The Droves of Academe,
New York Obeserver, January 2, 2003
"Two days earlier, nearly 11,000 English literature and modern-language professors had descended on midtown Manhattan for the start of the Modern Language Association’s annual conference, the place where intellectual superstars like Stanley Fish, Elaine Scarry and Kwame Anthony Appiah share hotel space with hundreds of desperate Ph.D.’s interviewing for a meager handful of jobs. The jittery orgy of power, insecurity and angst is the other academy’s answer to the Cannes Film Festival, except that as these strivers fan across the city between standing-room-only panels, instead of Anita Ekberg emerging from a fountain, they strain to catch a glimpse of aging Harvard nymph Marjorie Garber emerging from Barneys. The bacchanal of the bespectacled was back in New York for the first time in a decade, thrilling all those Ph.D.’s who had really planned to find jobs near the city, until the job market crashed and that tenure-track spot at Ball State started looking pretty appealing. But this year, as the stratified masses of academic hot shots and wannabes made their reservations at Esca (or Pasta La Vista) and scored tickets to La Bohème (or The Lord of the Rings), even an alcohol-soaked weekend in New York did nothing to calm the anxiety. It was palpable among more than just the job-seekers. Tension over the future of the profession could be felt all the way to the top of the pecking order, in the person of dashing M.L.A. president, Harvard professor and well-known Shakespearean Stephen Greenblatt, who in May sent 'A Call to Action' to every M.L.A. member, asking them all to begin to face a growing crisis in their industry: The academic presses that publish their esoteric work are shrinking, even as the publish-or-perish system of academic evaluation and promotion continues unabated, forcing lit professors to do some painful reckoning ... It’s a bleak landscape for academic job-seekers in any field, but this year, a flyer in the conference press room trumpeted "the sharpest decline in Language and Literature jobs" since the 1992 recession. The total number of English-language jobs fell from last year’s 983 to 792. Only half of these are tenure-track. These jobs are all that are available for the 977 people who received English doctorates in 2000-2001, not to mention the hundreds of frustrated job-seekers from previous years, on top of those with so-so jobs who are looking to trade up. ... In 1997, Mr. Greenblatt moved east with his second wife, Ramie Targoff, whom imaginative gossips claim is an heiress and a former Chanel model. Ms. Targoff teaches in the English department at Brandeis University ... Mr. Greenblatt has also co-edited The Norton Anthology of English Literature and The Norton Shakespeare ... Retired Princeton historian and famous leftie Natalie Zemon Davis, whom one conventioneer called 'the haute couture Communist,' was schmoozing in an adjoining room with Clifford Geertz. This was not her first M.L.A., she said, adding that she was mostly there because of her close personal and professional connections with Mr. Greenblatt. ... Descending from the party in the elevator, the University of Texas’ well-regarded Mark Twain specialist Shelley Fisher Fishkin was practically beside herself about the publishing question."

Man Arrested After Stealing German Plane,
iwon, Jan 5, 2002
"A man stole a small aircraft at gunpoint Sunday and flew it over downtown Frankfurt, circling skyscrapers and threatening to crash into the European Central Bank. He landed safely after about two hours and was arrested. The man, apparently a German, told a television station he wanted to call attention to Judith Resnik, a U.S. astronaut killed in the 1986 post-launch explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Military jets chased the stolen, two-seat motorized glider as the man began circling slowly above Frankfurt's banking district. Hundreds of people were evacuated from the main railway station and dozens more from several skyscrapers, which were mostly empty on a Sunday afternoon at the end of the Christmas season. Authorities refused to identify the man, who was being questioned at the airport. But news channel n-tv named him as Franz-Stephan Strambach. 'I want to make my great idol Judith Resnik famous with this,' he said in a call from the plane to the channel. 'She deserves more attention, she was the first Jewish astronaut, and maybe that's why she isn't really considered.' Police said the man had identified the Central Bank headquarters as a possible target ... Though the man told n-tv he didn't want to harm anyone, he threatened to commit suicide once his fuel ran out. He landed at 5:11 p.m. at Frankfurt's international airport, where flights were halted during the drama ... Strambach's name appears as the webmaster of an Internet site devoted to Resnik, with links documenting her career, death and efforts to remember her, including the position in the night sky of an asteroid carrying her name."


Questions abound after wild ride for love of dead Jewish astronaut,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 8, 2002
"Some Germans may be obsessed with Jews, but few demonstrate their fixations the way Franz Stephan Strambach did. On Sunday, Strambach, a psychology student now under lock and key at the Hadamar psychiatric hospital, stole a small plane from an airport near Frankfurt and took it on a wild ride through the skies of the city, threatening to crash into the European Central Bank tower. He finally landed without incident. Strambach, 31, said he wanted to call attention to his hero, the Jewish astronaut Judith Resnik. 'I want to make my big idol Judith Resnik famous,' Strambach told German TV journalist Leo Busch, who spoke to the amateur pilot while he was still airborne. Resnik, who died in the explosion of the Challenger shuttle 17 years ago, 'deserves more attention,' Strambach said. 'She was the first Jewish astronaut. Perhaps that’s why she never got proper attention' ... There is no indication that Strambach is Jewish ... Journalist Henryk Broder, an observer of relations between Jews and non-Jews in Germany, told JTA he did not think the case was 'an example of the usual German sickness vis-a-vis the Jews' — a philo-Semitism that sometimes manifests itself in a fascination with Jewish life and culture. Rather, he said, this is 'an individual problem.' But reporting of the incident reflected another problem: a lingering discomfort in Germany about Jewish issues. While live feeds carried Strambach’s comments about Resnik’s Jewishness, it was cut out of later news broadcasts. There also was no public reaction from Jewish leaders ... . 'Although the pilot made it clear on the telephone that he wanted the world to remember Judith Resnik as the first Jewish astronaut in the world, the adjective ‘Jewish’ was suppressed from most evening news reports,' the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper wrote in an editorial on Tuesday. 'This single piece of information was kept under quarantine. It should perhaps be handled carefully, but instead it was suppressed.' When it comes to Jewish topics, 'German journalists and people in general are very cautious, and they don’t want to make mistakes. Rather than making a mistake they prefer to do nothing,' Thomas Schmid, a political editor at the newspaper, told JTA in an interview Wednesday. Reporters 'were astonished hearing and seeing on TV that the hijacker wanted to promote ‘the Jewish astronaut Judith Resnik.’ They said, ‘Oh, this is very strange and maybe a dangerous case for Germans, so we won’t put it in the news,’ 'Schmid said ... Asked what German journalists might have feared, Schmid said he thought many journalists 'believe there may be attitudes among the population against Jewish people, so if it’s possible not to mention that the person is a Jew, it’s better.'"

Moral Defense of Israel,
Ayn Rand Institute
[This links to an entire web page with various articles in defense of the brutal, racist Jewish state; Ayn Rand was Jewish, as are many in her "Objectivist" movement, including current Executive Director, Israeli-born Yaron Brook] This ARI web page includes titles such as "Israel Morals Match Rand Ideology"] See also "Ayn Rand on the Death of Innocents in War", also War, Nuclear Weapons and "Innocents" : "With full moral certainty we must urge our government to defend our lives, even if that requires nuclear weapons and hundreds of thousands of deaths in terrorist countries." Also, "The Immorality of a "Compassionate War" on Terrorism" "On the first day of bombing Afghan military targets, our Air Force was busy delivering charity food packages stamped 'This food is a gift from the United States of America.' We have already lavished on the Afghans more than 450,000 aid packages. Not only is such alms-giving expensive (the President has pledged $320 million worth of food and medicine), but it also betrays an obscene inversion of morality."

[ 1) Circumcision is medically unnecessary. 2) Jews, by self-definition, must be circumcised 3) Non-Jews in the Western world have had no religious reasons for circumcision. 4) Circumcision has always been the absolute way to recognize a Jew from the rest of the population, and this way was used by the Nazis. 5) Jews are preeminent in the medical field. Do these things have anything to do with each other? ]
The unkindest of cuts,
Times Online (UK), January 13, 2003
"There is one operation being carried out on thousands of British children by NHS doctors without any clinical need — and without the patient’s consent. This procedure has an irreversible physical effect, yet there has been minimal public debate about the extent to which it is being performed. The procedure is non-religious circumcision, carried out on 'therapeutic' grounds on 4 to 6 per cent of boys under 15. Increasingly, the expert consensus is that most non-religious circumcisions are carried out for reasons of family history, medical myth and professional laziness. Some campaigners claim that as many as five in six of these circumcisions are unnecessary and potentially traumatising. Circumcision has become the subject of bitter debate in the US, where 80 per cent of men are circumcised. Doctors Opposing Circumcision is one of a range of groups challenging the medical orthodoxy of circumcision at birth; their campaign has been buoyed by a statement from the American Medical Association that there is insufficient evidence of benefit to recommend routine neonatal circumcision. Here, the British Medical Association is reviewing its guidelines and is due to announce its findings in March; current guidance makes it clear that it is unethical to circumcise for therapeutic reasons where research shows that less invasive techniques are available. Norm-UK, an organisation which campaigns against circumcision, estimates that fewer than 1 per cent of boys require the operation, and that most of those performed on the NHS are unnecessary ... Yet the psychological issues are complex: in a largely Jewish or Islamic community, this argument works as much in favour of circumcision as against it. Dr Lotte Newman, a former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners who chairs the circumcision working party of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, is troubled by developments in Sweden which may lead to a ban on child circumcision there."

Student's Search for Albert Einstein's Wife and Daughter Illuminates the Theory of Relativity,
Mt. Holyoke (college)
"What started as a simple translation job led Marija Dokmanovic '99 on a three-year search for information about the lives of the wife and the illegitimate daughter of Albert Einstein. The puzzle began when, as a student at Armand Hammer United World College, Dokmanovic was approached by an author planning to write a book on Mileva Maric Einstein and the daughter Albert sired while he and Mileva were young physics students. Dokmanovic was fascinated with the topic because she (like Mileva) is from Serbia, where Mileva is known as an important scientist despite her obscure life history. Dokmanovic collaborated with author Michelle Zackheim, translating letters and faxes between Serbo-Croatian and English. Later, she, her mother, and Zackheim scoured Serbian, German, Austrian, and Swiss archives and unearthed surprising facts about the great physicist's wife and daughter. Mileva and Albert were lovers as students, and Mileva probably gave their daughter, Lieserl, up for adoption in 1902, apparently because the scandal might hurt his career. They later married, and--as letters that Dokmanovic and fellow researchers found make clear--Mileva helped Albert refine many of the ideas for which he became famous. Mileva was devoted to Albert; as a 'typical Serbian woman,' Dokmanovic says, she would do anything to please her husband. Mileva did Albert's university homework, gave up her own physics career for his, took care of their schizophrenic son even after Albert divorced her, and was his scientific partner. Dokmanovic has seen letters indicating that Albert adopted some of his wife's ideas. 'Mileva's not given any credit, but she had a great impact on Albert's research ... [Mileva] was the only woman studying in Zurich Polytech Institute. But she stopped her thesis work, married Albert, and gave him all the credit. I would never do that, not even for Albert Einstein.'"

Building Morningside Heights, [upper Manhattan area]
Columbia University
"The builders responsible for the development of most early twentieth-century apartment houses in New York City a nd almost all of the apartment buildings on Morningside Heights reflect the major changes that were occurring in the city's ethnic composition during this period, especially the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Italians and Eastern European Jews. The entry of immigrant Italians and Jews and the children of these immigrants into the worlds of real estate, building, and investment coincided with the advent of the apartment building as the most popular form of middle-class residence in Manhattan ... The most active builders on Morningside Heights were members of the Paterno family, which had emigrated from Castelemezzano near Naples. The Paterno family built 37 buildings on Morningside Heights ... The vast majority of other builders active in the Morningside Heights neighborhood were Jewish. Many were small-scale builders involved with only a few buildings, but others established major careers as apartment-house developers. Some built under their own names or as corporations that bore their names, but the most active Jewish builders incorporated as real estate firms with names stripped of Jewish ethnic identity. For example, Edgar A. Levy, Jacob Stein, and Leo S. Bing were partners in the Carlyle Realty Company, Jacob Axelrod was president of the West Side Construction Company, and Charles Newmark headed the Carnegie Construction Company. Like the builders, many, but by no means all of the architects commissioned by the speculative developers to design apartment buildings were also from Italian and Jewish backgrounds, including Gaetan Ajello, Simon Schwartz, Arthur Gross, George and Edward Blum, and William Rouse."

Hitler's clairvoyant. A new biography tells the bizarre tale of the Jewish psychic who met with the future Führer for private sessions and predicted his rise,
Salon.com, February 27, 2002
"In the weeks leading up to Adolf Hitler's appointment as Reichschancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, there was nothing inevitable about the Austrian corporal's ascension to power. Results of the 1932 November Reichstag elections were disappointing for his National Socialist Party, with the Nazis suffering losses in the German parliament while retaining about a third of the seats there. Nazi coffers had been drained dry by the campaign. Hitler had endured significant defections from his movement and threatened suicide. Some Nazis began to wonder if he had the right stuff to be their Führer. It was at this point that Hitler, falling back on his belief in the occult, called the most renowned clairvoyant in the land to his headquarters at the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin for a private session. The man Hitler met with that day is the subject of a recent biography (the first in the English language), 'Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant,' by Mel Gordon. Hanussen, 43 at the time of the Hotel Kaiserhof session, was a man whose name was synonymous with psychic phenomena in Central Europe. The Vienna-born con man/celebrity seer was known for predicting the future, casting prescient horoscopes and astounding audiences with his feats of hypnotism and mind reading. In Berlin, Hanussen [born Hermann Steinschneider] was a rock star before there were rock stars, with a vast business enterprise trading on the voracious German hunger for all things paranormal. Hitler became a Hanussenite when in March of 1932 the psychic's own weekly newspaper, Erik Jan Hanussen's Berliner Wochenschau, printed the startling prophecy that within one year's time the future Führer would become Reichschancellor. Most Berliners scoffed. For many, Hitler was a megalomaniacal clown. But if the average Berliner thought Hanussen's prognostication absurd, Hitler certainly didn't. When Hanussen came to him that cold day in January, the Nazi leader was filled with dread anticipation, and kept the meeting secret should the results be negative. Hanussen placed Hitler on a seat in the middle of the room, examined his hands, counted the bumps on his head and sank into a mystical trance. The words he spoke filled the Führer with elation, says Gordon. 'I see victory for you,' Hanussen said. 'It cannot be stopped.' By the end of the month, Hitler had cut a deal with his enemies and become titular head of a coalition government. Hanussen's vision had given him hope in his hour of uncertainty. One can only wonder the intensity of his rage, if the raving anti-Semite had known at the time that the man he had adopted as his personal soothsayer, the chap nicknamed 'the Prophet of the Third Reich,' the decadent mystic who had just run his hands through his Aryan locks, was in fact ... a Jew ... The burning of the Reichstag on Feb. 27, 1933, for which German communists took the fall, paved the way for the consolidation of power in Hitler's hands and the suspension of all civil liberties. Eerily, the day before, Hanussen had predicted the event through a medium during the opening soiree of his newly minted pagan temple, the Palace of the Occult, a marble and gold-decked Taj Mahal of the black arts in Berlin decorated with astrological signs and religious statues."

Nobody’s Punching Bag,
Moment, December-January
"Jackie Kallen thinks of Jews as natural-born fighters. It’s part of our heritage to do battle,' she says—and she should know—she’s made a career of it. And now Hollywood has taken notice. Known by many as the 'first lady of boxing,' this 56-year-old ex-journalist has managed four champions, including six-time crown-holder Tommy 'Hit Man' Hearns and middleweight champion James 'Lights Out' Toney. What’s a nice bubbe from Detroit doing in the fight game? Doing what comes naturally, that’s what. 'Managing a boxer,' she says matter-of-factly, is 'a lot like being a Jewish mother. A manager has to take care of her fighter’s living situation, meals, grooming, you name it.' While catering to the needs of her surrogate family members—she’s even played Scrabble with them to soothe big-fight jitters—Kallen became the inspiration for a soon-to-be released major motion picture starring Meg Ryan called Up Against the Ropes."

Sorting through the Shuttle Debris,
Hoffman Wire, by Michael A. Hoffman II, February 2, 2003
"NASA astronaut Ilan Ramon was a scientist, conducting dust particle experiments under the supervision of Yehoyahin Yosef, professor of planetary physics at Tel Aviv University. Ramon was also a colonel in the Israeli air force, a war hero according to the Washington Post, '...who took part in Israel's famed 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor...Ramon clocked more than 3,000 hours as a combat pilot in A-4, Mirage III-C and F-4 Phantom fighter planes, and he logged more than 1,000 in the U.S.-built F-16....He fought in the 1982 war in Lebanon.' But what burnishes Ramon's image more than any other of his dazzling accomplishments, is his hallowed niche in the pantheon of Holocaustianity, the West's state religion. In an interview published by Israel's Foreign Ministry, Col. Ramon declared, 'I'm the son of a Holocaust survivor. I carry on the suffering of the Holocaust generation...' In an interview with NASA, he noted that his mother had been imprisoned in Auschwitz and held the exalted status of 'Holocaust Survivor.' The Washington Post reported, 'Like many astronauts, Ramon took a variety of personal effects with him into space...He...took a pencil drawing entitled 'Moon Landscape' by a 14-year-old Jewish boy, Peter Ginz, who was killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.' And thus a legend is born, Ilan Ramon, patron saint of astronauts and that lofty class of congenital sufferers, the Children of Holocaust Survivors. To this pious category must be added another in the taxonomy of victimhood, the Survivors of Dead Zionist Astronauts. Prior to Ramon there was Resnick, one of seven astronauts killed in the January 28, 1986 Challenger shuttle explosion. One hesitates to raise puckish questions during a funerary rite, but perhaps we might be forgiven if we pause in the midst of Col. Ramon's hagiography just long enough to burn a requiem candle to the memory of the French scientist and the two other people Ramon killed when he bombed the Iraqi reactor in 1981. Back then, Col. Ramon's bombing was infamous rather than 'famed.' Even the NY Times characterized it as 'a sneak attack...an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression.' The celebrated Israeli scientist-astronaut is thus guilty of the murder of a scientist, but the life of the French scientist and the status of his survivors is, under the circumstances, not worth the faintest mention. Moreover, our hero 'fought' in the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, logging thousands of hours in military aircraft. The use of the word 'fought' with regard to Lebanon smacks of some slight hyperbole, in that the Israeli air force was unopposed over Beirut's skies, as Ramon and his fellow heroes dropped wave after wave of napalm and cluster bombs on schools, hospitals and apartment buildings, culminating in the around-the-clock terror-bombing of downtown Beirut in August, 1982. The Israelis killed an estimated 20,000 civilians in Lebanon. Would it be opportune to light a candle for those Arab victims of this Israeli holocaust, or is Arab blood undeserving of recollection? ... As Israeli newscasters reported that the shuttle catastrophe had been visible over a town in Texas named Palestine, it was, said Reuters Jerusalem correspondent Michele Gershberg,"a bitter irony lost on no one." The medium is the message. The symbolism of the Israeli 'combat air force' pilot blowing up in the approximate vicinity of Palestine, Texas requires no embellishment or explication. This is sunrise language rather than twilight language, telegraphing a message as unmistakable as a left hook to the jaw. Rarely does what we might call 'the hand of God' move so dramatically in world affairs, but when it does there are no excuses for ignorance; it is 'a bitter irony lost on no one.' Human beings are often muttering, 'Why is God silent?' On the morning of Feb. 1, He fairly shouted at a deaf, dumb and blind western world, which, until then, had been content to celebrate NASA's selection of an Israeli astronaut in the midst of the ongoing collective punishment of the Palestinian people. When this writer learned that an Israeli was in orbit on NASA's shuttle, the first image that came to my mind was of all the dead and dying in Palestine, and of how America had lost all sense of shame. Now there are other dead strewn across the landscape of an alternate Palestine. It remains to be seen whether from this disaster we learn the sobering message that the Supreme Power wishes to impart, or if we submit ourselves instead to the beguiling electronic spectacle generated by the rulers of this world, who are not yet, for all their space age gizmos and gadgets, masters of the heavens. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord."

Rivers of ridicule, STAGE REVIEW: JOAN RIVERS,
Australian Jewish News, February 24, 2003
"Once you have seen her perform, there is no way to be neutral about American entertainer Joan Rivers. You are either a fan and they packed her Australian tour shows last week, roaring with laughter or you're not. As a first-timer at a Rivers performance, I'm afraid I now belong to the latter category. Strutting on stage to deliver a localised version of her London West End show Broke and Alone, Rivers unleashed a blizzard of one-liners that savaged just about every subject imaginable. Wall-to-wall obscenities actually were not the turn-off although the ferocious speed with which she spits them out made them tedious and somehow took away that acerbic underscore that comedians hope for when they swear. The stream of four-letter words simply had the effect of making the content of her material even more vituperative. It's an age of receding boundaries, with almost every subject fair game, yet some might find Holocaust humour distressing. I did. There was an Anne Frank joke. No thanks. Rivers' comic universe is a parade of crude 1970s-era stereotypes. It is a realm in which the world belongs to the rich and the thin and where the poor, the obese, the aged and infirm are pariahs to be ridiculed ... If Rivers' comic business is perpetuating the persona of the bad New York broad, then she excels."

Erich Fromm, Judaism, and the Frankfurt School,
By Douglas Kellner, Illuminations
"The Frankfurt School had a highly ambivalent relation to Judaism. On one hand, they were part of that Enlightenment tradition that opposed authority, tradition, and all institutions of the past -- including religion. They were also, for the most part, secular Jews who did not support any organized religion, or practice religious or cultural Judaism. In this sense, they were in the tradition of Heine, Marx, and Freud for whom Judaism was neither a constitutive feature of their life or work, nor a significant aspect of their self-image and identity. And yet the Frankfurt School's relation to Judaism was varied. Several of the key members of the group had orthodox Jewish upbringings, or at least studied and practiced some elements of Judaism. Moreover, for some of the members, Judaism played an important role in their life and work. For Walter Benjamin and Erich Fromm, their Judaic heritage figured importantly in key stages of their lives and works. Judaism was of some but arguably not major significance at different stages of their lives for Lowenthal and Horkheimer; and Judaism appears not to have been particularly important for Marcuse and Adorno. Yet all Jews were outsiders in Weimar Germany and all of the Frankfurt School were forced into exile because of their Jewish background after the rise of fascism in 1933. One could argue that the members of the Frankfurt School were also to some extent outsiders in the United States where they found exile in part at least because of their Jewishness. At this time, the Frankfurt school made anti-semitism, prejudice, and the situation of the Jews a major thematic focus of their work. During the years in Weimar prior to emigration in 1934, however, the Frankfurt School did not thematize the issue of the situation of the Jews in their major works and in a 1938 article the Director of the Institute for Social Research, Max Horkheimer, wrote an article 'The Jews in Europe' in which anti-semitism was explained as a mere reflex of the vicissitudes of monopoly capitalism in the end of its liberal phase ... In this entry, I will discuss the ways that Judaism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism intersected in the work of Erich Fromm, constituting a distinctive mode of Jewish writing that combined religion and Enlightenment conceptions. I argue that Fromm was at once traditionally Jewish and radically secular, and that his early immerse in Jewish religion and culture came to shape his distinctive views and work ... Fromm himself was born into an orthodox Jewish family and both of his parents came from families of rabbis ... Throughout his youth, Fromm was deeply involved in the study of the Talmud and with his friend Leo Lowenthal, later an important member of the Frankfurt School, he joined the circle around the eminent Rabbi Nehemiah Nobel, rabbi of the largest Frankfurt synagogue ... In the middle of the 1920s, Fromm was introduced to psychoanalysis via the Jewish psychoanalyst Frieda Reichmann, who later became his wife. Reichman ran a private psychoanalytic institution in Heidelberg which practiced Jewish traditions, earning the Institute the nickname of the 'Torah-peutic Clinic.' Fromm himself trained as a psychoanalyst, opened his own practice in 1927, and married Reichmann. Fromm's first published essay was on 'The Sabbath' and, drawing on psychoanalysis, he argued that 'The Sabbath originally served as a reminder of the killing of the father and the winning of the mother; the commandment not to work served as a penance for original sin and for its repetition through regression to the pre-genital stage' ... One of his first major essays was on 'The Dogma of Christ' (1930; reprinted 1963) in which Fromm argued against the interpretation of the origins of Christianity of another psychoanalyst, Theodor Reik."

Goldenberg candy,
(web site)

[Charles Hurwitz, a United Jewish Appeal-Federation official, is the majority stockholder in Maxxam]
Logging Pollution Damages North Coast Watersheds,
Environment News Service, January 29, 2003
"Accelerated logging has polluted some 85 percent of the waters in California's North Coast region, uprooted protected redwoods and damaged private property, but state officials continue to permit logging companies to avoid complying with environmental regulations. California environmentalists are fighting back with lawsuits, and activists continue to take to the trees in a desperate attempt to save ancient redwoods and their surrounding ecosystems ... The controversy over the management of the North Coast forests has deep roots. In 1985, Maxxam, a Texas based corporation, succeeded in a $900 million hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber, a company with local ties stretching back to the 1850s. Maxxam kept the Pacific Lumber name, but tripled the rate of its logging operations. A chorus of protests soon followed, as activists took to the streets and to the trees, appealing to the public and the logging industry to protect many of the world's last redwood forests. The result of these protests came 10 years later, with the Headwaters Forest deal between the federal government and Pacific Lumber. At the heart of the deal was the exchange of $480 million in public money for some 7,500 acres of ancient redwoods, which is called the Headwaters Forest. Although it included a 50 year ban on logging within some additional 7,000 acres, it allowed Pacific Lumber to bypass many logging restrictions on much of its land, including protections for endangered species and limits on the rate of logging. The company owns some 210,000 acres in Humboldt County. It is nearly four years later and many local activists are clearly not happy with the consequences."

[Another Jewish monopoly:]
Ever wonder why the stars come out for charity? Thank celebrity brokers,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 3, 2003
"Celebrity Connection, founded 20 years ago by Barry Greenberg, is the exclusive coordinator for all of B’nai B’rith’s fund-raising dinners in the United States. Greenberg, 51, is a pioneer in the celebrity brokering business, which involves finding, matching and hiring celebrities to make appearances on behalf of organizations. While celebrity brokering is still a small industry, it’s growing fast as America becomes ever more obsessed with celebrity. Curiously, virtually all the major players in the field are Jewish. 'Initially, Celebrity Connection was conceived as a clearinghouse for celebrity participation in charity,' recalls Greenberg, who previously worked for Jewish nonprofit organizations, including B’nai B’rith and the Jewish National Fund, and currently is vice president of Temple Israel of Hollywood, Calif ... While Celebrity Connection is the oldest and biggest firm in the industry, another key player is Celebrity Source in Los Angeles. Established in 1988 by Rita Tateel, who has a background in Jewish communal service, Celebrity Source also is a full-service firm, which often arranges video or satellite celebrity if celebrities can’t attend an event in person ... Another player in the field is Mark Goldman, founder and principal of the Oxnard, Calif-based Damon Brooks, a boutique firm in the niche market of celebrities and athletes who have overcome disabilities ... [Billy] Crystal, for example, 'throws his energy into big projects, like the planned Performing Arts Peace Center at the Hebrew University, to which he has personally donated $1.5 million,' Brezner says."

Leaders of the Pack.A new book recounts the large Jewish influence on rock ’n’ roll, but misses a few beats,
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angles, February 14, 2003
[Review of “Rock ’n’ Roll Jews,” by Professor Michael Billig - Syracuse University Press, $19.95]
"Mothers, politicians (Southerners, especially) and clergy alike worried that rock music would rot the morality of their children. To classical music aficionados, rock was merely a geological formation, certainly not a musical form. Nevertheless, it has not only endured for a half-century, but rock music has created a volcano in popular world culture. Today rock music is a multibillion dollar industry, by far the most profitable and distributed of all musical genres. In 'Rock ’n’ Roll Jews' — a personal passion of Professor Michael Billig of England’s Loughborough University — we discover that Jews were, and continue to be, major players in the rock industry. For every 'name' performer, like Bette Midler, there are hundreds of behind-the-scenes Jewish figures who have enabled rock to thrive. To Billig, rock is very 'Jewish' ... Irving Berlin, who popularized Tin Pan Alley music (the forerunner of rock), was a commercially successful role model for many of the pioneer Jewish rock ’n’ rollers. The heroes of Billig’s rich work are not the household names we recognize as performers. Rather, they are the obscure and often tormented lives of songwriters with names like Doc Pomus (R&B songwriter for Elvis), who was confined to a wheelchair due to childhood polio. Other personalities in the book include Los Angeles’ own enigmatic producer, Phil Spector Another interesting story is told of Lou Reed, the urban music legend of 'Take A Walk on the Wild Side' fame. He wrote racy lyrics at a time when radio stations were fearful of having their licenses lifted by the Federal Communications Commission. We also find colorful sketches of Monterey Rock Music Festival maven Lou Adler, but not his co-producer, Holocaust survivor Bill Graham. And then there are the 'black lyrics' of co-writers Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller ... Billig defends the role of the Jews. He observes that Jews wrote, produced and successfully distributed to white radio stations many top hits for black groups ... ” Only in the “counterculture” 1960s did other obviously Jewish performers surface. The nonethnic Tom and Jerry of the 1950s became the very Jewish Simon and Garfunkel of the 1960s and ’70s. Billy Joel, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is another rock idol of the new type. Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow represent a middle-of-the-road musical sound and a very Jewish persona. Paradoxically, the two groups that bemoan “satanic” rock music the most — Evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews — both use this medium to effectively communicate the human relationship to God. For trivia buffs, Norman Greenbaum is the Jewish singer-songwriter behind one of the most popular Christian rock songs of all-time, 'Spirit in the Sky.' Yet, he never converted to Christianity."

Old Smoke: The Death of Daniel Burros,
New York Press, February 18, 2003
"A Jewish Klansman who did more than just hate himself. The Times reporter was wrapping up his breakfast interview with the Grand Dragon of New York, the state boss of the Ku Klux Klan. They were in a luncheonette near Lefferts Blvd. in Queens, a little before 9:00 a.m. on Fri., Oct. 29, 1965. They had gone over the Klansman’s education, jobs, and military career. Then John McCandlish Phillips asked Daniel Burros how he had become a Nazi. The 28-year-old Burros, squat, blue-eyed, with crew-cut blond hair, talked about his admiration of the Third Reich and his hatred of the Jews, gloating that their purge in the United States would be far more violent than it had been in a 'civilized and highly cultured' country like Germany. The conversation continued until Phillips murmured, 'Your parents were married by the Reverend Bernard Kallenberg in a Jewish ceremony in The Bronx.' Before leaving the luncheonette, Burros said that he would kill Phillips. Daniel Burros, son of George and Esther Sunshine Burros, grandson of Russian Jews, was born March 5, 1937. He attended Hebrew school at Talmud Torah in Richmond Hill; his bar mitzvah was held there on March 4, 1950, the fifteenth day of Adar ... Burros worked as a printer at the Queens Borough Public Library. Though a diligent, conscientious employee, he talked of nothing but his admiration for Hitler and his hatred of Jews. His parents knew. They prayed it would go away. In his spare time, Burros operated the one-man American National Socialist Party from a post office box in South Ozone Park. He rubber-stamped swastikas onto his letters; distributed fliers such as 'There’s Nothing Wrong with America That a Pogrom Wouldn’t Cure.' He preached that 'the Jews must suffer and suffer and suffer.' In 1960, Burros moved to Arlington, VA. He lived at the headquarters of the American Nazi Party, where the rug was an ark curtain from a synagogue. He swore an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler and to George Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi leader ... While working at a Manhattan printing company, Burros joined other dissident Nazis in founding the American National Party."

[So, what does the following article signify? That Jewish author Daniel Levitas is a fraudster, trying to pin the label of  "Jewish" upon virtually all and everything -- wherein virtually ANYTHING is coopted to the "Jewish" root, or that "Jews" DO turn up at the helm of virtually all and everything? In either case, apparently unbeknownst to Mr. Levitas, he makes a bizarre case for "Jewish" omnipresence.]
Hate thy neighbor,
by Daniel Levitas, Creative Loafing, November 27, 2002
"The raspy voice of 'Reverend' William Potter Gale filled the airwaves over western Kansas on a summer night in July 1982. From the studios of country music station KTTL in Dodge City, Gale's tape-recorded sermon carried into homes, diners, cars and the cabs of combines that rolled across the last unharvested fields of winter wheat. The retired Army lieutenant colonel spoke in short rapid-fire bursts: ...'If a Jew comes near you, run a sword through him.' Like Gale's other speeches and sermons, this broadcast had a hate-filled theme: A satanic Jewish conspiracy disguised as communism was corrupting public officials and the courts, undermining the sovereignty of America and its divinely inspired Constitution. Gale, a self-proclaimed 'minister' in the Christian faith, believed that white Anglo-Saxon Christians were the true descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel to whom God's covenant belonged. Jews were children of the devil,and the nonwhites that swarmed the planet were 'mud people,' incomplete renditions of the pure Aryan man that God created in Adam. Obsessed with maintaining white supremacy, Gale railed against all forms of 'race-mixing' as a violation of 'God's law.' Other sermons warned of racial Armageddon, attacked Catholics and other minorities, and advised listeners to learn guerrilla warfare so they could garrote people in their sleep. 'You're damn right I'm teaching violence!" Gale acknowledged. You better start making dossiers, names, addresses, phone numbers, car license numbers, on every damn Jew rabbi in this land ... and you better start doing it now. And know where he is. If you have to be told any more than that, you're too damn dumb to bother with.' But William Potter Gale had a secret -- something that ultimately exposed the hypocrisy of all he preached ... Inspired by his hatred of the government, Gale created the paramilitary group known as the Posse Comitatus ... Gale officially established the Posse Comitatus in 1971. And a decade later, he helped launch the Christian Patriot movement ... During the early '70s, when other right-wing organizations were collapsing, the Posse thrived by disseminating its ideas and spawning successive waves of violence. It was largely unaffected by Gale's death in 1988, 17 years after its founding. Like children grown to maturity, the forces he shaped have fueled the radical right to the present day. From Gale's original ideas and comparatively narrow base of tax protesters and Christian Identity believers, the message of the Posse Comitatus has spread across America, spawning crime and violence and pushing seemingly marginal ideas into the mainstream. It ultimately metamorphosed into the broader Christian Patriot and militia movements of the late '80s and '90s. For decades, the Ku Klux Klan and its various allies had created social movements and sought political power based upon explicit appeals to racial purity and Christian Nationalism. Gale was no less fanatical in his devotion to 'white survival' or his denunciations of world Jewry -- a fanaticism that may well have grown out of a fervent self-denial of his own genealogy ... Even today, millions of Americans share the belief that the United States should be a predominantly Christian nation. That blacks breed crime and are innately less intelligent than whites. That interracial marriage should be against the law. That Jews are clannish, cunning and too powerful for the good of the country. Added to these essential themes of bigotry -- which resonate well beyond the ranks of the far right -- is the vague but popular notion that the nation is on the verge of relinquishing its sovereignty to a shadowy cabal of 'globalistic' forces known as 'the New World Order' ... The resulting threats and violence prompted the United States Department of Justice to launch a full domestic security investigation of the Posse in 1976 ... But the story of the Posse Comitatus begins not with a litany of its failures and achievements, or with the Oklahoma City bombing, or with manifestos and sermons, or with violent altercations that made headlines and left lawmen and others dead. It starts at a personal level, a century earlier, with the ancestors of William Potter Gale and their arrival in America. Like other 19th-century immigrants, they were fleeing tyranny and seeking freedom. And remarkably, the Gale family was Jewish. Over his three decades of right-wing activism, Gale successfully hid the secret of his Jewish roots, even as he preached the anti-Semitic theology of Christian Identity, claiming that Jews were satanic and white Anglo-Saxon Christians were the true descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Ironically enough, Bill Gale was a Jewish anti-Semite who spent a lifetime trying to convince Christian anti-Semites that they, too, were Jews."

