbens loses me is then putting forward, as part of the justification for this thesis, that the first part of the title – To Ra – means Tora, the Tarot, and the Latin rota or “wheel”, and that these were deliberate inferences on Dylan’s part. It just seems unnecessary, indeed counter-productive…’ And this was Nigel Williamson’s view: ‘… if you didn’t see the significance in the fact that the first four letters of the title “To Ramona” spell TORA, which is the word on the scroll held by the High Priestess in the Tarot pack, then your appreciation of Dylan is superficial indeed. You’re probably the sort of person who doesn’t even appreciate that his early lyrics are characterised by the use of the metrical foot known as the anaepest. [sic]’ This is mere misrepresentation. I do not imply – certainly not in the section under discussion here, and I hope nowhere else – that someone’s listening which is not informed by the circumstances or connections I fetch to a song, whether from far or near, is therefore shallow or wrong or inadequate. If I propose a thought you had not already had, or convey some fact you didn’t know, am I thereby calling you ignorant? No: though not being able to copy the correct spelling of a word – like ‘anapæst’, say – from a book you are reviewing could be considered ignorant. Never mind. For now, I’m interested in why this ‘To Ra’ idea of mine caught the flak. But first let me explain it a bit more. My argument seems not to have been clear in the book, since none of the three reviews I’ve mentioned restated quite what I thought I had proposed. I’m not suggesting that Dylan juggled the four letters TORA to get Tarot and also ‘rota’, the Latin wheel, or that he would ever expect anyone to follow such a leap if he had made it. The letters appear like this, ‘TORA’, on the High Priestess card, and they also appear at the four cardinal points around the Wheel of Fortune, as T–A–R–O, just as N, E, S, W appear on a compass. But Dylan did not need to connect these himself – the link is made by A.E. Waite, who designed the pack in question, in his accompanying book The Key to the Tarot. He points out the letters and explains that they can be read clockwise from T in the ‘North’ position, back to T again, to spell ‘Tarot’; or from R in the South, clockwise, to read ‘Rota’; or from the T, anticlockwise, as far round as A, to read Tora. He further points out that this is the word on the High Priestess’s scroll, and that it stands for Torah, which is the Hebrew for law, or instruction, or direction, and the name given to the first five books of the Bible. Before we go any further, there are a few supporting points I should make. First, these writings of A.E. Waite are not at all obscure or esoteric. The Waite pack is probably the most popular form of the Tarot to this day, and would have been by far the most likely pack you’d come across in 1964, back before the general revival of the ‘occult’ led to a profusion of new designs. Likewise, Waite’s book is one of the favourite beginner’s guides to the cards and has been reprinted many times. I bought it as a cheap, recently published paperback in the 1980s. Second, we know that, many years later, Dylan took an interest in the Tarot and the Waite pack in particular. He ‘quotes’ the Empress card from it on the back sleeve of Desire. Even from a cursory look at the symbols and the ways of interpreting them, the influence of cartomancy – and especially the kind of symbolism that Waite draws from, mixing the biblical with the magical – can be seen both in Street-Legal and Renaldo & Clara. In the film, when Joan Baez appears as the Woman in White clutching a red rose, she echoes both the Empress, who wears a white gown sprigged with red roses, and the High Priestess herself, who wears a blue mantle over what I take to be a shimmering white gown. (It’s coloured white in places and blue in others – I think to give a moonlit effect. She has the full moon set in her crown and the crescent moon at her feet, and sits as it were in an alcove between two pillars, one black and one white.) In Waite’s little instruction pamphlet that comes in the box with the cards, the High Priestess is said to represent, in a reading, ‘the woman who interests the Querent, if male; the Querent herself, if female’. She also stands for ‘silence, tenacity, mystery, wisdom’. (Which is about as much detail as any of the biographers have been able to disclose about the character of Sara Dylan, isn’t it?) For all her virginal and remote attributes, it’s the Priestess and not, for example, the much more ‘earthy’ seeming Empress, who signifies a sexual and romantic relationship with a woman. Now perhaps we can see a link between the High Priestess and ‘To Ramona’, with its peculiar blend of ‘high’ philosophising and sensual romancing. It doesn’t seem to me far-fetched to suggest that the song arises from the combination of experience of and meditation on this image. It’s interesting that ‘Torah’ should mean instruction or direction, given that the song mixes several direct instructions – ‘come closer, shut softly your watery eyes’ – with its more abstract teachings – ‘Everything passes, everything changes’ and so on. Here I should make a third substantiating point. This stuff about the Tarot may or may not interest you, but I think you’ll agree that it is directly relevant to one period of Dylan’s work at least; that he clearly had its symbolism in mind about the time of Street-Legal and Renaldo & Clara, and that he invites us, as openly as he has ever done with any outside source, apart from the Bible, to use the Tarot as a ‘key’ to some of his images. But that was then. Is it likely that he’d known about, let alone thought about the cards, and used their symbolism as a source for his art as early as the mid-1960s? Well, the biographical evidence suggests that he learned about the Tarot from Sara, whom he most likely met sometime in 1964. Now here’s a nice piece of circumstantial evidence. The cover photograph of Bringing It All Back Home was taken in the first weeks of 1965. Put the Empress on the back cover of Desire alongside Sally Grossman, the lady in red on the front of BIABH (much easier to see if you’ve got the LPs). Do my eyes deceive me, or is that almost the same pose? I hope I’ve made a case, at least, that Dylan’s quite deep knowledge of the Tarot could go back a long way before Renaldo & Clara. While I’m making this defence, I’d like to make a retraction too. In my book I claimed of the Dylans, ‘We can date their meeting fairly accurately’. This was showing off, because I was pleased with myself for having tracked down two decaying hurricanes that hit New York in the autumn of 1964 – on 14th and 24th September – and concluded that this must pinpoint the ‘tropical storm’ that is mentioned in the song ‘Sara’ as marking their meeting. They were the only truly tropical storms to reach the northeastern seaboard that season, but it’s still just a guess, and a far cry from ‘fairly accurate’ dating. I’d much rather, really, that they’d met a lot earlier, before 9th June 1964, for example, when Another Side was recorded. Then maybe that storm could be the tremendous one of ‘Chimes of Freedom’, and they could be that ‘we’: ‘Starry-eyed and laughing as I recall when we were caught, / Trapped by no track of hours…’ The ‘message’ of ‘Chimes of Freedom’, with its Sermon on the Mount echoes, also chimes with that line in ‘Sara’ – ‘A messenger sent me in a tropical storm.’ (The sentence is ambiguous: he was sent along by the messenger is the top meaning; but it can be read grammatically as ‘How did I meet you?… [By means of] a messenger sent [to] me in a tropical storm.’) If a ‘real-life’ Ramona is required, Sara is a much more natural one than, say, Joan Baez. The Tarot doesn’t seem like Joanie’s bag, and nor do the confusion and tears that Ramona shows. But the feeling of being torn that the song describes wouldn’t be surprising in a woman, like Sara at that time, with a young child and a marriage falling apart. Identifying Sara, or anyone else, with Ramona doesn’t tell us much about the song (though the song might tell us something biographically about a relationship). But associating Ramona with the High Priestess, it seems to me, does add something to the song. It strengthens our sense of Ramona’s dignity – ‘the strength of your skin’, those ‘magnetic movements’ – that counterbalances this temporary bewilderment and weakness. It heightens the feeling of reciprocity. If Ramona is, in her better self, like the Priestess, then she is herself the source of wisdom and knowledge, and this situation where the singer is spelling out the facts of life for her could as easily be reversed, as the last lines acknowledge: ‘And someday, baby, / Who knows, maybe / I’ll come and be crying to you.’ As the precursor to a string of notable ‘advice-to-a-woman’ songs – ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ – the Priestess image reinforces a basic respect that underlies them, that keeps them, somehow, despite their outspokenness, from sounding merely gloating or contemptuous. Much has been said of the viciousness, the sneer, the anger of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, but what has kept it alive so long is the way that this is mixed with a kind of stateliness. And this stateliness pertains to the person that the song describes, just as it does in ‘Queen Jane’. We may see the women, in the images, stripped of their trappings of comfort, prestige and power, but in the music we see them somehow the stronger for it. What makes the songs moving and lasting is the feeling that Dylan conveys, in everything apart from the words, that he’s not crowing ‘I told you so’, but saying rather, as he says Ramona says, ‘You’re better than no-one / And no-one is better than you’. That is a philosophical constant of Dylan’s work, a ‘something understood’ that keeps him on a level with us, however ostensibly preaching or haranguing or even vituperative his words. And this is what enables them effectively to preach and teach. My reason for mentioning the ‘To Ra’ hypothesis in The Nightingale’s Code was not so much to do with the High Priestess as with the Wheel, the Rota. Of course, this period of Dylan’s life was a ‘turning point’. What intrigued me was how consciously he seems to have realised it. The image of a wheel or ring is deliberately evoked in the front of Bringing It All Back Home, and it occurs in that key song ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, in the tambourine itself and in the ‘smoke-rings’ of the mind, and also in ‘To Ramona’: ‘my words would turn into a meaningless ring… Everything passes, everything changes’. I go on to discuss how Another Side itself seems to rotate around this central point, ‘To Ramona’, turning from a positive first side – Incident, Freedom, Free, Really – to a negative second – Don’t, Ain’t, Plain, Nitemare and so on; turning right round, in the end, from ‘All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you’ to ‘It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe.’ From there I go on to suggest an even wider wheel, still centred on ‘To Ramona’, with the three folk albums on one side and the three rock albums on the other. And there I leave you to decide for yourselves with what kind of consciousness Dylan could have created the ‘centre’ of such a wheel, when he could not know where it would stop. Which brings me back to my original question, why the reference to such esoterica as the Tarot got picked up. If there is any substance to my idea of a larger organised form to the whole sequence of Dylan’s first seven records, then how did it get organised? It suggests a shaping power of imagination far beyond what the ordinary Selfhood could encompass. The Canadian critic Northrop Frye wrote in Fearful Symmetry, his inspiring study of William Blake, ‘If a man of genius spends all his life perfecting works of art, it is hardly far-fetched to see his life’s work as itself a larger work of art with everything he produced integral to it’. This idea he expanded further in Anatomy of Criticism, which might flippantly be called the prequel to Fearful Symmetry, since it outlines the vision of all literature which he had seen through his reading of Blake: ‘It is clear that criticism cannot be a systematic study unless there is a quality in literature which enables it to be so. We have to adopt the hypothesis, then, that just as there is an order of nature behind the natural sciences, so literature is not a piled aggregate of “works”, but an order of words.’ My aim in The Nightingale’s Code was simply to set such a vision of Dylan’s work afoot. To be honest – not wanting to launch an anti-advertising campaign – this was what I’d missed in the critical studies I’ve read. The observations accumulate but they don’t seem to assemble into a picture. It’s not clear what the details are details of. I wanted to show how, for example, song might relate to song on an LP; how LPs themselves might be constellated in phases or cycles – or chapters, if you like. Also, what might be constants of the whole work, the forms and images that speak to each other across it. In this I seem so far to have failed, since the critic who was most responsive to the book, Paula Radice, took exception to precisely this schematic aspect of it. The tenor of most Dylan criticism at the moment is to celebrate the diversity of his work – to multiply its breadth and open-endedness. At the same time, I believe the perception that Dylan’s work is a whole, even while it can’t yet be seen whole, is well established – for example among the readership of this magazine. Many people – I would guess it’s probably most of the people who enjoy his music – have the sense that it’s worth getting to know extensively. There may be a certain consensus on the highs and lows, as well as our own personal charts, but I think most of us feel that the body of work adds up to something more than a selection of its highlights, however collectively edited. Don’t you also find yourself more often drawn back to, and getting more out of, a Dylan record you regard as second-rate, than is the case with many a first-rate record by other artists? Of course there are two important obstacles to studying Dylan as Frye studied Blake. One is that he is alive, and we can’t claim to see the work whole while it is still unfinished. The other is that it’s not literature. What constitutes the canon of Dylan’s work? ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, say, is an element of it, but what is ‘Mr Tambourine Man’? The first track on Side 2 of Bringing It All Back Home, or any one of the hundreds of other performances by Dylan himself, or for that matter by anyone else? In my book I opt for the official releases as forming a canon within the canon, so to speak. The artist himself gives some warrant for this. He doesn’t, at least in later years, give his songs in concert until they’re out on record – so that the live versions must to some extent be heard as subsequent variants of an original. The profusion of variants with Dylan has no real parallel among the poets of literature, but it’s not an alien thing altogether. The canons of poets are mostly synthetic; few are crystalline, fixed and simple. ‘A’ poem is often surrounded by a penumbra of other versions, earlier forms and later revisions. The ‘death-bed collected’ is the usual basis of a canon: the poems, and the forms of them, that were last authorised by the poet in their lifetime. But this needn’t prevail. Whitman, Wordsworth and Auden, for example, are all felt to have done injustice to their early work with later changes, and so there is often an alternative version of the poems as they first appeared. The canon of William Blake is, in fact, a striking anomaly something like Dylan’s. Not because Blake showed uncertainty in constituting his works: of him, more than any other English poet, we can say that the canon is ‘writ in stone’, since he personally, laboriously engraved in copper every single letter and punctuation mark of his completed poems. But the works he conceived are unities of word and image, and each copy of one of his Prophetic Books is unique, a combination of printing and painting. If he had had the audience and the resources, there might be as many Miltons and Jerusalems as there are ‘Mr Tambourine Men’. Well, almost. So the words of one of the poems reprinted in a book are not the actual thing that Blake made. This is why his work, though its influence grows year by year, is still regarded as obscure: because it is, and will be until there is a permanent free public exhibition of all his illuminated books together. At least there is, at last, two centuries on, an affordable one-volume, full-size reproduction (The Complete Illuminated Books, Thames & Hudson, 2000, £29.95). For future generations, the canon of Dylan’s work will pretty certainly include the concert recordings, studio outtakes and so on which are currently collected and curated by the fans. This is a fittingly democratic way for it to form, outside the ambit of the academies which Dylan has often berated. But I predict that the official albums will be the central structure around which the rest is organised, and I think that Dylan appreciates this, despite his pronouncements in periods of discouragement that he didn’t really care about making records, so long as he could perform. This was when he didn’t particularly care about making new songs either: compare and contrast with the clear sense of achievement that comes through in interviews now at having made ‘a great album’ in "Love And Theft". In an album, a set of songs is organised into a greater whole; in a concert they are organised into another, different whole. ‘Sugar Baby’ belongs at the end of ‘Love And Theft’; in a concert we might discover that it also belongs perfectly between ‘Buckets of Rain’, say, and ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’. This independence of the songs, their constant movement in relation to each other, does not diminish the order of the canon, but serves to knot it all the more integrally together. It may seem to have no parallel with the way that poems appear in a poet’s book, always the same words on the same page. Yet what Dylan does for us with his songs is quite close to the way that poets begin to be read when we know them well enough, so we can turn from one poem to another, cross refer, even read two poems side by side, nearly simultaneously. When I called my book The Nightingale’s Code I was obviously playing on the idea that Dylan is an enigma – that Dylanologists are still engaged in trying to ‘decode’ his lyrics. But I meant it more seriously in the sense of a ‘code of behaviour’, like the ‘code of the road’. The word comes from the Latin codex, which means originally a block of wood. A block was split to form leaves on which to engrave important and permanent documents, such as laws. In English the word ‘code’ – before it became synonymous with ‘cipher’ – meant ‘a digest of the laws of a country, or of those relating to any subject’ and ‘a collection of writings forming a book’ (Oxford English Dictionary). In other words, it’s an alternative term for the ‘canon’ that I’ve been using here. To my mind, the ‘code’ in Dylan – in the secret-language sense – is simply his ‘code’ in this second sense: the integrated body of work in terms of which each part can be interpreted. The resistance to my ‘To Ra’ idea – an arcane reference couched in a form rather like a cryptic crossword clue – springs I think from a generally healthy scepticism about hidden meanings and skeleton keys. Ingenious and cryptological explanations have fallen out of favour, due to their own excesses, and Dylanology pursues more sober, empirical and encyclopaedic projects. What was valuable, however, even in such wild theories as A.J. Weberman’s, was their search for the ‘thread’ of Dylan’s work. Weberman’s ‘plot’, applied to Dylan’s career up to the early Seventies, was the story of a Revolution betrayed by its leader (as far as I can make it out). He supplied for Dylan’s country music the cry of ‘Judas!’ that had earlier been flung at his rock music. If we don’t find schemes like this – or Stephen Pickering’s interpretation of the poet’s progress in terms of the Cabala and Jewish mysticism – satisfying, it’s because they seem reductive. Tying the form of artistic creation to another, extrinsic form, they restrict rather than expand its scope. The problem with approaching poetry or song as ‘code’ is that code in itself is meaningless. Once it has been deciphered it is ignored; it adds nothing more to the real message it was concealing. If a song is coded in this sense, then all our responses to what it ‘seems’ to be about would be like delusions. Hence our natural hostility to what is effectively a destructive form of interpretation. But a song can have ‘hidden’ or ‘other’ meanings in another way: not as concealed within it or ‘behind’ it, but hidden in the sense that we don’t see them until we see the larger form of which the thing we are looking at is a part. These are the relations that give a work of art its third dimension, its depth. The larger form is the artist’s body of work and also the ‘order of words’ that Northrop Frye speaks of, the total form of literature. With Dylan, of course, we cannot say simply ‘literature’. One of the reasons he strikes us as such an important figure is that an integral view of his work has to place it simultaneously in both literature and ‘popular music’ (there’s no word as neat as ‘literature’ to describe this other field); and therefore he unites, or reunites, these estranged relations. He’s not alone in doing this. Burns, Brecht and Lorca are three who spring to mind as co-conspirators, but their work has all ended up as books, and been subsumed into literature, and Dylan’s will not be subsumed. In fact, at the moment the emphasis is the other way, partly because of the nature of Dylan’s writing in its current phase, and partly because that ‘other’ field – the golden triangle that lies between points A (for art music like avant-garde jazz), C (for commercial or chart music) and F (for the various shades of ‘folk’ music and field recordings) – is at present, thanks to CDs and expiring copyrights, being formed into a canon of its own. In this respect "Love And Theft" is not ‘retro’ at all, because its encyclopaedia of ‘thefts’ goes hand in hand with a whole new level of documentation of its sources. Reference-spotting can be illuminating, but it’s not the end of hearing Dylan’s music in an integrated way – and it may not even be the beginning. Let’s say that the 12 songs of "Love And Theft" allude to 100 other records (it’s probably not an overestimate): we don’t necessarily get farther into it even if we track down every last one of them. The important thing would be to listen back and forth, so to speak. To know the why of one reference will tell us more than to know that 99 others exist. Which brings me back to my Tarot reference. The point is not that ‘To Ramona’ is really about a playing card instead of a person, or that Bob Dylan once practised divination. The point is that the High Priestess helps us see the ground on which Ramona moves, a harmony to her melody, if you like. A further quote from Northrop Frye, from Fearful Symmetry, may suggest how John Donne and Woody Guthrie, Tarot and ‘corpse evangelists’, ‘To Ramona’ and ‘Chimes of Freedom’ all come to combine in the form we know as Another Side. Speaking of the Renaissance humanists, he points out: ‘They had in common a dislike of the scholastic philosophy in which religion had got itself entangled, and most of them upheld, for religion as well as for literature, imaginative interpretation against argument, the visions of Plato against the logic of Aristotle, the Word of God against the reason of man.’ He goes on to say: ‘The doctrine of the Word of God explains the interest of so many of the humanists, not only in Biblical scholarship and translation, but in occult sciences. Cabbalism, for instance, was a source of new imaginative interpretations of the Bible. Other branches of occultism, including alchemy, also provided complex and synthetic conceptions which could be employed to understand the central form of Christianity as a vision rather than a doctrine or ritual…’ It remains only to say that in Dylan’s case the matter of references and possible allusions is slightly complicated by that aspect of him that plays the Riddler or the Jokerman. ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35’, anyone? Well, 1, 2, 3, 5 are the first four prime numbers, and the next in the sequence is 7, and this is the first track on Dylan’s seventh album. I’ve also speculated that they’re the numbers of hexagrams in the I Ching – something else he’s known to have been interested in, and once refers to openly: ‘I threw the I Ching yesterday, said there might be some thunder at the well.’ An interesting reading in the light of Blood on the Tracks, though ambiguously put. I’d assume it was hexagram 51, Thunder, moving to hexagram 48, The Well, but it could be the other way round. Either way, the judgment on The Well is fitting for that fresh tapping of former powers: ‘The town may be changed, but the well cannot be changed. It neither decreases nor increases…’ And the Thunder of the I Ching, as described in the translator Richard Wilhelm’s commentary – ‘A yang line develops below two yin lines and presses upward forcibly… It is symbolised by thunder, which bursts forth from the earth’ – is something that might well be called Planet Waves. So to return to Nos 12 and 35 – hexagram 12 is Standstill or Stagnation, and Blonde On Blonde is all about stasis and stuckness. Richard Wilhelm comments: ‘This hexagram is linked with the seventh month… when the year has passed its zenith and autumnal decay is setting in.’ That seventh album again, and according to my seasonal arrangement of Dylan’s records, Blonde On Blonde is an autumnal work. And 35? That’s called Progress and the image is of the sun rising over the earth. What lies beyond the stasis of Blonde On Blonde is, whaddyaknow, a New Morning. These are plausible references for the numbers, if you think they are there for any reason. They’re also both biblically important. Twelve, as in tribes and apostles, and 35 as a number of the apocalyptic proportion, as stated in the formula of Revelation, ‘a time, and times, and half a time’, i.e. 1 of any unit, plus 2 of it, plus a half = 3.5 and any of its multiples, like 7, or 70, or 35. The formula occurs, in fact, in chapter 12 of Revelation: ‘And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent. And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.’ (‘Rainy Day Women’, anyone?) ‘And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.’ (‘They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to be so good’ anyone?) Yet the suspicion is strong that they could actually be any numbers, and that what they mean at the beginning of the record, attached so arbitrarily to a title so arbitrarily attached to its song, is: prepare to be baffled. And yet, and still – why those particular numbers? Follow the Riddler into the labyrinth, but let a thread unwind as you go, or you may end up lost in there. A final quote from Northrop Frye. Of Blake he says: ‘He is not writing for a tired pedant who feels merely badgered by difficulty: he is writing for enthusiasts of poetry who, like the readers of mystery stories, enjoy sitting up nights trying to find out what the mystery is. Content from Other Issues Ain’t Bob About A (Singin’) Cowboy? By Pat Fitzgerald (In which the argument will be presented that Bob Dylan possesses a “cowboy attitude” and may have garnered some song lyrics from dialogue rendered from the western movies.) He enters his shows to the tune of Rodeo Hoedown Duded up like a cowboy goin’ to town. He don’t give no bullshit—no meaningless patter As he stands “at the keyboard with a gunslinger’s swagger.”1 He’s swung a lasso in the movies2 atop a horse And caught him a turkey—off camera, of course. He wrote that movie’s soundtrack and when asked why, “I had a fondness for Billy,”3 was his reply. He did the Kid right, composed the perfect atmosphere. Just head out to Lincoln4 where it’s played everywhere, In all the town’s museums for all to enjoy. Quite the achievement for a Midwestern boy. Did those western movies get into his brain When he was a kid on the Iron Mountain Range? Did he catch bits of dialogue that stuck with him, Heard over the Lybba’s5 kids’ matinee din? There was this line in The Law vs. Billy the Kid.6 Did Bob want to use it, the same as Billy did? “We still got better’n twenty miles to go before we get to town.” Ain’t that like he told us in “Cold Irons Bound”? “I don’t think about it,” was heard in The Great Divide.7 Could poss’bly, in his subconscious, those words did reside Till he thought about the daughters who put him down? Had he pictured them dressed in Miss Kitty-style gowns? In a Hopalong8 flick a dance hall girl once said Something that, maybe, lingered long in Bob’s head. “She doesn’t know whether to kiss him or kill him.” Was it a whim a lyric like that’s in “Standin’”?9 I know, it’s been said I watch too many westerns, An tyin’ those quotes to Bob is simply conjecture. But look at his music—it’s quite plain to see He know the source-ballads of western melody. In Bonnie’s apartment10 he sang “Wild Mountain Thyme.” In New York, at the Gaslight,11 “Barbara Allen” he chimed. Songs from the Isles—“”Wagoner’s Lad”, “Eileen Aaron” All traveled the wide ocean for our boy to croon. Those ballads wound their way to the Appalachians And soon bore the imprint of a brand new nation. From the mountains of the east, they traveled out west. Where new tales spun off them, as Bob’s own song suggests. To the sound of a traditional Irish tune Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie dies is a saloon. But first he roams from the White House to the Rockies Displaying the traits a legend should embody. Western ditties penned by Bob, they ain’t very many. Yet when rip-roarers all, there ain’t need for plenty. He learned his lessons well ‘bout how a tale to tell An’ once he gets a-goin’, his cowboy spirit swells. “Romance in Durango”—chili peppers, thund’ring guns, An outlaw with his querida on the run. ’Tis a Mexican yarn that’s filled with tragedy. South of the border cowboys can’t flee adversity. The haunting “Angelina” bears a western tinge With allusions to card games that no one can win. There’s bandits and shotguns, the sky changing shades And the hero must flee after his sad serenade. There’s folks in a song I feel is Bob’s western best, Equal to that flick in “Brownsville Girl”, starring Greg Peck. Lily was a gal about whom films could be written. The mysterious Jack of Hearts—for him she was smitten. Jealousy was Big Jim’s fatal flaw. Rosemary Faced the gallows, the deadly price her good deed carried. The setting, side plots, action, psychology Is everything that’s needed for a well-told movie. Wait—movies!? Let’s return once more to different times To that boy in Hibbing whose imagination shines When a bit of movie conversation sparks Something in his head that leaves an indelible mark. “He had it comin’,” said Gabby Hayes.12 His voice intones The timbre of the killer of Hezikiah Jones. And in Street Legal, after Bob got sober, Did he flash on Hoppy’s “ . . .We gotta talk this over.”?13 In Texas,14 ‘bout two drifters close as brothers, “We’ll meet again someday,” says one pal to another In a scene not unlike “Tangled”15 on the roadside, When he leaves the red-haired lady to roam far and wide. In The Gunfighter16—“Bring that bottle over here.” Is said by Greg Peck. Yeah, yeah, that’s not obscure. Could be chance that it’s in, “Be Your Baby Tonight.”17 I ain’t sayin’ my guess is necessarily right. But look at Gene Autry’s villain—quite often Big Jim.18 Remember The Last Waltz, that hat with the big brim? That same wide fedora is worn by Autry’s bad guys, As is a pencil-thin mustache, like on Bob’s lip did rise. There’s two simple words from Twilight on the Rio Grande,19 That I’m bettin’ in Bob’s memory did land. “Senor, senor,” from “Tales of Yankee Power,” A song more of Armageddon than of western lore. And in one Autry movie, a bus roles down the road.20 Is this where Bob’s restless feeling was first bestowed? Gene kept a-traveling to get to his next gig. Bob hits the highway in the same type of rig. Is it possible movies shaped Bob’s attitude And that’s how he became a western-type dude? Or perhaps you don’t see what I’m trying to say. And if you don’t agree, that’s perfectly okay. That he’s worn to Elton’s party21 and a boxing match.22 His western boots are legendary, at least to me. With black and white flames, they’re quite delightful to see. But that don’t count for much, because it’s just attire. To gain the cowboy attitude, one must reach higher. It’s not just about cattle, a lifestyle’s involved, And a respect for freedom’s a definite resolve. Who among us can deny that Bob is freewheelin’? The life’s choices he’s made would leave others reelin’. He stays on the road ‘cause settlin’ down ain’t his way. When you get right down to it, he just wants to play. I reckon he won’t quit. He’ll keep on singin’ his songs. Let’s hope that his wanderings remain wide and long, And he’ll always move forward with no regret Till, like an ol’ cowboy, he’ll ride into the sunset. 1. Robert Hilburn, Los Angeles Times October 17, 2002 review of Bob Dylan at the Wiltern Theatre 2. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid 3. Notes in Biograph,pg. 21. The entire quote is: “Why did I do it, I guess I had a fondness for Billy the kid.” 4. Lincoln, New Mexico, the site of Billy the Kid’s courthouse escape 5. Lybba movie theater in Hibbing, Minnesota, which was in operation when Bob was a boy. 6. The Law vs. Billy the Kid, Colombia Studios, 1954 7. Full title: All Along the Great Divide, warner Brothers studios, 1951 8. Wide Open Town, Paramount studios, 1941 ( I am aware that this film was released in the same year Bob Dylan was born, but many western movies were shown time and time again, not only in the movie theaters, but also on television in the 1950s, especially the Hopalong Cassidy series, which were marketed personally by William Boyd, who played Hopalong.) 9. Full title: “Standing In The Doorway,” by Bob Dylan 10. Bonnie Beecher’s apartment, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 1961 11. Gaslight Café, New York, New York, October, 1962 12. My Pal Trigger, Republic studios, 1946 13. Full line: “Well now, listen, we gotta talk this over.” The Bar 20 Rides Again, Paramount studios, 1936 14. Texas, Colombia studios, 1941 15. Full title: “Tangled Up In Blue,” by Bob Dylan 16. The Gunfighter, Fox studios, 1950 17. Full title: “I’ll Be You Baby Tonight,” by Bob Dylan 18. Rootin’ Tootin’ Rhythm, Republic studios, 1937 (Another movie often showed on television during the 1950s.) Big Jim was also the much-used name of the villain in Gene Autry’s 1950s television series. 19. Twilight On The Rio Grande, Republic studios, 1947 (“Senor, senor” was also heard in Four Faces West, 1948 United Artists studios) 20. Melody Ranch, Republic studios, 1940 21. 10th annual Elton John AIDS foundation InStyle Party, April 1, 2001 22. Felix Trinidad-William Joppy WBA Middleweight Championship bout at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, May 12 2001 Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right Chimes Of Freedom Subterranean Homesick Blues Inside The Gates Of Eden Too Much Confusion Four And Twenty Windows If You See Her, Say Hello Singing The Lexicon Time Out Of Mind “Love And Theft”

Home Page - The Missing Dimension - Ambassador Watch What might have happened if Armstrong was right? by Russell Miller It was 200 M. That is, the two hundredth year of the millennium, after Christ had come down and forcibly taken control of the world, just as that Great Prophet, Herbert Armstrong (or as everyone called him, Mr. Armstrong) had predicted. It had been a particularly bloody time. A meteor impacted the earth, much of the water turned to blood and undrinkable, and untold billions of people had died. In the feeble attempts of the nations of the world to stop the "invasion", they had thrown their entire nuclear arsenal at the descending Christ. Unfortunately for them, this had no effect whatsoever, and the missiles that went errant struck some of the major cities and caused even more devastation. By the time the tribulation was over, the world was a desert wasteland, and only a few hundred million people survived. The believers were, of course, instantly raised to the level of Spirit Beings. They were given the title of Believers. They came back down with the descending Christ, radiating in glory and power, and immediately took control of the world. Immediately they began reconstruction, of both society and infrastructure. The first undertaking was the destruction of all idolatrous things. This included mosques and cathedrals that had stood for centuries, even the small figurines that devout Catholics had managed to salvage throughout the tribulation. Even any bible that was not a King James Version was destroyed. People who believed in these things, of course, loudly protested. They were instantly destroyed. After a few of these destructions, everyone else fell in line and the indoctrination began. The names of the days of the week and the month were renamed to their Jewish name - the punishment for using any of the "old" names was death under the first commandment. Church services were started on the seventh day, and everyone was issued formal clothing. Attendance became mandatory, and formal clothing was required. The services were held by one of the Believers, and anyone who showed the slightest bit of disinterest, including sleeping, was killed on the spot. Any child who could not stop crying was also immediately destroyed, along with his or her parents. Paradoxically, the rate of suicides began to increase. There were quite a few people who intentionally flouted the rules, and were immediately destroyed. The Believers seemed, for all of their newfound intelligence and power, to be truly puzzled. It seems that they thought that the whole world would simply fall in line, and this wasn't happening. The killings and suicides continued at an even greater rate, as the world was transformed. Beautiful, gleaming buildings, parks, and fountains, sprung up almost instantly. The grass was green and lush, the air was fresh and pure. Everyone had enough food and water and natural resources abounded - and yet people were still unhappy. There also was 24/7 surveillance - untraceable, unstoppable, and omnipresent, as angels had been assigned as the eyes and ears of the Believers. Children laughed and played, and were beaten every time they did something that was even the slightest bit unpalatable to the Believers. If they were not beaten sufficiently, or if they were shown any mercy whatsoever, the parents were punished - occasionally to be struck dead, leaving the children to be orphans. The Believers then would actively raise that child, until it turned 18. Slowly the population began to dwindle, as God's perfect society became a killing field. People began to rebel more and more, and were instantly struck down. Sometimes the roar of thunder in a clear blue sky was constant, as lightning came down and struck the more egregious offenders. Finally, there was no one left. The Believers were left very puzzled. Even though everything had happened exactly as the bible had predicted, they could not understand why a society could not be built. They created more people, and ended up destroying them as well. Eventually they started to create batches and batches of people, forcing women to become pregnant and have children, just to keep the population level up. But crime still increased, and they ended up having to exterminate those batches en mass and begin over again. Years passed by. There was a beautiful earth, clean, and pristine. Because the animals were modified to be friendly with each other, "the lamb to lie down with the lion and the little child to play with them", the carnivorous animals went without food and died. There were eventually no lions, no bears, or wolves. This messed up the ecosystem, and eventually things started to go out of balance. Rabbits and small rodents multiplied out of control as there was nothing to control their population. The Believers ended up killing these animals themselves. They were faced with a really difficult issue - how to feed the carnivores? They ended up taking the meat from the killed rodents and leaving it in places for the carnivores to find. The Believers were beginning to get restless. Why was this world not what they were promised? Why was the world ending up out of balance? Why were the little animals ending up dead anyway, fed to the carnivores? Why were there no people left? Why would the people not accept the rule of the Believers? After all, that is what they were promised. Occasionally, a Believer would go up to God's throne, with Christ on the right side, and Herbert Armstrong on the left, and ask God why things were this way. God simply answered: "This is what you wanted, isn't it? I only gave you what you wanted. This is the Millennium you were so looking forward to. You wanted absolute rule, I gave you absolute rule. You wanted God's Government as Armstrong", and he pointed to his left, "taught you. You wanted swift and severe punishment for sin, and you got that. You wanted everyone in the world to accept your rule and live happily ever after. That I couldn't give you. You wanted to interfere with the natural order of things and for there not to be consequences. That, I could not give you, either." Why not?, the Believer would want to know. "Because, I gave people brains and minds to use. And they are using them. And I can't take them away without taking away what makes them people. And neither can you. Haven't you noticed that although you can read their thoughts, you can't change them? Haven't you noticed how, even though they are fully aware of the consequences of their thoughts and actions, that they do them anyhow?" But, said the Believer, I thought this was supposed to be my reward for following you faithfully. And at that, the look on God's face changed, and became deathly cold, and stern. And red fire shot out of his eyes. "Yes. This is your reward. But you did not follow me faithfully. You followed Armstrong faithfully." God would give the Believer a few seconds for that to sink in. And he would invariably look towards Armstrong. And for the first time, the Believer would notice the tendrils binding Armstrong to his throne. And then, when the Believer finally realized where he actually was, God said, "Yes. This is your reward. You have the world that you wanted. Now rule over it! You may not leave it. The people who live there do not really exist and never really did. You were transported here at the moment of your death, and you will live here forever. Oh, and one more thing..." As God began to transform his shape, the Believer would begin to tremble and quake with fear, realizing who he was really talking to. In a thundering voice that boomed out across the heavens, the now fearsome being roared, "I AM NOT GOD. Now GET OUT OF MY SIGHT." And Armstrong screamed. And the Believer would scurry away to rule over his own personal hell. Copyright © Russell Miller, 2003

On July 20, as I was roughing out an essay about Berlin for this page, a settlement was announced between Vienna’s Leopold Museum and the estate of Lea Bondi Jaray. The estate had contended that Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally (1912)—seized by American authorities while on loan from the Leopold to MoMA in 1998—had been stolen from its Jewish owner, Jaray, by Friedrich Welz, an Austrian Nazi, in 1939. According to the agreement, the museum would pay the estate $19 million; the estate would release its claim to the work. Portrait of Wally would return to Vienna after a brief exhibition in New York at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. An additional stipulation established how the painting will forever be shown to the public: the Leopold Museum will permanently display signage next to the Painting at the Leopold Museum, and at all future displays of the Painting of any kind that the Leopold Museum authorizes or allows anywhere in the world, that sets forth the true provenance of the Painting, including Lea Bondi Jaray’s prior ownership of the Painting and its theft from her by a Nazi agent before she fled to London in 1939 The righteousness of exposing persecution and crime is beyond debate. But my first thought upon reading the signage provision was “poor Wally-they’ve made her wear a yellow star.” Portrait of Wally is now a painting apart, permanently in evidence, its power to “speak”-for Schiele, for Viennese modernism, for the relationship between artist and model, for its own strange beauty-preempted by the duty to testify to events that transpired decades after its creation. I’ll be the first to concede, my response to Wally‘s fate was colored by my effort to come to terms with Berlin. Prompted by the June opening of the sixth Berlin Biennale, I traveled to the city for the first time-unfashionably late, I know. Opening the catalogue at the preview, I found a schematic street map indicating the Biennale’s six far-flung venues, from KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the event’s birthplace in the Mitte, to four ad hoc locations in the Kreuzberg district plus the Alte Nationalgalerie on Museum Insel, where an exhibition of drawings by the 19th-century artist Adolph Menzel was meant to buttress the Biennale’s theme of contemporary realism. At the Alte Nationalgalerie, Menzel rubbed shoulders with El Anatsui, whose monumental facade installation was one component of another Berlin-wide exhibition, “Who Knows Tomorrow,” which distributed installations by five artists of African descent at four venues of the state museum system. That show’s tabloid-size handout also features an abbreviated plan tracing the initiative’s cross-district reach. I recognized a diagram of reunification cultural policy in the maps of these city-spanning shows. Yet I found myself recalling Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone, a 1947 novel based on the failed attempt by an “ordinary” couple to sow resistance to the Nazi regime by dropping treasonous postcards in buildings across the city. At Gestapo headquarters, a map of Berlin is obsessively studied by the inspector who tracks the perpetrators, marking the location where each card is discovered. Why think of Fallada and not, say, my last encounter with a plan of the Venice Biennale? Well, I am a Cold War baby, a Kennedy-era kid, whose parents’ friends included Holocaust survivors. In short, I arrived in Berlin fully equipped with memories of a city I had never seen. Gestapo headquarters stood at 8 Prinz-Albrecht Strasse, today Niederkirchner Strasse. The site is part of an urban nexus where violent history and contemporary art collide with dizzying incongruity. What was left of Gestapo headquarters after Allied bombing was razed by the East German government. Alongside the foundations has risen a sleek new documentation center and tourist attraction called the Topography of Terror, where you are invited to descend into the remains of the Gestapo’s basement detention cells. It’s hard to tell where education ends and morbid fascination begins. Eventually the terror-studying folks merge with the crowds assembling for exhibitions (Olafur Eliasson and Frida Kahlo last June) at Martin-Gropius-Bau next door. From here, the simplest route to the galleries in Kreuzberg follows a preserved stretch of the Wall, along which open-air placards narrate the story of the barrier and its victims. Arrive at Friedrichstrasse, and you’ll find yourself staring at Checkpoint Charlie. But the GIs who stand sentinel at the onetime gateway to the U.S. sector are actors. Souvenir shops abound. Welcome to Berlinland, a gravitas-free zone. The administration of memory is a complex undertaking in the new Berlin. Nowhere is it being handled with more grace than at the Neue Nationalgalerie, where the thematic reinstallation of modernist works from the permanent collection, unveiled last March, is punctuated by black-and-white photographs of the art lost by the national museum during the Nazi era and its immediate aftermath. The lost works include Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Street, Berlin (1913), which was purchased by MoMA in 1939, the same year Portrait of Wally was stolen from Lea Bondi Jaray. This is how the history of Street, Berlin appears online as part of MoMA’s Provenance Research Project: National Gallery, Berlin. 1920-1937 Confiscated (as “degenerate art”) from German state-owned Museum in 1937 and included in Entartete Kunst exhibition, in the Antiken-Museum in Hofgarten, Munich, July 19–November 30, 1937, and other venues; then sold by Nazi government. Buchholz Gallery, New York (Curt Valentin). 1939The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchased from Buchholz, April 13, 1939 “Sold by Nazi government” sounds legally airtight, though other acts of that government have come to be considered criminal. Still, Germany is not likely to ask for restitution of the Kirchner. Nor is it likely to demand that MoMA display the provenance text beside the painting. At the Neue Nationalgalerie, photographic surrogates offer dolorous documentation of loss, like snapshots on a grave. There is a different pathos in the branding of Wally. I’m glad the Jaray Estate held fast in its pursuit of justice. I wish it had held fast to Wally, too. Yes, she might remain out of public view, at least for a while. But no future buyer could be contractually compelled, as the Leopold Museum has been, to treat her so cruelly.

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How many ants does it take to move an elephant? That’s what the traditionally bureaucratic Jewish community feels like to me sometimes, like ants trying to move an elephant. No matter how many ants you have, there won’t be any way to move that elephant unless you think about other ways of tackling the problem. Similarly, some Jewish organizations are adding more and more to their offerings (more ants) but not really tackling the issue of increasing Jewish engagement in different ways. Many have written about this, most recently, Ron Wolfson in “It’s About People, Not Programs.” There are all sorts of traditional tactics that different organizations use….from offers of ‘free’ programs to urgent requests to sign this petition or that (they even provide the pen), to guilt-laden messages like ‘if you just cared a little bit…’. And then there are the organizations that use fear. They report some of the worst anti-semitic attacks from the past year, complete with the horrid pictures, and also offer statistics about assimilation. As if it is not hard enough to read headlines about hatred just once, these are delivered into my mailbox, just for me. I recently read yet another mood-boosting online article: “A Bleak View of American Jewry” The fact is, I care a lot about the future of the Jewish community, so I need to know that the elephant can, in fact, move. So, wouldn’t it be wonderful to read, just now and then, about stories of success? There are many good ones out there. How did you engage people in your efforts? Tell me some stories, we love stories. I’m lucky, in my work, to hear moving experiences almost every single day. I hear from people who have been touched in a deep way and it has brought them closer to their faith, their families, and places of worship. I will make a commitment to myself to write about that more. I know that being in fellowship changes people. It’s a slow and steady process of relationship building that bears the sweetest and juiciest fruit. A Chabad Rabbi said it so simply. When asked what his techniques were for engaging so many young students Rabbi Yosef Kulek, at the University of Hartford, summed up Chabad’s approach and success in one word: Love (a dose of great marketing doesn’t hurt). “I know that sounds cliché but it’s really true,” he said. Unfortunately, there’s no short-cut for the kind of persistent and loving approach that is needed to engage people in a tradition that is overflowing with richness and beauty. Relationship building takes an enormous amount of time, and doesn’t show up in data on how many followers an organization has, how many posts were Favorited, or how many clicks per view a website link got. It’s about a whole lot of attention and love. That’s what I think will move the elephant.

Mini-Course on US Civics for Jews “U.S. Civics for Jews” is an introduction to the workings of government and electoral politics in the U.S. The “for Jews” component indicates that the course will integrate elements of Jewish ethics and theology, U.S. Jewish History, and Jewish relationships to and experiences of government and politics. For instance, when studying the federal courts, we will use Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb as our sample U.S. Supreme Court case. In this case, the court considered the question of whether a civil rights statute meant to prohibit race discrimination could apply to Jews. Faculty: Beth Ribet, PhD, JD Thursday, June 15, 2017, 7:30-9pm: Introduction to the Three Branches of Government June 22, 7:30-9pm: Lawmaking through the Legislative and Executive Branches June 29, 7:30-9pm: The Federal Courts July 6, 7:30-9pm: Elections — Co-taught by Elissa Barrett, JD July 13, 7:30-9pm: California Government July 20, 7-9pm (2 hours): Civic Participation and Political Organizers (guest speakers TBA) The mini-course is free, and there are recommended/optional readings, but no advance preparation is required. Guests are welcome (attendees need not be Jews, or members of Congregation Beth Chayim Chadashim). If you plan to attend and would like advance access to any materials, RSVP to Beth Drop-ins without RSVP are also welcome. 3 Comments on “Mini-Course on US Civics for Jews” Alisha Attella July 12, 2017 pm31 1:23 pm . Alisha Attella June 27, 2017 am30 9:52 am . Will these courses be recorded and archived? Thanks!

