Luke Ford

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Your Moral Leader Visits Fleshpots Of San Francisco, Resists Temptation

According to the great Judaic philosopher Maimonidies one can only claim to have conquered a sin when one has placed oneself in the same situation where one sinned previously and this time surmount the challenge.

With this teaching in mind, I walked down Broadway Ave in San Francisco on sunny Monday morning, striding into my past.

From age 16 on, I collected magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, which I stored in the woods outside my house. And almost every day, I visited them and studied their sacred contents. I read every word.

In the summer of 1983, just before my Senior year of high school, I attended a week long journalism training camp at St. Mary's College in the San Francisco Bay Area. And on a field trip into the city one afternoon, I led a group of highschool guys down Broadway Ave into various shops in the tenderloin. We filled the peep machines with quarters and for the first time in my life I saw the real thing. The whole shebang. My mates had to drag me out of the store after a couple of hours. I could've stayed there all afternoon watching.

The store was filthy. The machines were sticky and musty and smelling of disinfectant. Why does the thrill of the illicit always have to be accompanied by the most depressing surroundings?

Anyway, on September 10, 2001, I found two hour free parking on Bay St near Fisherman's Wharf, and remembering my past trek to find the forbidden 18 years previously, I struck courageously up the hills looking for Broadway.

I hoped in my heart that the smut shops would no longer pollute this most beautiful city in the world so that I would not even have to struggle against temptation. Alas, it was not to be. I walked past numerous such shops.

But at least I walked past them, and I did not patronize them. Rather, I rejoiced that I had now achieved a higher moral plane, where by my good example, I could become Your Moral Leader.

Fred writes: L-- Bad news. Your ability to resist the smut peddlers in SF is not the sign of having attained moral strength. It is a sign of reaching middle age, and having your libido drop. That's (slightly) different from becoming more moral. At least I think it is. If it isn't, I think I can also report that I have experienced a great increase in morality.

On another note, I read the comment about how LF is the "one stable thing" in Lynne's life. Boy, if you're the one stable thing in her life, she's in trouble. That's like saying the NASDAQ is the one stable thing in one's life.

Lynne L-patin: Maimonides also said that if you commit the sin of spelling something wrong and your friend points it out, not wanting you to embarrass yourself, you say "thank you" and don't accuse them of harrassment or picking at you etc.

Your Moral Leader Gets Mail

Khunrum writes: Luke, Connie Chung interviewed the CEO from Cantor Fitzgerald tonight who lost seven hundred employees (including his brother) in the recent Trade Center bombing. Not one person escaped. He was an intelligent, sensitive Jewish man about 40 who frequently broke down during the conversation. It was depressing. After, I logged on to your site to see what was new. To my chagrin, during this terrible period in our country's history, you are writing about [smut]. No mention of the grief we are all experiencing. Luke, the joke as worn wafer thin. You are no one's moral leader. At best you are a neurotic kook. If you took religion seriously you would be thinking about someone other than yourself for a change. I wonder if anyone else noticed how self centered and painfully out of touch with reality you seem to be.

BadGirl writes: Luke, Isn't it time you did something really different with your lukeford.net site? Aren't you sick and tired of posting the rantings of Lynne L-patin and Chaim Amalek? Those of us who supported you and backed you for years are totally fed up with the losers whom you have allowed to take over your websites.

Luke, of course, it was your website, lukeford.com. But you would not have had a website if you had not kept your viewers. You sold out! Clear and simple! You took a few bucks and ran, while leaving your devoted fans to sit and wonder what happened to the Luke Ford who was a fighter. You gave up, Luke.

I'm so disappointed in you. You could have been a "contender," but you dropped us like Afghanistan terrorists and sold your website to an incompetent fool. Some of us had the ability and desire to continue with the lukeford.com site. But you took the first offer that came around the bend and dumped one of the best porn gossip websites on the net.

How do you react now? You allow the same sick men and women to take up space on lukeford.net. Lynne is a very sick woman. She needs medical help. Why couldn't the terrorists kidnap all your sick followers and take them to the Mid-East where they might find useful lives catering to the starving people and giving sexual favors to the bin Laden gang.

We don't want to hear reports from Chaim about New York City. We can read and observe live reports from real survivors and reporters on CNN. Chaim, and I hope to God this isn't you, can sit up his own website instead of clinging to your shirt tail. Cut loose the garbage from your past including the phony Orthodox jews which I believe are Methodists and Mormons in disguise.

Start a new life, and if you want to put something on lukeford.net, let it be your words. Tell us more about your trip up North. Tell us more about JimmyD, Berkowitz.....anybody but Lynne, Chaim, and Brandy Alex. We don't care, Luke. Do you understand, we DO NOT care about those very boring sick individuals.

My Sociopathic Leader

Lynne L-patin writes from Portland: My Sociopathic Leader, bless his shriveled heart, came to an amazing conclusion just this week: he doesn't like interacting with people who dislike him. Never mind the genesis of their dislike -- that he is inherently unlikable. That he is nasty, rude, cruel, even vitriolic. Rather than change his behavior, others should simply not react to it.

People who have no lives or who deny their own issues upset themselves over others' misfortunes. They look outside themselves and are horrified; I look within and am horrified. I am to accept G-d's plan for me, I'm told, but am I not entitled to ask for an explanation? Must I go through months of endless torture just to show My Sociopathic Leader that one can still behave sweetly no matter the slings and arrows inflicted by this carnal world?

See, Luke, I've become numb to you as well. "Yes, of course, his behavior is cruel but he's a jackass -- what do you expect?" That's what made you so mad -- you want to manipulate me, you want to make me feel pain, sorrow, rage, whatever, but I can now go from "dearly beloved" to "drop dead" in ten seconds or less. Or thirty words or less -- whatever metaphor you want.

Instant Replay: Luke said something uncalled for and cruel in lieu of normal conversation. Lynne cried and cried, then recovered and told Luke she could care less about what he did, and that she had no interest in him, ever again. That the stress in her life is amazing and that Luke is the one stable thing in her life makes her more vulnerable to his pique, which is conveniently forgotten. Luke was upset -- he may not really want her, but no one will reject him -- that's his prerogative. It doesn't occur to him that he might have been wrong, overreacted and said something awful to his friend. That an apology might be in order. Instead, Luke decided to show Lynne how badly he could hurt her by driving two thousand miles just to be cruel and not even call her, then blaming her for it, because she didn't like being hurt by Luke and reacted like a normal person.

Meanwhile, Lynne remembers that Luke is a jackass and to expect a jackass to behave like a normal, empathic, caring human being is like expecting a jackass to pilot the space shuttle. Better to remember the enormity of his disability, ask Hashem to work a little harder on healing his little Jewboy, and remember that, if Luke didn't care about Lynne so VERY much, he wouldn't overreact so VERY much when she tells him to "f... off." Of course, Luke still has not apologized (even though he has been forgiven) nor possibly even forgiven Lynne (even though she has apologized)....which is why he is My Sociopathic Leader and I am his Beacon of Morality. (The Beacon needs some new batteries, dear.)

