RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco, trans. Richard Dixon (HoughtonMifflinHarcourt, 2011).

THIS COLUMN IS PUBLISHED IN THE CHICAGO JEWISH STAR AND HAS NO URL. PROFESSOR ALEXANDER’S NEW BOOK “THE STATE OF THE JEWS- A CRITICAL APPRAISAL” WILL BE PUBLISHED BY TRANSACTION BOOKS LATER THIS MONTH.

PLEASE ALSO READ: THE MEANING OF CRITICISM BY EDWARD ALEXANDER IN OUTPOST http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/edward-alexander-the-meaning-of-criticism.html

The center of this novel is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a catastrophically influential forged account of the minutes of a meeting (which never took place) in Prague’s ancient cemetery of “learned Elders of Zion” organizing Jewish bankers and trade unionists, rabbis and atheists, capitalists and communists, to conspire in perfect harmony to eradicate Christianity, steal the wealth of gentiles, and take over the world . Concocted by order of the Paris branch of the Czarist secret police between 1899 and 1902 to disseminate the “secret protocols” of the World Zionist Congress that had been held in Basel in 1897, it was published in 1905 and, after the mass slaughter of World War I and the Russian Revolution, became the deadliest document in the history of antisemitism. “When this book becomes the common heritage of all people,” wrote Hitler in Mein Kampf, “the Jewish peril can then be considered as stamped out.”

The Protocols are gross and clumsy forgery, ending with the Jews’ declaration: “Ours is an ambition that knows no limits, a voracious greed, a desire for ruthless revenge, an intense hatred.” This monument to stupidity’s influence in world affairs was exposed as forgery in 1921, yet became a perennial bestseller in Europe and then the Arab world. Henry Ford printed excerpts in his Dearborn newspaper and distributed 500,000 copies free of charge. Originally a favorite of right-wing politicians eager to blame Jews for secularism, democracy, communism, psychoanalysis, and pornography, Protocols ideology, outside of Islam, is now an obsession of “progressives,” including Jewish ones. Writers in Tikkun, for example, warn of “conspirators” who run our government on behalf of “Jewish interests,” and they invoke “the industrial sized grain of truth in the Protocols.” Noam Chomsky alleges that the only reason antisemitism is now an “issue” is that “privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control.” Thomas Friedman charges that any congressional support for Benjamin Netanyahu is “bought and paid for by the Israeli lobby.”

But unless you begin reading Prague Cemetery at p. 439, where a four-page appendix entitled “Useless Learned Explanations” clues you in to the book’s organization and plot, you may not discover the centrality of this poisonous document until Chapter Twelve, “A Night in Prague,” starting at p. 191. Eco’s appendix provides the crucial information that “the only fictitious character in this story is the protagonist, Simone Simonini,” a retired army officer whose grandfather had the dubious distinction of inserting the Jews into earlier (French) works of conspiracy-mongering that blamed shadowy schemers—Jesuits and Freemasons in particular– for undermining legitimate governments. Grandpa Simonini also provided the protagonist with his guiding principle in life: odi ergo sum (I hate therefore I am.) All other important characters, Eco tells us, “actually existed, and said and did what they are described as saying and doing in this novel.” Among them are Alfred Dreyfus and Dr.Froide, who, intrigued by the split personality Simonini shares with a priest named Abbe Della Piccola, persuades him to write his life story. Eco has not invented the characters and their doings—what novelist could be so wildly imaginative as to invent the incredible phantasmagoria of “real” European Jew-hatred?—but imagined their inner lives, as they imagined Prague’s cemetery, ”the sinister moonlit center of the universal conspiracy.”

http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/19683-Its-The-Arrogance,-Stupid.html
Right behind the economy, the issue that will sway swayable voters in November is the repeated displays of arrogance by President Obama and his administration, inept arrogance at that. Indeed, that arrogance has been so heavy- and ham-handed that it has and will continue to undermine almost every other appeal the Obama campaign may make to marginal voters. Those on the dole or looking forward to being on it may shrug, but those with a shred of self-respect will be repulsed.

Obama’s arrogance has reached the point of making him a laughing-stock. Obama’s inflated self-image will continue to overreact, making him appear more unworthy of confidence. Yeah, that’s the ticket! The best worst efforts of many in the major media to cover it up will be pierced, demonstrating their own lack of credibility. Others clinging to a shred of journalism will have to report the Obama campaign’s lack of credibility. There’s my forecast. And, I’m sticking to it.