[The Anti-Defamation League has for years co-opted the FBI in ADL's search for "hate" and "anti-Semitism." The Jewish American Lobby's private, pro-Israel spy agency has morphed into America's government surveillance system.]
Remarks prepared for delivery,
by Robert S. Mueller III, Director,
Federal Bureau of Investigation at the Anti-Defamation League's 24th Annual National Leadership Conference Washington, DC May 7, 2002
"I have long admired and respected the work of ADL, and I appreciate your longstanding support of the FBI. I know that under my predecessor, Louis Freeh, this partnership reached new heights. As I told Abe and Jess [heads of the ADL], I am absolutely committed to building on that relationship. We in the FBI tremendously value your perspectives and your partnership. Your insights and research into extremism are particularly helpful to us, shedding light on the changing nature of the terrorist threats facing America. Your support of hate crime and terrorist investigations, which are now front and center in the work of the FBI, is essential to us. And the training and education you provide for the FBI and for law enforcement have never been more relevant. That includes the conference on extremist and terrorist threats you are sponsoring later this month at the FBI Academy. And it especially includes the classes at the Holocaust Museum that Abe and Jess helped arrange for our New Agents and for National Academy students."

Police On My Back. Costa Mesa cops bomb U.S. Bombs show, Kona Lanes is collateral damage,
Orange Country Register (California), August 1999
"Is the Costa Mesa Police Department, in its zeal to protect the public, slandering OC bands by branding them 'Nazis' or 'skinheads' when they’re nothing of the kind? That’s the question in the wake of a canceled July 10 show by local punkers U.S. Bombs. The band was set to play a record-release party for the group’s latest disc, The World, at Kona Lanes, a Harbor Boulevard bowling alley. Tickets had been sold for the all-ages show, and everything seemed in order—until July 7. That’s when Costa Mesa police Sergeant Clay Epperson approached Kona Lanes management and told them the show could not go on. The reason: Epperson allegedly asserted that U.S. Bombs is a Nazi band, citing as evidence an event flier depicting a shaven-headed, skanking youth. Epperson also told promoters they didn’t have the right permits, and the show was pulled. Scott Tucker, the promoter who booked the U.S. Bombs show at Kona Lanes, admits he may not have had his paperwork in order, but, he says, he had booked shows at the venue last summer under the exact same permits, and there had never been any problems with police before. He says the cancellation cost him and U.S. Bombs about $4,000, as well as a Muffs gig that had to be moved. Tucker says he eventually contacted Epperson in an effort to get to the bottom of things. 'The first thing he asked me was, ‘Do [U.S. Bombs] have a Nazi following?’ I said they didn’t,' says Tucker, who is Jewish."

Rockin’ for Israel. Musicians provide Holy Land support for a song,
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, February 23, 2003
"Whereas nightclub gigs seem unlikely places for political rhetoric, Rebbe Soul and a number of other Los Angeles-based musicians are finding that the concert stage provides them with a mini soapbox, where they can espouse their views and galvanize support for Israel from a younger, otherwise disinterested crowd in a way that other political efforts cannot. These musicians, such as Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell, The Wallflowers’ Rami Jaffee, Peter Himmelman, the Moshav Band, the Jukebox Junkies and rapper Etan G, are using their art for a cause, either by singing songs that call for the support of the Holy Land, donating their appearance for concerts where the proceeds go to Israel, or both. While the artists tend to steer clear of erudite analyses of Middle East problems, they allow their music to create a supportive, feel-good milieu that will leave listeners feeling positively about Israel. 'Music has a way of breaking down doors, and musicians can really educate the next generation,” said Stuart Wax, the founder of Midnight Music Management, who organized a Rock for Israel concert last May at The Mint nightclub. 'I remember a few years ago years ago, Metallica played a concert in Russia that was televised on MTV, but the same night Slash from Guns N’ Roses was playing ‘Hava Nagila’ at a concert in Tel Aviv, and it was not mentioned anywhere,' he said. 'If kids saw that Guns N’ Roses are playing in Israel and Perry Farrel was playing in Israel, they could understand that Israel is not the [demonized country] they see on TV' ... 'Whenever an organization calls up and says we want to do something for Israel, I usually do it for free,' said Etan G, otherwise known as the Jewish Rapper, who often travels to Israel to perform ... Another Rock for Israel act, the Moshav Band, a Los Angeles-based group made up of three Israeli ex-pats from Moshav Modiin, the settlement founded by the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, have spent the past few years playing gigs in college campuses in order to raise awareness of Israel and Judaism. Many of the concerts were performed as part of an Edgar Bronfman sponsored effort called the Wake Up Tour."

[Jews are the navel of the universe. Is this not an established premise of modern Western culture? And now Judeocentrism declares that the Enlightenment -- the ideological opening that drew Jews out of their self-imposed Talmudic ghettos -- is the basis for fascism. Today's Judeocentrism is the real "fascism" and suffocating totalitarianism in intellectual thinking, wherein all thought, all reality, is twisted to revolve around the presumed Jewish sun against all the rest that is declared now to be darkness.]
The Rage of Reason. A scholar argues that Enlightenment thought was shaped by its obsession with Judaism,
by Danny Postel, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 28, 2003
"For all their championing of reason, toleration, and individual rights, the heroes of the Enlightenment were not exactly enlightened about Jews. A 'vile people, superstitious, ignorant, and both scientifically and commercially stunted,' wrote no less an Enlightenment icon than Voltaire. Such pronouncements were not out of step with the views of many other Enlightenment thinkers. But in his highly anticipated first book, Adam Sutcliffe, a 33-year-old assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, makes the bold claim that what has for centuries been referred to as 'the Jewish question,' rather than being merely a less-than-admirable aspect of Enlightenment thought, was actually of central importance in shaping it. 'Like a stubborn shard of intellectual grit,' Judaism was a 'ubiquitous, troubling, and often frustrating presence' for the philosophical architects of the movement, writes Mr. Sutcliffe in Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press). Regarded as 'not only the most venerably orthodox but also the most inscrutable and most potentially subversive strand of theology,' he says, Judaism was 'uniquely difficult for Enlightenment thinkers to negotiate.' The 'Jewish question' brought out what Mr. Sutcliffe regards as important paradoxes in their thought -- unresolved tensions that he maintains constantly threatened to undermine the very Enlightenment idea. The British-born historian is not the first writer to knock Enlightenment thinkers off their pedestals. The period's 'dark side' has been a recurring theme for more than a century now. Critics (among them Friedrich Nietzsche, the Romantic poets, and Michel Foucault) have charged the Enlightenment as an accomplice to a range of crimes that include not only racism, sexism, and 'phallologocentrism,' but also bureaucracy, technocracy, ecological devastation, Western imperialism -- even fascism. Indeed, in the eyes of some postmodernists, the 'totalizing' tendency of Enlightenment thought -- the aspiration to subsume all of reality in its province -- leads inexorably to totalitarianism. Despite the long tradition of such critiques, scholars are calling Mr. Sutcliffe's work groundbreaking ... During the early years of the Enlightenment -- in the mid-1600s -- there was an intense fascination with Jewish themes and texts. The Reformation ushered in a renewed emphasis on the Old Testament, a turning to Christianity's Jewish roots. Scholars in the new discipline of Christian Hebraism mastered Hebrew and pored over ancient Jewish texts like the Kabbalah, 'scouring' them, Mr. Sutcliffe writes, 'for further proofs of the truth of Christianity' and drawing inspiration from the study of Jewish history. But much of this new focus on Judaism was laced with animosity toward its subject. In what Mr. Sutcliffe describes as a 'barbed embrace,' early Enlightenment thinkers simultaneously idealized and repudiated Judaism, an attraction-repulsion that surfaced repeatedly. Indeed, Mr. Sutcliffe writes, philo-Semitism and Judeophobia were 'frequently intertwined in the same text and even in the same sentence.' Paradoxically, however, as Enlightenment thought became increasingly hostile to religion, it focused on Judaism as the source of Christendom. To attack Christianity at its roots, thinkers such as John Toland and Voltaire turned their critical ire on its Jewish foundations. For the champions of the new Empire of Reason, Judaism came to represent everything they were against. To them, Judaism embodied tribalism, scripturalism, legalism, and irrational adherence to tradition. Where the Enlightenment upheld reason, Judaism wallowed in myth. The Enlightenment stood for the universal, Judaism for the particular. Enlightenment meant cosmopolitanism, Judaism insularity. The Enlightenment promised progress, Judaism threatened atavism. In short, the Enlightenment came to define itself, Mr. Sutcliffe argues, as the antithesis of all things Jewish. It was against the backdrop of this self-image, he argues, that the Enlightenment faced a vexing challenge to its own logic. At the deep heart's core of Enlightenment values was the principle of tolerance. Jews, for Enlightenment thinkers, represented the quintessence of intolerance: intellectually closed off and culturally sealed in. Can an intolerant group of people be tolerated? ... Mr. Sutcliffe, who himself has Jewish roots, 'succeeds in showing that a true understanding of the Enlightenment must take Judaism into account' and will thus change the way scholars approach the subject."

["Burt Prelutsky is a veteran TV writer whose credits include, among others, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, The Bob Newhart Show and Diagnosis Murder."]
Diversity, schmiversity,
by Burt Prelutsky, Jewish World Review, March 6, 2003
"A few years ago, I was an Executive Story Consultant on the Dick Van Dyke series, 'Diagnosis Murder.' There were five on us working in the writers' room. We were, by most measures, a fairly diverse group of individuals. Two of us were born in New York, one in New Orleans, one in Chicago, one in a small town in Utah. Three of us were Jews, ranging from Conservative down to merely cultural; one was an ex-Catholic; one was Mormon."

Tearing it up. Michael Savage, once an angry white man who couldn't get the job he wanted, is now a voice of ultraconservatism.. His popular radio talk show can be nasty and politically incorrect. Tough,
Los Angeles Times, March 7 2003
"Operating from his private radio studio on the 15th story of a San Francisco luxury apartment building, Michael Savage, host of the nationally syndicated 'Savage Nation' talk show, is on a tear ... Take a current issue, mine it for possible political correctness, and recast it as a left-wing conspiracy. It is a formula that works. After an earlier career as a writer of homeopathic medicine and folk-remedy books, Savage has emerged as one of the hottest radio hosts in America, reaching 6 million listeners in a network of more than 300 stations nationwide, including KPLS-AM (830) in Los Angeles. His book, also called 'Savage Nation,' has been atop the New York Times bestseller list for weeks. MSNBC has hired him to host his own live TV show, which is to be seen for the first time Saturday. That news sparked an immediate wave of protest, led by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the National Organization for Women and the liberal media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting ... Savage, whose real name is Michael A. Weiner, began his radio career in 1995 at San Francisco's KSFO, a Walt Disney Co. all-talk station that detractors have dubbed 'seig heil on the dial' because of its steady stream of conservative programming, led by the gravel-voiced 60-year-old shock jock, who lives in Marin County. By dwelling on his pet peeves -- illegal immigration, multilingualism and cultural diversity -- Savage trails only Rush Limbaugh (14.5 million listeners); Sean Hannity (10 million); Howard Stern and Dr. Laura Schlessinger (8 million each) at the top of the national talk radio heap, according to Talkers Magazine, the authoritative industry publication ... Who knows how things might have turned out if just one of the 50 colleges Michael A. Weiner applied to for a job beginning in 1978 had responded positively. Weiner, father of two young children, had just received his PhD in epidemiology and nutrition from UC Berkeley. Instead, the grandson of a Jewish immigrant who grew up in the Bronx and who worked previous jobs as a social worker and a high school teacher, met rejection on all fronts."

American Legal System Is Corrupt Beyond Recognition, Judge Tells Harvard Law School,
MassNews, March 7, 2003
"The American legal system has been corrupted almost beyond recognition, Judge Edith Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, told the Federalist Society of Harvard Law School on February 28. She said that the question of what is morally right is routinely sacrificed to what is politically expedient. The change has come because legal philosophy has descended to nihilism ... 'The first 100 years of American lawyers were trained on Blackstone, who wrote that: 'The law of nature … dictated by God himself … is binding … in all counties and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all force and all their authority … from this original.' The Framers created a government of limited power with this understanding of the rule of law - that it was dependent on transcendent religious obligation,' said Jones. She said that the business about all of the Founding Fathers being deists is 'just wrong,' or 'way overblown.' She says they believed in 'faith and reason,' and this did not lead to intolerance. 'This is not a prescription for intolerance or narrow sectarianism,' she continued, 'for unalienable rights were given by God to all our fellow citizens. Having lost sight of the moral and religious foundations of the rule of law, we are vulnerable to the destruction of our freedom, our equality before the law and our self-respect. ... The legal aristocracy have shed their professional independence for the temptations and materialism associated with becoming businessmen. Because law has become a self-avowed business, pressure mounts to give clients the advice they want to hear, to pander to the clients' goal through deft manipulation of the law. … While the business mentality produces certain benefits, like occasional competition to charge clients lower fees, other adverse effects include advertising and shameless self-promotion. The legal system has also been wounded by lawyers who themselves no longer respect the rule of law. The judge quoted Kenneth Starr as saying, 'It is decidedly unchristian to win at any cost,' and added that most lawyers agree with him. However, 'An increasingly visible and vocal number apparently believe that the strategic use of anger and incivility will achieve their aims. Others seem uninhibited about making misstatements to the court or their opponents or destroying or falsifying evidence,' she claimed. 'When lawyers cannot be trusted to observe the fair processes essential to maintaining the rule of law, how can we expect the public to respect the process?"

Jewish Music,
Jinfo
"Western classical music is an outgrowth of the Gregorian chant, which had its origins in the liturgical chants of the synagogue service. In modern times, Jews have played a major role in music as performers, conductors, and composers. Of the one hundred leading virtuoso performers of the twentieth century listed at http://www.oboss.nl/muziek/100players.htm, approximately two-thirds of the violinists, half the cellists, and forty percent of the pianists were, or are, Jews. Of the one hundred leading conductors of the twentieth century listed at http://www.oboss.nl/muziek/100conductors.htm, approximately one-fourth were, or are, Jews. Among the leading classical composers, the Jewish representation is a more modest ten percent (cf., Master Composers). Jewish composers have, however, played a predominant role in the development of the American musical theater and in the development of film music (at least nine of the "Hollywood Ten" who pioneered this genre were Jews). Finally, approximately one-half of the membership of the Songwriters Hall of Fame is Jewish."

BROADWAY AND HOLLYWOOD MUSICALS WRITTEN BY JEWS,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
ANNIE, Martin Charnin (w) and Charles Strouse (m) ANNIE,GET YOUR GUN, Irving Berlin (w&m) BABES IN ARMS, Lorenz Hart (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) BARNUM, Michael Stewart1 (w) and Cy Coleman (m) BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, Howard Ashman (w) and Alan Menken (m) BELLS ARE RINGING, Betty Comden/Adolph Green (w) and Jule Styne (m) THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE, Lorenz Hart (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) BRIGADOON, Alan Jay Lerner (w) and Frederick Loewe (m) BYE BYE BIRDIE, Lee Adams2 (w) and Charles Strouse (m) CABARET, Fred Ebb (w) and John Kander (m) CAMELOT, Alan Jay Lerner (w) and Frederick Loewe (m) CANDIDE, Stephen Sondheim (w) and Leonard Bernstein (m) [lyrics also by Richard Wilbur (?)] CAROUSEL, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) CHICAGO, Fred Ebb (w) and John Kander (m) A CHORUS LINE, Edward Kleban (w) and Marvin Hamlisch (m) CITY OF ANGELS, David Zippel (w) and Cy Coleman (m) COMPANY, Stephen Sondheim (w&m) CRAZY FOR YOU, Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) DAMN YANKEES, Richard Adler and Jerry Ross (w&m) DO I HEAR A WALTZ?, Stephen Sondheim (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) FAME, Jacques Levy (w) and Steve Margoshes (m) FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, Sheldon Harnick (w) and Jerry Bock (m) FINIAN'S RAINBOW, E. Y. Harburg (w) and Burton Lane (m) FLOWER DRUM SONG, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) 42ND STREET, Al Dubin (w) [music by Harry Warren (non-Jewish)] FUNNY GIRL, Bob Merrill (w) and Jule Styne (m) A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, Stephen Sondheim (w&m) GIGI, Alan Jay Lerner (w) and Frederick Loewe (m) GODSPELL, Stephen Schwartz (w&m) THE GOODBYE GIRL, David Zippel (w) and Marvin Hamlisch (m) GUYS AND DOLLS, Frank Loesser (w&m) GYPSY, Stephen Sondheim (w) and Jule Styne (m) HELLO, DOLLY, Jerry Herman (w&m) HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING, Frank Loesser (w&m) JEKYLL AND HYDE, Frank Wildhorn (m) [lyrics by Leslie Bricusse (?)] THE KING AND I, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, Fred Ebb (w) and John Kander (m) LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, Jerry Herman (w&m) LADY, BE GOOD!, Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) LES MISERABLES, Alain Boublil3/Herbert Kretzmer (w) and Claude-Michel Schönberg3 (m) A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, Stephen Sondheim (w&m) LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, Howard Ashman (w) and Alan Menken (m) LOST IN THE STARS, Kurt Weill (m) [lyrics by Maxwell Anderson (non-Jewish)] MAME, Jerry Herman (w&m) MAN OF LA MANCHA, Joe Darion4 (w) and Mitch Leigh5 (m) MARTIN GUERRE, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg (m) [lyrics also by Stephen Clark (?)] MARY POPPINS, Richard and Robert Sherman (w&m) MISS SAIGON, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg (m) THE MOST HAPPY FELLA, Frank Loesser (w&m) MY FAIR LADY, Alan Jay Lerner (w) and Frederick Loewe (m) OKLAHOMA!, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) OH, KAY! Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) OF THEE I SING, Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) OLIVER!, Lionel Bart (w&m) ON YOUR TOES, Lorenz Hart (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) ON THE TOWN, Betty Comden/Adolph Green (w) and Leonard Bernstein (m) PAJAMA GAME, Richard Adler and Jerry Ross (w&m) PAL JOEY, Lorenz Hart (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) PAINT YOUR WAGON, Alan Jay Lerner (w) and Frederick Loewe (m) PETER PAN, Betty Comden/Adolph Green/Carolyn Leigh6 (w) and Mark Charlap/Jule Styne (m) PIPPIN, Stephen Schwartz (w&m) PORGY AND BESS, Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) [lyrics also by Du Bose Heyward (non-Jewish)] THE PRODUCERS, Mel Brooks (w&m) PROMISES, PROMISES, Hal David (w) and Burt Bacharach (m) RENT, Jonathan Larson7 (w&m) ROSE MARIE, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Rudolph Friml8 (m) [lyrics also by Otto Harbach (?)] 1776, Sherman Edwards9 (w&m) SHOW BOAT, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Jerome Kern (m) THE SOUND OF MUSIC, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) SOUTH PACIFIC, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) STATE FAIR, Oscar Hammerstein,II (w) and Richard Rodgers (m) STRIKE UP THE BAND, Ira Gershwin (w) and George Gershwin (m) SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, Stephen Sondheim (w&m) SUNSET BOULEVARD, Don Black3 (w) [lyrics also by Christopher Hampton (non-Jewish) and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber (non-Jewish] SWEENEY TODD, Stephen Sondheim (w&m) SWEET CHARITY, Dorothy Fields (w) and Cy Coleman (m) THEY'RE PLAYING OUR SONG, Carole Bayer Sager (w) and Marvin Hamlisch (m) TITANIC, Maury Yeston (w&m) UP IN CENTRAL PARK, Dorothy Fields (w) and Sigmund Romberg (m) WEST SIDE STORY, Stephen Sondheim (w) and Leonard Bernstein (m) THE WIZARD OF OZ, E. Y. Harburg (w) and Harold Arlen (m)

Jewish Song Writers and Composers,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
CLASSICAL COMPOSERS George Antheil Milton Babbitt Leonard Bernstein Marc Blitzstein Ernest Bloch Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Aaron Copland Richard Danielpour1 David Diamond Paul Dukas Hanns Eisler Rudolf Friml2 George Gershwin Philip Glass Reinhold Gliére3 Louis Moreau Gottschalk4 Morton Gould Emmerich Kalman Aaron Jay Kernis Leon Kirchner Erich Korngold Fritz Kreisler5 György Ligeti Gustav Mahler Felix Mendelssohn Giacomo Meyerbeer Darius Milhaud Jacques Offenbach Shulamit Ran Steve Reich George Rochberg Sigmund Romberg Alfred Schnittke6 Arnold Schoenberg William Schuman Robert Starer Johann Strauss, Sr.7 Oscar Straus Ernest Toch Emil Waldteufel Kurt Weill POPULAR SONGWRITERS Harold Arlen Burt Bacharach Lionel Bart Alan and Marilyn Bergman Irving Berlin Leonard Bernstein Don Black8 Jerry Bock Eric Carmen9 Cy Coleman Betty Comden Hal David Neil Diamond Bob Dylan Fred Ebb Dorothy Fields Rudolf Friml2 Art Garfunkel George and Ira Gershwin Adolph Green Marvin Hamlisch Oscar Hammerstein, II E. Y. Harburg Lorenz Hart Jerry Herman James Horner10 Billy Joel Sammy Kahn John Kander Jerome Kern Carole King Burton Lane Mitch Leigh11 Alan J. Lerner Frank Loesser Frederick Loewe12 Johnny Mandel Barry Mann Melissa Manchester Barry Manilow Alan Menken Randy Newman Laura Nyro13 Richard Rodgers Sigmund Romberg Claude-Michel Schönberg14 Neil Sedaka Carly Simon Paul Simon Stephen Sondheim Charles Strouse Jule Styne Cynthia Weil Kurt Weill Victor Young15 FILM SCORE COMPOSERS Elmer Bernstein Danny Elfman Jerry Goldsmith Dave Grusin Bernard Herrmann James Horner10 Erich Wolfgang Korngold Johnny Mandel Alfred Newman Thomas Newman16 Alex North17 Michael Nyman André Previn David Raksin Leonard Rosenman Miklós Rózsa18 Lalo Schifrin Howard Shore Max Steiner Morris Stoloff Dimitri Tiomkin Franz Waxman Victor Young15

Jewish Violinists,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
SHORT LIST Leopold Auer Joshua Bell2 Mischa Elman Jascha Heifetz Joseph Joachim Fritz Kreisler4 Sir Yehudi Menuhin Nathan Milstein David Oistrakh Itzhak Perlman Gil Shaham Isaac Stern Henryk Szeryng Joseph Szigeti Henri Wieniawski Pinchas Zukerman COMPREHENSIVE LIST Joseph Achron Licco Amar Leopold Auer Yuri Bashmet1 Joshua Bell2 Adolf Brodsky Ferdinand David Mischa Elman Aldo Ferraresi3 Carl Flesch Pamela Frank Miriam Fried Vadim Gluzman Ida Haendel Emil Hauser Jascha Heifetz Gustav Hollaender Bronislaw Huberman Joseph Joachim Leonid Kogan Rudolf Kolisch Fritz Kreisler4 Gidon Kremer5 Sir Yehudi Menuhin Anne Akiko Meyers6 Nathan Milstein Shlomo Mintz Erica Morini7 Tivadar Nachez David Oistrakh Igor Oistrakh Itzhak Perlman Michael Rabin Aaron Rosand Arnold Rosé Alexander Schneider Gil Shaham Oscar Shumsky Joseph Silverstein Tossy Spivakosky Vladimir Spivakov Isaac Stern Henryk Szeryng Joseph Szigeti Henri Temianka Lionel Tertis Maxim Vengerov Henri Wieniawski Efrem Zimbalist Pinchas Zukerman Paul Zukofsky

JEWISH PIANISTS,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
Charles Alkan Vladimir Ashkenazy1 Emanuel Ax Victor Babin Daniel Barenboim Simon Barere Lazar Berman Alexander Borovsky Alexander Brailowsky Yefim Bronfman John Browning Ignaz Bruell Shura Cherkassky Bella Davidovich Misha Dichter Samuil Feinberg Annie Fischer2 Leon Fleisher Claude Frank Ignaz Friedman Emil Gilels Leopold Godowsky Gary Graffman Grigory Ginsburg Mark Hambourg Clara Haskil Myra Hess Vladimir Horovitz Byron Janis Joseph Kalichstein William Kapell Julius Katchen Louis Kentner Evgeny Kissin Wanda Landowska Ruth Laredo Josef Lhévinne Rosina Lhévinne Radu Lupu3 Hephzibah Menuhin Benno Moiseiwitsch Ignaz Moscheles Murray Perahia Menahem Pressler André Previn Michael Roll Moritz Rosenthal Anton Rubinstein Artur Rubinstein András Schiff4 Artur Schnabel Peter Serkin5 Rudolf Serkin Solomon (Cutner) Mark Taimanov Carl Tausig Sigismund Thalberg Rosalyn Tureck Alexis Weissenberg Paul Wittgenstein6

Jewish Orchestra Conductors,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
SHORT LIST Vladimir Ashkenazy2 Daniel Barenboim Leonard Bernstein Antal Doráti Istvan Kertész Otto Klemperer Serge Koussevitzky James Levine Lorin Maazel7 Gustav Mahler Felix Mendelssohn Pierre Monteux Eugene Ormandy André Previn Fritz Reiner Leonard Slatkin Sir Georg Solti George Szell Bruno Walter COMPREHENSIVE LIST Maurice Abravanel Karel Ancerl1 Vladimir Ashkenazy2 Moshe Atzmon Carl Bamberger Daniel Barenboim Rudolf Barshai Sir Julius Benedict Leonard Bernstein Gary Bertini Leo Blech Artur Bodanzky Leon Botstein Semyon Bychkov3 Edouard Colonne Sergiu Comissiona Sir Michael Costa Leopold Damrosch Walter Damrosch Issay Dobroven Antal Doráti Arthur Fiedler Adam Fischer4 Ivan Fischer4 Lukas Foss Osip Gabrielovitch Vladimir Golschmann Sir George Henschel Jascha Horenstein Eliahu Inbal Harry James Mariss Jansons5 Istvan Kertész Otto Klemperer Paul Kletzki André Kostelanetz Serge Koussevitzky Josef Krips6 Emmanuel Krivine Erich Leinsdorf Hermann Levi Yoel Levi James Levine Norman Luboff Lorin Maazel7 Gustav Mahler Walter Burle Marx Felix Mendelssohn Mitch Miller Pierre Monteux Felix Mottl Eugene Ormandy André Previn Eve Queler Fritz Reiner Artur Rodzinsky Sir Landon Ronald Julius Rudel Max Rudolph Victor de Sabata8 Kurt Sanderling Gerard Schwarz Fabien Sevitzky Leonard Slatkin Sir Georg Solti William Steinberg Josef Stransky Walter Susskind George Szell Kate Tamarkin Henri Temianka Michael Tilson Thomas Alfred Wallenstein Bruno Walter Paul Whiteman David Zinman

Jewish Cellists,
Jews in Music (Jinfo)
Karl Davydov Jacqueline du Pré1 Emanuel Feuermann Bernard Greenhouse Natalia Gutman Matt Haimovitz Ofra Harnoy Steven Isserlis Mischa Maisky Gregor Piatigorsky David Popper Leonard Rose Nathaniel Rosen János Starker

Information Technology & The North American Mass Merchandisers,
Prepared by: IHLConsulting Group
"The end of WWII brought an economic boom that was a direct result of the pent-up demand for goods during the war. This demand was fed by the construction of new shopping centers in suburban areas. The old chain and catalog stores continued to hold a powerful share of the market, but the rise of the discounters was the most important marketplace development at this time. One man that took advantage of the demand was Eugene Ferkauf. Ferkauf was a Jewish WWII veteran who understood that people like to buy things cheaper, and he set out to let them do just that by founding E.J. Korvette’s. By using a membership card gimmick, he attempted to sidestep the intent of Robinson-Patman. In 1948 he founded E.J. Korvette’s (no, the name did not stand for 'Eleven Jewish Korean Veterans.' According to Ferkauf, 'I had a name picked out for the store, E.J. Korvette. ''E'' is for Eugene, my first name, and ''J'' stands for Joe Swillenberg, my associate and my pal. As for ''Korvette,' it was originally meant to be spelled with a 'C' after the Canadian marine sub-destroyer, simply because I thought the name had a euphonious ring. When it came time to register the name, we found it was illegal to use a naval class identity, so we had to change the spelling to 'K'). This company is generally cited as being the first of the discount stores that did not have a 5-and-dime root. Korvette’s was soon joined by numerous other discount stores such as Zayres, Arlans and Gibson’s. For many consumers, drawn by generally lower prices despite the low service, these large stores were exciting arrivals in the new shopping centers and suburban tracks that were appearing around all the old urban centers in the 1950s."

[Connie Chung is married to Jewish talkshow host Maury Povich.]
Connie Chung,
by John Koch, Boston Globe, June 29, 1997
Q: I was surprised to read that you're a Jewish mother.
CHUNG: Matthew had a bris, and I am very much a Jewish mother, which is not far from a Chinese mother. My favorite emotion is guilt. Both Chinese families and Jewish families have Chinese food on Sundays. I never converted, but we observe all the high holidays: By osmosis, I'm as Jewish as my husband."

Ben Bernie, 1891-1943. The Old Maestro,
btinternet.com
"Although Ben Bernie and 'all the lads' existed with prominence during the visceral part of the Jazz Age, it is Bernie's success with radio, primarily during the 30s, by which he is remembered ... He was born into a large family in New York as Bernard Anzelevitz. He showed such early brilliance at the violin, his parents encouraged him and believed one day he would be famous ... During his school days however, he seems to be more consumed with being involved with the college shows and such than his engineering pursuit. During these days, he first uses a strange word a lot to describe a feeling. Yowsah. Yowsah. 'Yowsah' is not in my desk dictionary. It is clear to be Bernie's invented word which eventually became a trademark of his radio persona. Even today the word seems oddly familiar; but more about 'yowsah' later. After Ben Bernie left school, he began as many, in the vaudeville shows travelling as far as the midwest ... His big break came when his speaking voice caught the attention of people from the ritzy Reisenweber's Restaurant. Reisenweber's was known for getting talent and that included a good MC ... Ben and 'all the lads' remained popular into 1940s, yet Ben Bernie never quite caught the swing bug. He loved cigars and when not holding a violin, he always had one. He chain smoked them and it probably didn't help any with his sudden illness which resulted in his death in 1943. Ben Bernie is a Jazz Age personality only by the technicality of having an orchestra during the period. He is more of an emergent from it, which led to his radio career."

The Emergence of Jewish Law in Postmodernist Legal Theory,
by Suzanne Last Stone, Harvard Law School

One of the Kurds’ leaders is Jewish? So they claim in Turkish newspapers, by Yigal Schleifer, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 7, 2003
"In the weeks leading up to the war, the Turkish press was filled with various articles reporting, mostly with suspicion, about the Iraqi Kurds’ postwar plans. A Feb. 17 article in the respected daily newspaper Hurriyet offered an interesting take on the situation: Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, one of two political factions that control the autonomous Kurdish area of northern Iraq, is Jewish and comes from a long line of Kurdish rabbis, the article claimed ... In the article, the researcher — a history instructor named Ahmet Ucar — said Barzani’s 'Jewish roots' should lead to a different understanding of the region and its history, since the Hebrew Bible states that the Jewish 'Promised Land' stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates, an area that would include Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. A series of articles and columns in the Haber Turk newspaper, printed after the Hurriyet story ran, took things even further. 'Brothers, we should quit the stories of Mosul and Kirkuk belonging to us,' said one column, referring to two oil-rich northern Iraqi cities that some Turks believe were unfairly taken from Turkey when the Ottoman Empire was divided up after World War I. 'The real owners have started to come out. I am sure you understand who they are.' 'Turkey, don’t be asleep!' the column warned. Yona Sabar, a Kurdish Jewish professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at UCLA and author of  'The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews,' said the articles are based on an inaccurate reading of Kurdish Jewish history ... Rifat Bali, a Jewish historian in Istanbul, said the Barzani story is part of a larger theory circulating for the past few years that has particularly strong popular support in Turkey’s conservative nationalist and Islamist circles. 'Islamists here always say that Israel has a Kurdish card it wants to play — that it has good relations with the Kurds and it wants to create a Jewish state from the Nile to the Euphrates, and that includes the Kurdish area,' Bali said. 'It’s fueled, first of all, by the obsession that Jews are behind everything, and that they use in front of them a crypto-Jew,' Bali said. 'There is also a Turkish fear that the world is looking from the outside and trying to divide Turkey up.' Indeed, a book titled 'Israel’s Kurdish Card,' which describes the possibility of Israel expanding its borders through an alliance with the Kurds, has been sold in Turkey for the last few years."

Sigmund Freud,
by Peter Gay, Time (The Time 100)
"Although the second pillar of Freud's psychoanalytic structure, "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (1905), further alienated him from the mainstream of contemporary psychiatry, he soon found loyal recruits. They met weekly to hash out interesting case histories, converting themselves into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1908. Working on the frontiers of mental science, these often eccentric pioneers had their quarrels. The two best known 'defectors' were Alfred Adler and Carl Jung. Adler, a Viennese physician and socialist, developed his own psychology, which stressed the aggression with which those people lacking in some quality they desire--say, manliness--express their discontent by acting out. 'Inferiority complex,' a much abused term, is Adlerian. Freud did not regret losing Adler, but Jung was something else. Freud was aware that most of his acolytes were Jews, and he did not want to turn psychoanalysis into a 'Jewish science.'"

MEDIA: 2002 AND BEYOND. After a Rocky Year, Time to Face the Music A look at the record firms, one by one, as the industry's problems mount,
Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2002
"Because companies report in different currencies and under varying methods, these comparisons reflect estimates made in consultation with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. For foreign-owned companies -- that is, all the major distributors except Warner Music Group -- figures are based on average currency rates for the period ... How far has the value of music fallen? Look no further than the world's biggest record label, which was assembled just four years ago in a deal then worth $10.4 billion. This year, new accounting rules forced French parent Vivendi Universal to take a charge of about $3 billion to reflect the decline in the worth of its music company. Despite the hit to the bottom line, Chairman Doug Morris [Jewish?] again dominated the charts with blockbusters from every genre. Jimmy Iovine's Interscope Geffen A&M complex takes the crown as the nation's top seller of new releases ... The Lyor Cohen-led Island Def Jam machine, for its part, delivered one of the year's biggest debuts with Ashanti ... Universal Records' Mel Lewinter and Monte Lipman once again struck platinum with hip-hop stars Nelly and Big Tymers. Things were far quieter over at Jay Boberg's MCA Records ... Even in a down year for the industry, Epic Records, led by executives Dave Glew [Jewish?] and Polly Anthony, still is regarded as a hit factory ... Bertelsmann Music Group [Major labels: Arista, J, RCA] BMG rediscovered its catalog ... BMG gave observers whiplash, bringing music icon Clive Davis back as chief of a combined J Records-RCA operation, less than three years after driving him from his seat of power at its Arista label ... EMI Group [ Major labels: Capitol, Virgin] ... Now, top executives Alain Levy and David Munns have vowed that by spring EMI will break even in North America, where its record division has long been a money-loser."

The Frankfurt School of Social Research and the Pathologization of Gentile Group Allegiances, Chapter 5, from the Culture of Critique,
by Kevin MacDonald
"Chapters 2-4 reviewed several strands of theory and research by Jewish social scientists that appear to have been influenced by specifically Jewish political interests. This theme is continued in the present chapter with a review of The Authoritarian Personality. This classic work in social psychology was sponsored by the Department of Scientific Research of the American Jewish Committee (hereafter, AJCommittee) in a series entitled Studies in Prejudice. Studies in Prejudice was closely connected with the so-called Frankfort School of predominantly Jewish intellectuals associated with the Institute for Social Research originating during the Weimar period in Germany. The first generation of the Frankfurt School were all Jews by ethnic background and the Institute of Social Research itself was funded by a Jewish millionaire, Felix Weil (Wiggershaus 1994, 13). Weil's efforts as a "patron of the left" were extraordinarily successful: By the early 1930s the University of Frankfurt had became a bastion of the academic left and "the place where all the thinking of interest in the area of social theory was concentrated" (Wiggershaus 1994, 112). During this period sociology was referred to as a "Jewish science," and the Nazis came to view Frankfurt itself as a "New Jerusalem on the Franconian Jordan" (Wiggershaus 1994, 112-113). The Nazis perceived the Institute of Social Research as a communist organization and closed it within six weeks of Hitler's ascent to power because it had "encouraged activities hostile to the state" (in Wiggershaus 1994, 128). Even after the emigration of the Institute to the United States, it was widely perceived as a communist front organization with a dogmatic and biased Marxist perspective, and there was a constant balancing act to attempt not to betray the left "while simultaneously defending themselves against corresponding suspicions" (Wiggershaus 1994, 251; see also p. 255).1 Gershom Scholem, the Israeli theologian and religious historian, termed the Frankfort School a "Jewish sect," and there is good evidence for very strong Jewish identifications of many members of the school (Marcus & Tar 1986, 344). Studies in Prejudice was under the general editorship of Max Horkheimer, a director of the Institute. Horkheimer was a highly charismatic "'managerial scholar' who constantly reminded his associates of the fact that they belonged to a chosen few in whose hands the further development of 'Theory' lay" (Wiggershaus 1994, 2). Horkheimer had a strong Jewish identity that became increasingly apparent in his later writings (Marcus & Tar 1986, 6; Jay 1980). However, Horkheimer's commitment to Judaism, as evidenced by the presence of specifically Jewish religious themes, was apparent even in his writings as an adolescent and as a young adult (Maier 1984, 51). At the end of his life Horkheimer completely accepted his Jewish identification and achieved a grand synthesis between Judaism and Critical Theory (Carlebach 1978, 254-257). (Critical Theory is the name applied to the theoretical perspective of the Frankfurt School.) As an indication of his profound sense of Jewish identity, Horkheimer (1947, 161) stated that the goal of philosophy must to be vindicate Jewish history: 'The anonymous martyrs of the concentration camps are the symbols of humanity that is striving to be born. The task of philosophy is to translate what they have done into language that will be heard, even though their finite voices have been silenced by tyranny.'"