On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Scheer talks about his father’s thirst for freedom and how that influenced his life; Scheer says defense of the U.S. Constitution, in spite of its flaws, is critical in defending against the erosion of democracy PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. We’re continuing our interview with Robert Scheer, who joins us again in the studio. Thanks for joining us. PROF. ROBERT SCHEER, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Thank you. JAY: And one more time, Bob Scheer is a veteran U.S. journalist, currently editor-in-chief of the five-time Webby Award-winning online magazine Truthdig. And Bob’s whole biography you’ll find below the video player here. Well, the framers of the Constitution–and it’s still the case today– SCHEER: Wore wigs. JAY: –it’s the sanctity of the individual who owns property. SCHEER: I know. We, you know,–. JAY: And it’s still today. SCHEER: Let me correct that. Let me just correct that, because that’s asserted over and over again. One of the major prophets of the American Revolution, and I would say the most important, was Tom Paine. And Tom Paine was not speaking to people who owned property. Tom Paine was that town crier. Tom Paine was that guy with the broadside. Tom Paine was that guy who hustled some printer. He was you. You know, he did but I did with Ramparts. That’s Tom Paine. Hustled some printer: yeah, I’ll pay you next month, you know, and meanwhile print my pamphlet. You know? And those pamphlets, no one can challenge that. Tom Paine was the guy who gave the American Revolution its urgency and definition, okay? And he was an immigrant, a recent immigrant from England, someone on the lam. You know? And if you look at Justice Roberts, the Supreme Court, the ruling a year ago in June on why the police can’t crack into your smart phone and use that data–unanimous decision of a Supreme Court that many of us don’t like, you know, but it included the liberals and the conservatives–unanimous. Scalia, everybody, said no, the cops can’t get that data, ’cause that’s a general warrant. That’s not specific. It’s a violation of due process. They can’t crack the code and convict you on some crime that they were not looking for. It goes back to English common law of the humblest peasant. This goes against your rich guys argument. The humblest peasant is off-limits to an agent of the king, cannot come in and rummage about. JAY: Yeah. SCHEER: The reason the Fourth Amendment is so important, as Justice Roberts said, the American Revolution was sparked by that demand. Okay? And when the agents of the king came in looking for your tax violation or are you selling rum or are you doing this or are you paying your taxes, blah blah blah, okay, they said that is what sparked the revolution. JAY: Yeah. But it’s fine in theory. It’s lovely on paper. We’re in Baltimore here. SCHEER: I’m in Baltimore. JAY: These constitutional rights of people who don’t own any property are violated after day every–. Go to court and see what constitutional rights, go see what constitutional rights Freddie Gray had, who just got murdered in Baltimore. It’s if you have property, you can actually assert those rights. Yes, they’re there for everyone. It’s like this–I once heard this coal miner, yes, anyone can go into the Ritz-Carlton, but not everybody can rent a room. It’s the same with constitutional rights. They’re there, but you can’t actually implement them unless you’ve got a lawyer, unless you–I mean, I walk into a police station; as you know, it’s a completely different story if some young black kid walks in. SCHEER: Yeah, I know. I understand. JAY: The reality– SCHEER: Let me explain what I’m–. JAY: –is different than the–than–and I’m–. Just a sec. And I’m not undervaluing the importance of these individual constitutional rights, even if the poor and people without property–it’s still massively significant that there’s still as much individual rights in the United States as there is. It’s very significant. And we need to fight for them. And this is why people that say we’re already living in fascism I don’t agree with, ’cause we’re really not quite there yet. And–. SCHEER: Those who say we’re already living in fascism have not been in– JAY: Lived in fascism. SCHEER: –have not been in a totalitarian country. JAY: I agree. SCHEER: You know. And this hit me–. Look, first of all, my parents came to this country–I don’t want to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” here, but they came because they had experienced, particularly my mother had experienced–you know, my mother was smuggling secrets in her hair when she was 17 years old and went to see somebody in Lithuania who was being tortured. She didn’t know he had been arrested. And she was put up by some people near the prison where she could hear his screams all night. And I’ve been in a lot of these countries. And I think it’s a copout. What you said–and I say this to you with great respect for what you do, great respect that you know a lot more about Baltimore and inner cities than I do, ’cause you’re working here. You care about covering it. And, also, anything I tell you in this show, I may be full of it, or I wouldn’t be a journalist. I may have it wrong. Okay? I’m not a big ideologue in that way. I don’t think I’ve got it all, a handle on everything. I really mean that. But I think–so let me get a little bit autobiographical here, which you wanted to do. I told you about finding those volumes by the garbage can. Now let me go back to my own childhood here, ’cause it really is important. My father was a part of–there were waves of German immigrants who came to this country, sparked by turmoil in Germany, of different kinds, but usually “Die Gedanken sind frei” [German: Thoughts are free], you know, the desire for freedom. It’s even in Beethoven’s Ninth, you know, the whole idea that, you know, thoughts matter. No tyrant shall–I forget the way it went, Die Gedanken sind frei, but no tyrant shall shape the–no one–no man can deny Die Gedanken sind frei, thought is free. PETE SEEGER SINGING “DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI”: My thoughts will not cater to duke or dictator / No man can deny, Die Gedanken Sind Frei / No man can deny, Die Gedanken Sind Frei SCHEER: And my father had that. And I don’t know what happened to him. I think he had a physical fight or beat up his high school principal. He was a farmboy in Germany. And his mother got him–my mother came over in steerage. My father came over, I think, second class or just above steerage. I found his thing on Ellis Island–my son Peter did, and so forth. And my father, we don’t know. He was 13, 14, maybe 15, but probably 13, 14 when he came. He didn’t know anybody. He had some relative he was supposed to find, but when he finally found him, he didn’t like him. So this guy was on his own. And he came from a town in Germany were every male–in each of these towns–and I’ve been there many times, Southwest Germany. It’s called the /fɒls/, and land was too poor to support the whole–it’s like the Old South in the United States. So each village–and they were about 3 kilometers apart–the people would, the males would learn something, to make pots or do something. And my father’s village, Mackenbach, they were famous for training musicians for the circus and other things. So my uncle, who I found after my father died when I went back to Germany, my uncle Ludwig, he had actually–he was wounded at Stalingrad fighting the Russians, but he’d already been in Moscow before the war as a musician. So my father arrived. He had his clarinet. I still have it hanging–well, not that one. I have a different version of his clarinet that I got from his brother hanging on my wall. But my father came, and he played on street corners and played the clarinet and music, and he learned to be a hand knitter and then a knitter mechanic. He was good with mechanical things. And he worked very hard. Real strong work ethic. And he became a Wobbly and an anarchist, and then he flirted with his union, with–the industrial union was communist for, I think, three weeks. And he got kicked out when my Aunt Lillie testified against him because he ran a wildcat strike against the union’s demands at the New York knitting mills. And my mother and father met when my mother–in 1936, they met on a picket line, or ’35, and they had me, you know, the undocumented child. And that’s how I came into this world. I believe very much in a woman’s right to choose, but I’m glad that my own mother chose to have me. So I do believe life is quite precious that way, at least mine. And so I was born in this. And as far as justice being fair, I was raised from day one to say my father’s whole thing, he would tell me, he says, you know, just don’t to anything where those cops’ll get you, because they’ll get you in the police station, beat you around the head, you’ll be funny-headed and you’ll be no good to no one. Okay? That’s my father’s–boom. I would hear that over and over again. You know, just watch it, you know, because that happens in 77th Precinct. Boom–they’ll get you. And the cops were Irish. He didn’t like the Irish there because of that, you know, and the whole thing. And so I grew up in that. I knew life was not fair. I could see–when we went down to get something for my mother, I could see she’s working in a sweatshop. The people, the woman were in their underwear ’cause there was no air-conditioning. I grew up in the Bronx. We didn’t have air conditioning when I was growing up. We slept on a roof of the tenement. You know, I know all this stuff. My aunt was a German maid, very proudly. She worked for rich people in New York. So I didn’t come from some kind of–you know, I was aware of how unfair things were. On the other hand, I also was aware that there were things that worked better than they did in a lot of other countries. Like we had good public schools. I’m a post-FDR person. You know, I mean, FDR was the hero in our house. So elections do matter, because we got this guy in there, a rich American. We all knew he was a rich American. But the guy saved our ass. And I heard the same thing from Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan told me–and he said this in one of his books, but when I interviewed Reagan, and I got–we’ve got the tapes, Norman Lear Center, crew around with me, but I published it in the LA Times, and Reagan said in his home, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a god, you know, and his father was out of work just like my father was. His father went to work for–. JAY: Oh, he was a Democrat. SCHEER: He went–but his father went to work for the New Deal. My father went to work for the WPA. You know, my father lost his job the day I was born. He didn’t get a job until the war started. Okay? War against Germans and Germany. But, you know, he got his job back, and then he never missed a day of work for the next 25 years. You know, he had the perfect attendance at the New York knitting rooms, and he was a shop steward for 25 years. You know, an incredible work ethic. So I know about unfair. I mean, you know–. JAY: I’m not talking about unfair. I’m talking about something more specific. SCHEER: No, I understand about the courts. I understand how rigged it is. And, of course, as a journalist, I’ve covered the very things you’re talking about. However, the reason I’m acting with some urgency here and some energy: I have found too many people–not you, ’cause you are on a day-to-day basis dealing with these issues, so this is not personal. But I have found too many people who’ve said because the game is rigged, it becomes an excuse for inactivity. And what I learned as an early kid, as an early citizen in this country, in the worst of times there are opportunities. And I’ll just–and if I can tell you biographically, I’ll just go through a number of issues. But in terms of money, that was a big issue. Food was an issue in my house. Come on. I mean, when I read about people at risk for food, you know, we–my father, first of all, had another family, so we could never see his income. And he was a decent man, and he wasn’t married to my mother, so he was supporting two kids. And at his funeral, my half-brother and -sister and his ex-wife asked me to be the only speaker. Okay? And they loved my father. And my father was an ethical man who worked like a dog, and he supported this family, even though he’d fallen in love with my mother and, you know. So I respected that. And I remember my father. And we moved in with another family. We lived with my aunt and uncle and cousins and crammed into a very small flat in the Bronx. During the Depression it was very hard. And I remember, you know, there’d be a real question. We knew some guy who sold organ meats, you know, maybe there’d be a piece of liver or something, and we’d get it. I mean, but I remember it being real hard times. I remember Christmas, you know, there’d be some old toys under a tree that my uncle Leon, who had a fruit stand, somebody didn’t buy, some forelorn [fruit], so the night of Christmas, maybe he’d bring it back ’cause he couldn’t sell it, you know, we’d have it there. So I remember I didn’t have a bicycle or anything. I didn’t have any–I couldn’t get a glove. I couldn’t get anything. And my father would–he would have this line you hear from parents once in a while. He’d say, well, you earn your own money, you’ll be a man, okay, and you’ll make your decisions, but right now you’re going to be here to eat at six o’clock and you’re going to eat everything on your plate, and on the weekend I’m going to press you a shirt and you’re going to wear it, and we’re going to go see Aunt–my aunt and Uncle Leon, and you’re going to have a tie. My father was like that. You know, he was German and cleaned the stoops and the whole thing. But the thing, the reason I am here, the reason that I am an independent person: my father said to me, okay, when you earn your own money, you’re going to be a man, and I’m not going to tell you what to do or anything to think. My father and mother, despite that they were leftists, they never tried to shape my thinking in any kind of overt way. I mean, my father took me down in a bowery to see people taking hand-out of food and tell me, if you don’t work, that’s going to happen to you. You know, I’d get these little lectures all the time. But then my father said to me, if you want to know the formative experience in my–my father said, when [incompr.] and then this guy, Meir /ˈrʌvɪdʒ/, had this grocery store, and the milk companies came in to grab the projects that were near us, and Meir /ˈrʌvɪdʒ/ tried to keep them out. He failed after a couple of years. But he had this idea he would drop his milk bottles on the corner and he would have kids go up and deliver them. And they came in glass bottles, and there were 12 in a tray. Okay? They were pretty God damned heavy. And Meir /ˈrʌvɪdʒ/ couldn’t get anybody to take this job except me, because the other parents wouldn’t let their kid be out there at four or five in the morning. It’s a school day, and they’re not going to be running up and down the stairs. We didn’t have elevators in that project. And so I was Meir /ˈrʌvɪdʒ/’s golden boy. You know. And he paid me real money. He didn’t want to lose me, and he was nice to me. I had already started delivering orders. But had a real job, and I’m 12 and half years old. And I went from being the poorest kid to the richest kid in the neighborhood in a matter of weeks. Weeks. Suddenly I’m the kid who’d say, hey, I’m going to go buy my–I’ll put money down in a layaway plan and I’ll get my own bike, you know, I’ll get my own glove. And you know what, guys? You want to go eat pizza? We don’t have to eat that German Jewish crap. You know? Let’s go eat the guineas’. You know. And then we–yeah, we were racists in some extent. You know, we’ll go eat the–you know, and there’ll be a derogatory word for the Chinese for–everybody seemed to have a derogatory word. They called us the kikes, or the Germans were called the krauts. That was the Bronx. Okay. But I had this liberating thing at 12 and a half. You know, hey, I worked my ass off here, I can’t even stay awake during school, but I now have some measure of freedom. And I had political freedom. My father–and I had movement. My father said, he’d tell my mother, /ˈʃraɪnɨʃt/. You know, I wanted to hitchhike across the country when I was 16. I did it. My father said, how much money? I said, well, I have about $10, but I’m going to have a job in Levittown and /ˈfjoʊˌrɛli/ steel plant down in Pennsylvania. Is there still a–? Probably not. I came down here, to Pennsylvania, and first Levittown, I mean, the second Levittown down here. And then I remember I was in Chicago. I got jailed for vagrancy with my friend Eric Brown. And then they were charging us with some other stuff. And I got to make a call, and I call home collect. And my father says, where are you, Son? I said, I’m in Chicago. He says, what’d you do in–he said, what happened to your job? And I said, oh, it was real hard. And he says, oh, he couldn’t make the job. He said, well, this is costing money. He says, come home and tell me all about it. And he hung up on me. You know. And I had to deal with it myself. So he was very principled, and about politics. You know. I remember when I was at City College, just before my father–at Queens’ College, City College, around there, and I got involved in a thing of trying to have a Hyde Park Day at City College [incompr.] first Queens [incompr.] I had this idea, because we were in McCarthy period, you know, so you can’t have Paul Robeson come, you can’t have some communist. And I said, well, why not? You know, let’s just have everybody have a soapbox like they do down in Union Square, but we’ll have it right in the middle of the campus and we’ll call it Hyde Park Day like in England. And so I went up and find George Lincoln Rockwell or whatever, I found the Nazi, I find this one, whatever. And we’re right in the middle of Harlem. So the Amsterdam news condemned me, the New York Post. You know, editorialists condemned–I forget what my position–. JAY: For inviting a Nazi. SCHEER: Well, the communists, everything. You know, I mean, I was condemned all around. The Journal of America. I remember that. And I remember being home. I was having those–we had Robin Hood Day. There were all these protests happening on Queens’ College where I first started, ’cause I–and I was in engineering, and then City College, where Colin Powell was actually in my class, but he doesn’t–I talked to him a little bit, but he doesn’t remember that particular thing. But we were already doing protests at that time, in the ’50s, with McCarthy and so forth. And it took quite a bit of energy. JAY: Well, let’s talk about it in the next segment, ’cause the period of McCarthyism and Un-American Activities is a big issue. SCHEER: Yeah, but I’m just telling you that my father, who was fiercely anti-fascist–and after all had stopped talking to his relatives, and all my German relatives wouldn’t have anything to do with Germany and this whole thing, and yet the idea, well, if we’re going to have a range, let’s get a range of all these vegetarian and this one and anarchists and what have you, and have free speech. And I remember my father, he did something very dramatic. He took a knife, and we’re talking over one table of one of these things about free speech. I don’t know whether it was at Queens’ College [incompr.] And I remember–he had a pretty strong temper, my father, although he never hit me, but he would break every dish in the–you know, he had a real temper. And my father took a knife, put it into this wooden table, and said, looked at me and he said, he said, it’s interesting what you’re doing, you do what you want, you know more about this than I do, but if you ever become a Nazi, I’ll kill you. That’s the limits–for his part, that was his threshold. I’ll never forget it. I mean, that was it. JAY: Okay. We’re going to pick up this conversation in the next segment of Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. Please join us. DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Shilyh Warren, an assistant professor of film and aesthetic studies, is curating an event this Sunday (March 25) at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Richardson. The event focuses on female filmmakers and celebrates the works women have made since film began. The event will be split into two programs. The first program begins with “Women Who Made the Movies (1992),” a documentary that traces the careers and films of pioneer women filmmakers. It then continues with three short films: “Meshes of the Afternoon (1943),” by Maya Deren; “Fannie’s Film (1979),” by Fronza Woods; and “An Island Surrounded By Water (1985).” by María Novaro. The second program will screen nine short films including “Sari Red (1988),” by Pratibha Parmar; “Measures of Distance (1988),” by Mona Hatoum; and “All Water Has a Perfect Memory (2001),” by Natalia Almada. Shilyh Warren was also interviewed about the event on “The Big Screen,” a podcast from KERA: Interview Dr. Matt Bondurant’s 2008 book, The Wettest County in the World, has made the leap to the big screen, and on Wednesday, Aug. 29, the film adaptation opened in theaters in a movie called, Lawless, starring Shia LaBeouf. Read more. Dr. Adrienne L. McLean, professor of film studies at The University of Texas at Dallas, has compiled a list of her top movies for the holiday season. “The most significant films are likely to be those that you and your family have turned into traditions yourselves,” said McLean. She says some families might watch Stephen King horror movies every holiday, and others might be theater bound for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which opens Dec. 21 but which is obviously not a celebration-themed family flick. The holidays are also probably marked as much by favorite television shows or any one of the animated specials featuring Charlie Brown, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Grinch or Frosty the Snowman. “My favorite holiday movies have virtually always been experienced as television shows, in the living room, ideally with friends and family but not always, and maybe it’s the relationship of these movies to the living room that makes them traditional. They’re revived over and over, if you’re lucky, and seeking them out on the television schedule is itself part of the holidays to me,” said McLean. Her favorite “conventional canonical classics” are: Holiday Inn (1942). Starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby at their peak, this black and white “putting on a show” musical is not strictly speaking a Christmas movie, in that it covers many other holidays as well. The Inn opens and closes during Christmas and New Year’s, and by far the most famous of its songs is Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” which it, and Bing, introduced to the world here. Other numbers are great too, but there is also a cringeworthy blackface “tribute” to Lincoln. And, rumor has it that the hotel chain got its name from the film. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). The film did not do very well upon its initial release, and it’s not hard to see why – it is something of a film noir, and while there is a “happy ending” it takes many wrenching scenes to get us there. In fact, the disturbing vision director Frank Capra gives us of an “alternative” postwar American culture, in which money and power are grabbed by the greedy who destroy families and communities for their own selfish interests, is arguably just as powerful as the message that it’s OK if your dreams don’t come true as long as you focus on what you do have. Miracle on 34th Street (1947). This black and white film was for a time available only in a “colorized” version, but is now back in its original form. Like It’s a Wonderful Life, it too is interesting for what it represents about postwar American life. The film depicts affluence and optimism as well as some cynicism about people’s beliefs and motives – there is also a loss of innocence. The later television version, with Mara Wilson, isn’t bad either, although it’s much more saccharine. White Christmas (1954). Another backstage musical with an over-the-top finale and a plot involving two song-and-dance men who try to save the inn of their former World War II Major General, who has fallen on hard times. The “girls” in the romance plot are singer Rosemary Clooney (George’s aunt) and dancer Vera-Ellen. While the ending is ostensibly “happy” – the inn is saved by the snow that should bring in the skiers, the romances all survive the required misunderstandings – you can’t help but wonder whether good fortune is going to stick around through the new year and beyond. A Christmas Story (1983). Although this film exhibits something of the raunch and sarcasm of Scrooged or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, it is also a sunny and very funny account, adapted from the novel by Jean Shepherd (who also wrote the screenplay), of a “typical” suburban Christmas. Phrases like “You’ll shoot your eye out!” that lots of people of a certain age remember from their youth now resonate with modern-day kids as well. The same can be said for certain situations, like the tangled strings of lights and overloaded electrical sockets of the holiday season, the snow suits that are so padded you can’t move in them, the bizarre objects – the leg lamp – that your parents fight over. It is sometimes called a cult film because it wasn’t originally all that popular. Now there is a stage version, A Christmas Story, the Musical! (produced by the film’s Ralphie, Peter Billingsley), that may or may not be Broadway-bound. “These films will, if you allow yourself to succumb to them, scare you rigid, not from blood or gore, but from what you sometimes cannot (and will never) see, what you must imagine, situations that are disturbing, things that may or not be real or possible,” said McLean. “Even when they make you giggle at one or another of their implausibilities or, in the case of the older films, general campiness, you will likely find yourself awake in the middle of the night at some point in the future remembering scenes from all of them.” Her recommendations are: Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942). “This film is in black and white and made on a tiny budget, but it contains one of the most influential horror scenes of all time — a woman being terrorized in a swimming pool by shadow and noise only. A perfect example of how the monster (a young married woman who becomes a vicious black leopard) is to be both feared and pitied — we cheer when she kills the sleazy psychiatrist who finds her ‘exciting’ and thinks he can control her. We mourn her death.” The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961). “An adaptation of Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw, this film is about a governess who agrees to take care of two strange and possibly possessed children in a mansion in the middle of the British countryside. Also in black and white, it is probably the scariest film I have ever seen, purely on the basis of its evocative and disturbing images—a cherub with an insect crawling from its mouth, a figure standing in a lake, a dead bird under a pillow. The soundtrack is also terrifying.” The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980). “Most people are aware of this film thanks to Jack Nicholson’s performance as the unhinged proprietor of a remote resort hotel, but it remains one of the creepiest films ever made. Your startle reflex will get a tremendous workout.” The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, 1999). “Yes, it has bizarre plot holes — why don’t the three lost students just follow the stream back to civilization instead of wandering around in circles? But, for dread created from very little (stick witches hanging from trees, piles of rocks, a blurry severed finger) this movie is hard to beat.” The Others (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001). “A ‘twist’ film, sometimes compared to The Innocents for its creepy children and the fact that there may or may not be ghosts in the house. Literally, it is quite a dark film because the children suffer from some disease that makes them sensitive to light, and all the scarier for it. The sequence involving a photograph album containing actual images of dead Victorian and Edwardian children will stay with you for years.” McLean has a PhD in film studies from Emory University and is the author of many books on film including Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema (Rutgers University Press, 2008; second printing 2011). Faculty members who are also published authors were the focus of a recent McDermott Library celebration. The 6th Annual Faculty Author Reception recognized 16 writers and nine editors of books published during the last academic year. Dr. David Patterson (left) celebrates publication of his book A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad with Dr. Susan Chizeck and Dr. William Pervin. Dr. Nils Roemer, a professor of historical studies in the School of Arts and Humanities, had the busiest publishing year. He wrote German City, Jewish Memory: The Story of Worms and co-edited two other volumes –Crossing the Atlantic: Travel and Writing in Modern Times and Jewish Longings and Belongings in Modern European Consumer Culture. Other recognized books ranged from strategies in chess education to the Western stories of Ned Buntline. Dr. Adrienne McLean, professor of film studies, was the editor of Glamour in a Golden Age: Movie Stars of the 1930s. She was also the series editor for nine other volumes in the Star Decades series published by Rutgers University Press. Dr. Alex Piquero, shown with his wife and colleague, Dr. Nicole Leeper Piquero, was honored as the co-editor of the Handbook of Quantitative Criminology. “The diversity of our faculty is shown in the wide range of subjects for which they publish each year,” said Dr. Ellen Safley, director of libraries, who organized the reception in cooperation with Executive Vice President and Provost Hobson Wildenthal. “We enjoy recognizing their significant commitment to scholarship. We are proud to add these publications to our collection.” As in past receptions, the authors and editors were showcased in a gallery of framed posters. Included in the festivities were faculty members who were promoted from assistant professor without tenure to associate professor with tenure – a milestone in a professor’s career. The newly tenured professors are invited to select books that have been meaningful to them, either professionally or personally, to be added to the library’s collection. The reception was held Thursday, Oct. 13, in the McDermott Suite of the Eugene McDermott Library. Dr. Matt Bondurant talks about his book “The Wettest County in the World” and upcoming movie based on the book starring Shia Labeouf. Watch YouTube Video From White Nights to Billy Elliot, ballet has found its way, time and again, onto the silver screen and into the hearts of otherwise unlikely audiences. With Oscar nominations gracing Black Swan, ballet is once again on point in Hollywood and beyond. But the film isn’t all tutus and curtain calls – it reveals a darker shade of pink. In her 2008 book Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema, Dr. Adrienne L. McLean, professor of film and aesthetic studies at The University of Texas at Dallas, explores the symbiosis of ballet and film. Drawing on examples that range from musicals to tragic melodramas, or “mellers,” she suggests that commercial films have produced an image of ballet and its artists that is associated at once with joy, fulfillment, fame and power – and also with sexual and mental perversity, melancholy and death. Dr. Adrienne L. McLean, professor of film and aesthetic studies, explores the symbiosis of ballet and film in her book. McLean, who specializes in classical Hollywood film history and who has an MFA in dance, says the drama of the dance goes back a long way. “Variety used the term ‘ballet meller’ in the 1950s to refer to a film that was yet another in a long line of sometimes over-the-top and clichéd representations of ballet in the movies as something associated with death, illness, insanity, doom and so on,” she said. “The Red Shoes (1948) is probably the pre-eminent ballet meller, complete with narcissistic and domineering impresario, and a ballerina who wants to dance more than life itself and who dies because she is asked to choose between career and marriage.” But ballet is not just about melodrama – McLean says it was often present in classic Hollywood musicals as well. “Ballet was sometimes employed to raise the prestige or class value of a film, but it was often lampooned or criticized in the process in favor of more ‘popular’ dance forms,” she said. “ These dance forms often used ballet as their technical basis, but you wouldn’t know it from watching – think Gene Kelly doing pirouettes in khaki pants and loafers in Singin’ in the Rain.” The weight loss of Black Swan stars Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis to prepare for the film has been widely publicized, and at the time that the film came out, there was a controversy over a New York Times’ dance reviewer criticizing a principal dancer in a local production ofThe Nutcracker for having “eaten one sugarplum too many.” As McLean points out in her book, “the extreme thinness that we now expect of women dancers is, in ways that are amorphous and difficult to measure, likely a result of ballet’s intersection with forms of visual time-based media like film. There are all sorts of other reasons across the past century for the pressure for women to be extremely thin, but the way that bodies look in the movies has certainly been a factor, and not just in ballet. “There are certainly some driven and obsessive young women in the dance world, as there are in most high-profile or performance-based professions, and always have been,” McLean says. “But there are also plenty of regular folks who are devoted to ballet as their profession but who do not mutilate themselves, go insane, and so on. In general, the issue with all films about worlds that audiences may not have experienced extensively on their own in ‘real life’ is that films can construct our attitudes about that world, the people in it, and what art means and is. As [New Yorker dance critic] Joan Acocella wrote in 2004, ‘People don’t know about ballet from seeing it … people know about ballet from the movies.’ ”

narratives I have translated were recorded by field workers from the Center for Asia Minor Studies in Athens, who began their work interviewing refugees from the “Asia Minor Catastrophe” in the 1930’s. Well-trained scholars, some bilingual in Turkish and Greek, interviewed survivors in refugee settlements throughout Greece and compiled an archive of roughly 145,000 pages. Based on the evidence of 5,051 informants who had resettled in Greece, research was conducted on 1,375 of the 2,163 settlements inhabited by Greeks that were identified in Asia Minor. The excerpts that appear below are taken from two volumes on the Exodos [A and B, with each narrative assigned a number] (1). These accounts amount to a small fraction of the archival material, but they are representative, coming as they do from a wide range of diverse settlements and socio-economic classes. For millennia, Greeks lived and prospered in Asia Minor. In antiquity, from the 8th century BC, the Greek cities of Ionia (now coastal Turkey) were among the most prosperous in the region. Greek settlements in Asia Minor were a natural outgrowth of the commercial and cultural relations that had flourished in the Eastern Mediterranean since Minoan times. Homer was an Ionian; Sappho’s brother, from Lesbos, was a wealthy merchant in Sardis, and Sappho tells us that Lydian girls were among her pupils; the Greek historian Herodotus was from Halicarnassus; the Greek scientist-philosopher Thales was a Milesian; the list goes on. Whether under Persian or, later, Roman rule, the Greeks of Asia Minor were allowed to keep their own language and were granted a good deal of autonomy. Even when the Byzantine Empire gave way to Ottoman rule in the fifteenth century, the Greek population was allowed to practice Orthodox Christianity, to speak Greek, and to a large degree to govern itself on the local level. In fact, until the last years of Ottoman rule, the large Greek population, the smaller Armenian and Jewish populations, and other minority groups coexisted peacefully with one another and with the Turkish The situation began to change radically with the rise of the Young Turks’ Committee of Union and Progress, the Constitution of 1908 and the deposition of the Sultan in the following year. The Balkan Wars (1912-14) caused some upheaval, but the persecution of minority populations did not escalate and become systematic until Turkey entered the First World War on the side of Germany. The German adviser, General Liman von Sanders, promoted a genocidal policy that led to the massacre of much of the Armenian population in 1915. He also encouraged the persecution of the Greek population, whose expulsion and eradication he urged as necessary for the creation of a strong, modern state. Ironically, the “ethnic cleansing” of the Greek population did not begin seriously until after the victory of the Entente powers. In 1920, after much squabbling and cutting secret deals, the victorious powers signed a treaty at Sèvres which ceded Smyrna to Greece. The symbolic as well as real economic value of the flourishing commercial port of Smyrna, a city so predominantly Greek that it was known as “the city of the ghiaours [infidels]”, and elation over the defeat of Turkey aroused popular sentiment in Greece. Prime Minister Venizelos (arguably the architect of the Greek nation state) and a conservative Orthodox Church, exploited irredentist dreams of recapturing the Byzantine Empire. For centuries, many had dreamed of taking back “The City”—that is, Constantinople. Now “taking back Smyrna” became a rallying cry, as Britain and the other allied powers pressed Greece to lead the invasion into Turkey and enforce the terms agreed upon at the end of WWI. In May, 1919 the Greek army landed in Smyrna, and was at first victorious. Without the support of the British, however, which evaporated as soon as it became clear that Kemal’s forces would defeat the Ottoman army and that the political situation in Turkey was changing, the Greek army—sabotaged and hung out to dry in the interior—was doomed to defeat. The decisive defeat came in August 1922 and three months later an armistice was signed. The systematic burning of Smyrna by Turkish soldiers and mobs began on September 9th, 1922 and lasted for days. Neighborhoods of Armenians and Greeks were pillaged and burned, their inhabitants robbed, tortured, raped, led off to slaughter. The foreign ships, “neutral observers,” looked on. Elsewhere, the retreat of the Greek soldiers left Greek communities exposed to the pursuing Turkish soldiers, to the bands of terrorists under the leadership of local war lords, to opportunistic groups of common criminals. The “liberators” were often no better: Greek as well as Turkish villages that had survived the war were burned by retreating Greek soldiers, so that the Turkish soldiers pursuing them would find no food or shelter. Brutal murder—whether part of a policy of ethnic cleansing or the random acts of soldiers and thugs--, rape, pillage and terror preceded for years the Lausanne Agreement signed at the end of July, 1923. The Treaty called for the Compulsory Exchange of Minority Populations; all Greeks resident in Turkey (except those who could prove established residence in Constantinople) before October 30, 1918, were to be expelled from Turkey and “repatriated” to Greece; the much smaller number of Turks resident in Greece (except those who could prove established residence in Western Thrace at the signing of the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913) were to be expelled and “returned” to Turkey. The last Greek and Armenian refugees left Turkey by 1925. The influx of refugees, a third the size of the entire population of Greece (roughly five million), proved an overwhelming challenge to the country. For the vast majority of refugees, hardships were dire and survival a struggle. Many did not survive; almost all suffered. Here are some of their voices: Andreas Haranis was from Gerenköy, 33 km N of Smyrna. The town had 1,000 inhabitants in 1922, almost all Greeks originally from Lesbos. He was taken prisoner and marched to a forced labor camp. His wife and children had gone to relatives on Lesbos earlier and he was eventually released and joined them. Ironically, since he had joined the Greek army and was a POW who could be exchanged for a Turkish POW, he fared better than many innocent civilians. “They took everyone on a forced march to the interior. After the first night, the Turks selected the prettiest girls and raped them. They took my niece too. She was screaming, ‘Grandpa, save me!’ My father wept when he heard her. He had always been a strong man, but now he could do nothing to help her. Two of my fellow-villagers were there, they told me about it. When those two saw what was going to be done to everyone, they jumped into the river and escaped. All the rest were dragged to Magnesia and they killed them in the ravine at Sipylos. Out of my whole family, I’m the only one who survived. My parents, three brothers and sisters, five nephews and nieces—the Turks slaughtered them all.” [A61-62] Panayiotis Marselas was also a soldier. He had been serving in Thrace but was sent to Smyrna in August 1922 to accompany and deliver a group of soldiers who had been tried in a military court and found guilty. He was in Smyrna when the Turkish army entered the city and the fires began, starting with the Armenian neighborhood. “There were fires everywhere. People were trying to escape from the city, but the Turkish sentries had cordoned off the city and were shooting anyone who tried to flee. Those who could swim and managed to get to the sea jumped in. If the Turks saw them, they shot them in the water. If they managed to escape unseen, some made it to the Allied ships, but even if they managed to climb up, they were thrown back into the water by the crew. Some drowned, others made it back to land. The British, French and Italians sat in the coffee shops and had a good At some point, people were allowed to leave. After two or three days, there was an order, we should come to the docks and leave. We did manage to send off our father, mother and sister to the docks, but we two boys stayed behind. After an hour, we headed out too, but we were captured by Turkish civilians and shut up in a jail. About ten at night, they took us out and gathered together some 5,000 prisoners. They marched us through the Turkish quarters. We passed through the Jewish quarter as well. The Jews were nastier to us than the Turks were. We got to Agios Konstandinos [outskirts of Smyrna] where the major slaughter began. There were fifty priests among the captives, and they were killed first….” [The informant goes on to describe killings and other atrocities and hardships on the forced march to the labor camps at Magnesia. Those who arrived numbered only 1,000, and they were officially recorded as prisoners, given numbers and used for forced labor. When the time came to transfer them to Aidini and send them back to Greece, only 500 survivors remained, one tenth of the captives who had been rounded up in Smyrna.] Theodora Kontou was a child in 1922, from a village 8 km SE of Nymphaio/Nif and 32 km ESE of Smyrna. The village of Grytzalia [Kyzylzali] was divided into three sections: 1,300 Greeks and 800 Turks lived in the Upper Village; 500 Turks lived in the Middle Village; 50 Greeks lived in the Lower Village. (Taken as a whole, the village had 1,350 Greeks and 1,300 Turks "We went from the village to Smyrna. We thought we would be coming back. We went to rest at St. John's church. There were a lot of people there. A friend of my father's took us to his house. We stayed there. He took his family and left without telling us anything. He left secretly. The Turks came in. They slaughtered our father and mother, my uncle and aunt, and my three brothers. My younger sisters and I—one was two-and-a-half, the other three-and-a-half—we were hiding under a little storage space and they didn’t see us. We stayed there for twelve days. No food, no water. The house had some kind of basin with some water that dripped into it. What could I do? I wanted to wet my lips a little. I'd wet the hem of my dress, hold my nose and suck a little sip. From the stench, you wanted to vomit. One of my little sisters had a bullet wound in her foot. As the days went by, and the corpses got more bloated, they stank--you can’t imagine how they stank. Turkish women came to steal and they couldn't even stand to come in, they grabbed what they could in a hurry: chickens, spoons, some copper pots, and they ran out without seeing us. One day God must have given me the notion to venture out a bit. I made the sign of the cross, took my wounded little sister on my back and the other by the hand, and went out into the road. I was running, trying to catch up with the crowd of people fleeing. Then I saw a girl sitting on a pile of stones. I called out to her, I wanted someone to help me, someone to talk to. This girl—not a word. She sat motionless. I didn't notice anything, just kept talking to her. I saw her eyes were bugging out, but I didn’t think anything of it. Then I looked closer. What did I see? They'd rammed a piece of wood up inside her from behind, and it was sticking out of her mouth. That's when I started running faster and faster. But what was I to do with two babies? I went into a church, but because we stank—rotten blood, the baby's festering wound, our hair, our clothes—they chased us out of the church. What could I do now? We curled up like little puppies in a corner outside. So many years ago, but I can't forget. I feel it's happening right now. We wept, we mourned, we talked about it over and over. My mother didn't die when everyone else did. They had ripped out her guts, she was covered in blood, and she was warning me, giving me advice: ‘When you see things are getting really bad, throw yourself into the sea.’ She took her purse out of her pocket and gave it to me, and a blood-soaked photograph as well. I still have it but I can't show it to you now. In the end, I followed along with the crowd. We walked and walked, and came to the cordon. The Turks didn’t want to let us through. Now what! I got first one baby through, then the other, then finally I got through too, and eventually, after a lot of problems, we got on a boat to Mytilene. From there they took us to Thessaloniki, and from there, here [Athens]. I had a cousin who was a dressmaker, and she placed me as a servant in a household. I was fourteen. My mistress knew a lady who was able to get my two baby sisters into an orphanage. One of them died at twenty-two. The other is alive. She's married, and lives in Nea Erithrea. I got married. I married a quiet, God-fearing man, someone from back home. But I've seen a lot of suffering." [A42-43] Vassilis Rallis was from the coastal town of Çandarli, 61 km NW of Smyrna, 29 SW of Pergamos (Bergama) and 47 NE of Ayvalik; it was built on the ruins of the ancient Aeolian city of Priene and had 2,000 Greek and Turkish inhabitants before 1922. Guilt and self-recrimination define Rallis’ memories and his view of himself. "In ’22, there was a massacre in my village as well. I don’t want to remember it. I was to blame that my children were slaughtered, and my wife. I was focussed on saving property, I wanted to save lifeless things. I don’t want to remember it; my soul is heavy as a stone. My little boy was pleading with me, 'Daddy, take us along!' But me, I said, 'I’ll be back,' idiot that I was, as if it were in my power to make good on that promise. I couldn’t imagine what would happen. I put all our good stuff on a little boat that I had, and went to Mytilene, intending to come back. But I didn’t get a chance to, the massacre happened. They took everyone to a fortress and slaughtered them all. Four sons and my wife, all dead because of me[….] My wife’s wedding dress survived, and when I remarried, this one here used the material to make some dresses for herself. That’s the way it goes. 'Daddy, take us too!' But I was pigheaded, I wasn’t there when they needed me. That wretched fortress became a mass grave; the whole place filled with the unburied dead. All of Asia Nota Diamandi came from Dikeli, a port and coastal market town 26 km WSW of Pergamos (Bergama), on the Ayvalik-Smyrna road. Before 1922 it had a mixed population of 4,000 Greeks and 3,000 Turks. "My grandmother was over ninety years old, and she seldom went out of the house; we didn’t tell her much about what was going on, either, to spare her any bitterness and sadness. The night we set out to get on my uncle’s fishing boat, she was walking on the beach, stepping on the countless corpses, sometimes she stumbled over bones, sometimes her feet sank into puddles of blood. She kept asking us, 'What road is this, that you’ve brought me on? It’s full of rocks. When did it rain and make so much mud?' Only when the sun came up did she see that her stockings and her shoes were steeped in blood. How could she know the Irregulars had massacred so many people on the beach, how much blood had been shed unjustly? While the poor wretches were waiting, gathered from the villages all around, they were spared no horror. The Irregulars would snatch girls, strip everyone of money and the clothes on their backs, leave them terrified, hungry and thirsty. All their rage at what the Greek army had done to them got turned against those poor unfortunate refugees. And forget about the French! I’m ashamed even to talk about their behavior. Quite a few young men would swim to the ships to avoid being taken prisoner, and instead of protecting them the French crews would chop off their hands when they tried to climb aboard. That’s the kind of monsters they At Mytilene, on Lesbos—the truth is a lot of people had landed all at once—they put us in the public garden. When winter came, they stuffed us into the movie house, and some of us in the schools. Because of us, their schools weren’t in session for quite some time. They gave us a small relief stipend. Some refugees worked as day laborers, some women cleaned the houses of the rich or were scrubwomen in stores, some made lace and knit stockings to sell. The sick begged in the streets, and the poor little children too!" [A145] Aglaia Kontou came from Mainemeni (Menemen), 22 km NNW of Smyrna; it was a central market town and commercial center on the Smyrna-Magnesia railroad line. Before 1922 it had 12,500 inhabitants: 5,300 Greeks, a very few Jews and Armenians, and the rest of the population Turks. She describes a moment on the docks, fleeing from Smyrna. żThere were Turkish guards there, culling out the young men as the crowd of refugees approached the ship. When the people in front of us got on board, we came face to face with the guards, and I was so frightened they would take my husband that I fainted. An Englishman snatched the baby out of my arms, tossed it to someone on the ship, and gave me some water from his canteen to revive me. In all the commotion, and what with my fainting, I don°t know how, but somehow my husband was spared. Praise the Lord, who helped us. They shoved us onto the boat. When I recovered, I saw that I didn°t have my baby and I started to cry. But my husband said: 'Woman, not a word of complaint! Be grateful we°re not at the mercy of the TurksȚ' A little while later, a woman came by, shouting that there was a kid in the hold and it was crying because it had lost its mother. I ran to find him, and it was my own son." Maria Birbili came from Yargcilar, 10 km SW of Vourla (Urla), 35 km SW of Smyrna, in the Erithrea peninsula. There were 1,000 inhabitants before the persecution, all Greeks. Fleeing the fighting and the massacre in the area of Vourlas, some villagers made it to the nearby Greek island of Chios. "We made it to Chios on a fishing boat, with a few other folks from our village. At first we stayed in the harbor, sleeping on the bare ground [….] Then we gathered up the few things we had and went to an orchard, but the owner drove us out; he was afraid we might eat a tangerine or two. Next we went to an olive grove. They tried to drive us away from there too, but we didn’t leave. My husband said, 'You jerk! We’ve been driven out, where do you expect us to go?' So we gathered up some stones and arranged them, just like children playing house, and we stayed there. One evening, it started pouring; we had no way to get out of the rain, so we huddled under the staircase of a house. In the morning, the owner opened the door, caught sight of us, and closed the front door again. A few minutes later, he came out again, with three slices of bread and a bit of cheese for the children. 'We came here to get out of the rain,' we said. 'We’re not looking for charity.' We spent a month on Chios, and we never saw an open door or an open window. Later we broke into a storage shed and stayed there. We came to Chios on September 1st, we left for Chania, Crete, on October 2nd. Someone took us to work picking olives in Paliochora [on the southern coast, a long journey through the mountains from Chania in the North]. It took us two days and a night to get there, walking through mountains and ravines. When we got to the village, he wanted us to sleep in a shed. 'I’m not going in there,' I said. 'If I wanted to be a captive, I would have stayed in Asia Minor.' Then the town manager came and put us in a cell. That was something! No mattress, no covers. The villagers came to gawk at us. 'Do you speak Greek?' 'Did you have a church where you come from?' 'Look, they’re wearing European clothes!' After a year we picked up and left, we went to Chania. We stayed on a Turkish plantation. It used to belong to one Turk, and they divided it among sixty families. You can imagine how much we got! In 1950, my two children left and came to Athens, and gradually we all settled here.” [A72] Eftyhia Roussou came from Kouitzaki, a small all-Greek village with only about 400 inhabitants. It was located 82 km SW of Aydini and 18 km SW of the city of Mylasa (Milas), a commercial center with 3,500 Greeks, 3,000 Turks and about 500 Jews. The village was 38 km SE of Gerontas , where many refugees went in search of boats. [Turkish "Ören Gerontas" , “old man” in Greek, is a distortion of the ancient name "hieron Apollonos", or Apollo’s sanctuary] "A big war started in 1914. All the peoples got into it, and Greece and Turkey too. There were blockades, folks suffered. In the beginning, we lived quiet; we had enough to eat, and no one bothered us. But later things outside got nasty, and so did things at home. The Greeks made a guerilla revolt, and the English gave them arms. They’d come down into the villages and steal, and attack the Turks. They’d steal their livestock and run off. They came down at night, they left at night. We never got a good look at them. The Greeks who showed up every day would tell us: ‘You have to go. Get on fishing boats and cross over to the islands. There’s going to be big trouble, and you’ll be destroyed.’ We didn’t want to believe them. Do you think it’s easy to leave all the good things you have and go away? […] We left with just the clothes on our backs, the slippers on our feet. We took nothing, just a few coins hidden in our bodices. We left the house just as it was, with food in the kitchen. A Turkish neighbor came, crying because we were leaving. I locked the house and gave her the key for safekeeping, until my return. We thought we’d go away and come back, and live in our homes again." [A199-200] Angelis Mavridis came from Sariköy, (ancient Zeleia), a town in the Panormos region, located 35 km SW of the large port city of Panormos and 28 km SW of Artaki. Only 300-400 of its 9,000 inhabitants were Greeks. "We used to have a very good life there, we lived like brothers with the Turks. Even after the events and the wars that brought hatred between the two [Greeks and Turks], we experienced no harm. At Easter, every Christian had a Turkish friend, a sagdiç or koumbaros [the speaker glosses the Turkish term with a Greek word denoting a kinship relationship through marriage or through sponsorship at a wedding or a baptism.] to whom he sent eggs and Easter bread. The Turks looked forward to that, they thought these things were delicious. And when they had a feast, they sent us baked goods, and sweets -- you wouldn't believe how fantastic they were! For the Resurrection, we would fire our rifles in the air, as much as we wanted; if a policeman came by, we'd give him an Easter egg, and we would all go on our way without any problems. (2) The Turks revered and honored our priest. They also respected the procession on Good Friday, and they honored the Virgin, they called her Meriem ana. [ … ] When a Turk was a guest at a banquet, no matter if he wasn’t hungry, he'd always sit and taste the food, after saying his prayer. And if a Christian was at a Turkish meal, it was a great insult for him not to partake of the food. We would invite them and they would invite us to weddings and community celebrations. This was especially true among friends. In general, until the Constitution, everything was fine. But even afterwards, when the Terror started, we still experienced no harm. Even during the Balkan Wars, everything was all right. Bad things started happening during the Mobilization [for WWI]. At that point, they drafted the Greeks too. Whoever could avoid it, did well. Most of those who went never came back. We also went hungry--we had no bread to eat. I was a little boy, but I had to work in the fields as a day laborer, in exchange for a bit of bread. After the Great War, during the Armistice, and especially when the Greeks landed in Smyrna and came closer to our area, a civil war broke out between the Circassians--we had a lot of them in our parts (their leader was Aznavour) -- and Kemal's forces. It was village against village, one brigand-chieftain against another, they had a sort of vendetta way of doing things...I remember going once with my father to Siziköy [a neighboring Circassian village 6 km distant]]. The Circassians liked us Greeks. So they welcomed us and gave us food, and right then one of them showed up and started talking to the others in that peculiar language of theirs, that sounds like walnuts clattering against each other, being mixed up in a bowl: kraka-kroukou. What had happened? Their warlord Gel Islam had been killed by an Albanian warlord from Yortan [a Turkish town 9 km from Sariköy with about 200 houses]. They didn’t tell us any of this--we found out later. They just insisted that we stay and eat and drink, they had a bit of business to take care of in a hurry. They left, and after quite a bit of time, they came back. They had killed Gafer Ali, the Albanian from Yortan.. Around that time we knew fear and danger too. As the Greek army advanced, the Turks became quite enraged and savage. Some Irregulars came to our village and said to our Turks: 'Why do you hold on to these lousy Infidels? Why don’t you cleanse them out?' We got scared that they were going to slaughter us, and for two or three nights we didn’t sleep at home. Some of us went to the basement of the school, others to the homes of Turkish friends. But the local government didn't let anything bad happen. And when the Greek army came, no one bothered the Turks either." [ A335-336] (3) Vrettos Menexopoulos was from the coastal town of Hili (Sile) on the Black Sea, near the Bosporos, 52 km NW of Nicomedea and 58 km NE of Constantinople. Before 1922 it had about 1,000 Greek households and 500 Turkish households. Menexopoulos’ father was a shopkeeper. "In our region the Turks and Turko-Lazoi were good people, and they loved us and supported us. When you went to their village, they never asked what you were. They'd lead you into their guest-room, bring you food and drink; they'd keep you company, put you up for the night and send you on your business the next morning. After the Constitution, things got rough. We didn't know much about Greece. In our living rooms, we had a portrait of the Russian Czar. We only learned about Greece during the Balkan Wars. Before that, we were familiar with Russia, Bulgaria, Rumania. We didn't know about America either. In the Balkan Wars, our boys fought as soldiers too. They gave them weapons, and took them in the navy, too; that is, they were in the regular armed forces. But they would desert and run off to Bulgaria with the Bulgarians or to Greece with the Greeks. That's why later, in the Great War, they didn't give them weapons, but put them in the Labor Battalions. In the Great War, at first they'd let the Greeks pay a fee to be exempt from the draft [in fact all minorities, not only Greeks, were allowed to purchase exemption from the draft]. Later they stopped that and there was no escaping the labor battalions unless you could sneak off or bribe someone. […] In 1917, on account of the deserters who joined the resistance, we had to go into exile. […] My father had left a lot of gold with a Turkish friend of his. As soon as we came back, he gave it all back to him. We found our houses just as we had left them. Whoever had left gold or money with a Turkish friend got it back. They returned everything. […] There was an amnesty, and the rebels came down and surrendered all their weapons to the French. That is, they were supposed to surrender their weapons, but they hid and kept the best ones. During the war, they hadn't been plundering, but now they went and stole 3,000 sheep from a Turk, Azlan Bey. So he got together a bunch of armed men and came and burned our villages. When they burned our villages, neither the Foreigners nor the Greeks had gotten there yet." [Excerpts from A 339-341. Menexopoulos goes on to tell of the arrival of the Greek army with the British, of how Greek soldiers fooled the British commanding officer by having one of their own men fire shots from the direction of a Turkish village so they could then set fire to the village in retaliation for an attack, and plunder and steal livestock. He describes the Indian soldiers in the British force of occupation, and how the local Turkish police acted as a buffer between the Indian soldiers and the local population. He describes the departure of British and Greek troops, the ensuing acts of brutal violence committed by Kemal’s soldiers, and stresses that the local Turks still treated their Greek neighbors well, as did the Turks in villages along the escape route of those Greeks who survived the slaughter.] Fotini Marangou-Karavela was a widow when she had to leave her native village of Akk/Asprochori, a village near the ancient Miletus with 4,500 Greek inhabitants before 1922, and no Turks. She worked in the tobacco fields both in her home village and later in Greece. Being shunted from one location to another in Greece is typical, as are the hardships endured by many refugees for whom there was no shelter and no organized relief. Less common is her matter-of-fact and sometimes wryly humorous tone, her lack of self-pity and her thankfulness for having survived and done all right by her daughters; she never complains about the hard work in the tobacco fields that was her lot both in her home village and in Greece. "We went through a lot. My house was isolated. I worked in the tobacco fields. I woke up, took care of my children and went out. Quiet, a strange silence. Oh God, the news traveled in whispers from one of us woman to the other: the Greek army was in retreat. I left. I was all alone with two little girls, one five and the other seven years old. What can you take with you? I just grabbed a burlap sack and tossed in a few of the children’s clothes. My husband went for a soldier in the Turkish army in 1918. God must have given him the bright idea to bathe in a lake! It was January, he caught a chill. They sent us a letter that said he was sick with pneumonia, but on the mend. After a bit another letter came, saying he was dead. He died, and escaped! Okay, so what can you do with two children? What was to become of us? We got on the road towards the [Aegean] coast, maybe we could find a fishing boat to take us to Samos. We walked for hours, we crossed the Maeander on a boat. On the other side, sky and a broad plain…And it started to pour, torrential rain, hail stones, it seemed like the end of the world. My littler girl was drenched to the bone, she was tired, what do you expect, poor thing? She had turned blue. I put her on my lap. I thought: should I revive her or leave her to die? What’s the point of dragging her along? I rubbed her dry with a blanket; I don’t even know where that blanket came from. I blew on her hands, I pressed her against my bosom, and little by little she came back to life. We set out again. A crowd of people was walking along with us, people from my village; some I knew, some I didn’t. Afraid I’d lose my children, I was gripping the burlap bundle in my teeth and holding a child by each hand. That’s how I walked. Eventually we reached Gerontas on the coast. Another disaster there! There was nowhere to go. Not a boat in sight, not even a small fishing boat. Nothing. So we turned back and tried Kelembesi [near ancient Priene]. They put us in the barracks for the Greeks. Bedbugs! It was unbelievably horrible; we were exhausted but we couldn’t sleep a wink, not me, not my girls. We went to Sokia, hoping maybe we could get a train to Smyrna. Lots of others came too, from Sokia, Akköy, Kelembesi. When we got to Smyrna -- wailing and lamentation, we were all jammed up against one another. Somehow or other, I was sitting in a corner on a sack of flour. As I got up, I dragged the sack along. Someone said the flour wasn’t mine, but I told him to hush up and he did. That flour saved us. I’d knead some flour and water in my lap, right on my apron,--no way I had a bowl!—and we’d gather a few twigs and scraps of paper on the beach and light a fire. On a scrap of old tin I’d bake some pretty miserable flatbread; that’s all we had to eat. We used up the whole sack of flour. Every day people would get on ships. Our turn came too. We went to Thessaloniki. We suffered a lot there. Too many folks came all at once. My children fell asleep exhausted by their crying. They were hungry. It was about midnight when the Committee, the aid people, managed to cook up some rice. How could I get close, how could I get some food? And where could I put it? Pushing and shoving along with everyone else, I managed to get close. I didn’t even have a kerchief, nothing. So I held up my apron and they put a bit of rice in it. I woke up the girls and fed them. Later they put us on boats for Naxos. They treated us well there, they gave us tea, coffee, rum, they cooked food for us. But that was the limit of their compassion: at night they sent us to a dry gully to sleep. The sky got angry, it started to look like rain. Then a woman called out from her veranda: ‘Aren’t you Christians? Aren’t you Greeks? Have you no fear of God? Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? If it rains the water will rise and those women and children will drown.’ So they found us a house whose owners were away in America, and they took us there – as if we could all fit! So finally they bit the bullet and opened the school buildings to lodge us there. Some time later, we came to Eretria. I worked in tobacco and brought up my children. Now they have children, and I have grandchildren. Praise the Lord." [A185-186]. Saroula Skyfti came from the small village of Eriköy, 15.5 km NW of Magnesia and 39 km NE of Smyrna; there were fewer than 1,000 Greek and Turkish inhabitants, with the Greeks in a minority. She tells of how the police left the village on the sly, in August of 1922, without telling the inhabitants that the Greek army had been defeated. As she is fleeing, she meets a Turkish neighbor on the road (whom she addresses as “Grandpa Mehmet”), who helps her and her family. After suffering many hardships and witnessing atrocities, she finally gets on a boat to Chios, where she experiences the same inhospitable reception others recall. From there she goes to Crete, where she picks olives and lives in very primitive conditions. Her family then moves to Thebes, but she and a girlfriend go to Athens in search of relatives. “'They’re building a settlement,'” they told me, 'and folks are moving in before the houses are finished.' […] We went and found my cousin, she had a half-finished house; a bunch of women from my village lived nearby too. There was a house a bit farther away, the same house I’m living in now. So I wrote my mother: 'We’ve got a house in Piraeus, come quick!' My mother wrote back: 'Are you crazy? We sent you to rent a place; what’s this business about a house?' Then I explained that the house was half finished, without doors or windows, and refugees were moving in without waiting for any kind of official permission, whoever got there first grabbed a place. You just hang an empty burlap sack in the doorway, go in as a squatter, and that’s how you claim a house. I was sleeping at my neighbor’s, because I was afraid to be alone at night. In the morning I’d go back to my place and find my piece of burlap torn down and thrown aside, and other folks would be in the house. 'Get out!' I’d say. 'It’s mine!' Some would leave, others stayed. One day a family showed up –Antigone, Katina, their mother, and a male cousin. They told me: 'We’ve claimed this place.' 'What did you do with my burlap?' Next door lived an old woman; one of her sons was a soldier in Plastiras’ army. [General Plastiras brutally persecuted political “dissidents,” and was feared.]. She and I would chat during the day; she spoke Greek. She had her son’s uniform jacket on a hanger. I asked her to lend it to me, and I hung it up in my house. Pretending to be talking to the old woman, so the family that had moved in to my space could overhear me, I said in Turkish that both my brothers were Plastiras’ soldiers, stationed in Athens, and that they were coming in the evening. 'Don’t worry,' I added, 'You can live in one corner of the house and I’ll stay in another.' 'Vai oglum' [Turkish, roughly: oh dear, bad luck, my son] the old lady said, 'Go find Andreas and tell him this here girl has two brothers in the military. It just won’t do, me in one corner with two girls and her in the other with two young men.' They all agreed with her, and they left and found another place a bit farther down. Remembering those days now, we can laugh. Another morning, two bullies showed up, with their hands stuffed in their pockets and a lot of attitude. They slept there and presented themselves in the morning. If it hadn’t been for my godmother’s brother, a young man, I would have lost the house. He confronted them: 'What business have you got here? About face, get out!' I owe this house to that boy. I’m still living right here!" 1. "Exodos A: Martyries apo tis eparchies ton dytikon paralion tes Mikras Asias/Testimonies from Provinces on the West Coast of Asia Minor." (Center for Asia Minor Studies: Athens 1980); "Exodos B: Martyries apo tis eparchies tes Kentrikes kai Notias Mikras Asias/Testimonies from the Provinces of Central and Southern Asia Minor." (Center for Asia Minor Studies: Athens 1982). I would like to thank the Center for Asia Minor Studies for enabling my archival work and for permission to publish my translations of these narratives. Readers who would like more information, see Thalia Pandiri, “‘We Used to Live in Like Brothers with the Turks—We Were Driven out of Eden and Came Here to Hell’: Voices from the Asia Minor Disaster.” In "The Dispossessed". Edited Peter I. Rose with a foreword by Liv Ullman, (University of Massachusetts Press. Amherst and Boston, 2005, 44-69.) 2. Many narratives echo such recollections. One example comes from Sophia Devletoglou, settled in Kokkinia near Piraeus, who talks about her home town of Arabisos [Turkish Arapsum] 75 km W of Caesarea, in the valley of the river Alys. In 1924 the town had 384 Greek-speaking Greeks and 1,500 Turks. “Before the war we got on very well with the Turks. We were like brothers and sisters. They were our guests and we were theirs. Whenever we had a festival, a wedding, a funeral, they came to us….And when they celebrated the Feast of Sacrifices, they would send us meat. They invited us to their weddings.” [B152]. 3. Eudoxia Ioannidou from Skopi (Turkish Uskubu), 25 km NE of Caesarea in Cappadocia has similar recollections of better days. In 1924, the town had 140 Turcophone Greeks, 250 Turks, and had relations with surrounding Greek, Turkish and Armenian communities. “We lived well before the wars. We got along fine with the Turks. We would go to their homes, they’d invite us when they had any festivities, and we would send them gifts of sweets and pastries. We gave embroidered head-coverings as bridal gifts. The same was true for them too. They would come whenever we had a festive event, share our food and celebrate with us, just as if they were family […]One day we found out that the battle of Smyrna was going on. Our local Turks kept hearing that Greek soldiers were killing Turks and throwing their corpses into the sea. They got angry, and began threatening that they would do the same and worse to us. We were scared. We kept expecting that we would be attacked, we were afraid to go out alone. We’d shut ourselves up in our homes early, before sundown; as soon as the herdsman led our sheep back to the village, we would lock and bolt our doors….” [B107].