I am NOT self-centered. I care, really, I do, about kittens and puppies and little children, and the starving in Ethiopia and the torn and bloody victims of this week's apocalyptic terrorist attack. I'm just not having any emotional reaction to the tragedies of others this week. My friends and even strangers are starting to give me funny looks. Don't you care about what happened? Aren't you crying yourself to sleep?

The American media has been known to manufacture tragedy as smoke screen for slow news days, but I'm aware that this is REAL tragedy and that thousands of people have been killed. I haven't had a plane crash into me in the past few months, but I've had way too much tragedy in my own life lately, and it's been real, too. My husband's illness, unemployment and death, moving, losing my stepfather, my own serious illness, losing three jobs in nine months (even though the last employer was in clear violation of wage and hour laws), ruining my fingernails on that last job, having gained twenty pounds in the last year, bankruptcy. I'm more concerned about keeping my medical insurance going for the next few months than I am over Islamic terrorism. Is there something wrong with me?

Our society talks a lot about people using pharmaceuticals to cope with problems. I don't understand what problems and what pharmaceuticals we're discussing, because when I recite the above litany to my health care providers, they don't react as though my stress is out of the ordinary. Certainly I've not been offered any tranquilizers. If I call a mental crisis hotline complaining I can't sleep nights because planes crash into buildings, will I be told to come on down and pick up some Xanax to take before bedtime? Because that's a "real" mental health issue, whereas panic over all the things happening to me as I face turning fifty alone and adrift are only the stuff of "normal" life?

Having to cope with what's gone on in my life over the past few years, being strong and compartmentalizing and dealing with daily life without being overwhelmed by feelings, has left me numb. If I have to "pull it together" and cope with transportation needs after watching my car being towed away by the repo man; if I have to calmly accept my inability to pay child support and file away unopened the threats I receive from the Support Enforcement Office; if I have to hold my feelings inside when bad things happen to me rather than let loose with what I would think to be normal behavior (screaming, crying, general hysteria), I'm not going to react to suicide bombers in New York or terrorist attacks in Israel. I've plenty of bottled up anger and hostility, but if it isn't appropriate to express it when my own life crashes in flames, venting it over acts of international terrorism isn't the answer, either.

Jamye Waxman Ok

Almost all members of the Luke Ford community in Manhattan including talk show host Bob Berkowitz, law student Bob Jones, and journalist Mark Kramer are fine.

Bob Berkowitz Lovebytes producer Jamye Waxman writes: Hey luke. I live near the blast...its so surreal, I feel really vulnerable...the "not in my backyard" disbelief... The shop (since you are concerned) is pretty close to the WTC...They haven't been open in a few days and are gradually getting back into it...this is just such a disaster. NYC and the world will never be the same...

Amalek Updates From Manhattan

5PM PST: Chaim Amalek writes: Jesus, I am not at all comfortable with this guy Bush. The smoke is picking up again - the great plume in the southern sky is growing anew. One Liberty Plaza, another 700-footer, looks like it is going to keel over at any moment. the walls are reported to be buckling, which is a pisser, since they had the emergency rescue effort set up right at the foot of this building. Even if it does not fall, they probably will have to know it down. As a concern this cannot rank with the severe loss of human life, but we cannot ignore the economic effects of all this. Lower Manhattan's economy is going into the shitter fast.

Not Thinking Straight

JRob writes: I find that all I want is vengeance. I'm also taking a serious "Southern Sheriff" attitude towards it. I want Afghanistan carpeted with dead bodies, and if we find out it wasn't them, "well, if they didn't do this they probably did something."

I don't want the perpetrators "brought to justice" or to "stand trial for their crimes." I want the report to say they resisted. And everyone within 80 square miles resisted. And everyone those people knew resisted. Y'know, fuel air bombs just get stale if you leave them lying around doing nothing.

And, mostly, we finally need the will to act as necessary. I've been saying this for a long time. We cannot worry about "how we'll look" or "collateral damage." When the president is confronted with the CNN footage of the six year old Afghan girl who was cut in half by an M-60 while looking for her kitten, his response should be, "why was a girl that young allowed to be a terrorist? Her parents have to be held accountable."

I don't want a reasoned and proportionate response. I don't want cooler heads to prevail. I don't want to be a world leader for peace and justice. I want the killing to start and keep going for a long time. No mercy. No pity. I've always been a foreign policy hawk, but on this subject I've gone a lot further. I want immediate, demonstrable vengeance. And lots of it.

Luke says: You sound like a liberal who's been mugged by reality.

JRob replies: Actually, I've always been pretty right wing on foreign policy and pretty left wing on domestic policy in real life. My personal view, maybe not expressed on your web sites, has always been that US military might against terror should be psychotic and terrifying. I've just like arguing with you (on occasion) about Israel and the Palestinians.

On the other hand, you are probably right. No matter how hawkish I was, I'm feeling ten times that now.

My true feelings have always been that the civil liberties and rights of Americans do not extend beyond our borders. I stated before on your previous site that I was an Imperialist and a Monarchist (as I recall in response to a Chaim diatribe in response to something I said). There is still not an intrinsic change in my personal beliefs in that I still am not much in favor of US might being flexed specifically on Israel's behalf. However, the problems are certainly mixed to a certain extent. And I have no problem if Israel benefits from the carnage wreaked in the name of our vengeance.

Khunrum writes: The disturbing thing is our perception of Osama. We are being led to believe if he is assassinated or they hand him over this type of thing will cease. I don't think so. I read an interview and he takes credit for some things and not others. Yet he is blamed for everything. I believe him when he says "No, I never met that guy but I like what he did"(first Trade Center bombing). There are a lot of loose canons around the world. He may be a sort of spiritual leader but one man doesn't make a movement. He said today "If they assassinate me 100 more Osmas will spring up" True! I say we need radical measures. We may have to round up every Mohammed in the country and put them in camps like we did the Japanese in WW II. Check them out and if they are OK release them. Who knows. There are no simple answers.

Amalek Updates From Manhattan

2PM PST Chaim Amalek writes: Ever wonder what the air smells of when a large office tower goes down? Burnt paper. The wind has shifted, and that's what most of Manhattan smells like today. Lots of face masks in evidence there, as well as the occasional fashion statement in gas mask. If I were just a little more paranoid than I am, I would go to one of those survivalist web sites and order up some defensive chemwarfare gear, like a gas mask. Maybe even keep a gallon of water on hand. I sure hope they did not use too much asbestos in those buildings. Your friend's [Jamye Waxman] dildo shop must be hurting, as no non-residents are being allowed anywhere south of 14th street (and she is south of Houston).