Privilege Before the Law,
By Paul Craig Roberts, VDare [Originally published in The American Conservative 2-24-03],
"How did we end up with racial quotas when the 1964 Civil Rights Act expressly forbids them? It was primarily the work of one man, an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) bureaucrat named Alfred Blumrosen, now a Rutgers University law professor. Blumrosen’s thoroughgoing and illegal rewrite of the Civil Rights Act was accepted by the Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power (1971) ... Neither the clear statutory language of the act and the amendments nor the act’s unambiguous legislative history could prevent Blumrosen and the Burger Court from standing the Civil Rights Act on its head. Blumrosen ignored the act and its statutory prohibition against regulatory interpretation. He bet that he could get away with rewriting the act because of the courts’ deference to the regulatory agency. Blumrosen redefined discrimination to be statistical disparity or under-utilization of blacks. If an employer’s work force contained a smaller percentage of blacks than blacks comprised of the local population, the company was discriminating. Anything that had disparate impact, such as employment tests, Blumrosen declared to be discriminatory. Having eliminated intent, he was able to shift the act’s focus from specific discrimination against individuals and initiate agency proceedings against employers even in the absence of complaints of discrimination ... Blumrosen’s rewrite of the Civil Rights Act required employers to adopt racial quotas in order to avoid federal lawsuits. Private employment and promotion quotas are held to be legal because of the fiction that they are 'voluntarily adopted' and not required by federal statute. They are required, of course, to avoid federal lawsuits. Blumrosen’s redefinition of discrimination created 'reverse discrimination.' Whites lose opportunities for racial reasons alone."

[Who's at the heart of American publishing?]
Shaping Cultural Tastes at Big Retail Chains,
New York Times, May 17, 2003
"Several publishers said they had learned not to show books with explicit content or racy covers to the buyers for the mass merchandise chains, especially Wal-Mart. 'Our reps who handle that channel might say, `Well, that cover won't get into Wal-Mart,' " and then we have to decide whether we are going to change it, if that is going to be a big channel for this book,' Jane Friedman, chief executive of the HarperCollins division of the News Corporation, said. "They have not dictated to us, but we are very smart about servicing that channel the way they would like to be serviced." Mr. Kirshbaum of AOL Time Warner's books unit said he decided to start a religious imprint because a book buyer for Wal-Mart told him that more than half its sales were Christian books. In the last two months, Crown, part of the Random House division of Bertelsmann, and Penguin, part of the British media company Pearson, both started new lines aimed at tapping the booming market for conservative books. Ms. Friedman said she had created a special sales force to sell rack-size paperbacks to the discounters, increasing sales 30 percent in two years. Michael Jacobs, senior vice president of Scholastic, said his company was investing more in books about licensed characters like its Clifford the Big Red Dog, in part because they sell well at mass merchandisers, which can also sell related toys and apparel. Film studio executives credit Wal-Mart's aggressive promotion and low prices with playing a major role in the recent shift toward DVD buying. Warren Lieberfarb, a former Warner Brothers executive who is considered the father of the DVD, said, 'Wal-Mart now comes close to spending as much on purchasing DVD's and videos as the major studios earn from all the theaters in America.'"

David Lee Roth, Hoping to Take Classic Rock to Promised Land,
By David Segal, Washington Post, May 28, 2003
"Since the dawn of distortion, men have fronted metal bands for simple reasons, like sex, drugs and the joy of wrecking hotel rooms. David Lee Roth has partaken of his share of groupies, consumed his share of drugs and trashed a whole Holiday Inn's worth of suites. But throughout his career as lead singer of Van Halen, and now as a solo artist, he's had another ambition, one a bit more esoteric and a lot less sordid. He's on a mission from God. The God of Moses, to be specific. The God -- let's just spell this out here, shall we? -- of the Jews. 'There's not a lot of Jewish action figures,' says Roth. 'Heroes for little Jewish kids are very few and far between when it comes to belligerent enthusiasm, a confrontational red-meat approach. I'm a highly literate slut. I dig only intellectual smut' ... As he explained in his autobiography, 'Crazy From the Heat,' Roth relished every decadent minute of band life, but much of his style and energy came from fury over anti-Semitism and an urge to crush Jewish stereotypes. That might surprise longtime Van Halen fans who missed the Talmudic side of Roth's tequila-Tarzan persona. But as Roth explained on the bus Tuesday night, he's never stopped celebrating the idea of Jewish identity ... 'Viva la différence, as they say in Israel,' he says, lifting his Bud toward the ceiling and cackling again. There's some madness in that laugh, and at various moments in this 15-minute interview, it's easier to figure out when the punch lines have arrived than the logical links between the setup and the joke ... Onstage, Roth is a few parts Bruce Lee, a little bit of Neil Diamond and a whole lot of porn star. He kick-spins like a cornered martial artist, leaps occasionally off the drum riser and suggestively wedges his microphone down his pants. He keeps a bottle of Jack Daniel's nearby, which he sips in dramatic gestures designed to look like heavy swigs. Most of the booze actually ends up sprinkled on fans near the lip of the stage. 'You do more for brunettes than anyone since Snow White,' Roth leers midway through the show, pointing at a woman a few rows back. She's invited to come forward, close her eyes and place her hand on Roth's fly, which she gamely does. Roth clasps her hand in place, grinds his hips a little and mentions 'little Elvis' ... Roth appreciates the gaudiness of the show, its dated crudeness, its nostalgia for teased locks and tight trousers. It's a caricature now, of course, but it's not a Jewish caricature, which for him saves it from cliche. Maybe it's not a lesson that the graybeards in the faith want to teach in Hebrew school, but if his career proves anything it's that a bar mitzvah boy can do lewd and loud as well as anyone else."

Israel's diamond dealers tremble. Diamond colossus DeBeers today launches fundamental changes to $56 billion retail market,
by Nicole Gaouette, The Christian Science Monitor, June 1, 2003
"It is a modern-day fortress for an ancient business. Workers arriving at the Israel Diamond Exchange pass metal detectors, guards, a photo station for visitors, then fortified doors that read their ID and let them in one by one. Inside, 900 cameras watch as they go about their day. The Big Brother trappings are necessary. In the world's largest diamond market, 20,000 people buy, sell and appraise the fiery white stones and exchange millions of dollars every day. But the fortifications don't eliminate internal threats: the odd robbery - and now a newer, more worrisome challenge. DeBeers Consolidated Mines, the colossus of the diamond world, is making changes that will radically reshape the industry. For consumers, these shifts may lead to lower prices and better guarantees of quality. For diamantaires, as these gem dealers are known, they could end a way of life ... As the largest and most influential company in the diamond world, DeBeers carries heavy clout, and the coming changes are sweeping. As of today, DeBeers becomes a private company, the most formal symbol of a meticulously planned transformation. The firm has also declared that it will soon stop acting as self-appointed industry custodian. For more than a century, the DeBeers monopoly has allowed it to keep a steely grip on the global supply of diamonds, ensuring stable prices and the organization's enormous influence. The Johannesburg-based group has also pledged to stop buying "blood" diamonds, stones sold by gem-rich African rebels to finance war, and to certify that no DeBeers stone is battle-tainted. The industry's ultimate wholesaler of unpolished stones will soon start selling jewelry under its own brand name, putting DeBeers in competition with its own customers for the $56 billion annual retail market. In July, DeBeers will unveil changes to the exclusive group of 125 merchants permitted to buy its diamonds. In Israel, five of the 30 merchants on this list are expected to lose out. "Some people are really biting their nails," says Yuval Ben Yona, an Israeli diamond merchant who says he's not worried, as his diamonds come from other sources. Most dealers 'fight, beg, borrow, and steal,' to stay part of this select club, says Ivan Solotaroff, a US-based writer who covers the diamond industry for Modern Jeweler magazine ... For centuries, the diamond business has been a family affair, one closely linked to Europe's Jewish communities ... The diamond business has expanded in the centuries since, but it is still strongly rooted in Jewish communities and families. Grandfathers, sons, and nephews - women rarely enter the trade - often work together, and that tight-knit, tradition-bound core makes the business unique. There are no written contracts. All deals - from Beijing to Buenos Aires - are sealed with a handshake and the Hebrew words mazal ubraha or "luck and blessing." Merchants often send diamonds overseas to prospective buyers, who keep the stones they want and return those they don't. Cell phones, email, and airplanes figure large in the business, but it still has an Old World ethos. Personal connections are crucial, and everyone seems to knows everyone else - or at least their uncle or father or cousin. 'Trust is crucial, which is one reason there are so many families in the business,' explains Efraim Raviv, managing director the Israel Diamond Institute in Ramat Gan, a Tel Aviv suburb. Even DeBeers, run by the Oppenheimer family, requires enormous trust of its 125 customers, or 'sightholders.'"

Demi Moore, Kabbalah recruiter,
MSNBC, June 5, 2003
"Ashton Kutcher isn’t the only thing that Demi Moore is wrapped up in these days. Moore is so immersed in Kabbalah that a source says the comeback diva was trying to convert co-workers on the set of the upcoming 'Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.' ‘She was singing the praises of [Kabbalah] to anyone who would listen — and some who wouldn’t,' says the source. 'She was encouraging people to take classes and read up on it.' The study of an ancient form of scholarly Jewish philosophy has become all the rage among celebs, and its followers including Madonna, Roseanne, and Courtney Love."

Flaunt it, baby! What do Superman, Italian movie families and Dick Van Dyke have in common? They're all secretly Jewish, says David Herman,
Guardian (UK), June 12, 2003
"In an early episode of The Simpsons, Krusty the Clown is invited to dinner and says grace in Hebrew. 'He's talking funny talk,' says Homer. Lisa points out that Krusty is Jewish. Homer is incredulous. 'A Jewish entertainer? Get out of here!' The whole programme turns out to be a strange meditation on the history of Jewish entertainers in the US. ... The history of Jewish entertainers in America, from The Jazz Singer to The Simpsons, is examined in a major exhibition at New York's Jewish Museum. At first glance, the story looks familiar enough: the rise of Jewish entertainers from Lower East Side slums to Hollywood. Most were descended from Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe and Russia at the turn of the century, including Harry Houdini - the son of a Hungarian rabbi - Louis B Mayer, Al Jolson, the Warner brothers and the Marx brothers. Sam Goldwyn was born Shmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Irving Berlin was born Israel Baline in Russia, and Kirk Douglas, real name Issur Danielovitch, was the son of Russian immigrants. A hundred years later, Adam Sandler's career took off with his performance of The Chanukah Song on Saturday Night Live, and today hardly a top American TV show is without a Jewish character, from Rachel in Friends to the Broflovskis in South Park, from Toby Ziegler to Grace Adler. But as the exhibition makes clear, the story of Jewish entertainers in the US is far from straightforward. Instead of the rise from rags to riches of myth, the real history is full of twists and turns, of silences and disguises. Jewish entertainers disguised themselves in many ways. Most obviously, they changed their names. David Kaminsky, Joseph Levitch and Benny Kubelsky are hardly household names. Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis and Jack Benny are. The same goes for Edward Iskowitz (Eddie Cantor), Nathan Birnbaum (George Burns) and Emanuel Goldenberg (Edward G Robinson). Even a younger generation were forced to Americanise: Leonard Schneider (Lenny Bruce) and Melvin Kaminsky (Mel Brooks) broke through in the 1950s and 60s, Roseanne Barsky (Barr) later stil ... One of the most telling examples comes from 1950s TV drama. Many of its pioneers were Jewish, most famously Paddy Chayefsky. A contemporary of his, writer Ernest Kinoy, recalls how in the days of live TV, 'You'd come into Studio One, or NBC, and Philco, and you'd tell them this long story about this marvellous Italian family. And they would say, 'It's too Jewish.' Because they knew very well that it wasn't an Italian, but it was a Jewish family. Paddy Chayefsky did it a number of times. The Catered Affair is about an Irish family ... Marty, the Italian butcher ... It was because a number of the Jewish writers would come in with material, and the networks would say, 'It's too Jewish. The rest of America won't understand.' " Won't understand - or won't like? As the exhibition makes clear, anti-semitism was never far away in the attacks on Jewish Hollywood moguls in the 1920s, or in the radio broadcasts of Father Coughlin, a popular radio personality in the 1920s and 30s. In one of his most controversial broadcasts, Coughlin criticised the disproportionate media interest in Kristallnacht, insinuating undue Jewish influence at work. He went on to speculate on the strange media silence over the murder of '20 million Christians' by the Soviet communist regime: 'Why, then, was there this silence on the radio and in the press? Ask the gentlemen who control the three national radio chains; ask those who dominate the destinies of the financially inspired press - surely these Jewish gentlemen and others must have been ignorant of the facts or they would have had a symposium in those dark days.' McCarthyism later revived an older discourse linking Jews with communism, and six of the so-called Hollywood 10 (screenwriters, producers and directors held in contempt of Congress for refusing to admit or deny communist affiliation) were Jewish. Throughout the golden years of Hollywood, there were plenty of reasons for Jews to play down their Jewishness and promote their integration into the mainstream. An industry run by Jewish moguls was notoriously quick to play down its Jewishness, which never simply disappeared - how could it? - but instead took on all manner of disguises. The story was just as complicated on television. On the one hand, you had stand-up comedians like Milton Berle, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny and George Burns fronting their own prime-time shows through the 1950s. Perhaps the most famous example was Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, whose writers included Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart (best known now for M*A*S*H), Carl Reiner and Neil Simon. On the other hand, although these stars were Jewish, they could not be seen to be Jewish. According to Jeffrey Shandler, one of the exhibition's curators, "Until the mid-1970s, explicitly Jewish characters were seen in prime-time series only as comic foils or as occasional guests." So, for example, Carl Reiner (who won eight Emmy awards between 1956 and 67), who based The Dick Van Dyke Show on his own experiences of writing for Sid Caesar, had to take out the Jewishness. Instead of Reiner and Caesar, the show had the all-American Dick Van Dyke playing the Gentile lead, Robert Petrie. You ended up with a strange kind of cultural ventriloquism, with non-Jewish characters like Marty and Petrie created by Jewish writers who wanted to write about their own experiences but couldn't. As a result, many of the achievements of mid-20th-century American popular culture now look as if they were written in code. The films of the Marx brothers and Billy Wilder, of course. Others are less likely. Superman was created by two young Jews, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. The humorist Jules Feiffer sees Superman as 'the smart Jewish boy's American dream'. One minute the shlemiel in glasses, the next minute Superman, all-American hero. 'It wasn't Krypton that Superman really came from," writes Feiffer, 'it was the planet Minsk." Or there's Philip Roth's take on White Christmas and Easter Parade: "The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ - the divinity that's the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity - and what does Irving Berlin brilliantly do? He de-Christs them both! Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow' ... [I]n the 1960s, things started to change. Jews became visible. In the 1960s the wigs, blackface and all-American shtick gave way to Lenny Bruce, Dustin Hoffman and Woody Allen. It was as if Clark Kent had stripped off his red and blue costume and appeared, blinking in the sunlight, with big nose, nerdy glasses and a foul but very funny mouth. A number of factors were at work. America discovered the Holocaust with the Eichmann trial and films such as The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and The Pawnbroker (1965). The Six-Day war and the Yom Kippur war changed attitudes to Israel (and to American Jews). There is the golden age of Jewish-American writing: Heller's Catch-22 (1961), Bellow's Herzog (1964), Mailer's The Armies of the Night (1968) and Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969). There was also a new generation of Jewish stand-up comedians, who were more upfront about their Jewishness: Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Tom Lehrer and Woody Allen. In an article called The Yiddishization of American Humor, published in Esquire in 1965, Wallace Markfield wrote: "The Jewish style, with its heavy reliance upon Yiddish and Yiddishisms, has emerged not only as a comic style, but as the comic style." Finally, there was a cluster of films in the late 1960s with a new generation of Jewish stars, who made no effort to conceal their Jewishness: Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. At the same time, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks made their first films. Allen's wise-cracking shlemiel and the in-your-face Jewishness of The Producers ("Flaunt it, baby! Flaunt it!") had a huge impact on the image of Jews in American culture. On Broadway, Fiddler on the Roof ran from 1964-72, and through the 1970s and 80s Neil Simon, Stephen Sondheim and David Mamet created very different kinds of Jewish characters. In almost every area of entertainment, American Jews had joined the mainstream. Television, perhaps inevitably, caught on late. It wasn't until the mid- to late 1970s that Jewish characters began to appear on sitcoms: Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Alex Rieger in Taxi, Murray Klein in Archie Bunker's Place. And, above all, there was Holocaust (1978). It's not just a matter of ticking off Jewish characters or issues as they appear on prime-time TV or in major films. The point is that Jews were able to joke about being Jewish, without code or disguise... "

Arguing the World,
PBS
"From cafeterias to cocktail parties to the pages of important magazines and journals, few groups of friends have argued ideas so passionately and so publicly as the writers and critics known as the New York Intellectuals. Rising from America's working class they went on to wield great influence in the second half of the twentieth century. ARGUING THE WORLD is the portrait of four members of this group: Irving Kristol, Irving Howe, Daniel Bell, and Nathan Glazer. It is the story of a lifelong political argument among brilliant and engaging individuals who came of age as radicals at the City College of New York during the Great Depression and then journeyed across the political spectrum. racing their rise to prominence as political and cultural critics in post-war America through magazines and journals like Partisan Review and Commentary the film charts their path through the controversies of the Cold War and Joe McCarthy's reign of terror, their clash with the tidal forces of the New Left on college campuses in the 60s, and the fights which pulled them apart in the midst of the conservative backlash hailed by Ronald Reagan's presidency in the eighties.Driven apart by their responses to these historical events, by the nineties the four found themselves at odds with one another. Irving Kristol became influential in America's resurgent conservative movement, Nathan Glazer, a forceful critic of liberal social policy, while Daniel Bell fought to defend a besieged liberalism. Until his death in 1993, Irving Howe, ever on the political margins, endured as a key voice of the radical Left ... Arguing the World, the book, will contain a much-expanded oral history of Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell and the New York Intellectuals along with an introductory essay on the making of the film. It will be published in the early summer of 2000 by the Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster."

[Bob Dyland (Zimmerman): Plagiarizer?]
How Dylan's lyrics struck a chord,
by Duncan Campbell, Guardian (UK), July 10, 2003
"Bob Dylan's lyrics have been the subject of university literature courses and countless scholarly discourses, but now they are attracting a different form of attention. Did the singer songwriter, who has inspired generations with his free-wheeling language, use the words from a little-known translation of a Japanese book as lyrics on one of his albums? There are remarkable similarities between the 2001 Dylan CD, Love and Theft, and the English translation of a 1991 book called Confessions of a Yakuza by a Japanese writer, Junichi Saga. The discovery was made by Dylan fan Chris Johnson, 29, from Minnesota, who teaches English in Japan and who found the book while browsing in a shop in Fukuoka ... The phrases were posted on Mr Johnson's website, dylanchords.com, which soon generated intense interest from Dylanologists around the world. Junichi Saga's reaction seems to be very much along the lines of "Don't think twice, it's all right". He had never heard of Dylan before but went out and bought the CD after he learned of the debate. He told the Journal he was flattered someone he had never heard of should possibly have found his words inspiring. "I like this album," Dr Saga said of Love and Theft. "His lines flow from one image to the next and don't always make sense, but they have a great atmosphere." Dr Saga is not planning to make a fuss about the lyrics, although he feels it would be "honourable" if there were some credit on future liner notes."

Fans launch "Free Kobe" Web site,
[sidebar to the article entitled: Kobe Submits DNA during hospital visit]
ESPN, July 10, 2003
"A pair of sports fans have launched a Web site to take advantage of the Kobe Bryant legal situation, the Rocky Mountain News reported Wednesday. Californian Jeff Reichman and Boston-area resident David Feingold have created a campaign and a retail store at www.freekobe.com, where they are offering T-shirts, coffee cups and hats. The two men launched the site Tuesday in response to reports that Bryant, a guard/small forward for the Los Angeles Lakers, was arrested in Eagle County on suspicion of sexual assault. Bryant has not yet been formally charged. "There are not really any superstars to look up to anymore," Reichman, 24, said to the newspaper. The site's creators, according to the newspaper, say they are seeking to "protect one of the few remaining role models in this tumultuous world of basketball fandom." "It's not so much that we are huge fans of Kobe, but it's more that we are fans of the idea that there can be a hero, somebody to look up to in professional sports," Reichman said. The T-shirts and hats sold on the site feature a "Free Kobe" logo and slogans such as, "Because we're running out of heroes."

RIGHT-WING SHLOCK-JOCK MIKE SAVAGE HAS A SECRET,
Radar Magazine
"Since recapping his racist and homophobic rants in our premiere issue, we've learned that the ex-liberal (aka Michael Weiner) whose syndicated radio program The Savage Nation (aka Sieg Heil on the Dial) was scooped up by a desperate MSNBC was once a close friend and pen-pal of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. It took a search of the Howl author's collected letters at Stanford University to discover just how close: March 8, 1970 Dear Allen: After speaking to you on the phone about how nice the black-white thing is in mountain villages in Fiji, I walked downstairs to the school courtyard, where a little–known black brother looks at me, takes my hand gently, we do some old–world Lower East Side finger tricks, and he peacefully kisses the back of my hand – I do the same for his hand. I told him about our brief talk, and he says, "I must have felt the vibes." Michael Weiner Botany Dept. University of Hawaii Honolulu, HI Now, the dope-smoking, boy-loving grand dame of '60s degeneracy didn't seem like the kind of riffraff a nationally renowned homophobic zealot would have on his buddy list. But we shouldn't have been so surprised. In Savage's thinly veiled confessional novel Vital Signs, the protagonist admits he is allured by "masculine beauty", saying, "I choose to override my desires for men when they swell in me, waiting out the passions like a storm, below decks. More intriguing is the reported existence of a picture of Savage and Ginsberg swimming naked together in Fiji." These days, of course, Savage is more prone to saying, "The gay and lesbian mafia wants our children!" Ah, the innocence of youth."

You don’t look Buddhist. More Jews than ever are converting to Buddhism, by Mary Wakefield, The Spectator (UK), July 11, 2003
"There is a joke in the Jewish community about a typical Jewish mother who travels to a remote Buddhist temple in Nepal. Eventually granted an audience with the revered guru there, she says just three words: ‘Sheldon, come home.’ The first trickle of Jews began to convert to Buddhism about 50 years ago. The beat poet Allen Ginsberg was among them, and wrote, ‘Born in this world/ you got to suffer/ everything changes/ you got no soul.’ By the 1970s, there were enough Jewish Buddhists for Ginsberg’s guru, Chogyan Trungpa, to talk about forming the Oy Vey school of Meditation. Now Jewish Buddhists — or Jubus — are the largest group of converts in the West, with all the hallmarks of an established movement. Armfuls of literature pay tribute to their conversion experiences: The Jew in the Lotus; One God Clapping and That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist! On the face of it, the rituals and the belief systems of Judaism and Buddhism couldn’t be more different. So why, and at what point in a young Jew’s religious life, does he fling off his phylactery and attempt the lotus position? How do you move comfortably from life with a paternal divinity to one in which there is no judgment or judge save yourself? The London Buddhist Centre gave me the number of a monk with a Jewish background, called Kulamitra. I dialled with a clear mental picture of an orange-robed Tibetan lama. ‘Hello, yeah?’ said a voice that sounded much more as if it belonged to someone called Dave. Kulamitra’s story is typical. He grew up in an orthodox family, but found no spiritual satisfaction in the synagogue. ‘I still think of myself as Jewish, but my childhood impression of orthodox Judaism was that it is all about superstition and the law,’ he said. ‘No one was even sure why those laws were there in the first place, nor was it a subject that could be brought up for discussion. It’s not the right environment to be looking for religion as a seeker.’ Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, of Maidenhead synagogue, agrees. ‘It is true that an enormous number of Jews are converting to Buddhism,’ he said. ‘I think they feel weighed down by the laws and rituals. Judaism is very good at camaraderie and community, but it doesn’t leave a lot of space for the individual or for spirituality.’ But surely Judaism has its own mysticism in kabbalah? ‘The average religious Jew in the synagogue hasn’t a clue about kabbalah, so it’s not really an option,’ said Kulamitra. Romain added, ‘The kabbalah that is fashionable among celebrities right now is just superficial; a fad. Real kabbalah, though, is equally unhelpful to the average young Jew, because it is incredibly esoteric and limited to a select number of educated and usually Hasidic Jews. You have to know Hebrew and study the scriptures in depth to even begin to understand it.’ Kulamitra’s colleague, Vagsavara, explained the appeal of Buddhism to me at the London Buddhist Centre above their shop, Evolution, in Bethnal Green. Evolution sells a lot of mirrors, incense and crystals, as well as sea-grass CD-holders ... The books all say the same thing: that Jews who convert to Buddhism and follow the eight-fold path are, as a result, happier. Although, by and large, they still consider their cultural and ethnic ‘Jewishness’ important, it is easier, they promise, to find the meaning of life in atheistic meditation than in a relationship with an omnipotent Creator. Despite this, Jews who convert to Buddhism are encouraged to explore their Jewish identity, so it is natural for them to make much of the similarities between their two religions. The Jewish history of persecution and displacement is, they say, echoed by the treatment of Tibetan Buddhists at the hands of the Chinese. Other claims about the compatibility of the two religions are a little more tenuous."

Soriano, Cesar G. 'Brother' Contestant Is Fit to be Tossed,
USA TODAY, July 14, 2003, p. 3D
"Another season, another controversy for CBS' Big Brother. Contestant Scott Weintraub was kicked off the reality series Saturday after throwing a temper tantrum -- and furniture -- five days into the show's fourth season. The Chicago waiter, 33, was served his walking papers after several contestants said they feared for their safety. Weintraub -- who describes himself on the CBS Web site as 'high energy, crazy' -- began his hissy fit by tossing chairs across the kitchen. When producers summoned him to the off-camera 'Diary Room,' he initially refused. He later apologized to his housemates and partly blamed his anger on a past outbreak of genital warts. The incident wasn't shown on TV, but viewers who paid $24.95 watched it live on the Internet."

Using libraries and Web, group hopes to shape generation of Jews,
By Sarah B. Boxer, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 23, 2003
"Julie Sandorf recalls her immigrant grandparents telling her that they learned to be Americans at the public library, where they improved their English and learned more about American culture. Now Sandorf wants this generation of Americans to use the public library to learn to be Jews. Sandorf is the director of a new organization called Nextbook, a nationwide campaign dedicated to promoting Jewish cultural literacy through gateways such as the Internet and public libraries. Replete with extensive reading lists, a daily cultural news digest and information regarding local library activities, Nextbook´s Web site — www.nextbook.org — has been up since early June. ... Nextbook is a project of Keren Keshet-The Rainbow Foundation, a philanthropic organization formed by the Zalman Bernstein estate to enhance the religious background of Jews in the United States, Europe and Israel. Nextbook currently has a "multi-million dollar budget," with no set end date, Sandorf says. As a result, "there are no dues, no membership, no test; you can just go in and learn," Sandorf says. Robin Cembalest, executive editor of ARTNews Magazine, says she uses Nextbook´s Web site to stay abreast of the latest Jewish cultural news. "I often end up sending articles to friends and family," says Cembalest, who says she has been checking the Web site virtually every day since its creation. Library sections devoted to books donated by Nextbook, and including information on upcoming events, have been installed in three libraries in Chicago and seven in the city´s suburbs. Pilot library programs also should begin soon in the greater Seattle area and the Washington metropolitan area, Sandorf says. Amy Eschelman, director of development and outreach at the Chicago Public Libraries, says it´s a "terrific idea to use libraries as an access point" because they´re free and open to everyone ... Beyond installing an extensive Nextbook literary section in the libraries, there are plans to "engage the public at large in Jewish literature and culture," Pickus says."

Understanding Jewish Influence I: Background Traits for Jewish Activism,
by Kevin MacDonald, Occidental Quarterly, Volume 13, No. 2, Summer 2003
"Abstract: Beginning in the ancient world, Jewish populations have repeatedly attained a position of power and influence within Western societies. I will discuss Jewish background traits conducive to influence: ethnocentrism, intelligence and wealth, psychological intensity, aggressiveness, with most of the focus on ethnocentrism. I discuss Jewish ethnocentrism in its historical, anthropological, and evolutionary context and in its relation to three critical psychological processes: moral particularism, self-deception, and the powerful Jewish tendency to coalesce into exclusionary, authoritarian groups under conditions of perceived threat. Jewish populations have always had enormous effects on the societies in which they reside because of several qualities that are central to Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy: First and foremost, Jews are ethnocentric and able to cooperate in highly organized, cohesive, and effective groups. Also important is high intelligence, including the usefulness of intelligence in attaining wealth, prominence in the media, and eminence in the academic world and the legal profession. I will also discuss two other qualities that have received less attention: psychological intensity and aggressiveness. The four background traits of ethnocentrism, intelligence, psychological intensity, and aggressiveness result in Jews being able to produce formidable, effective groups—groups able to have powerful, transformative effects on the peoples they live among. In the modern world, these traits influence the academic world and the world of mainstream and elite media, thus amplifying Jewish effectiveness compared with traditional societies. However, Jews have repeatedly become an elite and powerful group in societies in which they reside in sufficient numbers. It is remarkable that Jews, usually as a tiny minority, have been central to a long list of historical events. Jews were much on the mind of the Church Fathers in the fourth century during the formative years of Christian dominance in the West. Indeed, I have proposed that the powerful anti-Jewish attitudes and legislation of the fourth-century Church must be understood as a defensive reaction against Jewish economic power and enslavement of non-Jews.1 Jews who had nominally converted to Christianity but maintained their ethnic ties in marriage and commerce were the focus of the 250-year Inquisition in Spain, Portugal, and the Spanish colonies in the New World. Fundamentally, the Inquisition should be seen as a defensive reaction to the economic and political domination of these “New Christians.”2 Jews have also been central to all the important events of the twentieth century. Jews were a necessary component of the Bolshevik revolution that created the Soviet Union, and they remained an elite group in the Soviet Union until at least the post-World War II era. They were an important focus of National Socialism in Germany, and they have been prime movers of the post-1965 cultural and ethnic revolution in the United States, including the encouragement of massive non-white immigration to countries of European origins.3 In the contemporary world, organized American Jewish lobbying groups and deeply committed Jews in the Bush administration and the media are behind the pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy that is leading to war against virtually the entire Arab world. How can such a tiny minority have such huge effects on the history of the West? This article is the first of a three-part series on Jewish influence which seeks to answer that question. This first paper in the series provides an introduction to Jewish ethnocentrism and other background traits that influence Jewish success. The second article discusses Zionism as the quintessential example of twentieth-century Jewish ethnocentrism and as an example of a highly influential Jewish intellectual/political movement. A broader aim will be to discuss a generalization about Jewish history: that in the long run the more extreme elements of the Jewish community win out and determine the direction of the entire group. As Jonathan Sacks points out, it is the committed core—made up now especially of highly influential and vigorous Jewish activist organizations in the United States and hypernationalist elements in Israel—that determines the future direction of the community.4 The third and final article will discuss neoconservatism as a Jewish intellectual and political movement. Although I touched on neoconservatism in my trilogy on Jews,5 the present influence of this movement on U.S. foreign policy necessitates a much fuller treatment.

Spanish Literati Go Loco For All Things Jewish,
By DALE FUCHS, [Jewish] Forward, August 1, 2003
"At Madrid's annual weeklong book fair this summer, a growing affection among literati for all things Jewish finally burst out of the gate. An entire day of programming was devoted to "the Jewish book," participants were treated to an exhibit on the history of Madrid's Jewish community and "Shalom" was the standard greeting of the non-Jewish authors and literary scholars who spoke at the Jewish-themed roundtables and book signings. Since 1992, half a millennium after the Spanish Inquisition, a burgeoning fascination with Jews and Jewish life in Spain has been creeping into the country's literary establishment. Mainstream Spanish writers like Antonio Muñoz Molina have embraced Jewish themes while historians and journalists have churned out volume after volume on everything from the Holocaust to the Jewish heritage of the Spanish regions. In the last two years alone, the country's literary marketplace has welcomed the memoirs of a Sephardic Jew who survived the Nazi death camps, a prize-winning novel about the deportation of Jews in Paris and a highly publicized non-fiction work, "The Jewish Lobby," which debunks negative stereotypes implied by the title. And, in an almost implausible cherry on top, the director of Spain's literary council recently converted to Judaism. "In today's novel, the Jew isn't a symbol of the eternal 'other,' but rather a metaphor of ourselves, and the history of the Jewish people represents a suppressed part of Spanish society," explained scholar Paloma Díaz-Mas of the Institute of Spanish Literature. Or, as Jacobo Israel Garzón, the president of Madrid's Jewish community, put it: "Many people imagine how much better off Spain would have been if it hadn't kicked out the Jews" ... Historically, the Jewish character in Spanish literature symbolized passion and seduction, duplicity and evil, mystery and chaos. "In hundreds of thousands of novels, the Jewish protagonist was an essential ingredient," said Juaristi, who described this character as a dangerous, dark-haired beauty. Her foil: an upright and blonde Christian character. "The hero would always fall in love with the Jew but marry the blonde. The Jew would then either become a proto-Zionist or end up killing herself," he quipped. The other archetypical villain in 19th-century Spain, explained Juaristi, was the "Jew disguised as a monk," a religious version of America's Soviet spy genre. The Jewish male was considered benign in ghettos or synagogues, but dangerous when he passed himself off as a Christian — a fear that mirrored the society's distrust of converts, conspirators or anyone who, like a double agent, might have a dual alliance. In contrast, the new Jewish-themed books include Jewish characters portrayed in a positive light. "The Jew is seen as a symbol of a diverse, culturally rich and tolerant society, the highest values in democratic Spain," said Israel Garzón, who believes the new infatuation stems in part from Spanish society's desire to distance itself from the Franco regime. According to this theory, embracing Judaism means embracing tolerance and an international spirit, attributes admired by Spanish society ... In addition, regional and local governments have gotten into the publishing act, paying for historical research on expelled Jewish populations in their area. And cultural institutions are reclaiming the memory of neglected Jewish writers, such as novelist and playwright Max Aub, who lived in Spain before the Civil War. This literary love affair goes beyond Spanish writers. Israeli writer David Grossman writes frequent columns for the leading national daily, El País, and American novelist Noah Gordon, author of "The Last Jew" and "The Rabbi," has been the recipient of several local literary prizes. And since 1992, the 500-year anniversary of the expulsion edict and a turning point in Spain's Jewish sensibility, new-and-improved translations of American, Israeli and European Jewish writers have hit bookstores, from Isaac Bashevis Singer classics to the recent works of Meir Shalev. And the scene awaits a new generation of Spanish Jewish writers — perhaps among the children of Moroccan, Tunisian and Argentine Jewish immigrants who have flocked to post-Franco Spain, capable of telling their own modern Jewish stories, set in Sefarad."