P.S.: For those wondering about how Romney will capitalize on this, his campaign and those of us in the alternative media have shown how to expose the fool behind the curtain. All Romney himself has to do regarding Obama’s buffoonery is remain the gentleman that he is, and toss out an occasional barb at the overinflated balloonery from the Obama camp.

National Conference on Jewish Affairs
http://ncjausa.org/
NCJA CHALLENGES OTHER JEWISH LEADERS TO SUPPORT THE RIGHT OF JEWS
TO HAVE EQUAL ACCESS TO FEDERAL ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW
For Immediate Release
Contact: lorilowenthalmarcus@gmail.com 610.664.1184

Thursday, May 3, 2012, New York — In October 2010, the U.S. Department of Education announced that Jewish students would now be protected by federal anti-discrimination law, Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Incredibly, at its annual plenum in Detroit, on May 5, 2012, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which represents many of the establishment American Jewish organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the many Jewish Community Relations Councils, will vote on whether Jews should have to meet higher standards than other groups in order to make out a claim under Title VI.

The National Conference on Jewish Affairs, a new umbrella group of Jewish organizations which sees Jewish issues as its central focus, has issued its own position statement regarding the use of Title VI to combat anti-Semitism, in advance of the JCPA plenum.

“We believe it is the spines of those who claim to represent American Jews that must be stiffened, and not the pre-requisite standards allowing Jews use of Title VI,” said Lori Lowenthal Marcus, NCJA executive committee chair.

The NCJA is just as concerned with First Amendment rights and academic freedom as are the older American Jewish organizations. Indeed, Marcus is a Harvard-educated lawyer who practiced and taught First Amendment law for years. “To suggest, as the JCPA has done, that Jews are more likely than other groups to assert frivolous Title VI claims, or that the aura of First Amendment or academic freedom impedes Jews, and only Jews, from seeking redress, is a double-standard which can only harm Jewish students,” said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who chairs the NCJA Task Force on Academia and Campus Life, and who co-authored NCJA’s Statement on Campus Anti-Semitism and Title VI.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/3/myth-of-a-two-state-solution/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

JOE WALSH IS RUNNING FOR REELECTION…TO SUPPORT THIS WORTHY CANDIDATE PLEASE GO TO:

http://walshforcongress.com/

It has been 64 years since the United Nations General Assembly approved the Partition Plan for Palestine and the struggle to implement a “two-state solution” began. Today, we are no closer to that end. That reminds me of the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that definition, everyone who continues to cling to the delusion of a two-state solution is insane. There is no such thing as a two-state solution. It cannot work, it has not worked, and it will not work.

The only viable solution for the Middle East is a one-state solution: one contiguous Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. There will not and cannot be lasting peace in the Middle East until then.

Ever since the Palestinians and Arab countries refused to accept the Mandate for Palestine in the 1920s, the original two-state solution, the international community has been catering to Palestinian and Arab demands for a divided Israel. The Palestinians and Arabs, however, repeatedly have rejected those proposals, including the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan, which they are using to justify their demands for a divided Israel. Enough is enough. Why is the international community continuing to kowtow to these demands when, for 64 years, the Palestinians and Arabs have worked against peace? Israel is the only country in the region that has shown that it wants and will work toward peace. Since 1947, the Palestinians and Arab countries have fought more than five wars against Israel over territory, and at each opportunity, a victorious Israel has returned land it acquired in exchange for peace.

The Palestinians have broken their word again and again. They continue to fire rockets directly at innocent Israeli families and children, and they have betrayed the fundamental tenet of the two-state solution they tout by cutting Israel out of negotiations and going directly to the United Nations. Moreover, the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to incite violence against Israelis. It pays the salaries of imprisoned terrorists convicted of killing Israelis and glorifies suicide bombers at public events. The PA’s magazine Zayzafuna recently presented Hitler as a role model for Palestinian youth because of all the Jews he killed.

Most important, how can a people divided between radically different and violently opposed factions possibly govern a single state overnight? Right now, the Palestinians are divided between Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Fatah in the West Bank. Those factions fought a civil war no more than five years ago and are fundamentally irreconcilable. Who would govern a unified Palestinian state?