Ghost Town, seen at the Regal Kaufman Astoria, aud. #8, 1 slithy toad. Eagle Eye, also at the Kaufman, #4, 3 slithy toads. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist at the AMC Empire, aud #18, 1 toad. Religulous @ the Empire #19, 2.5 toads Lakeview Terrace at the AMC Loews 34th St., #11, 2.5 toads Appaloosa at the 34th St. #5, 1.5 toads Towelhead at the City Cinemas Angelika, #5, 1 toad, or 3 toads, or 2 toads, or I don't know how many Office Space at the AFI Silver #1, 2.5 toads Burn After Reading at the Landmark Bethesda Row #3, 2 slithy toads The Pool at the Landmark E St. Cinemas #6, 1.5 toads From worst to best... Ghost Town and Nick and Norah both share the same flaw, that they're so flat and so essentially dull that I decided to take a nap during each. While the reviews on both were mixed, both did have their share of positive notices, and I just can't figure out why. The kinds of screwball comedies Ghost Town tries to channel were fleet and fast and sophisticated. This movie thinks sophistication requires no more than Greg Kinnear in a tux. Ricky Gervais is like a 45 playing as a 33. During the moments I was awake, I kept wondering why none of the ghosts had died in their PJs. Don't many people die in their sleep, yet all of them died at work or home. Or did they get a change of clothes on their way to Ghost Town? Why did Andrew Wheeler like Ghost Town? Were the parts I slept through that much better? Nick and Norah tries to channel something like Scorcese's After Hours only done by way of teen romantic comedy, only there's no chemistry between Michael Cera and Kat Denning, whose smile seems torturously forced throughout. They try kind of so hard to be NYC hip and film in NYC but the ending makes no sense because the 5th Avenue address would be some upscale apartment building where I'm positive Where's Fluffy will not be found. They discriminate against bookstores by filming at the corner of 8th St. and Avenue of the Americas but away from the B&N where Brandon Sanderson will be signing and only toward the Gray's Papaya. Appaloosa gets 1.5 toads. I'd kind of like to give it at least 2 because the cast has so many people worth seeing, but at the end of of the day and as amiable as it is there's just no point to it, and I have to be a little harsh. There's also voice-over narration at the beginning and end, and the lines at the end I hated. They insist on declaiming what any reasonably intelligent watcher of the movie should be able to get from the film itself, which reflects either a lack of confidence by the filmmaker or a lack of respect for the audience's intelligence. The Pool also gets 1.5 toads. My sister really liked it, so I decided I could see it while I was down in DC before my train back, and then I read her second e-mail "remember we have different tastes in movies and you won't like this," and she was right about that. Set in India. Nice teenager working at a hotel doing maid work and handyman work and etc. Friends with a slightly younger boy who works at a restaurant. There's a pool house next to the hotel, older boy falls for the daughter of the family that visits from a bigger city for the summer. They have adventures with and without the younger kid who may be somewhat jealous, summer ends and lives have changed. There's some nice cultural stuff going on, but I feel as if this same movie if done as Amerindie cinema wouldn't go anywhere and that the people who like it including not only my sister but also Stephen Holden in the NY Times are giving it extra credit because it's shot in India and thus exotic. For my part I think 1 toad might be more like it, but out of respect for my sister's opinion I've given it a half-toad raise. Burn After Reading is worth seeing and worth not seeing, hence 2 toads. Considering I don't like the Coen Brothers all that much, this counts as a rave. Basically, the cast is really good, with George Clooney and Brad Pitt and John Malkovich and Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton and JK Simmons, so it's fun to watch on that account. The critics have lambasted it in some instances (and certainly by comparison to their usual unadulterated encomiums of praise for the Coen Bros) because they say it's not likeable, but that's more often a problem in the movies the critics like than in this one which they liked less. It's very hard not to like a Brad Pitt or George Clooney, and none of the cast are working overtime at being unloveable in this movie. More accurate to say that the movie drifts along until it reaches a random ending after a lot of random plot events. Religulous and Lakeview Terrace are both a tad above average on my toad scale. Lakeview Terrace is directed by Neil LaBute, whose plays I've often loved (The Shape of Things, Fat Pig) but who is less consistently successful on stage. The script is co-written by playwright Howard Korder whose 1988 drama Boys' Life has just been revived in NYC. It has elements of cheesier landlord/tenant horror thrillers like Pacific Heights but overall does I think hold to a slightly higher plane in putting within the context of race relations and parenting and other more issue-related angles. Another movie that gets points for having good cast members; Samuel L. Jackson is a plus in even the most negative-filled movie. I'm not sure why I'm not giving Religulous a higher rating. Though I attend Sabbath service more often than not over the course of the year I am very wary of the extremes in pretty much any and every religion which can meet on the left and right in some very scary places, which is ultimately Maher's point. His interview at a company that specializes in making "shomer shabbas" products for Jews resonates very deeply with me. Under Jewish law there are lots of specific things you can't do on the sabbath, but because some of these can be very inconvenient even many very religious Jews can find many ways to try and circumvent. When if ever can you go so far to try and circumvent the rule as to in fact be breaking it? When if ever can you go so far as to make a mockery of the self-righteousness that some very observant Jews have toward those who are less so? These can be real issues in my family where there are five siblings who received very similar backgrounds in Judaism but who go thru life now at every point on the scale from agnosticism/atheism to orthodoxy. One example to me is a concept known as an "eruv." You can't carry things outside your home on Shabbat, but there is this idea that if you put a very big string around something you can define it as your home. The Jewish summer camp I went to had this eruv strung up around its whole grounds and it would be checked every Friday afternoon to be sure it was intact, and in that context it seemed not an unreasonable thing, but it does strike me as unreasonable to have an eruv around the entire island of Manhattan. So some rabbis say the whole idea is ridiculous, some say if you can have an eruv you can have one as big as you please, I'm in the middle, and we're all reading the same source material. In the Religulous section, the company shows off a phone with a special Shabbas phone that dials all the numbers constantly, so when you hit a number you stop the phone from dialing which somehow makes the number dial which somehow makes it OK. My religion isn't the only one that presents questions like these. How do you buy a house if your religion forbids mortgage interest? The Washington Post has had some articles on this topic which I'd link to except they're buried in a pay-to-access archive. I love the topic, watching Real Time With Bill Maher is one of the nice side benefits of needing HBO for True Blood, and I like the movie, but I just don't love it. I feel awkward to give Eagle Eye the same rating as Rachel Getting Married because they're so different and one is like so clearly an entry in the good movie sweepstakes. But Eagle Eye succeeds every bit as admirably in its efforts as Rachel Getting Married, and I enjoyed both quite a bit. Eagle Eye does borrow from a zillion other fllms ranging from Enemy of the State to 2001 to multiple Alfred Hitchcock to Wanted (well, it couldn't have borrowed from that since it wasn't released). Unlike the movie Stargate, which borrows from 12 other movies in a boring kind of a way, Eagle Eye does it in a lively and energetic way. It has Shia LaBeouf who really does deserve to be the next big thing that he's becoming. I've liked him so much where I have seen him that I've come to regret not seeing Holes. There's real chemistry between him and Michelle Monaghan, unlike what we find in Nick and Norah. It's all very ludicrous but I was entertained entirely throughout, and it gives value more money. I think I may do a full separate post on Towelhead, which is a little too interesting to get a quick paragraph at the bottom here.

A remarkable journey The couple grew up in Berlin as teenagers during the Nazis’ rise to power in the 1930s. Both were half-Jewish, a class of people “grudgingly half-tolerated, half despised,” Richard Hyse later told a friend. Richard Hyse said he wasn’t allowed to attend college because of his ethnicity, so he became a blacksmith. He also spoke five languages. During World War II, he was able to convince authorities he was from northern Italy, according to conversations he had with fellow professor Richard Zakin. He led a team of repairmen who fixed bomb-damaged buildings in Berlin. A year before the end of the war, Jo was sentenced to a concentration camp after befriending a group of Jewish orphans, Zakin said she told him. She never talked about her time in the concentration camp, except to say she spent time as a seamstress. The Hyses started dating in communist East Berlin after the war. In 1947, they moved to West Berlin and then flew to the United States as displaced persons. Their experiences made them opponents of communism and ardent supporters of American ideals. In New York City, Richard Hyse found work in a Brooklyn shipyard; Jo became a seamstress in a factory. At his uncle’s urging, Richard Hyse enrolled in a local university taking night classes, and earned an accounting degree magna cum laude. He later earned his doctorate degree from New York University. The couple moved to Oswego in 1961 where Richard Hyse became the SUNY college’s first economics professor. He also founded the business department. The pair bought a house on East Seventh Street — the only one they ever owned, a “foundation for their lives,” a relative said. The couple established themselves in the lakeside community. Richard Hyse helped organize the United University Professions union at SUNY Oswego. Jo dove into her love of art, selling her watercolor paintings and becoming exhibit director of the Oswego Art Guild in 1964. “They loved the United States. They loved Oswego, N.Y., 13126,” said Daryl Kelehan, who is Jo Hyse’s niece and the couple’s closest relative. Richard built oak bookcases in his woodworking shop in the basement. He filled them — floor to ceiling in the living room and study — with books on economics, politics, religion and language. The watercolors created in Jo’s second-floor art studio were displayed in almost every room. Another room was filled with old sewing machines and a table with crochet patterns and needles. Jo Hyse stood less than five feet tall — she wore stylish size 4½ shoes and had the kitchen floor raised so she could reach the cabinets. Her husband rode a 30-year-old stationary bike in the second-floor hallway every day until he physically was unable to do so. Both were avid fans of the fine arts. In addition to watercolor painting, Jo Hyse carved nature scenes on copper plates and made floral wood carvings. Richard was a co-founder and volunteer treasurer of the Oswego Opera Theatre. He also volunteered his financial expertise at the Children’s Center of Oswego, a childcare center and preschool. Colleagues recalled Hyse as a gruff man who demanded the best from his students. A 1975 graduate, Mary Etta Schneider, said he was the most influential person in her life other than her parents. Schneider never forgot his unforgiving style. On one of her college papers, he had written, “This paper has only the scantiest connection to its title.” But he also encouraged her to pursue her dreams, leading her to a job with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Schneider called the couple about a year ago to plan a visit. “Don’t wait too long to get up here,” Jo Hyse told her. That was the last they spoke. “I will always believe they didn’t want to face their future years without each other and without Oswego,” Schneider said. A rapid decline In their last six months, the couple’s health deteriorated rapidly, family said. Jo Hyse lost a lot of weight because her dentures made it difficult for her to chew. She also became depressed by her lack of short-term memory. She kept forgetting they were moving into assisted living in Florida, even after the couple had committed to and visited the facility. Every time she was reminded they were leaving Oswego, it upset her greatly, said Daryl Kelehan, her niece, who spoke to them 30 minutes every day by phone. As they got older, the couple were in and out of the hospital frequently. Richard Hyse had spine problems that made it difficult to walk. He couldn’t get into the bathtub on his own. He could no longer exercise. A cleaning lady began taking on more duties, such as picking up groceries and take-out meals for the couple. A personal assistant checked on them every day. Richard and Jo had discussed committing suicide, Jim Kelehan, who is Daryl’s husband, told police. When asked in 2008 what Richard would do if something happened to his wife, Richard responded, “That’s been taken care of.” Kelehan assumed the worst. It was around that time Jo Hyse told her cleaning lady, “Don’t be surprised to find us.” The isolation had taken a heavy toll on them, Deborah Pritchard, the cleaning lady, told police. Jo Hyse was depressed by her inability to care for her garden, including her climbing rose bushes that she had kept in immaculate condition for years. When the couple discussed moving into an assisted living facility in Florida, it brought tears to Jo’s eyes. The Sunday before their deaths, the subject came up during breakfast. They understood they needed help. Both Richard and Jo repeated, “I don’t know what to do,” Pritchard recalled. Delaying their departure In their final days, Jo Hyse kept delaying the move to Florida. They were supposed to leave Oct. 28, but she said they weren’t ready. The first week of November, she said they hadn’t packed yet. The day before the move, Jo Hyse called her niece in Iowa and asked, “Can we wait one more day?” That was the last time anyone talked to the couple. Jo Hyse hadn’t remembered they were going into assisted living, and was distraught when reminded, Daryl Kelehan said. The next day, she couldn’t get through to her aunt or uncle. Jim Kelehan had flown to Syracuse to help them move. He arrived in Syracuse and started driving up to Oswego. A neighbor, Terence Wild, went to check on them. They did not answer the door. Wild entered, climbed the stairs and found the couple in their bedroom. They weren’t moving. Wild left the house and called police. When Jim Kelehan arrived, police told him Richard and Jo Hyse were dead. About 20 empty prescription bottles sat on the nightstand. Jo Hyse was lying on her side in bed with a gunshot wound to the back of her head. The bullet had severed her spinal cord and exited her face before lodging in her right wrist that she was leaning on. Richard lay next to her. Police found a Colt .22 Huntsman with one spent casing. The gun was licensed to Richard Hyse. Daryl Kelehan said she thinks he would have shot himself if he had been able. “They could not live without the other,” she said. “They wanted to die in this house. They wanted to die together.” Kelehan remembers only three times she saw them separated. All three times, her aunt came to visit her in the Midwest — once before her daughter was born, a second time for the birth of her daughter, Maggie, and a third for Maggie’s first birthday. Maggie’s middle name, Jo, was in honor of her great-aunt. In their later years, the Hyses spent many evenings walking at Oswego’s Breitbeck Park, along the shore of Lake Ontario. When Richard Hyse’s back pain became so great he couldn’t walk, he would wait in the car while Jo walked. When neither could walk, they sat and watched the sunset. “They never wanted to leave their adopted home,” Daryl Kelehan said. “They loved it here, they loved Oswego.” Contact Douglass Dowty at 470-6070 or email@example.com.

By Bernie on 06 Sep 2006 Photo Credit: Calvin College Imagine it's 1940 and you're sitting in the Zwie Pfennig Normales Cabaret in Berlin. Johannes Annalpfisdten is the stand-up comedy act for the night. Guten Abend, meine Damen und Herren. Und to the two Juden in the front row, sieg heil, fur dose who don't know what that means, I'll explain it zu you," he declares. "In German it means: 'I'm going zu kill you.'" The audience bursts into laughter. When the applause dies down, our Nazi comedian asks, "Zo, vat is the difference between a pizza pie and a Jew?" Someone in worn lederhosen in the back yells out, "Vat's the difference?" The comedian looks directly at the two Jews: "A Pizza Pie does not yell out 'oh vey is mir' when you stick it in the oven." The cabaret breaks into thunderous peals of laughter and guffaws. Even the two Jews in the front row find the joke immensely amusing. Moshe barely has the breath to tell Hymen, "This guy kills me, literally!" OK, so what's unbelievable about this scene? Too macabre for you? Well then, listen to this: Here is the guiding theme for the troupe: "The concept of this tour is to make a comprehensive effort to provide effective, significant, and appropriate comedy with an Islamic perspective, which is both mainstream and cross-cultural. The idea is to provide a venue whereby Muslims and non-Muslims can feel safe, relevant, and inclusive of an experience where humor is used to bridge gaps of bias, intolerance, and other social ills that are pre and post 9/11 relevant," says Preacher Moss, co-founder, and one of the featured comedians on the tour. However, there is a dark side to this group: according to Militant Islam Monitor they are affiliated with the Council of Islamic Organisations of Greater Chicago whose members are part of a network of radical Islamist organisations which are directly linked to Hamas and Al Qaeda and raises funds for convicted terrorists and other related causes. This comedy tour enables the group to go around the country pretending to be funny just so they can outreach to young Muslim men and turn them into Jihadists. If there are non-Muslims in the audience who laugh, they do so for the same reasons that Jews would laugh at a Nazi comedian. Here's some samples of "Muslim" humor. "I'm an American. But I'm an American Muslim. In fact, I consider myself a very patriotic American Muslim, which means I would die for this country…" "by blowing myself up…" "in a Dunkin' Donuts." Here's more unfunny Muslim Humor: BBC - Muslim comedians laugh at racism, Excerpt: With his bushy black beard and skullcap, Azhar Usman strides on to the stage with a raucous "Assalam Aleikum." "For those who don't know what that means, I'll explain it to you," he declares. "It means: 'I'm gonna kill you.'" The audience bursts into laughter. There are other Muslim "comedians" than these three: There is Tissa Hami a female, 30-year-old Iranian-American who performs her routine dressed in traditional Islamic hijab and jokes about stoning, harems, and hostage-taking. Topics that usually bring the house down in my home. Tissa is self-deluded if she thinks she is showing that Muslims can laugh at themselves; her type of irreverent attitude has gotten other young women hanged in Iran. She should know better. Child Rights Information Network, 3 Oct 2004, IRAN: Girl, 16, hanged It was when Atefeh appeared before Judge Rezaii for a fourth time that she lost her temper - and also her life. In a rage she tore off her hi jab - a headscarf - and told the judge she had been raped and it was his duty to punish her tormentors, not their victim. Rezaii told her she would hang for her "sharp tongue" and that he would put the noose around her neck himself. It became a personal crusade as he travelled to Tehran and convinced the Supreme Court to uphold his verdict. Yes, the mullahs would love Tissa Hami's sharp tongue. BBC - Muslim comic sees the funny side, Female Muslim comic Shazia Mirza: "I'm Shazia Mirza," she said. "At least that's what it says on my pilot's licence." BBC - Dark humour for dark times, Excerpt: Tissa Hami, an Iranian American, warns with a hint of a smile that if people do not laugh she will take them hostage. What these Muslim comics do not understand is that for self-deprecating humor to work, you have to make fun of yourself, not intimidate your audience. Jews make fun of themselves but they never cross the line. For example, you will never see a Jewish comic get up to an audience and say, "Shalom, and if you don't know what that means, let me explain, it means I come in the middle of the night and suck the blood from your children, and take their organs to sell on the medical market." That's not funny. Here's a pointless Kodak moment: If Muslims want to know what Muslim Humor is, they have to read Planck's Constant. Here's what's funny: - On my flight to New York there must have been an Israeli in the bathroom the entire time. There was a sign on the door that said "occupied." - What do you say to a Muslim woman with two black eyes? What’s to say? You already told her twice! - Q. How many Palestinians does it take to change a light bulb? A. None! They sit in the dark forever and blame the Jews for it! - Q: How many Palestinians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: If you wait long enough, the Palestinians will manage to screw themselves. - Q: How many palestinians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Even if you change it, they'll never see the light. - Q: How many palestinians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: None, the prison maintenance staff takes care of that. - Q: How many Muslims does it take to change a lightbulb ? A: None. If the lightbulb has died, it is the will of Allah, and it would be blasphemy to attempt to change it. - Did you hear about the Broadway play, "The Palestinians"? - What did one Palestinian woman say to the other? Does my bomb look big in this? - What do you call a first-time offender in Saudi Arabia? - So Abdul comes up to me and I notice stitches on both his wrists. So I say to him, "Abdul, I see you won your appeal." - Did you hear about the Muslim strip club? It features full facial nudity! - Why do Palestinians find it convenient to live on the West Bank? Because it's just a stone's throw from Israel! - Why are Palestinian boys luckier than American boys? Because every Palestinian boy will get to join a rock group! - Q: What does the sign say above the nursery in a Palestinian maternity ward? A: "Live ammunition." - A Palestinian girl says to her mommy: "Can I have Abdul's room after he blows up?" - A man goes into an adult entertainment shop and asks the assistant for an inflatable doll. "Would you like male or female?" "Would you like Black or White?" "Would you like Christian or Muslim?" This question confused the man, so he asked,"What has the religion got to do with it? It's an inflatable doll!" "Well," explained the assistant,"The Muslim one blows itself up!" - Hassan, a Palestinian, sees a friend over the Israeli fence. "Hey, Achmed, how do you get on the other side?" Achmed looks at him, scratches his head and says, "Hassan, you are on the other side." - So Fatima says to me, "My husband is so fat..." Naturally, I fall for it and ask, "How fat is he?" She says, "My husband is so fat it took two bombs to blow him up." - Did you hear about the Palestinian girls' night out? They sat around getting stoned. - Three boys in the fifth grade at an Israeli school are playing measure the wienie; a Bedouin, a Jew, and a Palestinian. The Bedouin pulls his out and it's only 3 inches long. Not bad (remember this is the fifth grade). The Jew pulls his Kosher sausage out and it, too, is 3 inches long. Farook, the Palestinian boy, draws his out from his shorts and it is 6 inches long! His two schoolmates are impressed: "That has to be the biggest wienie in the whole school!" So Farook runs excitedly home and asks his father, "Abba, I have the largest penis in the fifth grade, is it that Allah has blessed me because I am Muslim?" His father sighs and says, "no, Farook, it is because you are 19 years old." - When a Palestinian says they had a blast at a friend's house the other night, they're not talking about a party. - Q. What's the difference between a Muslim and a dog? A. You don't have to beat the dog with a stick to teach it something new. - Q. How can a Muslim tell if his wife is happy? A. Who cares? - Q. What do you call a Muslim with half a brain? - There were 3 men waiting for a bus ride in Montana, a cowboy, an indian and a Muslim. The cowboy trying to make small talk asked the other two how life was treating them. The indian not really wanting a conversation says "Once before you cowboys came we were many and now we are few." The Muslim sees his chance and tells the other two, "Once we were few and now we are many, so watch your back." The cowboy looks up at the Muslim and says. "We ain't played cowboys and Muslims yet." - Q. Why do Muslims wear those robes in Saudi Arabia? A. Goats can hear a zipper a mile away. - Two Muslims: - I heard that you have made a band. - Yes, it’s a quartet. - How many of you are there? - There are three. - Me and my brother. - You have a brother? - No, why do you ask? Variations of above: Photo Credit: Mike Keefe Political Cartoons Muslim Kitchen Accessory Photo Credit: MaxBlog.az al-Taqiyya comes natural to Muslims: Thank you, thank you My name is Goffaq Yussef. the anti-jihad pundit, The new source of Muslim outrage It's a song sang by these four Chechen girls, titled "Eastern Fairy Tale". The lyrics of this song run: "Do you want to be my fourth wife? Yeah, if you are my sixth husband". In the video, a boy asks the question and the group leader just answers. And there comes the real problem: the President of the Russian Islamic Committee, Gaydar Dzhemal, has declared that the video is immoral, because the "girls appear [in the video] as Muslims [he says Middle East Women] and because of that, they have offended to all Muslim women by spreading the offensive idea that is possible to have more than one husband". Translated from Eurabian News. Where is the sense of humour of a very important part of the Muslims that has been lost in so distant places that they cannot reach for it? It's a SONG, for God's sake…. [Actually the girls are one of Russia's favorite girlie groups, the Blestyashy] For more Palestinian jokes see Gates of Vienna. Click on al Qaeda training video image to view video: Anyone may republish this article for non-commercial use without asking my permission. I make it easy, see details here. comments powered by Disqus

Day 1Arrive in Munich Area, Germany Check into your hotel. The rest of the day is free. Tonight, meet your Tour Director and fellow travelers. Day 2Munich Area–Nuremberg–Prague, Czech Republic Drive this morning on the Autobahn directly to Nuremberg for a visit. Next, east across the border into the Czech Republic. Evening arrival in Prague. (Breakfast) The wealth of gothic and baroque architecture perhaps inspired Dvorak and Smetana, both Prague composers. The included guided sightseeing features landmarks such as the the Jewish Quarter, Charles Bridge, and the Old Town Square with the Astronomical Clock. (Breakfast, Dinner) Day 4Prague–Vienna, Austria This morning, motor from Bohemia into Moravia and continue southeast for a few more miles before crossing into Austria. Arrive in Vienna to enjoy an afternoon of optional sightseeing. Start with a tour featuring the State Opera, Parliament, and the Town Hall. Stop for a stroll in Heroes’ Square to view the Hofburg. Reserve some energy for an exciting evening optional excursion. (Breakfast) Day 5Vienna–Budapest, Hungary A morning to see some unexplored corner of this intriguing capital or maybe just to do some shopping down the Kärntnerstrasse. In the afternoon, head for the Hungarian border and, by way of Györ, you’ll reach Budapest for two overnights. (Breakfast) Buda Castle dominates the twin cities of Buda and Pest, separated by the broad ribbon of the Danube. Heroes’ Square typifies the modern capital, while along the riverbank you find the old inns and wine cellars. Included sightseeing takes in the Parliament building, Margaret Island, Fishermen’s Bastion, the Royal Castle, and Matthias Coronation Church. (Breakfast) Day 7Budapest–Salzburg, Austria Mid-morning departure from Budapest. Travel westwards across the border into Austria to enjoy more Alpine scenery before heading towards the Danube and finally to Salzburg for an overnight. (Breakfast) Day 8Salzburg–Munich, Germany Morning at leisure in Salzburg or maybe join the optional Sound of Music excursion. A comfortable and relatively short drive past Lake Chiemsee to Munich. Tonight, an included typical Bavarian dinner at a local restaurant is a must to celebrate a successful vacation. (Breakfast, Dinner) Your vacation ends with breakfast this morning. (Breakfast) BOOK YOUR FLIGHTS WITH US Learn more about booking an air-inclusive vacation - the reasons why include, you'll receive free airport transfer on published dates and your air will be coordinated with your vacation. AIRPORT TRANSFER TIMES Details about airport transfer times, prices and what's included with your vacation.

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 97 12:43:39 CDT From: law <firstname.lastname@example.org> Subject: West Bank: Violence Escalates THE RETURN OF THE "IRON FIST" POLICY iron fistpolicy: Israeli military escalates aggression against Palestinian civilians The cities of Bethlehem and Hebron have been targeted by the Israeli military for the return of the brutal military policy, once condemned worldwide. In Bethlehem, the situation is becoming increasingly unstable. Daily clashes, which began a week ago, have resulted in dozens wounded and contributed to an already very tense situation. In the past several days, undercover Israeli units infiltrated the Palestinian-controlled Area A in Bethlehem and kidnapped civilians and members of the Palestinian Authority, adding to the climate of terror and instability. In addition a LAW field researcher obtained the affidavit of one civilian, Mohammed Ali Mohammed Salah, 21 years-old from el Khader village near Bethlehem, who was taken from his taxi by Israeli soldiers on July 9, brutally beaten and his legs broken. In Hebron, violence is escalating as a result of these Iron Fist tactics. In the past three days, the Israeli army sealed the section of Hebron still under Israeli military occupation (zone H-2), home to about 20,000 Palestinians and 400 Jewish settlers and, forced Palestinian merchants to close their stores. In addition, Israeli soldiers entered the Palestinian autonomous area of Hebron (zone H-1) disguised as Arabs, and arrested demonstrators. In an alarming development, the Foreign Press Association charged the Israeli army with deliberately targeting journalists during the demonstrations. On 13 July, five journalists were among the 15 Palestinians wounded by plastic-covered metal bullets. One journalist was shot in the head. The wounded were: Imad Isseid from APTV, Mazen Dana from Reuters, Amer Jabari from ABC, and Diya Juabi, from Abu Dhabi television. All of them are veteran journalists well-known to the soldiers in the area. These recent events are terrorizing the local population and pushing the area closer to all-out confrontation. LAW believes that the Israeli government's purpose in escalating tensions emanates from its larger objective to maintain permanent military control over the Palestinians and prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state. Recent announcements by the Israelis regarding further settlement expansion, the house demolition in Silwan last Sunday, and the decision to allow Noam Friedman, the Israeli soldier who opened fire on Hebron residents in January, to go home every weekend and attend classes twice a week, reinforces anger and resentment of the Palestinians and highlights the double-standard of the Israeli government. LAW condemns in the strongest possible terms the increasing violence and terrorism inflicted on the Palestinian populations of Bethlehem and Hebron, and calls for an end to the re-emergence of the fist policy. These most recent actions violate both international agreements and the Oslo Accords, and places the Israeli government directly responsible for the deteriorating situation in the area.

2007 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - Slovenia |Publisher||United States Department of State| |Author||Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor| |Publication Date||11 March 2008| |Cite as||United States Department of State, 2007 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - Slovenia, 11 March 2008, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/47d92c4dc.html [accessed 29 March 2015]| |Disclaimer||This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.| Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor March 11, 2008 Slovenia is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional republic of approximately two million persons. Power is shared between a directly elected president (head of state), a prime minister (head of government), and a bicameral parliament composed of the National Assembly (lower house) and the National Council (upper house). On November 11, the country elected Danilo Turk president in a free and fair election. Civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces. The government generally respected the human rights of its citizens; however, there were problems in some areas. There were reports of trial delays, indirect government influence on the media, and cursory procedures for review of asylum applications. Societal violence against women, trafficking in women and girls, discrimination and violence against Roma and homosexuals, and discrimination against former Yugoslav residents without legal status were also problems. RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 1. Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From: a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life There were no reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings. There were no reports of politically motivated disappearances. c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment The constitution and law prohibit such practices; on rare occasions police used excessive force such as kicks, punches, and shoves during arrest. On January 9, a police commission investigating a report of minor injuries to three persons in a scuffle with police during November 2006 protests in Ambrus determined that the police used compulsory measures that were in "accordance with legislation and the principal of necessity" to the threat presented by the local residents. Authorities sent 100 special police to Ambrus after local residents blocked roads to prevent the return of the Strojan family, a Romani family who had occupied land in the village for some years and had been sheltered in another town due to tensions with local residents. Prison and Detention Center Conditions Prison conditions generally met international standards, and the government permitted visits by independent human rights observers. A delegation of the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) visited the country's prisons and detention facilities in January and February 2006; the CPT had not published the delegation's findings by year's end. d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention The constitution and law prohibit arbitrary arrest and detention, and the government generally observed these prohibitions. Role of the Police and Security Apparatus Police are centrally organized under the supervision of the Ministry of Interior. The ministry oversees the drafting of basic guidelines, security policy, and regulations governing the work of the police and exercises special inspectorial authority in monitoring police performance, with an emphasis on the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The police provided effective law enforcement. During the year the independent commission for the prevention of corruption referred eight credible reports of police corruption to police and the state prosecutor for further investigation. No credible reports of prosecutorial corruption were reported. The law provides procedures for the review of alleged police abuse by a three-person government committee that includes two representatives of civil society organizations. The committee does not have authority to conduct independent investigations, and it relied on information provided by ministry of interior or police investigators. Committee findings were usually forwarded to the state prosecutor's office and published; cooperation between the committee and the state prosecutor's office reportedly increased during the year. In January the parliament passed legislation that established a new judicial police branch to investigate allegations of misconduct by police, prosecutors, and judges. The government began implementing the new system on November 1. Arrest and Detention Persons taken into police custody were generally apprehended openly with evidential warrants issued by either a prosecutor or judge. Persons can be detained for 48 hours before charges are brought. Authorities must also advise detainees in writing within 48 hours of the reasons for their arrest. Upon arrest, detainees have the right to contact legal counsel of their choice, and authorities generally respected this right in practice. The government provides indigent detainees with free counsel, and detainees were generally allowed prompt access to family members. The law also provides safeguards against self-incrimination. Once charges are brought, pretrial detention may last for up to four months, depending on the severity of the criminal act, and must be certified by an investigative judge. Once trial procedures have begun, the total period of detention may be extended for up to two years. Persons detained more than two years while awaiting trial or while their trial is ongoing must be released pending conclusion of their trial. Lengthy pretrial detention was not a widespread problem, and defendants generally were released on bail, except in the most serious criminal cases. e. Denial of Fair Public Trial The constitution and law provide for an independent judiciary, and the government generally respected judicial independence in practice; however, court backlogs sometimes resulted in lengthy delays in trials. Following more than 100 judgments by the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) against the government in 2006 for violating the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms due to excessive court delays and the denial of effective remedy, in April 2006 the government adopted a law on the right to a trial without undue delay, which came into force on January 1. In a May 3 decision, the ECHR stated that the new law provides for efficient legal remedies for the protection of the right to a trial within a reasonable period of time. As part of its ongoing project to eliminate backlogs, which totaled 568,982 cases as of June 30, the Ministry of Justice hired 125 additional judges and court clerks during the year. The constitution and law provide for the right to a fair trial, and an independent judiciary generally enforced this right. The judicial system was overburdened and lacked administrative support; as a result, the judicial process frequently was protracted. In many cases during the year, criminal trials lasted from two to five years. Political Prisoners and Detainees There were no reports of political prisoners or detainees. Civil Judicial Procedures and Remedies The constitution and law provide for an independent and impartial judiciary in civil matters. As with criminal matters, court backlogs sometimes resulted in lengthy trials. As of June 30, the government had resolved 37,776, or 95.4 percent, of the 39,617 property restitution claims that have been filed with authorities. Unresolved cases included those in which the courts had not reached a final decision and those pending appeal. Court backlogs, a lack of trained judicial and administrative personnel, amendments to the Denationalization Act, and inadequate land ownership records slowed claims processing. Some claimants have complained of a general lack of transparency, bias, and potential conflicts of interest on the part of adjudicators, and procedures that were inconsistent with the law. An effort to initiate a program for the restitution of Jewish communal property has encountered a number of delays. f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence The constitution and law prohibit such actions, and the government generally respected these prohibitions in practice. 2. Respect for Civil Liberties, Including: a. Freedom of Speech and Press The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and of the press, and the government generally respected these rights in practice; however, there were reports of indirect government influence on the media. The penal code criminalizes the promotion of "national, race, or religious discord or intolerance or the promotion of superiority of one race over others." There were no reports that criminal charges were brought against individuals or publications under this provision during the year. Individuals could criticize the government publicly or privately without reprisal, and the government did not attempt to impede criticism. The independent media were active and expressed a variety of views, and international media operated freely. The major print media were supported through private investment and advertising; however, the government owned substantial stock in many companies that were shareholders in the major media houses. There were reports that indirect political and economic pressures and partial government ownership of media companies influenced journalists and the media, and that self-censorship was practiced in some media outlets. On August 31, the International Press Institute (IPI) issued a statement expressing concern that the government used business relationships and share holdings as leverage to induce independent media organizations to publish favorable news reports. Managers reportedly protected their own interests and the interests of those in government with whom they were affiliated. In late September, hundreds of Slovenian journalists signed a petition that was distributed to international organizations, embassies, and international media houses. The petition accused the government of restricting media freedom through direct and indirect political and economic pressures and partial government ownership of media companies. On October 1, several editors and journalists published a letter that contradicted the petition. The letter asserted that the level of government influence in the media had not changed in recent years, but rather that journalists no longer found themselves in political agreement with the governing coalition. On October 12, the government issued a statement denying any undue influence over the media. The government stated that it does not have a significant ownership share in media institutions and has no means to leverage editorial decisions. On November 22, the European Federation of Journalists, Journalists Without Borders, and the IPI called on the government to establish an independent commission to investigate charges of government influence on the media. As of year's end, the government had not established a commission. The 2006 Act on Media created a "media pluralization" fund to ensure that media reflected a greater diversity of viewpoints. Some media watchdog groups reported that a disproportionate level of pluralization funds have gone to Catholic Church media and media outlets favorably disposed towards the government. In July 2006 several journalists covering a demonstration reported that police used excessive force against them, including pushing and shoving. In October 2006 a government investigatory panel found the subsequent complaint filed by the journalists to be justified but did not conclude that the journalists had been prevented from carrying out their work. The government did not reprimand the officers involved or take other corrective action. The law provides criminal penalties for defamation that harms a person's honor or name, and one person was given a three-month prison sentence during the year. In 2006 the International Helsinki Federation called on the country to abolish "criminal defamation laws establishing prison sentences for those who have harmed a person's honor or name." The Constitutional Court ruled in 1999 that the law is consistent with the constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. There were no government restrictions on access to the Internet or reports that the government monitored e-mail or Internet chat rooms. Individuals and groups could engage in the peaceful expression of views via the Internet, including by electronic mail. Internet access was widely available, and nearly one-half of citizens used the Internet at least once a month. Academic Freedom and Cultural Events There were no government restrictions on academic freedom or cultural events. b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association The constitution and law provide for freedom of assembly and association, and the government generally respected these rights in practice. c. Freedom of Religion The law provides for freedom of religion, and the government generally respected this right in practice. While there are no governmental restrictions on the Muslim community's freedom of worship, services were commonly held in private homes for lack of a larger venue. Although the city of Ljubljana worked actively with the Muslim community to establish a mosque, at year's end construction on a new site had not begun. On July 9, the justice minister, who was the chair of the government Commission for Religious Communities, and Mufti Nedzad Grabus signed an agreement that acknowledges the Muslim community as an integral part of Slovenian society, more clearly defines the areas of its activities, and facilitates the implementation of its programs. It also gives the Muslim community the right to establish its own media and educational institutions, the right to preserve historical and cultural heritage, the right to conduct religious services in hospitals and for army and police forces, and places Muslim charities on equal footing with other charities. Societal Abuses and Discrimination There are approximately 300 Jews in the country. Jewish community representatives reported some prejudice, ignorance, and false stereotypes of Jews propagated within society, largely through public discourse. There were no reports of anti-Semitic violence or overt discrimination. The government promoted antibias and tolerance education in the primary and secondary schools, and the Holocaust is a mandatory topic in the contemporary history curriculum. On September 2, the Jewish community, supported by local government officials, held the second annual European Day of Jewish Culture festival, which was attended by the country's president and received broad media coverage. For a more detailed discussion, see the 2007 International Religious Freedom Report. d. Freedom of Movement, Internally Displaced Persons, Protection of Refugees, and Stateless Persons The constitution and law provide for these rights, and the government generally respected them in practice. The law prohibits forced exile, and the government did not employ it. Protection of Refugees The law provides for the granting of asylum or refugee status in accordance with the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 protocol, and the government has established a system for providing protection to refugees. In practice the government provided some protection against refoulement, the return of persons to a country where there is reason to believe they feared persecution. During the year the government received 395 requests for refugee status or asylum and granted refugee status or asylum in nine cases. During the year the government did not provide temporary protection to persons who may not have qualified as refugees under the 1951 convention or the 1967 protocol. The government cooperated with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other humanitarian organizations in providing protection and assistance to refugees and asylum seekers. In February 2006 the National Assembly amended the government's asylum procedures to allow border police to perform an initial screen of asylum seekers and to reject applications they deem to be "manifestly unfounded." The procedures could prevent the applications of some asylum seekers from receiving a thorough review. The law restricts refugees' ability to work in the country for one year. In December 2006 the Constitutional Court ruled that asylum seekers should be allowed to change their asylum application if there were considerable changes in their circumstances. The law provides asylum seekers with the right to appeal decisions on their applications, but many asylum seekers were not informed of this right. The independent ombudsman for human rights, the UNHCR, and several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) reported that the government put excessive restrictions on refugees' freedom of movement by requiring asylum seekers to sign a statement renouncing their claim to asylum if they left the premises of the asylum center. On December 21, the Law on International Protection came into force. The law is intended to bring the country into compliance with European Union asylum directives. However, the UNCHR, Amnesty International (AI), and other NGOs expressed concern that the law provides for accelerated asylum procedures with few safeguards, and that its exclusion clauses and broad detention powers could lower the country's asylum standards. 3. Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government The constitution and law provide citizens the right to change their government peacefully, and citizens exercised this right in practice through periodic, free, and fair elections based on universal suffrage. Elections and Political Participation On October 21, the country held the first round of free and fair presidential elections. A free and fair second round of voting on November 11 resulted in the election of Danilo Turk as president. Political parties operated without restriction or outside interference. There were 11 women in the 90-seat National Assembly and three women in the 40-seat National Council. There were three women in the 17-member cabinet. There were two members of minority groups in the 90-seat National Assembly and none in the 40-seat National Council or in the cabinet. The constitution provides the "autochthonous" (indigenous) Italian and Hungarian minorities the right, as a community, to have at least one representative in the parliament. However, the law does not provide such rights to any other minority group. Twenty distinct Romani communities, each designated autochthonous at the local level, are entitled to a seat on their local municipal council. At year's end, one municipality – Grosuplje – remained in noncompliance with this law for a second straight year. Although both the government office of nationalities and the Romani community submitted proposals to freeze the municipality's budget until it complied with the law, the government had not taken any action on the proposals before year's end. Government Corruption and Transparency The law provides criminal penalties for official corruption, and the government generally implemented these laws effectively; however, officials sometimes engaged in corrupt practices. Corruption was perceived by the public to be a widespread problem. Only the highest-level government officials – approximately 5,000 of the country's 80,000 public servants – are subject to financial disclosure laws. The independent Commission for the Prevention of Corruption received 595 cases of suspected corruption and found 118 out of the 327 cases that were assessed during the year to be credible. The remaining cases were not assessed by year's end. The commission played an active role in educating the public and civil servants about corruption; however, it claimed it had neither adequate staff nor funding to fulfill its mandate and assess all cases of suspected corruption that it received during the year. In April 2006 the Constitutional Court stayed legislation adopted two months earlier that would have terminated the commission and replaced it with a parliamentary anticorruption commission. The commission continued to operate during the year, but reported that its funding had consistently been reduced over the previous three years. During the year the commission forwarded 150 suspected cases of corruption to police and prosecutors and 84 cases to other state institutions, including cases received in 2006 but not processed until the next year. The law provides for free public access to all government information, and the government provided access for citizens and noncitizens alike, including foreign media. The government may deny public access only to classified information, personal data protected by privacy laws, and other narrowly defined exceptions. The office of the government information commissioner reported that, while the overall number of complaints it received declined, the number of complaints related to the nonresponsiveness of state institutions increased. During the year the office received 221 complaints about nonresponsiveness of state institutions and 121 complaints under the Law on Access to Public Information, and publicly called on government ministries to cooperate more transparently. 4. Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights A number of domestic and international human rights groups generally operated without government restriction, investigating and publishing their findings on human rights cases. Government officials generally were cooperative and responsive to their views, although some human rights groups complained of lengthy delays in government responses. 5. Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in Persons The constitution and law prohibit discrimination based on race, gender, disability, language, or social status, and the government generally enforced these provisions in practice. However, violence against women and children, trafficking in persons, and discrimination against homosexuals and Roma were problems. Rape, including spousal rape, is illegal; however, it was a problem. AI and SOS Phone, an NGO that provided anonymous emergency counseling and services to domestic violence victims, estimated that one in seven women was raped during her lifetime, but that only 5 percent sought assistance or counseling. Spousal rape, in particular, was rarely reported to authorities. Police actively investigated reports of rape and prosecuted offenders. The penalty for rape was one to 10 years in prison. During the year there were 41 criminal acts of rape, 32 criminal acts of sexual violence, 14 criminal acts of sexual abuse of the weak, and 115 criminal acts of sexual attack on a minor under the age of 15 reported to authorities. Although no accurate statistics were available, violence against women, including spousal abuse, occurred and was generally underreported. Although domestic violence is not specifically prohibited by law, it could be prosecuted under statutes criminalizing assault, which provide for penalties of up to 10 years' imprisonment in the case of aggravated and grievous bodily harm. SOS Phone estimated that 25 percent of women had experienced domestic violence. In 2005 the UN Human Rights Committee announced its concern about the high rate of domestic violence and the lack of specific legal provisions and government programs to address the problem. The government partially funded 19 shelters or safe houses for battered women, (12 run by NGOs and seven by government organizations) that offered 305 total beds. Some domestic violence victims also sought assistance at maternity homes and social work centers, although staff at these locations were not always trained to work with victims of violence. When police received reports of spousal abuse or violence, they generally intervened and prosecuted offenders. The NGOs SOS Phone and Kljuc provided support hot lines, and SOS Phone reported receiving approximately 5,000 calls during the year. The police academy offered training on domestic violence. The 2006 Council of Europe report, Combating Violence Against Women, stated that the country had trained nursing staff in all hospitals to screen patients for domestic violence. Prostitution is illegal, but the government did not actively enforce this prohibition. Antitrafficking authorities and NGOs informally estimated that as many as 80 bars and clubs across the country could be engaged in facilitating or promoting prostitution. Sexual harassment remained a widespread problem. The law explicitly prohibits sexual harassment in the civil service, but not for the overall workforce. However, authorities could prosecute harassment under a provision of the criminal code prohibiting violation of sexual integrity through abuse of office; 22 criminal acts were reported during the year. The law provides for equal rights for women, and there is no official discrimination against women in family law, property law, or the judicial system. The office of equal opportunities protects the legal rights of women. While the average length of unemployment was the same for men and women, women frequently held lower paying jobs. On average, women's earnings were 90 percent of those of men. The government was committed to protecting children's rights and welfare. The government provides compulsory, free, and universal education for children through grade nine and up to four additional years of free, voluntary secondary school education. The Ministry of Education reported an attendance rate of nearly 100 percent of school-age children, with most children completing secondary school. On October 1, the Center for Social Work Grosuplje, the Ministry of Labor, Family, and Social Affairs, and the retail company Mercator opened a safe house for children. The "Palcica" safe house provides shelter for children up to the age of six who are victims of domestic violence or whose parents have died suddenly. A November 2006 AI report noted that Romani children were enrolled in 40 nursery schools throughout the country, but that school attendance varied widely by region (39 percent of Romani children attend school in the southeastern Dolenjska region and 70 percent attend school in the northeastern Prekmurje region). Poverty, discrimination, and language continued to be the main barriers to the participation of Romani children in education programs. AI reported that the Romani literacy rate was 10 percent. A number of Roma reported that their children attended segregated classes and were selected by authorities in disproportionate numbers to attend classes for students with special needs. In 2004 the government provided funding for a regional program to desegregate and expand Romani education by training Romani educational facilitators and creating special enrichment programs in public kindergartens. Other school districts hired Romani facilitators at their own initiative and expense. A March 2006 report by the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights noted that de facto segregation continued to exist in the Brsljin school district in Novo Mesto. Education authorities were evaluating Brsljin's program. The government has not developed a bilingual curriculum for Roma on the grounds that there is not a standardized Romani language. However, the government was currently funding research into codifying the language. Romani assistants worked in some schools, although many schools were unable to hire Roma coordinators, a higher-level position, due to administrative impediments. Child abuse was a problem. During the year there were 115 criminal acts of sexual abuse of a child under the age of 15 reported to authorities. The law provides special protection for children from exploitation and mistreatment, and the government generally enforced the law in practice. The law criminalizes the sale, purchase, and propagation of child pornography. Child marriage occurred within the Romani community; however, it was not a widespread problem. Trafficking in Persons The law prohibits trafficking in persons. Slovenia is primarily a transit country for internationally trafficked victims. To a lesser extent, it is also a destination country and, almost negligibly, a country of origin. A September 2006 Peace Institute study reported that, although the majority of trafficking victims were transiting from Southern, Eastern, and Central Europe through Slovenia, it was a source country for trafficking to countries such as Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany. The study reported that victims were trafficked primarily for sexual exploitation and that traffickers lured victims through advertisements promising high wages, marriage, employment as entertainers and dancers, and employment without indication that it would involve the sex industry. Organized criminal groups, nightclub owners, and local pimps were primarily responsible for trafficking. Those at particular risk of being trafficked were teenage girls and young women who lived in impoverished areas with high unemployment. Many of these women were unaware of the trafficking problem and the risk that they might become trafficking victims. Penalties for trafficking range from one to 10 years imprisonment. Authorities can also prosecute persons for rape, pimping, procurement of sexual acts, inducement to prostitution, sexual assault, slavery, and other related offenses. The government apprehended, investigated, and prosecuted traffickers under a 2004 law criminalizing trafficking. Police investigated three cases of human trafficking and five cases of forced prostitution, and found four victims of forced prostitution and nine victims of human trafficking. During the year there were 13 criminal acts of trafficking reported to authorities. There were four trafficking convictions during the year for crimes committed in previous years. Regional police directorates had departments that investigated trafficking and organized crime. One prosecutor in each regional state prosecutor's office was dedicated to trafficking cases. During the year the government continued to actively cooperate with NGOs and Interpol in project "Red Routes" by sharing information about traffickers and patterns of illegal migration. The Ministry of Interior Border Police Division also actively participated in Plan ILAEIRA, a Greek-led international transborder police cooperation project to combat trafficking. The government did not extradite any persons who were accused of trafficking in other countries. The government's national coordinator for trafficking in persons served as the head of the interagency working group on trafficking in persons, which is responsible for the government's long-term national strategy to combat trafficking. The working group consisted of representatives of ministries, NGOs, international organizations, and the media, and met more than six times during the year. In June the group established a 2008-09 action plan against trafficking that included trafficking legislation, prevention, prosecution, victims' assistance, and projects. The NGOs Karitas and Kljuc provided shelter and assistance to trafficking victims under a contract with the Ministry of Labor. Karitas provided short-term emergency housing, transportation, translation services, and counseling for victims. Kljuc organized programs for prevention, education, detection, prosecution, and long-term reintegration of trafficking victims. The Ministry of Interior, the UNHCR, Kljuc, and the NGO Filantropia jointly administered a project that addressed trafficking and gender-based violence by providing information and assistance to asylum seekers at greatest risk of being trafficked, particularly single women and children separated from their parents. The project provided information to trafficking victims, who were identified during asylum procedures, on how they could find specialized assistance and protection. At-risk asylum seekers received a book with trafficking information and assistance contacts throughout Europe. The government also continued the "Vijolica" and "CAP" programs, administered by Kljuc, to provide trafficking awareness classes for elementary and secondary school students. Persons with Disabilities The law prohibits discrimination against persons with physical and mental disabilities in employment, education, access to health care, or the provision of other government services, and the government generally enforced these provisions in practice. The law mandates access to buildings for persons with disabilities. Modification of public and private structures to improve access for persons with disabilities continued at a slow pace, and many buildings were not accessible in practice. The Ministry for Labor, Family, and Social Affairs has primary responsibility for protecting the rights of persons with disabilities. In February 2006 the ministry established a working group to implement national guidelines for improving access to buildings, information, and communications for persons with disabilities. The law provides special rights and protections to "autochthonous" (indigenous) Italian and Hungarian minorities, including the right to use their own national symbols and have bilingual education and the right for each to be represented as a community in parliament (see section 3). Other minorities do not have comparable special rights and protections. Ethnic Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Kosovar Albanians, and Roma from Kosovo and Albania were considered "new" minorities; they were not protected by the special constitutional provisions for autochthonous minorities and faced some governmental and societal discrimination with respect to employment, housing, and education. A 2005 report by the UN Human Rights Committee and a November 2006 AI report noted that the Roma continue to suffer prejudice and discrimination, in particular with access to health services, education, and employment. While implementation of the November 2006 law on protection of the Romani community resulted in the establishment of the Roma Council and the legalization of nearly 40 Romani settlements, some Roma and NGOs working with Romani communities reported that the new regulations are too abstract and have had little practical effect on average Roma. AI expressed concern that the law neglects to address the lack of social services available to Roma. Implementation of the law's plan to place advisors in employment service offices has also met with difficulties due to the absence of these positions from the national employment register, resulting in an administrative impediment to the hiring of qualified individuals. In a 2006 report the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights expressed concern that discriminatory attitudes and practices against Roma persisted and that the distinction between "indigenous" Roma and "new" Roma could give rise to new discrimination. The report also cited the committee's concern that "nonindigenous" Roma do not enjoy protection of their cultural rights, such as education in their mother tongue, unlike members of other minorities who enjoy this right under bilateral international agreements. Many Roma lived in settlements, apart from other communities, that lacked such basic utilities as electricity, running water, and sanitation, as well as access to transportation. According to government officials, 65 percent of the approximately 100 Romani settlements are illegal, and Roma reported that discrimination in employment complicated their housing situation. Organizations monitoring conditions in the Romani community have noted in recent years that Roma exclusion from the housing market was a problem and that the unemployment rate among Roma was approximately 90 percent. In October 2006 approximately 30 members of a Romani family living near the village of Ambrus left their homestead with assistance from government officials as the result of intense pressure from the local community, and temporarily relocated to a former army barracks in Postojna, which the government had improved to meet basic living standards. The government condemned the family's home in Ambrus because of illegal construction and demolished it in December 2006. The family has been subsequently housed by the government at a temporary location. On December 27, the minister of environment and spatial planning and the legal representative of the family signed an agreement that provides new land and housing for the family. Human rights NGOs estimated that there are approximately 4,000 to 6,000 persons without legal status in the country as the result of the government's February 1992 erasure of the names of approximately 18,000 persons from the register of permanent residents. These persons were mostly Yugoslav citizens residing in the country at the time of independence who did not apply for citizenship in 1991-92. The deletion of these records has been characterized by some as an administrative decision and by others as a politically motivated act, based on a desire to exclude former Yugoslav nationals who did not actively seek Slovenian citizenship. Some of those affected complained that they had been legal residents at the time of the deletions and therefore saw no need to apply for citizenship. Others stated that they were not properly informed of the requirement to apply for citizenship. The deletion of records resulted in a loss of legal status and, as a consequence, the loss of housing, employment, health insurance, pension rights, and access to higher education for some. In 2003 the Constitutional Court ruled portions of a law governing the legal status of former Yugoslav citizens to be unconstitutional because the law neither recognized the full period in which "erased" persons resided in the country nor provided them the opportunity to apply for permanent residency. At year's end the government had not completed legislation to resolve the court's concerns. In July 2006 a group of 11 "erased" persons filed a complaint with the ECHR claiming several violations of their rights, including discriminatory treatment, denial of social benefits, a loss of legal status, and the lack of effective legal remedy due to the government's failure to implement the constitutional court ruling. In a 2006 report, the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights urged the government to restore the status of permanent resident to all individuals concerned to allow them to reclaim access to social services, education, and employment. Other Societal Abuses and Discrimination The law prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation; however, societal discrimination was widespread, and isolated cases of violence against homosexuals occurred. Recent data on the problem's scope was not available. A 2004 Peace Institute poll of members of the gay and lesbian community found that 53 percent of respondents had experienced verbal, sexual, or physical harassment because of their sexual orientation. More recent polling data was not available. On June 30, the seventh annual gay pride parade in Ljubljana took place with the support of local government officials, although there were reports that bystanders shouted homophobic slurs at participants, and antigay graffiti and stickers were seen in various locations around the city. Organizers reported satisfactory police presence during the parade. However, at a gay pride event that evening, four persons attacked a gay man who subsequently required hospitalization. Police responded immediately and reported the assault as a homophobic attack, but were unable to locate the attacker. Gay pride activists reported that, despite being notified of the attack, the Slovene Press Agency did not report the assault. In July 2006 a law legalizing homosexual civil unions came into force. Gay activists, however, filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court in November 2006 claiming that the law does not afford the same social, family, and inheritance rights as those granted to heterosexual married couples. The court had not issued a ruling on the complaint by year's end. There were no reports of societal violence or discrimination against persons with HIV/AIDS. 6. Worker Rights a. The Right of Association The law allows workers to form and join unions of their choice without previous authorization or excessive requirements, and workers exercised this right in practice. All workers, except police and military personnel, are eligible to form and join labor organizations. Approximately 35 percent of the workforce was unionized. b. The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively The law allows unions to conduct their activities without interference, and the government protected this right in practice. The law provides for the right to bargain collectively, and it was freely practiced; however, the law requires that 10 percent of the workers in an industry sector be union members before collective bargaining can be applied to the sector as a whole. All workers were covered by either a general collective bargaining agreement or a collective bargaining agreement that focused on a specific business segment. The law provides for the right to strike, and workers exercised this right in practice. The law prohibits retaliation against strikers, and the government effectively enforced this provision in practice. The law restricts strikes by some public sector employees, primarily the police and members of the military services, and provides for arbitration to ensure due process and protection of these workers' rights. There are no special laws or exemptions from regular labor laws in the country's sole export processing zone at Koper. c. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor The law prohibits forced or compulsory labor, including by children; however, there were reports that such practices occurred. d. Prohibition of Child Labor and Minimum Age for Employment There are laws and policies to protect children from exploitation in the workplace and to set forth acceptable working conditions; the government effectively implemented and enforced these laws and policies in practice. The minimum age for employment is 15; however, younger rural children often worked during the harvest season and on other farm chores. The law limits working hours and sets occupational health and safety standards for children; the government effectively enforced these provisions in practice. Urban employers generally respected the age limits. Trafficking in children for sexual exploitation was a problem. The Ministry of Labor, Family, and Social Affairs is responsible for monitoring labor practices and has inspection authority; police are responsible for investigating violations of the law. Enforcement practices were generally effective. e. Acceptable Conditions of Work The national monthly minimum wage of approximately $785 (538 euros) provided a decent standard of living for a worker and family. The law limits the workweek to 40 hours and provides for minimum annual leave of 20 days and a mandatory rest period of at least one day per week. Premium pay for overtime was regulated by collective agreements and was not standardized, and maximum overtime was limited to eight hours per week, 20 hours per month, and 180 hours per year. The Ministry of Labor, Family, and Social Affairs is responsible for monitoring labor practices and has inspection authority; police are responsible for investigating violations of the law. The laws were enforced effectively. Special commissions under the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Labor, Family, and Social Affairs set and enforced standards for occupational health and safety. Workers had the legal right to remove themselves from dangerous work situations without jeopardy to their continued employment; however, it was not clear to what extent they could do so in practice.