Madonna, a role model for Jewish girls?,
By Jill Suzanne Jacobs, mzvibe.com
"I was one of the lucky 20,000 holding a ticket to the Madonna concert in Boston a few weeks ago. Sitting up in the nosebleed seats behind the stage (which still cost me 55 bucks!) I witnessed scantily clad men hang from the ceiling by their feet, aerial acrobats fly through the air, and Madonna try her hand at acoustic guitar. (She even played some bar chords I was very impressed!) From where I sat sound quality was not so hot. My experience was an assault on the senses - a blur of changing costumes, wild movements, light and sound. Amid this spectacle I pondered a question put to me by our fearless MzVibe editor, Gabi (who sat a few rows away), "Is Madonna a good role model for Jewish girls?" A strange question given the fact that Madonna comes from an Italian Catholic family. But believe it or not-Gabi is not the first one to make the Madonna/Judaism connection, and Madonna herself has a long history of involvement with Judaism and Jewish life. Some examples: Madonna is a life-member of Hadassah, a Jewish women's Zionist Organization dedicated to Jewish life and bettering the lives of women in Israel and the around the world. (editor's note: And the funders of this very webzine!) Madonna has been spotted attending worship services at the Ohr HaTorah congregation in West L.A. Madonna has visited Israel. Madonna has attended Passover Seders. Madonna has grappled with Judaism's sacred texts, in particular the Kabbalah, the writings of Jewish mysticism. So taken on that level, I would say yeah, Madonna's actions exemplify what I would want for Jewish girls: involvement in the Jewish community, a visit to Israel, and a wrestling with Judaism's rituals and sacred texts. But if I look at Madonna on a deeper level considering the subtleties of her character and implications of her actions would have to say, both yes... and no ... I think that Madonna is a woman who celebrates her sexuality. Her words, actions and dress belie a woman who revels in sex. A perspective, by the way that Judaism endorses. Judaism never branded sexual activity as sin nor does it see procreation its only goal. Rather Judaism sees the sexual pleasure that a loving couple can give to each other as holy and blessed by God. Madonna dwells in the interstices and margins of society, a place where Jews have traditionally stood; a place from which Jews have critiqued the world, and advocated for positive change."

William Woolfolk, 86, Writer Behind Comic-Book Heroes, Dies,
By ERIC P. NASH, New York Times, August 9, 2003
"William Woolfolk, a novelist, television writer and comic book author who wrote stories for many popular wartime comic-book characters, including Captain Marvel and Blackhawk, died on July 20 in Syracuse, where he lived. He was 86. Mr. Woolfolk was chief scriptwriter for the television courtroom drama "The Defenders," starring E. G. Marshall, which ran from 1961-65. One 1965 episode he wrote, "All the Silent Voices," was one of the first to deal with birth control. Mr. Woolfolk began his career as a comic-book writer in the early 1940's, after graduating from New York University. He was a friend of Seymour Reit, the creator of Casper the Friendly Ghost, who suggested that he write for Will Eisner and Jerry Iger's company, which produced the Spirit and Blackhawk comics. At a time when comics were still a crude, amateurish art form, the Eisner stable included the artists Jack Cole, Lou Fine and Reed Crandall, known for their impeccable craft and their work's fine line and proportions. Mr. Woolfolk became their collaborator. Cole went on to create the character Plastic Man, which combined super-hero action and surrealism, for Police Comics, a line for which Mr. Woolfolk also wrote stories. He was one of the most highly paid writers of the era, earning $300 a week when an average weekly salary was about $30. He wrote for several different companies at once, including DC (Superman and Batman); Timely, the precursor to Marvel comics (Sub-Mariner and Captain America); and Fawcett (Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr. and Bulletman). Long before Pearl Harbor, American comic-book writers and publishers, many of them Jewish, decided that the United States belonged in World War II. Their comic-book heroes continued to fight during the war."

Jews, Multiculturalism, and Boasian Anthropology, [pdf form]
by anthropologist Gelya Frank, Associate Professor, Anthropology, University of Southern California, Published in the American Anthropologist magazine, Volume 99, No. 4, pages 731-745, December 1997;
[page numbers shown may or may not be 'true' to the magazine edition due to the pdf format]
"The preponderance of Jewish intellectuals in the early years of Boasian anthropology and the Jewish identities of anthropologists in subsequent generations have been downplayed in standard histories of the discipline ... From that vantage, the development of American anthropology appears part of Jewish history." -- p. 731
"The public silence or omission concerning anthropology's Jews is due mainly to the tone of liberal humanism and cosmopolitanism set by founder Franz Boas (1858-1942), himself a Jewish German immigrant, who in 1896 established the nation's first department of anthropology at Columbia University. There has also bern [sic] a whitewashing of Jewish ethnicity, reflecting fears of anti-Semitic reactions that could discredit the discipline of anthropology and individual anthropologists, either because Jews were considered dangerous due to their presumed racial differences or because they were associated with radical causes." -- p. 731
"Sandra Harding's multiculturalist question (1994) may also be applied here: Is anthropology in some sense a Jewish science?.....Therefore my answer is yes, but a qualified yes." -- p.732
"Franz Boas 'more than anyone else,' maintains historian George Stocking, 'shaped the character of American anthropology in the twentieth century.' (1992b: 118-119). Former American Anthropological Association president Annette B. Weiner has described this legacy: .....[quoting Weiner]: 'First he [Boas] established that 'race' does not determine behavior; then he showed that cultural and biological contacts between groups discredit any notion of either a 'pure' race or a pristine culture.'" -- p. 732

Broadway's New Champion Playwright,
New York Times, September 7, 2003
"In a Broadway season that is light on plays, Richard Greenberg has the opportunity to become the first American writer to have two new plays running simultaneously on Broadway since Neil Simon did it in 1992 with "Jake's Women" and "Lost in Yonkers." (The British playwright David Hare did it in 1999 with "Amy's View" and his one-man show, "Via Dolorosa.")"

Foer play. Six months ago, Jonathan Safran Foer was earning $11,000 as a receptionist for a PR company.Today, he's a millionaire novelist and being compared to last year's publishing sensation Jonathan Franzen. Not bad for a 25-year-old who doesn't even like writing,
by Clark Collis, Guardian (UK), June 2, 2002
"Like most writers, Jonathan Safran Foer has a large amount of blank paper. Unlike most writers, however, Foer's blank paper is hanging on the wall of his living room. 'Would you like the tour?' asks the 25-year-old, jumping off his sofa. 'I feel like I need to get a laser pointer,' he laughs, pointing at a piece of graph paper. 'OK, this is Paul Auster. This is Susan Sontag. This is Isaac Bashevis Singer's - I got that because a friend of mine was working on his archive. This is...' The framed paper, it transpires, is a pet project of Foer's. Over the past few years he has contacted various famous authors asking for the piece of paper they're going to write on next. Or, rather, the piece of paper they would have written on next had not this spectacularly polite Princeton graduate got in touch. 'You can get anybody's address if you really want to,' explains Foer. Ironically, Foer himself is rapidly becoming more famous than the people who are sending him their pieces of A4. In the past six months he has become one of America's best-known young writers, thanks to his novel Everything is Illuminated and the $500,000 he received for its hardback rights. 'Surprised is not even the right kind of word,' he says. 'I was a receptionist at a PR firm when I sold the book. I was just the guy who picked up the phone, making $11,000 a year. I always had this number of $20,000 floating in my head. I thought that if I made that then I could go away to Spain for a couple of months. There were just so many things I could do with $20,000. But then... it became a different story' ... Split roughly into two interwoven parts, the book simultaneously relates the entirely fictitious magical realism-inclined history of Trachimbrod - the village where Foer's grandfather was raised and which was subsequently destroyed by the Nazis - and the almost entirely fictitious story of a trip Foer took during his second year at Princeton to find its remains ... Smartness is definitely in his make-up - his older brother Franklin is an editor at The New Republic and his younger brother Joshua is a contributor to the political magazine Slate. Yet despite the brain-heavy background, he's still shocked at his success. 'It was a huge surprise,' he admits. Did he plan to write a book so steeped in Jewish language and culture? 'I actually consider myself to be one of the least Jewish people I've ever met,' he says. 'I read a great line in a poem just yesterday - I only look in a mirror when I think there's something I don't want to see - and there's a funny way in which that's analogous to writing a book. Why would I choose to have all the jokes sort of dirty? Why would I choose such a Jewish sensibility? And the answer could be I don't know. But it's nice to have evidence that says, well, regardless of what you thought you were .... However, there are critics who feel Foer's Jewish background does not entitle this son of a public relations executive and a legal researcher to place humour and the Holocaust in such close proximity. 'People do get upset about that,' says Foer. 'Also people get upset that the humour is maybe at the expense of an ethnic group. Some people say it's at the expense of the Ukrainians, others say the Jews. And people have felt that the humour is cheap. That there are easy laughs. But what people miss is that a lot of the jokes are funny because they're bad jokes. People criticise me for... everything.'"

[Any Campbells products coming out with a Christian cross on them? Don't hold your breath. Only Jews are kosher. Witness the continued Jewification of American life. As Mel Gibson gets everywhere mugged by the Jewish Thought Police for his film about Jesus, more American products get literally stamped as being "kosher."]
Mmm, Mmm Kosher! Campbell’s Vegetarian Vegetable gets the OU seal of approval; more varieties may follow,
by Steve Lipman, Jewish Week, September 19, 2003
"Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Oreos. M&M’s. These are some of America’s favorite sweets that have come under kosher certification in recent years. It’s not just desserts. Campbell’s Soup, one of the oldest and most noted food manufacturers in the country — remember Andy Warhol’s famous prints? — announced this week that its condensed Vegetarian Vegetable Soup is now certified kosher by the Orthodox Union. The first cans bearing the OU kashrut symbol, Campbell’s first kosher soups, rolled on store shelves in the Northeast this month. Nationwide distribution will begin in December. More kosher soups may be coming, say Campbell’s officials, if the first cans sell well. “We’re really looking to make our soups available to a wider consumer base,” said Campbell’s spokeswoman Julie Mandel Sloves. Campbell Soup Co. entering the kosher food field serves as another milepost of Jewish life in the U.S., reflecting both the buying power of kosher-observant Jews and the eagerness of non-kosher companies to gain a foothold in the kosher world. Supermarkets across the country carry the thousands of kosher items, from appetizers to entrees to desserts, under the supervision of the OU and a score of competing kashrut supervision agencies. Other Campbell products, including Pepperidge Farm cookies and Godiva chocolates, already are under OU supervision ... Coca-Cola, incidentally, has long been under OU supervision ... Campbell’s decision to experiment with a kosher soup follows a decade of negotiations with the OU. Certifying a product as kosher — even one as apparently uncomplicated as a vegetable soup, with no dairy or meat ingredients — involved a weeklong visit by a three-rabbi OU team to the North Carolina plant to kasher every piece of equipment used on the production line by cleaning and purging; inspection trips by other kashrut authorities to Campbell’s facilities around the country to check on soup ingredients; and the presence of an OU mashgiach in North Carolina while the kosher soup is being produced. “It’s a fairly expensive process,” Sloves said, but declining to provide a dollar amount on how much Campbell’s spent on the kosher conversion process"

[Jewish embarrassment, after Jewish embarrassment, after ... The Jewish Lobby would give "Jewish" awards to the Devil if he was Judeocentric enough and supported racist Israel.]
Jewish communities split over Berlusconi,
By Irene Peroni, BBC (UK), September 26, 2003
"A US Jewish lobby this week gave Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi its annual award - only days after he said Mussolini was a benign dictator. The remark sparked a wave of outrage among Italy's Jewish community. But the New York-based Anti-Defamation League said Mr Berlusconi deserved its Distinguished Statesman Award for his help to fight a revival of anti-Semitism in Europe, his support for Israel and his commitment to the war on terror. "Berlusconi has sided with the USA against Iraq while the other countries were keeping quiet," the lobby's director, Abraham Foxman, told Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera. "Few countries in Europe understand Israel's problems, and when anti-Semitism exploded again in Europe, he did not hesitate to brand it as unacceptable," Foxman added. Some renowned Jewish intellectuals protested against the award. In a letter to the New York Times, economists and Nobel laureates Franco Modigliani, Paul A. Samuelson and Robert L. Solow said that the award was "bad for Jews, for Italy, the United States and Israel ... Despite the premier's gaffe on Mussolini, many Italian pundits believe that the country has never been as pro-Israeli as under Mr Berlusconi's leadership. The Berlusconi Government is characterised by a marked pro-Israeli, in addition to pro-USA, stance. He has often said that he would like Israel to join the European Union, and during last year's trip to Israel, he snubbed Yasir Arafat by choosing not to meet him. Finally, the Palestinian militant group Hamas has been added to an EU list of international terror organisations during Italy's six-month tenure of the chairmanship of the EU Council of Ministers."

Germany's Jewish revival 'a sign of normality',
By Kate Connolly. Telegraph (UK), October 21, 2003
"Germany's Jewish population, already the fastest-growing in the world, is expected to soar by a third in the next two years, the head of the country's Jewish community said yesterday. Paul Spiegel, leader of the Central Council of Jews, forecast that the there would be around 130,000 Jews in Germany by 2005, and welcomed the increase as a sign that Germany was "on the way to normality". "Today we have 83 Jewish communities with 100,000 members and synagogues are being built all around the country," Mr Spiegel said. "We could not have dreamt of this when we returned after the Second World War." Most Jewish immigrants to Germany arrive from countries in the former Soviet Union, such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where anti-Semitism is rife. In 1950, following the devastation of the Holocaust, only 15,000 Jews lived in Germany compared to 560,000 before Hitler came to power. But since 1990 persecuted Jews from the former Soviet Union have been invited to live and work in Germany, and it now has the third-largest Jewish community in Europe after France and Britain. The state offers arriving Jews generous benefits and the chance of higher education. Applicants can have free German language lessons in their own countries while their cases are considered. But critics within the Jewish community have often accused the newcomers of "diluting" the faith, citing the numbers who have never stepped foot in a synagogue. An illegal trade in forged Jewish birth certificates has added to charges that many who arrive are not Jews. Mr Spiegel said many Jews chose Germany because they had to fight anti-Semitism in their homelands. "The thinking is that a country with the history that Germany has is unlikely to let anti-Semitism become a danger again, so that is why they come to Germany," he said."

[Who runs Hollywood?]
Ultraviolence & The MPAA,
Chicago Tribune, October 23, 2003
"A slew of unbelievably violent and bloody new movies is hitting American multiplexes this fall, and absolutely no one seems concerned about it. Not only that, the Motion Picture Association of America appears not even to have considered assigning such gorefests as Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill its strictest rating of NC-17, which is generally given to films with graphic nudity and/or particularly harsh language. Should we care that movies are becoming bloodier by the day? Or, as the MPAA claims, is it all just good fun so long as the violence remains "cartoonish," whatever that is?"

Memories of a comic genius - has Woody finally gone bananas?,
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), October 21, 2003
"The wallet wants what it wants. Woody Allen has proposed writing a memoir, if he can get enough dough. In this Untitled Woody Allen Fall Project, the most secretive filmmaker in history is ready to spill about Diane Keaton, his ex-girlfriend; dish on his acidic legal fights with his mother-in-law, Mia Farrow, and former business partner, Jean Doumanian; and rhapsodise about the journey of his wife, Soon-Yi, from poor child in South Korea to lady of fashion ordering her own servants about in her Upper East Side mansion. More than a kiss-and-tell, he reportedly promises a titillating romp of breaking "taboos". "For this," said the man who once savoured privacy, in his proposal to market and spin his own scandal, "I want a lot of money." One top New York editor who took a pass on the proposal drily summed it up: "He's going to explain why he married his girlfriend's daughter. Rather a biblical assignment." Early Woody, the hilarious neurotic who wore army jackets, T-shirts and khakis and scorned glitz and celebrity, is now Grody Woody, as consumed with greed and payback as he used to be with sex and death. The New York Times' David Kirkpatrick called the cynical trash-only-for-enough-cash offer "one of the oddest book proposals in memory". The New York Post said the star wanted $US10 million - an advance bigger than Hillary Clinton's, presumably to serve up even grander propaganda about his love triangle. Allen, whose movies have been cratering and who has had steep legal bills stemming from partnerships that grew poisonous, is also trying to scare up money by putting his Upper East Side house on the market for $27 million or so. Dysfunction was a good career move; straying close to incest, not so much. His fear of mortality has been replaced by a fear of anonymity. In search of vindication, he wants to boast about things he should be ashamed of. After all those movies about guilt, he doesn't have any. What price perversity? ... As his character, Ike, told his friend Yale in Manhattan: "You're not honest with yourself ... in the end, you'd rather buy the Porsche, you know, or you cheat a little bit on Emily, and you play around the truth a little with me, and - and the next thing you know, you're in front of a Senate committee and you're naming names! You're informing on your friends! You know, uh, it's very important to have some personal integrity." Ike believed people should "mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics". Somewhere along the line, Allen's cinematic obsessions changed from smart, funny women to teenage girls and women in little white socks, quasi-incestuous sexual triangles and hookers. After excoriating the vapid culture of movie-star worship and instant bestsellers in Celebrity, he's ended up at that trough. To quote Fielding Mellish, Allen's hapless revolutionary in Bananas: "It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham."

The literary itch. The JC Interview: Francesca Simon,
by Joy Sable, Jewish Chronicle (UK, paper copy), August 22, 2003, p. 23
"It is hard to believe that Francesca Simon, writer of the hugely successful Horrid Henry children's books, is the woman who singlehandedly made nits [head lice] an acceptable topic of conversation -- but more of that later. Her new book, 'Horrid Henry's Underpants,' was published yesterday and is the latest featuring the incredibly naughty child who has found a plce in the hearts of young children around the world ... Simon's books have sold over one million copies and are translated into 12 different languages. She is by far this countruy's most successful Jewish writer of childrens's books ... [S]he is the 13th best-selling children's writer in the UK -- living or dead ... [Raised in Malibu, California] [h]er father was a screenwriter. In 1977 she continued her studies at Oxford, picking Jesus College because it appealed to her sense of humor ... Her financier husband's willingness to share [in her child's] early care -- 'I couldn't have done it without him' -- enabled Simon to devote more time to writing."

Beckham's debt to Jewish grandfather,
by Mark Scodie, Jewish Chronicle (UK, paper copy), September 19, 2003, p. 7
"David Beckham's hugely hyped autobiography, 'My Side,' gives an insight into the England football skipper's relationship with his Jewish grandfather, Joseph West ... The player first revealed his Semitic roots in 'My World,' a book published three years ago in whihc he described himself 'a quarter Jewish.' He then acknowledged having 'more contact with Judaism than with any other religion. I used to wear the skullcaps when I was younger and I also went along to some Jewish weddings with my grandfather.'"

New York, old talk, and it's great,
by Sue Margolis, Jewish Chronicle (UK, paper copy), September 19, 2003, p. 36
"I last visited New York 15 years ago. Since then, I had forgotten how much Jewishness dominates the city. It's not simply that there's an overwhelming Jewish presence, that everywhere you look there are hoardings for Jewish businesses -- Tel Aviv Taxis, Cohen's Fashion Optical, a camera shop run by a family of grinning Chassidim. It's not that every park, hospital and college seems to have been founded by Jews. It's the conversations, the cadences, the hand gestures, the shouting, the nosiness, the argumentativeness, the friendliness ... Chatting to various people, I learned that bits of American culture that we Brits regard as 'Jewish', Americans simply see as American. These days, nobody in the U.S. is really aware that their humour, speech, or way of thinking has Jewish roots ... Rightly or wrongly, there is overwhelming support for Israel in America and there is no shame in being a Jew. Here, on the other hand, the situation is somewhat ambiguous."

Between true rock and a hard face [review of the book "The Mansion on the Hill"],
by Don Carnell, Jewish Chronicle (UK, paper copy), August 29, 2003, p. 23
"Although superficially about the relationship between three rock stars -- Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Neil Young -- and their respective (Jewish) managers -- Albert Grossman, Jon Landau, and David Geffen -- this book's subtitle "The Head-On Collision of Rock and Commerce," is what really fires author Fred Goodman ... Moneychanger or not, Grossman emerges as a fellow-traveller more concerned with getting the best deal for his client than betraying the cause. Not so David Geffen, whose hip huckster shtik masked the face of a calculating businessman ... Laundau is similarly castigated as someone born of the underground who sold out to the man. Anybody who seriously thinks that rock'n'roll is anything more than just another arm of the multinational entertainment conglomerates will read this moralistic and hard-nosed history of rock with an increasingly heavy heart."

[Hmmm. So let's see. Wendy KATZ wants to expose the NRA's "influence in Washington." Is she likewise advertising the Jewish Lobby nestled in the White House while she's at it, and the billions of dollars it sucks from U.S. taxpayers to pay for Israeli guns, bombs, missiles, biological weapons, nuclear bombs ...]
Americans Flock to Get on NRA Blacklist,
Yahoo!News (from Reuters), October 29, 2003
"Most blacklists are designed to intimidate. But thousands of Americans are clamoring to join one drawn up by the National Rifle Association (NRA). Actor Dustin Hoffman was so dismayed to find his name missing from the NRA's shadowy 19-page list of U.S. companies, celebrities, and news organizations seen as lending support to anti-gun policies that he wrote to the powerful pro-gun lobby group begging to be included ... Hoffman's name has now been added to the list which reads like a Who's Who of American business, culture and religion and which ranges from the American Jewish Congress to A&M Records, ABC News and talk show queen Oprah Winfrey. An NRA spokesman could not be reached for comment. The list was found deep in the official NRA Web site by a group of grass-roots anti-gun campaigners and publicized by them two weeks ago to garner support for two pieces of gun control legislation going through Congress. The campaigners set up their own Web site (http://www.NRAblacklist.com) and urged Americans to voluntarily put their names there. A full-page ad Tuesday in Daily Variety -- the Hollywood trade magazine -- urged movie and music artists to sign up. "What the site tries to do is turn it into a badge of honor to get on the blacklist by saying 'Hey Julia Roberts is on the blacklist. Why don't you join it?.' It's been incredibly successful. Since we have launched, 25,000 people have signed on to ask to be put on the blacklist," said Wendy Katz, spokesperson for the group ... Katz said the campaigners hoped to expose the NRA's influence in Washington, D.C., spur opposition to a bill that would grant immunity in civil cases for gun manufacturers and dealers, and gather support for renewal of a 1994 ban on the sale of military assault weapons."

Historian: Nazi army included 150,000 of Jewish descent,
Haaretz (Israel), October 30, 2003
"As many as 150,000 men of Jewish descent served in the German military under Adolf Hitler, some with the Nazi leader's explicit consent, a U.S. historian who has interviewed hundreds of former soldiers said on Thursday. Bryan Mark Rigg, history professor at the American Military University in Virginia, told Reuters that the issue of soldiers of partial Jewish descent was long a somewhat taboo subject, overlooked by most academics as it threw up thorny questions. "Not everybody who wore a uniform was a Nazi and not every person of Jewish descent was persecuted," he said. "Where do they belong? They served in the military but lost mom at Auschwitz." According to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Jews or those of partial Jewish descent were unfit for military service, but Rigg tracked down and interviewed more than 400 former soldiers of partial Jewish descent - labeled "Mischlinge" ("half-caste") by the Nazis. He estimates there were about 60,000 soldiers with one Jewish parent and 90,000 with a Jewish grandparent in the Wehrmacht, the regular army as distinct from the Nazi SS. "They thought 'if I serve well they're not going to hurt me and not going to hurt my family'," he said. However, on returning home from the campaign in Poland at the start of the war to find persecution of their families worsening, many soldiers classified as half-Jewish started to complain, prompting Hitler to order their dismissal in 1940. But many of these so-called half-Jewish soldiers continued to serve, sometimes due to delays in the discharge order reaching the front, because they concealed their background or because they applied and won clemency for good service. Many senior officers with Jewish ancestry won special permission to serve from Hitler himself ... Rigg, who has served in the U.S. Marines and as a volunteer in the Israeli army, was moved to research the subject after he discovered his own Jewish ancestry while probing his family tree and after a chance meeting with a Jewish Wehrmacht veteran. Many of his subjects were telling their story for the first time and in some cases their families knew nothing of their Jewish heritage."

[JTR contributor's comment: "What is worse? Snyder's desire to break a contract rather than honor it, or the journalist, herself a well-known Jew, reporting the story without the least bit of sense that such behavior is immoral? Evidently these two people feel no shame in acknowledging that they are part of a culture which is not bound by real moral or ethical considerations, but only by legal and financial ones ..."]
AX MAY FALL ON REDSKINS COACH,
by Cindy Adams, New York Post, November 5, 2003
"In defeat, the Redskins owner Dan Snyder makes the Yankees owner - otherwise known as jolly George Steinbrenner - seem reticent. Mr. Snyder is distinctly disturbed, displeased and dishappy with his team's Sunday loss to the Dallas Cowboys. Oy, is he distressed. Let us say the boss was not charmed with some of his coach's decisions. Fact is, he's had it with the guy. There exists a multimillion-buck contract - $5 mil per annum - with coach Steve Spurrier, and it still has a ways to go. However, what Mr. Snyder really wishes to go at this moment is this coach. Keenly aware of the liabilities here, he is carefully trying to extricate himself from the existing deal. I will be kicked around for this. I will be used as the proverbial football for this. But what I know for real for sure for true is, Mr. Snyder, who is not only hired-hand shopping, but has already definitely - even as we speak - offered the job to another person, a former coach, says: "If he didn't have such a good contract, he'd have been fired already!"

[This article does not the address the vast Jewish dominance of the music industry, from the business side. We discuss it here.]
Judaism's remarkable contributions to rock 'n' roll,
Sun-Sentinel (Florida), November 4, 2003
"The Jewish-roots man of rock 'n' roll lives in Delray Beach with his wife and two children. He works in a study off his bedroom that's crammed with books, pictures and vintage albums by the likes of The Tokens and Jay and the Americans. All Jewish guys, he'll have you know. "Judaism," Scott Benarde maintains, "permeates rock 'n' roll." A former music writer for the Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post, Benarde has devoted the past five years to proving the point. He has surfaced from his investigations with a book, Stars of David: Rock 'n' Roll's Jewish Stories, published by Brandeis University Press. It's filled with many interesting discoveries. For instance, every music fan knows that Bob Dylan is Jewish. But Manfred Mann (The Mighty Quinn)? Pete Brown, lyricist of Cream (Sunshine of Your Love)? Phoebe Snow (Poetry Man)? Keith Reid of Procol Harum? Marc Bolan of T-Rex? Leslie West and Corky Laing of Mountain (Mississippi Queen)? Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction? Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of Kiss? Country Joe and all the original Fish? Who knew? "I wrote this book to uncover a truth I felt had been unknown and ignored," Benarde says, "and to reveal it, not just to Jews, but to anyone. The Jewish contribution to music in the rock era has been and continues to be substantial -- and Judaism has played a bigger role in influencing the music and the people who make it than anyone ever would have thought." Rock 'n' roll is usually thought of as a cross between black rhythm and blues and white country and Western with maybe a detour for Italian doo-wop and crooning. But as far back as Elvis Presley's first big hit, Hound Dog (by a pair named Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller), a Jewish strain has run through the music. Why, even the guy who coined the music "rock 'n' roll" -- disc jockey Alan Freed -- was Jewish. Benarde, who works in communications for the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, believes music "doesn't exist in a religious vacuum." "I found many rockers who care very much about their Judaism, in a field that makes it very difficult to do so." David Bryan, keyboard player for Bon Jovi, blows the shofar at his synagogue on High Holidays, Benarde says. Stan Lynch, former drummer with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, took his Hanukkah menorah along on concert tours. The Wallflowers, when on the road, say blessings to welcome the Sabbath on Friday nights. David Lee Roth, who became famous with the group Van Halen, told Benarde that he learned to sing from studying for his bar mitzvah. Some famous names didn't cooperate with Benarde: Simon and Garfunkel, Carole King, Arlo Guthrie, members of the J. Geils Band. But among those who did were Al Kooper, Michael Bloomfield, Harvey Brooks, Zal Yanovsky, David Grisman, Peter Yarrow, Don Was, Max Weinberg and Julie Gold. Their stories run the gamut of Jewish experience. Some rockers were raised in strict religious households, some by atheists. Billy Joel, son of a Holocaust survivor, was reared Catholic. Some said the feeling of being an outsider, a common aspect of Jewish identity, led them to pursue music as an outlet. Some talked about experiences with anti-Semitism and ethnic stereotypes. "I wanted to write something that will last," Benarde says. I know I'm keeping it around just to settle bets. Lou Reed. Would you believe the family name was Rabinowitz?"

Understanding Jewish Influence II: Zionism and the Internal Dynamics of Judaism,
by Kevin MacDonald, Occidental Quarterly, Volume 3, Number 3
"The history of Zionism illustrates a dynamic within the Jewish community in which the most radical elements end up pulling the entire community in their direction. Zionism began among the most ethnocentric Eastern European Jews and had explicitly racialist and nationalist overtones. However, Zionism was viewed as dangerous among the wider Jewish community, especially the partially assimilated Jews in Western countries, because it opened Jews up to charges of disloyalty and because the Zionists’ open racialism and ethnocentric nationalism conflicted with the assimilationist strategy then dominant among Western Jews. Zionist activists eventually succeeded in making Zionism a mainstream Jewish movement, due in large part to the sheer force of numbers of the Eastern European vanguard. Over time, the more militant, expansionist Zionists (the Jabotinskyists, the Likud Party, fundamentalists, and West Bank settlers) have won the day and have continued to push for territorial expansion within Israel. This has led to conflicts with Palestinians and a widespread belief among Jews that Israel itself is threatened. The result has been a heightened group consciousness among Jews and ultimately support for Zionist extremism among the entire organized American Jewish community. In the first part of this series I discussed Jewish ethnocentrism as a central trait influencing the success of Jewish activism. In the contemporary world, the most important example of Jewish ethnocentrism and extremism is Zionism. In fact, Zionism is incredibly important. As of this writing, the United States has recently accomplished the destruction of the Iraqi regime, and it is common among influential Jews to advocate war between the United States and the entire Muslim world. In a recent issue of Commentary (an influential journal published by the American Jewish Committee), editor Norman Podhoretz states, “The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil [i.e., Iraq, Iran, and North Korea]. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as ’friends’ of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen.” More than anything else, this is a list of countries that Israel doesn’t like, and, as I discuss in the third part of this series, intensely committed Zionists with close links to Israel occupy prominent positions in the Bush administration, especially in the Department of Defense and on the staff of Vice President Dick Cheney. The long-term consequence of Zionism is that the U.S. is on the verge of attempting to completely transform the Arab/Muslim world to produce governments that accept Israel and whatever fate it decides for the Palestinians, and, quite possibly, to set the stage for further Israeli expansionism."

[The Jewish Queen speaks. You know what this country needs, Ilana? Less arrogant Jews like you exploiting (helping?) Blacks by cutting the minimum wage, less Jews like you pissing on WASPs, and more (any?) Jewish janitors to clean up all the puke on TV all the time. The next time Ms. Mercer has writer's block (which, semantically speaking, seems to be a constant), we suggest Ms. Mercer sell her Mercedes and get a job flipping burgers for a few years, preferably for sticks of gum: say, 12 sticks (2 used) an hour.]
Selling out black Americans,
by Ilana Mercer, World Net Daily, November 7, 2003
"It's both libel and lie, but it's repeated again and again by immigration lobbyists. Be they liberals, libertarians or plain la Raza racists, they all say the same: illegal aliens only take the jobs Americans refuse to do. The nation's elites are forever singing hymns to illegal aliens for allegedly rescuing Americans from sloth. Terry Anderson does not. His testimony in 1999 to the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims ought to have made Congress sing a different tune. Sadly, it didn't. Anderson, an auto mechanic turned radio talk-show host and activist, lives in South Central Los Angeles. He speaks for "those ... at the bottom who have no power" – blacks like himself who were once gainfully employed as auto mechanics, body and fender repairmen, roofers, framers, drywallers, gardeners, and truck drivers. "We, black Americans are being displaced in Los Angeles," Anderson told an indifferent Congress. "We are being systematically and economically replaced. And the next time somebody tells you that the illegals only take jobs that blacks won't do, just remember that we were doing those jobs before the illegals got here." As hard as it is for open-border internationalists to believe, once there indeed were plenty of black janitors in Los Angeles. In the early 1970s, before the trickle of cheap foreign labor turned into a torrent, these Americans (yes, gasp, Americans!) even did construction and house painting. ... The fabrications of the free-immigration crowd notwithstanding, bussing tables, washing dishes, flipping burgers and mowing the neighborhood lawns were once vital jobs for young, poor Americans, white and black. The vicious slander of America's poor by the open-border devotees is rendered more disingenuous considering the minimum-wage laws. How on earth can anyone say with certainty that Americans are not willing to work for lower wages if the law bars employers from hiring them at a market price? By fixing the price of labor above the market rate or the employee's productivity, minimum-wage laws always increase unemployment among the poor and the unskilled ... Supply and demand should be allowed to determine the price of labor. Once the borders are shut to the deluge of illegal laborers, the supply of cheap labor (as well as the steady "supply" of crime and welfarism) will no longer be limitless. With a smaller pool of workers, wages for "menial work" will soon rise – all the more so as employers, no longer seduced by the interminable flood of cheap, illegal labor, begin to bid for the most productive workers. The resulting higher wages, in turn, will induce more Americans to do such work. It's all very well to disenfranchise meek, guilt-ridden WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). But by encouraging the displacement of black Americans, promoters of unfettered immigration – black leaders included – may have slipped up strategically. Given their history, blacks are less inclined to fade into the night."

[The usual disgusting Jewish hypocrisy: the U.S. government sends BILLIONS of dollars of U.S. taxpayers' money for Israeli guns, tanks, jets, nuclear bombs, and biological weapons, thanks to the Jewish Lobby. Are the Jews below on the NRA lists protesting THAT? Hell no. Rabbi Menitoff's comment that "I don't know of any self-respecting organization that creates a blacklist" may win him the Jewish Tribal Review's JEWISH HYPOCRITE OF THE YEAR AWARD (in a very crowded field of contenders). I guess he's never heard of the Anti-Defamation League (that great monitoring and mind control agency), and all the other Jewish Thought Police organizations that list -- as part of the normal Jewish ideological diet -- "anti-Semitic" enemies of every persuasion. We can expect the National Rifle Association to appear now on this Jewish "black list." This article is ITSELF confirmation of nomination of the NRA for the Jewish Lobby's target of ideological criminals).
Gun Control Ad Highlights Jews on NRA 'Blacklist',
By ERIC MARX, FORWARD, November 7, 2003
"In their latest campaign against the National Rifle Association, gun-control groups are highlighting the names of Jewish organizations and individuals found on an NRA-compiled "blacklist," in what observers say is an effort to spur one of the gun-control lobby's key constituencies to action. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence-Million Mom March bought advertisements in The New York Times and other publications last week inviting gun-control advocates to "join the honor roll at www.NRAblacklist.com." The NRA's register of those it considers enemies contains the names of many different organizations and individuals, including tennis commentator John McEnroe, newsman Walter Cronkite and rock star Bruce Springsteen. Yet fully a fifth of the names cited in a list of 35 featured in the Brady Campaign-Million Mom March ad belonged to Jewish organizations or individuals. "They were consciously or unconsciously acknowledging that American Jews are an important demographic in the universe of domestic social policy and social organizing," said David Twersky, a spokesman for the American Jewish Congress. The AJCongress appears on the NRA "blacklist" and in the Brady ad along with Hadassah, former New York City mayor Ed Koch, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, actor Billy Crystal and comedian Mel Brooks ... Jewish groups that are on the NRA "blacklist" but are not cited in the Brady ad include the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, B'nai B'rith, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Jewish Labor Committee, the National Council of Jewish Women and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Five religious leaders are singled out by the NRA, including Rabbi David Saperstein, the chief lobbyist for the Reform movement; Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive vice president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. No bodies of the Conservative movement make the NRA list, despite that movement's pro-gun control positions. Menitoff said he didn't understand the point of publicly labeling one's enemies. "I don't know of any self-respecting organization that creates a blacklist," he said. "It's beyond the pale. It has no effect on our stance as an organization, and I can't believe it would have any effect on any other credible organization."