Luke Ford On Ground Zero

Catherine writes: Luke, Obviously you are one step ahead of the times as usual. Your departure from porn journalism to writing about Judaism and the crisis in the Middle East was strangely well timed. I congratulate you on pursuing your dreams and goals and feel proud that all your detractors can now eat crow. Although I didn't want you to leave your site I respected your decision to do something that wasn't particularly popular or engaging for the masses. I did continue to go to your new site every day. A few weeks ago you wrote a breakdown on the crisis in the Middle East that really encapsulated the topic for people like me that were a little confused about just what the fighting was all about. Your ability to cut through the bs and tell it like it is has translated into this religion that you feel so strongly about. Recently my truck blew and tire and I called for a tow truck. The driver gave me a lift home and as usual I conversed with him to pass the time and ease the uncomfortableness of the silence. He was clearly a Palestinian and after hearing him confirm that he was from Israel I asked him "What is the fighting over there all about?". He rubbed his fingers together to indicate $. I said "What...the real estate's worth money?" he said (in garbled English) something to the effect that the fighting is about tourism dollars. I said "You mean this is all about the Christians coming over to see where Jesus lived and the fighting's over their money?". He nodded and smiled. I thought to myself, "Oh this guy is troubled" and remained quiet for the rest of the ride. I thought this was a Holy War lol. Anyway my point is that I will continue to follow your site to gain insight into the whole matter and applaud your genius, once again, at placing yourself at Ground Zero.

We are the Juwes...

Lynne L-patin writes: "The Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing..."

Written on the wall over one of Jack the Ripper's mutilated victims, that declaration was instantly erased by a well-meaning inspector from Scotland Yard, who feared the inflammation of anti-Semitism in a city already reacting with hostility over an influx of immigration from Eastern Europe.

Current thought is that the chalked scrawling was merely coincidental grafitti, and that Jews had nothing to do with the series of lust murders that rocked Victorian London and introduced an age of sexual savagery.

Unfortunately, the American media would pretend that the terrorist events of September 11, 2001, also have nothing to do with Jews. Erase the context and Israel Vs Palestine will be downgraded to a Mexican wrestling match?

I understand that there's probably a different electrical system in use in Israel, but I did spend the day cleaning up three different space heaters so that YOUR Immoral Leader could have his choice when he heads for Jerusalem to cover the Apocalypse. Personally, I'd prefer a 747.

Manhattan's Chaim Amalek Survives Terrorist Attacks

Chaim Amalek writes at 6:18AM PST: "Lower Manhattan is in utter chaos. "Accident" my ass."

6:34AM PST: "There will be many, many deaths from this terrorist attack. The planes hit at a time when the offices in the towers are fully occupied. No way into Manhattan today at all. Subways shut down on the west side, and everyone waiting to see if any other shoes are going to drop."

Khunrum writes: What if Osama Bin Liden is not religious at all. How about if he is an evil financial genius who shorted the market????

5PM PST: Chaim writes: I was in lower Manhattan earlier....just lots of dust. Right now I am on the upper west side, watching the clouds of smoke from what were the towers (110, 110, and 40 story buildings) of the World Trade Center. This must be what Pearl Harbor felt like on December 7, 1941, only with (I fear) far greater loss of life.

I was a couple of miles to the north - heading south via the subway, when it came to a halt. I did not quite realize what had happened until I made it to Canal street, about half a mile away from the detonation points. Then all I could see were clouds of smoke and then, later, masses of people moving to the north, whom I joined on foot. Lower Manhattan has been sealed off. I know some folks who live down there who are essentially trapped in their apartments, with no good way of leaving.

You know, a year or so ago I considered working at the World Trade Center. They were such beautiful buildings. I cannot tell you how strange it is for that to be gone, and all that it represented. I hope that everyone or almost everyone got out of there alive. The media report that there are strangely few seriously injured people in local hospitals. This could mean that they all got out in time. I hope. Or that they never made it out and are dead, entombed in 200,000 tons of rubble.

The media here are reporting that several hundred police and firemen are missing. There was just enough time for hundreds of them to make their way into the building to start dealing with the fire when the structures collapsed.

Blame Lee Harvey Oswald for this. He made LBJ president of the United States, who indiscriminately opened up our borders to the alien horde of the Third World. Islam and western liberal democracy simply are not compatible with each other.

PS I am certain that Pierce is gloating over this one.

Exterminate The Brutes

Chaim Amalek writes:

1. Our national security isn't.
2. What next - anthrax attacks?
3. This is a GREAT day for Islam!
4. Am I the only one who feels a bit of unease over who is president?
5. Thank God (acting through Edward Teller and Stan Ulam) that we have (still, I hope) Hydrogen bombs.

BOMBTHEMBOMBTHEMBOMBTHEMBOMBTHEM -- EXTERMINATE THE BRUTES!

JRob writes YML: OK, I'm on board. Israel should kill every Palestinean they can reach. No more sympathy. You were right.

Khunrum writes: Dubya has an advisory committee which rivals Luke's. Old Cold Warrior "War Lords" like Cheney and Rumsfeld. What did the Clinton gang do after the embassy bombings? They lobed a few missals at Bin Liden which missed the mark and then nothing. For retaliation purposes give me Dubya.

EXTERMINATE THE BRUTES! Who? Where? Chairman Mao wrote the book on this sort of thing. Very difficult to identify and find them. Afghanistan is saying.."Wasn't us, sorry." So hard to defeat a foe who will gladly blow himself to kingdom come for his religion, 50 virgins and a lamb shank.

Luke Visits San Francisco

I visited San Francisco Monday and met with our own Fred Nek for dinner in San Jose.

Chaim Amalek writes: Ah, Luke visits the Real World of heavy-set chicks, boring tedious jobs and unemployment. Wasn't porn more fun?

San Francisco is a very beautiful city, lacking only a rational civic culture and political establishment to sweep aside the problems created by lunatic liberalism. (Check out all the derelicts on Market Street!) While in San Francisco go to the Mitchel Bros. Theater, for old-times sake (as the journalist that you are). See if they won't comp you, and start pricing the chicks there.

Your Moral Leader Gets Mail

Will writes: I stayed up til 3 am watching a documentary about you and Margold etc. so I have a simple question: You are talented, a capable writer and a fine example of a person who can report on an industry without becoming part of it. So, is it worth all the shit people sling at you and the one-room garage conversion when you could be doing something else? Like most, I am both horrified and titillated by the porn industry. I am happy you maintain such an interesting site which is a grade above the porn it relies upon for content, but I would sooner see you plying your writing talents on a more worthy cause. The documentary suggested you also have/had a website where you discussed ethics. Where is it?

Michael writes: hi Luke just a quick note to say I saw you on a late night cable broadcast (selling your soul ) . I think they called the documentary .you did a job revealing the truth amidst allot of lie`s . also some pretty dangerous people . you `ll be lucky to not get stuffed in a trunk . it must be difficult to not form personal relationships with these women . and even more difficult if you do get close . having known a few (not porn stars)emotional rollercoasters . knowing as many as you do must be emotionally draining . I think your interviews could be used to train psychologist or something . !

Lynne L-patin writes: When all is said and done, and His judgement of us is imminent, how will our scheming and manipulation be perceived? Will our attempts to pervert His intentions to our own will be judged by their success or failure, or do they not sorrow Him merely by their existence? What does it say about us that we do not trust in His plans for us, but must manipulate and control others in our own interest to feel safe in this world? Sometimes the hardest thing for us to do is to let go, drop our efforts to influence our world, and listen to what He is trying to tell us with His silence.