Topless Prophet: Local King of Strip to Star in Reality TV Show October 9th, 2013, 8:50 PM He's been shot twice, and he once was the target of a murder contract. He wrote an autobiography and bought and sold 11 local topless clubs. He’s a rare Jew in Grosse Pointe. He once used a chimp in an act with predictably strange results. He's about to become metro Detroit's latest TV ambassador in an HBO/Cinemax reality show called "Topless Prophet." “I’m Alan Markovitz and I’m living the American dream,” he says in a 10-minute trailer, walking amid several dancers wearing very small bikinis. “Together with my talented staff and my 700 beautiful dancers, I create the most elegant gentlemen’s clubs in the country, built right here in Detroit. Topless Prophet will let you look behind the curtain at the business of strip. Trust me there’s more to it than meets the eye.” The series, which is slated to run early next year on HBO’s sister station, Cinemax, will feature Markovitz, his three metro Detroit topless clubs, his managers, agents who recruit dancers and the dancers themselves -- on stage, backstage and outside the clubs. In one episode, Markovitz goes on a blind date at Bacco Ristorante, an upscale eatery on Northwestern Highway in Southfield. In another, he’s talking about the future with his managers. "I got a new dream," he tells them in a meeting featured in the trailer. "The dream of building the club of all clubs. I'm going to draw on on all 30 years of my experience to make this thing the mothership, the club that finally puts Vegas to shame." A Jewish Guy in Grosse Pointe With a poofy, well-coiffed head of hair and what the younger generation might call “a porn mustache,” Markovitz operates four topless clubs -- three in metro Detroit and one in Philadelphia. He calls them five-star clubs with five-star food. Markovitz, who doesn’t like to discuss his age but appears to be at least 50, lives in a 8,000-plus square foot home with a historical designation in Grosse Pointe Farms. But not for much longer. He’s moving to a 12,000-square foot home in Orchard Lake. “All my friends are over there,” Markovitz said. “In all the Grosse Pointes, there’s 50 Jewish families. It’s nothing if you think about it. I’ve been feeling like a fish out of water.” Ron Lipson, a good friend says, “He’s gotten older and smarter, and he’s a pretty good businessman. He’s very entertaining as a friend. When I go out for dinner, he has a big limousine come and get us. He’s got a beautiful boat with a crew of three people.” The 11 clubs that Markovitz has owned at various times include Trumps and the Booby Trap, both on 8 Mile Road in Detroit; BT's in Dearborn and Tycoons. He currently owns the Penthouse and Coliseum clubs in Detroit and the Flight Club, in Inkster, near Metro Airport. He also owns a Penthouse topless joint in Philadelphia. His younger brother Paul helps out with the Penthouse club in Detroit. How The Show Came About The TV show came about by happenstance. Rob Cohen, a Los Angeles film director, said he was directing a Tyler Perry movie, “Alex Cross,” that was filming in Detroit. When it was wrapped, some of the local staff involved in the film took Cohen out partying, and they wound up at the Coliseum. Cohen was blown away by the "rocking" atmosphere, at what looked like an intense party in a city that was slowly going bankrupt. He met some people in the business, read Markovitz’s autobiography, “Topless Prophet,” and realized “the strip business is more complicated than I knew.” Cohen went to Pilgrim Studios, known for its reality shows, and got it to make a sizzle reel, or a 10-minute trailer, to shop around. HBO/Cinemax bit and offered to bankroll a 10-part series. He said Cinemax airs HBO’s more risque material. As executive producer Cohen is “creatively guiding" the 10 episodes. The episodes are still being filmed. “The first three episodes, they’re outrageous, they’re sexy and they’re colorful," he said. "You get a real sense of the city. I’m thrilled about it.” Without elaborating, Markovitz says he’s getting paid well to do the shows. But he says it is more important that show bolster his business. TV Was Great for "Pawn Stars" “I hope it does that, that’s why I’m doing it. You look at 'Pawn Stars' from Vegas. I hear now that sometimes you go there and there’s a line to get in.” Markovitz grew up in Oak Park, where he attended high school. He described himself as a “Jewish Greaseball” who drove a motorcycle and worked at a gas station, Sol & Ziggy’s at 10 Mile and Greenfield. “My parents wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer, the typical young-Jewish-guy-does-well-for-himself success story,” he writes in 'Topless Prophet.' “Instead, I wanted to ride my Triumph Bonneville down the hallways of my high school -- and I did! What a hoot. Got suspended for a week.” After high school, he traveled to Israel, wanting to be a pilot in the Israeli military. He took the tests and was accepted in the program. But he was told 90 percent of recruits wash out. He didn’t like the odds, so he returned home to attend Wayne State University. But he says he “got ants in his pants” and dropped out. Meanwhile, he noticed a neighbor in Oak Park, Sol Milan, who seemed to be living the good life. He owned a strip joint. Neighbor Inspired Him “We’re all driving Chevys and he lived kind of kiddy-corner to us and he’s driving a brand new Eldorado Cadillac,” Markovitz says, sitting his Grosse Pointe Farms mansion, in a room adorned with photos of stars like Bogart and Bacall. “They always seemed to have the best of the best.” So he stopped by Milan’s club, La Chambre, at Telegraph and I-96 in Detroit, and asked for a job. He became a bartender and later helped manage the club. Eventually, he got Milan to partner on a shuttered club on 8 Mile near I-75 that they renamed the Booby Trap. Markovitz wanted it to be a first-rate club that looked more like a TGI Fridays than a dive joint. “We opened up and it just took off," he recalled. In time, some people thought of Markovitz as a Detroit version of Hugh Hefner, surrounded by beautiful women. He said he had some relationships with dancers, but tried to keep romance outside of business hours. “Let’s put it this way, in high school and college, I didn’t really have that many girlfriends. I had a couple steadies. I made up for the lost time in a hurry.” At the Booby Trap, there soon were problems when a motorcycle gang, The Renegades, started showing up. “We got crushed, the whole biker thing,” he recalled. “Customers were scared.” Markovitz posted signs that forbade gang colors and motorcycles in the parking lot. The bikers ignored them. The cops came on a couple occasions, guns drawn, and kicked them out. One day his father, Max Markovitz, who had been helping with the club, marched down to confront the bikers. Max, who spent time at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, told the leader he had survived Holocaust and wasn’t afraid. “I had dealt with a lot tougher situations in the war,” Max said in his son’s book. “What could they do to me? Kill me? I’m not stupid, but I wasn’t afraid. I went into the clubhouse that day in May and I talked to their leader. People understand when you mean business, and he listened to me. I told him we had a lot of money invested in our new club and we weren’t going to put up with any nonsense. Follow the rules, I told him, and they were welcome in the club like anyone else. I think he liked that, and we sure never had a problem with the Renegades after that.” The Booby Trap thrived. It didn’t hurt that Tigers Kirk Gibson and Dave Rozema hung out there and eventually married two dancers who happened to be sisters. “I remember once somebody coming to me about somebody on the phone for Kirk Gibson. I get on the phone and it’s Spark Anderson,” asking for Gibson.” He said Gibson told Markovitz to tell Sparky he wasn’t there. “So I go, ‘No, he’s not here. I haven’t seen him.” Business was good, but it came with plenty headaches. "Boom, Boom Boom" One night in 1983, Markovitz fired a dancer on the spot for taking a customer into the bathroom to have sex. Later, she was in the parking lot, claiming someone had stolen her purse. When Markovitz opened the club door to the parking lot, she shot him. “Boom, boom, boom. She nailed me,” he recalled. “ She hit me once, but she hit me real bad. I remember flying into the wall. That bullet just lifted me off the ground. I got hit here right in the lung in the chest. I was fucked up. She tried to finish me. I remember her over me and I remember having enough strength, I grabbed her hand and then everybody just jumped on her." It took him several months to recover, and he lost a lot of weight. The managers and his father helped run the joint. “It definitely takes your innocence away.” The dancer was convicted in the shooting and served time in prison. In 1993, several years after Markovitz had bought BT's in Dearborn, his partner, Freddy Giordano, was charged with putting out a murder contract on Markovitz. The suspected hit unraveled after one of the parties involved, Alan Howard of Boston, got cold feet and went to the FBI to cooperate. He ended up overdosing before the trial. Markovitz says he first learned of the plot while watching the 11 p.m. news. He heard the anchor say that he was the target of a $12,000, murder-for-hire plot involving a man named Dino Tilotti. Giordano was charged later on. “I was stunned, I didn’t think I heard it right,” Markovitz wrote in his book about hearing about the plot on TV. The case went to trial. Tilotti, who had been cooperating with the prosecution, froze on the stand and decided not to testify that Giordano allegedly put out the hit. So Giodarno walked. Tilotti ended up getting sentenced to more than 12 years in prison. When the trial was over, an angry Markovitz told Giordano to sell his interest in the club. On Jan. 9, 1997, an off-duty rookie cop from Inkster left Club 747 near the airport, another club Markovitz owned at the time. (It later became The Flight Club following a trademark battle with Boeing.) The cop had been drinking, arguing with a dancer and “being a general macho prick,” Markovitz wrote in his book. Markovitz came outside and the officer fired a shot, hitting Markovitz in the face. A U-M Medical helicopter came and picked him up. He made a complete recovery, and after several reconstructive surgeries, there was no noticeable scar on his face -- though the .40 caliber bullet remains lodged in his neck. He couldn’t believe he was shot a second time. “You go, wait a minute, I live in America. People go to war and don’t get shot up a couple times.” The officer ended up with a sentence of probation, according to Markovitz's book. The cop also lost his job on the force. Despite the gunplay, Markovitz continued to thrive. He understood marketing. He promoted his topless joints as classy clubs, not dingy joints, though on occasion some were busted for "lewd" behavior. Markovitz wasn’t above a little gimmick. On the one-year anniversary of BT’s, in the late 1980s, he brought in a chimp named Gonzo to do circus acts on stage. But the trainer had different ideas, and the dancers wound up giving the animal a lap dance -- taking turns straddling him while he sat on a chair. “Gonzo got intoxicated all right -- the hot chicks swarming over him must have kicked in some primal instinct -- he be started to go bananas!” Markovitz wrote in his book. “In the blink of an eye, Gonzo screeched like a chimp possessed and started grabbing at the unfortunate dancer who was straddling him -- grabbing her by her breasts and throwing his legs around her. The girl began screaming bloody murder as she reared back onto her four-inch danger platforms, trying to stand and back away from the monkey as the monkey did his best to hold on!” The handler eventually loosened the chimp’s grip and dragged him off stage. Not the Bada-Bing Markovitz has a 17-year-old daughter from a previous relationship who lives with him. He was married for two years to a woman he met at a friend's birthday party at an Auburn Hills restaurant. But they recently divorced. He said his wife, a native of Slovakia, was cheating on him with someone he knew. She moved in with the guy two days after moving out of the house. “He broke the Man Code. He’s a total freakin’ asshole,” Markovitz says. “Real men don’t do that to another guy.” Markovitz said he made it clear when he met with Cohen, the director, and others on the TV show: “I didn’t want to be portrayed as the stereotypical adult entertainment bar owner/strip-club owner, that it would mostly be about these machines," -- the clubs -- "because that’s what they are. There’s so many moving parts in my business.” He knows what some people think about topless joints; they think of places like the Bada Bing, Tony Soprano's club in the popular HBO series “The Sopranos.” “Yes, this is going to be the opposite of that. This is like the anti-Soprano. That was a cheese-ball bar. They were the real mob and that’s a whole different thing. Me, I”m a businessman, I run these clubs.”

Tuesday, May 27, 2014 Memorial Day Camping Ready to go... or so we thought. We ended up repacking my bike. We left a lot later than I wanted to... you know how it is, the doctors appointment runs late, Max gets off work later than expected, we had to get gas and stop by to replace our sleeping bags. By the time we got on the road it was nearly 6pm, and darkness would creep up on us soon. We rode purposefully up 400, until it turned into 115, then onto 52 toward Helen, and I eyed the little shops and farmers market with regret and promised myself a meandering ride home and to figure out some way to bring home the muscadine cider I saw advertised near a rental barn whose owners I knew long ago. The is no hardship in a reasonably paced and reasonably long ride; in our case, an hour and a half of slow looping turns, old farmsteads, and brief cold blasts of creekbed air. Parts of it made me wish to stop and put on my sweatshirt, but the sun sets earlier in the mountains than on the piedmont and I didn't dare risk stopping. Max rode behind me, easily in sight of regular checks in my mirrors, and at every red light and country stop sign we would check on one another. Finally, we reached 348 and it's tight curves, through which I pushed us a bit faster than was likely wise, excited to almost be there. The area was full when we pulled in, prompting me to a mental groan of realization. Saturday evening on Memorial Day Weekend? What had I been expecting, an empty stretch of forest? We passed my preferred campsite with a sigh of regret on my part and journeyed onward, pushing our reluctant bikes along the slick mud - and - gravel road until we reached the deep trough where the creek crossed the road. Max wanted to push the bikes across and keep going, but here I demurred as nerves and experience failed me... I ride rarely enough on rough ground, I was unwilling to try to cross a 2' deep and fast-moving stream that was easily 12' across. Instead, a gentleman whose camp lay just off the road beside us suggested that we would be welcome near them and we gratefully agreed to explore the area. His little setup, fortified by an electric fence, 'to keep out bears,' included two tents, chairs, rugs, and a grill. I could only giggle, while still appreciating his generous spirit since many campers prefer others as far away as possible. Ten minutes exploration netted us an excellent spot a few meters up the trail, mostly private and with trees ideal for the hammocks. Setting up the hammock tent was a bit of an adventure- we didn't test the new equipment beforehand like we should have, and it was a race against time to set up shelter and a fire pit and food and a rain - fly in case of the possible showers tonight. We managed, albeit barely, and there's no way I would have been able to get it all set up myself. Here, Max's superior knowledge of knots and his mechanical mind saved the day. We did the minimum needed to set up, boiled water for our dinner- chicken a la king out of a hikers good pack, which was surprisingly good, and gratefully collapsed into bed. Camp, all set up! Collapsed being the key word... despite blithe assurances that it was meant for two, our Eno Nest was NOT comfortable for two people to sleep in. After a frustrating half hour of shifting and figuring, full of muffled laughter and elbows in bladders, we have up and I moved to the other hammock and left the Eno to Max. With a rain fly and a sleeping bag it was comfortable enough, but at 3am one needn't be on the ground for the earth's cool fingers to chill you. I slept deeply when I slept, and spent much of the rest of the night cursing my inability to sleep in my jeans, as my legs and feet were the coldest parts of me. I woke to birdsong and the sound of Max extricating himself from the other nylon prison, and we agreed that today would involve a run to Helen and the purchase of a tent and sleeping pads. With light on our side this time, gathered enough firewood for the day, and Max set up a cheerful little campfire of mostly pine to keep away mosquitoes while I made breakfast- more hikers food, strawberry granola with milk. Again, surprisingly good. A round of tea followed- Early Grey is surprisingly good made over a campfire, and the smoky flavor lent itself well to the bergamot. The new water filter seemed to work well... we had bought two water bottles en route up, and used one to fill the water filter from the creek and the other to move filtered water to the fire and the mini-stove. A bottle of water flavoring drops made for surprisingly good mango - pineapple 'juice,' and once all was established we settled in with our books and enjoyed the gradually-warming morning. Later, we cleaned up the camp and headed into Helen to replace Max's ripped jeans and play tourist. The ride in was much more leisurely, knowing now that not only did we not have a time limit but that Max wasn't bored by my (lack of) speed. Long, slow curves and gentle turns, dappled sunlight and the ever-present scent of honeysuckle and water. The river lay to one side of the road for a mile or two, giving glimpses or green and silver and shivers of water-borne zephyrs. The road into Helen was slow, as always, but I couldn't argue the opportunity to keep looking around. Finally, on the recommendation of the carriage driver, we tried a little restaurant tucked onto a side street called BodenSee. Lunch was excellent- garlicky wurst, house - made by a chef with a predilection for meat. Max's chicken schnitzel with grilled onions was also excellent, and our Sacher torte was phenomenal. The cafe was a definite win, and we will be eating there again. We wandered a bit after that, enjoying sun and breeze and the many tourists. Max found a puzzle box that stumped for almost 10 minutes- a record, I think- and I fell in love with a metallic dragonfly 3d puzzle. Only as we looked up and noticed patchy clouds rolling in did we realize that our sojourn- or its length at least- might have been ill-advised. We raced 'home,' but were too late. The ride this time was far less pleasant as rain quickly soaked our jeans, dripped down the backs of our necks, and made me at least thankful for tall boots that allowed no drips to soak my socks. Rain-slick blacktop, and new blacktop at that, is a terrifying thing when you're cold and wet and in a hurry. The gravel road twisting along the mountainside inside the camp area carries its own warnings, and thin bike tires meant for asphalt are perilously slippery in gravel and mud. Still, I pushed our pace a bit faster than may have been advised, but not Max had no objections and was likely more comfortable with our pace than I was being the better rider. On arrival, I all but leapt off of Skya, grabbing my saddlebags- which, I realized, I'd never fastened on properly!- and nearly running to our campsite to salvage what wood I could and get it under cover. With the addition of a few pieces of heartwood donated by the campsite next to us, we were fairly well set up for the storm that soon broke over our heads. We layered both tarps over the Eno's rainfly, creating a big triangle of dry, under which we reslung the hammocks and stowed all of our gear, laying our soaked jeans over the rope of one of the hammocks so they could hopefully dry out some. When finally the rain began to break, Max did the cooking this time- we found that my Ensi stove doesn't boil water with a single fuel cell like it claims, but that in the all-the - way open position with 2 of them, you get a decent little boil. The beef stroganoff was our least favorite, but was still eminently edible when allowed to cook for 15 minutes instead of the directed 10. Snuggled down with books to wait out the rain Visiting puppy who looks EXACTLY like my Noka When the storm broke, we were pleasantly warm and dry in our respective hammocks, in dry socks, dry shorts, and in my case a sweatshirt, and snuggled in our sleeping bags with books. We also found that our lifestraw family filter was basically perfect for our needs: while harder to pack into saddlebags, the hard-sided 'dirty water' container made pouring into it easier (something our water bottles and leftover hikers food bags were ideal for), and a bungee to secure the lower end of the filter pipe made using it a breeze once we figured it out. If you're unfamiliar with them, they work like this- pour 'dirty' water into the big reservoir, turn the red tap and let water drain for a few seconds. Turn off the red tap. Turn the blue tap and use the bulb to pump clean water through the filter and put of the side straw. Voila! Clean water! It would drip on its own with the tap turned, or the bulb would pump it faster. Rebuilding the fire, post-storm Not very successful attempt to dry out our soaked jeans Our gregarious neighbor brought us the makings for s'mores, which was very welcome after an early lunch and early dinner- Max eats less when camping, but I eat quite a bit more. The rest of the evening was spent playing with the fires in Max's case, as he tended our neighbors during their run to the store and showed our other neighbors- a group of orthodox Jewish men and a bunch of kids- where to find the heart of pine from a downed tree, which burns fast and hot even when wet. In my case, there was a lot more lying in the hammock and reading my book. We decided that next trip, a tent is in order, but we will have to figure out a way to keep from being cold and stiff the next morning. We will try the thermarest pads, possibly layered under an air mattress although I despise the things. That night was rather more comfortable, as we both slept in socks and shorts and in my case, my sweatshirt again. The morning was still damp and early, and even an hour by the fire the night before and a night beneath our sleeping bags in the hammock hadn't dried out our jeans. I woke before Max and wriggled into my cold and damp jeans, and started another fire and breakfast to let him sleep in a bit. The bandito scramble was the least - good of our prepared meals, although the banana raisin quinoa we followed it with was quite good. We had our tea and spent most of the morning breaking down camp- really, less than an hours work but we were leisurely about it- before snuggling back up in the hammocks to laze about a bit longer and let it get warmer before riding back town town in still - damp clothing. It was nearly noon, and one more meal (excellent chicken teriyaki) before we heard thunder and realized we were overdue to get out of dodge. Camp, mostly broken aside from the hammocks Everything packed up, aside from the hammocks Ready to head home! Unfortunately, we were very overdue and the rain broke over our heads just as we finished loading the bikes. Joy. The ride home was a misery... little in the world is more unpleasant than cold rainwater finding it's way into your groin, down the back of your neck, and trickling into your boots. I at least had tall boots, although they didn't protect me nearly as much as I'd like. Poor Max had ventilation in a few spots he'd rather not, as we hadn't replaced his jeans in Helen like we'd planned. It's hard to enjoy the sights and sounds of rushing water and a world draped in emerald lace when your helmet fogs with every breath and needles of rain sting your cold, bare hands with every flurry of showers that passes overhead. Nor did it help that after stopping at a gas station to check our bearings and reactivate the data on our phones, the bluetooth on my helmet went out, leaving me instead of music a teeth - grinding intermittent crackle. Even more frustratingly, this extended not only to my music but to my gps, meaning that my route back was 100% memory, and I hadn't been here in 2 years. Our ride was made longer by this, since I didn't dare try it from memory and run risk of adding 'lost,' to our list of adjectives on top of, 'wet, cold, and miserable.' Reaching 400 felt almost like safe haven as we dropped altitude and gained warmth, so that even the ever-present cold wasn't as bad as it had been in the mountains. A half-hour's stop at Gypsy's, a few miles south of the outlet mall, netted us warm and mostly dry clothes and steaming mugs of tea- you know you have good friends when you can show up on their doorstep and ask to use the dryer. We still hit a few squalls before reaching the house, but finally we were able to unload the bikes, spread out our things to dry, and went to the apartment for long-awaited showers. It took two shampoos to get the smoke out of my hair, and little else compares to the joy of lotion after 3 days in the woods....Unless it's Damian's hugs when we went to pick him up, followed by gorging ourselves at Chili's (and indulging in a margarita) with Val and Wentzel.

The often insufferable Keith Olbermann calls the Tea Party folks the something-for-nothing crowd – and of course that’s shorthand for those who want no new taxes, and massive tax cuts as we’re taxed too much already, and the government to do less of everything, but who don’t want anyone to touch their Social Security benefits or cut Medicare in any way. Yep, there were those signs – Keep Your Government Hands off My Medicare! You could even buy the t-shirt. It was a bit odd, and mockery may be appropriate. How would any of that stuff be paid for? And, as true patriots, the same crowd wants a strong military – to slap around anyone in the world who gets too uppity – but also love it when the economist who invented Reaganomics, Art Laffer, says things like this: No income tax, no corporate profits tax, no capital gains tax, no estate tax, no payroll tax (FICA) either employee or employer, no Medicare or Medicaid taxes, no federal excise taxes, no tariffs, no federal taxes at all… Can you imagine where employment would be today? How does a 2.5% unemployment rate sound? Laffer proposes that for the next eighteen months. He does not suggest how government employees, like our troops, would be paid, or how we’d pay the incoming bills for, say, jet fuel for the drones, or for the food the guys over there need, or the upkeep of the federal highway system or for air-traffic controllers and all the ordinary every day stuff, much less the amount due each month on our already accumulating debt. Most of the column is about the necessity of cutting off unemployment benefits to all, and about the danger of the deficit, as there should be no deficit. One does not borrow from the Chinese. They are not nice people. They don’t have our interests in mind. And of course the math doesn’t work. Leaving the lazy and whining unemployed – who refuse to take all the jobs that are obviously available – high and dry, would provide maybe one pne hundredth of one percent of the funds necessary for ongoing government functioning. But the theory is cool – if no one had to pay any taxes at all there would be lots more money floating around in people’s hands, and that’s always good for business. Whether not having a functioning government for a year and a half would be good for business is a matter he doesn’t address. It hasn’t worked out that well in Somalia. But Senator Jon Kyl riffs on that same theme – Extend the Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Even If They Add to the Deficit. In this senator’s mind, if you have to choose between continuing the massive tax cuts and a ballooning deficit – more like real life – it’s best to run a deficit, so long as you keep lots of money in the hands of the movers and shakers who are the key people who keep America thriving. You have to accept certain things, for more important things. Lots of money in the hands of the right people – that’s the ticket. Sure it might be painful to some. This will mean you have to cut services to those who aren’t wealthy, like any sort of social safety net for them, as such cuts will make the deficit a bit less, and thus a bit less dangerous. But they’ll understand. Their pain is for the greater good. And the Tea Party folks do understand that. Some folks matter more than others – you don’t pick on big corporations or multimillionaires. Those are the folks who keep things humming. See this clip from the Chris Matthews show – Trish Regan doing the outraged and alarmed patriot thing – “Isn’t there something inherently un-American about the more money you make, the more money we’re going to take from you.” She is passionate. Who is going to stand up for the people who make something of themselves in this sorry world? See Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham: First they came for the rich. And I did not speak out because I was not rich. Then they came for the property owners, and I did not speak out because I did not own property. Then they came for the right to bear arms, and I did not speak out because I was not armed. Then they came for me and denied me my medical care, and there was no one left to speak for me. That’s the Tea Party in a nutshell. She hits all the issues. Your Jewish friends who lost parents or grandparents in the Holocaust might be a tad offended considering the original – but she says it’s the same sort of thing, or even worse, so back off. When she sits in for vacationing Bill O’Reilly on Fox it’s always an adventure. You know – it’s just not fair. That’s the general idea, no matter what the issue. And now, if the Bush tax cuts expire without a fight, the estate tax – what the right has always called the Death Tax – will revert to its usual fifty-five percent. The Tea Party crowd is apoplectic about that. It’s tyranny. It’s slavery – Michele Bachmann’s new formulation. But here’s an interesting finding from John Sides: The majority of Americans opposes the estate tax, even though it affects only a small number of wealthy people. Scholarly investigations of this puzzle have debated the role of knowledge about the tax. Do at least some people support the estate tax because they are ignorant of its limited scope? If people were better informed, would more of them support this tax? Via experiments, I demonstrate the casual effects of information about who pays the estate tax, as well as arguments for and against it. I find that this information does reduce opposition to the estate tax, and that it does so primarily among the poorer conservatives and Republicans. The combination of this information and various arguments also tend to shift opinion in favor of the tax. These findings contrast with previous research and suggest that knowledge (or lack thereof) is central to understanding public opinion about the estate tax. You can figure these things out, not that many make the effort. But Olbermann’s mockery is not useful. Mockery – attempting to shame those who hold a view you find wrongheaded – is never useful in argumentation. They just dig in and you miss what is really going on, and certainly something is going on here. And what that is seems to have to do with what many have observed – someone is playing on the notion that one day you too will be rich beyond the dreams of avarice – Doctor Johnson’s sarcastic way of putting it – and then such impositions will enrage you too, with their unfairness. But, with so many out of work and in distress, with no hope of turning into Donald Trump (with better hair) overnight, how can this be? They should know better. But of course it’s the times – and the now quite dramatic inequality in American life, with the few rich far richer than ever before, and everyone else, losing jobs, or having their wages remain flat for a decade, and just generally stuck. All they have is hope, even if it is hopeless hope. It’s just something to cling too, as you watch the Porsche ads on CNBC and follow the Real Housewives of New York, or tell your friends that Paris Hilton really ought to wear underwear now and then. It’s a play on the American Dream, when the dream is far preferable to the waking reality. And it seems to work. But how severe is the current inequality? It’s at record levels, and as much a cause of our problems as it is symbol of them, or so says Robert Reich: Wall Street’s banditry was the proximate cause of the Great Recession, not its underlying cause. Even if the Street is better controlled in the future (and I have my doubts), the structural reason for the Great Recession still haunts America. That reason is America’s surging inequality. Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation’s total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America’s total annual income. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income reconcentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928 – with 23.5 percent of the total. And Reich notes that each of America’s two biggest economic crashes – 1929 and 2008 – occurred in the year immediately following such a peek: This is no mere coincidence. When most of the gains from economic growth go to a small sliver of Americans at the top, the rest don’t have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing. America’s median wage, adjusted for inflation, has barely budged for decades. Between 2000 and 2007 it actually dropped. Under these circumstances the only way the middle class can boost its purchasing power is to borrow, as it did with gusto. As housing prices rose, Americans turned their homes into ATMs. But such borrowing has its limits. When the debt bubble finally burst, vast numbers of people couldn’t pay their bills, and banks couldn’t collect. But we could dream, and we still do. It’s just that this time, like the last time, those at the top screwed up, in kind of the same way: A second parallel links 1929 with 2008: when earnings accumulate at the top, people at the top invest their wealth in whatever assets seem most likely to attract other big investors. This causes the prices of certain assets – commodities, stocks, dot-coms or real estate – to become wildly inflated. Such speculative bubbles eventually burst, leaving behind mountains of near-worthless collateral. The crash of 2008 didn’t turn into another Great Depression because the government learned the importance of flooding the market with cash, thereby temporarily rescuing some stranded consumers and most big bankers. But the financial rescue didn’t change the economy’s underlying structure. Median wages are continuing their downward slide, and those at the top continue to rake in the lion’s share of income. That’s why the middle class still doesn’t have the purchasing power it needs to reboot the economy, and why the so-called recovery will be so tepid – maybe even leading to a double dip. It’s also why America will be vulnerable to even larger speculative booms and deeper busts in the years to come. But this time it’s worse: The structural problem began in the late 1970s, by which time a wave of new technologies (air cargo, container ships and terminals, satellite communications and, later, the Internet) had radically reduced the costs of outsourcing jobs abroad. Other new technologies (automated machinery, computers and ever more sophisticated software applications) took over many other jobs (remember bank tellers? telephone operators? service station attendants?). By the ’80s, any job requiring that the same steps be performed repeatedly was disappearing – going over there or into software. Meanwhile, as the pay of most workers flattened or dropped, the pay of well-connected graduates of prestigious colleges and MBA programs – the so-called “talent” who reached the pinnacles of power in executive suites and on Wall Street – soared. But we continued to dream on: Government could have given employees more bargaining power to get higher wages, especially in industries sheltered from global competition and requiring personal service: big-box retail stores, restaurants and hotel chains, and child- and eldercare, for instance. Safety nets could have been enlarged to compensate for increasing anxieties about job loss: unemployment insurance covering part-time work, wage insurance if pay drops, transition assistance to move to new jobs in new locations, insurance for communities that lose a major employer so they can lure other employers. With the gains from economic growth the nation could have provided Medicare for all, better schools, early childhood education, more affordable public universities, more extensive public transportation. And if more money was needed, taxes could have been raised on the rich. Big, profitable companies could have been barred from laying off a large number of workers all at once, and could have been required to pay severance – say, a year of wages -to anyone they let go. Corporations whose research was subsidized by taxpayers could have been required to create jobs in the United States. The minimum wage could have been linked to inflation. And America’s trading partners could have been pushed to establish minimum wages pegged to half their countries’ median wages – thereby ensuring that all citizens shared in gains from trade and creating a new global middle class that would buy more of our exports. But of course we did none of that – we just deregulated and privatized, and our government did all the wrong things: It increased the cost of public higher education and cut public transportation. It shredded safety nets. It halved the top income tax rate from the range of 70-90 percent that prevailed during the 1950s and ’60s to 28-40 percent; it allowed many of the nation’s rich to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax and escape inheritance taxes altogether. At the same time, America boosted sales and payroll taxes, both of which have taken a bigger chunk out of the pay of the middle class and the poor than of the well-off. Companies were allowed to slash jobs and wages, cut benefits and shift risks to employees (from you-can-count-on-it pensions to do-it-yourself 401(k)s, from good health coverage to soaring premiums and deductibles). They busted unions and threatened employees who tried to organize. The biggest companies went global with no more loyalty or connection to the United States than a GPS device. Washington deregulated Wall Street while insuring it against major losses, turning finance – which until recently had been the servant of American industry – into its master, demanding short-term profits over long-term growth and raking in an ever larger portion of the nation’s profits. And nothing was done to impede CEO salaries from skyrocketing to more than 300 times that of the typical worker (from thirty times during the Great Prosperity of the 1950s and ’60s), while the pay of financial executives and traders rose into the stratosphere. No wonder people retreated to their dreams – their fantasies. That’s all that was left them. And others were running things anyway: As money has risen to the top, so has political power. Politicians are more dependent than ever on big money for their campaigns. Modern Washington is far removed from the Gilded Age, when, it’s been said, the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators. Today’s cash comes in the form of ever increasing campaign donations from corporate executives and Wall Street, their ever bigger platoons of lobbyists and their hordes of PR flacks. And those paying for the politicians, of both parties, got what they paid for: Legislation to improve America’s healthcare system illustrates the paradox. Initially, the nation was strongly supportive. But the president and Democratic leaders failed to link healthcare reform to the broader agenda of widely shared prosperity. So as unemployment rose through 2009, the public understandably focused its attention on the loss of jobs and earnings, to which healthcare appeared tangential. Consequently, the nation was not as actively supportive of reform as it needed to be in order to weaken the hold of Big Pharma and private health insurers, who demanded that any so-called reform improve their bottom line. The resulting law is fodder for the right, because it won’t adequately control future costs and requires Americans to pay more for health insurance than they would have had the deals not been made. Much the same has occurred with efforts to reform the financial system. The White House and Democratic leaders could have described the overarching goal as overhauling economic institutions that bestow outsize rewards on a relative few while imposing extraordinary costs and risks on almost everyone else. Instead, they defined the goal narrowly: reducing risks to the financial system caused by particular practices on Wall Street. The solution thereby shriveled to a set of technical fixes for how the Street should conduct its business. Even the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico could have been put into the larger frame of how giant corporations use their influence to capture regulators and impose risks and costs on the broader public, and the central importance of public health and environmental safety to widespread prosperity. But here again, the administration and Democratic leaders failed to connect the dots. The disaster morphed into a technical question of how to plug the gusher and a policy discussion of how best to regulate deepwater drilling. And that is just a taste of what Reich lays out, which ends with this: None of us can thrive in a nation divided between a small number of people receiving an ever larger share of the nation’s income and wealth, and everyone else receiving a declining share. The lopsidedness not only diminishes economic growth but also tears at the social fabric of our society. The most fortunate among us who have reached the pinnacles of economic power and success depend on a stable economic and political system. That stability rests on the public’s trust that the system operates in the interest of us all. Any loss of such trust threatens the well-being of everyone. We will choose reform, I believe, because we are a sensible nation, and reform is the only sensible option we have. Good luck with that. Everyone else is just watching television, while sipping cheap beer, imagining being rich one day. Sometimes that’s all that sustains you – that and your imaginary Ferrari. And then you die. Would facing the facts be helpful? Maybe so, but everyone seems to be reading Joe Keohane’s Boston Globe article on the fact that “facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds.” That item is what everyone knows to be true, but is now being confirmed by all sorts of studies: If people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers and better citizens. If they are ignorant, facts will enlighten them. If they are mistaken, facts will set them straight. In the end, truth will out. Won’t it? Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger. And this evidence that facts can actually make misinformation even stronger is not just an amusing outcome: On its own, this might not be a problem: People ignorant of the facts could simply choose not to vote. But instead, it appears that misinformed people often have some of the strongest political opinions. A striking recent example was a study done in the year 2000, led by James Kuklinski of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He led an influential experiment in which more than 1,000 Illinois residents were asked questions about welfare – the percentage of the federal budget spent on welfare, the number of people enrolled in the program, the percentage of enrollees who are black, and the average payout. More than half indicated that they were confident that their answers were correct – but in fact only 3 percent of the people got more than half of the questions right. Perhaps more disturbingly, the ones who were the most confident they were right were by and large the ones who knew the least about the topic. No comments about Fox News, please. It can happen to those who watch Olbermann and Maddow, as there something innate involved: What’s going on? How can we have things so wrong, and be so sure that we’re right? Part of the answer lies in the way our brains are wired. Generally, people tend to seek consistency. There is a substantial body of psychological research showing that people tend to interpret information with an eye toward reinforcing their preexisting views. If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn’t. This is known as “motivated reasoning.” Whether or not the consistent information is accurate, we might accept it as fact, as confirmation of our beliefs. This makes us more confident in said beliefs, and even less likely to entertain facts that contradict them. We all know people like that, or know we too are like that. That’s just how it is. But there are some ideas for how to counter this: One avenue may involve self-esteem. Nyhan worked on one study in which he showed that people who were given a self-affirmation exercise were more likely to consider new information than people who had not. In other words, if you feel good about yourself, you’ll listen – and if you feel insecure or threatened, you won’t. This would also explain why demagogues benefit from keeping people agitated. The more threatened people feel, the less likely they are to listen to dissenting opinions, and the more easily controlled they are. But there’s a fix for that too: Instead of focusing on citizens and consumers of misinformation, he suggests looking at the sources. If you increase the “reputational costs” of peddling bad info, he suggests, you might discourage people from doing it so often. “So if you go on ‘Meet the Press’ and you get hammered for saying something misleading,” he says, “you’d think twice before you go and do it again.” Wait – getting a politician to register shame? Dream on. And things have changed, as Peter Beinart notes here: The more fundamental difference between the Obama era and its New Deal and Great Society predecessors is this: Back then, progressives did not define the left end of the political spectrum. In the 1930s and 1960s, America featured honest-to-goodness alternatives to capitalism, home-grown radical movements that scared the crap out of the American establishment and sent some of its denizens scurrying into arms of reformers like FDR and LBJ. Because our entire ideological spectrum has shifted right since communism’s collapse, reforms that once looked like centrist compromises now look like the brainchild of Chairman Mao. For confirmation see Lydia Saad at Gallup – Americans Unsure About “Progressive” Political Label – and Donald Douglas at American Power – Progressives Are Communists (If You Didn’t Know) – and Olbermann mocks on. And America dreams on. And key people are counting on you continuing to dream. Your dreams are paying for their real Ferrari. But why would you want to wake up? To how things really are, that you’re stuck and that’s that? Dreams are preferable, even hopeless ones, or in these times, especially hopeless ones.