The "Kosher Nostra Scam" on the American Consumer,
by Ernesto Cienfuegos, La Voz de Aztlan, April 27, 2002
"La Voz de Aztlan receives quite a few "news tips" per week from our many subscribers and readers. Some we dismiss immediately but a very few catch our attention. Last week we receive an e-mail asking us if we knew the significance of the small encircled letter "U" or letter "K" that can be found printed on many food cans, food packages and on other kitchen products. The message gave us some clues and suggested that we do some research into the subject. What we found certainly was "news" to us and it both shocked and angered us. On arriving at my residence, I immediately went to the pantry to verify that what I had just learned was actually true. Sure enough, most of the packaged and canned foods from major companies, like Proctor & Gamble and others, did have the (U), the (K) or other similar markings. The Arrowhead water bottle, the instant Folgers Coffee, the Kelloggs box, the Jiff Peanut Butter, the Pepper container, the Trader Joe's tea box and even the Glads plastic sandwich bags carton had the (U) or (K) mark on them. We needed a little more verification so we called two major companies to asked some questions. We chose Proctor & Gamble that markets the Folgers Coffee and the Clorox Company that manufactures the Glads plastic zip lock sandwich bags. Each of the two companies, as well as most others, have 1-800 telephone numbers printed on their packages for consumers to call in case they have any questions about their products. When we asked the Proctor & Gamble representative what the (U) meant on their Folgers Coffee container, she asked us to wait until she consulted with her supervisor. She came back and informed us that the mark meant that the coffee was " certified kosher". We than asked her how and who certified the coffee to be "kosher" and whether it cost any money to do so. She refused to answer these and other questions. She suggested that we write to their Corporate Public Affairs Department. We than called the Clorox Corporation to ask what the (U) meant on the package of their Glads plastic sandwich bags and she also said that the (U) meant that the plastic bags were "kosher" but refused to answer questions concerning payments the Clorox Corporation has to make in order to be able to print the (U) on their products. What we learned next, pretty much floored me personally. I learned that major food companies throughout America actually pay a Jewish Tax amounting to hundreds of million of dollars per year in order to receive protection. This hidden tax gets passed, of course, to all non-Jewish consumers of the products. The scam is to coerce the companies to pay up or suffer the consequences of a Jewish boycott. Jewish consumers have learned not to buy any kitchen product that does not have the (U) the (K) and other similar markings. Another shocker was learning who is actually behind these sophisticated "Kosher Nostra Scams." It turns out that the perpetrators of these elaborate extortion schemes are actually Rabbinical Councils that are set up, not just in the U.S. but in other western countries as well. For example, the largest payola operation in the U.S. is run by those who license the (U) symbol. The (U) symbol provides protection for many products sold here in Aztlan and in the United States. This symbol is managed by the The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations with headquarters at 333 Seventh Avenue in New York City. The scam works like a well oiled machine and is now generating vast amounts of funds, some of which are being utilized by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis to support the Ariel Sharon Zionist government in Israel. The website of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations is full of pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian propaganda. The "Kosher Nostra" protection racket starts when an Orthodox Rabbi approaches a company to warn the owners that unless their product is certified as kosher, or "fit for a Jew to eat", they will face a boycott by every Jew in America. Most, if not all of the food companies, succumb to the blackmail because of fear of the Jewish dominated media and a boycott that may eventually culminate in bankruptcy. Also, the food companies know that the cost can be passed on to the consumer anyway. The food companies have kept secret from the general consumer the meaning of the (U) and the amount of money they have to pay the Jewish Rabbis. It is estimated that the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, which manages the (U) symbol protection racket, controls about 85% of the "Kosher Nostra " certification business. They now employ about 1200 Rabbi agents that are spread through out the U.S. Food companies must first pay an exorbitant application fee and than a large annual fee for the use of the (U) copyright symbol. Secondly, the companies must pay separate fees each time a team of Rabbis shows up to "inspect" the company's operations. Certain food companies are required to hire Rabbis full time at very lucrative salaries ... I certainly do not need to pay extra for "kosher water", "kosher coffee" or "kosher plastic sandwich bags". In fact, I demand my money back for all I had to pay over the years for the hidden and illegal Jewish Tax. Are there any bright attorneys out there that could bring a class action suit against the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations on behalf of the citizens of Aztlan and other non-Jewish people?"

Leonard Nimoy: Shedding Light on Shekhina,
by John C. Snider, Sci Fi Dimensions, December 2002
"Leonard Nimoy has lived every actor's dream - and every actor's nightmare. His portrayal of Spock, Star Trek's logical Vulcan, earned him (through five feature films) financial security beyond his wildest expectations, and gave popular culture one of its most recognizable icons. Unfortunately, he became so closely associated with his famous alter ego that he felt stifled and resentful for many years, a struggle detailed in his book I Am Not Spock (years later, Nimoy reconciled himself with Mr. Spock in another book - I Am Spock). Most fans never give any thought to Nimoy the man, unaware that he was born in Boston in 1931 to Russian Jewish parents. This religious heritage has had a profound influence on science fiction culture, and over 35 years later that same influence has culminated in Shekhina, an eight-year project by the actor in which he explores part of his Jewish roots. So what's the Spock-Shekhina Connection? The story is now legend within the Trek community of the source of the famous split-fingered Vulcan salute. The original Star Trek episode "Amok Time" introduced the Vulcan home world, and was in fact the first time viewers would see Vulcans interacting with one another. During the shooting of the episode, Nimoy felt that something was missing, that Vulcans should be seen as having a deep and complex culture. So, rather than shaking hands like Westerners, or bowing like Asians, Nimoy suggested to director Joseph Pevney that Vulcans should have their own distinctive greeting. "What do you have in mind?" asked Pevney. After some thought, Nimoy held his hand up in an unusual but now familiar gesture. Pevney liked the idea, and the rest is history. What Nimoy didn't say at the time was that this gesture came from a deeply moving childhood experience. During a ritual blessing in synagogue, the all-male congregation were required to either cover their heads with their shawls, or cover their eyes with their hands. Young Leonard's father cautioned him not to look - but naturally this was too great a temptation for the eight-year-old...so he looked. What he saw impressed him greatly. The men blessing the congregation had also covered their heads, with arms outstretched, each hand splayed in a bizarre three-pointed symbol. Leonard kept this stolen glimpse to himself, but practiced the intriguing hand-gesture over and over. Decades later (when he was 62, in fact), Nimoy shared this story with a rabbi friend, who in turn revealed to him why he was told not to look. According to Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), during the blessing, the shekhina - the feminine essence of God - appears, and would be too much for mere mortals to look upon. The split-fingered salute approximates the Hebrew letter Shin, which is the first letter in Shaddai, a name for the Almighty. Intrigued by this new information, and disappointed that his own Judaism had "gone flat", Nimoy set out on an eight-year project to create a "photographic essay" exploring the shekhina."
SHEKHINAGATE: What the Fracas over Leonard Nimoy's New Book Is Really About, by Alle C. Hall
Samples of Nimoy's controversial photography: http://www.leonardnimoyphotography.com/2photo.htm

[Hmmm. Rosie O'Donnell seems to be the ping pong ball for a quick Jewish game of "Peoples' Court."]
Exec Admits Hiding 'Rosie' Mag's Losses,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), November 10, 2003
"The chief financial officer of Gruner + Jahr USA, publisher of Rosie O'Donnell's magazine, admitted Monday that his company reported false circulation figures to hide the magazine's losses. Lawrence Diamond, the CFO, said executives at G+J decided to "manage the financials" of the magazine, "Rosie," so they could keep publishing. If the magazine lost more than $4.2 million in a fiscal year, O'Donnell would have been permitted to end her arrangement with G+J. "We did not want to shut down," Diamond testified under questioning by Matthew Fishbein, an O'Donnell lawyer. The executive was testifying in Manhattan's State Supreme Court where O'Donnell and G+J are suing each other for breach of contract. ... Earlier in the day, Michael Lavery, president of ABC, said it is an offense under his association's bylaws to falsify information provided to ABC. Fishbein displayed evidence exhibits that showed G+J's internal circulation figures were less than those reported to ABC ... State Supreme Court Justice Ira Gammerman is hearing the trial without a jury and will decide the case. The next and final round of testimony is expected to occur on Wednesday."

[Yet another Jewish prima donna with a "free speech" issue, as always. The guiding lights of modern culture? The last (or first through fourteenth?) act of a Jewish scoundrel is a claim of anti-Semitism.]
Opera-goers get a two-cheeked revue in Brazil. Angry director drops his pants, shows booing crowd the moon,
by Larry Rohter, San Francisco Chronicle, November 11, 2003
"Those in the opening-night audience at the Teatro Municipal hated director Gerald Thomas' radical reworking of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," and they were eager to let him know it. Though the cast members were spared when they came out to take their bows, the moment Thomas appeared, he was greeted with a fusillade of boos, jeers and insults. So Thomas responded in a way that many artists who feel misunderstood or unappreciated have undoubtedly dreamed of -- he turned his back, dropped his pants and green drawers and mooned the audience. Now, Thomas, the eternal enfant terrible of Brazilian theater, is paying the price. Acting on a complaint filed by the local chief of police, prosecutors have charged him with public indecency, and today he is scheduled to appear before a judge who will decide whether there are grounds to proceed with the case. The indictment has startled artists and civil libertarians here. This is, after all, the notoriously permissive and even licentious city in which thousands of people parade virtually naked on the streets, and over television, during the annual Carnival celebrations -- with the full approval of the same authorities who have now gone after Thomas. Then again, the 49-year-old Thomas has been a lightning rod since settling here nearly 20 years ago, bringing with him a passion for the avant- garde. Thomas acknowledged that his staging of "Tristan und Isolde" was meant to be revisionist and provocative. During the overture a woman sits masturbating on a sofa. Another scene much mocked by critics has Sigmund Freud sniffing cocaine and tossing it into the air like confetti, and the production also features a chorus of Hasidic Jews and a fashion show ... Used to being booed Thomas added that he was accustomed to being booed and said that in certain circumstances, like a controversial production of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" that he mounted at the Teatro Municipal in 1987, he even preferred that to applause. What enraged him in this case, he said, were the anti-Semitic remarks that he says he heard from some in the audience. "From the first three rows I very clearly heard voices saying, 'You filthy little Jew, why don't you go back to the camps?' " he recalled. "That was organized by members of the International Richard Wagner Forum, who had come from Germany and Buenos Aires because they didn't like my staging. I lost it, and the rest is history." Others associated with the production or in the audience that night said that they did not hear any such slurs. Even within the world of Brazilian culture, Thomas has collected plenty of enemies in a long series of feuds and spats. But a group of prominent actors, musicians, writers, directors and critics have come to his defense with a petition calling on prosecutors to withdraw the charges. They say that Thomas is at most guilty of "an unthinking attitude that is worthy of criticism but not of punishment." The American composer Philip Glass has also come to Thomas' defense. "This is totally a free-speech issue, surprising in a country that we love for its openness to all kinds of political and social dialogue," said Glass, who created an opera called "Mattogrosso" with Thomas in 1987. "The act itself was not obscene. What they are objecting to is an artist replying to his critics, and knowing Gerald's work, he would of course choose a theatrical response." Artist says he was targeted Thomas said he was being singled out for harassment by the government of Rio de Janeiro state for political reasons. In the newspaper column that he wrote until recently for a daily here, he repeatedly mocked the former governor, Anthony Garotinho, and his wife, Rosinha Matheus, the current governor, and accused them of administrative irregularities. But Helena Severo, who is both the artistic director of the Teatro Municipal and the state's secretary of culture and had hired Thomas for what turned out to be four sold-out performances in August, denied that there was a vendetta against him. The prosecutor who filed the charges, Gisela Brandao, said in an interview that she had chosen to forge ahead with the case because Thomas "didn't want the relief to which he was entitled," referring to the option of admitting guilt and paying a fine of about $400."

[Talk about coincidence ... Or is it coincidence? Is it really just that this kind of stuff is everywhere and whatever opera once was is now something else? I posted the above article from a JTR contributor and the first thing I next ran across online, randomly, was another Jewish-centered opera innovation. Jerry Springer, the famous trash TV guy, is of course also Jewish. "Culture" is crumbling, it appears, fast.]
Jerry Springer Loves Opera Based on Him. Talk show host Jerry Springer arrives for the premiere of Jerry Springer - The Opera, at the Cambridge Theatre in central London,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), November 10, 200
"'Jerry Springer - The Opera," the rude and often raucous British musical take on American tabloid television, got two thumbs up from the real Jerry Springer, who called the West End show, "phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal." Springer spoke at Monday's lavish party following the commercial bow of the $4.2 million musical, which premiered in April at the state-funded National Theatre to rave reviews. The Chicago talk show host never saw the National's incarnation of creators Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee's musical collaboration, with its tap-dancing Ku Klux Klansmen, wildly foul language and extravagant parade of lowlifes, addicts and miscreants. But the 59-year-old Springer did catch director Lee's production twice within four days at the Cambridge Theatre, where top tickets are a steep $83.50 - which is high for London. After the opening, the producers gave an elegant party at the Banqueting House in Whitehall, with revelers sipping champagne beneath a 17th-century Rubens ceiling."

[Bob Dylan (i.e., Robert Zimmerman) is Jewish in many ways. But becoming a reclusive capitalist millionaire by singing left-wing social protest songs without a voice breaks the norm in a (little) different way. I hear that when he has a concert these days, you're not allowed to bring in bottled water. After you pay to get into the building water is -- of course -- for sale. Truly, the times they are-a -changin.' Or have they? Has his audience always been hoodwinked by this guy?]
Bob Dylan. Wembley Arena, London,
Betty Clarke, The Guardian, November 12, 2003
"Watching a living legend inspires duplicity. You're torn between wanting to hear something seminal and admitting that you want to witness possibly the last, faltering, steps of a star. When the legend is Bob Dylan, the event turns into a freak show. His voice hovers between that of a shrill housewife and Yoda, and he teeters around the stage with the elegance of the Elephant Man. Having tried his best to destroy his significance - a litany of turgid albums, starring in the abysmal Hearts of Fire with Rupert Everett - Dylan now toys with his reputation. He appears to a blast of bombastic classical music, a crest, featuring a crown, projected behind him. This is "the voice of 1960's counterculture", a booming, disembodied voice reminds us. The country rock of Maggie's Farm is given an enthusiastic makeover by Dylan's outstanding band, who deliver tight rock'n'roll. Dylan's keyboard dexterity is a revelation. Then he sings, with his nasal whine. He pinches the last words of every phrase until they squeak, in an interpretation that's almost parody. It's difficult to tell if he's embarrassed by the lyrics or indulging in a Jerry Lee Lewis impression. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue is an incomprehensible shriek, his harmonica playing during Mr Tambourine Man a welcome reprieve."

[Here's today's new super-novelist to demonize Islam. It's interesting that the Jewish-owned New York Times underscores Rosenberg's novels as trash and then claims that his connections in the "conservative" community have unleashed to the world his stupid novels. True, Christian Zionists endorse him, and a Jewish Christian Zionist innately finds a lot of the Doors of Power swinging open. What is Rosenberg's apparent political base of being? The Jewish core: support for Israel. And friends, it's no secret. The New York publishing industry -- like so much else, including the New York Times -- is Jewish. It is largely a Jewish network. And this network loves Israel -- and loathes its enemies.]
His Conservative Connections Help to Put Novelist on Best-Seller List,
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, New York Times, Novmeber 15, 2003
"This is a Washington success story. A year ago at this time, Joel C. Rosenberg was a conservative Republican political operative with a deep evangelical faith, three small children, no connections in the Bush White House or the Congressional leadership and no particular prospects for a steady job. Just before Thanksgiving last year, his first novel, "The Last Jihad," was published. It begins with a suicide pilot crashing his private plane into the president's motorcade and ends with the president saying a silent prayer as the nuclear bombs he ordered are dropped on Iraq. By December, it was on The New York Times best-seller list, where it stayed for 11 weeks. Based on those sales, Mr. Rosenberg, 36, received an advance of more than $1 million for a sequel, "The Last Days," which also involves terrorism in the United States and mayhem in the Middle East. It went on sale three weeks ago and is already No. 24 on The Times's expanded best-seller list. "No one had ever heard of me," Mr. Rosenberg said over lunch the other day. "Now I feel like I'm playing in the major league with the Yankees." By conventional standards, these are not very good novels. The plots streak along at breakneck speed. But there is no subtlety and no attempt at character development. The Washington Post review of "The Last Jihad" called the writing "an act of terrorism on the reader's brain." Publishers Weekly said of "The Last Days," "The author singularly fails to suspend readers' disbelief." But Mr. Rosenthal has an advantage few writers of fiction enjoy — his friendships in the conservative political network. The day "The Last Jihad" was published, he was on Sean Hannity's radio and television shows. The next week he appeared on Rush Limbaugh's radio program. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year, Mr. Rosenberg said, he was on 160 radio and television programs. Among those who wrote blurbs for his books were Oliver L. North and G. Gordon Liddy. Last week, Pat Robertson had Mr. Rosenberg on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club." World Magazine, an evangelical publication based in North Carolina for which Mr. Rosenberg once wrote political columns, said "The Last Jihad" was a book "of which Christians can be proud" ... Mr. Rosenberg grew up outside of Rochester. His father, an architect, was an Orthodox Jew. His mother, an English teacher, was a Methodist. Both became born-again Christians when he was a small boy, Mr. Rosenberg said. He himself "kind of wrestled through it and became a follower of Christ when I was 17," he said. He majored in film at Syracuse University and voted for Michael S. Dukakis for president in 1988. But by the time he graduated from college, he was a committed conservative, he said. He came to Washington right out of college to work for conservative research institutes, first the Heritage Foundation and then Empower America. Then he went to work for Mr. Limbaugh as the broadcaster's eyes and ears in Washington with the title of research director. After two years with Mr. Limbaugh, he joined Steve Forbes's campaign as a policy adviser and speech writer in the 1996 Republican presidential primaries. Then he opened a political consulting business and worked briefly to spread around Washington the message of the conservative Israeli politicians Benjamin Netanyahu and Natan Sharansky. By the end of 2000, Mr. Rosenberg said, "I had signed up with the wrong horse for president, Forbes, I wasn't going to work in the Bush White House, and I wasn't going to be the political adviser to the prime minister of Israel. So I decided that maybe now was the time to sit down and write the political thriller that I had always wanted to write."

[Satire? Not sure.]
Jew Hunter,
By Viktor Ivanov, The Exile (Moscow-based alternative paper), November 13 2003)
"For many reasons, it is necessary for us to know who is a Jew and who isn’t. Many Jews conceal themselves so cleverly that one needs powerful computers and a keen mathematical mind to uncover them. This is because the Jews are a talented and clever people. Please do not misunderstand me. I am no anti-Semite. How could any Russian possibly be considered an anti-Semite when our cultures have been so intertwined, and Russia is the most multiethnic state on earth. I am a great fan of the Jewish people’s achievements and have many Jewish associates and friends. Rather, I am a realist on the Jewish question. I want to help them prevent their own mistakes. Unmasking Jews wherever they may be is important for peace between peoples. It is also, I may add, a challenging intellectual exercise which I believe I have mastered. I am the author of two best-selling software programs in the CIS devoted to this exercise, Jewdar and Jewdar2000, which act as a kind of radar system to flush out hidden Jews in our society. Let us start with the most obvious example. Only recently have your Western newspapers exposed the Jewish origins in Mikhail Khodorkovsky; other Jews in YUKOS have revealed themselves by taking refuge in their Asiatic homeland, Israel. Most Russians, equipped with Jewdar or Jewdar2000 already knew this and expected this to happen. Misha Khodorkovsky’s mistake was in underestimating Russians’ Jewdar. If Misha– Mikhas in Hebrew - had publicized his Jewishness in the last few years –for example, had he grown out a large black bushy beard with sidelocks and worn a skull cap, or adopted a stiff walk, hawking phlegm from deep in his lungs, then perhaps the Russian people would have felt a little more sympathy for him. They would have said, "There’s a Jew who’s not hiding himself, we don’t need to fear him."

t h e s a l o n i n t e r v i e w | Tony Kushner coming out as a socialist America's real taboo is talking about a different society, says the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, By CHRISTOPHER HAWTHORNE, salon.com
"In the early '90s, "Angels in America" transformed Tony Kushner from a young writer working in obscurity into the most highly acclaimed playwright of his generation. ("Angels" -- a "gay fantasia on national themes" in two parts, "Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika" -- won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 and a slew of Tony Awards.) Since then, Kushner has also built a reputation as one of the most outspoken literary figures in America -- a man who will talk just as easily about Roseanne or Gingrich as O'Neill or Ibsen. In an age when the American theater has grown increasingly divorced from public life, Kushner, like a latter-day Arthur Miller, stubbornly insists on the playwright's role as political provocateur. His latest play, which he has called a "coda" to "Angels in America," is "Slavs! Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness" -- a compact, quirky exploration of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ruin, both philosophical and environmental, left in its wake.

... You've become something of a spokesman for and in the gay community. Is that a role that you mind shouldering? Well I don't know how much I'm a spokesman. There's always this dilemma about wanting to be an activist, but also finding that the time that it takes can be pretty destructive to making art. I really admire people who can do both, but it's very rare, and the sad fact is that when you try to mix the two the art suffers, and sometimes the activism suffers as well. I feel that if there's something that I need to contribute to in terms of writing a letter or making a statement, or if I get called to go on "Nightline," like I did in January, that I have a responsibility as a citizen to do that. But I don't aspire to a leadership position. I don't want to run for office, and I don't want to run an organization, and I really feel that whatever contribution I have to make I'll make as a playwright. I'm trying to write fewer essays and introductions and blurbs and all of that this year, because I think it has been a huge distraction from the one thing I do relatively well, which is write plays. I heard you say once that you think it's easier to come out as a gay man in this country than as a socialist. Can you elaborate on that a little? It's a more acceptable thing now: we all know that we have to be nice to homosexuals. We've all been scolded and seen enough episodes of "Roseanne" to know -- and we have "The Birdcage" to remind us if we had forgotten in the last 15 seconds -- that the cool thing now is to be tolerant of homosexuals, who after all are asexual and funny and not any threat to anything. At least that's how most Americans want to think about it. But the notion that anybody has a continued interest in alternative economic formations -- alternative to capitalism -- is shocking and appalling to people. There's a real anger I've seen in audiences for "Slavs!," in places like Baltimore and Los Angeles, a very cold reception that I think is based on the absolute certainty, as people have been promised over and over by the media, that we don't have to think about these issues at all anymore. The idea that someone is still writing plays about them is hopeless. I don't think that anybody's going to kill me because I say I'm a socialist, but I think people find it risible."

Celebrity Jews in the news,
by Gilbert Glimmers, Jewish News Weekly, September 18, 2003
"The biggest Jewish story to come out of the Open is the emergence of Piedmont native BRAD GILBERT as a “miracle coach.” Gilbert, who now lives in Marin County, coached American Andy Roddick to a surprise singles title. Gilbert was a top touring professional from 1982-1995 ... In 1995, he became Andre Agassi’s coach. ... 13 GOING ON 30 NIKKI REED, 15, must have set some Hollywood record for youngest screenwriter. She is the co-star and co-writer of the recently released film “Thirteen,” about two affluent girls who live the fast life of drugs, sex and petty crime. Reed wrote the film with director Catherine Hardwicke. It is somewhat autobiographical — although Reed has matured quickly from her wild days. “Thirteen” has received good-to-great reviews. However, it might be best to use this fairly graphic film as a discussion tool between parents and teenagers — rather than just sending teens off to see it on their own. In a profile in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, Hardwicke noted that both Reed and co-star EVAN RACHEL WOOD, 15, are Jewish."

[How come, whatever the sensational story, there's always a Jew in the wings? When "Kosher Sex" rabbi Shmuely Boteach introduced Michael Jackson to the protective Jewish Klan Network, Jackson got weirder.]
Focus: From Bad to worse. Despite the efforts of his friends to save him from terminal weirdness, Michael Jackson appears to be doing all he can to draw his extraordinary career to a pitiful end, Andrew Gumbel reports, Independent (UK), 23 November 2003
"Among the puffed-up opinion-peddlers, pop psychologists and "friends" who sprang up like jungle weeds as the latest Michael Jackson child molestation case erupted last week, perhaps the most intriguing was a media-savvy rabbi called Shmuley Boteach, the man who tried - and failed - to make the famously eccentric pop idol acceptable in polite company. A few years ago, Rabbi Boteach was dropping Jackson's name at every possible opportunity to promote books with quirky titles such as Kosher Sex and Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments. But he also helped Jackson to set up his Heal the Kids charity - a response, in part, to the earlier round of child molestation accusations in 1993 and 1994 - and coaxed the reclusive superstar into making his tear-choked appearance at the Oxford Union. There was also another dimension to the relationship. As the rabbi wrote on Friday - the day after Jackson was handcuffed and booked at the Santa Barbara county jail for "lewd and lascivious behaviour with a minor" - he spent from 1999 to 2001 trying to help him to find "the basic ingredients of a healthy life", especially in his dealings with children. To regain a modicum of credibility as an advocate of child welfare, Boteach told his friend, he had to make sure he was never alone with children who were not his. He should surround himself with respected child and education experts and lecture "at serious rather than sensationalist events". Boteach introduced Jackson to the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres and child development expert Stanley Greenspan. But Jacko's taste for this sort of rarefied company was limited. He stopped listening to the rabbi's counsel that he needed "dignity rather than celebrity". "Shmuley, you want to make Michael normal," Jackson's manager finally berated him. "What you don't understand is that he's famous because he's not normal." That sentiment has certainly been borne out by the events of the past five days, from the moment sheriff's deputies were first reported to be swarming over every inch of Jackson's Neverland ranch in California's Santa Ynez Valley, to the bizarre aftermath of the arrest when Jackson, out on $3m (£1.8m) bail, was followed for two hours by a hungry pack of news media buzzards apparently reliving the O J Simpson dash down the San Diego Freeway in 1994. "Not normal" does not begin to describe the manner in which a deeply odd human being was hauled into custody to be accused of a profoundly disturbing crime, the molestation of a 12-year-old boy. The boy - who may or may not be the recovering cancer victim portrayed in Martin Bashir's startling documentary aired in the spring - was, like an unknown number of others like him, invited to stay at the ranch, served milk and cookies at bedtime and then joined beneath the sheets by Uncle Michael himself. That is not in dispute, whether or not sexual contact took place. "Not normal" is also an altogether inadequate description of the police mug shot taken of Jackson and beamed around the world with variations on the caption "Moon Walk to Perp Walk". The face, believed by one of his former plastic surgeons to have undergone at least 50 cosmetic operations (Jackson himself admits to just two), looked so other-worldly and so blank, despite the carefully applied lipstick and black eyeliner, that it could have been the embalmed visage of a dead man. It is tantalising, and perhaps not entirely implausible, to think that Rabbi Boteach was fighting as recently as two years ago to rescue Jackson from the brink of terminal weirdness."

[Subtext: JEWISH Chilean poet to visit next month. Subtext: Jewish Chilean poet, part of the international self-promotive Judeocentric publishing network, to visit next month.]
Chilean poet to visit next month, Buffalo News (New York), November 24, 2003
"Marjorie Agosin, a Chilean poet and human rights activist, will make three public appearances in the Buffalo area early next month while attending a writer residency program. Her Dec. 2 to 5 visit is part of World of Voices - a collaboration to promote cultural awareness through literature - sponsored by Just Buffalo Literary Center and White Pine Press and made possible by a grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation. Besides visiting students at area high schools, Agosin will appear at 8 p.m. Dec. 2 in the Jewish Community Center, 2640 N. Forest Road, Getzville, for a community talk titled "A Cross and a Star: Growing Up Jewish in Chile."

[More social engineering (Judeocentric propagandizing) in our schools, to bend the public to the totalitarian notions of Jewish and Israeli angelism. If Jewish school administrators decide that everyone needs to know about how wonderful Jewish contributions are to America, and to start cramming even more and more Judeocentrism into everyone's mouthes, we suggest that this web site be required reading, underscoring the dominant role of Jews in pornography, organized crime, sexual hedonism, the "Russian" mafia, the destruction of religion, the spread of illegal drugs, accumulation of wealth, Jewish traditional dual moral standards, etc.]
L.A. School: Few Jews, But More Jewish Studies,
by Tom Tugend , Baltimore Jewish Times, NOVEMBER 28, 2003
"This campus of California State University, home to few Jewish students, hardly seems fertile ground to introduce classes in Jewish history and culture. But the classes starting next year are important, says a school official. "Our students, who are tomorrow's public school teachers, have no connection with Jews in their lives and studies," said Carl Selkin, dean of the school's College of Arts and Letters. "Many are immigrants, or the children of immigrants, and they need to know about the Jewish contributions to American society and the building of Los Angeles." The school becomes the latest college campus without a large Jewish presence on campus to offer classes in Jewish studies. Cal State-Los Angeles has some 21,000 students, of whom more than half are Latino, almost a quarter Asian-American, and 8.4 percent African-American. Among the 15.7 percent that are non-Hispanic whites, Jews make up such an insignificant portion that no statistics, or even good guesstimates, are available. The campus site is near Boyle Heights, home to a vibrant Jewish community before and during World War II. But by the time the campus was opened in 1956, almost all Jews had left the area. That means that few students have had any regular contact with Jews, leaving only a residue of anti-Semitic stereotypes and myths. The Jewish studies program will start out fairly modestly in 2004 by expanding existing courses to reflect Jewish contributions in a given field. Selkin expects that the first such courses will be those covering the history of the film industry and American literature. As the program's financial resources grow, he hopes to add Jewish-oriented lectures by visiting experts, research projects, scholarships and special events. These studies and activities will be part of the university's American Communities Program, which has received challenge grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Rockefeller Foundation. However, to put the Jewish program on a sound financial footing, Selkin is seeking an endowment of $200,000 from Jewish community organizations and individuals. The campus has never enjoyed the Jewish activism and presence found at the top American academic institutions. But the campus has also been largely immune to pro-Palestinian demonstrations and confrontations. "These issues don't really interest our student body," Brier said. The obvious question remains, then: Do Latino, Asian and black students have the interest, and time, to study about American Jewish culture, history and the immigrant experience? ... "It will take an effort, but it is important to keep Jewish culture and history on the radar screen," he said. One plus factor is the relatively large number of Jewish faculty members on campus. Seymour Levitan, who served as chairman of the psychology department, recalled that in the 1960s roughly one-quarter of his 100- member academic staff was Jewish. Although the number has declined as Jewish professors retire and are largely replaced by non-Jewish faculty, there still remains a sufficient core that could serve as instructors and supporters of a Jewish program."

[Israelis are arguably the most obnoxious people in the world. And, now that they're taking over the tourist culture in India, and there's a growing tradition of banning them from some private establishments, do we have another surge of irrational "anti-Semitism?"]
The Promised Land. It could be to escape the unease back home or for psychotropic bliss, but India is now a rite of passage for young Israelis, says Alex Halperin,
The Sunday Express (India), November 30, 2003
"The fashionably late crowd arrived at 4 am wearing flowing pants and day-glo T-shirts. They smoked charas, took LSD and danced to trance music past sunrise. Scenes like this recent full moon party, which brought about 60 revellers to an outcrop overlooking the Arabian Sea in Gujarat, have become common in India. The organisers were Israeli backpackers who, through the force of numbers, have made an impression in most of the country’s tourist centres. And elevated Hebrew to the second language, after English, of Indian tourism. Touring the country has become a rite of passage for young Israelis. And while their countrymen are generally big travellers, India’s cheap prices, plentiful drugs and traditional allure for foreigners has made it a primary destination for Israelis looking for relief from the tensions in their country. They have escalated the cliché of a disenchanted soul in search of enlightenment to a disillusioned country seeking relaxation, or just something very different from home. This mass exodus from the holy land, if a temporary one, has become a national institution. According to a recent report in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, 30,000 Israeli backpackers come to India annually, this from a country of less than 6 million. And very often what they find is more Israelis ... It’s true that many Israelis come to India for sightseeing or for any other of the innumerable tourist draws. But with an increase in their numbers, certain trends have emerged. These include full moon parties, touring the country on Enfield motorcycles and sleeping and eating at places where they are likely to find familiar food, compatriots and charas, which, they say, virtually all of them smoke (many claimed not to use drugs like LSD and ecstasy). The all-night bash made Diu a stop on the annual Israeli migration from northern destinations like Manali and Dharamshala to the beaches of Goa. In Paharganj, Delhi’s backpacker centre, many shops and restaurants advertise in Hebrew, some shopkeepers even speak the language, greeting tourists with reflexive shaloms ... An itinerant construction worker, Sharon, 33, first came pleasure-seeking to India in 1996 when he heard Israelis were into drug-induced psychotic episodes in Goa. He had fun and said he had come back “three or four times”. He estimated his current trip would last a year “but who knows what will happen”. He was sitting at a Delhi guest house that caters to Israelis, wearing light cloth pants, reflector sunglasses and no shirt. Like many Israelis, for him any mystic allure India has comes more from an overall mood of relaxation than from any spiritual interest. “I don’t go to ashrams, it’s against my religion,” he said. Coming to India can even increase Jewish sentiment. Chabad, a Jewish movement interested in rekindling religion in Jews, has several offices in backpacker hot spots. One recent afternoon, David, a tattooed Israeli with a shaved head and desert camouflage shorts, stopped by the Delhi centre to don tefillin, leather ribbons placed on the head and wrapped around the arm daily, for saying prayers. It is not something he does at home. “Outside Israel you feel more pride in being Jewish,” he explained. But several backpackers have criticised Chabad for taking advantage of those who had taken too many drugs ... The critical mass has made it easy for Israelis only to associate with each other. When they come, they meet other Israelis in backpacker ghettos. Though many say they want to get off the typical Israeli route, they admit it is easy to wander down the well-beaten path. “Everything’s in Hebrew,” said Amit Sigler, 21 ... Israelis have acquired, among many backpackers, a reputation for cliquishness. Sarah Witt, a backpacker from British Columbia, said that while she tried not to form an opinion of them, they “dominate the travel culture of India”. Ablu, owner of The Third Eye, said he sometimes has to discipline Israelis, “but this is only because they’re young and coming out of the army”. He said that apparently other proprietors in Pushkar are less forgiving and have banned Israelis from their places. One man who called himself Oz, and who said he came to India for drugs and dancing,was more blasé. “They don’t like me and I don’t care. I don’t hate anybody,” he said."

["Behind every successful Indian Hotel Owner ... there's a Jew. That's the intended closure of this headline, folks. And it can't be "anti-Semitic" because this headline comes out of a Jewish ethnic journal.]
Behind Every Successful Indian Hotel Owner ...,
by Max Gross, [Jewish] Forward, November 28, 2003, p. 2 [offline paper version]
"Not too long ago there was story circulating around the Asian American Hotel Owners Association that a petition would be launched to change its president's name. There are approximately 8,400 AAHOA members, all of them Indian or Indian American. And many of them said, albeit in jest, that their president should have a more Indian-sounding name. Fred Patel, perhaps. It would certainly sound more in sync with the organization than Fred Schwatz. Yes, yes. The president of the largest member-based Indian business organization in the country -- and one of the most powerful lobbyists for an Asian American group -- is a Jewish boy from Queens. Schwartz ... is a celebrity in the Indian-American world ... Schwartz is the public face of a significant enterprise of Indian immigants, the hotel business ... Out of 52,000 hotels and motels in America today, roughly 18,000 -- more than one-third of the total -- are owned by Indians ... Schwartz is actually not the first Jew to become a fervent advocate for Indian hoterliers; Henry Silverman and Michael Leven of Days Inns of America, one of the most popular franchises that AAHOA members buy into, were instrumental in establishing the AAHOA. 'They [gave] some of the initial seed money to get the first conference ... off the ground,' Schwartz said ... Leven, the president of Days Inn, lobbied insurance companies aggressively during the 1980s, when many Indian hotel owners had problems getting insurance .. When certain hotel owners in the big franchises began putting signs outside their hotels that said 'American owned,' Schwartz lobbied the franchises to take these signs down.

Jews, Multiculturalim, and Boasian Anthropology, [pdf file]
by Gelya Frank, University of Southern California
"There has always been a lively, if sometimes hushed, in-house discourse about American anthropology's Jewish origins and their meaning. The preponderance of Jewish intellectuals in the early years of Boasian anthropology and the Jewish identitites of many anthropologists in subsequent generations have been downplayed in standard histories of the discipline ... [T]he development of American anthropology appears part of Jewish history ... The public silence or omission concerning anthropology's Jews is due mainly to the tone of liberal humanism and cosmopolitanism set by founder Franz Boas (1858-1942), himself a Jewish German immigrant, who in 1896 established the nation's first anthropology department at Columbia University. There has also been a whitewashing of Jewish ethnicity, reflecting fears of anti-Semitic reactions that could discredit the discipline of anthropology and individual anthropologists, either because Jews were considered dangerous due to their presumed racial differences or because they were associated with radical causes."