Your allure is the opportunity to so fully express myself in writing; you, being somewhat of a "jackass," force me to really stretch my creative abilities.

I think you've tried to be honest with me all along; I certainly have no five-year-plan (nor even twenty-five year plan) for turning you into a normal male who just happens to be devoted to me. But you sucker me in with your half-baked morality, so easy to refute, and your amazing denial; responding to you is like target practice at an amusement park shooting gallery. Plink! Do I not owe it to the world you would sway with your self-serving moral code to point out the chasms in your logic? Cruel? You?

You're a loser, Luke, wanting control where there should be only compromise and negotiation. I win! I get to choose whether I shall feel, or write, or perhaps do neither! Plus I get to forgive you. (Oops, that's immodest. Better quit while I'm ahead...)

Who Can Disagree?

Chaim Amalek writes: A political plan of action, courtesy of the National Alliance (which weirdly does not mention the jews in this week's portion):

"We must once again provide the sort of social and spiritual environment in which our own nature can express itself in music, in art and architecture, in literature, in philosophy and scholarship, in the mass media, and in the life-styles of the people."

In specific terms, this means a society in which young men and women gather to revel with polkas or waltzes, reels or jigs, or any other White dances, but never to undulate or jerk to negroid jazz or rock rhythms. It means pop music without Barry Manilow and art galleries without Marc Chagall. It means films in which the appearance of any non-White face on the screen is a sure sign that what's being shown is either archival newsreel footage or a historical drama about the bad, old days. It means neighborhoods, schools, work groups, and universities in which there is a feeling of family and comradeship, of a shared heritage and a shared destiny. It means a sense of rootedness, which in turn engenders a sense of responsibility and energizes a moral compass, so that people once again know instinctively what is wholesome and natural and what is degenerate and alien. It means spiritual feeling coming from the soul and unencumbered by superstition or dogma, soaring free and reaching far above today 's priest-ridden, church-bound spirituality."

Glamorizing Vice

9/5 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON: I try to respect the decisions of thriving morally accomplished communities to stigmatize certain behavior, even when that stigmatizing doesn't make rational sense to me. I then work hard to understand what doesn't initially make sense to me.

For instance, my writing about pornography over the past six years has made me a stigmatized person within Orthodox Jewish life.

It's easy for me to reject this stigmatizing by claiming that it doesn't make rational sense. My writing on porn does not endorse porn anymore than a journalist writing on organized crime endorses organized crime. A writer should not be equated with his subject.

Over the years, I learned that writing on pornography was apparently the one exception to the otherwise clear delineation between writer and subject. On what other topic could a journalist get into trouble simply by specializing in something distasteful?

Thursday evening in Seattle, I gained insight on this matter while reading Ann Marlowe's book "How To Stop Time: Heroin From A to Z." She recounts all the abusive mail she received after writing about her heroin addiciton.

While I came to respect and abide by my community's stigmatizing morality, Marlowe still rejects hers as irrational. Though Harvard educated, she's shallow in her thinking.

Ann describes the calumny "to write about it is to glamorize it." But I'm beginning to accept the truth of that aphorism. Writing about heroin addiction and pornography in a matter of fact non-judgemental tone tends to legitimate, if not glamorize, that deviant behavior. Writing about something unknown to the general population allows civilians access to the reality of a particular vice. It thus introduces the vice, be it drugs or porn, into a person's lexicon of choices. Thus there's great wisdom in the refusal of many circles to even discuss certain vices. By not discussing a vice, you keep it out of your options.

Marlowe writes:

"When I published a cover story on heroin in The Village Voice in 1994, I got lots of nasty letters that all agreed on one thing: because I emerged from years of heroin use without noticeable health, career or financial effects, I wasn't qualified to write about dope.

"Writing about heroin will ALWAYS be perceived as "glamorizing" the drug, no matter what you say.

"Only pornography ("it causes rape!") and writing about drugs are suppposed to have this ability to function as immediate incitations to action... But accounts of heroin use (and sex), like the real thing, are supposed to be irresistible, powerful drugs in thier own right.

"People who say that pornography is an incitment to rape forget that rape is a crime of violence, not lust. Pornography may be an incitement ot masturbation, but it's no more an incitement to rape than a Cartier ad is an incitement to jewel theft. And addiction isn't a hunger for a high, it's a disease, a system of thought and a way of life. Reading about dope doesn't create addicts; a combination, probably, of biochemistry and life experience creates addicts.

"The more heroin is hyped as ultimately powerful and irresistible - to the point that merely reading about heroin is thought to cause heroin use - the more people are going to addict themselves to it."

My thoughts on her comments:

* I suspect that literature and entertainment that depicts pornography and drug abuse and rape and murder other vices as thrilling and wonderful will increase participation in those vices. How could it not?

* There are many vices, including heroin and porn, that a well disciplined educated intelligent middle-class person like Marlowe can indulge in and survive that would sink a person of a lower class status and discipline.

* I don't believe pornography directly causes most men who use it to rape. But I do believe that porn use breaks down moral boundaries which permit anti-social behavior like rape.

* This feminist mantra that rape is a crime of violence, not lust, is thoughtless. Why do men choose to rape rather than commit another form of violence if it is only about violence? What about the vast majority of rapes where the women are not hurt seriously, only forcibly penetrated? If it is all about violence, why weren't the rapists more violent?

* I don't believe that reading about rape or porn or murder or heroin causes people to do bad things, but if the literature is amoral or inciting, it will obviously have some effect on the margins. If it didn't, advertisers wouldn't buy advertising space.

* I don't regard homosexual practice, drug and alcohol addiction and the like as a disease, rather as a moral failure.

Lynne L-patin writes: Blaming pornography for your ostracism by polite society won't work, Luke -- your fellow sociopath Ted Bundy did it to no avail.

Even in an objective world, a writer may be tainted by his choice of subject, but you, Luke, will always be stigmatized by good people regardless of yours. Not only do you write about objectionable subjects in an offensive manner, you are personally objectionable. The Orthodox Jews will shun you even if you sing the praises of cottage cheese. Your writing endorsed pornography like Kelloggs endorses breakfast -- the use of it, the enjoyment of it, the preference of it over real-life relationships with women. You glamorized pornography even as you flicked the semen off your computer monitor, as you waggled your index finger at us in shame! The thin veneer of disdain you spread over your tumescent gloating at others' erotic failings never concealed your true agenda -- you wrote about pornography because it titillated you and because you wanted attention.

Writing about pornography or drug addiction in a matter-of-fact, truly non-judgemental tone, allowing people to form their own conclusions, is boring. Boring writers don't become infamous. By not discussing certain subjects, by deeming them too extreme for exposure, one also glamorizes them. "The knowledge too dangerous to reveal" is merely a stack of moldy old Playboys. Better to educate the community properly so they make the right choice when confronted with the tawdry.