"... These lines are especially for you, my darling Annele. I send you my best wishes; the kind of wishes which a father has in mind for his good child and the special wish that all of us can be together again in the near future. I am glad that at least the both of you can be together and I am very sorry that I can only think of you on your 20th birthday in the distance. After all we must be glad that we are with good people and that we are in good health." Paul Strauss wrote these lines in November 1939. At that time the hops dealer from Nuremberg lived in Brussels, his wife Zerline and daughter Annemarie he had sent to England. Almost sixty years later his daughter Annemarie outlined the fate of her family in a report to NCA. Paul Strauss was born in Nuremberg on August 9, 1879 as the only son of Hermann and Lina Strauss. He went to highschool in Nuremberg and was a soldier in World War I 1914/18. His father founded a hops trade by the name "Hermann Strauss jun." in which my father succeeded him. The office and the private apartment of my parents and me (their only child) were at Bahnhofstrasse 35. In 1929 we moved into a villa in the proximity of the Luitpoldhain (Hertastrasse 8). The business went very well. Paul Strauss worked at least 10 hours every day and traveled 4 months a year. He bought the hops in Germany and sold it to German breweries, too, but mainly to breweries in Belgium and Holland. He brought a lot of foreign currency to Germany. Because the Hitler regime also needed foreign currency at that time, my father had no difficulties in the business until 1938/39 although he was a Jew. Then he had to sell his business to an "Aryan" company by the name of Gruber & Breitschaft. In April 1939 Paul Strauss managed to move to Belgium because he had many customers there. The permission was only for one person, therefore my mother and I went to England. My father worked in Belgium but we heard nothing more of him after the German troops had occupied Belgium. We got this information from the Red Cross and the "Aide Aux Israélites De La Guerre" (help for Jewish war victims) after the war: Paul Strauss had been arrested and deported as No. 1031 of transport XX from Malines to Auschwitz April 19, 1943. He never came back. Zerline (Lili) Plaut of Mainz (born July 9, 1896) married Paul Strauss of Nuremberg February 25, 1919 and from then on lived in Nuremberg ... They had one daughter (Annemarie). Paul Strauss was the owner of a hops trade. Mainly his customers were breweries in Belgium and Holland. The export business went well, also within the first years of the Hitler regime. Then, in 1938/39 Paul Strauss had to sell the business to an "Aryan" company and the house in Hertastrasse was handed over to the NSV (Nazi Public Welfare Service). Paul Strauss got the permission to go to Belgium. The permission however was for him only. Lili's daughter had emigrated to England in January 1939. One only could get the permission to live in England if one was willing to be a domestic. Annemarie was a servant in Sheffield with a family and she managed to acquire another job for her mother. Thus Lili Strauss moved to Sheffield in July 1939, too. Later she was housekeeper for a sister in London. For a couple of years she moved to Macclesfield (a little town right in the middle of England) and lived there with her daughter in a room. Both of them worked in dress factories. After the German troops had occupied Belgium, she heard nothing more of her husband. After the war she heard from the Red Cross, that her husband Paul Strauss was deported from Belgium to Auschwitz. This of course was the worst what could happen to Lili Strauss. She was terribly sad, however she was very brave mainly because of her daughter. She was naturalized in England and got a position for housemother in a big orphanage. She worked there many years, then she retired. She got a pension from Germany. For reasons of health she had to spend the last years of her life in an elder care home. She deceased in 1983. Annemarie Strauss, born November 27, 1919 in Nuremberg (Bahnhofstrasse 35) was the only child of Paul and Lili Strauss. I went to the Labenwolfschule (Girls' High School) and was a good student. I liked school very much and had many Christian and Jewish friends. I was so sorry, that by law I had to leave high school in 1936. For some time I worked with my father in his office, studied French (in Switzerland) and English (in England). In 1938 my parents sent me to a business school in Hamburg. I learned a lot there but after 4 months I got a summons by the Gestapo. They said to me, that there were enough Jews in Hamburg already and that I had to leave the town within a week - so I went back to Nuremberg. After the "Kristallnacht" November 9, 1938 my parents decided that I shall emigrate. - The only possibility for me was to go to England as a domestic. England allowed many Jewish children to enter this country but I was 19 years of age already. I could get only the permission to live in England, if I obliged me to work as a domestic. So I went to a family in Sheffield in January 1939. My mother followed me in July, also as a domestic. I stayed in Sheffield for 15 months, then I learned that due to the war refugees could get the permission to work as seamstresses in factories. I got work in the eastern part of London in a dress factory. During the air-raids the factory was closed temporarily in fall 1940. I hadn't any money and worked as a cleaning woman. After a couple of weeks the owners opened a second factory in a little town outside of London and I decided to work there again. The English female workers in London and in Macclesfield were always very nice to me. In the course of time I could sew better and more fastly and I earned more. Finally I got the permission to work in the office, first as shorthand typist, then as bookkeeper. I became the private secretary of the director after a couple of years. In January 1947 I married an Englishman and I have two children. JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of the translation. The reader may wish to refer to the original material JewishGen is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in the original work and cannot rewrite or edit the text to correct inaccuracies and/or omissions. Our mission is to produce a translation of the original work and we cannot verify the accuracy of statements or alter facts cited. Leaving Nuremberg Yizkor Book Project JewishGen Home Page Copyright © 1999-2013 by JewishGen, Inc. Updated 21 June 2003 by LA

Jewish World Review March 1, 2006 / 1 Adar 5766 From the Taliban to the Ivy League I thought I'd lost the ability to be shocked by anything that happened on an American university campus that is until I read the New York Times magazine this weekend. In an article entitled, simply, "The Freshman," author Chip Brown describes a charming tale of a young man come to study at one of the premier institutions of higher learning in the country. He might more aptly have titled his piece "G-d, Country, and Yale." Only in this telling, G-d is the vengeful Allah of Islamist fanatics, and the country to which this student once pledged his allegiance is the Taliban's Afghanistan, for the first-year Yalie profiled is none other than the former "ambassador-at-large" of the Taliban regime, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi. Yes, Yale has decided to welcome into its fold a man whose previous visit to the New Haven, Conn., campus in March 2001 was as an official apologist for the misogynistic government that had just blown up the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan, the giant 1,500-year-old statues long considered among the most important ancient sculptures in the world. This might be just another tale of multiculturalism run amok on campus were it not for the 3,000 dead Americans buried in the rubble of the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, and the more than 200 Americans who died fighting to liberate Afghanistan from Rahmatullah's former paymasters. As it is, this story raises serious questions not just about what's happening on America's campuses but whether the student visa program that gave us Mohammed Atta and his murderous accomplices continues to pose threats to American security. Rahmatullah's journey from the Taliban to the Ivy League is a strange one told in more than 8,600 words by Brown. Rahmatullah grew up in what appears to have been a lower-middle-class family in Afghanistan, the sixth of seven children, the son of a former policeman who fled with his family to Pakistan after the Soviet invasion. According to Brown, the boy dropped out of school when he was 10 to help in his father's shoe store, but later returned to an English-language training school for Afghan refugees run by an American charity, the International Rescue Committee. His language training would later come in handy when Rahmatullah returned to Kandahar, Afghanistan, after the Taliban seized the city from the Afghan communist government that ruled the country once the Soviets withdrew. Rahmatullah became a translator for the Taliban, and worked his way up into the regime's foreign office. Rahmatullah even met the Taliban's most famous "guest," Osama bin Laden in 1997. "He came to the foreign office with some people," Rahmatullah told Brown. "He was a very tall guy. I knew him as a rich man, an Arab, but there was no reason at the time to remember his name." He also heard bin Laden speak in 1998, not long after bin Laden's agents blew up two U.S. embassies in Africa, killing 224 people, as Brown notes. But it was Rahmatullah's chance meeting with an American filmmaker, Mike Hoover, that brought the young man to America, first as the Taliban's official spokesman and then later as a student at Yale. Hoover met Rahmatullah while filming in Afghanistan in 2000, liked him, and suggested that the young man come to America to tell the Taliban's story. Hoover even put up the money for travel expenses and arranged much of his speaking tour. But the trip didn't go all that well; it seems Americans weren't all that keen to hear a defense of blowing up priceless ancient sculptures or depriving young girls of the right to be educated. But Hoover never lost faith in Rahmatullah and, in 2004, encouraged him to apply to Yale. For its part, Yale was thrilled to have him. Yale Dean Richard Shaw came away from his interview with Rahmatullah, says Brown, "with a sense: Whoa! This is a person to be reckoned with and who could educate us about the world." Yale admitted Rahmatullah as a "special student" in January 2005. Apparently, getting a visa was no problem for this former spokesman of a terrorist regime, and Rahmatullah has been studying at Yale for the past year. Now, Brown says with no apparent irony, Rahmatullah "plan[s] to apply for admission as a degree-status sophomore in March or April. And in May, in'shallah [If Allah wills], he would go home." Unless Yale has gone totally mad and with Yale, the U.S. State Department, which grants student visas Rahmatullah should be encouraged to stay there. JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Linda Chavez Archives © 2006, Creators Syndicate

With the Jewish high holiday Yom Kippur being observed last Saturday, weekend football schedules were spread out over several days throughout Essex County and the rest of the state. As if you didn’t know. That presented a fabulous opportunity to see multiple Essex teams, and I took full advantage. Caught St. Anthony at Newark Academy on Wednesday, West Orange at Union City Thursday, Verona at Glen Ridge and also Bloomfield at Belleville Friday, East Orange Campus at Irvington Saturday and Passaic at Livingston Sunday. No Essex games scheduled for Monday, so I treated myself to a little South Jersey action with Winslow Township at Shawnee.And some people call this work. Please. A few thoughts on the action: * Newark Academy’s new coach Steve Trivino has his kids working hard and believing in themselves. They took a pounding against a very good St. Anthony team, 54-13, but kept their heads high and never sulked. The Minutemen will learn from that experience. * Covering football from the roof of a building is definitely an experience everyone should try (not at once, please). For those who don’t know, Union City’s Roosevelt Stadium, completed last year, is set atop its school building, two stories above Kennedy Boulevard. That enables you to watch the game and your car at the same time. The novelty of the situation did wear off once the hitting commenced (and there was plenty), though did return for one humorous moment. Christian Smith’s PAT following West Orange’s third touchdown sailed above the net backing and onto the street. Funny to then see team managers running Down to fetch the ball. * Glen Ridge was going to replace Verona as my pick to win North Jersey, Section 2, Group 1 after its 31-21 win over the Hillbillies. But then Weequahic beat a very good West Side team that night, 21-14, and changed my thinking. Still, the Ridgers have an outstanding overall package this season—experienced QB in Elijah Conte; two talented running backs in Mike Rollo and Jerome Alexander; a punishing two-way end in Matt McMahon and one of the more versatile players in the county with Carl Castor. Glen Ridge has a brutal three-week schedule starting in a few weeks against Orange Oct. 18 at Bell Stadium, Orange. It has Caldwell at home the following week and then Weequahic Oct. 23 at home. * Both Bloomfield and Belleville paid touching tribute to Michael Anthony Mason, the 17-year-old Bloomfield student and former player who had died six days before their game last Friday. Belleville coach Chris Strumolo and many of his players and coaches attended the wake service during the week and his school offered a moment of silence and a moving statement about the youngster prior to the game. Bloomfield players wore No. 30 stickers on their helmets to commemorate their former teammate and drummers in the marching band displayed small banners adorned with that same No. 30 on the front of their instruments. This is something high school kids should never have to experience. Ever. It is indeed remarkable when the youngsters express their anguish with such grace. * East Orange Campus lost some very good linemen to graduation last year (including All-State selection Chris Woods), but it has replenished its resources quickly and convincingly. Size is down a bit, but Omane Stephen, Baja Rowe, Darren Hammond and Ethan James compensate for that with quickness and ferocity. Don’t forget that the Jaguars have an experienced QB in Junior Justin Laroda and a whole lot of deep talent around him. Najee Williams, Chris Rolling and Rammel Tisdale lead a ground game that’s probably No. 2 in the county behind well-stocked Seton Hall Prep. * Livingston coach Barry Kostibos indicated before the season that his kids had last year’s 0-9 season in the rearview mirror. In fact, the Lancers had driven so far away from that wreckage that it wasn’t even worth looking back anymore. Move-ahead Livingston is now 2-0 after a thrilling comeback win over Millburn, 34-26, to open the season, and a hard-fought 10-8 win against Passaic on a sweltering afternoon in Livingston. In both cases, the team overcame deficits by maintaining poise and confidence and by seizing opportunity as it presented itself. The Lancers answered Passaic’s go-ahead TD, 8-7, with an eight-play, 55-yard drive culminating with a 22-yard field goal by Anthony Cappuccino. Here’s what Kostibos said before the season: ``We made no predictions about this season. We wan to give ourselves and our teammates the opportunity to play the very best we can every game and every practice and let the chips fall where they may.’’

Geller again “knows” identity of criminals, this time the Bulgarian Bus Bomber by Sheila Musaji In July of 2012, criminal terrorists carried out an attack in Bulgaria. A bomb was placed on an Israeli tour bus and at least 5 Israeli tourists were killed. This was a tragedy, and like all terrorism, reprehensible. Whoever carried out this act and with whatever twisted justifications. There is NEVER a justification for such acts. The investigation has been lengthy and for the past 6 months there has been a lot of supposition, but very few facts released to news media. The Bulgarian bus bombing was a criminal act, and whoever was responsible needs to be caught, tried, and punished under the law. Today, Pamela Geller published an article with the title #myjihad in Bulgaria: Hezballah behind #savage Bulgaria bus bombing. The title makes a specific charge against a specific group, and sounds as if the evidence is now in. However, Geller only makes her claim in her title and adds the statement “Jihadists targeting Jewish women and children on holiday on a bus in Bulgaria. Islamic Jew-hatred, their reason for living, their reason for dying.” and provides links to three articles. I read the articles, and here are the only facts they contain: 1) Israelis blamed on Lebanon’s Hizbullah terrorists and Iran. Bulgaria has said the bombing was plotted outside the country and carried out by foreigners. 2) A report is being prepared by Bulgaria and “The conclusions of the report are expected to have a significant impact on whether the EU finally adds Hizbullah to its list of terrorist organizations, something the U.S. has already done and which Israel has been pushing for more than a decade. Such a move could lead to the freezing of Hizbullah’s assets in Europe.” 3) The spokesperson of the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry, Vesela Cherneva, said that the results of the investigation are not ready to be announced in public. I did a quick news search and found a Jerusalem Post article Bulgaria: No Hezbollah link to deadly terror attack which says The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry denied on Friday a report saying that the probe into the Burgas bombing links Hezbollah to the attack. On Thursday, Channel 2 reported that the investigation report found the Lebanese terror organization was behind the deadly bombing that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver. However, on Thursday a contradicting report appeared in Bulgarian media saying Bulgaria has no evidence of Hezbollah’s involvement in the bombing. The report, citing officials in the Bulgarian Interior Ministry, added that the bomber’s suspected Arab accomplice had a link to al-Qaida in the past. The Bulgarian investigation report also states that the Europol has successfully identified three out of the four suspected of committing the attack, Channel 2 reported. The three allegedly entered Bulgaria through neighboring countries using fake identifications. Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov declined to comment on the report in Israel media, while Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the MFA, told the Jerusalem Post on Friday, “we will not make any comments before the Bulgarian government divulges its conclusions and states its position.” ... The bottom line is that Geller is simply making claims based on nothing at all. Even if Muslims were involved it would still be a criminal act of terrorism and not jihad. Even if the terrorist claimed an “Islamic” justification or called it jihad, that would not make their claim true. Since Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the dynamic duo of hate have come up with so many fake stories in the past few weeks all using the #MyJihad hashtag, I doubt that this one is any more accurate. Here are just a few of these recent hate pieces. If you click on the titles of the posts, it will take you to a response to the particular claim. - The #MyJihad campaign was accused of inspiring a Chicago bus threat. It has now been reported that Canadian suspect in Bulgaria bus bombing likely triggered explosion prematurely, killing his relative and five Israelis. “Bulgarian authorities allege Hassan El Hajj Hassan, 25, who emigrated from Lebanon to Canada as a child, is a Hezbollah operative involved in last year’s bombing of a bus at an airport on Bulgaria’s coast that killed five Israeli tourists and their local driver.” Therefore, it is possible that in this particular case, the Islamophobes may have accidentally been correct, and there may be a Hezbollah connection. If this man, and any accomplices are found guilty, they deserve to receive the maximum punishment that the law allows. It has further been reported that the EU agrees to put Hezbollah’s military wing on terror list : “European Union foreign ministers agreed on Monday to blacklist Lebanese militant group Hezbollah’s armed wing, holding it responsible for terror attacks in Europe including a bus bombing in Bulgaria in which five Israelis were killed.” This is a good thing. RESOURCES FOR DEALING WITH ISLAMOPHOBIA SUMMARY The Islamophobia Industry exists and is engaged in an anti-Muslim Crusade. They have a manifesto for spreading their propaganda, and which states their goal of “destroying Islam — as a culture, a political ideology, and a religion.” They produce anti-Muslim films. They are forming new organizations and coalitions of organizations at a dizzying speed, not only nationally, but also internationally. They have formed an International Leadership Team “which will function as a mobile, proactive, reactive on-the-ground team developing and executing confidential action plans that strike at the heart of the global anti-freedom agenda.” Currently, the Islamophobia Industry is engaged in a full-scale, coordinated, demonization campaign against American Muslims and Arabs. In just the past few months we have seen a series of inflammatory provocations: There was the Innocence of Muslims film Titanic, a German satire magazine plans an “Islam” cover article to be published later this month. Charlie Hebdo, a French satire magazine published an issue with inflammatory cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Newsweek published their ‘Muslim Rage’ cover. Terry Jones held a “trial of Prophet Muhammad”. SION held a “global” gathering in NYC to plan propaganda strategy. A group in Toronto publicized a “walk your dog at the mosque” day. AFDI/SIOA has run a series of anti-Muslim ads on public transportation across the country. AFDI/SIOA are planning to run 8 more anti-Muslim ads. There are three more films on Prophet Muhammad in the works by Ali Sina, Mosab Hassan Yousef and Imran Farasat. They are even bringing their hate messages into public schools. Daniel Pipes is encouraging publication of “A Muhammad cartoon a day”, and says “So, this is my plea to all Western editors and producers: Display the Muhammad cartoon daily, until the Islamists become accustomed to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger.”. Pipes joins Daniel Greenfield (aka Sultan Knish) who published an appeal on David Horowitz’ Front Page Magazine Is It Time for ‘Make Your Own Mohammed Movie Month’?. And, both are following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Pamela Geller, who promoted just such a plan back in 2010 with her promotion of Draw Muhammad Day, even after the cartoonist who drew the first cartoon and suggested the idea, Molly Norris apologized to Muslims and asked for the day to be called off, and American Muslims had issued a defense of free speech. None of this is surprising as one of the Islamophobes laid out their strategy as “The Muslims themselves have shown us their most vulnerable spot, which is the questionable (though unquestioned) character of the ‘Prophet’ himself. We need to satirise and ridicule baby-bonking Mo until the Muslims fly into uncontrollable tantrums, then ridicule them even more for their tantrums, and repeat the process until they froth at the mouth and steam comes out of their ears.” The Islamophobia of these folks is very real, it is also strikingly similar to a previous generations’ anti-Semitism, and it has predictable consequences. The reason that this is so obvious to so many is that rational people can tell the difference between legitimate concerns and bigoted stereotypes. The claim that the Islamophobes are “truth-tellers” and “defenders of freedom” who actually “love Muslims” and have never engaged in “broadbrush demonization” or “advocated violence”, or that nothing that they say could have had anything to do with any act of violence, are nonsense. The claim that they are falsely being accused of Islamophobia for no reason other than their legitimate concerns about real issues and that in fact there is not even such a thing as Islamophobia, or their claim that the fact that there are fewer hate crimes against Muslims than against Jews or that some Muslims have fabricated such crimes “proves” that Islamophobia doesn’t exist, or that the term Islamophobia was made up by Muslims in order to stifle their freedom of speech, or that anti-Muslim bigotry is “not Islamophobia but Islamorealism” are all nonsense. These individuals and organizations consistently promote the false what everyone “knows” lies about Islam and Muslims (including distorting the meaning of Qur’anic verses, and distorting the meaning of Islamic terms such as taqiyya, jihad, sharia, etc.). Islamophobes falsely claim to see “JIHAD” PLOTS everywhere, particularly where they don’t exist. They, like Muslim extremists, don’t understand the true meaning of the term jihad. The Islamophobes have uncovered countless examples of “shocking”, non-existent Muslim jihad plots. Islamophobes generalize specific incidents to reflect on all Muslims or all of Islam. Islamophobes consistently push demonstrably false memes such as: - we are in danger from creeping Sharia, - the Muslim population is increasing at an alarming rate, - 80% of American Mosques are radicalized, - There have been 270 million victims of “jihad” - There have been 17,000+ “Islamic terrorist” attacks since 9/11 - Muslims in government are accused of being Muslim Brotherhood plants, stealth jihadists, and creeping Sharia proponents and should be MARGINALIZED or excluded. Muslim and Arab organizations and individuals are connected to the infamous Muslim Brotherhood document or the unindicted co-conspirator label, or accused of not condemning Hamas, telling American Muslims not to talk to the FBI, of being “Jew haters”, etc. There is a reason that many, even outside of the Muslim community see such demonization of Muslims as Islamophobic. There is a reason that the ADL has stated that Brigitte Gabriel’s Act for America, Pamela Geller & Robert Spencer’s Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), David Yerushalmi’s Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE) are “groups that promote an extreme anti-Muslim agenda”. There is a reason that The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated SIOA as a hate group, and that these individuals are featured in the SPLC reports Jihad Against Islam and The Anti-Muslim Inner Circle. There is a reason that these individuals and organizations are featured prominently in: — the Center for American Progress reports “Fear Inc.” on the Islamophobia network in America and Understanding Sharia Law: Conservatives skewed interpretation needs debunking. — the People for the American Way Right Wing Playbook on Anti-Muslim Extremism. — the NYCLU report Religious Freedom Under Attack: The Rise of Anti-Mosque Activities in New York State. — the Political Research Associates report Manufacturing the Muslim menace: Private firms, public servants, and the threat to rights and security. — The ACLU report Nothing to Fear: Debunking the Mythical “Sharia Threat” to Our Judicial System — in The American Muslim TAM Who’s Who of the Anti-Muslim/Anti-Arab/Islamophobia Industry. There is a reason that the SIOA’s trademark patent was denied by the U.S. government due to its anti-Muslim nature. There is a reason that these individuals and organizations are featured in just about every legitimate report on Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred. See Resources for dealing with Islamophobes for many more reasons that these people cannot be trusted. Sheila Musaji is the founding editor of The American Muslim (TAM), published since 1989. Sheila received the Council on American-Islamic Relations 2007 Islamic Community Service Award for Journalism, and the Loonwatch Anti-Loons of 2011: Profiles in Courage Award for her work in fighting Islamophobia. Sheila was selected for inclusion in the 2012 edition of The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims published since 2009 by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Amman, Jordan. Biography You can follow her on twitter @sheilamusaji ( https://twitter.com/SheilaMusaji )

Life is based on perceptions, and perceptions are based on assumptions. As human beings, our reactions to the world around us are based upon what we perceive we are seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, or tasting. That is why two people can share the exact same experience yet have different perceptions and reactions. That's why we can be so shocked by another person's behavior (or shock others by ours) in response to a situation that we perceive differently. The problem with assumptions is that they are not absolute realities but conclusions that have been drawn for one or more practical reasons. Assumptions are not absolute realities, but conclusions that have been drawn for practical reasons. The wonderful thing about being a prophet was that you knew that the Creator of all Reality was communicating to you, and that what He told you was not an assumption but an absolute axiom of truth. The hard part about being a prophet -- especially if you were charged by God to deliver a warning of impending doom if people did not improve -- was convincing others who did not share such absolute clarity, but rather who ran their lives by perceptions and assumptions, and often mistaken ones. Indeed, the conflict in the Mideast and world reaction is just a bunch of varied assumptions coming at each other from different directions. Thus all the very different perceptions that seem to be floating around these days of just what exactly needs to be done to bring peace, if in fact peace is possible. Judaism recognizes the assumption paradigm. Hence a primary purpose of the 'Sinai Experience' was to make sure that the acceptance of Torah, at least at the beginning of Jewish history, was not a function of assumption but rather the result of a historical reality. This is why only God could give the Torah to the Jewish people, and not some angel or human messenger -- because believing them would have entailed basing such acceptance on some level of assumption. The 'Kuzari' and other important rabbinic works explain this issue superbly, and show how this point is the basis to assume that belief in Torah is, in fact, not rooted in assumption but in incontrovertible evidence. Torah is an objective standard to check your assumptions, allowing you to build upon the correct ones while discarding those which are not. In fact, that is why God gave the Torah in the first place. Mankind has a tendency to be intellectually lazy, and will assume just about anything to make life more pleasant. Torah is an objective standard by which to check your assumptions for their validity, allowing you to build upon the correct ones while discarding those which are not. To be a 'light unto nations,' as the Jewish people have been charged by God to be, means to share this process with the rest of the world. Global peace can and will only exist when there is a shared perception of the purpose of life, which can only be based upon a common assumption. In this case, this perception is not based upon assumption, but based on fact, from God Himself. If we do not function in this capacity, then people make their own assumptions about the purpose of creation and develop their own perceptions about life. There is bound to be conflict when this happens, and depending upon factors such as timing in history, geographical location, resources, etc., the size and intensity of the conflict will vary. Thus, the Christians went on Crusades and killed millions over centuries. The Islamic world has often hunted down 'infidels' with a similar vengeance. The religion of the West has become business and the pursuit of pleasure, with its own dire consequences. And, over 3000 years of history and including the present time, the Jewish people have fragmented into more interpretations of Judaism than there are colors in the rainbow, resulting in vast assimilation. How is the Mideast conflict perceived by the various concerned parties? To the radical Muslim, it is a holy war, period. The assumption is that the Koran reigns supreme, Muhammad was God's latest prophet, and that the world is destined to one day be completely Islamic. Hence, the war against Israel is not just about territorial rights; it is about the greater goals of Islam, and compromise with Israel is out of the question, or at least only a stepping stone to fulfillment of the 'final solution.' To the Westerner, the Mideast conflict is about politics and diplomacy. To the Westerner, the Mideast conflict is about politics and diplomacy. The assumption is that everyone wants to live a materially fulfilling life and the Islamic people are no different. All the Arabs want in general, and the Palestinians in particular, is place to call home, where they can set up shop and make a comfortable life for themselves. The assumption is that the Israelis, for reasons of insecurity at best and hatred of Arabs at least, are holding them back from this national goal and therefore are the reason why peace has yet to be achieved. True, there are many questions that poke holes in such assumptions, such as, why did Jordanians massacre and eject Palestinians in the 1970s when they lived with them? Or, if the Arabs are so rich and have so much land, why don't they simply give a large portion to the Palestinian population, enough cash to make a go of it, and leave them to their own fate? Furthermore, why have the Arabs never accepted Israel's right to nationhood, and why have they started all the wars? More recently, why did Arafat reject the terms of Camp David that would have clearly put him on track to physical prosperity and nationhood? And, why did Palestinians dance in the streets on September 11 after terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers? Loose ends that have to be tied up, it is assumed. To assume otherwise would force the West to check its own assumptions for accuracy, embroiling them in a rather scary process. LEFT, RIGHT & CENTER In Israel, the Left assumes that religion is dead, and is deadly for the State of Israel. This is why they often compare the charedi Jews (orthodox) to Islamic fundamentalists, and accuse them of undermining society. They assume that the Arabs only want land and liberation, and that peace is just around the political corner if only Israel would turn it. The so-called Middle has more or less disintegrated over the last year or so, as the world moves in the direction of polarization. Moderates have either gone to the Left or to the Right, as suicide bombings and world reaction to Israeli incursions in the West Bank either prove that we must yield -- or that we cannot yield -- to their demands. Which direction a moderate goes will depend upon his perception and assumptions about life in general and in the Land of Israel in particular. The Right in Israel assumes that it is an ideological conflict. After all, if the main antagonist is telling you that it is, then who are we to argue? Thus, the Right is not interested in making compromises or peace because it is assumed that peace is not possible, not with an Arab population ideologically bent upon wiping out every Jew. Europeans assume that if all of the assumptions prove false, the world can survive without the Jews. Just read the Arab newspapers or watch their television and promotional films. There isn't a hint of reciprocity in their messages, especially on the level of child education. Just the opposite! The message is one of hatred for the Jew and of a mission to expel them from the 'Land of Palestine' at the first possible chance. (And they certainly have tried that over the years.) The British and Europeans have assumed that all of that will change once we give the Palestinians their homeland. At least they assume it's worth a try. They assume that if the Arabs prove to be liars, somehow Israel will be able to survive anyhow in spite of the tremendous weakening of strategic strength. And finally, they assume that even if all of the above assumptions prove false, the world can survive without the Jews. END OF DAYS? There is another group involved in all of this, quietly tucked away from the political fray. They are Torah-observant, and even though others may label them 'Ultra-Orthodox,' they are far from fanatical. They are simply loyal to God, Torah, and Jewish history. What is their assumption? In truth, they have none in this regard. They know that Torah is true even if others assume that it is not. That includes the books of the Prophets and Writings as well. It also includes the words of the Talmud and the many Midrashim, all of which speak about the End of Days. And some amongst them even possess Kabbalistic knowledge that puts the events of the day into Divine perspective. They see how the events of today really have no logic to them, and how various attempts to better the situation actually end up making it worse. They see how the events of today really have no logic to them, and how various attempts to better the situation actually end up making it worse, just as the prophets of old predicted it would. They see how people in positions of power can believe and say things that are incredibly distant from plain reality, just as the Talmud predicted they would. And, they see time speeding up and history changing in quantum leaps, with events taking on a kind of 'biblical' quality to them. They see the miracles, as negative as many of them may be at this stage, and they see the hand of God. They see it becoming more overt with every passing day, and they wonder, is something big happening? "Big" as in bigger than the Palestinian people. "Big" as in bigger than the dilemma of the Israeli government. "Big" as in bigger than the UN, the Red Cross, the EU, and even the White House. "Big" as in the ultimate fulfillment of the purpose of creation. If so, then the conflict is supernatural, not natural. If so, then its resolution must be, by definition, supernatural. This would explain the 'no-win' situation that has developed, and the increased anti-Semitism around the world. This would explain a lot of things that all of the world's assumptions just can't make heads or tails of. We may actually be witnessing the end of the period of history which has been ruled by assumption. The Mideast conflict is not just about resolving the dispute between Jews and Arabs and appeasing the nations of the world. It is about eradicating false assumptions and joining forces with truth, with the Ultimate Truth. Torah is an objective standard by which to check your assumptions for their validity. Global peace can and will only exist when there is a shared perception of the purpose of life, based upon a common understanding of God's revealed truth. Therefore those who truly yearn for peace must reach beyond the limitations of human assumption, and more in the direction of the only known source of Godly truth, the Torah itself. Then, and only then, can mankind build a perfected society upon a foundation of common perception about the role of man and the purpose of creation. May it happen soon in our time.