[Jews, who have always dominated the comic book world, are giving voice to underground currents -- Jewish rage, in free form. There is more here, as they say, than meets the eye ... ]
Enough To Make Bugsy Siegel Blush. Introducing Gangsters Who Know Torah As Well As Torture,
By JOSH LAMBERT, [Jewish] Forward, December 19, 2003
"The Hebrew Hammer isn't the only Jew in a frock coat and a black hat meting out justice this winter. In fact, next to the Weiss brothers, lieutenants in San Francisco's turn-of-the-century Jewish mob, the Hammer looks like a bit of a nebbish. The brothers are the heroes of "Market Street," the first story arc in "Caper," a new monthly series published by DC Comics. "Market Street" will wrap up in the February and March issues of "Caper" and will be followed by two more four-issue arcs, written by Judd Winick and drawn by different artists. Varied in tone and setting, the tales are loosely linked through family connections between characters, and revolve around double-crosses, heists and various criminal misadventures. Don't let the fact that "Caper" is a comic book fool you into thinking it would make an appropriate Chanukah present for your young nephew. The warning label — "Suggested for mature readers" — is perhaps too subtle. The comic's violence is gritty and ornate: Jake and Izzy Weiss win their jobs as "toppers" by bludgeoning their father's murderer to death with a two-by-four and a table leg. Later, Izzy accidentally pushes a debtor off a building and shows little remorse: "No big loss. He couldn't pay. We would've had to top him next week anyway." They swear like sailors, in English and Yiddish, and in the first issue we're treated to an intimate glimpse of Jake mid-coitus. It's enough to make Bugsy Siegel blush. At the same time, the Weiss brothers travel in circles that are surprisingly frum. Everybody — including their victims and their godfather, "Boss" Josef Cohen — wears head coverings. When Cohen's son has a bar mitzvah, there's a mechitza and separate seating. And although they don't spend much time observing commandments, these mobsters have read their Torah ... [R]uthless gangsters have been a part of the Jewish literary imagination at least since Benya Krik, Isaac Babel's "gangster and king of gangsters," ruled Odessa ... . Like Benya, and unlike most of the gangsters who have followed him, the Weiss brothers are clearly heroes whom we are meant to fear and respect. As bold as Izzy and Jake are, so too is Farel Dalrymple's artwork for "Market Street"; he renders period costumes and pistols with care, while not hesitating to capture blood splatter and broken teeth. The striking cover of the first issue pictures a man facedown in a pool of blood, still clutching two pistols, three rosy bullet holes in the back of his coat. A yarmulke peeks out on the back of his head. Beneath him, a giant Star of David is painted with his blood. When this image, along with announcement of the series, was first posted on the comic fan Web site Newsarama.com in July, readers were quick to register their dismay. An Israeli poster objected immediately to the depiction of his "national symbol in a pool of blood," another reader announced that "As a human being, I'm offended!" and a third demanded that the image be changed for the issue's publication. At a comic book convention in San Diego where Winick displayed the image and discussed the story, he was approached by a teenage fan who "equated the image on the cover to that of Nazis."... On Newsarama.com, dozens of readers rushed to Winick's defense, explaining to the offended parties that both Winick and Paul Levitz, the president of DC Comics, are Jewish ... Winick cited Murder Inc., a real 1930s death squad run by Louis "Lepke" Buchalter out of the backroom of a candy store in Brownsville, Brooklyn, as inspiration for the Jewish assassins and mobsters of "Market Street," but he stressed that he had no desire to be a documentarian."

[More comic book Judeocentrist narcissism, full force:]
Here She Comes To Save the Day...Unless it's Saturday,
By MAX GROSS, [Jewish] Forward, December 19, 2003
"Talk about Aishes Chayil. The time has come to usher in a very different sort of Shabbat Queen — literally, "Shabbas Queen," a new superhero who wields a golden wand with a Star of David affixed at the top that gives her the power to lift heavy objects and fly, apparently unencumbered by her full-length skirt. She is a new defender of the Jewish people, on call 24 hours a day, though only six days a week because, as you must expect, her wand doesn't work on Saturdays. Shabbas Queen is a member of the Jewish Hero Corps, one of many superheroes who can be seen on display at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan's January exhibit "People of the Comic Book," about the involvement of Jews in the world of comic books and superheroes. "I don't feel that it's a coincidence that superhero comics took off in the 1930s and 1940s [and had] a Jewish consistency," said Alan Oirich, one of the organizers of the exhibit, who is also the creator of Jewish Hero Corps, which was published last month. "The timing seems to imply that there was real frustration — that there was a wrong in the world... the consummate fight between good and evil." The Jewish presence in the creation of comic books has been profound and well noted. Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman; Bob Kane created Batman; Stan Lee created Spider Man and the X-Men. And many commentators have remarked that the core of every superhero's story — the assumption of a secret identity — is an allegory for assimilation. The JCC exhibit begins with a section on Jewish folklore's golem, a man built out of clay with superhuman power who acts as a defender of the community, which, according to Oirich, was the precursor to the superhero. The exhibit then shifts to World War II, when superheroes like Captain America were fighting Nazis long before any American soldiers were, moving on to the present day, when Jewish superheroes are no longer outwardly gentile and symbolically Jewish, but overtly Jewish and proud of it — like the Jewish Hero Corps. The Jewish Hero Corps made its appearance on the comic book stage last month with its first issue, "The Amnesia Countdown," which puts these crusaders in kippot on a mission to save the Jewish people from losing its collective memory."

Jews resurfacing in Cuba. Easing of suppression brings revival of faith community,
by Evan Silverstein, Presbyterian News Service, November 26, 2003
"For Moises Rodriguez, growing up Jewish in today’s Cuba means spending hours each week studying Judaism and its teachings and the Hebrew language. The 13-year-old boy with short black hair and tan skin is a self-proclaimed Jew who worships and attends Hebrew-Sunday school at Bet Shalom, the main synagogue in this culturally diverse capital city. “I feel good in the synagogue, more than any other place, because I practice Jewish,” Rodriguez said in halting English. “I have many friends at the synagogue. The synagogue is part of my life. Like a student, like a child.” Lay members serve as rabbis and cantors at Bet Shalom. Rodriguez’s mother is not Jewish, but thanks to his Jewish-born Cuban father, he grew up with an awareness of the faith. Rodriguez started attending services at the conservative synagogue as a child, first with his uncle, then on his own. Under Jewish law, Jewish identity is inherited maternally, so Rodriguez is preparing for the day he will officially convert to Judaism. He also is looking forward to his eventual Bar Mitzvah, a time-honored coming-of-age ceremony for 13-year-old Jewish males. Such traditional Jewish ceremonies, now quite common in Cuba, were nearly unthinkable before Rodriguez was born. Until the early 1990s, a Bar Mitzvah hadn’t been celebrated in Havana since 1973. Cuba, an island about 90 miles south of Key West, FL, was virtually cut off from the rest of the Jewish world after the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. Support for Castro was nearly universal among the island’s 15,000 Jews, as among most Cubans, when Castro overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista. But Castro declared Cuba an atheist state, nationalized businesses and other properties and introduced communism. Within two years, more than 90 percent of Cuban Jews had joined thousands of others in fleeing their island homeland. Most community leaders, virtually all rabbis and teachers and many business people were among the Jews that emigrated from Cuba. Many relocated to southern Florida, while others went to Mexico, Venezuela and Israel ... Things are better today. Rodriguez is coming of age in a small but thriving Jewish community that survived more than three decades of dormancy. About 90 percent of Cuban Jews live in the capital ... In 1995, the government allowed a congregation of about 90 Jews to reclaim its former synagogue property in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city. Three years later, on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), the Jewish community in Camaguey, Cuba, rededicated a new synagogue in a whitewashed turn-of-the-century house. It was the first Jewish temple established since the revolution. The Jewish population is still a far cry from pre-revolution levels, when it peaked at about 15,000; but Jewish communal life has undergone a revival nationwide the past 12 years. Gradual membership growth and a new sense of religious pride have re-energized the Jewish community after its 30-year slumber. Jews are rebuilding their organizations and synagogues, attracting young new members and filling sanctuaries for religious services. During this recent renaissance, Cuba’s Jewish population has more than doubled, from about 700 in 1991 to 1,500 today, according to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which assists the Cuban Jewish community and others worldwide. “ The synagogue is growing all the time,” Rodriguez said, looking up from a booklet of class notes. “More people every day come and study with us.” The Jewish reawaking was sparked in large part by a dramatic change in national policy toward religious groups. Young people are converting to Judaism in record numbers. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Cuban National Assembly passed a law in November 1991 allowing Cubans to be members of the Communist Party and to participate in religious associations. The following year, the constitution was changed to define Cuba not as an “atheistic” state but a “secular” one ... Like Rodriguez, many new members are children of interfaith couples who want to convert to Judaism — another visible sign of the rekindling of Jewish life on this Caribbean island nation of 11 million people. Sixty percent of the Cuban Jews are believed to be converts. Asked why he wants to convert, Rodriguez said: “I like practicing Jewish because here (at Bet Shalom) I have many friends. I study much here at the synagogue. I listen to much about history, philosophy other things. It’s very good. It’s very interesting' ... Famous visitors to the Patronato have included Fidel Castro himself. His image is featured in photos taken during the 1998 Hanukkah party, which adorn the wall outside the sanctuary at Bet Shalom. Film director Steven Spielberg, an American Jew, has visited the synagogue and an Ashkenazi cemetery in Havana."

JTR contributor's comment: "Media Jews debate staged Bush Thanksgiving ploy. The implicit context, of course, is that THE MEDIA DECIDES whether or not what the President does (or does not do) is 'kosher.'"]
Some Understand Covert Journey; Others Fear Bad Precedent,
By Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, November 28, 2003; Page A44
"Although the White House lied to much of the press to conceal President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, many journalists and analysts yesterday were willing to give the administration a pass. "In this case, it's justified," said Bob Schieffer, CBS's chief Washington correspondent ... But Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, said that "in this day and age, there should have been a way to take more reporters. People are perfectly capable of maintaining a confidence for security reasons. It's a bad precedent." Once White House officials "decided to do a stealth trip, they bought into a whole series of things that are questionable." Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, criticized the White House correspondents who made the trip without spilling the secret. "That's just not kosher," he said. "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause" ... But Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online, called the trip "a political masterstroke' ... Mike Abramowitz, The [Washington] Post's national editor, said Allen did not tell his editors of the Baghdad trip in advance. "I'm glad Mike was on the plane. He had a great file," Abramowitz said ... Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program."

[From a JTR contributor: "the article is not online, but they more or less boast how they are the 'tastemakers' - in other words, bragging about their control of art and entertainment."]
The New Super Jews,
Time Out New York

Filmmakers unleash Myers to be sure 'Cat' is no dog,
By ANTHONY BREZNICAN, Houston Chronicle, December 3, 2003
"You don't put a leash on a cat. That was the philosophy the filmmakers followed to transform the simple whimsy of Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat into a candy-colored, in-your-face comedy starring Mike Myers as the mischievous feline in a towering red-and-white cap ... "We agreed it would be a live-action cartoon, and talked about the sound," Welch said. "Everyone thinks they know what the Cat in the Hat should sound like, but no one has ever heard him." The Myers performance suggests the Cat hails from New York, with a laid-back version of the urban Jewish accent he used playing Linda Richman in the Saturday Night Live sketch "Coffee Talk" (or "Cawwfee Tawwk," as she pronounced it) ... Producer Brian Grazer wanted something that could last roughly an hour and a half ... Grazer, who also produced The Grinch [that Stole Christmas], sought to follow that movie's formula. He hired a team of three writers to adapt Cat: Jeff Schaffer, Alec Berg and David Mandel, all former Seinfeld scribes who worked together on an uncredited rewrite of The Grinch."

[Americans have "stolen" Jewish culture?! It's the other way around. And Jews have "given" America so very MUCH? Oh, Mr. Suissa, thanks for the giant Porno-Materialism-Money-is-God Festival and Let's All Kill Another Arab For the Star of David but, uh, who voted for it? What exactly is Jewish that is now American? Greed, hedonism, nihilism, exploitation, hustling, moral decadence, wars for Israel, etc. etc. etc. The crap below is quintessential arrogant Jewish doublethink and here's what's real: "Jews run American culture, therefore America is lovingly Jewish. You mean to say there's any other ingredients? Can't be. We forbid it."]
Do We Have Anything Left to Give?,
by David Suissa, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, December 5, 2003
"Do the Jews have anything left to give to America? This question was on my mind recently, after I was on a panel at Brandeis-Bardin Institute to discuss the Jewish influence on American culture. The popular view on this subject is invariably, "Just look at all the Jews who run Hollywood and the media; look at the humor, the attitude, the Yiddish terms, etc. Jews are everywhere." This is true, but when you start to look beneath the surface, you see a more complicated picture, one that suggests the waning influence of Judaism and the need to re-examine the Jews’ role in America as we begin this new century. Culture is easy to steal. What was clearly "Jewish" at the turn of the century is now just as likely to be called American. Of course, America didn’t just steal it, we gave it away, with the gusto of a grateful people desperate to fit in. And who can blame us? After 2,000 years of getting beat up everywhere we went, we discover this all-you-can-eat freedom buffet called America, and what do we do? We eat, and we cook and we have lots of people over. Culture was the perfect Jewish thank-you gift to America. Movies, music, humor and literature are entertaining, relatively harmless and easily appreciated. They’re also easy to co-opt. That’s why the Gershwins, Bellows, Berles, Spielbergs and Streisands are at least as American as they are Jewish. That’s not to say culture was all we gave; we’re not that homogeneous or disciplined. For every Woody Allen directing a film, there was an Abbie Hoffman directing a civil rights march. But in the explosive areas of morality and politics, there was always a collective care in the Jewish community not to offend our gracious hosts. We may have planted the seeds of Jewish morality, but in the field of culture, we grew a forest. This 100-year cultural love fest between the Jews and America has been a source of rightful pride, but it has left us with a nagging question that many Jews have difficulty answering: Do we have anything "Jewish" left to give? We have trouble answering this question, because we’ve developed an instinct to equate everything Jewish with everything American. In other words, if our cultures are now so intertwined, then everything else — including our values — must be as well. The American values of freedom, tolerance and diversity? They’re Jewish. The Jewish values of freedom, tolerance and diversity? They’re American. It’s a simple, convenient formula that lets us feel Jewish and American without offending either side (even in our activism to defend Israel against terrorism, we never miss the chance to equate it with America’s war) ... The good news is that America is ready to hear the Jewish message — we live in an open, multicultural, emotional country that doesn’t mind being moved and challenged. And after being such wonderful guests for so long, we’ve certainly earned the right to make a bolder contribution. The not-so-good news is that Jews have become so American that all we’re giving back to America, it seems, is more of itself. This is a shame. If more Jews had the chutzpah to assert and live up to our differences, we might add an exciting new dynamic to our relationship with America (and isn’t asserting one’s difference part of the American way?). Ironically, the Jews and America are now in the same boat: We both could use a little more Judaism. For our Jewish leaders worried about "Jewish continuity" and "Jewish pride," they ought to educate and encourage Jews to become, each in his or her own way, the unapologetic messengers of Judaism and its distinctive values. Instead of spending $6 million to count the Jews, they could spend that money to make Jews count. And they ought to realize that a Jewish identity shaped by a negative, crisis mindset — against assimilation, against intermarriage, against anti-Semitism — is not as nourishing and lasting as one driven by the empowering questions: What values am I for and what values can I share? In the 20th century, we were geniuses at sharing the value of our culture. In this century, we can be geniuses at sharing the culture of our values. That would be good for America, and it certainly would be good for the Jews."

[As part of the vast Jewish Culture Mafia, the current American poet laureate, Louise Gluck, is Jewish. Surprise, the writer of the article below also reflects a Jewish surname. The head of the news source in which this appears, the Wall Street Journal, is headed by a Jew. The subject of this article, Poetry magazine, is the granddaddy of American poetry journals. The editor for over 20 years, Joseph Parisi, just stepped down in what appears to be a power struggle over a recently-willed $100 million to the magazine. We don't know Parisi's ethnicity. Here's his picture. What do you think?]

Poetry Commotion: Big Donation Roils A Literary Bastion Ms. Lilly's $100 Million Gift Shakes Up Staid Journal; Prosaic Issues Writ Large,
By ROBERT FRANK, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, December 8, 2003
"The first sign of trouble for Poetry magazine came with the Wall Street money managers. Last year, when the fabled 90-year-old journal announced that it was getting a gift of $100 million -- the largest single donation ever to a literary institution -- editors were flooded with calls and letters from new fans of verse. Wealth managers from Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch offered investment advice. Real-estate agents came by pushing office towers and luxury homes. A group called "America Scores," which promotes literacy through soccer, proposed a joint venture. Poets around the country penned pleas for loans ... While initially hailed as a blessing, the $100 million gift from drug-company heiress Ruth E. Lilly is sowing discord in the normally harmonious realm of verse. Poetry is embroiled in a lawsuit with a bank over alleged mismanagement of funds. The journal's editor of 20 years, Joseph Parisi, quit over the summer amid a battle with a newly assertive board. Rival poetry groups complain the magazine is gaining too much influence and will stifle the more-creative elements of the craft ... Since [Parisi] became editor in 1983, Poetry has nearly doubled subscriptions and built up a rainy-day fund of $700,000 by attracting wealthy donors and grants. Poets were paid $2 a line, though the amount was raised to $6 after the magazine's windfall ... Mr. Parisi announced the gift at a gala dinner in Chicago last November, saying poetry fans would "never have to worry about Poetry's future." His own future was another matter. This summer, Mr. Parisi abruptly resigned. Poetry put out a brief statement saying he left to "pursue his writing interests." As part of the separation, Mr. Parisi was required to sign a nondisclosure clause banning him from commenting on the reasons for his departure. Asked about his resignation, Mr. Parisi says only, "I enjoyed 27 years at Poetry, which was a great challenge and adventure. I wish them well." People familiar with the matter say Mr. Parisi clashed with certain board members, including Ms. Cummins, over how to spend the money."

[Who are the Godparents of Internet spam? Ever wonder about the pioneers' ethnicity? Take a wild guess. Wow! A shot in the dark! What a lucky guess! You're right! : "One of the earliest examples of [Internet] spamming was actually done by lawyers. Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, former practitioners in Florida, in 1994 invented 'spamming.' They advertised that they would prepare the documents for the INS lottery, which permitted non-residents of the U.S. to enter a lottery for a green card. Their advertisement was posted across the Internet. And the Internet was outraged. To understand the outrage of the Internet community, you need to understand the origins of the Internet. In 1994, roughly one year after the World Wide Web came into use, the Internet was primarily populated by academics, scientists and students. Commercialism was frowned upon and violated the terms of service for most of the Internet service providers then in existence (including the terms of service of the provider used by Canter and Siegel to spam the Internet). Many Usenet groups, inundated with the spammed message, crashed or were forced offline ... .Notwithstanding the furor caused by their spamming, in 1995 Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel published How to Make a Fortune on the Information Super Highway, a book that became the 'spamming bible' to the next generation of spammers. Inevitably, given the low cost and ease of mass mailings online, spamming caught on." [CYBERANGELS]
Congress OKs National Anti-Spam Bill,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), December 8, 2003
"Congress on Monday approved the first national effort to stem the flood of unwanted e-mail pitches offering prescription drugs, cheap loans and other come-ons. President Bush has indicated he intends to sign the measure into law. Indeed the White House revamped its own e-mail system this summer over a flood of so-called spam. Clogged inboxes have become a leading irritation among Internet users, an increasing business expense for companies and a popular target for Washington interest before an election year. "Today, it's a nightmare that threatens to overwhelm people's legitimate use of the Internet," said Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M. "All the technologies and the filters have failed to keep our inboxes free of junk." The House voted without dissent to approve slight changes Senate lawmakers made to the "can spam" legislation, which would outlaw the shadiest techniques used by the Internet's most prolific e-mailers, who send tens of millions of messages each day."

[Older article, related to the above. JTR contributor's note: "The name of Mark Felstein, a famous pro-spam lawyer, will surely turn up as soon the anti-spam legislation becomes law."]
Spam and a Case of Dyspepsia,
By Don Oldenburg, Wasington Post, May 3, 2003
"Fisticuffs nearly came on Day 2 of the Federal Trade Commission's bare-knuckle forum on spam this week. In what FTC Chairman Timothy Muris called "this historic event," all the main combatants of the spam wars came together for the first time to hash out how best to curb today's onslaught of unsolicited e-mail ads. Close to 400 bureaucrats and lawmakers, consumers, lawyers, Internet service providers, techies and, most perilously, anti-spam activists and spammers sat side by side over three days in the close quarters of the FTC's new conference center near Capitol Hill. But it was the session on "blacklists" that was the zenith of bad chemistry. Blacklisters are online vigilantes who fight junk e-mails with techie guerrilla tactics, such as posting lists of spammers for people and companies to use to set up blocks. Spammers are the online advertisers who fill in boxes with annoying messages peddling cheap mortgages, vacations and breast enlargement creams. Blacklisters loathe spammers for damaging the Internet; spammers detest blacklisters for hurting their business. Tensions escalated during questions from the audience. Florida lawyer Mark Felstein, director of the pro-spam EMarketersAmerica.org, confronted panelist Alan Murphy of the blacklist Spamhaus, angrily arguing that blacklists sometimes hurt innocent marketers. Most of the audience didn't know Felstein had named Murphy as one of the several defendants in a lawsuit he filed against anti-spammers and blacklists a couple weeks ago. Another defendant, Adam Brower, sat irritated nearby. When the session ended, Felstein and Brower headed for each other. By chance, FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle, racing toward the door for lunch, stepped between them. "They both bumped up against me and were jabbing at each other, and one started saying, 'He assaulted me,' " recounted the grandfatherly Swindle, a former Marine Corps aviator and Vietnam War POW who towered over the two. Swindle (pronounced Swin-DELL) told the scufflers to take a deep breath, then added, "If you want to see assault, I can show you" ... Defining spam isn't as easy as you think. Sure, you know it when you see it in your in box (well, usually). But as a legal issue, defining what should be prohibited gets contentious and complex, rife with free-market arguments and constitutional rights. Boos and hisses filled the room 35 minutes into the forum's very first panel session. Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct Marketing Association, whose membership includes commercial e-mailers, drew the audience's ire by arguing that unsolicited commercial e-mails aren't spam unless they are deceptive and fraudulent."

[Older article, related to the ones above.]
Spam Wars. The proliferation of junk e-mail is threatening to overwhelm the Internet. Software companies are rushing to build defenses—but will the new technologies do more harm than good?,
By Evan I. Schwartz , Technology Review, July/August 2003
"Alan Ralsky, by contrast, seems almost respectable. While trying to overcome a past littered with fraud convictions, a court-ordered fine, personal bankruptcy, and a brief jail stint, Ralsky in 1997 heard about a new Internet opportunity. Repudiating pornography to his wife, Ralsky rented mailing lists and set up servers in his basement, according to media interviews he gave last year. Pitching mortgages, vacations, and online pharmacies and casinos on behalf of others, he boasted of thousands of dollars per week in sales commissions. After moving into a $740,000 house in a Detroit suburb, Ralsky set up another basement operation that was soon spewing tens of thousands of messages per hour, relayed through servers in Dallas and in Canada, China, Russia, and India. In 2001, Verizon Internet Services sued Ralsky, charging him with unauthorized use of its network."

[Another f***ing Jewish gift to mankind. Sure, Lenny Bruce, that f***ing k**e, a drug addict, is an obvious f***ing hero. He was a m***er f***ing pioneer in the f****ing "free speech" movement. S**t, yes. Look at the f***ing great doors he opened up for all of us. Now deep-think street vulgarity is the f***ing cultural norm. (Here's a toast to another great f***ing Jew, f***ing Jerry Springer.) It's a good thing the governor of f***ing New York (where all the k**es live) understands his f***ing priorities. F*** you all too, you f***ing terrorist a**holes. ]
Lenny Bruce Pardoned for 4-Letter Offense,
Yahoo! News (from Associated Press), December 23, 2003
"Long after four-letter words in standup comedy lost their ability to shock, Lenny Bruce — whose foul-mouthed rants started the trend — was posthumously pardoned Tuesday for his 1964 obscenity conviction. Lenny Bruce Gov. George Pataki granted the pardon after a campaign that included Bruce's daughter and former wife, and entertainers such as Robin Williams, the Smothers Brothers, and Penn and Teller. "Freedom of speech is one of the greatest American liberties and I hope this pardon serves as a reminder of the precious freedoms we are fighting to preserve as we continue to wage the war on terror," Pataki said. It was the first posthumous pardon in New York state history. Bruce's supporters called Pataki's decision a victory for the First Amendment and for the legacy of the pioneering comic, who helped transform his art ... Bruce was arrested during a November 1964 performance at Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village. He used more than 100 "obscene" words, according to undercover New York City police detectives who attended the show, and was charged with giving an obscene performance. Bruce's performances at the time were littered with four-letter words, and sexual references to Eleanor Roosevelt and St. Paul, among others. Bruce was convicted after a six-month trial and then mishandled his own appeal, refusing to follow the court's rules. He was sentenced to four months in jail but left the state and never served the term. Despite Bruce's frenetic stage presence, carrying the mantle of free speech in the cultural wars of the 1960s wore him down. He died of a drug overdose in 1966 with his conviction still on the books."

[Jewish control of the music industry, here.]
Jews take credit for writing, singing Christmas songs,
by VIVI ABRAMS, Jewish San Francisco (from Atlanta Jewish Times)
"A Methodist dad wants to get into the Christmas mood. He plays a record of "The Christmas Song" and sings along to the familiar "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" refrain. Then he feels like a movie, and watches "White Christmas" with his family. Before bed, he reads his daughter the Caldecott-winning children's Christmas book, "The Polar Express." He's just had a very Jewish night. Not many people know it, but Jews have a long history of orchestrating Christmas, back to the early 1800s when French composer Adolphe Adam wrote the music for "O Holy Night." "Christmas Song" composer Mel Torme was also Jewish. Chris Van Allsburg, a convert to Judaism, wrote "The Polar Express." And "White Christmas," a film about song-and-dance men who romance women for the holidays in a Vermont ski lodge, had a Jewish star (Danny Kaye), director (Michael Curtiz) and composer (Irving Berlin). Berlin, born Israel Baline, wrote "White Christmas" for the film "Holiday Inn" in 1942 and resurrected it for the Bing Crosby film in 1954. Actor and commentator Ben Stein recently wrote an essay saying that Jews should feel no shame about having so much power in Hollywood, because it's a sign of how much they love America. He said the same about Christmas ... Nate Teibloom, editor of jewhoo.com, a Web site that identifies famous Jews, had a different reason for why Jews involve themselves in the Christmas spirit: the bottom line. "There's a huge market," he said. "Virtually every recording artist puts out a Christmas album eventually, including Jewish recording artists. It's money in the bank. [However,] some Jewish recording artists tend to shy away from doing the religious Christmas songs." One Jewish popular songwriter, who asked not to be identified, believes so many Jewish composers write Christmas songs "because it broadens the field of endeavor. "Every year for a couple of months the recordings sell all over again. It's the old profit system, not an underwriting of another faith," he said. Teibloom said Jewish songwriters dominated the popular music scene from around 1920 to 1965 ... According to jewhoo.com, Jeffery Tambor, the actor who co-starred as Mayor May Who in the recent film "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," was asked if he ever worked on a project as big and expensive as the Grinch film. He replied, "Maybe my bar mitzvah." Speaking of the Grinch, remember the original animated version soundtrack with the great line, "He's a mean one, Mr. Grinch"? Contrary to what some might think, the Grinch was not Jewish -- but the songwriter was (Albert Hague). There are even Jewish ornaments on the Christmas tree -- Hallmark features one of a miniature Larry Fine of Three Stooges fame. But songs are by far the biggest Jewish contribution to Christmas pop culture. Barbra Streisand and Kenny G. (Gorelick) have put out hugely successful Christmas albums. Other Christmas carols written or performed by Jews include: * "We Need a Little Christmas" (Jerry Herman). * "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and "A Holly Jolly Christmas" (Johnny Marks). * "The Christmas Waltz" and "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow" (Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne). * "Silver Bells" (Ray Evans, lyricist, and Jay Livingston, composer). *"I'm Getting' Nuttin' for Christmas" (Barry Gordon, performer). So to all the Jews walking around the mall this year and getting annoyed by all the holiday music on the sound system: Quit blaming the Christians."

He Placed Shopping at the Center. Christmas shoppers should hail Victor Gruen as a hero,
BY DANIEL AKST, Wall Street Journal (Opinion Journal), December 24, 2003 "To most people, Marx, Freud and Einstein are the Mitteleuropean trinity that gave us the modern world. But the modern world itself, sprawling giddily in all directions from old-fashioned downtowns, is as much the product of a fourth conflicted genius who happens to be from a similar background. Like Sigmund Freud, architect Victor Gruen (1903-80) was a secular Jew who fled Vienna one step ahead of the Nazis and, also like Freud, spent his career dealing unscientifically with people's subconscious desires. The difference is that Gruen's ideas have endured to reshape the American landscape, for Victor Gruen was the father of the modern shopping mall. He is now the subject of a biography by M. Jeffrey Hardwick, an editor at Smithsonian Books. Gruen was a classic American type, the brilliant and driven immigrant who struggles to achieve wealth and influence but who yearns most of all for legitimacy. Like the immigrants who built Hollywood, Gruen combined art and commerce in new ways that captured something deep in the American psyche ... His most remarkable innovation--unveiled in Edina, Minn., in 1956--was the first enclosed shopping mall, a climate-controlled community of retailing under a single vast canop ... In theory he embraced the automobile as fervently as most Americans did, yet personally he hated driving, hated the suburbs and eventually, it seems, hated even the vulgar, sprawling, profitable nation whose landscape he helped to shape. Among his many bad ideas was saving downtowns by banning automobiles from key streets and building giant malls and parking structures at city centers--in effect making them more like suburbia. He also ran through four wives. It's hard to think of a better subject for a biography; thus it is hard not to be disappointed by "Mall Maker" ... Mr. Hardwick is at his best in highlighting the many contradictions between his subject's public pronouncements and the lucrative commissions he executed at almost complete cross-purposes to what he claimed to believe. Gruen at first condemned strip development even as he designed innovative stores for commercial strips. Then he condemned sprawl even as he designed bigger and bigger suburban shopping centers ... At the end of his life he took his ample American profits and returned to Vienna, from which he condemned the U.S. even though, as Mr. Hardwick puts it, "the world of postwar America that he so lamented was, in part, his own creation."

A Gift From Santa’s Jewish Helpers,
by Naomi Pfefferman, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, December 26, 2003
"In the sleeper hit “Elf,” Buddy (Will Ferrell) is a lovable childlike oaf, raised by elves, who returns to New York to find his real father and spread Christmas cheer. It’s a hip, witty, charming fairy tale that, like much of Christmas cinema, was created by Jews. “Apparently I’m following in a grand tradition,” said screenwriter David Berenbaum, 33, who shares religious roots with director Jon Favreau, actors James Caan (Buddy’s dad) and Edward Asner (Santa Claus). In decades past, such movies reflected filmmakers’ longing to belong to a popular culture that excluded Jews, Favreau said. But for the “Elf” filmmakers, who grew up in more tolerant times, the outsiders’ perspective isn’t part of the mix. Instead, the writer and director drew on childhood memories of Christmastime, which included TV viewings of classics such as “It’s a Wonderful Life.” They feel “Elf” reflects their affection for a beloved American holiday, not a Christian one. Berenbaum (“The Haunted Mansion”), was raised in a Reform Philadelphia home where a menorah shared space with a Christmas tree. While Chanukah was a religious holiday, Christmas was strictly secular: “It was never about Jesus, it was about Santa Claus,” the wry, friendly writer said with Buddy-like enthusiasm ... The actor-director — previously known for edgy, independent films such as “Swingers” and “Made” — grew up in an interfaith family in New York. His Italian Catholic father attended parochial schools; his Jewish mother, Madeleine, was so inspired by a B’nai B’rith camp that she convinced her parents to keep kosher in their Bronx home ...Asner curtly dismisses those who ask why a Jewish actor is portraying Santa. “Forget the identification with Christmas,” he said of “Elf.” “The film inculcates a spirit of togetherness, which is priceless, especially during these terrible times.” Favreau and Berenbaum, too, have fielded the “Why is a nice Jewish boy making a Christmas movie” question. “Relatives ask, ‘So when’s the Chanukah film coming out,’” said Berenbaum, who did write and direct an Internet Jewish parody of the Budweiser “whassup” ads, “Shalom.” “And I’ll say, ‘Well, you know, Chanukah doesn’t have the same cinematic tradition as Christmas.’”

[More tearing down of the Jewish pillars of fraud. Psychoanalysis is an unethical fairy tale $uction-gun that milks the emotionally exploited. It is dominated by Jews, it has been spread like poison ivy by Jews, and it has degraded Western culture with yet another version of secular Judeocentric hucksterism. Psychoanalysis/Freudian theory is but another expression of Jewish self-delusion, and distinctly Jewish neurosis: another way to get rich off human distress.]
Killing Freud: 20th-century culture and the death of psychoanalysis,
by Todd Dufresne. Disastrous victory of a 20th-century shaman,
By Justin Wintle, The Independent (UK), December 16, 2003
"Had Freud and his celebrated "talking cure" never happened, would BT still have come up with "It's Good to Talk"? Would the slogan have such ambiguous ring-tones? Post-Freud, the proposition is scarcely one that entices all subscribers. Good to chat, maybe; good to discuss and debate. But by its one-sided definition of "talk", psychoanalysis unsettles. Encouraging the patient to let it all hang out should be empowering for the "analysand". In fact, the reverse is true. Nobody except a megalomaniac can "talk" (in a monologue) indefinitely without rendering themselves vulnerable to the suggestive interventions of that dictatorial wizard: the analyst. What may begin as a minor character trait is inflated into an obsession, then a phobic neurosis. There is little chance that an analysis will last less than several months, years or, in the most lucrative cases, decades. As Todd Dufresne reminds us, Karl Kraus famously quipped that "psychoanalysis is the disease of which it purports to be the cure". For its practitioners, the embarrassing truth is that its therapeutic record is at best unproven, at worst contra-indicative. The scam scarcely ends there. Freud's untestable "discoveries" were not just a means of persuading unfortunates to part with their money, but a grand theory capable of uncovering the tap-roots of experience. And, in the wake of his admittedly enthralling Interpretation of Dreams, one discipline after another fell under his shamanist sway. Dufresne suggests that the upshot of Freud's moribund triumph has been, intellectually, little short of catastrophic. Psychoanalysis subverts the essence of western rationality, substituting a bastard discourse for the fact-honouring conventions of dialogue that, intermittently, have served civilisation well since Socrates. Rightly, Dufresne identifies the excesses of post-structuralism and postmodernism as Freud's progeny, without wholly condemning all such movements. Yet his basic point rings true: wherever the bearded shadow of Freud falls, something unwholesome festers. Killing Freud is the latest salvo fired in the Freud Wars, which got seriously under way during the "recovered memories" furore that gripped 1990s America. Dozens of parents faced imprisonment because their grown-up children were seduced into believing, by the inchoate shibboleths of Freudianism, that they had been abused as youngsters. Dufresne does not attempt a demolition of Freud, though he is equipped to do that. He concentrates his fire on weak points in the enemy's defences: the way Freud systematically distorted his findings in case-histories, and the way psychoanalysis, as a profession, is a fiercely jealous guild. There is a wickedly funny section on the literal-cum-metaphoric ice-skating of Ernest Jones, Freud's English promoter and "official" biographer; and, more playful still, a supposedly unpublished memoir by an orthodox practitioner, forced to admit that psychoanalysis is nothing if not "a bad habit". Killing Freud requires some knowledge of its subject-matters: Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan, as much as Freud. While it is not a book for he uninitiated, for those minded to follow the Freud Wars, its erudition offers sure-fire caviar."