The two-state solution can never work when one of the domains, the Palestinian state, does not even acknowledge the other state’s (Israel’s) right to exist and has as its entire purpose in life wiping Israel off the face of the earth. Never will peace come when one side possesses such hate and routinely expresses that hate through violence and blood. It is time to let go of the two-state-solution insanity and adopt the only solution that will bring true peace to the Middle East: a single Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is the only country in the region dedicated to peace and the only power capable of stable, just and democratic government in the region.

This solution is the best for everyone, especially the Palestinians. They will trade their two corrupt and inept governments and societies for a stable, free and prosperous one. Those Palestinians who wish to may leave their Fatah- and Hamas-created slums and move to the original Palestinian state: Jordan. The British Mandate for Palestine created Jordan as the country for the Palestinians. That is the only justification for its creation. Even now, 75 percent of its population is of Palestinian descent. Those Palestinians who remain behind in Israel will maintain limited voting power but will be awarded all the economic and civil rights of Israeli citizens. They will be free to raise families, start businesses and live in peace, all of which are impossible under current Arab rule.

The two-state solution has failed. Only a one-state solution – a single, undivided Israel – will bring peace, security and prosperity to Israelis and Palestinians alike. It’s time for the United States to lead toward this. For more than 60 years, though peace has been the goal, common sense and basic human morality have been ignored. So peace has never come. We’ve had it backward all these years: The goal should not be peace at all costs. The goal should be a strong, free and prosperous Israel. The United States should not be some honest broker between two sides, but rather should stand publicly with one side – Israel. Then, and only then, will real peace truly come.

Parker is a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20120503/OPINION12/205030314/Kathleen-Parker-unknown-celebrity?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7COpinion%7Cs
The squabbling between political campaigns and the harrumphing of pundits were put in proper perspective at, of all places, the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — the annual Prom on the Potomac where 2,000 or so media members and movie stars gather to honor the president and admire one another.

It is customary at this “exclusive” congregation for media organizations to compete for the celebrity “get.” Thus, this year, all were abuzz over the stars, including George Clooney, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Steven Spielberg and, of course, Kim Kardashian, without whom no shallow occasion would be complete — and finally, Lindsay Lohan.

Then there was Table 46, one of The Washington Post’s tables, to which I was fortuitously assigned. We were the un-celebrities — writers, editors, Undersecretary of State Bob Hormats, and a military officer who introduced himself as “Bill.”

He was obviously important. His dress uniform was festooned with medals and ribbons — lots of them. And he had that bearing we recognize in military elites that betrays another kind of space, a private zone where intelligence and readiness keep each other quiet company.

Bill . . . who did he say?

Turns out this humble, polite man was Adm. William McRaven, leader of the Joint Special Operations Command that oversaw the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. In a recounting of the eight-month lead-up to the raid, Time magazine features McRaven as part of President Obama’s highly secret, and secretive, inner circle. He’s the guy to whom CIA Deputy Director Michael Morrell was referring when he turned to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in the early planning stages and said, “It’s time to call in the pros.”

Trayvon and Zimmerman: The Structure and Elements of a Disinformation Campaign

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/05/trayvon_and_zimmerman_the_structure_and_elements_of_a_disinformation_campaign.html

“Trayvon,” of course, is Trayvon Martin, the black 17-year-old who was killed two months ago in Florida. “Zimmerman” is George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who shot him. Referring to Martin by his first name and Zimmerman by his last is just one small tactic in the national media campaign to make Martin’s death an enduring symbol of white racism.

The Trayvon campaign is accurately described as “disinformation” because deception is a fundamental part of its planning, strategy, and implementation. Leftist disinformation campaigns are common but not widely understood. This article is intended to make them easier to recognize, and to provide a framework for additional research and investigation. Whether or not George Zimmerman was justified in pulling the trigger is outside the scope of this analysis.

Narrative

The Trayvon narrative can be summarized as follows: a black child was walking innocently through a gated community after buying some candy at a store, when a white racist stalked and murdered him for no reason but his color. The police, who are also racists, let the white man go free.