BIBLE STUDENTS DAY, JUNE 7th, 1915(From 1915 Convention Report, Pages 166 and 167) At the Exposition Grounds a Committee of the Exposition Officials met our company at Festival Hall at 1:30 P.M. Director A. W. Scott, Jr. gave a brief address expressing a very hearty welcome to the Bible Students, and to Pastor Russell. To this Pastor Russell responded, on behalf of the Bible Students, expressing our deep appreciation of the hearty welcome extended to us, and briefly setting forth some views of God’s great plan, as held by the Bible Students. Address of Welcome by A. W. Scott, Jr. (San Francisco World’s Fair Director.) Promptly at one-thirty several hundred delegates of the Bible Students assembled at Festival Hall. After Organist Clarence Eddy, had delighted the delegates with the sweet music which flowed grandly and impressively from the great pipe organ at the touch of his deft fingers, Chairman E. D. Sexton introduced Director A. W. Scott, Jr., who welcomed the Delegates in the following words: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Delegates, Guests:—I want to say on behalf of the Exposition Directorate that we hope you are all our very good friends. I feel that it is a great privilege to address an audience such as this today. We have welcomed many, many groups of people, representing different governments, as our guests to the Grounds, but it seems to me it is a particular privilege to speak to a delegation representing a great civilizing influence, such as brings you here today. I cannot tell you how fitting it seems to me to see the representatives of your great organization participating in the work of this Exposition. Many have said to us as we have been doing our work, from the time we first took up the harness to the present, "What do you expect to get out of it? What are you doing it for? Why are you giving your time in something that possibly may be a thankless task?" I want to say this privilege of talking to you; this privilege of feeling we belong to you, and you and your great organization belong to us; that we have a part in the things you are working for; that you have the same desire to educate , and benefit fellow men—these are the things that go to make up the reward that comes to us for the efforts and toil we have put in, and will still put into the work of this Exposition. Perhaps you will be able to come with me for a moment into our inner thoughts; really into our inner soul in the matter of this Exposition. You know there is nothing that gives me the pleasure I have in speaking to an audience like this, that I feel will really go down beyond the pageantry, and fun, and tassel of the Exposition. There is a motive in this Exposition far beyond the outward show. You who have been devoting your lives and thoughts to those things which make for the good of your fellows, can understand and appreciate how a few of the citizens of our state have gathered together with the idea of giving their best of time and effort, that they might be small figures in carrying out a work which the Almighty has planned for this great commonwealth of ours; that they might be units, in working out the destiny which the great Creator has ordained for us. While the nations are battling on the other side, we should be happy that we are given this opportunity of working out something that may tend to the betterment of our fellow men. There is something beyond the educational, something beyond the pleasure that may be experienced, something deep down in this Exposition that has a great civilizing influence which we cannot help but feel. I am indeed glad to come here and address such a speaker as we have here today; a man whose life is devoted to the betterment of mankind—and to feel that I have a part as a worker in this field, of participating in a work like this. Surely that is a reward sufficient for one individual. In representing our Board I ask you as Delegates, and Pastor Russell as your representative, to accept a small token, a Bronze Medal, commemorative of the occasion. We are giving it to you that you may have some small, tangible mark of our appreciation of those who, as we do, stand for progress, for the benefiting of humanity, for the aiding of fellow men. We heartily welcome you, and ask that you take this medal away and cherish it, not so much for its value; not so much for the occasion it represents; not so much for the gathering of people as for the great basic truth, the great fundamental principle which we can feel working within us, pushing us onward in the direction of progress and development. We heartily welcome you. I say to you, representing the Exposition Board, our doors are open to you. You belong to us; this is your home. Our house, so far as we have been able to put it in order, is yours. Come and participate with us of the feast. As we do so let us have, as we do, the full measure of gratitude, that full appreciation of our Maker, for the kindness that makes it possible for us to be separate from the strife and battle elsewhere; that enables us to gather in this Exposition, representing the great work of our magnificent nation; representing something we are doing to help man onward and upward to better things. Response by Pastor Russell I am sure, my dear sir, that I express the sentiments of the entire company here present, when I thank you on their behalf for this evidence of your sympathy and cooperation with us. I indeed esteem it a privilege to be a representative of the Bible Students, and for your information, sir, as well as for the information of others here, I have pleasure in saying that our Association is a purely voluntary one. We have no denominational creeds—nothing whatever except love for God and His Book, love for fellow men, and our love for ourselves in that we are seeking to do those things that would be for our own highest welfare. The Association, in choosing San Francisco at this time as a meeting place for the Convention, had in mind this wonderful Exposition. I had the pleasure of being here, sir, more than a year ago, and of visiting the grounds and seeing what preparations were under way. I was amazed at the expense that was being undertaken, and thought to myself, then, as I still think, how much better is this way of expending than for war. How much better if those in Europe were doing likewise, instead of battling among themselves, destroying lives, homes and happiness. I trust, my dear sir, that you, and all the people, are coming more and more to realize the fact that God has a great destiny, not merely for California, not merely for the United States, but that He is working out a great destiny for the whole world. We are glad today to recognize this great Fair, this great Exposition, with the wonderful manifestation it gives of intelligence and of thought, of skill and learning, of the use of time and talent for the service of humanity. We rejoice in all of this, not only for the good it may do here and now, and that it is doing to all of the people who visit this Exposition, but we rejoice in it in another sense. From our viewpoint it is one of the evidences that we are living in the dawning of a new dispensation. From our viewpoint as Bible Students the great day of God’s blessing, which is to last a thousand years, began in the autumn of 1874. We are not laying down these figures in any determined way, but merely, as before suggested, stating that we believe from that time the world has been entering upon a new dispensation, which is to be the most wonderful, the most peculiar ever thought of by human mind. That is the period the Bible refers to as the "Day of Christ," It is the time of Messiah’s Kingdom. We are not of those who expect the world to be burned up. Rather, we are of those who understand the teaching of the Bible to be that the world is about to enter upon this period of great blessing. It has been under the curse for 6,000 years, according to the Bible, but according to same Bible we understand the earth is to pass from under the curse during this period of blessing. We recognize the fact that these great international expositions have been coming on since the opening of this new era. I had the pleasure of being at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. I thought it was a wonderful fair, and remember wondering if it could ever be surpassed. I have been at all of the great Expositions since, in this, and some in foreign lands, and have seen increasing evidence of skill. I have noted from the various Expositions as they follow one another, the grand progress that the world has made. All of these wonderful things belonging to our day indicate that we are in the dawning time of the great millennial kingdom. Although there is, as the speaker said, a dark cloud hovering over a part of the world, the Bible indicates that this is to be the last time of trouble—a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation, and Jesus said "No, nor ever shall be," indicating this will be the great, final trouble. After this great trouble shall come Messiah’s Kingdom, ruling over all the earth. This is intimated in the prayer Christ taught his disciples to pray, saying "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven." We are not expecting this to come in any very sudden way, but gradually, grandly, steadily. The grand climax of blessing is to be not merely for Bible Students, but God has wonderful things in store for all of mankind; for all the families of the earth. We rejoice that He has not merely blessings for the church, but that there are everlasting blessings for all of humanity who during the time of Messiah’s reign shall be willing to cooperate to their own uplift to a better relationship to God; to a better understanding of the Bible, the Word of God; to a better understanding of themselves, and how to get out of their degradation, and meanness, and selfishness into a condition of freedom from sin, and all of its entailments. Through sin, Father Adam forfeited his relationship to God, and lost gradually the grand blessings he had enjoyed while obedient to the heavenly Father, his Creator. Because Jesus gave His life as a ransom price for Adam and his race, it will be their privilege during His reign to regain the blessings lost through sin. It is now possible, we believe, for those who are willing to become footstep followers of Jesus to receive God’s blessings in a still larger measure, in that they may thus be fitted for association with Him in bestowing the intended blessings upon the world later. On behalf of the Bible Students now assembled, and those they represent in all parts of the world, I thank you for your kind courtesy. (3) COLPORTEUR ADDRESSESPARTICIPATED IN BY THREE BRETHREN OPENING REMARKS BY BRO. E. F. CRIST. (From 1915 Convention Report, Supplement, starting on page 117.) We will endeavor to make our remarks such as may be of assistance, not only to colporteurs, "would-be’s," "has-beens" and volunteers, but also to those who are candidates for membership among those colporteurs who shall in due time carry the message of love to all of the families of the earth. A proper appreciation of the beauty and harmony of the message we bear; and of the importance and dignity of our work as harvest laborers, will do much toward stimulating zeal and giving necessary impetus for carrying on our work successfully and effectively. With this thought in mind, let us notice the reading of Jas. 5:7, "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he received the early and latter rain. In the Scriptural account of creation, we are told that the earth brought forth grass, and the trees of various kinds. It also brought forth cattle and creeping things, including beasts of all kinds. Of all that the earth produced, man was the crowning fruitage, having been made from the dust of the earth. We might correctly say that the man was THE FRUIT, in that he was superior to all else that the earth produced. That perfect fruit was stung by the serpent of sin. The virus there injected not only brought death to its first victim, but all the progeny down to the present time have suffered therefrom. We see no perfect fruit, no perfect man. God has been waiting for many centuries for THE PRECIOUS FRUIT OF THE EARTH, until He receive the early and latter (FRUIT, or HARVEST). From a suggestion from the Pastor we are helped to see that God waits not to receive some rain, but we know that He has patiently waited for an early and latter harvest. The word "rain" does not appear in the Vatican Mss., and the appropriateness of omitting it will be apparent to Bible students. God is looking forward to having this earth filled with a perfect FRUIT, NAMELY, a perfect race. As a means to that end He is now gathering out a still more precious fruit, for which He has been waiting 1800 years. It becomes our precious privilege to co-labor with Him in gathering out this most precious fruit, as colporteurs, as volunteers, or in some other capacity. When we have faithfully performed our little part in this feature of the fruit gathering, we may also participate in the ingathering of that multitudinous crop that will include all mankind who are willing to be made perfect. For this grand consummation, God has waited patiently 6,000 years. May the thought that we may be associated with Him in carrying out this purpose fill our hearts with joyful anticipation; may it move us to earnest, persevering effort to that end. "Let us be patient brethren." We remember how Pharaoh, King of Egypt, placed Joseph in authority at his right hand, and during the seven years of plenty he gathered together the wheat that was to be used later as a means for saving the lives of all Egyptians. Doubtless people scoffed at his prediction of a great time of trouble (a famine); we may readily suppose they said, "How foolish to spend time in gathering up wheat—how much better it would be if he would engage in some reform work." Joseph persevered, knowing what the result would be, according to God’s word. What must have been his delight when later he could save the lives of these very ones who had looked with scorn upon his course. Since we understand that Joseph was a type of Christ, the seven years of ingathering may well picture to us the entire harvest period, seven being suggestive of completeness. At any rate we know the Lord has been gathering the wheat (figurative wheat) during that time. He has raised the dead wheat (saints) and is now assembling the other grains, we believe, as one after another dies. This better wheat will be used for giving life to man kind as the antitypical Egyptians during the coming age. In the realization that we are spending time and energy in helping to gather this better wheat, may we not receive with equanimity the scoffings of our fellows who see not the glorious end to be thus made possible? What matter if they do say, "How foolish to spend time in such work; it would be better to do some slum work, or social reform work." Soon, if we faithfully perform the little part allotted to us in the wheat-gathering process, it will be our privilege to give life to these very ones who have misunderstood us. Truly, that will be sweet revenge. Surely we may take encouragement from this. We read in Ephesians 6 about having our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. To have one’s feet shod would suggest putting on shoes. With good shoes, having think soles, we would walk over sharp stones, or among thorns and briers, without inconvenience, or pain. However, the shoes would be of little assistance except they be worn. Would not the lesson be that we have in the Scriptures the Gospel of Peace. It is God’s purpose to give to mankind, peace universal and eternal, but there’s a special, prescribed way by which this is to be accomplished. A class is to be developed in gentleness, patience, humility, and love by passing through much difficulty and tribulation. "Through much tribulation shall ye enter the kingdom." If we have a proper grasp of this gospel of peace, so that we realize every disappointment, every conflict, every affliction, every rebuff, every opposition, every unkindness, received from others is most surely working out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; that they are all necessary to fit us for giving peace to the world by and by, then that knowledge will protect us from feeling hurt of such experiences as thick soles would keep us from being hurt by the stones or briers. The knowledge must be so applied as to keep us from being hurt under such circumstances, otherwise it would afford us as little aid as shoes that were carried in the hand. Are we wearing these shoes? Are they protecting us so we can go unhurt over the rough places? If not, why not? Let the realization that we may help others to have such a valuable protection, spur us on to diligent effort in the work, while we seek to appreciate deeply the privilege of wearing the blessed shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace. The speakers have mentioned many precious promises. We wish to give a little illustration that may help to make these promises more real and effective to colporteurs and others. You have read of Sir Robert Bruce. When he was spending himself for the welfare of his country, there came a time when he had suffered defeat, he was forsaken by all and fled alone for his life. He came finally, in an exhausted condition, to the mouth of a cave, which he entered. He lay down to rest. There seemed to be little hope for him. As he looked toward the small opening through which he had entered, he saw a spider begin to weave its web. He watched with interest until the little insect had woven a network that completely spanned the opening. Soon he heard voices, and footsteps approaching the cave. At the opening his pursuers stopped, and one said, "I wonder if he may have taken refuge in there?" Another responded, "No; do you not see that spider’s web across the mouth of the cave? If he had gone in there he would have broken down the web. There is no use looking for him there. Let us hurry on." Sir Robert Bruce was saved by a spider’s web, frail and insignificant though it appears to be. The web may appropriately illustrate to us God’s promises. When purchased by the adversary, if we have a web of these promises covering us he will say, "No use trying to get him; see how he is protected by these promises." While the promises may seem to some to be as inadequate to afford protection as the spider’s web, yet to those who place implicit confidence therein they afford absolute security. There can be no invasion by any foe. Let us see to it that we do not permit this web to be torn down, for therein lies our safety. "God is faithful who hath called you, who will also do it." Whatever He has called us to do He will also provide strength to perform , if we seek it in the proper way. "The God of all grace, who hath called you unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that you have suffered a while make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you." FURTHER REMARKS BY BRO. O. MAGNUSON I am so glad to see so many interested in the colporteur work. It has been my privilege for ten years to be engaged in that branch of the service. No portion of my life has been so much blessed as those ten years. It is a most wonderful way to show to the Lord that we love Him more than houses, lands, friends, or anything in the world. Many years ago two colporteurs came to my home in Chicago. They were the first I had seen, and I never forgot them. We had the privilege of entertaining them for a year. They suggested that we go into the colporteur work. We said, "It is out of the question." But we prayed about it. We had a little girl about four years old, and we thought we must do the proper thing for her, so we were tied down to a certain extent. I was working for the Pullman Company. The Lord so blessed my efforts among the men there that we were able to leave about 150 volumes in the shop. I said, "That is no real evidence that you can do colporteur work, because you are dealing with friends and acquaintances; it will be a different matter when you go from door to door where no one knows you." Bro. Greig said to me, "You haven’t much to do; why not go out with me and try the work?" My spirit was willing, but my flesh was weak. I said, "I will try." I remember very keenly the first call I made. I knocked at the door, and while I waited, I hoped that no one was at home. When I heard footsteps coming toward the door my heart went pit-a-pat. A lady opened the door, and I stumbled along trying to tell her about the books. I soon saw the necessity of having a method. The Society did not send out a method at that time. I made a botch of it, but managed to sell her some books, When I left her I thought, "what was the trouble with you anyway? Were you afraid of that woman? No. Are you ashamed of the message? No. What is the trouble? I do not know." Then I began to think of my wonderful privilege of carrying from door to door the message of great joy—something the angels may not do. After trying this work for a week I wrote Bro. Russell, telling him how we Were situated, and asking his advice. I said, "My heart is in the colporteur work, but I do not know whether it would be proper for me to enter the work." He wrote back, "Enter the colporteur work, and, if necessary, leave the little girl with friends for a week, or a month, at a time. I feel sure the Lord will be pleased to have you do so." I took Bro. Russell’s advice, and we began to sell out the furniture. Someone asked the little girl, "What are they doing at your home?" She said, "They are smashing the house and going into the ‘culture’ work." Truly, it is culture work. We want to be developed for a great future work. We burned all the bridges, and we never regretted it. The friends in Chicago were concerned about the step we had taken, not knowing we had well considered the matter. They said, "Brother Magnuson, we admire your zeal, but you should not have sold your goods." I said, "We have considered the matter, and we are taking Brother Russell’s advice." Every Sunday they would say, "How are you getting along, brother?" We told how the Lord was blessing us. After a month or six weeks they concluded that it was the Lord’s will that we should go into the colporteur work. In order to be successful you must have faith in your work, and be enthused with it. I met a brother who said he could not do colporteur work because he could not see chronology as Bro. Russell does. He would make a failure in the work. We must have faith in the message we are carrying. There must be an entire consecration to the Lord of our time, our means, our talents, and everything. It has been said, "there is money in the colporteur work." I believe there is, for I know I put about $500.00 into the work, and it is still there. Anybody is welcome to it if they can get it out. "He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal." It is necessary to have zeal, or we will not sell any books. There must be faith, consecration, and a loving zeal prompted by right motives. One brother told how he planned to sell so many books a day to establish a record as a colporteur. No doubt the Lord blessed his efforts somewhat in spreading the truth to a large extent. He says that he has found out now that one book sold where it gives the buyer the truth is better than a hundred sold elsewhere. We believe the Lord is directing the harvest work. There was a time when we almost had to perform sleight-of-hand to keep the people from learning that we had Millennial Dawn. We used to put our finger over the words, "Millennial Dawn." We were deceivers, and yet true. I want to tell you a little incident right along this line, showing how Bro. Dr. Moe, of Chicago got the Scripture Studies, and became interested in the truth. He had no use for Dr. Jones’ religion. Bro. Jones said, "If possible I would like to have you get a set of books into the hands of Dr. Moe. I believe he is a consecrated child of God." I said, "If the Lord wants a set of books there, I have no objection. You pray for me." He lived on Washington Boulevard—a fashionable section. When I saw the place, I thought, "If I ever get the truth in there I will have to take it in the back door." I went to the back door, where I thought I would meet the wife, or perhaps a servant. He came to the door. His wife was standing at the stove stirring in a kettle. I got through my introduction and started to talk to him. While trying to press the canvass his wife said, "You don’t want those books; you have more books now than you need." I thought, "as long as she is standing there I can never sell him the books." The door bell rang. He made no move, and she had to go and answer the front door bell. I offered a silent prayer to the Lord that He might assist me to do His will. She was gone long enough for me to complete the sale. Knowing that they were prejudiced against Dr. Jones’ religion, I thought best to take the books to them right away. I took them after dinner. His wife said, "He didn’t order them did he?" I said, "Yes, he knew a good thing when he saw it." She took the books. A few days later, a friend called, and seeing the books lying on the table said, "Why that is Dr. Jones’ religion; are you reading that?" Dr. Moe said, "If that is Dr. Jones’ religion it is all right; I have entirely misunderstood his religion." The result was, after a little his wife came in-to the truth, also a servant girl. This friend also came into the truth, and wanted a set of the books. Dr. Moe said, "You go and get them from Dr. Jones." The friend had been living near Dr. Jones for years. It was a little hard, but brought its reward. The Lord is directing the harvest work, and we are glad it is so. Of course we will not sell books at every door. Sometimes we will meet a reception such as my wife once had. A lady whom she was trying to interest said, "I have my God, and my church, and I do not want your books." My wife said, "Who is your God?" She replied, "the god of this world." My wife agreed with her. I once said to a lady, "We are calling on the Christian people of your section; are you Protestant or Catholic?" She said, "And what is that to you?" I said, "It is true that is not my business, but the Bible Society has requested me to bring to the attention of the people here a wonderful method of Bible study, and I do not want td pass any by. I feel sure you will be interested in this if you will look into it." In this way I overcame her resentment. Never take the first no as an answer. When a lady begins to hesitate, and says, "I don’t know whether I want those books or not," that is a sale. The old saying is, "To hesitate increases the power of temptation." That is the time you want to give some good licks to get the books in. You will surely succeed. Now a few words about delivering. I remember one instance where I had sold a set of books to a Lutheran minister, and when I came to deliver them there was a house full of ministers in conference. I thought, "If I get the books in here the Lord will have to help me." He was sociable, and introduced me to the ministers. I told them how I appreciated anyone who was serving the Lord, etc. After it was all over I said, "Here are your books all wrapped up; my train is soon to leave." He took the books and thanked me. The Lord is able to help us. I want to say, if you have the opportunity to enter into the colporteur work, by all means do it. It is the most wonderful work you can get into. "He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal." REMARKS BY BROTHER GOODWIN I am very glad to have any share in the great harvest work, but I am especially glad to have a share in the colporteur department of that work. It , has been my blessed privilege to be in line with the great harvest work for many years. My attention was directed to these things by "Food For Thinking Christians," which was published as a forerunner for the Scripture Studies. I have followed the development of the work with great interest, from that day to this. Great and momentous events have taken place within that time. The great prophetic days of the Lord, with which we are familiar—1874, 1878, 1881 and 1914 have all come and gone, but the great events that they marked the fulfillment of remain. I have received many blessings since I came to this convention. I have been repaid a hundred fold, and I want to mention particularly one thing that was presented from the platform that specially impressed me. That was the lesson from the type of Elijah, in connection with the glorification of the last members of the church. History has recorded the fulfillment of prophecy, but the worldly historians know it not. The year 1914 did witness the close of Gentile Times. Who would ask for any better evidence of the end of the wonderful time in which we are living? The explanation of this type brought out so clearly that when the last members of the church are taken it will be a surprise to them, although they are expecting it. The harvest work has been growing more interesting as time goes on, and I believe the opportunities have increased with the opposition. We have never had greater fruits than now. I think I can best illustrate the importance of taking advantage of our opportunities by a brief legend. There was a statue in one of the ancient cities of Greece. A passing traveler addressed it in the following words; "Oh, statue, what is thy name?" "My name is Opportunity." "Why art thou made standing on thy toe?" "Because I can stay but a moment." "And why art thou made with the lock on thy forehead so long?" "That men may seize me as I pass by." "Why is the back of thy head so bald?" "That when I am passed men can never grasp me." How highly important that we improve these golden opportunities as they pass. We are nearing the end of the harvest day; the night cometh when no man can see to work. It was my privilege to be brought up on a farm, and I know something about harvest work. I remember that we used to rest a little during the heat of the day, and then in the cool of the day we would work hard again. When night came we would quit working, because we could not see to work. It seems to me we can see the night time settling down on certain portions of the world. While we know not how soon, yet we believe that very soon it will settle down on this land, as it has in other lands, so that no one can see to work. It is not my intention to say much with reference to methods. I believe there are as many successful methods, or canvasses, as there are successful colporteurs. It is true we all begin with the excellent method placed in our hands by the Society, but as we proceed with the work, we change. The method used prior to 1914 would not be so successful today. I have changed my method greatly. We now have opportunity to call the attention of the people to the great Battle of Armageddon, in which all are interested at the present time. It is our privilege to tell them how these things breaking upon the world are in fulfillment of prophecy. We have the privilege and opportunity of reaching the ears of the people at the present time as we have never had before. I want to tell you of a matter which I stumbled into. There is no credit to me. Rather, it reflected against me. I started out to work, and after a time I found I did not have my first volume with me, but I did have the prospectus. It had been my custom to carry the first volume. While at first I felt lost, I found later that this was one of the "all things that work together for good," in my case. I am not saying that other colporteurs should follow this method of working with the prospectus only, but it helped and if any can derive benefit from it you are welcome. I do not want the first volume. Even the prospectus takes too much time. The shorter the canvass the better, if the right things are said. When the iron is hot is the best time to strike. If you do not strike then you must heat it up again, and the chances are that you may lose the sale. It is not the number of books we sell, as one of the brethren has said, that determines our success. We might fill the world with books, and if we did not have the spirit of devotion and love for the Master; if we did not develop the Christlike character, our work would be far from a success. Our success is measured by the manifestation of the spirit of love and devotion to the Heavenly Father, which rises before Him as sweet incense, through Jesus Christ our Lord. I wish to mention some of the other opportunities that we have as colporteurs, and other who are otherwise engaged in the harvest work, may also take part in this way. It is in organizing classes where there are none. Also in helping to build up classes, where there are such, and thus we build up ourselves. As we come in close touch with the people, we are enabled to locate those who have a special interest in Bible study, and in this way we can be a help. Another opportunity we have is to help arouse prejudiced persons who are still in Babylon. I remember one case which I will mention. We called attention to the Berean Study in the third volume on Babylon. It aroused her interest. She said, "If I believed that the nominal system is Babylon, I would not let any grass grow under my feet in getting out." She went to the Bible, and with the aid of the Bible Helps she satisfied herself that the great system there described is the Babylonism nominal church system. She got out of Babylon. I am glad to say that this sister is present at this convention. It is her first convention of this kind. In closing I wish to refer to one other experience which I think may be of special interest to you. One evening I called to see a party who is somewhat of a Bible student, although he is in Babylon. He has an honest heart, and understands God’s Word as well as we could expect one to understand who has not the valuable Helps that we have in our possession. When I began to’ speak to him in regard to Scripture Studies, he said, "I don’t want them; I know enough about Pastor Russell." I said, "What do you know about Pastor Russell?" "Well so and so—." I asked, "Did he tell you; have you read any of his writings, or do you know just what you have read in some pamphlet written against him?" He acknowledged that such was the case. I said to him, "Brother, I would like you to take these books and see for yourself." "He said, "I did not go to hear Pastor Russell when he was in Providence but some who heard him said that he knocked hell out of the Bible." I said, "Brother, doubtless they meant to report the matter correctly, but Pastor Russell believes in hell." "Why," he said, "Is that true?" "Yes, but he does not believe in eternal torment." He said, "It is plain to me from the parable of the rich man and Lazarus that there is a hell of torment." I said, "You will agree that it is a parable, or it is not. It is all literal or it is not. It will not do to mix the figurative and the literal." He agreed. I gave him Pastor Russell’s explanation of the parable. He said to his wife, "I have never heard anything like that before. I have heard many explanations of it, but never anything like that." I had given him the explanation of one of the greatest Bible Students of the age. We would say, dear friends, to those who are able to enter the colporteur work, it is a great opportunity. The colporteur work does not need you, but you need the colporteur work. THE USES OF ADVERSITY-F. H. Robison(Discourse by F. H. Robison, recorded on page 71 of the 1915 Convention Report.) Text—"It is good for me that I have been afflicted." Psalm 119:71. Introduction and Generalities: The Master said: "It needs be that offences must come", (Mt 18:7) and experience has her own confirmatory word. Someone has said: "Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; Adversity is the blessing of the New." Certain it is that the New Testament writings are full of references to the sufferings of Christ’s followers, and even of himself it is written that "he learned obedience by the things which he suffered," and "he was made perfect through suffering. In fact the whole tenor of the New Testament inculcates the principle of resignation under adverse conditions, and more. For the follower of Jesus Christ must not be merely a passive sufferer but a strenuous and persevering combatant against opposing forces. Troubles and afflictions are intended under the dispensation of Divine grace to bring out the deeper capacities of the heart. Experiences which are calculated to deaden the callused mind will develop consecration, richness and devotion in the thoughtful. One time we had a summer hail-storm which beat on the flowers and foliage. A bed of nasturtiums which grew near the door suffered most. When the door was opened the air was full of sweetness from the crushed and mangled vines. They were returning good for evil in the misfortune that had come upon them. For every wound that the hail had made they were giving out the fragrance of a beautiful spirit. Though bruised and broken they were filling the whole atmosphere with an aroma which was in pleasing contrast to the adverse rain of hail. Blest is that life which can yield its sweetest fragrance when the storms are at their highest. we have all known men and women who when lacerated with pain, prostrate under the hands of God, have made their very atmosphere redolent with the incense of Christian hope and trust. When we reflect on the conditions of discipleship laid down by our Lord we need not be surprised if certain adverse or unpleasant things be our portion. He said: "If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." The very first step of the way is thus seen to be a self-imposed adversity against ourselves, and the narrow way never grows broad and easy. The Apostle Paul, who himself suffered so much of opposition, was comforting instead of discouraging the early church when he told them: "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." A Christian without trouble is like a ship that has never weathered a storm; evidences of her sea-worthiness is lacking. It has not been demonstrated just how much ballast would be necessary to steady her. Adversity from various sources: The adversity, opposition, hindrance or resistance brought to bear against our Christian progress derives from five main sources: The Devil, the World, the Flesh, the Brethren, and God. Of the Devil: That from the Devil is calculated to be antagonistic in purpose and effect; opposite, hostile and inimical to our best interests. The Apostle Peter describes him in these words: "Your Adversary, the Devil, goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour; whom resist, steadfast in the faith" His resistance to our Christian walk is to be met with a still stronger resistance on our part, and that not in our own strength and power, but by the power of faith, inspired and instructed by God’s word. His method of opposing does not always consist in an endeavor to directly hinder our progress; but since he is a deceiver, he attempts to cause delay by getting us interested in various other schemes and subjects than that most vital to us. Again he is referred to as the "Accuser of the brethren". False accusations made against the brethren tend to hinder them by arousing their sense of justice. They are obliged to spend time and energy in resisting the desire to recompense the allegation, instead of committing their cause to him who judgeth righteously. We may safely assume that since God has seen fit to allow us to be confronted with opposition from so malignant and crafty a foe He sees some good in it for us, and just that good it is which we wish to experience. Again Satan’s antagonism drives us to closer fellowship with God for we realize that the devil is wiser and stronger than we. But abiding under the shadow of the Almighty we can say: "If God be for us, who can be against us?" So even Satan who so persistently dogs the steps of the toiling saint, may be a means to a noble end, if we are rightly exercised thereby. Opposition from the World: The resistance which the world offers to our progress is from a twofold quarter—from the secular world or from the religious world. The opposition from the world in a general sense consists in its being or acting in a contrary direction, opposed or opposing in position or course. From the Secular World: From the secular wing of the world comes a passive opposition, as that of a fixed body which interrupts the passage of a moving body. The world has its ideas and ideals of life and these are said by the Scriptures to lie "in the wicked one." That is Satan, the wicked one, rules in the hearts of man by pampering to and nourishing the spirit of selfishness. This spirit of self and the ideals and institutions it has gendered are all firmly set and established in both the mind and heart of the world. When the Lord’s people, therefore, travel in an opposite direction they but naturally encounter the inertia represented in the world. When we are criticized we are to seek to ascertain to what extent we are really at fault and if we are convinced that it is not our fault then just what lessons God would have us learn in connection with our difficulties with the world. The hauteur and supercilious attitude of the secular world ripens humility and submissiveness in us and helps us to look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are eternal. From the Religious Quarter: Strange as it may seem, from the religious quarter of the world comes a more actively adverse influence. It is active, as in the exertion of force to stop, repel or defeat progress or design. Concerning this adversity the Master said: "Marvel not if the world hate you; ye know that it hated me before it hated you. Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world: if ye were of the world the world would love its own, but because ye are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you." It was the Jewish religious world which was especially set against the work of the Master. The Romans and Greeks cared little one way or the other. But though opposition be our portion from the religious world; though the "sun of persecution ariseth;" (Mr 14:17) though "bonds and afflictions" await us; (Ac 20:23) though we be sent forth "as sheep among wolves"; though "all who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution"; (2Ti 3:12) still we learn by that very method God’s protecting care and know that underneath are the everlasting arms. "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me." (Ps 138:7). May it not be true in our case as with the Israelites of old! "The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew." Ornithologists assure us that the eagle, the condor of the Andes, the Albatross of the Pacific, and even the swiftly flying little dove, like many other birds that are strong on the wing, can fly more swiftly against the wind than in a gentle breeze. It may be that this is because they are stimulated to exert the muscular strength of their pinions. But, however this may be, it is a fact that the fires of a steamship burn much more fiercely under the boilers when the vessel is going against a head-wind. The Christian’s effort of the right kind is at its best when opposition is faced, for this very condition brings us into contact with the Divine resources which are pledged to the help of the Lord’s people. "Woe to you when all men speak well of you." From the flesh: The resistance which the flesh offers is in the shape of opposing desires, which are contrary to the wishes or to the good of the new creature. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh; and these two are contrary to one to the other." Through circumstances affecting the flesh we are at times "cast down, but not destroyed." But such disheartened feeling which arises as likely as not from an insufficient nervous vitality is not without its uses. We are not likely to be proud or unsympathetic while in that condition. And as the Apostle says: "I take pleasure in infirmities, for when I am weak then am I strong." Trust and submission are learned in a degree otherwise impossible. Brunts from the brethren: Yes, our closest friends and associates sometimes hinder us and the courage necessary to oppose these influences is greater than that required against outside forces in that one’s own feelings and the feelings of those held dear are involved. Nor does such action often if ever call forth praise from any one. Even our Master said to Peter: "Thou art an offence unto me, for thou savorest not of the things that be of God, but those that be of men." (Mt 16:23) We are admonished lest "any root of bitterness springing up trouble us and many be defiled." There must therefore be some way for us to draw benefit from those things which tend of themselves to engender roots of bitterness. In the first place we may learn humility of an extremely rare quality when we try to make something right and our motives are misunderstood. We go to a brother or sister with whom we have had words and wish to apologize for our part and they are thereby only confirmed in their belief that we were wholly wrong and they were wholly right. Otherwise why should we be coming there to explain anything if we did not now see that they were right. The rebuff to our noble aims thus gained with pretty surely burn out anything of pride that might have been left. If the brethren speak evil of us (and they sometimes do) we can learn all those qualities which we do not see manifested in such conduct—large-heartedness; benefit of the doubt; is it true? is it necessary? does it minister grace unto the hearer? From the brethren we learn the futility of looking to one another’s faults to grow better. "Comparing ourselves with ourselves we are not wise." No, it is not by looking, even with sympathetic eye, at the weaknesses of our brethren that we are changed from glory to glory but rather "by beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord." Well then, if offences are of such good to the Lord’s people why not turn in and cause others all the difficulties we can. But no: "it needs be that offences must come, but woe be to that man by whom the offence cometh." Not however a woe from us; it is not our affair to recompense evil with evil or hindrance with hindrance. The woes or difficulties upon those who offend us, as well as upon us if we offend others to their injury, will come from the Lord who can judge and recompense wiser than we know how. Chastisement from God: How rich a dowry sorrow gives the soul! God, the great husbandman, sees sometimes best to plow the soil of our hearts with trouble that he may plant the seeds of a richer harvest in the fruits of the holy spirit. The floods which cover the upper Nile valley in Springtime are welcomed by the natives as affording them the opportunity to sow their seed and to have the soil renewed by moisture and by silt, so that a good crop is possible. The waters of affliction at times overflow on us and one seems to be overwhelmed; the heart is borne down by the flood, all her fruitful land is covered by the waters—waters of desolation, bereavement, affliction. The heart cries: "I am overwhelmed, undone; my life is all wrong; I shall never smile again." But nay. The flood which terrifies us may only wash away the impurity of the life, giving fertility; the fruits of love, patience, charity shall grow now; it is not a flood of desolation, but of blessing and fruitfulness. "Ye received the word in much affliction." (1Th 1:6) Of course, in one sense all adversity is from God in that he allows it to transpire; but some is more directly so than others and in some his hand is more than generally seen. The purpose of such difficulty is never to drive us away from him but to draw us nearer by showing us our weak points and our need of his grace and fellowship. "In the world ye shall have tribulation"—" in me ye shall have peace." Even of our Lord it is written, "He was oppressed and he was afflicted.....the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isa 53:7). When affliction is heavy and no one else seems to fully understand, we may be sure of a full appreciation of our little difficulties by Jehovah God, for it is written: "In all their affliction, he was afflicted." If we incline to think that God does not actually send or arrange for offenses let us read how that Jesus was definitely foretold as being of such a character that he would be an "offense to both the houses of Israel." (1Pe 2:8). Divine wisdom is capable of having arranged such a course for our Redeemer that he could have appeared popular and suave and pleasant to all; but such was not done. Adversity is the bitter herb with which we eat the message of his grace, lest we become surfeited and vomit forth the whole. The Master says: "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me; in my father’s house are many mansions." Not, "let not your heart be troubled, for you will have a nice, easy and respectable time in the present life." Rather is the basis for our peace put not in the present but in the future, and this is the word of the Lord through the Prophet Isaiah: "O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted; behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors and thy foundation with sapphires." (Isa 54:11) Therefore, "Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us and the years wherein we have seen evil." (Ps 90:15) "O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard; which holdeth our soul in life and suffereth not our feet to be moved. For thou, O God, hast proved us; thou hast tried us as silver is tried. Thou broughtest us into the net; thou laidest affliction upon our loins. Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place." Only the experienced child of God can say: "I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me." (Ps 119:75) Conclusion and comfort: The Scriptures tell us of a time when there shall be no more pain. the pain shall have done its work; the permission of evil shall have taught its lesson. Even for us the suffering is not long. "The God of all grace, who hath called you unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you." (1Pe 5:10) But if this light affliction, which endureth but a moment, be only instrumental in preparing us to heal poor humanity of its head-aches and body-aches of every kind, is it not worth while? Now, though it is not within our power to make affliction no affliction, yet it is in our power to take off the edge of it by a steady view of those joys prepared for us in another state. All the philosophizing imaginable will not make hard things easy, will not make adversity pleasurable in itself. But a proper philosophy on the subject, guided by and based upon God’s word, will enable us to avoid despair and enable us in pious suffering to be calm during the trouble and thus minimize as much as possible, and sometimes entirely counteract the deleterious effects thereof. Trouble without the aid of the Holy Spirit, means anything but benefit. "Trouble and anguish shall make him (the wicked) afraid; they shall prevail against him as a king ready to the battle." "Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of?" Yes, Lord, though it be through fire and blood; by thy grace we will. But the natural man is not able to drink the cup and it would be futile to try. The natural man wants his rights and cries loudly at every infringement thereof. If the trial seems of a peculiar nature or seems more intense than we can bear, let us consider whether or not we are trying to meet it in our own strength. Yes, it is good to be afflicted, for the winds of adversity fan to greater heat and brighter flame the fire of love already kindled there. Affliction proves and tests our earnestness and burns away hypocrisy and shallow-heartedness. What a terrible mass of hypocrisy and self-seeking would have been attracted to the message of the gospel, did not that message at the very start promise self-abnegation. Therefore, "count it all joy" and "think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you." We are forewarned and forearmed more than the worldly, who say: "I shall not be moved, for I shall never be in adversity." (Pr 24:10) If something seems to be incompatible with our understanding of harmony, perhaps it will be all right when we understand the main theme better and perhaps we cannot understand the main theme better until we have had affliction. If others seem to be having an easier time and to be missing the continuous kaleidoscope of perplexities which are our portion, let us remember that they are being prepared for another place, or have had more time, or are not making so much progress, or are adept in hiding their troubles; for every follower of Jesus must walk the way of him who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. There is a German proverb which says: "Disaster lends to the just a charm, as night a beauty to the stars." Tenderer and purer than a mother’s kiss come the words "Let not your heart be trouble, neither let it be afraid."Joh 23:10. "He kindles for my profit, purely, Affliction’s glowing fiery brand; For all his heaviest blows are surely Inflicted by a Master hand. And so I whisper, ‘as God will’ And in his hottest fire hold still." From the German of Julius Sturm CONFIDENT ASSURANCE-R. H. Barber (Discourse by R. H. Barber, 1915 Convention Report, Supplement, starting on Page 29.) The general topic of the day is confident assurance, and we wish to keep this thought before our minds in speaking to you this morning. In looking over the program, I wondered which of the topics was of most importance. I could come to no decision. The one we have for today is surely of great importance—CONFIDENT ASSURANCE What is meant by confident assurance? We understand that to be sure of anything would be to have a belief in it, based upon certain indisputable evidence—that is, evidence that would appeal to the mind as indisputable. It would mean that one would have no doubt in his mind. With respect to the great Divine Plan, it would mean to believe in the Heavenly Father as the God who is good, the God who is love; it would mean to believe that the Bible is His Word, and that its statements are true. Therefore, we could have confident assurance. This morning I wish to bring to your attention some features of the divine plan, and I will use as a text Isa 30:15: ‘For thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel; in returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.’ It seems to me that the very essence of confident assurance is expressed in this text. It pictures us all as once wandering away from the Lord; as a ship without a rudder. It tells us that in returning and rest shall we be saved. Here we have the thought of confident assurance in rest. We understand the rest here referred to is not physical rest, although we believe this rest does contribute to physical rest. To our understanding it is the rest referred to in Heb 3. It is the rest of faith. In returning to God, and being filled with a realization of this great plan of salvation, we have been enabled to look forward in confident assurance to the time when that plan will be completed. When sin entered Eden, and seemed to interfere with God’s arrangements, He rested, and He is still resting in confident assurance. You and I have the privilege of entering His rest. In returning and rest shall we be saved. I am reminded of the Psalmist’s words in Ps 37:7, ‘Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.’ I fear some of us have been waiting a little impatiently. I have had some of the friends tell me that they were very much disappointed that they are not in the kingdom. I tell them the fact that they are disappointed in the matter is positive proof that they were not ready for the kingdom. We want to get to the point where we will say, ‘Thy will be done.’ That is the rest of faith which says, ‘God has not taken us into the kingdom, therefore it must not be the proper time yet. We will wait, in quietness and assurance, God’s due time.’ It seems to me, if we do not feel that way, it would indicate a lack of this full assurance; it would indicate that we are not just ready. Perhaps God saw that we needed a little more time. ‘In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.’ This strength is of a peculiar character. It is in quietness and confidence. If you and I were to pick out those who we feel would stand the tests and trials of the present time, I feel sure we would select some who are strong and robust physically; some who have much of self-reliance, and possibly some of the spirit of boastfulness. We would say, ‘These will stand.’ I have seen some of that character in the past, who are not standing with us at this time. On the contrary, I have seen some timid ones, armed with God’s strength, who after long years are still loyal, and give every indication that they will remain loyal to the end. The Lord can provide the needed strength, and He tells us it will be manifested in quietness and confidence. The Lord is seeking such a class as this, who will conquer in the Lord’s strength, and not in their own. These will not only not be relying on self, but they will be relying on the Lord. At the same time, they will be courageous. This goes hand in hand with courage. Some of the most courageous characters are those who had not much courage naturally. The Lord will endue with courage to meet the trials if we have dependence upon Him. He will give such strength as He gave to the martyrs of the past. In reading of the experiences of those loyal ones of the past, we were surprised to read of a boy of twelve who went to the stake without a murmur, without a word of protest. It reminds me of the Lord, who was ‘led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.’ We find the record of timid sisters in the past who were burned at the stake, or thrown to the lions, without a murmur or complaint. They were armed with the strength that God supplies. They had confident assurance, not in themselves, but in His grace. They believed that all things would work together for good to them that love God. They held to that promise, ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.’ Having this assurance, we can trust ourselves in His hands; secondly, there could be no complaining or murmuring. I hear many complaining and faultfinding about the Lord’s providences. I fear sometimes that we indulge in this. I think to some extent all of us are prone to do this. If so, we have not reached this condition of full confidence, or reliance upon the Heavenly Father. If we had, there would be none of this. The Apostle Paul tells in 2Co 12:9, of his own experiences in this connection. You remember he had a physical disability. You and I, too, have physical disabilities of certain kinds. He prayed the Lord that this disability might be removed. I have no idea that this prayer was a selfish one. My thought is not that he wanted to be a more handsome man so that he might present the message in a more forceful and impressive manner, to bring attention to himself. I believe he desired to serve the Lord better, and for this reason he offered this prayer. The Lord gave him a wonderful lesson. He said, ‘Paul, my grace is sufficient for you.’ These humbling experiences that you are having are intended to be for your eternal good. ‘My grace is sufficient; my strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Think of this. The Lord is taking the weak, physically, and some who are weak in other respects—those who are naturally of a shrinking disposition, and He is supplying these with strength. They receive from Him strength, which gives them confident assurance, and they can rely upon the Lord. ‘My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ What an encouragement this should be, if we do not feel that we have much of physical strength, or self-reliance. Many of the friends have little of self-reliance. When the door of opportunity for service opens they shrink back, feeling their own inherent weakness. The Lord can use these gloriously in the carrying out of His purpose, sometimes rebuking those who have more of physical strength, and self-reliance. We have read instances where the Lord strengthened and used such in a wonderful way. It has been strengthening to me to read some of these instances. God supplies this strength through the word of truth, through providential leadings, and experiences in connection with their own lives. Sometimes I think we fail to take note of the providential experiences as we should. Little things befall us day by day, and they come in such a matter-of-fact way, that we are apt to think they came by chance—that they are simply accidents, whereas the Bible tells us plainly that everything that befalls the Lord’s people is permitted by Him. These experiences are overruled by Him. These experiences are designed of the Lord to work out the good pleasure of His will in our hearts. Sometimes He opens opportunities of service to us, that we may see His hand in the matter, and thus gain confidence and strength, that we may be better armed to do His will in the future. This is what furnishes us material for testimonials. The reason why testimonies sometimes drag is that we have failed to note these providences. If we can go through seven days, from one week to another, without having some blessings of experiences to strengthen and encourage us, we had better get down on our knees and ask for grace and wisdom—perception, so we may see His hand in our affairs. The Lord strengthens us through His Word. The Psalmist says, ‘Jehovah is the strength of my life; of whom should I be afraid?’ I am reminded here of Mt 10:28 in this connection. You remember the Scriptures give us the thought that having been begotten of the spirit the earthly body is simply the residence, the abode, of the new creature. The new creature is the I, and the old fleshly body is counted dead. The Lord says, ‘Fear not them who are able to destroy the body and after that have no more that they can do, but, rather, fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body (the body and the new creature, the life).) We see the force of this. Of whom should we be afraid—those who destroy the body, and after this have no more than they can do? No, fear, rather, Him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. In Isa 28:5,6, we have a text referring to the present time, and I think it is specifically applicable to the time just in the future—’In that day shall Jehovah of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty unto the residue of His people, and for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for strength to them that turn the battle to the gate.’ It represents the Lord’s people fighting against the foe. Jehovah of hosts shall be their strength. The prophet in Isa 40:31 says, ‘They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.’ That is why some of us are weak. What does waiting on the Lord mean? Sometimes I think we give this a restricted, very limited meaning. We think it means getting down on our knees twice a day in prayer. We grant that means waiting on the Lord, but we believe it is only a small portion of the waiting on the Lord, though a necessary portion. Waiting on the Lord would mean to give heed to His instructions. It would mean to search the Scriptures. I believe many are failing along this line, and I have noted it particularly during the past twelve months. I remember reading a letter in which it was said that the writer could see no evidence of lack of diligence among the Lord’s people. I must confess that my experience is the opposite. I see a lack of zeal. Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength—those who give heed to His instructions. The Lord says, ‘Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.’ Some are neglecting this. Another is, ‘Study to show thyself approved unto God.’ Some are neglecting that. I find some are not keeping up their study of the Volumes. Some have deserted the Volumes, thinking they possibly get misinformation there, hence they are studying the Bible for themselves-what our ancestors have been doing for hundreds of years without getting very much out of it. I believe that the Bible is given to be studied, but I also believe that the Lord has kept much of it hidden until the due time. At the due time He gives us the understanding through His agencies, and we cannot get instruction in any other way. It is best to follow the leadings of the Heavenly Father. We want to take the Bible, and study it with the helps the Lord has given us. That is the way to search the Scriptures. Some who have lost confidence in the Volumes, and decline to use them further, go direct to the Scriptures, taking such helps as Young’s and Strong’s Concordance, not seeing the nonsense of rejecting the one and taking the other. They repudiate the most important aid, from which we have received the greatest help. All of these helps should be used, so far as they will assist us in understanding the Father’s Word. If we wish to wait on the Lord it will mean watchfulness, prayerfulness, thoughtfulness. Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, and so much the more as ye see the day approaching. This is included in waiting on the Lord. ‘They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.’ If we find that we are losing faith, strength, confidence, full assurance, what does it mean? It is an indication that we are not waiting upon the Lord properly. In De 33:25 we read, ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be.’ I think we may properly say this text may be understood to refer to physical strength. If the Lord has some work for us to do, He will grant strength to do it. If you keep yourself in the Love of God He will supply strength in every trial, so you go through it to His honor and glory, and come off a victor. All of this depends upon our fulfilling the instruction given in the Word of Truth. We must wait on the Lord. If we go to the Word, depending on self-confidence, we are not waiting on the Lord. He will not then supply the strength. ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be.’ The Bible, seemingly, calls attention to the fact that the harvest of the age, the end, would bring the very hardest part of the trial. I think our trials will be more severe than any past trials of faith. I understand that every trial, in the last analysis, simmers down to a trial of faith. The Apostle in 1Pe 4:12,13, says: ‘Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial (there is to be a fiery trial).’ If you have not had any fiery trial, there is such in store for you somewhere. If you murmur, and complain, and find fault, it means that you think it strange that the Lord would treat you in that way, does it not? It indicates that you have not learned your lesson as you should. You have not put the armor on as you should. You have not come to the point where, in quietness and confidence, you have strength. ‘Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you, but rejoice inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings.’ We promised the Lord in our consecration that we would be partakers of His sufferings. Are you able to have part in His baptism? We said we are able. When we complain in any trial, we are not in harmony with this text. ‘Rejoice, that when His glory is revealed ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.’ At the present time our sufferings may not be conducive to physical joy. Sufferings come to us as human beings; not so much as new creatures. The apostle says, ‘Christ suffered in the flesh; arm yourselves also with the same mind.’ If they burn you at the stake, it is the flesh that they burn. When they tell you something that hurts your pride, it is the flesh that is hurt. The tears may roll down your cheeks, the sobs may escape us, the pain may be truly severe, yet the new creature is rejoicing that it is counted worthy to suffer with Christ. We want to rejoice, that when His glory is revealed we may be glad. In 2Pe 2:1,2 is a text which I think refers quite specifically to our time. The apostle there says, ‘There were false prophets among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you.’ He is pointing to our day. Personally I believe it is a little further on. These shall ‘privily bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them. Many shall follow their pernicious ways.’ Have we had that experience? Yes, we have had the bringing in of false doctrines, Those who have gone out from us have not been a great number yet. This passage declares that ‘Many shall follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the truth shall be evil spoken of.’ It is evil spoken of now to an extent, but it is by the public principally. This text intimates that some will speak evil of the truth who have gone out of the truth. In He 10:32,33, we read of some who ‘endured a great fight of afflictions (after they had been illuminated) partly whilst they were made a gazing stock, both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly whilst they became companions of them that were so used.’ I interpreted it in this way: in some of the ecclesias there are some who are not highly educated, some who have lacks of various ways, and reproach may come in that way. However, I believe there is a different thought in this respect. I believe the reproaches will be against our dear pastor. The reproaches will be against him, and they will come upon us because we are associated with him. In our home communities, there is not so much reproach from the world against our religious belief. If I go quietly to your neighborhood and inquire about you, they might say, ‘Oh, he is a good fellow, he is a good man; he pays his debts, he is a good neighbor, and minds his own business, but he has a queer religion.’ The reproach brought against us in that way would not have a serious effect, because the neighbors know of our manner of life. But some of these matters brought against our pastor will be proven, to some extent, and people will say, ‘Are you following such a man?’ It will take some confident assurance about that time. When we cannot defend the character of our pastor, we can say, ‘I do not believe it.’ Then they will sneer at us, and there will be a severe trial. I can not think of one much more severe than that. There will be some who have had the truth, furnishing the evidence for all of this reproach. The world will say, ‘We have it from their own lips,’ as it were; ‘from those who walked with you.’ Such things have occurred in the past, and they may occur in the future. If any one on earth could tell you a story about our pastor, or any one else, among the Lord’s people, and you would believe it, let me tell you that if you had lived 1900 years ago you would have believed the things they told about Jesus. We have found some friends in this condition. I have talked until past midnight to some who have been thinking along this line. Some think everything is going on smoothly. It is in some places, but not everywhere. Every man’s work shall be made manifest. What kind of work? The faith structure that we are building on the truth. I have found some who had newspaper clippings, and wanted me to swear to them. They had not built up their character on the truth. They had not seen the truth in such a wonderful way. It had not appealed to them that if our dear pastor has been used to bring this truth to us in such a beautiful way, nothing on earth should shake our confidence in him. If we lose confidence in the representatives of the Heavenly Father, we have lost confidence in the Heavenly Father. The day shall declare our work, of what sort it is. ‘Every man’s work shall be made manifest.’ Do not think that you will escape. Judgment has begun at the house of God. He is now sifting out, judging, condemning, eliminating everything not fit for the kingdom. Ps 91:7 gives us a thought which I cannot think is fulfilled yet—not completely, anyhow. ‘A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand.’ We have interpreted this in the past as being applicable to the nominal systems going into evolution, Christian Science, etc. But it seems to me this comes home to God’s consecrated saints, who are walking with us, and believing the things that we believe possibly. ‘It shall not come nigh thee’—those keeping themselves in the love of God faithfully, Here is a text we should take confidence from. Many see the text, ‘A thousand shall fall,’ and wonder whether we will be among the falling ones. Notice the next verse: ‘It shall not come nigh thee.’ Let us always remember that God has made certain provision whereby we remain His children; whereby everything shall work together for good to us. The provision is, that we keep ourselves in the love of God. Keep your thoughts on Heavenly things, and full of faith. Pay no heed to the distractions of Satan. Pay attention to the truth, as the Father is giving it to us at the present time. Keep girding on the armor. I think some forget that when we have the knowledge of the truth we may lose it. Consequently they get careless along the lines of study. The knowledge very soon slips away. Some texts may be very familiar to you, yet, after a few weeks or months you cannot quote them. A few years ago in the Pilgrim service, I had several different talks which I gave several times, and in these I used some texts many times. After a time I changed my talks, and to my astonishment, after I had not used them for a few months, I would have to go to my Bible and read them. Our minds are like leaky vessels. We must not think that we have the armor on—we must keep girding it on, and polishing the armor. In Re 3:10, we have another text to consider ‘Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will keep thee from the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.’ I think all of the harvest of the age is a time of trial, but I believe it will culminate in a climax a little like we have been looking for and expecting—greater trials. The Bible tells us it is a trial of faith. ‘The trial of your faith, being more precious than that of gold that perisheth.’ Jude 17 and 18 says, ‘But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.’ Notice, these mockers are walking after their own desires, following their own fleshly desires and cravings. I understand this to be a class associated with the church, in the ecclesias. These are self-willed, walking after their own desires. Some seek to domineer in the class, not being willing to submit to the vote of the class, according to order and discipline. Jude describes this class as those who despise rule and dominion. They speak evil of the elders, and they speak evil of the pilgrims, who are also elders at large, and of Brother Russell once in a while. I have heard them say these things. They are despising dominion; speaking evil of dignities. The Apostle has told us that in the last time there would be mockers, walking after their own ungodly lusts. ‘These be they that separate themselves.’ You know there is some separating going on. On this last trip I learned of some classes who are already divided, and others are dividing. They are sensual, not having the spirit. They had it once, possibly, but now they have lost it. These are following their own ungodly lusts, because they have lost the spirit. The spirit of love is, primarily, the spirit of union, of oneness. It is interesting to look up the texts on oneness, unity, etc., in the Bible. The apostle speaks of the faithful ones endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit—that is, they strive to keep it. Some think it means, if there is a little friction between a brother and sister, that they must jump into the breach and right the wrong. Sometimes they work injury. I know of a brother who, living in a neighboring city, visited a class at another place, and he seemed to think he should right all the wrongs he saw there. He stirred up a great deal more of trouble than there was before. The Lord has not even appointed the Pilgrims to do this. I had two or three experiences where I tried to do that. Some think it is their special office as representatives of the Pastor to straighten out difficulties. Our special office is to preach the truth—the divine law. If we can give good advice in a talk, without being personal, that is properly our work. It is not our work as Pilgrims to do what we can to adjust these difficulties; it is not your work either. The best way to keep the unity of the spirit is to keep our own lives and example above reproach, and not be busybodying in other men’s affairs, or in the affairs of other ecclesias. In 2nd Peter 3: 3 and 4, we read, ‘Knowing this first that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, ‘where is the promise of his coming."This indicates that there will be some who will doubt about the time features. Is any one in our little ecclesias saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming?’ I find that some are very doubtful about certain features of the truth, and consequently they stumble. In Mal 3:2 we read, ‘Who may abide the day of his coming; and who shall stand when he appeareth?’ There is going to be an experience of testing—fiery trials of faith and courage. The fire will manifest what spirit we are of. Some are murmuring, faultfinding, resenting, being offended at something the brethren do or say, or something the pilgrims or Brother Russell do or say. There are little surmisings, little roots of bitterness, until the Lord sifts them out. The Lord does it. Sometimes you and I have been interested specially in some of these, and have tried to help them back into the truth. I had such an experience. I went to a brother four times in thirty days, and tried to get him to see the wrong of the course he was taking. Some things of the truth he did not agree with, and he came to disagree more and more. Kindly, and as lovingly as I could, I pointed out the situation to him. He treated me as kindly as he could, but he gave me to understand that I had said some unkind things to him. I said, ‘I have not said an unkind thing, but have merely tried to help you to see the matter rightly. I believe in separating from the class you are losing a blessing. I do not believe you can keep the truth and stay away.’ He said, ‘You are talking unkindly.’ I gave him the thought that the body is to be edified and built up by that which every joint supplieth. We cannot be edified by the class, nor can we edify the class, if we stay away. He said, ‘Brother, I never heard you say anything unkind to me before.’ Almost invariably you will find that you cannot help them. Why? They once had the spirit of oneness, but when they separate themselves, is that oneness? It is the spirit of separation. ‘They went out from us, because they were not of us. If they had been of us they doubtless would have continued with us.’ The Greek is very emphatic. If they had been of us they would not have separated. How does the Lord supply strength? You are all familiar with the suggestion of the Apostle Paul in Eph., the 6th chapter. It is by putting on the whole armor of God. Notice, beginning at the 10th verse, ‘Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.’ What is strength? It is the knowledge, the truth, the understanding of God’s plan, that gives confidence, assurance, and strength. It helps to give us courage and persistency. ‘Put on the whole armor of God.’ You girded the armor on a number of years ago, but there is still more to do. As we read from the Pastor and from the Volumes we buckle on the armor the tighter, that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. He has had wiles all through the age, but nothing compared with those that are coming. In 2nd Thessalonians, speaking of the second coming of the Lord, the apostle describes it as coming with energetic manifestations by Satan, with lies and unrighteousness. He is going to use lies, and deceptions. He is not coming with hoofs, and horns, and a tail, but as an angel of light, specially at this time. We must gird on the whole armor to stand against these wiles of the devil in this evil day. That locates it at the present time. We not only have a great battle against our own flesh and blood; and that of our neighbors, husbands, and wives, etc.; we wrestle not against these only, but against principalities and powers, and rulers of the darkness of the world (cosmos). We are living in the evil hour. While we must acknowledge that many of the imposing arrangements of the’ present time are good in some respects, we recognize that many of these imposing features are calculated to deceive, if possible, the very elect. A little farther on he has something lined up that he thinks will catch them all. When the federation is completed, and the thing looks so imposing, unless we are thoroughly protected with the armor, some of us will be led away. I have learned of some who have had the truth for many years, who have now gone back to Babylon, and placed their names on its roll. Deceptions are getting strong when they do that. I can see how one might desert the truth and go back to the world, but I cannot understand how they could go back there. Yet, the Scriptures intimate that some may do so. We are striving against the rulers of the darkness of this age. It is a time of darkness, and everything is intended to blind our eyes. Satan would be glad to get us mixed up with moral and other reform movements, and thus blind us to the study of the truth more and more. We are struggling against spiritual wickedness in high places. Satan has some high places; some exalted places. Some of his agents at the present time are cultured, and kindly, and benevolent. The more kindness, and benevolence, and suavity his representatives use, the better will it serve his purpose to deceive. It will tend to make us believe that possibly we have made a mistake in associating ourselves in opposition as we have. It may appear that our time features did not come to pass. Seemingly we are left stranded, so far as our time features are concerned. Seemingly our work is going down. Have we made a mistake? Here is a little test. There may be an inclination not to be as energetic as in the past—a tendency to help the ruler of this world. Some are being tested along this line, and some are cooperating with the ruler of this present evil world. ‘Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand in this evil day; and having done all, to stand.’ I am impressed with this text at the present time. ‘Having done all.’ My thought was in the past that the harvest work would go on accumulating and increasing, until a grand finale would be reached, and then it would go to smash all at once. It looks now as though the Lord would let it peter out, until we are stranded. ‘Having done all, stand.’ We could not stand a moment if we did not have the armor on. It is not long since seventy went out from the Bible House. I was down south at the time, and some preacher got hold of it almost as soon as I did. He said in the pulpit that Pastor Russell’s friends were deserting him; that his prophecies did not come true, and therefore his friends would no longer furnish him money; they would not ‘feather his next longer.’ Suppose this sort of thing continues until there is no money to put out the Truth? What a test it would be. To simply stand, may be one of the final tests, for aught I know. (Do not say, Brother Barber said it would be so. It may be.) Just keep in mind that you could not stand a moment if you did not have on the whole armor. Now, one or two thoughts in conclusion. Some of the friends are losing their confident assurance, it seems to me. I just want to show how this manifests itself. My travels in the last six months have taken me through a number places where they have had the truth many years. Some who have been active in the classes, and some elders, I find, have moved two or three hundred miles away and gone in debt to buy farms. They are going so far away that they cannot maintain their fellowship with the friends. In some cases the class do not even hear from them. What does it mean? It looks to me as though they lack confidence. It looks as if they are ashamed of the Gospel which they once believed. Some are stumbled because some prominent brother whom they loved, and upon whom they had built their faith, to some extent, has dropped out. What does it mean? They have not confident assurance. Confident assurance is built upon the truth—not on a brother. Some are getting careless and indifferent respecting the Studies, respecting tract distribution, and attending the various meetings. It was very noticeable in connection with my last two trips, particularly the announcements for the public meetings. While we had quite a few public meetings, at only one place on our last trip did we have a well advertised public meeting. In some places they put up a little notice in the post office, with a little notice an inch and a half long in the newspaper. Then they complained because they could not get anybody out. They think the door is shut. At one place, I found they had secured the court house for a meeting at eight o’clock. I went down to the post office, and found they had expected to invite the people to the meeting that evening when they came to get their mail. The mail did not get in until 8:30. I made inquiries and learned that they had advertised in a good way formerly, but they found that not many came out, so they had dropped down to advertising in this way. It means loss of confidence. Others get offended at the brethren, and stumble. They are looking at the flesh of the brethren, instead of viewing them as new creatures. Bro. R—d called attention to this matter of getting offended, and demanding apologies. Then evil speaking, and evil surmising must be guarded against. We should not listen to evil speaking. The pilgrims have more of that to contend with than anyone else on earth. People think they should listen to all of their troubles, and so they come with reports about this and that. One came to me with Dr. Ross’s pamphlet making an attack on Bro. Russell and the truth, and wanted me to explain. Others came with other matters like this. Some are offended at Bro. Russell’s teachings, and others are offended at the pilgrims. Satan has got in some false advertising in some way. I found a place where they take no part in tract distribution. I said to the brother, ‘If you believe the Society would give sanction to anything that is wrong, or if you think Bro. Russell would, or the pilgrims, the sooner you get out the better.’ We should have more confidence in one another. Inasmuch as you did this to another whom you are finding fault with, you did it unto the Lord Jesus. Some are offended because they were not taken into the kingdom last October. They did not have enough confident assurance. We read in Ps 119:165, ‘Great peace have they who love thy law, and nothing shall offend them-’NOTHING shall offend them. In Mt 26:31, Jesus said, ‘All ye shall be offended because of Me this night.’ Suppose there should be another similar experience just ahead of us, where all shall be offended because of our dear pastor, or something else? All this, we think, indicates a lack of confident assurance. The proper thing for us to do is to gird on the armor. Let us give more diligence in the matter of study in attending the meetings, in loyalty to the brethren, in loyalty to class work, and in loving the Lord and one another. Let us remember that the way to do this is to study, and to endeavor to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace. Thus may we be able to stand faithful in the trials which the Lord may see fit to send upon us in the future. May the Lord bless us all.