[Fifth graders? Fire him, whatever he is. But wait. He's Jewish. He's immune from everything -- especially responsibility.]
Arm from a cadaver too 'gross' for some,
By Jane Elizabeth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 8, 2004
"It's fair to say that both doctors showcased at a Fox Chapel elementary school on Tuesday made an impression. In one case, it was just a little more lasting. Dr. Seuss was the attraction in some classrooms at Fairview Elementary, with parents reading "Green Eggs and Ham" and using seaweed and other green foods for props. Meanwhile, Dr. Michael Horowitz was headlining a fifth-grade science lesson on the human body. His prop was a human cadaver arm, which he opened to show its nerves and other parts. At least one child vomited; five children left the classroom feeling ill. Another child fainted almost immediately. The experience angered some Fairview parents, kept school board member Shirley Wiley's phone ringing yesterday and had school officials scrambling with damage control much of the day. And it left science experts scratching their heads about why a human body part would be presented to such young children ... Horowitz, a local neurosurgeon who has a child at Fairview, brought in the limb and medical tools to supplement the art lesson, school officials said. Horowitz appeared surprised by the complaints yesterday and said that he has visited the school in previous years bearing cadaver eyes, ears and a brain ... "My son left the room; he was quite traumatized," said one father, who didn't want his name used fearing "reprisal." The boy's mother was at the school to help with the Dr. Seuss program, he said. "She said he was as white as a ghost."

[Per the Jewish destruction of America: The Jewish robbing of American culture "may have little to do with Jews themselves." So another Jewish smokescreener tell it. Jews dominate U.S. culture because they OWN culture and the self-feeding, hyper-hustling, ethnocentric Jewish Network is a defining feature of modern American life. On the other hand, you can't talk about this publicly without being Jewish and framing it through a laudatory prism. Anything less than groveling before Jewish cultural hegemony and you're attacked as an "anti-Semite" -- and all the forces of the Jewish Network will rally to isolate and disempower you. Let us hope that this is the Twilight of Jewish Power and Oppression. Corrupt Israel may yet turn things around for us all.]
Can Our 15 Minutes Last? The rewards and pitfalls of being cool in America’s eyes,
by Thane Rosenbaum, The Jewish Week, January 6, 2004
"A favorite inside joke among American Jews has always been their disproportionate influence on American culture. Although small in absolute numbers, their contribution to cultural achievement has been indisputably vast, to the point where some American art forms would almost not have existed were it not for Jews. Tin Pan Alley became a virtual boarding house for rhyming Jewish boys who used to duck violin and cantorial lessons in their youth but ended up redefining American musical theater — from “Oklahoma,” “Annie Get Your Gun” and, yes, even “Fiddler on the Roof.” So, too, with the film and fashion industries, where Jews taught Americans what cowboys look like on screen, while Ralph Lauren showed them how to dress up like Connecticut, prep school Yankees. American literature in the second half of the 20th century was a virtual writing workshop for fast-talking Jews who stopped speaking just long enough to write some of it down. Comic books were created by men who transformed their sense of Jewish powerlessness into mythic super powers. Standup comedy was dominated by truant yeshiva boys who didn’t know how to sit still ... Curious and improbable as it may sound, we are all now living in a Jewish nation, and the cause of this cultural transformation may have little to do with Jews themselves. Jewish culture and values have rubbed off on everyone else ... The broader culture has gone ahead and domesticated our mystery and, in many cases, they did so without our permission. They have adopted our ways, co-opted our culture. The question is, do we want it back, and now that they sampled the flavor of our tribal life, will they return it? Just think how pervasive and ubiquitous Jewish values and sensibilities have become. For centuries Jewish men were warned against studying the kabbalah until they reached the age of 40. Now, kabbalah study is open to everyone — totally democratized, regardless of age and even religion. How did it come to pass that someone with the improbable-sounding name Madonna — a pop star, not a rabbi — would become the poster girl for Jewish mysticism? The story behind the 9-11 memorial was not only that a Jew, a son of Holocaust survivors infused with a sense of tragedy and remembrance, designed the rebuilding of Ground Zero, but that it’s broader significance was influenced by the aesthetics and symbolism of scores of Holocaust memorials from around the world. And Holocaust restitution initiatives have prompted calls for similar efforts on behalf of other once-victimized groups. Jazz clubs resound with European klezmer music, often by young hipsters of Jewish Renewal, but occasionally the bands are fronted by non-Jews like, for instance, Don Byron, an African American. One of the leading translators of classic Yiddish plays is Caraid O’Brien, an Irish Catholic who is as versed in “The Dybbuk” as she is in “Ulysses.” Television comedies, from “Seinfeld,” “The Larry David Show,” to “The Nanny” and “Will & Grace,” couldn’t be more Jewish, and yet the audiences for these shows are not primarily Jews. It’s not so much anymore that Jews are funny, but that their ways of life and values are funny, immediately recognizable in an American sort of way — not simply as stereotypes, but as an artifact of our common culture. Elie Wiesel is the face of cultural memory and world peace. Rabbis Shmuley Boteach and Irwin Kula have brought Judaism not only to Michael Jackson, but also the heartland. Sen. Joseph Lieberman was not just a Jewish vice-presidential candidate, but perhaps even more important, he forced voters to consider what it would be like to give an Orthodox Jew a position of high elected office knowing in advance that he wouldn’t be working, or driving in a motorcade, on Shabbat. Similarly, the boom in the kosher food market has been fueled not only by the returning devout but by the consumer spending power of health-conscious, lactose-intolerant gentiles rummaging through grocery aisles searching desperately for an “OU” or a “K” stamped on bottles and cans. And perhaps most paradoxical of all, Southern Baptists have become Israel’s staunchest and most unwavering political allies, just as many American Jews grew critical of and ambivalent about Israeli politics. When did their evangelical claims to Jerusalem, and their solidarity with Zionism, begin to supersede our own? Perhaps there is nothing to fear here, only something to relish. After all, it’s much more desirable to be courted at the prom than hunted at the pogrom. Jews always wished for cultural acceptance, to be considered true Americans. Now it seems that one can’t patriotically call himself an American unless he has visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, broken matzah at a seder and danced the hora at some kid’s bar or bat mitzvah. Americans not only have finally decided to accept Jews, they are, in some instances, determined to shamelessly copy them, as well. When the whole country starts wearing Stars of David around their necks not as affiliated religious symbols but as crass fashion statements, we should really start getting nervous. The Jews of the new American millennium are living through a virtual “Twilight Zone” episode. Collective memory is fading when it comes to persecution, largely because it has been showered with the stardust of relative adulation. Americans used to want to “Be Like Mike”; now they want to be more like Moshe ... America, after all, is a Jewish nation."

[The Jew and the Literary Establishment. Jim Irsay's rich Jewish father was Robert Irsay -- originally named Robert Israel. Author Ann Douglas notes that famous Beatnik author Jack Kerouac once became "ever more paranoid," thinking that "the New York Jewish critics were plotting against him; he joked bitterly about titling Big Sur (1962), 'Another idea for the Jews to Steal.'" [DOUGLAS, A., 19-99] In 2001, Jim Irsay bought Kerouac's original manuscript On the Road, at auction, for over two million dollars. (Jewish author Franz Kafka's The Trial had "held the previous record for an original manuscript sold at auction.") [HERMAN, J., 5-22-01]
Kerouac's 'On the Road' Begins Museum Tour,
Yahoo! News (from Associated Press), January 13, 2004
"Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, talks about his purchase of the original manuscript of the first draft of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road," in Indianapolis ... Irsay bought Kerouac's epic for $2.43 million, a 50-year-old, 120-foot scroll of single-spaced typewritten account of his trip about wandering across America. Beginning this week at the Orange County History Center in Orlando, Fla., and ending with a three-month stay at the New York Public Library in 2007, Kerouac's "On the Road" scroll will make a 13-stop, four-year national tour of museums and libraries ... In a conversation after he brought the scroll with director Cameron Crowe and journalist Hunter S. Thompson, Irsay said they discussed the manuscript's continued relevance as a chronicle of American discovery. Kerouac wrote the novel in a coffee-saturated, 21-day typewriter marathon at a friend's apartment in New York City in 1951. When finally published six years later, it won critical acclaim as an unconventional masterpiece, defining a post-World War II generation of intellectual outlaws on an aimless, odyssey across the American landscap ... When Kerouac died, his estate was reportedly valued at less than $100 ... Irsay inherited the Colts in 1997 when his father passed away. At 44, he is the NFL's youngest team owner. The scroll, which was once thought to have been stored in a dorm room closet, exchanged hands often after Kerouac's death in 1969. It had been part of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library until the 2001 auction, which was held to pay for debts in Kerouac's estate."

[Why is an advertisement for Doctor Lederman's character news, except that the war of public opinion influences law cases and the New York Post is an apologetic Jewish/Zionist playground? JTR Contributor's comment: "Only a member of the uber-tribe could get their cousins in the NY press to do such puffy damage-control for them. And notice that most of the 'friends' his wife mentions are clearly Jewish. The so-called "Spanish" and "Italian" friends probably are too. Either the byline is a fake or the poor journalist had this assignment jammed down her young gentile throat...."]
'BEATLE' ANGUISH, ALL PART OF THE TREATMENT: Dr. Josiane Lederman, with husband Gil, says he often has a close, personal relationship with his patients' families,
By JEANE MacINTOSH, New York Post, January 13, 2004
"The heartsick wife of the Staten Island doctor accused of forcing an autograph from a dying George Harrison broke her silence yesterday, saying her family was devastated and her husband "badly hurt" by the allegations. "It was like a brick falling on our heads," Dr. Josiane Lederman said of the $10 million lawsuit filed by the former Beatle's family last week against her husband, Dr. Gil Lederman, an internationally respected cancer doctor. "We couldn't believe it - we were speechless. We didn't understand how this was happening." Lederman was sued Jan. 6 by Harrison's widow, Olivia, and son, Dhani, for allegedly grabbing the Beatle's hand and forcing him to autograph Lederman's son's guitar as Harrison lay on his deathbed. "How Gil is [being portrayed] is not how he is at all. He's a sweet, caring, dedicated and devoted doctor who has always had very close relationships with all his patients," Josiane Lederman told The Post. Josiane, a Staten Island dermatologist, cannot discuss the Harrison case specifically, but she said her husband is not the opportunist he's been portrayed as. "Gil is hurt because that's not him, how they make him to be," she said. "His life is his family and his patients." The Harrison suit blasts Lederman for bringing his three kids - daughters ages 18 and 12 and a son, 15 - to the home where Harrison was staying while undergoing treatment for cancer. "My husband has always had [a] personal relationship with his patients," Josiane noted. "Their families become close with ours, and our kids know most of his patients. The families come to our bar and bat mitzvahs, we go to visit them at their homes. To us, it's not unusual - because that how's Gil is." Fame and wealth plays no part in her husband's dedication to his patients, she added. A few years ago, the wife said Lederman had a patient - a tour guide from Israel - who came for treatment and planned to get married at City Hall while in New York. "Gil told him he wouldn't let him do that - and he offered our house for the wedding," Josiane said. "With two days' notice, my husband got the rabbi, the caterer, the flowers. They got married at our home." Another time, upon learning that the son of a patient from Spain was an avid bicyclist, Josiane said Lederman arranged for the boy to get the special bike he'd asked for when the Lederman family visited the patient's family. Last year, Gil also threw a barbecue for a group of Italian patients at his home, replete with steel-drum musicians. And, with a growing caseload of patients from Italy, Josiane noted, "My husband learned Italian to better communicate with them." Lederman was fined $5,000 by state health officials after he spoke to the media about Harrison's medical condition."

[A good resource to contextualize the following "Kosher World" link is Lubomyr Prytulak's research about the hidden "kosher tax" consumers face, at his web site Ukrainian Archive.]
Kosher World,
"Expo: January 27-29, 2004
Conference: January 27-28, 2004
Los Angeles Convention Center Los Angeles, California"

Jews swarming to WASP schools, ... but at what cost?,
By Stacey Dresner, Jewish World View, January 21, 2004
"Increasing numbers of Jewish families are sending their children to private New England college prep schools that were for many years centers of WASP privilege. They cite the academic excellence and social advantages that these schools offer for doing so. Most of these prep schools provide their students with an intensive liberal arts education, small classes, and top notch educators, as well as an emphasis on extracurricular activities like sports and the arts. According to The Curriculum Initiative, a non-profit organization that brings Jewish programming to Jewish prep school students, there are 50,000 Jewish students at non-Jewish private schools around the country. "I think Jewish parents care very much about education," said Rachel Bashevkin, assistant director of studies at Westover School, an all-girl institution in Middlebury. "All parents care about education, but Jewish parents in particular see a quality education for their children as important and are willing to pay for it." As the number of Jewish students at prep schools around Connecticut grows, these schools, often with the guidance of Jewish student associations and Jewish faculty advisors, are attempting to provide more Jewish programming. Two prep schools in Connecticut even have Jewish chaplains: Rabbi Eric Polokoff at Taft School in Watertown and Rabbi Reena Judd at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, who as a teenager attended Kimball Union Academy, a boarding school in New Hampshire ... Besides her academic role at Westover, Rachel Bashevkin also serves as the faculty advisor to Westover's Jewish Student Association. Bashevkin, who has been on the staff at Westover since 1981, said the school "is more responsive to Jewish students' needs now than we were then. Part of that is that the number of Jewish students has grown." Back in the early 1980s, the school did not run specifically Jewish programs for the entire school, nor was there much organized socializing between Jewish students. "Now there is an annual Holocaust Chapel and the Chanukah party, attended by the whole school, is a major event of the year," Bashevkin said."

[Jews were the first people on the planet to eat fish. Believe it. First to do anything, actually. And best, of course. "Totally Jewish," indeed. Jews probably also invented French fries, and tacos and the hamburger, by the way. Why not? As matter of fact, they coined the term "food."]
Fish's Jewish Roots,
by Jeremy Last, Totally Jewish, January 22, 2004
"Fish and chips may be the most quintessential of British dishes, but a UK history professor has launched a research project that may prove the dish’s distinctly Jewish origins. Panikos Panayi, who teaches European history at Leicester’s Demontfort university, is aiming to outline the influence of immigrants on British cuisine. The culinary expert, who has received a £6,000 grant from the Nuffield foundation to aid his study, told TJ: “I wrote a book about the impact of immigration on post-war Britain and one of the areas of the most dramatic transformation is food and so I thought I would explore this further. “The research I have done on fish and chips found that chips come from a French influence and that the concept of fried fish probably stemmed from traditionally Jewish recipes. Over time it has become a British food.” And Panayi, who is intending to publish his findings in a book, is urging Jews to contact him to help him with his research. He said: “I am going to search through archive sources but would like to hear from Jews who lived in the east end about their culinary experiences in early 20th century.”

[More neurotic self-indulgent Jewish narcissism. This Jewish omnipresence is the direct result of decades-long Jewish seizure and control of the information arteries of popular culture, the erasure of credibility to other ethnic identities that do not revolve around the Jewish model, and a self-conscious propagation of the many myths of Jewish identity.]
It's hip to be Jewish, but not a victim,
Young US Jews are rebranding their image, and quietly grappling with their past, writes Naomi Wolf,
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), January 20, 2004
"The rebranded, trendy, twentysomething American Jew is about as far from the neurotic characters in a Woody Allen film as you can get. The hip new brigade of "Hebesters" listens to Jewish rap music, watches edgy Jewish theatre and wears tight-fitting T-shirts with the word "Jewcy" proudly emblazoned across the chest. Their heroes are the Sex and the City actress and all-round style icon Sarah Jessica Parker (SJP to those in the know) and the comedy star du jour, Adam Sandler. It reminds me of a moment about five years ago when you looked around and suddenly gay people had become chic to the very same mainstream that had labelled them "deviant". From the lesbian entertainers Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres on daytime television to homoerotic Calvin Klein iconography above Toys R Us in Times Square, all at once homosexuality was cool in places it had never been cool before. Five years later we are looking at gay marriage, at gay package holidays, at gay entertainers like Graham Norton on prime time. There are such moments for other groups, too, moments when there is a kind of cultural "tipping point". We seem to be witnessing such a moment for Jews. For young gentiles it's cool to be mistaken for a Jew and to greet each other with the words shalom and mazeltov. Such shifts occur after the minority group's sense of itself has changed. Only then is the outer world willing to follow ... This new self-confident Jewry is finding expression everywhere from the comic Sandler (his hilarious Hanukkah song dominated the Christmas airwaves, with its catchy refrain "O.J.Simpson ... not a Jew" and lyrics: "When you feel like the only kid in town without a Christmas tree, Here's a list of people who are Jewish, just like you and me: David Lee Roth lights the menorah, so do James Caan, Kirk Douglas, and the late Dinah Shore-ah ... Paul Newman's half Jewish; Goldie Hawn's half too, Put them together - what a fine lookin' Jew!") to the high street, where the fashion hit of the season is knickers with "Jewcy" written on the backside. The Hebrew Hammer, a Jewsploitation film (parodying the recherche fashionability of the "blacksploitation" movies of the 1970s) is due out shortly. It is groundbreaking in that it is a film with Jewish characters that doesn't have the Second World War or relationship angst as a backdrop. Hollywood has gone wild over kabbalah, the branch of Jewish mysticism favoured by Madonna and Jerry Hall. Fashionable young Jewish characters are surfacing in pop culture, from SJP and her groundbreaking outfits to the lesbian romantic film Kissing Jessica Stein. The attitude to their ethnicity is less prohibitive than the previous generation's. Postwar American Judaism, reeling from the Holocaust and suffering from a kind of collective post-traumatic shock, established an identity based strongly on ethnic centrality; you were to support the state of Israel no matter what; you were not to intermarry; you were to send your kids to camps and on trips to Israel that would solidify their commitment to their roots and to Israel above all; and you were never, never to forget the Holocaust. The notion that the Holocaust was unique among atrocities, that Jews were unique as the world's persecuted and that it could happen again at any moment became the very definition of mid-20th century Jewry. I remember a gentile friend in a mixed marriage saying to her five-year-old daughter, who was complaining in the car that she was tired of the journey: "Everybody suffers, honey." The Jewish-Sunday-school-educated child promptly replied: "Especially the Jews."

[There's plenty of room for public debate about gun control in the U.S. But we see here the usual Jewish Double Standard. Question: where is George Soros' activism to disarm the Israeli public, defang Israel's aggressve militarism, tear down its torture chambers, and strip it of its nuclear bombs and biological warfare stockpile?]
George Soros: Anti-Gunner Who Would Remake America,
National Rifle Association
"George Soros has made an immense fortune manipulating international stock and currency markets. Over the past few years the Hungarian-born billionaire has used that fortune to become a preeminent funding source for global gun control. Directly and through his organization Open Society Institute (OSI), he has funneled cash to various anti-gun groups, such as the Tides Foundation, the HELP Network and SAFE Colorado. He and seven rich friends founded their own political committee--Campaign for a Progressive Future--and spent $2 million on political activities in 2000, including providing the prime financial backing for the Million Mom March. OSI has supported UN efforts to create international gun control regulations and has singled out the United States for failing to go along with the international gun-prohibitionists. Soros has worked to combine with other wealthy activists and foundations to provide funding for numerous anti-gun projects. Soros and the Irene Diamond Foundation made equal $5 million contributions to form the Funders` Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention. This organization has provided funding to the anti-gun Harvard Injury Control Center and has helped bankroll reckless lawsuits designed to cripple the firearms industry. OSI and the Funders` Collaborative (using money largely supplied by Soros) was the primary funding source for the plaintiffs in Hamilton v. Accu-tek and in NAACP v. ACUSPORT Inc. OSI provided $300,000 to the plaintiffs` lawyers in the Hamilton case and provided a grant identified as between $100,000 and $499,000 in the NAACP case ... In addition to his efforts to undermine the Second Amendment rights of Americans, Soros has spent over two decades trying to influence the political and social development in various parts of the world, particularly the nations of the former Soviet bloc. In the United States, Soros has given many millions of dollars to finance pro-marijuana initiative campaigns. He has been called "the Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization," by former Democratic Cabinet Member Joseph Califano ... Soros` decision to spend tens of millions of dollars to influence the 2004 election flies in the face of his earlier crusades against the use of "soft" money in political campaigns. Over the past seven years, Soros has donated close to $7 million dollars to efforts to reform campaign finance laws. Now he is spending tens of millions in "soft" money political ads to influence the 2004 election. This hypocrisy has drawn the condemnation not only of political foes, but of former ally Fred Werthiemer, the former Common Cause director, who now says "we`ll be watch-dogging him closely.'"

Syrian Cartoonist Snubs UN Prize Over Israel Link,
Reuters, January 26, 2004
"A Syrian cartoonist said on Monday he had rejected a United Nations Correspondents Association award named after Ranan Lurie, after he discovered the world renowned cartoonist was of Israeli origin. "As a matter of principle I refuse to accept an award linked to a Zionist Israeli no matter under whose patronage it was," Raed Khalil told Reuters. "There is no honor in it for me. Most of my cartoons are against Israel and Israeli policies," he added. Lurie, one of the world's most awarded cartoonists, served as a reserve combat major in Israel's armed forces before moving to the United States in 1968 and later becoming a U.S. citizen. Khalil, whose country is officially in a state of war with Israel, said: "Taking part in a contest arranged by a Zionist Israeli is a matter not appropriate for an Arab citizen whose people are subjected to aggression and harm by Israel which occupies the Syrian Arab Golan (Heights) and other Arab land and commits daily massacres against the Palestinian people." Khalil said the prize he received in December was awarded for a cartoon about "peace and love in the world." "It is not about peace between Syria and Israel," he said of the cartoon showing two men on either bank of a river watering a plant that linked the two sides. Khalil, 31, has won five awards from Iran, Poland, China and Cyprus and publishes his work in two local publications including a state-run newspaper. The U.N. prize is awarded annually for cartoons that best exemplify United Nations values and activities."

The Sierra Staff Strikes Back, With Some Help From The SPLC,
By Brenda Walker, VDare, January 27, 2004
"In case you haven't been following the roiling controversy within the Sierra Club, a group of insurgents seeking seats on the Board of Directors have been smeared as radical right-wing extremists by the Club’s fearful permanent officials. Three outstanding candidates running for the Board believe that America's skyrocketing overpopulation, driven by out-of-control mass immigration, must be addressed. They want the Club to return to the position it held until 1996: to "bring about the stabilization of the population first of the United States and then of the world." ... Although they pose as rescuers, the SPLC mudslingers have in fact been plotting their insertion into Sierra Club internal affairs for some time - witness the SPLC's lengthy letter from Mark Potok to Sierra Club President Larry Fahn dated October 21 and posted on GroundswellSierra.com, a website dedicated to “protecting” the Sierra Club regime. Current Sierra Board member Ben Zuckerman, an immigration realist, has speculated that the SPLC may be looking to the immigration controversy to fill its coffers since the KKK, with only a couple thousand members including federal informers, may no longer elicit the same fundraising response. The SPLC has certainly dolled up its website with a green look and a newly discovered interest in environmental affairs. However, its tactics are the same old hysteria."

[After Bob Dylan becoming rich and famous singing about social justice, in the 1980s "Dylantologist" A. J. Weberman declared that the famous singer "is an ultra-Zionist. He is doing the tour to raise money for Israel. He has given large sums of money to Israel in the name of Abraham Zimmerman." [SPITZ, p. 430] Newsweek and Time each reported that Dylan had indeed donated sums to the Jewish state, and even the far right-wing Jewish Defense League. [SPITZ, p. 407] A biographer, Anthony Scaduto, noted earlier, in 1971, "At this writing, Dylan's search for personal salvation seems to be coming around full circle, back to the religion of his fathers. Bob has started to study Judaism, and Hebrew. Dylan, who gets so Gemini-enthused about everything, has made several trips to Israel in the last year to 'sniff the breeze' as his friends put it. He has reportedly donated some of his funds to help support at least one kibbutz there. Folksinger Theo Bikel [also Jewish, and a Zionist activist] adds: 'Dylan has told me that Israel appears to be one of the few places left in the world where life has any meaning.' He has even attended several meetings of the militant Jewish Defense League. The JDL's head, Meir Kahane, [charged by many, including Jews, as a racist and fascist] will say only that Dylan has 'come around a couple times to see what we're all about' and has promised to donate money to the organization. Dylan refuses to discuss it." [SCADTO, p. 274]
Bob Dylan Film Blowin' in the Wind at Paramount,
by Steve Gorman, Reuters, February 10, 2004
"The story of Bob Dylan's life is blowin' in the wind at Paramount Pictures. The Viacom Inc.-owned studio has struck a deal with producers to develop a biographical feature film about the famed singer-songwriter with Dylan's cooperation, a Paramount spokeswoman said on Tuesday. Dylan, who played a washed-up folk singer sprung from jail in the recent film "Masked and Anonymous," will not portray himself in Paramount's "biopic" but has licensed rights to his music for the production, the spokeswoman said. The project is the brainchild of Oregon-based filmmaker Todd Haynes, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director behind 2002's romantic period drama "Far From Heaven," starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, she said. The film will be developed by New York production company Killer Films and Hollywood-based John Wells Prods. Haynes and the head of Killer Films, Christine Vachon, are old friends from college, a spokeswoman for the company said ... "The film is going to be inspired by Dylan's music and his ability to re-create and re-imagine himself time and time again," Vachon was quoted as saying. Haynes, himself, has said in previous interviews that he envisions the film as a "multiple refracted biopic" with Dylan played by at least seven different actors, including a woman. Dylan, 62, whose music gave voice to an era of youthful revolt during the 1960s and transformed the sound and depth of rock 'n' roll for four decades, has given few interviews over the years while remaining an object of intense fascination in the popular culture."

[What about Israel, where Jews carry guns everywhere and the tiny Jewish state is one of the world's greatest weapons factories?]
Million Mom March,
By Marlene Adler Marks, Jewish Journal, April 7, 2000
"Moreover, virtually all Jewish movements are behind the Million Mom March. That's right. Gun control is the one issue that all Jews can still agree upon. The Orthodox Union is working with the Reform movement to get safety locks on guns! Want a thrill? Visit the OU website (www.ou.org) and read Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz's article, "Gun Control: A Jewish Look." Then click on Mark J. Pelavin's opinion piece "Jewish Values and Gun Control," for the Reform movement: rj.org/rac/news/mjpgunoped.html. Gun control falls under the same religious precept as putting a gate around a roof. It carries the same rabbinic weight as ensuring workers' safety in a factory. If they can agree that gun control is necessary, what's stopping you."

Jewish Writers of the 20th Century,
Routledge
A Abish, Walter Abse, Dannie Agnon, Shmuel (S Y Czaczes) Allen, Woody Almog, Ruth Aloni, Nissim Alterman, Natan Alvarez, Al American-Jewish Literature Amichai, Yehuda Amir, Eli An-ski, S. Appelfeld, Aharon Apple, Max Asch, Scholem Aub, Max Auslaender, Rose Auster, Paul Avidan, David Ayalon, Leah B Babel, Isaac Bagritsky, Eduard Ballas, Shimon Barbash, Benny Baron, Alexander Baron, Devora Bartov, Hanokh Bassani, Giorgio Becker, Jurek Begley, Louis (Ludwig Begleiter) Bejerano, Maya Bellow, Saul Ben Ner, Yitzhak Ben Yehuda, Netiva Berdyczewski, Micha Josef Bergelson, Dovid Berkoff, Steven Bermant, Chaim Bialik, Haim Nahman Biller, Maxim Bloch, Jean Richard Brenner, Joseph Hayyim Broch, Herman Brod, Max Brodkey, Harold Brodsky, Joseph Broner, E.M. Brookner, Anita back to top C Cahan, Abraham Canetti, Elias Carmi, Tcharney Castel-Bloom, Orly Celan, Paul (Antschel) Chayevsky, Paddy Cixous Hélène Clouts, Sydney Cohen, Albert Cohen, Leonard D de Winter, Leon Dinur, Yechiel Döblin, Alfred Doctorow, Edgar L Dorfman, Ariel Durlacher, Gerard Dworkin, Andrea back to top E Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigorevich Elkin, Stanley Epstein, Leslie Esther (Malke Lifshitz) Ezekiel, Nissim F Fainlight, Ruth Farhi, Moris Federman, Raymond Feffer, Itzik Feiffer, Jules Feinstein, Elaine Ferber, Edna Feuchtwanger, Lionel Fiedler, Leslie Fierstein, Harvey Fink, Ida Fischer, Otokar Fleg, Edmond Fried, Erich Friedman, Bruce Jay back to top G Gary, Romain Gebirtig, Mordkhe Gerchunoff, Alberto Gerez, Josef Habib Gershon, Karen Gilboa, Amir Ginsberg, Allen Ginzburg, Natalia Glantz, Margo Glatstein, Jacob Glickman, Nora Gnessin, Uri Nissan Goldberg, Lea Goldemberg, Isaac Goldfaden, Abraham Golding, Louis Goloboff, Gerardo Mario Goodman, Allegra Gordimer, Nadine Gordin, Jacob Grade, Chaim Greenberg, Uri Zvi Grossman, David Gur, Batya Guri, Haim back to top H Halkin, Shmuel Halpern, Moyshe-Leyb Halter, Marek Hareven, Shulamit Harwood, Ronald Hazaz, Hayim Hebrew Literature Heifetz-Tussman, Malka Heijermans, Herman Heller, Joseph Hellman, Lillian Hendel, Yehudit Herzberg, Judith Herzl, Theodor (Binjamin Ze'ev) Heym, Stefan Hilsenrath, Edgar Hirschbein, Peretz Hoffman, Joel Hollander, John Holocaust Writing back to top I Ignatow, David Ionesco, Eugène J Jabes, Edmond Jacob, Max Jacobson, Dan Jacobson, Howard Jewish Writing in Britain 20th C Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer Jong, Erica Josipovici, Gabriel back to top K Kafka, Franz Kahana-Carmon, Amalia Kahanowitz, Pinye (Der Nister) Kaniuk, Yoram Karpinovich, Avrom Katz, Menke Katz, Steve Katzir, Yehudit Kenaz, Yehoshua Kis, Danilo Kisch, Egon Erwin Kishon, Ephraim Klein, A M Klima, Ivan Koch, Kenneth Koestler, Arthur Kolmar, Gertrud Konrád, György Kopit, Arthur Kops, Bernard Korczak, Janusz (Henryk Goldszmidt) Kosinski, Jerzi Kovner, Abba Kraus, Karl Kreitman, Esther (Hinde) Kulbak, Moshe Kunitz, Stanley Kushner, Tony back to top L Langer, Jiri Laor, Yitzchak Lapid, Shulamit Lasker-Schuler, Else Layton, Irving Leib, Mani Leivick, Halpern Lesmian (Lesman), Boleslaw Levi, Carlo Levi, Primo Levin, Hanoch Leyeles, Arn Glants Liberman, Serge Liebrecht, Savyon Lind, Jacov Lispector, Clarice Litvinoff, Emanuel Louvish, Simon Lunel, Armand Lustig, Arnošt back to top M Mailer, Norman Malamud, Bernard Mamet, David Mandelstam, Osip E Manea, Norman Manger, Itzik Mankowitz, Wolf Mann, Emily Margolin, Anna Markfield, Wallace Markish, Peretz Matalon, Ronit Maurois, Andre (Emile Herzog) Megged, Aharon Memmi, Albert Mendele Mokher Sefarim Michael, Sami Michaels, Anne Mikes, George Miller, Arthur Millin, Sarah Gertrude Minco, Marga Mishkovsky, Zelda (Schneerson) Modiano, Patrick Molnar, Ferenc Molodowsky, Kadya Morante, Elsa Moravia, Alberto (Pincherle) Moring, Marcel Mulisch, Harry back to top N Nadas, Peter Nathanson, Henri Nemerov, Howard O Odets, Clifford Olsen, Tillie Opatoshu, Joseph Oppen, George Orpaz, Yitzchak Auerbach Ortiz, Alicia Dujovne Oz, Amos Ozick, Cynthia back to top P Pagis, Dan Paley, Grace Parker, Dorothy Rothschild Pasternak, Boris Perec, Georges Perelman, S.J. (Sidney Joseph) Peretz, Isaac Leib Perutz, Leo Petri, Gyrgy Piercy, Marge Pinski, David Pinsky, Robert Pinter, Harold Potok, Chaim Preil, Gabriel Yehoshua Pressburger, Giorgio and Nicola Proust, Marcel back to top R Raab, Esther Rabinyan, Dorit Rachel (Bluwstein) Rakosi, Carl Raphael, Frederic Ratosh, Yonatan Ravikovitch, Dalia Rawicz, Piotr Reisen, Abraham Reznikoff, Charles Rich, Adrienne Richler, Mordecai Riding, Laura (Reichental) Rosenberg, Isaac Rosenfarb, Chava Rosenfeld, Isaac Rosenfeld, Morris Rosten, Leo Roth, Henry Roth, Joseph Roth, Philip Rothenberg, Jerome Rubens, Bernice Rudnicki, Adolf Rukeyser, Muriel back to top S Saba, Umberto Sachs, Nelly Sadeh, Pinhas Salinger, J[erome] D Samuel, Maurice Sarraute, Nathalie Schindel, Robert Schnitzler, Arthur Schulz, Bruno Schutz, David Schwartz, Delmore Schwarz-Bart, Andre Schwob, Marcel Scliar, Moacyr Sendak, Maurice Shabtai, Yakov Shaffer, Peter Shaham, Natan Shahar, David Shalev, Meir Shamir, Moshe Shapiro, L Sherman, Martin Shneyer, Zalmen (Shneour Zalkind) Sholem-Aleichem Shpigl, Yeshayahu (Shaye) Shrayer-Petrov, David Silkin, Jon Simon, Neil Sinclair, Clive Singer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Israel J Slutsky, Boris Sobol, Joshua Sontag, Susan Spark, Muriel Spiegelman, Art Spire, Andre Stavans, Ilan Stein, Gertrude Steiner, George Stoppard, Tom Stryjkowski, Juljan (Pesach Stark) Sukenick, Ronald Sutskever, Avrom Svevo, Italo (Ettore Schmitz) back to top T Tammuz, Benjamin Tchernikowsky, Shaul Torberg, Friedrich Trilling, Lionel Tuwim, Julian Tzara, Tristan (Sami Rosenstein) U Uris, Leon V Viertel, Berthold Vigee, Claude Vogel, David back to top W Wallach, Yona Wallant, Edgar Lewis Wasserman, Jakob Weiss, Ernst Weissbort, Daniel Weissenberg, I M Werfel, Franz Wesker, Arnold West, Nathanael Wiesel, Elie Wieseltier, Meir Wiseman, Adele Woolf, Leonard Wouk, Herman Y Yehoshua, A B Yeshurun, Avoth Yezierska, Anzia Yiddish Writing in the 20th Century Yizhar, S Z Zach, Nathan Zangwill, Israel Zukofsky, Louis Zweig, Arnold Zweig, Stefan Zwicky, Fay Zwicky

The Culture of Critique. An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement In Twentieth Century Intellectual and Political Movements,
by Kevin MacDonald
[PDF file, complete book, 541 pages]

Our Union's Jewish State. THE DISPUTATION,
By DAVID KLINGHOFFER, The Forward, January 30, 2004
"If anyone else has pointed out what a Jewish piece of oratory the recent State of the Union address was, I'm not aware of it. The ethos, the whole moral outlook, was Jewish, and this observation raises a question: How did America come to be the most Judaic country on earth, a country where one could plausibly say such a thing about the principal yearly address given by an American president? Before getting to the State of the Union, let's try to arrive at an understanding of what it means for a non-Jewish country to be, in some sense, Jewish. Two features of the Jewish way of contemplating the world are the emphases on a detailed attention to ethics and the faith in a messianic future. Ironically, perhaps the first thinker to point out the Jewishness of America was the sainted Reform rabbi Leo Baeck (1873-1956). A survivor of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, Baeck attributed what's special, and especially Jewish, about America to its Christian heritage. This is ironic because Baeck's modern-day followers, for example the Reform movement's left-wing Commission on Social Action, have tended to find America admirable despite, not because of, her deep commitment to Christianity. An amazingly observant and prescient writer, Baeck understood Judaism's daughter religion as being in a constant state of war with her own Jewish soul ... Sometimes, as in the State of the Union, the Jewish streak in American public life is lofty and subtle. Other times it's comically obvious. How about this for obviousness? As Bush spoke, the Democratic presidential contenders were campaigning in New Hampshire. Four of them either have Jewish ancestry (Kerry, Clark), a Jewish spouse (Dean), or are Jewish (Lieberman). Nothing like this is to be found in Europe — where sexual decadence is smiled upon, where it was thought that leaving Iraqis to suffer under their horrendous dictator was the most reasonable course of action. Lofty or comical, it's something for which we Jews should not forget to thank our Maker. Which reminds me: Thank you, God, for making me an American."