This narrative is similar to those used in previous racial disinformation campaigns:

* 1987 – White racists have raped a young black girl and left her in a trash bag.
* 1996 – White racists are burning down black churches across the South.
* 2005 – White racists at Duke University have raped a black woman.

Like the Trayvon narrative, the earlier narratives were untrue. However, they remain widely believed as a result of the massive media coverage used to bring them to national attention.

www.EYEontheUN.org.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/03/obama-foreign-policy-catastrophe-was-years-in-making-247968105/#ixzz1tsKC2eRZ

The Obama foreign policy lynchpin known as “engagement” has run into one more eminently predictable quagmire in the case of Chen Guangcheng. State Department officials knew full well that five seconds out of American custody and into Chinese hands they could not guarantee Chen a thing.

So what did they do? They took a man who had suffered years of Chinese human rights abominations and in less than one week they asked him — of their own admission — over and over: What do you want to do now? What do you want to do now? What do you want to do now?

It is hardly a surprise that eventually they got the answer they wanted — the response that made their life a whole lot easier given Chinese banquets for visiting Obama emissaries were waiting and Hillary Clinton was coming to town. And yet astoundingly Obama officials expect us to believe that the atmosphere at the embassy was one of “no pressure.”

With Chen reportedly out of the embassy just a few hours after Clinton’s arrival, the image of the bum’s rush surely comes to mind.

Whichever way it now works out — that is, whatever political bribe, public or private, is or is not, paid to the Chinese to resolve the mess — one thing is clear. Usama bin Laden’s death is not going to save this President’s catastrophic foreign policy.

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/index.php/pruden/full_column/nary_kiss_nor_hug_for_the_blind_man

Barack Obama says he agrees with Abraham Lincoln (you could ask him) that America is “the exceptional nation,” a nation unique in a world of moral squalor, a beacon of hope for the “tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” But sometimes cold pragmatism demands the exceptional nation make exceptions.

This was apparently the message sent to Chen Guangcheng, the blind human-rights hero who fled for his life to the American embassy in Beijing. He didn’t ask for asylum, exactly, but he was desperate for help. A blind man who travels 400 miles, evading cops and soldiers to reach the American embassy, fits the definition of desperate. But after six days of negotiations between American diplomats and the Chinese government a deal was struck, and Mr. Chen left the embassy. To the surprise only of the Americans, Mr. Chen said Thursday that the Chinese were not living up to the agreement.

The specifics of the deal are leaking slowly, and outsiders can’t know for sure exactly what’s going down. The U.S. State Department says it did nothing to force Mr. Chen to leave the embassy, which is something the Chinese government devoutly wanted. But the State Department is stuck with the reputation for weakness, vacillation, hesitation, mendacity and shilly-shallying it has earned over the years, so most of us take the account of friends of Mr. Chen as the straighter goods.

http://sarahhonig.com/2012/05/04/another-tack-the-only-thing-worse/

We can only speculate about whether Meir Dagan, ex-chief of Mossad (counterpart to America’s CIA), and Yuval Diskin, ex-chief of Shin Bet (counterpart to America’s FBI), are at all conversant with Oscar Wilde’s wit. Unfortunately, we’ve no way to evaluate their erudition. But on the off chance that they’re better- read than the average honcho, we might ponder whether they subscribe to Wilde’s insight that “the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

Wilde’s dictum might go a long way to accounting for Dagan’s and Diskin’s otherwise inscrutable gabbiness, which might be no more than the product of an apparently uncontrollable urge to generate headlines. This may be in keeping with a local penchant alluded to by the colloquial Hebrew catchphrase for volubility: larutz lesaper lakhevreh. It roughly translates to “run and tell your friends.”

But that may be no more than an intricate ruse they want us to fall for. Their hypothetical nothing-is-what-it-seems hoax could be in keeping with the Hebrew semi-slang idiom hafuch al hafuch – literally “opposite on opposite”– i.e. not what you expect, the opposite of what you assume, creating an impression that’s the opposite of what immediately looks likely.

Both the above pearls of our insular culture may contain some relevance to putting Dagan’s and Diskin’s spasms of loquaciousness into some semblance of context.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ Riots are the exclusive domain of those who view themselves as outside the law. Whether they are outside the law because they are above or below it is a matter of perspective. The rioters may see themselves as the oppressed who are below the law while their victims tend to think of them as […]