There's a category of crime called "sedition" in which it is assumed certain political writings will function as "immediate incitations to action." Great inspirational writings are also intended to incite action. Marlowe, as you point out, is a shallow thinker, if she puts only drugs and sex in the "irresistible, powerful" subjects category.

Time for some deep thinking: good pornography instigates lust; the reaction to lust may be harmless masturbation or antisocial woman-oriented violence, depending on the viewer. Cartier ads make not make me rob jewelry stores but they lead me to covet -- isn't that equally sinful? Addiction begins as a hunger for a high but quickly becomes a diseased system of thought and way of life. Reading about dope doesn't create addicts and reading about sex doesn't create sociopathic sex killers -- a combination, probably, of biochemistry and life experience creates both addicts and sociopathic sex killers, not to mention sociopathic authors like Luke Ford.

**Because most people don't have the guts to risk participation in any vices that require them to leave their recliners and remote controls, or that might result in ostracism by their social groups. They live vicariously through the portrayal of fictional characters' collision with risk, just as you live vicariously through the interesting lives of your friends.

**Addiction crosses all social boundaries. Well disciplined educated intelligent middle-class people are as subject to the vicissitudes of biochemistry and life as lower class people, only lower class people don't have the economic resources to bury the results of their bad behavior like those addicts who are financially better off.

* I don't believe pornography directly causes most men who use it to rape. But I do believe that porn use breaks down moral boundaries which permit antisocial behavior like rape.

**You KNOW pornography doesn't cause most men who use it to rape. The numbers don't add up. Antisocial behavior like porn use follows the breaking down of moral boundaries that led to disrespect of women which can escalate to more extreme antisocial behavior like rape.

**Rape is a bullying form of sexual violence that really upsets the victim. Men choose to rape for many different reasons. Some prefer to inflict emotional violence rather than physical violence, and it doesn't take a lot of violence to terrorize a woman, whereas taking on a man is risking real physical damage should he choose to fight back. Some rapists are only as violent as they need to be to get the desired effect, and being "forcibly penetrated" is far more "serious hurt" emotionally than broken bones incurred in a impersonal traffic accident. Perhaps I could set up a demonstration for you?

**That's good, because I've got hundreds of true crime books on my shelves, Luke, and I'm really mad at you right now, so be happy that I shan't be doing any bad things. You should see the notes in the margins! Do you really think that advertisers bought space on your former site because your amoral, inciting gossip would cause people to do bad things and click on advertising banners? In which case, aren't the Orthodox Jews correct in stigmatizing you for inciting immorality?

* I don't regard homosexual practice, drug and alcohol addiction and the like as a disease, rather as a moral failure.

**I don't regard homosexual practice, drug and alcohol addiction and the like as diseases or moral failure; I consider them emotionally dysfunctional reactions to an insane world. I attribute Luke Ford's emotionally vicious, sociopathic behavior as a dysfunctional reaction to early, repeated physical abandonment by his mother and series of surrogate mothers, and ongoing emotional abandonment by his father. Furthermore, I fail to find the concept of a sociopath posing as a moral leader to be particularly funny. Luke, are you a disease? A moral failure? An oxymoron?

From Toronto Globe and Mail:

Caregivers in Copenhagen have found that pornography and prostitutes have a greater calming effect on their elderly patients than traditional medical treatment such as drug therapy. Staff at the Thorupgaarden nursing home in the Danish capital have been broadcasting pornography on the building's internal videochannel every Saturday night for several years. And if videos and erotic magazines don't relieve the tension, residents can ask the staff to order a prostitute for them.

Adult Video News Attacks Your Moral Leader

From AdultVideoNews.com:

As this issue went to press, AVNOnline.com reported that Luke Ford had sold his website and plans to start a new non-adult site. "I feel I've done my duty," Ford wrote in explaining the sale. "I know the FBI, LAPD and John Ashcroft are happy with me, so now I will move on." While we can only say, "Good riddance," such developments do not change the validity of the following editorial. Ford, after all, as he has demonstrated time and again, is hardly a man of his word and in all likelihood is not through writing about adult. Besides, there are other little Ford types out there, waiting in the wings, so consider this a distant early warning.-- Ed.

Mark Kernes writes:

September marked my tenth anniversary as a full-time member of the adult industry, and ever since I figured out what it was about - not too difficult, considering my libertarian background, zen/psychedelic philosophy and willingness to spend long hours on sets - I've been a supporter of it, both financially and philosophically. I like most of the people I've met who are in it, have grown close to a few, and have learned to deal diplomatically with the ones I don't like. However, none of that blinds me to the fact that some of my fellow industry members are just plain stupid.

Let me pose a hypothetical question: Let's say you're an actress and you're approached by a guy who starts a conversation with you, in the course of which, he drops little comments like: "The reality is all porn stars and nude models are hookers. They just vary in their price - from $250 to $50,000 per trick. From Playboy Playmates on down, virtually all of these girls will have sex for money... Many people think that high end escort work and porn is glamorous, romantic and sexy but I know how twisted and suicidal and damaged these people are."

Or, "Lying and deceit are endemic to this industry... It's an industry filled with deceit."

Or, "I want to save [porn stars], like Christian evangelists want to save souls for Jesus. It's not so much that I deeply care about them, I just want to rack up points and feel important by 'saving' fallen women."

Or, "[S]pending an hour a day viewing porno is not the moral equivalent of viewing mindless TV. Porno is more destructive."

Or, "The pornography industry inherently defiles people and this defilement usually makes its mark on their physical person quickly. You see people aging very quickly in this industry."

Or, "I agree with the feminists that pornography is all about the degradation of women. Where I disagree with them is that I think it is equally about the degradation of men. Pornography inherently degrades the user, the maker and the participant. Pornography does to the soul what tobacco does to the lungs."

Or... well, you get the idea.

Now, I understand that some people are in the adult industry simply for a paycheck, a chance to feature at clubs and/or the ego bosto to be able to say "I work in adult video," which has been known to engender what passes for respect at frat parties. And if the industry went away tomorrow, they'd just go into retail sales, a secretarial position or something equally fulfilling, and never again have to consider that what they do in front of the camera, or even behind, is a perfect example of the First Amendment in action. And if you were to ask me, I'd say those folks should waste no time returning to those custodial engineering and food service type jobs.

Mind you, I don't begrudge them their choice of livelihood. The problem I have is when they're too stupid to a) be able to tell when someone to whom they're speaking is intent upon destroying not only their occupation, but the occupations of thousands of innocents whose only "crime" is that they're engaged in a business that Religious Rightists and their government cronies fear and abhor; and b) that no matter how friendly that person may sound one-on-one, that that person may have (and in this case, has) no respect for the industry member's life, lifestyle choices, livelihood or, really, anything about them.

Add it all up, and the only image I can come up with is watching that actress/producer/director/whatever hold a gun to his/her own head, as did Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles, and threaten, "One more step and the nigger gets it!"