[The swastika is a symbol of fertility that has existed for thousands of years before Nazism. It may be found in Indian heritage, Native American, and on and on. You can even find it in American popular culture at the turn of the 20th century -- postcards, architecture, etc. Like so very much, Jews today dictate its permissible meaning and interpretation. Hitler appropriated it for his purposes, and Jews exploit it for their reasons now. You'll find that Microsoft maintains a Star of David symbol which, especially given current Jewish Nazism in the Middle East, we find offensive and would like removed. We won't hold our breath for equal attention to our complaint.]
Microsoft removes swastika from software,
Ananova, February 14, 2004
"Microsoft has been forced to apologise after swastika symbols were found on new copies of a popular software package. The company said the Nazi symbol had now been removed from the latest version of its widely-used Office series. The US software giant said procedures designed to prevent the use of potentially offensive symbols had failed. The swastikas appeared as options for users within a font called Bookshelf Symbol 7, one of a large number of character choices available in Office 2003 which went on sale at the end of last year. Microsoft is unclear how the symbols made it into the software but say the Bookshelf font is not their creation and is used elsewhere. Jewish groups called the inclusion of swastikas in the software as "regrettable". Dr James Smith, co-director of The Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire, said: "It is good that Microsoft are withdrawing the swastika symbol but one has to ask what it was doing there in the first place. "Including it in a word symbol collection encourages casual use by people who have not stopped to consider the issues it raises and is therefore deeply inappropriate."

[The Jewish psycho-magician: "All over the world," says Jewish psychoanalyst Earl Hopper, "Jews are drawn to the profession of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The 1990 roster of the International Psychoanalytical Association reads like the membership list of a synagogue." [HOPPER, p. 18]  "That vast apparatus of putative concern, psychiatry," wrote Roger Kahn in 1968, "is largely a Jewish monopoly." [KAHN, R., p. 53]  "An area of medicine which Jews have made almost their own is psychiatry." [BERMANT, C., 1977, p. 119] "Jews," says Ann Roiphe, also Jewish, "have rushed to psychoanalysis as lemmings to the sea." [ROIPHE, 1981, p. 76] Psychotherapy is also in all respects so overwhelmingly a Jewish consumer domain that in a 1996 survey (in which nearly half of 17 psychoanalysts in a research project were expressly solicited as non-Jews), 75% of the patients for all of them (both Jewish and non-Jewish therapists) were found to be Jewish. [OSTROW, p. 27]
Freudianism is/was a neurotic Jewish cult, widespread throughout American culture: another gimmick to get rich off human suffering. It is an authoritarian mind control. Its high priests are overwhelmingly Jewish, and Freudianism is crucial to the Jewish invention of irrational "anti-Semitism."]
Psychoanalysis Is Dead ... So How Does That Make You Feel? Arguably no other notable figure in history was as wrong as Freud was about every important thing he had to say,
By Todd Dufresne, Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2004
"What an utter disappointment the 1990s were for the fans of Freud. Time magazine asked aloud, and on its cover no less, "Is Freud Dead?" And the former analytic stronghold, the New York Review of Books, published lengthy feature articles debunking Freud's reputation as a man and as a thinker. By the end of the decade, even the New Yorker was in on the action. Taken as a whole, these sensations of the 1990s, part of the so-called "Freud wars," capture the gist of a cause well lost. The year 2000 — the centenary of "The Interpretation of Dreams" — should have been a triumph for Freudians. Instead, amid the celebrations was a funereal whiff of defeat: The psychoanalytic century was over before the 21st century had begun. Everyone knew the answer to Time's rhetorical question. Psychoanalysis was indeed dead. Well, almost everyone knew. You can always count on intellectuals to keep a candle burning for whatever idea they've invested long years, enormous sums of money and, perhaps above all, limitless ego promoting. Obviously, it's not easy to walk away from a venture of this magnitude — one that helped pave the way for tenure and the prestige of authorship. Over the years, there were so many books, so many reviews, so many lectures, all with so little perspective on Freud's limitations, and partisans were just not ready to give it all up. So the Freud industry soldiered on. Freud is truly in a class of his own. Arguably no other notable figure in history was so fantastically wrong about nearly every important thing he had to say. But, luckily for him, academics have been — and still are — infinitely creative in their efforts to whitewash his errors, even as lay readers grow increasingly dumbfounded by the entire mess. So what can we see today that we didn't see during the last century? We now know that Freud compulsively fudged the historical record. This tendency is evident in Freud's backsliding statements on his advocacy of cocaine, his opportunism concerning the case of Anna O., his flip-flops on the seduction theory, and in almost every instance where he mentions a patient. Just ask the "Wolf Man," Sergius Pankejeff, whom Freud supposedly cured but who was, in truth, consigned to psychoanalysis for an additional 60 years. Not surprising, Pankejeff considered Freud's effect on his life a "catastrophe." We also know that Freud never seriously dealt with the problem of "suggestion," which totally compromised his clinical findings and, by extension, his theories. Already, by the 1890s, few believed in Freud's convenient claim that suggestion — the undue influence of the psychoanalyst over the patient — was possible only in the biologically predisposed and was thus of no consequence to his findings ... Now connect the dots. In each iteration of the unconscious, some anointed medium — priest, quack or analyst — claims special access to the darkest, scariest reaches of our minds. For a certain price, he or she can cure you of this demon. Of course, as with exorcism, the psychoanalytic "cure" hinges upon belief in mysterious entities such as the unconscious. For with belief we are back in the realm of suggestion and, at its best, the placebo effect. True, that's not nothing. But the cult-like exigencies of psychoanalysis dictate that normal human suggestibility be exploited for the cause of conversion. As Karl Kraus put it many years ago, psychoanalysis itself became the poison it purports to cure. Another way to put it is that it is psychoanalysis itself that has infected the Western soul with penis envy, Oedipal conflicts, death drives and so on. For these ideas are not given to, and cannot be found in, the world. They must be created."

[Amy Gutmann replaces Judith Rodin as president of the University of Pennsylvania. Rodin is also Jewish.]
Penn's Next President,
University of Pennsylvania
"Amy Gutmann, the Provost and Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, was elected the University of Pennsylvania’s next president by Penn's Board of Trustees at its Feb. 20 stated meeting."

[Classical Jewish arrogance, and there's been more than one Jewish-obsessive article like this in the Jewish ethnic media lately. This article says it all, don't you think? Jews own popular American culture. It's their game, and they've shaped it to their beliefs and desires, while systematically veiling their "indisputably vast" influence and power. The reason for American Judeocentric culture is not because of a democratic choice by non-Jews. It is because of Jewish cultural hegemony and extraordinarily ethnocentric Jewish networking in subtly submitting the masses to their self-obsessive ideology and exploitive will. Per this guy's comment below about Jewish dominance and control of "some American art forms," the issue is not that these art forms would be non-existent without Jews; they would be different. Non-Jews have not "co-opted" Jewish culture. That's ridiculous. Jews have stolen American culture, destroyed it, and recreated art, literature, and entertainment as a Judeocentric pornographic carnival ride.]
Can Our 15 Minutes Last?,
The rewards and pitfalls of being cool in America’s eyes,
by Thane Rosenbaum, The Jewish Week, January 1, 2004
"A favorite inside joke among American Jews has always been their disproportionate influence on American culture. Although small in absolute numbers, their contribution to cultural achievement has been indisputably vast, to the point where some American art forms would almost not have existed were it not for Jews. Tin Pan Alley became a virtual boarding house for rhyming Jewish boys who used to duck violin and cantorial lessons in their youth but ended up redefining American musical theater — from “Oklahoma,” “Annie Get Your Gun” and, yes, even “Fiddler on the Roof.” So, too, with the film and fashion industries, where Jews taught Americans what cowboys look like on screen, while Ralph Lauren showed them how to dress up like Connecticut, prep school Yankees. American literature in the second half of the 20th century was a virtual writing workshop for fast-talking Jews who stopped speaking just long enough to write some of it down. Comic books were created by men who transformed their sense of Jewish powerlessness into mythic super powers. Standup comedy was dominated by truant yeshiva boys who didn’t know how to sit still. But in so many ways the snickering, perverse pride that Jews took in their cultural accomplishments had limited value ... Curious and improbable as it may sound, we are all now living in a Jewish nation, and the cause of this cultural transformation may have little to do with Jews themselves. Jewish culture and values have rubbed off on everyone else. Perhaps it’s the inevitable fallout of Jews scrubbing away the immigrant accents of their grandparents, with the sounds eventually landing and sticking onto everyone else. Jews finally have not only entered the mainstream, but apparently our immersion would not have been complete without a good drowning by others with what we had left behind. Suddenly Jews have become hip. The broader culture has gone ahead and domesticated our mystery and, in many cases, they did so without our permission. They have adopted our ways, co-opted our culture. The question is, do we want it back, and now that they sampled the flavor of our tribal life, will they return it? Just think how pervasive and ubiquitous Jewish values and sensibilities have become ... The story behind the 9-11 memorial was not only that a Jew, a son of Holocaust survivors infused with a sense of tragedy and remembrance, designed the rebuilding of Ground Zero, but that it’s broader significance was influenced by the aesthetics and symbolism of scores of Holocaust memorials from around the world. And Holocaust restitution initiatives have prompted calls for similar efforts on behalf of other once-victimized groups. Jazz clubs resound with European klezmer music, often by young hipsters of Jewish Renewal, but occasionally the bands are fronted by non-Jews like, for instance, Don Byron, an African American. One of the leading translators of classic Yiddish plays is Caraid O’Brien, an Irish Catholic who is as versed in “The Dybbuk” as she is in “Ulysses.” Television comedies, from “Seinfeld,” “The Larry David Show,” to “The Nanny” and “Will & Grace,” couldn’t be more Jewish, and yet the audiences for these shows are not primarily Jews. It’s not so much anymore that Jews are funny, but that their ways of life and values are funny, immediately recognizable in an American sort of way — not simply as stereotypes, but as an artifact of our common culture. Elie Wiesel is the face of cultural memory and world peace. Rabbis Shmuley Boteach and Irwin Kula have brought Judaism not only to Michael Jackson, but also the heartland. Sen. Joseph Lieberman was not just a Jewish vice-presidential candidate, but perhaps even more important, he forced voters to consider what it would be like to give an Orthodox Jew a position of high elected office knowing in advance that he wouldn’t be working, or driving in a motorcade, on Shabbat. Similarly, the boom in the kosher food market has been fueled not only by the returning devout but by the consumer spending power of health-conscious, lactose-intolerant gentiles rummaging through grocery aisles searching desperately for an “OU” or a “K” stamped on bottles and cans. And perhaps most paradoxical of all, Southern Baptists have become Israel’s staunchest and most unwavering political allies, just as many American Jews grew critical of and ambivalent about Israeli politics. When did their evangelical claims to Jerusalem, and their solidarity with Zionism, begin to supersede our own? Perhaps there is nothing to fear here, only something to relish. After all, it’s much more desirable to be courted at the prom than hunted at the pogrom. Jews always wished for cultural acceptance, to be considered true Americans. Now it seems that one can’t patriotically call himself an American unless he has visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, broken matzah at a seder and danced the hora at some kid’s bar or bat mitzvah. Americans not only have finally decided to accept Jews, they are, in some instances, determined to shamelessly copy them, as well. When the whole country starts wearing Stars of David around their necks not as affiliated religious symbols but as crass fashion statements, we should really start getting nervous. The Jews of the new American millennium are living through a virtual “Twilight Zone” episode. Collective memory is fading when it comes to persecution, largely because it has been showered with the stardust of relative adulation. Americans used to want to “Be Like Mike”; now they want to be more like Moshe. But does the impulse to assimilate and share ourselves also require that we dilute our values and culture? Was there strength in our once-avowed uniqueness — the “do-not-touch” ethos of our deepest convictions — or did our marginality and self-regard result in the murderous resentment of others and the deprivation that we experienced by not embracing, and being embraced by, the wider world? Ironically, during the very time when many more Jews have forsaken the homogeneity of assimilation and returned to the rigors and rituals of organized Judaism, the rest of the country, rather than criticizing our insularity, has decided to come along with us, peeking inside the sanctums of what makes us tick, observing our customs, not as lurid voyeurs, but as quasi-practitioners. And yet, paradoxically, there is still anti-Semitism in the United States."

What's Really Going on In Hollywood,
by John Cones, mecfilms

Jerry Springer Opera Scoops British Theater Awards,
Reuters, February 22, 2004
"A foul-mouthed opera about Jerry Springer's lurid talk show has won four of Britain's top theater awards including Best New Musical at the Laurence Olivier Awards on Sunday. "Jerry Springer - The Opera" by British composer Richard Thomas, a profanity-laden show which the real-life Springer has given his full support, has been seen by more 230,000 people and has taken $9 million since it opened at the National Theater's Lyttelton stage last year. The critically-acclaimed show, which has already picked up a clutch of awards, transferred to the Cambridge Theater in London's West End last November."

[Racist Judeocentrism at its finest as Jews monitor in-house Tribe Networking. Who's Jewish? Who's Jewish? If a non-Jew does this, it's condemned as "anti-Semitism."]
Oscar notes relating to Our Tribe in Hollywood,
By NATE BLOOM, Cleveland Jewish News, February 27, 2004
"The Oscars were moved to an early date this year - Feb. 29. The bad news is this is a fairly thin year for Jewish Oscar nominees. The good news is that Billy Crystal is back hosting the show after a three-year hiatus. For me, 2004 will always be remembered as the year in which the (non-Jewish) Clint Eastwood issued the most surprising "Oscar-related Jewish remark" since the (non-Jewish) Bob Hope said, "Oscar time - or, as it is known in my house - Passover." Eastwood, who directed the hit "Mystic River," was interviewed just before the Oscar nominations were announced. He was asked about the possibility of nominations for his flick. He responded, "Kineahora! Kineahora!" The reporter retorted, "Pardon?" Eastwood said, "That's a Jewish expression meaning 'Don't talk about it. It's bad luck.'" Or, more literally, "May the evil eye stay away." Feature Film Nominees The evil eye kept away from "Mystic River" - it got six Oscar nominations, including best picture, director, and actor - Sean Penn. Penn, 43, is the son of the late Leo Penn, a Jewish actor and director who died in 1998. Leo's film acting career was cut off in the late '40s when he was blacklisted. He kept busy as a stage actor and TV director. He could have easily snared another Oscar nomination for "21 Grams" and he's already won the Golden Globe for "Mystic River." Sean's daughter in "Mystic River" was played by Emmy Rossum, 17, a Jewish actress. Competing with Penn for the best actor Oscar is Sir Ben Kingsley, nominated for his performance as an Iranian immigrant in "House of Sand and Fog." Kingsley may have had only one Jewish grandparent, but he has amassed a record of bravura performances as a Jewish character. His best- known Jewish character is Itzhak Stern in "Schindler's List." Sir Ben also played Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal in a 1989 TV film; the prophets Joseph and Moses in TV flicks; Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father, in the 2001 ABC miniseries on Anne Frank; and gangster Meyer Lansky in "Bugsy." "House of Sand and Fog" is the first movie directed by 40-year-old Russian Jewish immigrant Vadim Perelman (he also co-wrote the film). The film's Oscar-nominated music is by James Horner, 50, a top-tier film composer. Competing with Horner in the best score category are Howard Shore, Danny Elfman, and Thomas Newman. Shore is nominated for "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King." (He's also nominated for co-writing the song from the film, "Into the West.") Danny Elfman, 50, is of "Russian-Polish Jewish" background. He started as an avant-garde rock musician, playing in the band "Oingo-Boingo," with his brother, Richard Elfman. This year, he is nominated for his score for Tim Burton's "Big Fish." Thomas Newman, 48, who is nominated for his score for "Finding Nemo," is the son of legendary film composer Alfred Newman, the winner of nine musical Oscars. This is Thomas' seventh Oscar nomination. Gary Ross, 47, is nominated for best adapted screenplay for "Seabiscuit," which he also directed. The picture's producers, including Ross, are nominated for best picture. Ross grew up a horse-racing fanatic, and his not-very-religious parents gave him a trip to Santa Anita racetrack in lieu of a bar mitzvah. Cinematographer John Schwartzman is nominated for his work on "Seabiscuit." His late father, producer Jack Schwartzman, was Jewish. Competing with Gary Ross for best-adapted screenplay Oscar is Shari Springer Berman, 38. She is co-director and co-screenwriter of "American Splendor. " She shares this nomination with her husband, Robert Pulcini, her co-director and co-writer. The film was adapted from the autobiographical comic books of the same title by Harvey Pekar, a Jewish writer and retired file clerk from Cleveland. The Documentary Makers Errol Morris, 56, is nominated for best documentary for "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara." The Friedman family of Long Island is the subject of Andrew Jarecki's Oscar-nominated documentary, "Capturing the Friedmans." Jarecki's film leaves viewers unsure whether the Friedmans are really guilty of sexually molesting children. Also competing for best documentary Oscar is "My Architect," about the life of the famous and highly influential Jewish architect Louis Kahn."

[Plenty more Jewish "indecency" here.]
Howard Stern suspended for indecency,
CNN, February 26, 2004
"The U.S.'s largest radio chain has taken shock jock Howard Stern off its stations indefinitely for running afoul of new decency standards. "We will not air Howard Stern on Clear Channel stations until we are assured that his show will conform to acceptable standards of responsible broadcasting," said a Wednesday statement from John Hogan, president and CEO of Clear Channel Radio. Stern was subdued but firm on air Thursday morning in response. "They are so afraid of me and what this show represents," he said. Earlier, he had wondered if he should even talk about the controversy. "I could blow my stack, but ... ," Stern said, trailing off. "A caller used the N word, and I hung up on him." Stern was referring to his Tuesday morning interview with Rick Salomon, Paris Hilton's ex-boyfriend and the man involved in her infamous sex video. A person called in during the interview and used a racial slur. The company said Stern's suspension from its stations came after a review of his Tuesday broadcast. "Clear Channel drew a line in the sand today with regard to protecting our listeners from indecent content, and Howard Stern's show blew right through it," Hogan said. "It was vulgar, offensive and insulting, not just to women and African-Americans but to anyone with a sense of common decency." The statement did not outline what parts of Stern's show ran afoul of the policy or how long the suspension might last. Clear Channel operates 1,200 stations nationwide. It was unclear how many of its stations currently run Stern, who is syndicated across the country by another company, Infinity Broadcasting. The suspension applies only to Clear Channel stations. Earlier in the day, Clear Channel, which has been under fire from the Federal Communications Commission over allegedly indecent content aired on its stations, announced a zero-tolerance policy that called for immediate suspension of its on-air personalities who cross the line."

[Jewish Dual Exploitation and Ridicule of both "Whites" and "Blacks," using stereotypes Jews were instrumental in creating. How about a "reality show," Mr. Blumenfeld, about categorically "uncool" Jews being taught civility, integrity, humility, compassion, and dignity by Palestinians? Can't imagine it? Neither can I.]
BLACK EYE FOR THE THE WHITE GUY?,
by Phil Kloer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 20, 2004
"Take Richard Pryor teaching Gene Wilder how to walk the walk in the movie "Silver Streak," graft it onto "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," and you have "Make Me Cool," a reality TV series in the making about a team of blacks trying to show a white person how to be cool. "The joke version of the title is 'Black Eye for the White Guy,' " says executive producer Jay Blumenfield. "It's a catchy title, but it's not the show we want to do. "There's something in the culture right now that there are parts of black culture that everyone wants to aspire to," he continues. "We want to explore that. We want to face racial stereotypes head on and say, 'What is this? Why is this?' " The series idea has been bought by cable channel Showtime, but no air date has been set, and the show is still in the casting stage. Even the title is tentative. The format will be something like the hit "Queer Eye." A team of three or four African-Americans (including one female) will do a full hipness makeover on a desperately dweeby target. "The first people will be uncool, and the easiest way to express that is they'll be white," says Blumenfield. "Once the concept is established, anyone can be made cooler." Individuals won't be the only targets, he says; eventually they'll go after couples, families, even a fraternity. "This is a lot more than changing the color of your shirt and getting a haircut," he says. "This is about immersing them in a new kind of culture."

[JTR Contributor's comment: "I am sure that your loyal public would like to know how that they can support Israel by signing up for energy service. http://www.econnergy.com/flash/Site_Map/site_map.html The ECONergy site doesn't have anything on it about this service that I can see but ads are placed on several jewish websites http://www.energyforisrael.com/info.html#whois and http://www.oneisraelfund.org/articles/20030603.html It must be a special service available only to special customers. But they should be cautioned that the company just settled on a lawsuit with the state on 11-21-03 for slamming and misrepresented potential savings customers would accrue by switching to ECONnergy, and in some cases, led customers to believe they were representing the local utility company.
http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2003/11/17/daily48.html ]

[Why have Jews created "multiculturalism?" To preserve Jewish ethnocentrism and hide the racist political creed of Zionism in America, in homage to apartheid Jewish Israel. This is the Israel that is founded on the direct opposite of the "multiculturalism" Jews have been central in creating in America. The interesting thing is that Arab and Muslim immigrants are rising as multiculturalism's vanguard block of "anti-Semites" against Jewish cultural hegemony over the entire "diversity" ideology.]
Mass Immigration Eats Through The Melting Pot,
By Sam Francis, VDare, March 4, 2004
""The 'melting pot' concept," [Stanley Karnow] writes, "glorified as the paradigm, turned out to be an illusion, primarily because people sought to preserve their distinct identities. We are closer to the notion of 'cultural pluralism' broached in 1925 by the Jewish philosopher Horace Kallen. Dismayed by the thought of dissolving his pedigree in an Anglocentric caldron, he suggested a 'loose federation of nationalities … cooperating voluntarily through a multiplicity of autonomous institutions.' Die-hard conformists vehemently decried his proposal as a gambit for championing 'hyphenated' Americanism. But he was remarkably prescient." Well, Kallen was "remarkably prescient" in part because the mass immigration that began arriving forty years later, after the 1965 Immigration Act, did indeed decline to melt. Instead, it ate through the pot itself, which is what Mr. Karnow is so happy about. It's nice he acknowledges this, since the usual argument—heard nowadays mainly from conservatives—is that the immigrants are assimilating. Mr. Karnow knows better and likes it that way. It's also interesting he acknowledges the Jewish connection, since it's becoming increasingly obvious. Mr. Karnow, as he makes sure to tell us at the end of his column, is Jewish himself, and so, he also made sure to tell us, was Kallen. And one reason they like immigration so much is precisely because of what it does to the "Anglo Protestant core" of American civilization. A couple of years ago, the Forward, the principal Jewish newspaper in the country, reported a remark made by Leonard Glickman, president and CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, in explaining why his organization was promoting the resettlement of Somali refugees in the United States: "The more diverse American society is the safer [Jews] are." Mr. Glickman is not alone. Perhaps for much the same reason, Jewish neoconservatives like John Podhoretz, David Brooks and several others don't much like the very concept of an "Anglo Protestant core." Unlike most conservatives, almost all of them rushed to endorse President Bush's amnesty proposals as soon as he announced them, and some like Mr. Brooks have rushed to denounce the Huntington article. Jewish Americans played a crucial role in pushing for mass immigration throughout the last century, and there's no more reason that should be a secret than there is that Roman Catholics have pushed hard for banning abortion. Unfortunately, there is a secret about it—because people who mention it tend to get smashed as "anti-Semites." But these days real anti-Semitism doesn't come from those who talk about the Jewish role in promoting liberal immigration policies. It comes from Arabs and other Third World immigrants whom those very policies have welcomed. When they start bringing it to Mr. Karnow's "multicultural, multicolored, multilingual" neighborhood, we'll see if he still prefers those who have made it that way to the dreary lily-white people who used to live there."

[Try to imagine a major company hustling expressly Christian-blessed products, say, with the icon of a cross on the box.]
Morton Launches Kosher Salt Recipe Contest; Provides Opportunity for Consumers to Join Classic American Icon on New Morton Kosher Salt Box,
Yahoo! Finance, March 8, 2004
"One of the most recognizable icons in America, the Morton Salt Girl, will have company under her umbrella on the newly designed Morton Kosher Salt box this year, as winners of the "Picture Yourself with an American Icon" contest cash in on their prize. Morton Kosher Salt, long preferred by restaurant chefs as a key ingredient, is seeing mainstream consumer growth. To celebrate, Morton has teamed up with Allrecipes.com, America's favorite recipe Web site, to hold an amateur chef contest that kicks off today and runs until April 16. Contest entrants will be vying to have their photo and original recipe displayed on the Morton Kosher Salt box, available in grocery stores nationwide, along with the legendary Umbrella Girl spilling salt. Morton Kosher Salt's coarse grain, clean, crisp taste, and ability to moisten and flavor dishes have landed it in American pantries in record numbers. Once a chefs-only ingredient, kosher salt has seen an incredible rise in sales largely due to increased education to consumers through television cooking shows and magazines. In the last five years, Morton Kosher Salt sales have increased considerably and continue to rise. The "Picture Yourself with an American Icon" contest is a chance for Morton to celebrate kosher salt's growing popularity and showcase home cooks who've made it possible. "With its purity and diversity of uses, kosher salt has always been preferred by professional chefs for use in restaurant kitchens across the country," said Earl Thorne, director of advertising, sales promotion and brand development at Morton."

Julius Schwartz, Without Julius Schwartz, science fiction and the superhero as we know them would not exist, writes Alan Woolcombe,
Jewish Chronicle, March 5, 2004, p. 30 [Offline paper edition]
"[Schwartz] joined an SF fan club at 15 and helped put together the fist SF fan magazine. (The Time Traveler in 1932). In 1934, he set up the first SF literary agency (Solar Sales Service) and was a co-organiser of the first SF convention in 1939. In 1944, after rejection from the American Army on grounds of poor sight, he joined his old colleague from 'The Time Traveler,' Mort Weininger, as an editor on All-American Comics, which later merged with DC Comics. For the next 42 years, he oversaw whatever kind of comics caught the reading public's fancy: superheros in the 1940's, followed by westerns, comedy and science fiction in the1950s ... His reward was to be handed control of the company's top two icons. He revitalised each in turn. Batman, in 1964 ... [and] Superman in 1972 ... Superman had been fathered by Jerome Siegel and Joe Schuser two of the many inventive Jewish creators in the world of comics. Later creations, such as Spiderman, the Hulk and X-Men, were dreamed up by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (nee Kurtzburg)." [After 1956, Schwartz also oversaw the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom, and the Justice League of America.]

Sunny day as 'Sesame Street' marks 35th season,
CNN, Wednesday, March 31, 2004
"Here's a kids show that still boasts plenty of street cred. Now beginning its 35th season, "Sesame Street" remains a daily destination for millions of preschoolers, an evergreen cityscape as much a part of their world as any other play space. It's been that way for generations of kids, as any of the show's estimated 74 million "grads" will recall from "Sesame Street Presents: The Street We Live On." This retrospective airs on most PBS stations 8 p.m. EST Sunday, then serves as the season opener the next day (check local listings). Even if you haven't caught "Sesame Street" since around the time it premiered November 10, 1969, you will be struck by how things seem much like you left them ... "'Sesame Street' grew out of the Great Society programs," says executive producer Lewis Bernstein, referring to the Johnson administration's social initiatives. "That was a period when politics, educational needs and the social milieu all converged to say, 'You influence kids at an early age and you can give them the skills they need to navigate their way through school and in life."'

[JTR Contributor's Note: "Ringling Brothers Circus, originally founded by John North Ringling, is owned by Feld Entertainment, Inc. (Shades of Disney). http://www.ringling.com/index.aspx ]
Hasidim get greatest show,
By BRIAN HARMON, Yahoo! News (from DAILY NEWS), April 9, 2004
"The cotton candy was kosher. The dancing girls took the day off. And heavily armed cops stood watch outside Madison Square Garden. It wasn't your typical day at the circus. A private performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for some 18,000 Hasidic Jews yesterday made for a unique experience. "The question is: Who's having more fun, me or my grandkids?" said Abe Juravel, 52, of Monsey, N.Y., who was flanked in the front row by his grandsons, Yosef, 5, and Yakov, 3. "The answer is, me." Without special, first-ever accommodations from the circus, Juravel and the rest of the sellout crowd would have stayed home. Because of the ultraconservative audience's beliefs, all female performers - that includes the Sensational Circus Siren Sylvia Zerbini - were banned from the two-hour show. In addition, the circus brought in brand-new kosher cotton candy machines, inspected and approved by rabbis. "It's very hard to find something that is 100% pure and pristine," said Rabbi Bunim Amos, one of the event's organizers. The heavy police presence outside the Garden - which included mounted cops and Emergency Service officers - was due to the volatile situation in the Middle East, officials said."

[This guy doesn't say the "J" word. He may be a victim himself to the propaganda game of which he speaks and not grasp that he too is trapped in the Jewish bottle. But the hegemony stuff is on the right track.]
Ideological Hegemony Thought Control in American Society,
by Morpheus, Question Everything
"In June 2003 a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that about 1 in 4 Americans (incorrectly) believed Iraq had used weapons of mass destruction during the recent war with the United States. [1] A separate poll in the same month found that 34% of Americans believed the United States had already found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. [2] In September another poll found that 69% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9-11. [3] Even the Bush administration has been forced to admit that these claims are not true. These misconceptions are the outcome of a system of thought control called ideological hegemony. Hegemony operates through many mechanisms including the media, education system, newspeak and others with the primary function of maintaining support for the dominant socio-economic system in the United States. In all class societies, the ruling class can maintain control through violence and/or ideology. If the majority can be persuaded that the rule of the ruling class is legitimate then it can be maintained with less violence. Examples of ideologies that serve this function include the divine right of kings, social Darwinism and Marxism-Leninism. All of them acted to legitimize the rule of specific elites in certain societies and helped those elites maintain power ... These assumptions are both shared by the vast majority of Americans and transmitted to the populace through a variety of mechanisms. In an important sense hegemony, once established, is self-perpetuating. Those who believe in these ideas, to varying degrees, tend to advocate and promote them, passing them on to others and to the next generation. These values are also transmitted, often indirectly, in movies, novels, scholarship, entertainment and other forms of communication that reaches large numbers of people. This isn’t necessarily intentional or explicit. Critics play an important role in perpetuating ideological hegemony. If even the most ardent critics of the current regime share these basic assumptions then it will serve to reinforce those assumptions. If even they share these assumptions then even fewer will question them, as doing so would seem insane. Those dissatisfied with the status quo will tend to become involved with movements and ideologies that accept these fundamental principles and therefore will not represent much of a threat to the dominant socio-economic system. The kind of ideological hegemony that operates in America is different from the mechanisms used by totalitarian states to maintain control. Totalitarian societies tend to rely more on violence to control the population, although they usually also have an ideology to support the status quo. The United States does occasionally use violence to control dissent, such as the frame up of Sherman Austin, and has around 100 political prisoners. [4] However, force is not used against dissidents on nearly the scale it is in totalitarian states, where dissidents are systemically rounded up. Most dissidents in the United States can criticize the government with low odds of going to jail for it. So long as their ideas are kept marginalized, so long as the vast majority continues to believe in the system, dissidents do not represent much of a threat to the status quo. Allowing most dissidents to exist, but marginalizing their views, actually strengthens hegemony because it makes the system seem freer and more open ... Hegemony is the result of the way the media, education system and other institutions are set up and have evolved."

[Madonna embodies the Mass Culture Whore on many levels.]
A new Sabbath queen,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency [Breaking News], April 15, 2004
"Madonna will not play on Friday nights during her upcoming tour, which includes Israel. The move by the singer comes as her interest in Kabbalah appears to be broadening. Though Madonna is not Jewish, “she is observing Shabbat on Friday evenings,” her longtime publicist, Liz Rosenberg, told New York magazine."

[Yes, indeed, "it is hard to grasp," "even as he worked as an organizer for the American Jewish World Service."]
He's Big in Japan/ Scott Jacoby, A Shooting Star In the Land Of the Rising Sun,
By JENNIFER FISHBEIN, Forward, Aapril 17, 2004
"When musician Scott Jacoby heard that his first single, "I Like You," had hit the airwaves in Japan, the Manhattanite was incredulous. So he sat down at his computer to find out if he was indeed a rising star in the Land of the Rising Sun. To his astonishment, Jacoby discovered — with the help of Google — that his song was quickly climbing the Japanese pop charts. It eventually claimed the No. 1 slot, besting big-name stars like Beyoncé, OutKast and Britney Spears. Japanese youth have even taken to downloading the song to their cell phones. Sitting among the towering stacks of CDs, snare drums and computer equipment that filled Jacoby's recording studio on Manhattan's Park Avenue South on a recent afternoon, it was hard to grasp that the lanky, freckle-faced singer-songwriter had reached the top of the charts in Japan — even as he worked in New York as an organizer for the American Jewish World Service."

[JTR Contibutor's Note: "Remember, dear JTR reader, that it is a COMPLETE MYTH that the media affect people, unless, of course, it is critical of Jews, in which case it could lead to ANOTHER HOLOCAUST. But media content that graphically depicts suicide is just FREEDOM OF SPEECH (and free publicity and profit for the media makers/owners)."Our comment: Who controls the mass media and all these puppet "stars?"]
Television blamed for suicide rise. Britney Spears video reignites debate over 'irresponsible' shock scenes,
by Jamie Doward, Guardian (UK), April 18, 2004
"A young woman slashes her wrists. A prisoner hangs herself in a cell. A man swallows scores of paracetamol tablets in a desperate bid to end his life. The three haunting scenes all feature in television story lines which have provoked alarm from mental health charities who fear the media are becoming increasingly irresponsible in their treatment of suicide and self-harm. Suicide awareness groups have highlighted several recent television dramas that have given cause for concern. These include Footballers' Wives and an episode of the prison drama Bad Girls, both of which showed one of the main characters hanging herself. Samaritans points out that prisoners are seven times more likely to take their lives than the average person. Many production companies now consult mental health experts when writing suicide story lines into scripts. EastEnders, for example, will soon feature a suicide. The show's writers worked with mental health groups to ensure the scenes were not gratuitous and did not provide a graphic description of the method. Hollyoaks, William and Mary and the Inspector Lynley series have also sought advice from experts. But not all producers are so sensitive, according to suicide experts. 'Over the past few years, we've become aware of quite a few instances of suicide being portrayed in a way that isn't entirely appropriate,' said Sarah Nelson, media manager for Samaritans. The debate over the way the small screen treats suicide will be reignited later this month when the latest Britney Spears video, in which the singer's wrists are accidentally slashed and she then drowns in a bath, is aired on UK television. The singer denies the scene could be mistaken for suicide but experts say it is 'almost inevitable' that the video will spark a wave of copycat attempts. In the month after Marilyn Monroe killed herself, for example, the suicide rate in the US went up by 12 per cent. 'It would be almost surprising if there wasn't a rise in suicide attempts after the Britney Spears video is aired,' said Greg Philo, professor of communications at Glasgow University. Philo was part of a team that monitored suicide attempts following an episode of Casualty which showed a character swallowing more than 50 paracetamol tablets. The episode, watched by 12.8 million viewers, prompted a 17 per cent rise in hospital admissions for paracetamol poisoning the week after it was shown and nine per cent the week after that."

[From a JTR contributor: "In state-sponsored radio France-culture, the director of the program is Ms Laure Adler; the "journalists" of the political broadcasts were : Miguel Benasayag, Alexandre Adler and Alain-Gérard Slama. Although Mr Benasayag (a philosopher and psychoanalyst) has just been fired, this broadcast is still *entirely* in the hands of the tribe, from Le Nouvel Observateur (owner J. Daniel, a Jew). I also have a report that new Serbia president Boris Tadic (who won the elections last june) is a Jew. But I'm still waiting for the proof: do you have one? ] [From another JTR contributor: "The rumour that Serbian president Boris Tadic is Jewish is false. His stepmother, Klara Mandic, however was Jewish. Mandic was born in Italy in 1944 by Jewish parents and later on was adopted by a family in Yugoslavia. She was a member of Slobodan Milosevic's inner circle and founder of the Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society. She was murdered in 2001 in a criminal settlement."]
"Ma sensibilité n'a plus sa place sur France Culture", [FRENCH LANGUAGE]
Nouvel Observateur, March 22, 2004

See also Jewish Influence in Popular Culture, pt. 3