- The Question To Atheists - Atheist Answer #1: Scientific Consensus - Atheist Answer #2: An Infinite G_d Could Have Created a “Better” System - Atheist Answer #3: If I Saw The Signs the Israelites Saw Coming out of Egypt - Atheist Answer #4: As Long as I have Free Will, I Will Use It To Deny G_d’s Existence - Atheist Answer #5: G_d Has An Obligation to Reveal Himself to Me, if He Exists - Atheist Answer #6: I Know Morality Without G_d - Please comment Atheists fascinate me. In my most secular days, I was an agnostic because even if you are right that there is no Creator, you can’t know that. I recently found a group of atheists online that I have been debating out of fascination and hope that they at least will quit scoffing at people who believe in stuff. The problem is, we generally argue two different things – an atheist will argue “you can’t prove it to me by experimentation, so I don’t believe.” So I asked them to consider this question (among others): Assuming with live in a world with free will, what amount of evidence would be enough for you to believe in G_d? Assuming free will again, wouldn’t the arguments against, or at least, the ways a person sees it, be equally attractive? So how can anyone who wants to say ‘there is no G_d’ ever be convinced of something they don’t want to see? The question forces you to look at this world as created by G_d in a very rational manner – based on what we observe in this world. This is the basis of the school of ‘rationalism’. Free will allows you to see either G_d or no G_d, and in fact, there are smart people on either side. Not one proclaimed atheist could answer the question without first breaking it or attacking the very question itself. Is the axiom of free will and viewing the world we live in illogical? This is a much more logical way to approach the issue than demanding a world that isn’t ours, including the demand for concrete evidence which either break reality or would break your free will (again, see axiom and is it logical to start with a premise of free will or not? If not, then no one has control over anything, anyway.) Here are the collected atheist answers, keeping the original words intact as best as possible. For me, enough proof would be if the scientific consensus held it to be true based on the scientific method, and even then only those details that have been established by experiment. I.e. just proving that there’s a creator or a prophet 4000 years ago, doesn’t prove all the other details in a package. This would still allow free will, because we see so many people today choose not to believe scientific claims, or act in ways that would put them in danger according to scientific claims. Rebuttal: It is arbitrary to say that science has to prove G_d to believe. One could arbitrarily say science has to disprove G_d to disbelieve. Science and testing theories does not answer whether there is or isn’t a creator. The scientific method only answers what we observe, not how it was created. The hypothesis here would be “there is a Creator” or “there is not a Creator”. Either hypothesis is untestable so this is no basis for choosing non-belief, or for that matter, belief. The scientific method is irrelevant. Though arguably particle physics might be getting close, having faith in scientific experimentation to produce results that cannot be tested does not mean the hypothesis is not correct. This answer is based on a fallacy, and further, maybe scientific tests to show there is a Creator and people choose not to believe, but it certainly can’t show the opposite. (This actually is the same person as #1, but I like his answers best so I’m putting them first.) Let G_d make a world with free will where it’s also obvious to everyone that you exist. Can he do that? If he’s omnipotent and omniscient he can think of ways of doing that. If you just start thinking, even you can come up with ways too. For example, G_d could make a world where it’s obvious that he exists but there’s no punishment for people who sin or there’s no proof that punishment happens and a lot of people believe that it doesn’t, so people have the free will to decide if they want to please G_d. There are many such alternative ways it could work, and an omnipotent G_d can certainly make the world like that, so the argument of free will is not valid. It is a later invention because there was a time when most people were certain that there is a G_d. Rebuttal: This answer sidesteps the entire question. Atheist answer #2 is saying, “In my point of view, an infinite Creator would not create the world that we have, so therefore, there is no G_d.” Really? Your infinite Creator would make a world how you see fit? You know better? That’s quite an audacious claim. Who are any of us to say we know how to create a better world than even a theoretical infinite Creator? The answer is pure arrogance, and for such a person, why would G_d want to interrupt your feelings of omnipotent rationality with a truth (if it is truth) that would be so painful to you? Atheist answer #2 basically posits, “in this world, nothing would ever convince me that there’s a Creator because I’m smarter and better than any such Creator of this world.” Having stated the above, These are interesting thought experiments, but we need to work within our world, not a hypothetical world. We could spend pages and pages dissecting every different world and the pros and cons (not to mention, that such other versions of the world did or may yet exist, such as the era of Adam before the downfall of man and the era of the Moschiach). In the meanwhile, we have to make sense of our world and at least accept that there could be a Creator of this world, and that we don’t know more than the Creator, no matter how smart we are. If I saw the 10 makkos and the sea split, that would be enough . . . all the firstborns dying, rivers turning to blood and frogs everywhere right after Moshe Rabbeinu predicted it all? Sounds pretty compelling to me. Rebuttal: This violates the question. If there’s free will to believe or not believe, then even if you experience things that can only be from a Creator, you could still deny and try and find a godless explanation. In fact, using the example provided by atheist #3, Pharoah did exactly that, repeatedly! (A simple answer to the ‘hardening of the heart’ is that he chose to do so, and so G_d helped him in that direction, consistent with the free will positing, above.) It goes further – according to commonly quoted midrashim, this was not enough for 5/6 of the Jews. On the other side, according to the text of the written Torah itself, however, some Egyptians did leave with the Jews, seeing the signs as signs from a Creator. However, it didn’t take long for people to doubt, and Amalek attacked soon after as a result. It is unclear that this would really be enough for Atheist #3 in the situation, but even if it was, what about if he didn’t witness the above but his father did and told him about it? What if his father told him he heard it first hand from his father? What if his father told him he heard it second hand from his father who heard it from his father? How far back until we say, “it’s not strong enough evidence anymore?” In history, the answer seems to be about 3,100 years until Jews largely stopped believing in the chain, largely due to purposeful government sponsored assimilation and persecution in German and Russia, and lack of education in the United States more than any theological difficulty. In the Torah, the chain is listed forward straight through from Adam to Avraham to Moses to Nachshon (first in the water) to Ruth to King David and his descendants, who are historically verifiable. My wife’s family tree goes back to King David through Germany, Spain, Iraq and more, and though admittedly sketchy for some time between there and King David, we do know the leaders of the generation and what they wrote straight through the times of the Mishnah, Talmud, Geonim, Rishonim, and so forth. If someone could show me a strong otherwise non explainable correlation between people that keep the Torah and good thing happening to them or if some sort of entity appears to me claiming to be G_d and does enough miracles to have me convinced that he’s powerfully enough to do bad things to me if I sin. But frankly I don’t think anything can convince me in G_d who created the world. The only way I can really be convinced is if G_d actually changed the way I reason things in my mind. Rebuttal: The question resulted in a very forthright answer – unless the correlation is obvious enough to suspend free will (we see the results of reward and punishment near-immediately and obviously), there can be no G_d. While an honest answer, it violates the question that posits free will to see and not see equally, and further, like the rebuttal to answer #2, posits that the world we live in would not one created by G_d and closes off ability to see if there is one in the world we are in. On a totally different level, this answer is somewhat the flip side of answer #2 in that this one is a negative answer about “do bad things to me if I sin” whereas answer #2 was about a more positive world with no punishment for sin, and only love. Suffice to say, I think the answers say much about the psyche and associations of each person. In a world as confusing as ours, would a rational G-d who expected us to know of his existence not have an obligation to give us at least one objective piece of evidence proving he exists? Even a single revelation per generation like the one that supposedly happened at Mount Sinai would be enough. Rebuttal: No, it would not be enough in a free will system where you could deny it or doubt it a moment after. This is now a combination of answer #1 and #3. The rebuttal includes both (see above) – 1) Why does G_d have to create things to how you think he should, and 3) You violate the question by demanding proof (which is removal of free will). (Side point: Both Moses and Iyov demand that G_d be revealed and get it.) It is not rational to ask, “why isn’t the world different?” and to enter the realm of a hypothetical world. It is rational to examine the world for what it is and make our choices are a result. Smart people are theists, and smart people are atheists – yet lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. If you’re G_d, who says you need to have open revelation every 20 years? Why not a period of open revelation, and a period of hidden revelation? See what people do with it, and see if they continue to make the relationship even while you ‘pull away’ as a test. Maybe that’s better, ad maybe that is … what is? Have you heard of global warming? Global cooling? If we have the minds to know right from wrong than it is our responsibility to act upon what we know is right- I don’t need a G_d to tell me something is wrong or right- I have instincts like all animals do. Why exploit oil, energy, animal life, entire rainforests, cause pollution and contaminate unnecessarily? Why not just use exactly what we need and stop being greedy? Why buy a brad new BMW if I live in a city like Manhattan or Tel Aviv where I can ride my bike? Why do people throw garbage out the window? Why do we hunt endangered species? Why don’t we find natural and environmentally friendly sources of energy instead? At the end of the day it is not us who will destroy the earth, but the earth itself will destroy us through natural disasters in order to prevent us from causing more damage. Rebuttal: Yeah, that’s a real answer. It also included eating organic, free range chickens and stuff like that. This one doesn’t even attempt to answer the question before breaking it, but I include it because it’s still interesting. This goes to morality without an objective/cosmic system, for which I’ll go into extremely briefly: in a man-made morality, if we go by each person’s morality and what is good for them, it’s an argument for anarchy and I can kill you because I only know of my own pain, not yours, and this gives me pleasure that I choose. If we go for society-functioning morality (which I’m all for, verses the former) then forget John Locke. Ancient Egypt has little autonomy, individual rights, or freedom of … much, and it lasted about 3,000 years largely unchanged. That’s a much more successful track record for the good of society than any utilitarian model. The problem is this: the person’s ideas do have their roots in a G_d-based system (okay, Judaism as I was dealing with Jewish atheists). We have kosher slaughter of animals to cause them no pain in a timeless manner which worked as well 3000 years ago as today, we do not kill more than we can eat, we do not waste, we do not buy excessive material goods unless for the purpose of beautifying a mitzvah, we do not even tear a leaf off a tree if we have no reason to do so, our cities are supposed to (and were, when Torah law was in place) be a certain size surrounded by fields, we do not cut down fruit trees, etc, etc, etc. The environmental list goes on and on. There’s nothing like Jews to go off on an extreme tangent after a few generations. Do we follow this to the logical conclusion and say kill all humans because we’re destroying the planet for the rest of the animals who are not? Do we follow one of my PETA-membered lab partners in college who said that if a dog and person were drowning, she’d save the dog first because it won’t kill people? Nothing stops people from using their own logic to do terrible things (which isn’t to say religious people are exempt, but this is a rational philosophical discussion, not a discussion of people acting irrationally). Jews are at the forefront of the pro-choice and pro-life movements, democracy and communist movements, feminist and anti-feminist movements, and everything else. Apparently, without G_d telling you something is right or wrong, you can believe just about anything and argue that it’s right. Torah is the system that binds this together and says at the same time, don’t harm your fellow man, but here are the instances when he deserves death; even if he deserves death, here are the very limited circumstances where you can do it. So on and so forth. Torah following Jews are human and can mess this up too, but point is that you could be going down a very pleasant river of your own intellect and not see the waterfall ahead because you didn’t care to consult the guidebook because “I have instincts like all animals do”. There are smart people on both sides who argue for either side. If we choose to see a Creator, it’s there everywhere we look. If not, then not. That’s our free will choice. I don’t expect the Creator to act how non-believers want the Creator to act in a fantasy world, but would rather start with the world I’m in. This world might be created by a Creator. Once we go there, then we can look at the evidence and see what makes the most sense. Theists and atheists are generally speaking different languages, so the question is only which way of looking at it makes more sense, and the answer to G_d’s existence flows from there. If you look through a prism of atheism which says “prove it to me”, you are denying free will. You want something as clear as a Bitcoin hashtag level verification as proof? Well, even if you had that, then according to the theory of free will, the counter balance for not believing would still be equal, thus arguing with someone who does not want to believe is futile, but also, makes their arguments without merit in a world that has free will. Up next in part II – an Atheist flips it around on me and says, “What evidence would it take for you NOT to believe in a Creator?“

Frist Center Presents Maira Kalman Paintings Made to Accompany the Classic Composition Guide The Elements of Style Maira Kalman: The Elements of Style June 6–September 1, 2014 NASHVILLE, Tenn. (April 14, 2014)—The Frist Center for the Visual Arts presents Maira Kalman: The Elements of Style from June 6–September 1, 2014, in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery. The exhibition features paintings by artist, illustrator and author Maira Kalman, which were created to illustrate a 2005 re-publication of William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s classic composition guide The Elements of Style. Renowned as an authoritative treatise on clear and effective writing, The Elements of Style has offered distinctive guidance to readers since its debut in 1919 as a classroom text by Cornell University professor William Strunk Jr. In 1957 the author E.B. White, a former student of Strunk’s, was asked to edit what was known around the Cornell campus as “the little book,” for the general public. Today, after multiple printings and editions, The Elements of Style remains a delightful and famously idiosyncratic handbook for writers. Charmed and inspired by what she calls the “glorious, nutty, cinematic, eccentric and wise” language of the text, Maira Kalman decided to create illustrations to accompany the text for a new edition. The result, The Elements of Style (Illustrated), was published by Penguin Books in 2005, and features paintings that respond to the text’s exacting grammatical decrees and peculiar usage examples, e.g., “It was a unique eggbeater,” with wit, whimsy and the artist’s own vivid imagination. “Kalman embraces all that she observes and experiences. Her joie de vivre is infectious,” says Dr. Susan H. Edwards, executive director of the Frist Center. “We as readers and viewers feel empowered to make expansive leaps back and forth recalling her voluminous sources from literature, art and poetry, as well as her delightful appreciation of everything from a donut to the idea that a person wearing alligator shoes would have an alligator on each foot.” Kalman’s 56 paintings, all gouache on paper, feature strong colors, flattened spaces, floating objects, and childlike figures that provide settings for riddles. The viewer asks: How does the image reflect the text, and what, if anything, is wrong with the text, anyway? This provides enjoyable experiences in both literary and visual literacy. Reflecting on the painting “‘Be Obscure Clearly’ Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!” Dr. Edwards notes, “Kalman’s accompanying illustration is a table filled with special treats: champagne, champagne glasses, chocolates, anemones, tulips, compotes, crystal goblets, teacups and plates with a rose pattern…all pink and white and red on a neutral tablecloth in a caramel colored room. It is clearly articulated for us. Eat dessert first.” Nico Muhly, a contemporary classical music composer who has collaborated with a number of classical and pop/rock artists, created an accompanying song cycle scored for soprano, tenor, viola, banjo and percussion. In the Frist Center installation, visitors will be able to listen to the music while viewing the paintings. “The addition of Nico Muhly’s composition adds an unexpected twist,” says Frist Center Chief Curator Mark Scala. “Just as the artwork grew out of a literary text, the songs exemplify ways that inspiration can cross disciplines to delightful effect.” Looping the exhibition into another dimension, Kalman will also curate, in the gallery, a table of objects that were used by her friends and family to make soft percussive noises in the performance of Muhly’s composition. Visitors may listen intently to identify the sound that a cup and saucer might make. As a special aspect of the installation, Kalman will hand-paint the exhibition’s title onto the wall during the media preview. Scala explains that Kalman’s hand is in such evidence throughout her paintings, “that we thought it would be wonderful to have her participate in the actual design of the exhibition. By performing this action in front of an audience, she will remind viewers that an exhibition is, among other things, the ‘theater of presentation.’” About the Artist Maira Kalman achieved international acclaim with her cover illustrations for the New Yorker, which include the renowned New Yorkistan, a “map” made in collaboration with Rick Meyerowitz that playfully designates various boroughs and neighborhoods with the Asian geographical suffix “istan.” She has also created illustrated blogs for the New York Times and written such books as The Principles of Uncertainty (2006–07) and The Pursuit of Happiness (2008–09). In 2010, The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia) organized Kalman’s retrospective Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World), which was also seen at The Jewish Museum (New York City), the Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles), and the Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco). She has been represented by the Julie Saul Gallery in New York since 2003. This exhibition was organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee. Elements of Style composed by Nico Muhly. Used by Permission from St. Rose Music, New York. The Frist Center for the Visual Arts is supported in part by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Related Public Programs Saturday, June 7 Artist's Tour: Maira Kalman: The Elements of Illustrator Maira Kalman insists that one needn’t be an English major to have fun with the rules of grammar. Join the artist for a discussion of her sources of inspiration for her delightful drawings for William Strunk Jr., and E. B. White’s The Elements of Style and her experiences working with composer Nico Muhly to create a song cycle inspired by the wordsmiths’ perennially popular treatise.

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Due to this, there should be hardly any Pokemon anywhere which could fit the occult power. belongs to the finally technology Pokemon group, named this’get better at involving choice’since it features the strength of different types about Pokemon inside. He / she is probably the Pokemon in whose presence globally, will be considered early myth just by a good number of people. The particular amount was within this twelfth animated widescreen motion picture on the gum anime Pokemon range permitted, Arceus plus the Gem associated with Living, circulated found in 2009, Arceus’s company name on their own comes from a schooling would include biology posture written text which means that the biggest time and also from the word archon which translates to mean’Typically the rule, the bodies cells physique on the Arceus any time noticed is usually just like some desired form of transport or maybe a llama, They’re the latest four-legged Pokemon, almost all of as their chest muscles is certainly vivid white having a variety of dull about the bottom. Arceus by itself contains a top of your head condition that could be particularly exclusive, considering it possesses a rather long spherical tresses and even sharpened by the end, resembling a significant of one’s wizard’s head wear upon a classic Euro tale. These stern relating to his or her physical structure also offers any the identical shape, simply because while in the go, On both walls of this have to deal with there is also a set of taper-shaped the ears, thus it appears similar to a saddle horn and a jewelry decoration around the forehead. includes a tough fretboard just like an Ilama, just where on attributes there is simply a department that only has a fin-like shape. In the gut, there exists a golden ornamentation in the shape of one of the wheels placed on his body. Inside the decoration, there’s an easy renewable treasure, that is definitely disconnected relating to 5 components, The good thing about yellow metal are offered also, regarding all thighs because both versions contains gold-coloured nails. Nevertheless exclusively, the golden shades by their system changes color selection if he makes use of amongst the strengths acquired, because of 16 pieces’early storage’he has to shift the level of strength. As an illustration, the actual rare metal color involving this physical structure can flip the colour inexperienced the moment they become Pokemon together with forage type as well as is going to be navy in the event that he / she flipped him self in to water-type Pokemon. _ Victini, ‘Pokemon Legend of the Little Rabbit of Victors’ Powering the woman small,and lovely amount, there’s a simple significant energy not even really should be doubted, it is company is magic from win in just about every fight which has taken place intended for a large number of years. Victini has become the exceptional along with fifth-generation pokemon species of flame in addition to psyhic beginnings, primary participating in that 14th pokemon alive aspect motion picture discharged in two reproductions, referred to as Pokémon this Video: White-Victini in addition to Zekrom. Not to mention Pokéwednesday any Dvd movie: Black-Victini and additionally Reshiram. Either dvds ended up being first unveiled during 2011, any term Victini develops from a combined glory thoughts signifying glory not to mention little language that contain tiny meaning, the work with Victini is viewed motivated by a goddess around the age-old Ancient greek language mythology in Nike, our bodies is just like some rabbit contains a major ear canal, in which smells like the particular cover letter’V ‘. at the after part carries a profile such as few of wings, which often can take a flight, Almost all overall body Victini solution coloring, sole over the outer position on the ear canal, simultaneously extremities which happen to have orange colored color. He / she also has sizeable excellent blue eye lids, defining it as start looking highly adorable. From the hands and feet, Victini just has 3 palm each kids finger in both wrists and hands and 2 kiddy hands in both legs. Along with the hands within the side, Victini possesses among the many unique patterns when they is normally viewed holding up her only two hands, and so developing some’V’notification with a shape body language to represent victory. Victini itself is no Pokemon living inside rough outdoors as being a habitat. As a replacement, she were located around a town named Eindoak, and that is an area of the Empire within the Vale region. By just looking at which usually 1000’s of years earlier Victini would have been a Pokemon who was close friends that has a double about Land belonging to the Vale. To start with he’d given his or her chance to the cal.king, to help him or her pet travel these Sword on the Vale structure to the spot, if you want to avoid the demolition due to this Tartar Force. Efforts has been powerful, but yet for reasons uknown, Victini was in fact caught up inside palace vicinity, right after that king’s loss for the reason that unpleasant incident got place. Victini herself features a element nature the fact that is often cheerful, timid, and elusive. Due to his / her shyness, she or he regularly incorporates his or her flexibility to produce their shape silent, and even will for sure disclose himself for you to all who have received his particular confidence. They yet another caring particular person, and will not waver to assist you to overcome to his or her local persons today when playing in danger. _ Piplup, ‘Pokemon king of the Penguins of the Dignity of the Blue’ Him / her shape that looks extremely cute as well as precious, will be the drawing card the fact that many times generates some people fooled will probably look and feel, At the rear of any contrast utilizing the picture which can be viewable is often a sum involved with cavalier who is responsible for upholding his or her self-esteem. Piplup, known as Pochama, is amongst the fluids category Pokemon class, is really a suit age bracket Pokemon, primary debuted on the anime Pokemon sequence: Gemstone & Pill range, It is the initial Pokemon operated from Get through, one of many reasons customer protagonists from this course, as soon as she or he primary chosen to become a Pokemon personal trainer you need to this adventure. These company name Piplup itself, derived from a blend of the saying message pip, a term signifying an established state for a child baby rooster well before them hatches from its egg. Together with the term plunk / plup that’s the sound of drinking water gurgling developed at a pebble in regards to puddles. In physical form, Piplup’s details is without a doubt comparable to the latest penguin more often than not, having to deal with navy blue head of hair that looks contrasted utilizing its vivid white have to deal with as well as almost all of the entrance of that body is lumination blue. The total amount saved throughout coloration, building Piplup found putting on any cloak on her body. All the bill concerning this are up against contains a short measurements, and is stained, such as coloration concerning some of thighs, because both versions has only three fingers. Found in Piplup’s body system, the good news is one of a kind, light-weight green structure, most suitable over the rest of its bill, that steadily the form from the top which represents all the sum of one’s Piplup made up of honour. Furthermore, the two main oval-shaped habits for the chest, that is definitely white. Eventually, when the time comes some Piplup may well change to a Prinplup. At this stage, Piplup’s body system spreads instances as huge as previously that looks such as child penguin, learning to be a top of your head who has a resemblance to the horn. Additionally, by just workout together with work, an important Prinplup could advance inside Empoleon that’s the other second evolutionary form of Piplu. Around the finished steps these history, ugly Empoleon appears quite definitely more advanced than past evolutionary forms. The more vibrant switch consistantly improves coloration in the feathers figure involved with Empoleon that is certainly presently more decided with african american, when ladies bright sample in the shape of some fortify in belly, earning Empoleon check just like dressed in some sort of tuxedo suit. That piece in her head which formerly was similar to the automobile horn, has now was a good 3-eyed pate, helping to make his particular beauty appear as if any penguin king. _ Cyndaquil, ‘The Freaky Mouse Pokemon’ This physique most likely are not seen as an chance, for the diffident nature. However , in back of very, stashed away an exceptional capability, which will make it structure risks to help you their opponent. Cyndaquil as well as generally known as Hinoarashi is certainly one species of Pokemon fire-pipe. It is the second-generation Pokemon, which usually initially been seen in with 2000, throughout the next year or so for the Pokéfriday anime collection: The particular Johto Journeys. One is the 3rd Pokemon of Ash, which inturn he / she was given throughout this excursion, Cyndaquil’s special label, made from a blend of the word clinker that’s got this is of ash, together with quill word meaning surges, like some form of flame configuration in his / her figure, which usually appears to be like as being a spikelet like for example body hedgehog. Cyndaquil’s body appears to be much like a variety of rodent mammal referred to as Shrew or even a rodent and as well a particular Echidna or even a squealer spine. It features a little shape and runs using couple of legs. Most of the is white wine get, as you move the upper side with one’s body will be turquoise. Body Cyndaquil by themself appears a range of Shrewmouse and then Echidna just as well because in his or her pawning aspect there’s a flame that is certainly the same shape as a fabulous joblessness like is very important on the sticker on the human frame of each Echidna, but yet on the other hand, almost all of the additional features are indifferent having a Shrew. Cyndaquil on its own features a tough snoot and then view which will generally go looking sealed, a small grip which will does not have paws and kiddy hands, but there is the latest nipper with each one thigh, as opposed to Charmander owning a powerful’interminable flare’that in case outages may pressured their everyday life life, the fireplace in Cyndaquil’s again to some extent different. For just sure circumstances, Cyndaquil is usually frequently experienced with out using fire on this spine, though it doesn’t stop here have an affect on immediate influence on the and additionally health and wellbeing from his or her entire body like Charmander. Any time the fireplace have before happen to be put out, it might size up together with size in place over again, as he for a second time noticed the eliminating passion even when fighting. In the event that the hearth is put out, you will see 4 purple oval-shaped scars at the lower back, that could be it is said getting to of this flames. When the time comes, the Cyndaquil are able to advance suitable Quilava. At this time, this total body could grow greater now his or her structure realistically seems to be much more similar to a Weasel or a weasel. One of the most attractive shifts will be in his particular little brown eyes which have been currently now not shut down, these outgrowth in some hearing, and also the relationship concerning their human body that may be currently placed found at a couple of tips to wit the pinnacle head that looks like the mohawk haircut new hair-do and even in the final analysis in the to come back which is alot more for instance a after part, by using train and then working hard, a fabulous Quilava can certainly center directly into her up coming manner, to become a Typhlosion. During this period, his or her form has not yet switched a whole lot right from before. Simply, his or her is right now increasing extremely huge, along with a growth about fangs, as well as a flame concerning his / her human body that’s at this time simply situated by single place, around the neck. _ Rayquaza, ‘Pokemon Legend of the Green Dragon of the Ruler of the Sky’.. The appearance of her own figure at the acquire has been a fantastic incident, in which will be able to not happen with the secondly time. Known as the’leader on the celestial sphere ‘, significantly earlier that confuses to the natural environment, the place the idea lifetime and pertains ability, Rayquaza is one of the well-known Pokemon varieties of tartar and then fly type. Oahu is the than era Pokemon, first i went to inside lcd screen alive the silver screen this 7th from the Pokemon gum anime range, Pokéfriday: Fate Deoxys what was launched around 2004. Is it doesn’t group of 3 expert, organ of the necessary trinity with the mainland leader not to mention Kyogre (ruler of the oceans). These brand Rayquaza comes from a mix of the definition of beam signifying sun as well as the text quasar and that is the particular list for starters astronomical concept, which is the source connected with electromagnetic electric power, can consult the expression Raqiya that means this welkin or construction of the atmospheric core, it is actually on their own some in’ energy’of one’s Rayquaza. This work is usually reported to be stirred using a celebrated creature referred to as Ziz’the beautiful ruler’who is responsible for unbeatable on Jewish legends. Inside superstar is without a doubt also told, Ziz (: Rayquaza) also has other sorts of peers that is Behemoth or possibly Groudon as well as Levianth or maybe Kyorge, Intention involved with different Rayquaza results stated to be empowered in the our god Quetzalcoatl with the Aztec tribe beliefs. They’re an important the almighty, shownd in the form of some sort of snake or possibly a tartar controlling above, setting up a border between this planet, beach plus sky. From actual perspective, Rayquaza offers a big, alternative entire body and it has a physique containing any ophidian and additionally monster, On the shoulder joint to your poop, there’s a simple portion such as a extension accompanied by a reddish collection, with a population of form resembling some sort of guiding fender by using an aeroplane. Along the length of the bodies cells physique for Rayquaza, as a result of head to stern, there exists a blue group of friends for emblems that appear to be like a pattern on his or her body. Rayquaza has an incredibly exact makeup structure having a snake, especially with a clear,crisp fang which usually resides for the inside about his / her mouth. From the neighborhood with the head, one can find 4 items the fact that look like a saddle horn, which in the top side regarding some of horns contain a lengthier size, whilst the over the mouth space has a smaller form. Whilst by hand way more for instance a snake, still its ability to soar above, in addition to both of your hands hands along with a couple of paws further,it teaches our bodies to a dragon. _ Haunter, ‘The Terrifying Terror Pokemon in the Darkness’ Inside iniquity in her find disappearing, ready together with catching in her victim. Together with his occurrence, the guy can cast scourge and also worry, so that you can everybody close to the pup, Haunter or even commonly known as Spider, are you types of pokemon style spider and also poison. They are the primary generating pokemon, which has surfaced due to the fact the best time of year of this zanzibar copal pokemon string, Pokéwednesday: Indigofera tinctoria League. Haunter herself is a secondly sort of some sort of Gastly with which has developed over time, a new Gastly has some type of orbs or perhaps a power sphere from a wraith soul. Gastly’s private entire body stated to be made up of 95% pathogens like flatulence, the amount is just described as developing a face shaped like a fabulous black baseball, when the item consistently happens a new yellow obscure that is a kill gas which usually is from his body. Haunter’s designate is derived from the idea of worry so this means’persistent ‘, annoyingly,many people he does as a general touch, this valuable number might be, in line with Dila, a historical mythology inside Filipino philosophy, around spiritual mood which will drift in the divider and might result in the the loss of an gentleman through thrashing his particular body. Haunter can be described as violet Pokemon which includes a poisonous chemicals gas-forming substance. It possesses a great round head off, and even a couple palm taken away from from the body, once each fretting hand possesses about three finger, which is also which included a pointed claw. Surrounding the head, you will find there’s razor-sharp part of an stiletto heel mane brand on features, to boot the particular quarter which also contains a clear,crisp design not to mention narrowing around the tip. They have good sized trilateral ordered little brown eyes, having small pupils, similar to some sort of dark colored dot, given it advances perfectly into a Haunter they are going to have a relatively wide dental problems measurements, in which feels crisp and clean smile along with long-term glossa is within the mouth. the Haunter the moment it consists of achieved a specific place might later on grow suitable Gengar. At this stage, some of the most striking corrections noticed in his or her body system are actually more and more increased as well as rounded. On top of that, large connected with this little brown eyes have become made inflammed, with this issue involving a set of hip and legs including a dustup for clean white teeth prepared efficiently like a human’s teeth. _ Snivy, ‘The Cold Green Snake Pokemon’ Powering the nice and even strange character, you will find a beauty which their charm challenging to resist. His private, usually calm in all problems, represents typically the exquisite mother nature containing flowed in him or her pet, Snivy and even referred to as Tsutarja is amongst the varieties of Pokemon with the yard It’s the fifth-generation Pokemon that will to start with developed on the Pokemon cartoons line Pokéfriday the Course: African american & Whitened considering the fact that 2010. Snivy is undoubtedly the 4th Pokemon, attained by just Ash in her experience, Snivy’s Company name, derived from the lizard phrase solution meaning snake, plus explained common ivy which can be the naming of a form of creeping plant. The particular determine is without a doubt reportedly moved by way of a particular types of lizard which includes a narrowing gun muzzle, termed as a lizard or maybe snake-shaped snake. In relation to fisking, Snivy is known as a two-legged Pokemon, small , willowy, and also belongs to the reptile class. Almost all body’s green, cream color selection relating to the undersurface in his or her body. There exists a white wire from in to this butt and around the eyes. On top of the neck, Beyond the neck of, must avoid discolored bent composition the fact that resembles the sort of a new catch connected with German commendable dresses inside Renaissance century. Snivy carries large red face, a set fists equally by means of two finger, and then male lower limbs that appear to be really small and yet competent at supporting it is body. Snivy features a after part appearance that would be particularly completely unique mainly because in the final analysis it happens to be shaped like a three-pronged thumb together with a large size. Yet another special point, as it happens Snivy can make use of’renders’inside stern to build particles photosynthesis to absorb the sun together with transform it again inside energy source usage pertaining to the pup that could try to make Snivy go along with agiler any time fighting. But, as soon as the illness is undoubtedly stressed, typically the’thumb’positioned in the final analysis from the pursue will likely start looking cancerous resulting from power loss. Some Snivy regardless of whether possesses hit a clear level, will in the end germinate in a Servine. At this time along with the expanding total body on the greater, today regarding all the stern connected with couple of different hair strands regarding leaves, primarily smaller. Even at the top of a scalp can be a hornlike piece, as well as portion that smells like some’arrest’upon the neck of grows more lengthy, offfering a silhouette for ‘ V ‘. After driving via diverse routines together with diligence, in that case Servine are able to progress towards a Serperior, With this last trend, the foremost detectable alteration of which often for this kind some sort of Serperior not anymore carries some hands or even feet, At present his / her style appearances like a good ophidian , ugly a Serperior appearance which means that classy and elegant, Ken Sugimori, the particular designer possibly even promises which usually some of the external why people love the actual Serperior, countless have creativity from majestic German nobleness during the Renaissance, Among the many design fleur-de-lis expression on the chest area Serperior stirred by way of the type of badges the fact that nobles been on individuals days. _ Roselia, ‘Pokemon the Beauty of the Roses Two colours’ The beauty with the girl find is definitely a all natural enchantment, that is certain to consume any one just who encounters it. For a thorny increased by, regarding every single elegance it gives you, there is a deadly probability that means it is undeniable. Roselia is among the most third-generation Pokemon varieties of grass and poisonous substance, which initially showed up through 2002 inside Pokemon cartoons selection Pokéfriday the Line: Deep red together with Sapphire. It is the to begin with place of organic evolution, at a Budew who’s got acquired growth. Roselia identity by themself, is usually a mix the term rose which translates to mean tulips, as well as word of mouth azalea is normally grouped azalea blossoms, Could be undoubtedly with the inspiration in the amount Roselia, was based on the advantage of a went up, Roselia can be a Pokemon in which uses a pair thighs and legs butt including a human, posesses a minor body system dimensions, and additionally a good many body is green. Just simply previously mentioned his / her head, you will discover two to three well-defined spines which kind like a crown. These thorns include a kill which may paralyse a competitor, Roselia includes minimal dark-colored eye, together with huge sexy eyelashes that will make her loving appearance exquisite, At the nck locale, you will find there’s foliage who sorts just like a receiver collar at the clothes. Plus, you will find there’s leafage by using a even bigger volume which will handles practically almost all of the face involving the body body no more than, as a result experienced making use of a good apron. The duration of typically the foliage was initially marginally distinctive between Roselia man and then female. Where in Roselia men leafage length and width on the body is actually smaller, dissimilar to the female total body Roselia? From the riffle, there is also a grey brand habit who documents these shape’V’in the middle. Throughout Roselia’s hands and fingers, the good news is improved which includes roughly exactly the same measurements since it’s head. Relating to a good hand, this elevated is actually red. Whilst in the left, typically the improved possesses a diverse colors this really is blue. In spite of this, it is stated in many situation, a improved definitely will experience an bizarre colour. In which in the right can be red-colored, will alter the colour to make sure you purple. While on the particular left hand beforehand pink, right now improve shades to black. The Roselia, whether seems to have gotten to a clear phase after may evolve as a Roserade. At this point, the most noticeable actual improvements are noticed throughout several well-defined spines at the fists, which often have finally happened to be succeeded because of the growth of’head of hair’composed of the white kind of raised petals. Much better deal with spot, you can find at this moment an element that may smells like masquerade costume mask covering up this deal with, coupled with that emersion connected with a green leaf like any’drape ‘, what these days switches a riffle with Roselia’s total body earlier. Roserade is at this point further unexplained, as compared with while comprising of Roselia is a bit more observable innocent. _ Vaporeon, ‘Pokemon the Four-Legged Blue Mermaid’ Considering the marvelous strength trapped in the The water Stone, it may grow as well as grow stronger. Such as working liquid, down the page his / her calm-looking figure out, the guy can carry aside just about all his particular oppositions, Vaporean or referred to as Tub areas, is among the most types of Water-type Pokemon. He will be the original technology Pokemon, that has came about given that the 1st winter within the cartoons Pokemon selection, Pokéwednesday: Indigofera tinctoria League. Vaporeon on its own is just about the finished evolutions of Eevee, of which developed through using only liquid stone. The actual company name Vaporeon comes from a mix of written text, vapour so are drinking water like petrol, as well as the message aeon, a period of time which unfortunately can not be tested, which usually is the time essential for that Pokemon to assist you to evolve naturally. the final message contained in every one brand with all the self-proclaimed evolutionary forms of any Eevee. On the grounds that is essential development during an Eevee isn’t affected by the way in which prepared he has been the Pokemon. Very merely as a result of exploiting your supernatural abilities associated with specified things filed on object. a great Eevee might evolve within the future manner there are a comparatively quite short time. The origin of one’s inspiration connected with Vaporeon’s own figure remains to be very much uncertain, but it’s considered to be blending marine or perhaps marine canines, feline as well as pet home kinds plus canids which were carnivorous varieties of canines, as well as greatly assist law of similarity, Vaporeon might be thought to be empowered by a brute through Greek mythology the ancient labeled Telkhiens. While there are, the body’s blending terrain canines and even canines that reside inside the water. It’s really a Pokemon that may is run on 3 hind legs, and then a physique how large a fabulous dog. Nearly all of Vaporeon’s body’s lighting green along with navy throughout the travel, at the spiny dorsal fin or maybe the spiny fin is undoubtedly on the back of the end, Regarding part of the facial area in addition there are 3 components of cream-colored fin that has a higher measurements, Couple of at the everywhere you look section connected with the face area, and 1 berries is actually earlier mentioned his head. It is known, generally if the weather will come in the following few hours, the particular fins concerning this system could certainly recognize it again you need to to help beveled seeing that an indication of elements will come down. Also, there is a styles with the nck Vaporeon, when a spherical part the same shape as some receiver collar for clothes, that is definitely mostly used when products through American magnanimousness in the middle of these 16th century. Several other individuality could also be looked at inside trail with Vaporeon, with a population of shape that is definitely rather just like any creature in the htc legend, that is the mermaid. But yet nevertheless a lot of the entire body looks like a some seafood like fish, Vaporeon seems to have the design of the eye lids along with estuary being a cat. _ Corsola, ‘Blue Pokemon Blue Pokemon’ Not only does it offer wonder exclusively, the use of with the ability to provide lots of benefits to have, For instance a stronger coral about the surf on the seaside, right behind the web delightful presence, its preserved tricky which will it’s not easy to be shattered. Corsola or simply often called Sunnygo certainly one species of water-type Pokemon and additionally stone. They are the next era Pokemon, which initial looked inside anime Pokemon chain, Pokémon: Become an expert in Quest. Corsola might be Misty’s one-eighth Pokemon, the very first time she or he becomes all through his / her adventures along the region regarding Grey Mountain Isle. Typically the identity Corsola themselves, producing from an assortment of coral formations words and phrases that means coral reefs reefs, along with the term diesel engine might be named a new sun’s rays ray. Corsola determine might be stirred in accordance with the submarine biota, namely inflammed reefs as well as crimson coral formations ocean, one of many red coral reefs that may automobile splendor, traditionally used being a creative hobby fabric or even just utilised like jewellery. In a bricks-and-mortar viewpoint, Corsola has a little round body, when there are 4 branches/stems maturing about the higher an important part of their body system, which in turn look really comparable to the particular function for the reefs reefs. For the public presence, ideal for the perhaps the temple, there’s an easy office along with a much smaller dimension, therefore it appears some sort of horn. Besides, there’s an easy set of minor oval-shaped big eyes, charcoal which inturn would make the sum to take a look adorable. Much of the physique Corsala, pink coloured through an assortment of vivid white in the foot of this body similar to a style. She has a pair of palm together with 4 modest thighs and legs butt compliment his particular body. Far apart from Pokemon overall, Corsola itself is identified Pokemon it does not germinate, for that reason it is going to continue to be in the small form. Corsola may be a Pokemon variety the fact that day-to-day lives as well as is found typically from the wild. However , it seems, some sort of Corsola is formulated specially as a result of men and , pertaining to a specific purpose. It may constantly be located in trivial sultry water, from the southern region marine environments as their natural and organic habitat. To improve good, any environment where by Corsola lifetime really should be comfortable and features clean and uncontaminated water. Because if he / she existence in the filthy and even toxin heavy environment, that limbs connected with his particular overall body will struggle to manufacture attractive colors, and also growth rate might also decrease. Throughout great health, a limbs involving one’s body will be able to build on a regular basis, to the point where all the offices will certainly be released, replaced because of the growth of recent branches. The item tells such branches, can easily build lower back solely inside single night. Twigs are let go, mostly could help individuals that should be delt with making it several come up with coral formations reefs or jewellery, to make sure that afterwards can have a deal benefit and also artistic worth is high. A fabulous Corsola usually resides with types, methods an important nest plus together forms his or her cuddle to provide a’dwelling home’for the purpose of them. Besides, this draw close is usually searched by humankind, as a general bottom basic foundation regarding going family home, by the majority life inside the coast neighborhood, White Mountain Island island. Most of the users who work as craftsmen, measuredly build their residence just simply in this article typically the Corsola herd, to become proficient in the event that they’re going to’buy’free limbs designed to subsequently get to be the information of coral formations reefs. Typically, a good Corsola, commonly has the features of a gay as well as helpful aspect, frequently on mankind or any other Pokemon. _ Greninja, ‘Pokemon of the Ninja Frog’ Through a variety of exercise routines along with diligence, his work progressed directly into one of many Pokemon that attained this play name being the fastest. Its extremely extraordinary speed, a primary tool that means it is some sort of poisonous competition, Greninja as well as often known as Gekkouga, is among the Pokemon varieties of fluids and darker type. Oahu is the 6th technology Pokemon. initial seemed to be while in the gum anime Pokemon string, Pokemon: A & Wye, Greninja was basically major Pokemon which usually Ash bought, when ever he or she started this excitement, At the start of his following assembly, next Greninja nevertheless available as a fabulous Froakie, still immediately following suffering from many different escapade along with struggle with Ash tree, when the rope advanced as a Frogadier, just up until at long last, Frogadier may well down the track evolve proper Greninja. These brand Grenaan again comes from a combination of the phrase grenouille in which through the french language expressions means some toad frog, as well as the message ninja that may be all the industry of a’criminal and even skilled infiltrate’within the feudalistic period of The japanese, Greninja figure will be reportedly impressed in one species of amphibian predators this is a horned batrachian , The cause for the word ninja will be pinned about the number for Greninja, encouraged by the old Western folktale about’These Storyline for the Dashing Jiraiya ‘, pertaining to the unique talent of any ninja of the time, which will remodel in a giant frog. the entire body associated with Greninja is definitely associated by using a toad, the Pokemon which will runs using not one but two feet, and features how large a great adult’s body. From the mind, arms and legs of one’s navy-blue Grenoman, followed by 3 white wine bubbles, in just about every section of his or her control not to mention feet. While on the capitulum, facial skin to chest muscles, contains a contrasting colouring for cream. In addition to they can be kept on the second legs, there’s a simple routine wooden shuriken soft blue. A grapevine by themself comes with some of extremities, which will with each and every toe of the foot includes a level with membrane layer for a frog. Is very important belonging to the head off involving Greninja incorporates a proportionate building which usually is exclusive, in which, in case regarded, has a resemblance to the shape from the stern connected with an aeroplane. One more completely unique item on the Greninja, excellent for an extended time lingua diameter, as a result they can actually encapsulate this for the throat, the software seems to be as a scarf that may handles the eye together with make a incomprehensible effect for a ninja. Greninja is certainly a unheard of Pokemon and will be very rarely suffered while in the undomesticated, also comprising Froakie though. On the other hand, as it would be some water-type Pokemon, the idea generally favors spaces towards the h2o similar to a body of water within general. Of this aspects for the outdoors, Greninja is mostly a Pokemon that greatly exhibits his or her trustworthiness in addition to dedication to your owner. It provides a exciting and never self-centered nature. As a Pokemon, they are very sensible, plus illustrates a superb knowledge or worry in opposition to his or her friends, making him invariably go ahead and take project so that you can normally give protection to these guys out of your pressure about distress. Greninja itself is some sort of shape, who seems to be highly partial to fighting. particularly if she is the chance to attack with the help of an intense opponent. _ Ho-Oh, ‘Pokemon Legend of the Eternal Bird the Happiness Bearer’ Through man an important sweetness of this key shades for the rainbow shall be built because he jigs spanning the sky, Of course these pressure that produces man able to converted from the ashes, producing his / her find might carry on living eternally ageless, Ho-Oh or even also known as Houou, is about the Pokemon class unbelievable second-generation terminate not to mention driving type. Ho-Oh very first seemed to be ever since the main situation from the Pokéwednesday liveliness series Pokéwednesday: Indigo plant Category, Ash tree very first reads Ho-oh in the forest, any time they’re on his particular option to Viridian city, their initial daytime as a Pokemon coach, lying down on the floor, coupled with Pikachu who was seriously injured at that moment, The appearance of Ho-Oh right away developed a rainbow seem in the sky, additionally as soon as the storm. But then Ash’s Pokedex was in fact struggle to naturally find typically the Ho-Oh physique, now Ho-Oh’s overall look found in the original instance, very much like a fabulous cameo, given that their find has never in fact happened to be mentioned significantly. As a result, Ho-Oh by themself new categorised simply because mythical Pokemon inside the moment generation. The particular title Ho-Oh is undoubtedly a mixture of the definition of Hoo that is representative of the actual phoenix arizona fowl in the trust associated with Offshore society. And also the word Ouyang proceeds from the actual notification O and even emperor that means saturnia pavonia or maybe’O’which suggests king so this means saturnia pavonia and even’O’which translates to mean king. Ho-Oh’s figure out is definitely motivated because of the icon on the Arizona, especially a good Fènghuánanogram, the actual identify for only a phoenix,az who has interminable living within Oriental mythology. Or simply mentioned, his or her figure out ended up being encouraged by a unbelievable avian labeled Huma. Read all through this lifespan, the actual physique involving Huma will be observed controlling above lacking truly asleep some bit. The crna can restart by his own or others, along with lung burning ash strengths or maybe fire within his body. Any Huma bird can be symbolic of luck together with association, he will convey joy to be able to any person so,who unexpectedly were able to watch this figure. Originating from a vigorous mind-set, Ho-Oh’s body is made since similar, for a blend of phoenixes and additionally peacocks. The majority of the feathers on the body are actually white along with great yellow, at the annexe, down on your body about Ho-Oh consists of, some cellular levels from colors dominated by reddish, associated with the white kind of in addition to renewable because colour gradation. The particular roll involving wings might be in a position to having a light of sunshine, that can create a range surface each time that it jigs along the sky, accordingly the range graphic above, is normally a sign of their presence. Yellowtail down tend to be when combined product coloration for the tip. Vary when using the green colors that rules his / her body, period of time aspect or even belly Ho-Oh solely white. Ho-Oh provides an environmentally friendly red stripe relating to her nck, an enormous wonderful orange nib, a good deep group around his red-lit cornea space, rrncluding a gold yellow-crested tresses together with his head. Selan the fact that, Ho-Oh also has a pair of black-coloured feet, having 4 bits of fingers accompanied by lengthy claws. _ Umbreon,’Pokemon the Mysterious figure under the Moon of the Moon’ With the awesome strength belonging to the moon’s radiation, it may well develop along with increase stronger. During the iniquity involved with the night the fact that contains 1000 classifications, you will find there’s physique gift using suspense, covering up as well as ready restfully just for the presence of the challenger, Umbreon and even often known as Blacky, belongs to the Dark-type Pokemon species. He’s one minute generating Pokemon, what looks inside cartoons Pokemon range, Pokémon : Johto Conference Champions. Umbreon has become the maximum evolutions on the Eevee, which in turn been refined whenever the connection between man plus the trainer was so shut for a friend. Therefore in the course of the night, while a great Eevee has gone through different exercises plus effort, by making use of that moonlight’s illuminating vitality of sunshine, he may well then center inside an Umbreon. The list Umbreon alone develops from a comprehensive forensics education terms, umbra of which during Latin will mean tincture and even may also be taken since the outline within the moon around, which in turn is intended throughout the presentation of the solar power eclipse befell, As well as concept about that’s a period of time who can not be calculated or simply figured out, whereby this unique alludes just how long the item gets a Pokemon so that you can evolve naturally. The idea of aeon can be, the total word of mouth linked to each and every name of all evolutionary styles of any Eevee. Umbreon’s figure out is usually encouraged with a dark colored snake or maybe a dark-colored fox. He’s got a tough spike just like a Moon on Lapin safely contained at a htc legend that could be widely believed in these eastern location about Asia. Ring-shaped patterns or possibly stained forums at Umbreon’s body along with the trend with man in the moon token usually associated with snake figurines together with the goodness Anubis on historic Egyptian culture. None can typically the sequence also be said to be an important outline with a diamond ring of sunshine, which inturn is created because a solar energy over shadow occurs. With a bricks-and-mortar perspective, Umbreon can be described as four-legged Pokemon, trim just as a cat, and an appearance measurement on the fox. Virtually all of Umbreon’s person is decent african american, together with a yellow-colored ring-shaped routine in the forehead as well as every half about usual legs. When Umbreon on their own offers brilliant scarlet big eyes, which often seems to be fairly differentiation aided by the colour in the body. Umbreon even been found undertake a pair of clear fangs, might no more than wind up being accessible whenever she opened up his / her mouth. Also, She has extended radio stations such as a bunnie, nevertheless wrought tapering located at the perimeters, or perhaps a long tail assembly with identical figures, a little bit thicker. Together with a couple radio stations and also end, there is also a white sections of which forums it. By simply in the event the night time comes the whole set of orange piece of his physical structure, will probably shine teeth whitening really brightly in the dark plus pass on fright towards someone near him. As well while he or she hits his particular attackers, the ring-shaped routine regarding his / her overall body might also glow. _ Leafeon, ‘Pokemon The Cats of Leaves Lovers of Peace’ Including facilities, just for your guy, natural light plays the main component of her life. With out them, he cannot get hold of an energy eating, which happens to be dealing with involving the power. For example saving money crops providing a feeling of silence, and also the determine what people always jam packed with peace of mind not to mention peace. Leafeon, commonly known as Leafia, are probably the grass-type Pokemon species. Is it doesn’t 4th technology Pokemon which foremost seemed on the Pokemon gum anime chain, Pokéwednesday any Series: Generally as well as Pearl. Leafeon has become the greatest evolutionary sorts of a Eevee, which in turn been refined as a result of the process of working out plus the hard deliver the results not wearing running shoes started until eventually during one time it might advance proper Leafeon in some conditions. This company name Leafeon is undoubtedly an assortment of riff word sense foliage, along with aeon which is a time which cannot be tested, what themselves describes the time this takes a Pokemon to develop naturally. The idea of aeon is, the final word attached to every different name of all the so-called evolutionary kinds some sort of Eevee. Leafeon figures tend to be stated to be encouraged by means of a cat in addition to a sibel, like the Leafeon habit of ascending forest, also know as the seem it creates is definitely identical to the sound of a cat as well as a fox. Originating from a vigorous opinion, Leafeon’s entire body looks similar to a blend of a cat in addition to a fox. Them goes to the four-legged mammalian Pokemon class. Much of Leafeon’s is cream-coloured, along with dark brown on all fours, and likewise inside their ears. It includes dark little brown eyes and then smallish tip, which happens to be identical to the contour of a cat’s face plus nose. During Leafeon’s body system, it again thrives similar to a marijuana in certain parts of her body. But there’s single big-sized bud, which unfortunately increases in the actual travel, thus making an incomparable design like a’cap ‘. The single most stunning features of some Leafeon overall look is without a doubt the form regarding a couple hearing in addition to longest tail that appears such as leaf. Consequently, it is stated which usually Leafon’s private cell structure is a lot like that will of an plant. As a result so that it is competent to conduct the entire photosynthesis to offer breathable oxygen that might clean and renew the atmosphere roughly it. As a result, every Leafeon came across being sleeping on a sunny day, it might be agreed he had been going through the operation of photosynthesis. The above mentined brief description could very well be pleasure with regards to your daytime, the whole picture Elegant Pokemon Xd Gale Of Darkness Review- of which is already when in front of you actually might be verification all of us have a passion for ones’s’s activity relating to some of our cyberspace, and wish you aren’t getting fed up courting to internet, we do hope you furthermore become a good inspirator involving similar systems, which often considering the plan you happen to be a part of the era of the a happiness of others.