Because, folks, when it comes right down to it, that's how Luke Ford thinks of you: Niggers. Now, this is not a word I normally use (nor have I seen Ford use it), and it's not a word I take lightly - but I know what it means. But after reading those quotes above - all of which are Ford's own words, taken from his postings between mid-June and mid-July - and hundreds of similar comments he's posted over the years, it's the only word I can think of that accurately describes what this conman thinks of you.

And if you don't see that, you're a moron.

Okay; so, given that it's Ford's intention to put you out of business, if not get you put in jail, what would an intelligent person's response be to Ford's entreats for a comment from you about your life, your associates or your current project?

Well, I've heard the arguments in favor of doing so: That 'any publicity is good publicity,' or that the actress/producer/director doing the talking is 'smart enough to run rings around' Ford. That's horseshit; as a wordsmith myself, I know how easy it is, when one has an agenda, to twist the most innocent phrase.

And then there are those nursing grudges, who look to Ford as a sounding-board where they can air their (often imaginary) grievances, not considering that anything bad they say about a co-worker serves Ford's agenda as much, if not more so, than it does their own. So intent are they to salve their own egos that they ignore what this guy is and what he does.

Understand, Ford is not a "journalist," much as that appellation has been applied to him. Journalists don't publish unfounded rumors, especially if they have good reason to believe the rumors are false. If Janet Cook could be fired from the Washington Post for falsifying an "interview" with a juvenile drug addict, what do you suppose the Post would have done if one of its reporters had falsely claimed, as Ford did, that all the Vivid girls have HIV, or that they were scheduled to work as prostitutes at the Moonlite Bunnyranch? And yet, this idiot continues to get quoted by the mainstream press as if he knew something about this industry! More pity they... and more pity us, since equally ignorant readers will believe what Ford says and draw false conclusions about the industry.

Incidentally, I urged Vivid's attorney to sue Ford for posting those libels, but for reasons that never made any good sense to me, he decided simply to debate Ford on Ed Powers' radio show, in which I also took part.

Yet, it amazes me that self-admitted liars like Ford can still find hosting on some server somewhere, and even more that any adult company would help keep this guy alive by buying banner space on his pages - but that's just their (and my) moral dilemma, Dr. Laura. As I said: Morons.

JRob writes YML: Why did you post AVN's attack if you have divorced yourself from the adult industry? AVN and all of the adult industy are, for you, a bad memory. By posting their commentary on your non-porn site you continue to associate yourself with the industry despite your aversion to it.

If you are truly getting away from it (the porn industry) in order to have an association with those you think worthy and to re-introduce yourself to the Orthodox community (and be my moral leader [[though I still do not require a moral leader]), wouldn't you be better served by not responding to, or posting comments from the adult industry?

Your Moral Leader Goes To Bumbershoot

I attended the 31st annual Bumbershoot festival in downtown Seattle Monday. It was the last day and featured bands from all over the Northwest as well as a few national ones. I didn't recognize any of the names except David Lee Roth but I mainly attended to people watch. And it largely disturbed me - most people dressed sloppily, with lots of tattoos, piercings, strangely dyed hair and the like.

I wore my yarmulke to help me meet Jews and I did meet some. Having a group identity makes the journey through life less lonely.

Your Moral Leader Arrives In Seattle

Your Moral Leader (YML) arrived in Seattle Monday morning, September 3rd. He now sits outside his friend's home on 95th St. waiting for his friend to either wake up or come home.

After filing his first update in five days early Sunday morning, YML departed on a hike of Mount Hood (an hour outside of Portland) with a woman he met in shul Shabbos morning and two of her friends. The hike was a scheduled 6.8 miles and YML wondered if he could make it. We set off on the trail shortly before noon and more than seven hours later, with the sun setting, we were lost. We worried we'd have to spend the night on the mountain, huddling together for warmth.

But we eventually found our proper trail, as YML will one day find his.

We probably hiked ten miles, more than I thought I could do. I charged up the slopes at one point to touch a pack of snow.

I've slept in my van all but one night.

Your Moral Leader Goes On Vacation

9/2/01, PORTLAND, OREGON:

A 35-year old man, a 20-year old van and a five-year plan coalesce on a drive from Los Angeles to Vancouver.

Ok, maybe no five-year plan for my life has yet emerged on my trip but I have the right to be satirical and alliterative, don't I?

A creatively blocked writer drives up the coast of North America seeking to heal the wounds of childhood.

There.

Feeling frustrated with his writing and unable to develop a plan for the rest of my life, Your Moral Leader (YML) packed a few belongings in his van Tuesday morning, got a Jiffy Oil Lube, canceled two appointments with psychologists, checked out several books from the Beverly Hills Library including "The New Journalism" by Tom Wolfe, and drove north up the Pacific Coast Highway from Santa Monica.

He had no specific destination in mind. There was nothing and nobody he really yearned to see. He was depressed after all and life held no meaning outside of the commmandments of the Torah.

YML took this trip to experience a wider swathe of life and to break out of his mental block.

He took breaks on his drive and voraciously read excerpts from the latest Phillip Roth novel "The Dying Animal." In it, YML thought he found a voice.

Shortly after 2PM, YML arrived in Santa Barbara. He'd only been there once before, five years previous, when he moved a hippie and his few belongings from Los Angeles.

By 4PM, YML's finished his Roth novel. Though the writings of the secular Jew are frequently the antithesis of Judaism, Luke's devoured about eight Roth novels because they fill one of YML's two greatest needs - truth (the other is goodness). Roth to YML truthfully depicts life, which is the calling of the artist.

Roth is particularly keen on depicting the male sexual animal, of which, at times, YML can be one (at least in theory).

Luke decides to venture out from the relative safety of exploring the world of the mind to the world of the fact. He walks up and down Main Street, drives around the local community college, checks his messages via cell phone and finds a warm congratulations on his manly quest from his therapist, and spends most of the evening in Borders bookstore.

This is YML's natural pattern for travel - he walks around, tries to spend as little money as possible, and checks out the local bookstores and college campuses.

YML takes no tours and though he consults his recently purchased "California For Dummies" book, there's no attraction he particularly wants to see. Aquariums and museums and historical landmarks hold little meaning for him.

Around 8PM, Luke sees the barefooted hippie he moved five years previous but YML, an elitist, doesn't say hello. Most of the time, YML only wants to converse with his equals or superiors. He yearns to associate upwards on the social ladder.

Before 11PM, YML finds a street to park on for the night, crawls into the duna in the back of his van and tries to sleep. Thinking about the starving kids in Africa (and his lack of an income), YML doesn't want to spend the minimum $50 a night to get a hotel room. Before 7AM, Wednesday, he's driving north on the PCH (the One) after not engaging in one substantive conversation since Monday.

YML drove through Big Sur, stopping at a park to go for a three mile hike. YML only sees middle-class white and yellow people on the environmental trails. Why aren't there many blacks in small town America? I hardly see any on my drive up the coast of North America. Is Environmentalism a white disease?

At the top of the hill in this national park (all the rangers are white and mainly working class), YML gets into his first meaningful conversation with a Jewish couple from the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Then YML drives past Carmel to Monterey where he parks and walks around Fisherman's Wharf to the Monterey Convention Center. I get a shot of recognition. My family spent several days here in the summer of 1981 as my father took a series of Christian meetings.

It was the summer before my tenth grade year when I'd attend a public school for the first time. My sister Elenne from Australia stayed with us and she dyed my hair blonde and got me wearing deodorant for the first time in my life. Neither helped me succeed with girls, who were the things uppermost on my mind.

I sat on the concrete retaining wall outside the convention center and looked deep into my soul. I realized that most of the great issues consuming me then consume me now. I've found no effective way yet to mediate my two greatest drives - to stand out and to fit in.

I wrote on pornography to stand out from the crowd but at the great cost of not being able to fit in with my favorite groups.

Overall, I've devoted more of my resources to standing out rather than fitting in. Over the rest of my life, I wish more to fit in.

YML orders a power size (32 ounce) Strawberry Tsunami with protein boost smoothie from Jamba Juice and walks up and down the downtown. Then he retrieves "The New Journalism" from his van and spends the evening at a Starbucks, sipping a hot herbal tea.

Not having taken a shower since Tuesday morning, YML Wednesday night washes himself off by hand as best he can in the Starbucks bathroom. He leaves before 11PM and finds a quiet street to sleep on.

Thursday morning YML walks around John Steinbeck's Cannery Row before 9AM, the time when he'll have to start paying for street parking. By then he's driving north on the One to Santa Cruz. He finds the famed boardwalk and it is disappointing. He walks the quarter-mile of tawdry amusements, then heads out under an overcast sky to drive around UC Santa Cruz.

By 2:30PM, he's closing in on San Francisco. YML calls an ex-girlfriend in San Jose and when she doesn't answer, he drives over the Golden Gate Bridge and north on the Pacific Coast Highway. The next six hours go by along a windy road amidst spectacular scenery. It's a long lonely drives with some stunning views - much like my own life.

I've lived largely alone with occasional glimpses of other people leading rich fulfilling lives.

Every other time in my life I've traveled this road, (not once since 1983 but probably 20 times between 1977-83) I've done it with a group of people I've liked. Journeys with groups tend to be more emotionally fulfilling. Who do you share the spectacle with when you're alone?

I drive past Dogtown, population 30.

I look back over my life as I drive and ask myself what wish I would've done differently. I most wish that I would've given more weight to this question - is what I am about to do going to bring me closer to or drive me further from the people I most want to be closer to?

I wish I could share this trip with someone special but when I go over in my mind the women who'd be willing to take this trip with me, I realize that most of them are not special enough. I'd rather go it alone than go with many of my female friends.

I yearn for a kehilla (community) that's warm and inviting and wants me to come inside. A community that embraces me and holds me tight. A community that pulses with life and is the source of life.

YML does not leave his Judaism behind on this trip. No, no, no. He sleeps every night in his van and does not eat out, instead subsists on raisin bread and peanut butter.

A struggling writer, at a career crossroads, goes on a long drive up the West Coast of North America, journeying into the darkest recesses of his childhood. The adventure stretches not just from Los Angeles to Vancouver, but the entire span of his 35-year old life.

The parched open fields in front of him stretch before him like the rest of his life - undeveloped soil that could remain untilled or turned into a bustling home of wit, insight and mitzvot (divine commandments) depending on his choices.

At 8:30PM, YML arrives in Albion, and drives down the steep one-laned road to the Seventh Day Adventist retreat (associated with its Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley). YML spent weeks of his youth at this retreat, including a memorable week-long stay with his sixth grade class. On the ride home from the adventure, YML, who'd always maintained till this time that girls had cooties, manipulated his way into receiving dozens of kisses from several girls in the class. It was the most pleasurable and meaningful experience YML had to date with the opposite sex. It was what I wanted most and yet what I pretended to shie away from.

Thankfully today YML no longer manipulates and passive-aggressive's his way into what he wants, nor does he deny his most basic urgers. Rather, YML stands as a beacon of psychological health and forthrightness.

I walk around Albion and see nobody. It's like kissing a former lover on the cheek after she's married. For the first time in years, I wonder if I made a mistake in leaving the Seventh Day Adventist church. I feel small emotional regrets. Just walking around the Adventist retreat, I feel myself fitting right in.

But my mind enumerates numerous reasons why I made the right switch to Judaism.

* I don't believe in Jesus as God or as my personal savior.

* I believe, like Judaism, in giving greater importance to actions rather than beliefs.

* Jews get more press.

* We have our own country - Israel.

* We can drink and smoke, dance, attend movies and read fiction. All are forbidden by classical Adventism.

* Judaism's focus on this world.

* Judaism's hatred of evil - gratuitous human cruelty.

* Jews can be more expressive of our feelings and thoughts as our religion focuses more on deeds than on motives.

* Judaism's more politically involved.

Adventism is a rural individualistic religion which regards cities as dens of iniquity. Judaism is more urban and communal.

At age eleven, I ran up and down this hill, training for marathons. I finished five at age eleven. That was my way of gaining attention. There was no internet.

As I drive past Klamath Falls on the 101, I remember my teenage years, after my family left the Seventh Day Adventist church. We didn't have tight community and I missed going on all the trips with friends that my Adventist peers went on, including to Klamath.

Khunrum replies: "Most of the time, YML only wants to converse with his equals or superiors. He yearns to associate upwards on the social ladder." The Moral Leader makes a big mistake. If the Moral Leader wants to get over writer's block he should be open to all kinds of people. Paupers as well as Princes and Kings. If the ML is too much of a snob to rub noses with the masses he may want to consider writing a society column for blue blood wannabes like himself.

Your Moral Leader Gets Email

Khunrum writes: I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Luke returns from his travels with the psycho van filled with 8-10 ragtag followers (see Charles Manson). I predict he will start his own breakaway religion based on Christianity, Orthodox Judaism and Science Fiction. Much like that group in San Diego a few years ago who drank the killer cool aid when the space ship forgot to pick them up. I don't recall the fellow's name. The weird looking guy, Brother Sunbeam or something..... his followers died with their sneakers on. I believe that is the direction Levi is moving in. Unfortunate, but this is what happens when the mainstream religions shun well meaning kooks like Luke.

Lynne writes: Having had the opportunity to view a few more houses over the last week, I've noticed that there seems to be another correlation between books and babes. To recap, it appeared that men who acquired trophy wives did so by scorning literacy and playing with motorcycles or by hunting big game. I've had the opportunity to see what happens in families with bookshelves, and I'm afraid I've got even worse news... The more books in the house, the more solid the marriage. Ordinary people with extraordinary libraries seem to have long-term relationships with their spouses. Books on the nightstand, books under the bed, magazines in the bathroom -- all bind ordinary-looking people together for years and years. The children grow up and leave home and husbands are stuck fifty years later with the same old wife with whom they started.