The setting is the Franco-Spanish border, the time 1940. Walter Benjamin, fleeing occupied France, presents himself to the wife of a certain Fittko he has met at an internment camp. He understands, he says, that Frau Fittko will guide him and his companions across the Pyrenees to neutral Spain. Frau Fittko takes him on a trip to scout out the best routes; he brings along a heavy briefcase. Is the briefcase really necessary, she asks? It contains a manuscript, he replies. "I cannot risk losing it. It... must be saved. It is more important than I am." The next day they cross the mountains, Benjamin pausing every few minutes because of a weak heart. At the border they are halted. Their papers are not in order, say the Spanish police; they must return to France. In despair, Benjamin takes a fatal overdose of morphine. The police make an inventory of the deceased's belongings. The inventory shows no record of a manuscript. What was in the briefcase, and where it disappeared to, we can only guess. Benjamin's friend Gershom Scholem suggested it was the last revision of the unfinished Passagen Werk , or Arcades Project. By his heroic if futile effort to save his manuscript from fascism and bear it to the safety of Spain, Benjamin became an icon of the scholar for our times. The story has a happy twist. A copy of the Arcades manuscript left behind in Paris had been secreted in the Bibliothèque Nationale by Benjamin's friend, Georges Bataille. Recovered after the war, it was published in 1982 in its original form - that is to say, in German with huge swathes of French. Now we have Benjamin's magnum opus in full English translation, and are at last in a position to ask the question: why all the interest in a treatise on shopping in 19th-century France? Benjamin was born in 1892, in Berlin, into an assimilated Jewish family. His father was a successful art auctioneer who branched out into property investments; the Benjamins were, by most standards, well-to-do. After a sickly, sheltered childhood, Benjamin was sent at the age of 12 to boarding school, where he was influenced by one of the directors, Gustav Wyneken. For years after leaving school, he was active in Wyneken's anti-authoritarian, back-to-nature youth movement; he broke with it only when Wyneken came out in support of the first world war. In 1912, Benjamin enrolled as a student in philosophy at Freiburg University. Finding the intellectual environment not to his taste, he threw himself into activism for educational reform. When war broke out, he evaded military service first by feigning a medical condition and then, after his marriage in 1917 to Dora Sophie Pollak, by moving to Switzerland. There they stayed until 1920, reading philosophy and working on a doctoral dissertation for the University of Bern; but the lack of a social life unsettled Dora, and they returned to Berlin. Benjamin was drawn to univer sities, remarked his friend Theodor Adorno, as Franz Kafka was drawn to insurance companies. Benjamin set out to acquire the Habilitation (higher doctorate) that would enable him to become a professor, submitting his dissertation, on German drama of the Baroque age, to the University of Frankfurt in 1925. Surprisingly, the dissertation was not accepted. It fell between the stools of literature and philosophy, and Benjamin lacked an academic patron to urge his case. His academic plans having failed, Benjamin launched himself on a career as a translator, broadcaster and freelance journalist. Among his commissions was a translation of Proust's à La Recherche du Temps Perdu; three of seven volumes were completed. In 1924, Benjamin visited Capri, at the time a favourite resort of German intellectuals. There he met Asja Lacis, a theatre director from Latvia and committed communist. The meeting was fateful. "Every time I have experienced a great love, I have undergone a change so fundamental that I have amazed myself," he later wrote. "A genuine love makes me resemble the woman I love." In this case, the transformation entailed a change of political direction. "The path of thinking, progressive persons in their right senses leads to Moscow, not to Palestine," Lacis told him. All traces of idealism in his thought, to say nothing of his flirtation with Zionism, were abandoned. His friend Scholem had emigrated to Palestine, expecting Benjamin to follow. Benjamin found an excuse not to come; he kept making excuses to the end. In 1926 Benjamin travelled to Moscow for a rendezvous with Lacis. In his record of the visit, Benjamin probes his own unhappy state of mind, as well as the question of whether he should join the Communist party. Two years later the pair were briefly reunited in Berlin: they lived together and attended meetings of the League of Proletarian- Revolutionary Writers. The liaison precipitated divorce proceedings in which Benjamin behaved with remarkable meanness toward his wife. On the Moscow trip, Benjamin kept a diary which he later revised for publication. He spoke no Russian. Rather than fall back on interpreters, he tried to read Moscow from the outside - what he would later call his physiognomic method - refraining from abstraction or judgment, presenting the city in such a way that "all factuality is already theory" (the phrase is from Goethe). Some of Benjamin's claims for the "world-historical" experiment he saw being conducted in the USSR now seem naive. Nevertheless his eye was acute. Many new Muscovites were still peasants, he observed, living village lives according to village rhythms. Class distinctions might have been abolished, but within the party a new caste system was evolving. A street market scene captured the humbled status of religion: an icon for sale was flanked by portraits of Lenin "like a prisoner between two policemen". Though Lacis is a constant presence in the Moscow diary, and though Benjamin hints that their sexual relations were troubled, we get little sense of her physical self. Benjamin had no gift for evoking other people. In Lacis's writings we get a much livelier impression of Benjamin: his glasses like little spotlights, his clumsy hands. For the rest of his life Benjamin called himself either a communist or a fellow traveller; for years after meeting Lacis, he would repeat Marxist verities - "the bourgeoisie... is condemned to decline due to internal contradictions that will become fatal as they develop" - without having read Marx. "Bourgeois" remained his cuss word for a mindset - materialistic, incurious, self-satisfied - to which he was viscerally hostile. Proclaiming himself a communist was an act of choosing sides, morally and historically, against the bourgeoisie and his own bourgeois origins. 'One thing... can never be made good: having neglected to run away from one's parents," he writes in One-Way Street, the collection of diary jottings, dream protocols, aphorisms and mordant observations on Weimar Germany with which he announced himself in 1928. Not having run away early enough meant that he was condemned to run away from Emil and Paula Benjamin for the rest of his life: in reacting against his parents' assimilation into the middle class, he resembled many German-speaking Jews of his generation, including Kafka. What troubled Benjamin's friends about his marxism was that there seemed to be something forced about it, something merely reactive. Benjamin's first ventures into the discourse of the left are depressing to read - rhapsodies on Lenin (whose letters have the "sweetness of great epic"), and rehearsals of the ominous euphemisms of the party: "Communism is not radical. Therefore, it has no intentions of simply abolishing family relations. It merely tests them to determine their capacity for change. It asks: can the family be dismantled so that its components may be socially refunctioned?" These words come from a review of a play by Bertolt Brecht, whom Benjamin met through Lacis and whose "crude thinking", thinking stripped of bourgeois niceties, attracted Benjamin for a while. "This street is named Asja Lacis Street after her who, like the engineer, cut it through the author," runs the dedication to One-Way Street. The comparison is intended as a compliment. The engineer is the man or woman of the future, the one who, impatient of palaver, armed with practical knowledge, acts and acts decisively to change the landscape. (Stalin, too, admired engineers. In his view, writers should become engineers of human souls, meaning that they should take it as their task to "refunction" humanity from the inside out.) Of Benjamin's better-known pieces, The Author as Producer (1934) shows the influence of Brecht most clearly. At issue is the old chestnut of Marxist aesthetics: which is more important, form or content? Benjamin proposes that a literary work will be "politically correct only if it is also literarily correct". The Author as Producer is a defence of the left wing of the modernist avant-garde, typified for Benjamin by the surrealists, who were against the party's stance on easily comprehensible, realistic stories with a strong progressive tendency. To make his case, Benjamin appeals once again to the glamour of engineering: the writer, like the engineer, is a technical specialist and should have a voice in technical matters. Arguing at this crude level did not come easily to Benjamin. Did his faithfulness to the party cause him no unease at a time when Stalin's persecution of artists was in full swing? (Lacis herself was to become one of Stalin's victims, spending years in a labour camp.) A brief piece from 1934 may give a clue. Here Benjamin mocks intellectuals who "make it a point of honour to be wholly themselves on every issue", refusing to understand that to succeed they have to present different faces to different audiences. They are, he says, like a butcher who refuses to cut up a carcass, insisting on selling it whole. How does one read this piece? Is Benjamin ironically praising old-fashioned intellectual integrity? Is he issuing a veiled confession that he, Benjamin, is not what he seems to be? Is he making a practical, if bitter, point about the hack writer's life? A letter to Scholem (to whom he did not always, however, tell the whole truth) suggests the last reading. Here Benjamin defends his communism as "the obvious, reasoned attempt of a man who is deprived of any means of production to proclaim his right to them". In other words, he follows the party for the same reason that any proletarian should: because it is in his material interest. By the time the Nazis came to power, many of Benjamin's associates, including Brecht, had read the writing on the wall and taken flight. Benjamin, who had felt out of place in Germany for years, soon followed. (His younger brother Georg was less prudent: arrested for political activities in 1934, he perished in Mauthausen concentration camp in 1942.) Benjamin settled in Paris, where he scratched a precarious existence contributing to German newspapers under Aryan pseudonyms (Detlef Holz, KA Stemplinger) and living on handouts. With the outbreak of war, he found himself interned as an enemy alien. Released through the efforts of French PEN [the world association of writers], he made arrangements to flee to the United States, then set off on his fatal journey to the Spanish border. Benjamin's keenest insights into fascism - the enemy that deprived him of a home and a career and ultimately killed him - concern the means it used to sell itself to the German people: by turning itself into theatre. It is commonplace to observe that Hitler's Nuremberg rallies, with their combination of declamation, hypnotic music, mass choreography and dramatic lighting, found their model in Wagner's Bayreuth productions. What is original in Benjamin is his claim that politics as grandiose theatre, rather than as debate, was not just one of the trappings of fascism, but fascism in essence. In the films of Leni Riefenstahl, as well as in newsreels exhibited in every theatre in the land, the German masses were offered images of themselves as their leaders called upon them to be. Fascism used the power of the art of the past - what Benjamin calls "auratic art" - plus the multiplying power of the new postauratic media, particularly cinema, to create its new fascist citizens. For ordinary Germans, the only identity on show was a fascist identity in fascist costume and fascist postures of domination or obedience. Benjamin's analysis of fascism as theatre raises many questions. Is politics as spectacle really the heart of German fascism, rather than ressentiment and dreams of historical retribution? If Nuremberg was aestheticised politics, why were Stalin's May Day extravaganzas and show trials not aestheticised politics too? If the genius of fascism was to erase the line between politics and media, where is the fascist element in the media-driven politics of western democracies? Are there not different varieties of aesthetic politics? The key concept that Benjamin invents (though his diary hints it was in fact the brainchild of the bookseller and publisher Adrienne Monnier) to describe what happens to the work of art in the age of technological reproducibility (principally the age of the camera - Benjamin has little to say about printing) is the loss of aura. Until roughly the middle of the 19th century, he says, an inter-subjective relationship of a kind survived between an artwork and its viewer: "To perceive the aura of a phenomenon [means] to invest it with a capacity to look at us in turn." There is thus something magical about aura, derived from ancient links, now wandering between art and religious ritual. Benjamin first speaks of aura in his Little History of Photography (1931), where he tries to explain why it is that, in his eyes, the very earliest portrait photographs - the incunabula of photography - have auras, whereas photographs of a generation later have lost them. In The Work of Art, the notion of aura is extended rather recklessly from old photographs to works of art in general. The end of aura, says Benjamin, will be more than compensated for by the emancipatory capacities of the new technologies of reproduction. Cinema will replace auratic art. Even Benjamin's friends found it hard to get a grip on aura. Brecht, to whom Benjamin expounded the concept during lengthy visits to Brecht's home in Denmark, writes as follows in his diary. "[Benjamin] says: when you feel someone's gaze alight upon you... you respond (!). The expectation that whatever you look at is looking at you creates the aura... This is the way in which the materialist approach to history is adapted! It is pretty horrifying." Throughout the 1930s Benjamin struggled to develop an acceptably materialist definition of aura and loss of aura. Film is postauratic, he says, because the camera, being an instrument, cannot see. (A questionable claim: actors respond to the camera as if it is looking at them.) In a later revision he suggests that the end of aura can be dated to the moment in history when urban crowds grew so dense that people - passers-by - no longer returned one another's gaze. In the Arcades Project he makes the loss of aura part of a wider development: the spread of a disenchanted awareness that uniqueness, including the uniqueness of the traditional artwork, has become a commod ity like any other commodity. The fashion industry, dedicated to the fabrication of unique handiworks intended to be reproduced on a mass scale, points the way here. In the late 1920s Benjamin conceived of a work that would deal with urban experience; inspired by the arcades of Paris, it would be a version of the Sleeping Beauty story, a dialectical fairy tale told surrealistically by means of a montage of fragmentary texts. Like the prince's kiss, it would awaken the European masses to the truth of their lives under capitalism. It would be 50 pages long; in preparation for its writing, Benjamin began to copy out quotations under such headings as Boredom, Fashion, Dust. But as a stitched-together text, it became overgrown each time with new quotations and notes. He discussed his problems with Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who convinced him he could not write about capitalism without a proper command of Marx. The Sleeping Beauty idea lost its lustre. By 1934 Benjamin had a new, more philosophically ambitious plan: using the same method of montage, he would trace the cultural superstructure of 19th-century France back to commodities and their power to become fetishes. As his notes grew in bulk, he slotted them into an elaborate filing system based on 36 convolutes (from German Konvolut : sheaf, dossier) with keywords and cross-references. Under the title "Paris, Capital of the 19th Century" he wrote a résumé of the material, which he offered to Adorno (he was by then receiving a stipend from, and was thus in some measure beholden to, the Institute for Social Research, which had been relocated by Adorno and Horkheimer from Frankfurt to New York). From Adorno, Benjamin received such severe criticism that he decided to set aside the project and extract from his mass of materials a book about Baudelaire. Adorno saw part of the book and was again critical: facts were made to speak for themselves, he said; there was not enough theory. Benjamin made further revisions, which had a warmer reception. Baudelaire was central to the Arcades plan because, in Benjamin's eyes, Les Fleurs du Mal first revealed the modern city as a subject for poetry. (Benjamin seems not to have read Wordsworth, who, 50 years before Baudelaire, wrote of what it was like to be part of a street crowd, bombarded on all sides with glances, dazzled with advertisements.) Yet Baudelaire expressed his experience of the city in allegory, a literary mode out of fashion since the Baroque. In Le Cygne, for instance, he allegorises the poet as a swan, scrabbling comically in the paved marketplace, unable to spread his wings and soar. Why did Baudelaire opt for the allegorical mode? Benjamin uses Marx's Kapital to answer his question. The elevation of market value into the sole measure of worth, says Marx, reduces a commodity to nothing but a sign - the sign of what it will sell for. Under the reign of the market, things relate to their actual worth as arbitrarily as, for instance, in baroque emblematics, a death's head relates to man's subjection to time. Emblems thus make an unexpected return to the historical stage in the form of commodities which, as Marx had warned, "(abound) in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties". Allegory, Benjamin argues, is exactly the right mode for an age of commodities. While working on the never-completed Baudelaire book, Benjamin continued to take notes for the Arcades. What was recovered after the war from its hiding place in the Bibliothèque Nationale amounted to some 900 pages of extracts, mainly from 19th-century writers but from contemporaries of Benjamin's as well, grouped under headings, with interspersed commentary, plus a variety of plans and synopses. The history of the Arcades Project, a history of procrastination and false starts, of wanderings in archival labyrinths in a quest for exhaustiveness, of shifting theoretical ground, of criticism too readily acted on, and generally speaking of Benjamin not knowing his own mind, means that the book we are left with is radically incomplete: incompletely conceived and hardly written in any conventional sense. Rolf Tiedemann, who published an edition of the work in 1982, compares it to the building materials of a house. In the hypothetical completed house the materials would be held together by Benjamin's thought. We possess much of that thought in the form of Benjamin's interpolations, but cannot always see how the thought fits or encompasses the material. In such a situation, says Tiedemann, it might seem better to publish only Benjamin's own words, leaving out the quotations. But Benjamin's intention, however utopian, was that at some point his commentary would be withdrawn, leaving the quoted material to bear the full weight of the structure. The arcades of Paris, says an 1852 guidebook, are "inner boulevards, glass-roofed, marble-panelled corridors extending through blocks of buildings... lining both sides... are the most elegant shops, so that such an arcade is a city, a world in miniature". Their airy glass and steel architecture was soon imitated in other cities of the west. The heyday of arcades extended to the end of the century, when they were eclipsed by department stores. The Arcades book was never intended to be an economic history (though part of its ambition was to act as a corrective to the entire discipline of economic history). An early sketch suggests something far more like his autobiographical work, A Berlin Childhood. "One knew of places in ancient Greece where the way led down into the underworld. Our waking existence likewise is a land which, at certain hidden points, leads down into the underworld - a land full of inconspicuous places from which dreams arise. All day long, suspecting nothing, we pass them by, but no sooner has sleep come than we are groping our way back to lose ourselves in the dark corridors. By day, the labyrinth of urban dwelling resembles consciousness; the arcades... issue unremarked on to the streets. At night, however, under the tenebrous mass of the houses, their denser darkness protrudes like a threat, and the nocturnal pedestrian hurries past - unless, that is, we have emboldened him to turn into a narrow lane." Two books served Benjamin as models: Louis Aragon's A Paris Peasant, with its affectionate tribute to the Passage de L'Opéra, and Franz Hessel's Strolling in Berlin, which focuses on the Kaisergalerie and its power to summon up the feel of a bygone era. In his book, Benjamin would try to capture the "phantasmagoric" experience of the Parisian wandering among displays of goods, an experience still recoverable in his own day, when "arcades dot the metropolitan landscape like caves containing the fossil remains of a vanished monster: the consumer of the pre-imperial era of capitalism, the last dinosaur of Europe". The great innovation of the Arcades Project would be its form. It would work on the principle of montage, juxtaposing textual fragments from past and present in the expectation that they would strike sparks from and illuminate each other. Thus, for instance, if item 2,1 of convolute L, referring to the opening of an art museum at the palace of Versailles in 1837, is read in conjunction with item 2,4 of convolute A, which traces the development of arcades into department stores, then ideally the analogy "museum is to department store as artwork is to commodity" will flash into the reader's mind. According to Max Weber, what marks the modern world is loss of belief, disenchantment. Benjamin has a different angle: that capitalism has put people to sleep, that they will wake up from their collective enchantment only when they are made to understand what has happened to them. The inscription to convolute N comes from Marx: "The reform of consciousness consists solely in... the awakening of the world from its dream about itself." The dreams of the capitalist era are embodied in commodities. In their ensemble these constitute a phantasmagoria, constantly changing shape according to the tides of fashion, and offered to crowds of enchanted worshippers as the embodiment of their deepest desires. The phantasmagoria always hides its origins (which lie in alienated labour). Phantasmagoria in Benjamin is thus a little like ideology in Marx - a tissue of public lies sustained by the power of capital - but is more like Freudian dreamwork operating at a collective, social level. "I needn't say anything. Merely show," says Benjamin; and elsewhere: "Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars." If the mosaic of quotations is built up correctly, a pattern should emerge that is more than the sum of its parts but which cannot exist independently of them: this is the essence of the new form of historical-materialistic writing that Benjamin believed himself to be practising. What dismayed Adorno about the project in 1935 was Benjamin's faith that a mere assemblage of objects could speak for itself. Benjamin was, he wrote, "on the crossroads between magic and positivism". Adorno later had a chance to see the entire Arcades corpus, and again expressed doubts about the thinness of its theorising. Benjamin's response was to invent the notion of the dialectical image, for which he went back to baroque emblematics - ideas represented by pictures and Baudelairean allegory. Allegory, he suggested, could take over the role of abstract thought. The objects and figures that inhabit the arcades - gamblers, whores, mirrors, dust, wax figures - are to Benjamin emblems, and their interactions generate meanings, allegorical meanings that do not need the intrusion of theory. Along the same lines, fragments of text taken from the past and placed in the charged field of the historical present are capable of behaving much as the elements of a surrealist image do, interacting spontaneously to give off political energy. In so doing the fragments constitute the dialectical image, dialectical movement frozen for a moment, open for inspection, dialectics at a standstill: "Only dialectical images are genuine images." So much for the theory, ingenious as it is, to which Benjamin's deeply anti-theoretical book appeals. But to the reader unpersuaded by the theory, the reader to whom the dialectical images never quite come alive as they are supposed to, the reader perhaps unreceptive to the master narrative of the long sleep of capitalism followed by the dawn of socialism, what does the Arcades Project have to offer? The briefest of lists would include: a treasure hoard of curious information about Paris, a multitude of thought-provoking questions, the harvest of an acute and idiosyncratic mind's trawl through thousands of books, succinct observations, pol ished to a high aphoristic sheen, on a range of subjects (example: "Prostitution can lay claim to being considered 'work' the moment work becomes prostitution"); and glimpses of Benjamin toying with a new way of seeing himself: as a compiler of a "magic encyclopaedia". Suddenly Benjamin, esoteric reader of an allegorical city, seems close to his contemporary Jorge Luis Borges, fabulist of a rewritten universe. From a distance, Benjamin's magnificent opus is reminiscent of another great ruin of 20th- century literature, Ezra Pound's Cantos. Both works are built out of fragments, and adhere to the high-modernist aesthetics of image and montage. Both have economic ambitions and economists as presiding figures (Marx in one case, Gesell and Douglas in the other). Both authors have investments in antiquarian bodies of knowledge whose relevance to their own times they overestimate. Neither knows when to stop. And both were in the end consumed by the monster of fascism: Benjamin tragically, Pound shamefully. It has been the fate of the Cantos to have a handful of anthology pieces excerpted and the rest quietly dropped. The fate of the Arcades may well be similar. One can foresee a condensed student edition drawn mainly from convolutes B (Fashion), H (The Collector), I (The Interior), J (Baudelaire), K (Dream City), N (On the Theory of Knowledge) and Y (Photo- graphy), in which the quotations will be cut to a minimum and most of the surviving text will be by Benjamin himself. And that would not be a wholly bad thing. What was Walter Benjamin: a philosopher? A critic? A historian? A mere "writer"? The best answer is perhaps Hannah Arendt's: he was one of "the unclassifiable ones... whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre". His trademark approach - coming at a subject not straight on but at an angle, moving stepwise from one perfectly formulated summation to the next - is as instantly recognisable as it is inimitable, depending on sharpness of intellect, learning lightly worn and a prose style which, once he had given up thinking of himself as Professor Benjamin, became a marvel of accuracy and concision. Underlying his project of getting at the truth of our times is an ideal he found expressed in Goethe: to set out the facts in such a way that the facts will be their own theory. The Arcades book, whatever our verdict on it - ruin, failure, impossible project - suggests a new way of writing about a civilisation using its rubbish as materials rather than its artworks: history from below rather than above. And his call elsewhere for a history centred on the sufferings of the vanquished, rather than on the achievements of the victors, is prophetic of the way in which history writing has begun to think of itself in our lifetime. This is an edited extract from an article that first appeared in the New York Review of Books. The Arcades Project, by Walter Benjamin, translated from the German and French by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, is published by Belknap Press/Harvard University Press (£27.50).

Earthquake Relief Program 2015-2017 Gorkha is one of the most vulnerable earthquake-hit districts in Nepal. In accordance with the information provided by Government of Nepal, Nepal Disaster Risk Reduction Portal, it is reported that 447 people were killed and 953 were injured. Similarly, 228 government’s houses were fully damaged; 37 were partially damaged and 44,382 private houses were fully damaged. In addition, the District Reconstruction Committee (DRC) formed under the coordination of Chief District Officer (CDO) reported that 68,769 houses built with stones and clay was fully insecure for staying. Similary, 12,425 RCC houses were also partially damaged. Big numbers of families are still sitting under the open sky due to lack of appropriate support (both financial cum human resources) from the government and other concerned agencies. Though adequate immediate relief materials were distributed to the earthquake victims in Gorkha, rehabilitating them through constructing temporary shelters is their prime needs now. Since the monsoon is starting very sooner in Nepal, those victims have to be protected from probable landslides and flooding in this season. While assessing their urgent needs, cent percent of them requested to reconstruct temporary shelters. Therefore, ADWAN is taking this initiative to resolve their primary needs. - In December of 2015, ADWAN won a $50,000 grant from the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), which was just completed in June, 2016. - In April of this year, the UK based Karuna Foundation approved ADWAN’s proposal for €10,600 for a 13-month livelihood and gender equality training, which begins this August 2016. - ADWAN is actively running a EU funded (€92,815.) 30-month (Dec/2014 – June/2017) project on skills and rights trainings for ADWAN women’s groups in Gorkha. The trainings include mushroom, mini poultry, goat rearing, bamboo crafts, tailoring, candle and incense making, ginger farming, off season vegetable farming, social accountability training, strategic planning, participatory budgeting, public hearing and community score card training. It will directly benefit 786 women and indirectly benefit more than 4,500 community members.

By H. Lynn Gardner Fathers and grandfathers either leave a godly heritage or a godless legacy. What inheritance is our priority: money, property, a business, or a succession of spiritual, committed Christians? Is our focus on transient or eternal values? How we invest in our children and grandchildren defines the inheritance we leave. The spiritual legacy we leave to our children and grandchildren is the greatest investment we make as fathers and grandfathers. A Biblical Mandate In God’s plan for the family, parents are responsible for the spiritual instruction of their children. The father leads, with his wife’s help, in conducting biblical and moral instruction in the home, not leaving this duty to the church and youth minister. Through Abraham, God wanted to develop “a great and powerful nation” so that “all nations on earth will be blessed.” God could accomplish this promise as Abraham would “direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just” (Genesis 18:18, 19). Moses urged the Israelites not to forget the works and words of the Lord but keep them in their hearts as long as they live. “Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” God wanted the people to “hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children” (Deuteronomy 4:9, 10, emphasis added). Hear, O Israel. . . . These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates (Deuteronomy 6:4-9; see also 11:18-21; Proverbs 22:6). God instructed the Israelites to listen to his words spoken by their fathers: We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power and the wonders he has done. He . . . established the law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands (Psalm 78:4-7, see also 103:17, 18, emphasis added). In the Jewish family, the father taught the law of God to his sons, prepared them for a trade, and guided them in finding a wife. Mothers taught their daughters to be housekeepers, wives, and mothers. Christian fathers nurture their children as they “bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). The Role of Fathers A child’s relationship with his or her father greatly influences the child’s idea of and relationship with God. Especially crucial is the father’s role as moral authority, example, and in discipline. He must teach the child to respect authority and to realize the serious consequences of wrong behavior. Children learn the law (right and wrong) before they learn the gospel (grace). A primary goal should be to teach children to know God and to follow Christ as their Savior and Lord. Christian men can be spiritual encouragers for children who do not have a father’s guidance. After interviewing 10,000 fathers, the National Center for Fathering identified four functions of fathering: involvement, consistency, attention, and nurturance (The Heart of a Father: How You Can Become a Dad of Destiny, by Ken Canfield, Northfield Publishing, 2006). Fathers seeking to leave a godly spiritual legacy in their children and grandchildren will seek to fulfill the following functions. They will be involved in the spiritual instruction and development of their children in the home. Significant interaction of parents with their children helps them mature. As with absent fathers, the uninvolved father has detrimental effects on his children’s behavior and well-being. Involved fathers read Bible stories and pray with their children and continue Bible studies with their teens. Fathers are responsible for biblical teaching in the home and making worship and church attendance a priority. They will strive for consistency in what they say and teach about spiritual matters and what they do in their personal life. Values, attitudes, habits, and priorities are caught by children observing us. Our conduct exposes our character. If we do not practice honesty, self-control, kindness and service to others, generosity, respect for women, and purity in thought and behavior, how can we expect them to develop these traits? Does our commitment to Christ and the church match what we profess? Just as ballplayers dislike inconsistency in an umpire calling balls and strikes, children cannot respect a father whose conduct contradicts his Christian profession. Consistent fathers provide a stability enabling children to mature spiritually. They will give attention to know their children and their world, especially their spiritual development. Keep the lines of communication open so children feel free to express what they think and feel about spiritual matters. What a tragedy to wake up one day and realize we don’t know our son or daughter. We must not let programming our children to succeed in sports, academics, and extracurricular activities overshadow and crowd out encouraging growth in their Christian walk. A good father teaches his children that commitment to Christ and the church has top priority over everything else. They will love their children by acting in their best interest and nurturing each child by seeking to meet his or her emotional and personal needs. Many men—over 50 percent in one study—never felt close with their fathers because their fathers kept an emotional distance from them and failed to express and demonstrate love. The emotions and mood of fathers largely determine whether a home is a happy welcoming place or a tense and uncomfortable place. A father demonstrates his love to his children by giving his time and presence, by appropriate touch and praise, and by listening to their heart questions and needs. A wise father loves his wife, his children, and the Lord’s church. The Role of Grandfathers God expects grandfathers to be spiritual teachers of their children’s children (Deuteronomy 4:9; Psalm 78:4-8). “A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children” (Proverbs 13:22, NIV 1984). Through stories and memories, grandparents can be a bridge unifying the generations by shaping a sense of history and family heritage. Grandfathers have special opportunities and responsibilities in the spiritual instruction and development of grandchildren. The primary responsibility of grandparents is to be supportive of their children and grandchildren. While not in charge of parenting, grandfathers must not be preoccupied with their own pursuits and pleasures so they ignore their children and grandchildren. Praying daily for our children and grandchildren, we will be sensitive and available to help and encourage. Grandparents provide an outside voice supporting and reinforcing the moral and spiritual teaching of parents. The lives of grandparents provide examples and role models watched by grandchildren. Grandfathers who live irresponsible lives pursuing their selfish pleasures will undermine godly teaching that parents try to instill in their children. Lives well lived by grandparents demonstrate to grandchildren that Christianity provides the abundant life. Meeting the difficulties of one’s declining years with faith, patience, joy, and hope speaks volumes to watching grandchildren. Grandfathers can mentor their grandchildren. Survey your strengths and identify what you can offer to your grandchildren. Possibilities include handyman skills, woodworking, gardening, electronics, sports, and learning their family heritage. Teach grandchildren Christian principles that relate to whatever you share with them. I, with Barbara’s assistance, have found joy in teaching the Bible to our grandchildren in Grandpa’s Bible Club (“Grandpa’s Bible Club,” by H. Lynn Gardner, The Lookout, September 9, 2007). We often visit Christian organizations and then eat together. Our last study focused on the main characters of the Old Testament. Recently health concerns and children’s schedules have limited our meetings. Begin your mentoring early. A grandfather who is a friend and listening ear to his grandchildren can help them learn from and relate to the older generation. Growing up in a digital and virtual world, young people have relational needs that grandparents can meet. Grandfathers can contribute to the health of families by affirming and esteeming their children and grandchildren. The Most Important Legacy John reflects, “It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, telling how you continue to walk in it. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 3, 4). Fathers and grandfathers have supreme joy when our lasting legacy includes our children and grandchildren walking in the truth. H. Lynn Gardner is a freelance writer in Carl Junction, Missouri. The Leadership Wisdom of Solomon by Pat Williams with Jim Denney Based on 28 profound leadership strategies from King Solomon, The Leadership Wisdom of Solomon is filled with true stories from business, politics, pro sports, history, the church, and the military. You’ll learn how to apply Solomon’s ancient insights to today’s leadership world. “The Leadership Wisdom of Solomon is jam-packed with real-life examples to be enjoyed, remembered, and applied. It is the right stuff.” — John Ashcroft, former United States attorney general and chairman of The Ashcroft Group “Pat Williams has taken the wisdom of Solomon and provided a foundation for leaders today, not only to inspire them but to provide a guide for making difficult decisions in a practical fashion. Wow! What a book.” — Jay Jacobs, athletics director, Auburn University “The two qualities our world needs most today are leadership and wisdom. Pat Williams has reached back through the ages, recalling for us King Solomon, the one man who exemplified leadership and wisdom to the nth degree. In this practical, powerful book, we discover Solomon as a flesh-and-blood man, the CEO and commander in chief of ancient Israel, a man we can identify with and learn from. If you are a leader in any arena of life, tap into The Leadership Wisdom of Solomon today — J. C. Watts, former congressman and chairman of J. C. Watts Companies. “Pat Williams captures the essence of the wisdom of the wisest man and adds much of his own wisdom! What an important and needful book in our information age that is long on information but short on wisdom.” — Bill Glass, former NFL all-pro defensive lineman and founder of Bill Glass Prison Ministry

January 12, 2012 | 12:00 am Posted by Steven Windmueller Originally published September 14, 2011 The forthcoming Presidential election promises to be a challenging time for America. For Jews, a number of key issues will be particularly significant as we enter this political cycle. The American-Israel connection will continue to play a defining role. Economic issues, national security concerns, and the general state of U.S. foreign policy priorities will all be seen as important to this community. Among various Jewish constituencies, domestic interests including job-creation and educational initiatives, immigration reform, and health and social service programs will be seen as compelling. At the outset of the 2012 campaign, it would appear that American Jews, as in the past several national elections, are divided along party lines. One of the compelling issues however will be to determine if President Obama has experienced an erosion of support, and if so,what might be the nature and depth of that voter dissatisfaction. The Wind Report will seek to capture the key elements related to the Jewish vote, as it unfolds over the next 14 months. Your comments and questions are solicited. Steven F. Windmueller, Ph.D. Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk Emeritus Professor Los Angeles Campus 11.8.12 at 12:03 pm | Jews no longer count in defining election. . . 10.23.12 at 12:14 pm | During last evening’s debate some 33 minutes. . . 9.17.12 at 8:07 pm | What will happen prior to November 6th? 8.28.12 at 12:12 am | Over the course of history, Jews would operate in. . . 8.10.12 at 10:43 am | Every voter has his/her own motivations and. . . 7.30.12 at 9:39 am | With approximately 100 days to the November. . . 7.30.12 at 9:39 am | With approximately 100 days to the November. . . (5) 8.10.12 at 10:43 am | Every voter has his/her own motivations and. . . (4) 1.13.12 at 9:18 pm | Tonight’s stunning victory by Robert Turner, a. . . (4) We welcome your feedback. Your information will not be shared or sold without your consent. Get all the details. JewishJournal.com has rules for its commenting community.Get all the details. JewishJournal.com reserves the right to use your comment in our weekly print publication.

On My Mind: Syria’s children The international community has been sorely divided and incapable of assisting the people of Syria in an organized, helpful way. Syrian children at refugee camp in Tyre, southern Lebanon Photo: REUTERS/Ali Hashisho The human desire to maintain normalcy during wartime is one of life’s puzzling anomalies. But that has become increasingly difficult in Syria for the most innocent, the nation’s youth. Some 35 percent of the country’s 21 million people are under the age of 14. What happens to them will largely determine the future of Syria, a country in the process of being torn apart, as the conflict initiated by the Assad regime enters its third violent year. during a routine preparation for a professional soccer game, a mortar shell killed a 19-year-old player in Damascus. Here was a reminder that the conflict had definitely reached the country’s capital, where President Bashar Assad remains holed up, determined to use whatever resources are available to carry on his fight. He has maintained from the beginning that his opponents are terrorists, an assertion that is not only factually inaccurate, but also cruelly off base when considering the youngest victims. Major media – also recently – carried a photo of a sorrowful Syrian girl. explained that she had just learned that the school she was attending as late as the previous day no longer existed. Hers is not an isolated story. reports that 20% of Syrian schools have been destroyed, damaged or seized by families that, displaced from their own homes, have been seeking shelter within Syria. The number of internal refugees now exceeds two million, and 800,000 of them are children. Many others, desperate to find some normalcy, have fled Syria. Since the beginning of this year, the pace of refugees crossing into Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey has accelerated, adding to the burdens of international humanitarian organizations trying to provide basic services, as well as the countries that, by sheer circumstance, are hosting the refugees. Half of the one million Syrians who have found refuge in neighboring countries The tragedy is further compounded by the obstacles that stand in the way of delivering humanitarian aid, including food and medicine, and the shortage of qualified medical personnel. “The health system in Syria has collapsed,” says Doctors Without Borders. The tragic irony is that the conflict started with children. Two years ago, in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, a group of schoolchildren were arrested, and some tortured, after scrawling anti-Assad regime graffiti. Each upheaval in the Arab world over the past three years had a spark, and this ridiculously unnecessary government assault on children and the outrage it evoked in their parents was Yet, while other countries that have undergone political revolutions – Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen – are still struggling for stability, none has endured the kind of sustained wrath that Assad has poured out. He has not held back from using just about every weapon available against his own people, and even today shows no sign of relenting. The Assad regime’s war against Syrians has been transformed into a civil war, and the opposition forces are so disparate – in ideology, geographic location and numbers – that the country could be moving toward permanent fragmentation. writing on The Guardian website, observed that “following a sudden disaster such as an earthquake or tsunami, the response of the international communities is rapid and effective.” In contrast, the international community has been sorely divided and incapable of assisting the people of Syria in an organized, Those divisions, however, have not stopped the flow of arms to the government and rebel groups. Syria, in short, has become a proxy setting for playing out rivalries between other states in the region and even between Ultimately, this inability of the international community – chiefly the UN and Arab League – to mobilize in a united way to end the conflict, will have the most lasting impact on Syria’s children, whatever the final outcome of the tragedy and the ultimate configuration of the What used to be “normal” for Syrians, life under a strictly authoritarian regime led by one family for more than 40 years, has shifted to brutally violent repression, and the new reality of a traumatized, deeply divided nation will be extremely difficult to repair. That will have long-term implications for all of Syria’s neighbors and the wider region. But, in the end, the biggest losers are Syria’s children, whom UNICEF director Anthony Lake aptly calls the “lost generation.” The writer is the American Jewish Committee’s director of media relations.

Israel’s sewage war Beitar Illit settlers release sewage on Palestinian Wadi Fuqeen village farmlands By Nureddin Sabir Editor, Redress Information & Analysis A picture is worth a thousand word. The videos below are both instructive and appalling. They sum up the character of the Jewish settlers – the misfits, thieves and squatters from the United States, Europe, the former Soviet Union and elsewhere who are stealing and blighting Palestinian lands in increasing number – and they expose the deep-seated racism that underlies their contempt for Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. This first video below, shot by a special correspondent, shows raw sewage flowing from the illegal Jewish colony of Beitar Illit on to the farmlands of the besieged Palestinian village of Wadi Fuqeen. At least twice a month, starting on Friday afternoons and continuing for a large part of the following day, the authorities in the illegal Jewish settlement of Beitar Illit, which is built on land stolen from the neighbouring Palestinian village of Wadi Fuqeen, near Bethlehem, open their sewage tanks on to the farmlands of the village. As the video shows, the sewage, which runs through specially-built pipelines that open on to the slopes leading to Wadi Fuqeen, accumulates on the Palestinian farmlands, poisoning crops, contaminating the water table and posing a serious health threat to villagers. This second video, taken recently by Church of England Reverend Stephen Sizer, also shows the sewage waters flowing down the hillsides from the illegal Jewish settlement of Beitar Illit on to farmland of Wadi Fuqeen. Note that the interviewee explains that the next village along, Nahalin, is experiencing the same problem. In this video, also made by the Rev. Sizer, you can see the type and scale of damage caused by the sewage from the illegal settlement of Beitar Illit to Wadi Fuqeen’s agricultural land. In the video below, the mayor of Wadi Fuqeen, Ahmad Sokal, gives an interview to Rev. Sizer in which he explains the problems and challenges facing the village. Efforts by the Palestinians of Wadi Fuqeen and some Israeli peace activists to persuade the Israeli authorities so stop this appalling and disgraceful behaviour have come to nothing. The “mayor” of the illegal Beitar Illit settlement even had the audacity to suggest that this is a Palestinian problem and that they, the Palestinians, not the Jewish producers of the sewage, should find a way, such as constructing an aqueduct, to divert the Jewish sewage away from their farmlands. Please help to expose the Jewish settlers for what they really are by circulating the link to this page as widely as possible.

JNF Makor Member; JNF National Board Assistant Vice President; Community Campaign Chair, Washington D.C. JNF Board Travels from Washington D.C. Availability: Contact JNF Speakers Bureau for availability. Topics:JNF's Work in Israel, Positively Israel Ira has extensive experience in the Jewish communal world. Currently he serves on the executive committee of the Board of Governors of B’nai B’rith International, and the Jewish Council for the Aging of Greater Washington. Previously, Ira has served as his synagogue’s president, and on the board of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, where he served as chair of the Northern Virginian campaign. A long-time board member of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, he served as chair of its Soviet Jewry committee and Northern Virginia Commission. Since 1971, Ira recently retired after more than 40 years on the staff of the National Gallery of Art inWashingtonDC, one of the world’s finest art museums. Ira held supervisory positions in the Education and Visual Services departments. Ira is pleased to be a member of Makor, and is happy to speak to groups and individuals about the many ways we can support JNF’s work and projects inIsrael. Download a prepared introduction for Ira Bartfield Makor (Hebrew for “source”) is a specially-trained cadre of highly-involved Jewish National Fund volunteers. Our primary role is to support the core functions of JNF by direct fundraising. Thus, we identify prospective donors, conduct direct solicitations in our own communities and around the United States and assist in educating the public about the JNF and its projects. Makor also serves as a source for lay leadership. We are leaders in our own communities, and provide training and inspiration for other community leaders on solicitation techniques, board development and outreach and on the work of the JNF. Makor members also assume JNF leadership positions on a national level. We are proud leaders who are committed to the mission of the JNF, the caretaker of the land of Israel forever. In addition, Makor is a source of innovation within the JNF. Our diverse backgrounds, coupled with our common commitment, foster a free-flow of ideas to keep JNF as relevant and productive as possible. Makor members travel to Israel each year to study JNF projects and programs in depth, and bring their insights and experiences to you. Members speak at no charge.

Similar to any twins, Trinidad and Tobago are often mentioned together in the same breath. But they are not identical, and like any siblings, they assert their in- dividual identities quite clearly. “Trinis,” as the locals from the main is- land of Trinidad call themselves, take their holidays in Tobago to get away from the bustling industrialization of their capital, Port of Spain. They find it a restful break to escape to their countrified sibling island. Tobago was named Magdalena by Christopher Columbus in 1498. It later was re-named by the roaming Caribs and Arowaks for the long pipes they smoked that were filled with tobacco. After a mere 18-minute flight from Port of Spain, Tobago takes you absolutely off the beaten track, and its appeal is instantaneous. As John Murphy, acting manager of Magdalena Resort, said: “It is how the Ca- ribbean used to be and should be.” One of the people I was travelling with commented, “The locals are so nice, I thought they were being sarcastic.” Trinidad and Tobago are very different twins, but what weaves them together are the similarities. Experiencing waterfalls and forests are quintessential, but there are many other activities to choose from around the two islands, including snor- kelling, diving, hiking and bird watching. Birdwatchers flock to both in hopes of a peek at some of the 244 bird species found in Tobago and 450 in Trinidad. In Tobago, I bounced around in the back of an open-topped jeep, and grip- ping firmly onto the handrail was the only way to stop from falling out as we ca- reened along a winding Caribbean coastal road. The road was so narrow and muddy with deep puddles, our tires tipped and skidded. I found myself laughing, a mix- ture of nervousness and elation, because I didn’t know what to expect next. Our driver, Fabio, braked quickly as the jeep tore around a steep corner – the ribbon of the road ahead was completely blocked by a fallen tree. Fabio and Dennis from the second jeep didn’t hesitate as they leapt out, quickly grabbing machetes. In a Robinson Crusoe manoeuvre, they chopped their way through the branches, freeing up the path. As we drove on, we passed abandoned plantations completely overgrown with vegetation, giving us a brief glimpse into Tobago’s history. The first evening on Tobago, we wad- ed up to our waists to board Island Girl, a graceful 43-foot catamaran, crewed by friendly locals that served unending amounts of rum punch and nibbles, all included in the reasonable price. From Mount Irvine Bay, we cruised around the coast of Tobago’s north shore, drink in hand, sitting on the deck of the boat, watching as the sun set in vibrant Carib- bean hues around us. It was a wonderful start to our stay. The next day, we took the short, 10- minute walk to Argyle Falls, the highest falls on the island, tumbling 175 feet in a series of stepped cascades. Located on the Roxborough Estate, which was a thriving sugar estate up to the 1870s, it has arti- facts of the old sugar mills still in place. Very pretty to see, and if you are feeling a bit too warm, cooling off and showering under the falls is recommended. A visit to Fort George is worthwhile to help with an overview of the history of the island, still under the influence of a British-structured government. The number of times the island has changed hands is quite intriguing – now 31 times and counting, including traces of British, Scottish, French, Latvian, Dutch, Chinese and Finnish masters. The British background is the most evident, with international cricket dominating the sports scene and vehicles driving on the left side of the road. Even the capital city of Scarborough was named by Scottish planters after its Yorkshire counterpart, apparently so named for the resemblance. Coastal, yes, but after that, the similarity ends. The fort, named after King George III, still has the barracks that housed 200 men from 1784 to 1811, the walls are still crowned with broken glass meant to keep prisoners from escaping. Clinging to a cliff high above the ocean, it offers views of the harbour from the high- est part of the island. Built in the 1780s, this is Tobago’s best-preserved historical site. The 56,000 people populating Tobago are 90 per cent African and 10 per cent mixed. Magdalena Resort is the only four-star resort on the island, and it shows. Sprawled over 670 acres, situated along 2 1/2 miles of beach and coastline, the grounds offer nature trails and canopy walks through a virgin mangrove forest. With complimentary bicycles, four pools to dip in, PADI-certified scuba training, a spa, and endless daily activities posted in the lobby including aqua aerobics and Zumba, it is difficult to choose to just sit and relax, but many visitors do. The resort is home to a PGA-designed championship 18-hole golf course, but many visitors choose to lounge on the beach or by one of the four pools. Shuttle buses travel twice daily to Pigeon Point, a nearby archetypal Caribbean Heritage beach with everything you need. Off-road Jeep Safari: wwww.toba- gonow.com as published in The Canadian Jewish News

BRUNNER, ARNOLD WILLIAM: By: Cyrus Adler American architect; the son of William Brunner and Isabelle Solomon; was born in New York city Sept. 25, 1857. He was educated in Manchester, England, and in New York, and is a graduate of the special architectural course in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brunner was one of the founders of the Architectural League of New York (1881), is a member and vice-president (1898) of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, a fellow of the Institute, and (1902) a member of the Board of Education of New York city. He has designed and erected many buildings, notably the new United States post-office, custom-house, and court-house at Cleveland, Ohio, won in competition. He was also the architect of the Temple Beth-El, the synagogues of the congregations Shearith Israel and Shaaray Tefila, the Educational Alliance Building, the Mt. Sinai Hospital, the Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, all in New York, and of the Temple Mishkan Israel at New Haven, Conn., and the Frank Memorial Synagogue at Philadelphia. Brunner has written a work on "Cottages," another on "Interior Decoration," and is a contributor to the "Encyclopedia of Architecture," edited by Russell Sturgis.

ANKARA (May. 19) Mass-arrests of Jews in Bulgaria were reported today over the Sofia radio which also announced that 4,000 more Bulgarian Jews will be recruited for forced labor in addition to the several thousand who have already been Bet to building a railway. Jews were arrested, the announcer explained, because “many Jews were loafing around provocatively outside their houses after curfew hours.” A large number of Jews were arrested at the Sofia railway station when they attempted to leave the Bulgarian capital “in an effort to escape forced labor,” the announcer admitted. A decree prohibiting Jews in Bulgaria from trading in meat and cattle was also broadcast today over the Sofia radio. The measure effects several hundred Jewish families.

WHO IS JESUS? The most important question that faces the human race is simply this: who is Jesus? In the Gospel of John, Jesus made a number of extreme claims that demand a response. These are not the kinds of claims that we can remain neutral about. They are not the claims of a “normal” human being. For example, Jesus claimed to be God in human flesh (John 8:58), He also claimed to be “the way, the truth, and the life” and that “no one could come to the Father, except through [Him]” (John 14:6). In John 5, Jesus claimed to be the final judge for all mankind. Beyond this, He claimed that people should honor Him in the same way they honor the Father. As C.S. Lewis says in his classic Mere Christianity, Jesus is either a lunatic, or a deliberate liar, or He is telling the truth. These are our only options when faced with such extreme claims. You cannot sit on the fence when someone makes such claims. Extreme claims demand an extreme response! There is no way around it: the Bible’s portrait of Jesus is radical. It is either true or false. There is no in-between. Just to be clear, the Bible claims: 1) that Jesus is God in human skin, 2) that Jesus is the Savior of mankind, 3) that He died and rose from the dead, 4) that He will be the final judge of all mankind, 5) that our response to Him will determine where we will spend eternity. These are radical claims that we have to respond to! The old response of liberal clergy will not do—namely that Jesus is a “good moral human teacher” and nothing more. Here’s the problem with this: good moral teachers do not walk around claiming to be God! If Jesus is not God, then He is either insane or evil. In John 8:24, Jesus says, “Unless you believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” The reference to “I AM” is a direct reference to the Old Testament book of Exodus, where God claimed to be “I AM.” In ancient Jewish culture, Jesus’ claim in John 8 was a clear and direct claim to be God in human flesh. It was a claim to be Yahweh of the Old Testament. This is either true or it is utter blasphemy! The bottom line is this: the biblical portrait of Jesus puts a strong emphasis on truth claims because Jesus did. The Gospels tell us that He claimed to be God incarnate, but that He also showed radical compassion for the poor and needy. (This is unparalleled in the world religions!) He is also presented as a man who loved others deeply and preached a gospel of God’s grace and mercy. Thus, any attempt to present a flattened picture of Jesus that reduces Him to a one-dimensional person is destined to be off base. It is destined to present a Jesus that is weak and diluted. This kind of Jesus will not impact the world and will certainly not draw the worship of modern-day men and women. What is your response to Him? Have you surrendered to Him as Lord and Savior? The real Jesus of the Bible is a shock to the contemporary Western reader. You might call this “Jesus Shock.” He is quite different than the soft-spoken teacher who often shows up on Sunday school flannel boards in Vacation Bible Schools all over America. It’s a good reminder to make sure we are worshiping the real Jesus of the Gospels, and not an air-brushed, dumbed-down version so common in Western culture today. by Jay Childs, Senior Pastor

We attended a very special Bar Mitzvah yesterday – one of those events that reminds us how lucky we are to be in Israel – and have the chance to celebrate this type of occasion here. The Bar Mitzvah was organized and run by Liran Levi – an Israeli with a company that specializes in conducting Bar/Bat Mitzvah trips to Jerusalem. Liran, who during his army service was in an elite combat unit, is also a trained cantor, tour guide and teacher. His told us that his goal (with the help of his four person crew) was to provide a unique, once in a lifetime experience – a day filled with happiness and excitement for the bar-mitzvah boy – and I have to say he met the goal. We started out in Ra’anana – getting on a full sized bus around 8 a.m. The bus stopped at a few different points on the way to Jerusalem – picking up waiting friends and family members to join in the festivities. Though we had a bit of rain along the way – and some fairly nasty traffic jams – everyone was optimistic that things would still work out well. Our first stop was Neve Shalom/Wahat Al Salam (“Oasis of Peace” – in Hebrew and Arabic) – a unique Israeli settlement – dedicated to the coexistence of Jews and Arabs in Israel. People from different backgrounds live there (www.nswas.com). We were there for a breakfast along the way – a fairly quick stop – but with enough time for bourekas, salad and coffee – before starting the real part of our trip. As we left Neve Shalom, the festivities began. Liran and his crew turned on the speaker system – and pulled out Middle Eastern drums. For the next 40 minutes or so – the bus became a mixture of a party – and a Jerusalem tour. Liran gave explanations about the history of Jerusalem – from ancient times until today. He challenged the guests with interesting questions. But he also got people singing – and – yes – dancing on the bus. Sounds crazy - but it was a riot. He went up and down the aisles with the microphone finding people willing to take a turn singing. He had the bar mitzvah boy and his parents at the front of the bus jumping up and down (not during the sharp turns) – and he had the drummer banging away to keep the beat. Other guests were dancing in the aisles – as the bus drove up through the mountains towards Jerusalem. As we got closer – the excitement level continued to increase. There was a unique sense of mission – and history. We were told all about the modern history of Jerusalem. Liran, of course, highlighted the fact that Jordan had held the Old City of Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967 – and Jews simply weren’t allowed to visit the Jewish religious sites during those years. Since 1967 – Israel has reunited Jerusalem – and ensured full access to the various religious sites – not only for Jews but for Christians and Muslims as well – to their holy sites. The bus let us off at one of the gates to the walled Old City of Jerusalem. The crew pulled out the Shofars (rams horns), took the drums – and put up a mini Chuppah (overhead canopy) – held up by four guests over the bar mitzvah boy’s head – for a procession from the gate to the Kotel – the western wall. By now it was raining – but that didn’t really seem to bother anyone. As we began walking through the old City, our guide led us in singing a whole series of songs about Jerusalem as well as other traditional Hebrew melodies. The amazing thing was that people who were walking by – entirely unrelated to the affair – joined us in singing and dancing. One small group of about 8 or 10 – joined our group and everyone started dancing a Hora. Some of the passers-by were religious – and probably Israelis. Others were clearly tourists – some secular Jews – some not Jewish. It didn’t matter. Liran invited people to join the dancing – and many did. This really got crazy when we ran into a Birthright type group – of about 100 or so – young adults – 18-23 – doing their own tour of Jerusalem. Liran went over to them and started signing – and invited them to join us. About ½ the group did – and before you know it – we had a huge group – singing and dancing together – even putting the Bar Mitzvah boy high up in the air. We continued along towards the Kotel – stopping for explanations of different parts of the Old City. By now it was still raining – so we had to have the Bar Mitzvah ceremony itself – in the enclosed area of the Western Wall – at the end of the Men’s section. We went inside – where there are a series of wooden Arks – housing a variety of Torah Scrolls – suitable for different types of congregations. The women’s section is up in the balcony – behind one-way glass. So the women could watch everything taking place – but the men couldn’t see the women. To ensure that they could hear everything – the women were all given wireless headphones – and the bar mitzvah boy was given a microphone. This is certainly not ideal for families used to attending Conservative or Reformed Synagogues – with mixed seating – but it is par for the course for an Orthodox Synagogue. Since it was now afternoon (too late for the morning service – Shacharit) – there was a very abbreviated service – a chance for the Bar Mitzvah boy and his father to put on Tefillin – and the main event – the reading of the Torah by the Bar Mitzvah boy. The service was reasonably quick – the Bar Mitzvah boy completed the main part of the day – (that he had spent many months preparing for) and we even had time to squeeze in a full but very fast Minhah (afternoon) service. After all of that – it was off to have lunch in Emek Refaim, Jeruselem – a new City area lined with galleries, cafes and upscale restaurants. We ate at La Bocca – a Kosher, Latin style restaurant. The food was terrific – a variety of chicken, steak and vegetable dishes – prepared and presented beautifully. Over lunch – the singing and dancing continued – led by Liran and his crew. The music was mostly Israeli religious music – with an Eastern flavour to it – though Liran apparently tries to cater the music to the style that the guests are likely to appreciate. The guests sang along – got up and danced – and generally seemed to have quite a good time. Liran continued to be full of energy – running around trying to involve as many people as he could – in singing, dancing – or at least hand clapping. When lunch was over – it was time for the bus ride back – and most people were exhausted. But the event was really unique. With the bus rides – the explanations – the singing and dancing – it was really a quintessential Zionist and Jewish experience – with a pilgrimage- like feeling. Travelling together - to the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem – the Western Wall – for a day filled with prayer, song and happiness – and even involving complete strangers along the way in singing and dancing – well – it was quite an experience.