How horrid to think that getting married would be something permanent, based on mutual values and a love of sharing one's joy in life! Isn't marriage about cuteness? Isn't marriage about having a spouse one's friends envy? After all, we are supposed to sleep with this person! Who would want to sleep with a person with whom they share dreams and children in common? What social percentage is there in that? (I think I'll suggest "Singles Night at the Library" to the Powers-That-Be here in Multnomah County. I'll be sitting on the floor reading at 364.15 if anyone cares...)

Today at lunch the Rabbi told a story about a phone call he received from a local calligrapher who said that he had done some Hebrew pieces and that now he wanted the Rabbi to recommend a book he could copy because he was "ready to make a Torah."

The men at the table cracked up. One asked, "Did you ask him when he planned to become a Jew?" And another asked, "So I take it he found a really long piece of paper and decided to make it into a Torah?"

The Rabbi used this story to illustrate that, just as a goyishe calligrapher cannot make a Torah, all the learning and the recitation in the world cannot make one Live Torah. And I thought of you. You, who hold your Jewish knowledge over my head like you have the true answers, and who brag about your attendance at this shul or that shul, but who has never gained an understanding of Torah or applied it to your life. Hashem tests me -- I come to him through you, Sunshine Boy, and when you walk away, will my faith go with you?

Am I as shallow and superficial as you are? Hardly, and as you run from me and push me away, you run from Hashem and Torah and all that it means to love G-d. The pornography was a symptom that others unfamiliar with the industry could easily see, that warned them away from you from a distance. I allowed myself to get very, very close to you. I have given you nothing but devotion and affection; you blame me for your problems and your emotional turmoil and treat me like SHIT. No more darkness. I won't turn to you for any reason. You have nothing to give me.

Fred Answers Chaim On The Palestinians

Fred writes: 1. Clearly, long before there were "Palestinians" in Israel, there was a Jewish state. The Jews clearly have priority over the land. If anyone is the recent colonizing interloper, it is the Palestinians.

2. To the extent that Palestinians were dispossed from Palestine, that was the result of Arab-initiated violence.

3. Palestine was pretty darned empty at the time Jews started immigrating into the region at the end of the 19th century, early 20th century. There were not millions of Palestinians milling about at that time.

4. Israel occupies Gaza and the West Bank in large part because there is no alternative. The Palestinians insist on waging war against Israel. Accordingly, there is no choice but to limit the Palestinian ability to wage war, i.e. by occupying strategic portions of Gaza and the West Bank. (Note that Israel is only 12 miles wide at its mid section. It is simply not feasible to permit the Palestinians, given their current violent proclivities, to have complete control over Gaza and the West Bank.)

5. Mr. Arafat has made clear, both through his conduct and his own words to the Palestinian people that he thinks any agreement with the Israelis is meaningless.

Lynne L-patin answers Chaim Amalek: Spoken just like an Arab, Chaim. Deceitful and sneaky and full of irrelevant bullshit. Jerusalem was a Jewish city long before the false prophet Muhammed invented Islam. The British had to choose between Arabs and Jews when they pulled out of Israel, and they went for the Jews. Why? Because you can't trust Arabs. They don't bathe, they have sex with camels and they slice off the genitalia of their women. We're coming home armed to the teeth -- Jews with Guns -- and we can read and write as well. Jihad? You want Jihad? You want horseradish with that? Jewish toughness was forged in the ovens of Auschwitz and the sales of Bloomingdales; G-d promised us this scrap of desert; you squatters better turn and run, tails between your legs, like the mongrel dogs you are, before Jewish women come after you with oven cleaner and toothbrushes. The Holocaust was only the most recent insult to the Jewish race: we've been pushed around for 2,000 years and "Never Again" is our battle cry. We don't want California, we don't want Berlin -- we want the Holy Land and we want it now! One Jew is worth a thousand Arabs -- get the picture? Or do I have to spell it out for you? Jews with Uzis where their American Express cards used to be are dangerous. My trigger finger itches, and I can't find the hydrocortisone cream...

Khunrum writes: Why didn't you carve it out of Germany, the land whose people were directly responsible for the holocaust? Let's give Khun Amalek his dues. He presented us with another side of a complex issue. And who the hell is Louis Scorbick? Dissing our boy Chaim is he?. What has Scorbick done to make me laugh lately?

Godless Heathen Seeks Advice Re: Earthly Wickedness

JMT writes: Luke - An acquaintance from middle America plans on visiting LA in the near future and wants to see "stars." Can you recommend any locales for possible random celebrity sightings? If not, could you maybe ask your close personal friend, Ron Jeremy? He seems pretty star-struck.

Luke says: Buy star maps.

Missing Luke

Eergi writes: Luke You screwed up! All your previous work which you have allowed to go to shit.....

Rumdar writes: Funny we should be thinking similar thoughts young W.. The post from Eergi jolted me into realizing just how much I missed the old Luke. The fun, the camaraderie, the good times. It has been mere weeks since the demise of Luke Ford.com and my thoughts wander back to what I consider The Golden Age of Luke. For me that would be from the time I discovered Levi until a couple of months after his trip to Israel. Who could forget the fun we had advising him on what tact to use in pursuit of the cheerleader Pepperoni? And how about Luke's female Canadian fan club? Remember the woman who was married to the guy who broke down doors and smashed furniture when denied his porn? Thanks to Chaim for Mohammed of Mecca, Lord Peter Christian and others. The radio show and the great chat room where we would hurl insults at the "guests" and each other. Jimmy D, always in sprightly contrast to the frequently somnolistic Luke who would disappear for minutes to drain his bladder. All gone now. Just fading memories. One wonders if Luke misses Luke as much as we do? Would he be honest enough to tell the truth? I think not because if nothing else he misses the clout he had in the industry. Even if it was the porn industry. I am reminded of a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald from the Crack Up (1932) "..I can only say that I have lost my splendid mirage. Come back, come back O glittering and white"............... Luke, What have you done?

Chaim Amalek's Spiritual Search

Chaim Amalek writes: Luke, I am torn in my search for a new spiritual home. On the one side is Christianity, but on the other is this hot new faith recently making its appearance in NY - the Raelians. Read this story in full and CAREFULLY. I am a natural for them (in ways which you do not fully appreciate). I hereby reach out to the entire world of Lukeford.net and ask, which should I choose?

The Rael World Comes to New York Clone Ranger
by Rebecca Segall

The first Raelian has just moved to Manhattan, and she's on a mission to multiply. She is hosting her first "sensual meditation" class next week, spreading the extraterrestrial good news on the Upper West Side—and bringing the group's controversial stance on cloning to New York. One of Raelianism's goals, unraveling the secret to immortality, has embroiled its many scientific followers in the cloning debate. Dr. Brigitte Boissellier, a former biochemistry professor at Hamilton College in upstate New York, brought the Raelians much notoriety last month, insisting that despite heavy opposition to the idea of human cloning among bioethicists and throughout the scientific community, she will persevere in her attempts to clone human beings. Like all Raelians, Dr. Boissellier believes that advanced methods of human cloning will lead to immortality. After all, the Elohim—aliens who created all life on earth—became immortal this way.