The Providence St. John’s Santa Monica Experience

Posted on March 29, 2017 by Luke Ford

Luis Pierce provides this Google review: “The only reason I’m not giving it five stars is because I had to walk across dozens of people in the waiting area from the bathroom with my urine sample, which was a bit embarrassing. Other than that, I was treated respectfully, the staff were organized and efficient. They have shelves of condoms and lubricant if you need it. In and out. That’s how it went.”

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What’s Happened To America?

Posted on March 29, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* A lot of savvy young people of the internet generation now know how this stuff is engineered, though — the information is in, we were born in it, and this is why so many young white men are way more to the right than Steve’s commentariate. We know why it’s happening and we know who’s doing it, and we don’t BS around it like a lot of boomers still do. There’s a reason why the same trends were present in Russia up until recently; because the same people who were in charge over there are now in charge over here. This is about people: who is running the show, in charge of crafting the youth culture, and able to promote their policies and agenda. Presently in the US, that is an alien elite who wants to see us destroyed. So we are dying…

* It used to be that social observers could, with some justification, conflate class with race. But given the rather precipitous drop in life quality indicators – including, er, life itself – for lower status whites, that is no longer a tenable position.

In other words, the author of the piece above fails to realize the rather wide gulf that now exists between upscale whites and downscale whites. The latter, especially in Appalachia, are essentially the forgotten people of America. Their communities have been devastated by idleness, substance abuse, decline in religiosity, destruction of marriage and other social institutions, yet they are not endlessly valorized in the media as blacks and Hispanics are. Indeed, they are told that they are the enemy of the good in this country.

Some of the underlying causes are due to mass immigration of menial laborers, but much of it has to do with other reasons, such as the shift to the polarized high-tech/service dual economic structure, the decline of marriage and religion, the disintegration of civic society, including its most basic structure – family, that existed as social glue even (or especially) in poor areas.

Put another way, the “progressive” evolution of American society in the last 20-30 years has been catastrophic for the left side of the IQ bell curve among whites. Blacks were the first to suffer from this “benevolent” poison of the Left; now whites with lower IQ profiles are undergoing the same change. In some ways the trends are worse for downscale whites, because the exceptional ones from downscale white communities can pick up and move to upscale white areas and assimilate themselves easily (the way upscale blacks can’t or won’t). This essentially leaves the worst-off behind with few role models and leadership to rescue the communities from their plight.

I get to observe this firsthand, because I live in both a super zip area and West Virginia (though I should stress that my area of WV is relatively intact and affluent as far as WV goes). My super zip is full of bright/hardworking people from WV who fled their declining communities and built new, affluent lives for themselves. Most of them are crystal clear that they hold their former communities in low regard and intend never to return.

Interestingly, what new “menial” jobs there are in parts of WV are not geared to downscale white men, but to downscale white women. A prime example is a call center for, say, Verizon FiOS. Verizon used to staff several call centers with blacks. They couldn’t do math (deal with billing issues) and they often angered customers with poor customer service. At some point Verizon realized the customer service and retention issue this was causing and started to staff/relocate its call center to WV with white women without college degrees (but with high school diplomas), because these women were comprehensible, pleasant with the customers on the phone, and smart enough to resolve common billing issues on their own.

On the one hand, this is good news – it means money in the pockets of those who need it; on the other hand, left out from these new jobs, of course, are less educated white men, which exacerbates some of the current problems – downscale white women have better jobs and more money than the downscale white men, hence the latter make, literally, poorer marriage partners. So this helps to perpetuate the dynamic of single parenthood, idle men, etc. – again, a repeat of what blacks have suffered.

It’s not certain what can be done at this point. Curtailing mass immigration would help, certainly, but that will be far from enough. In any case, economic aspects are only a part of the problem.* It’s not clear how the social aspects are to be addressed, as social capital is famously easy to consume but difficult to replenish once depleted. One thing that is clear is that the lower class does not do well left on its own devices. Whether black or white, those on the bottom rung of the educational/IQ profile need strong families and social-religious institutions that enforce salutary social norms (e.g. chastity, thrift, work ethic, soberness, etc.).

*One educational suggestion that I get behind is to replicate the German model of three-tiered secondary school system, i.e. dramatically cut down the number of those who are headed to universities; increase technical (non-college) education, including apprenticeships, for the swollen middle portion; and provide practical, useful basic work skills (e.g. basic communication/English) for the menial labor class at the bottom.

* There are ZERO laws in the US granting white people a privilege.

In high contrast, there are thousands of laws, including especially federal laws, that grant whole classes of victim cult freaks an undeserved privilege.

When a victim cult freak refers to white privilege, it is actually referring to the benefits white people derive from hard work, honesty, and independence.

A victim cult freak panoply:

Women are federally entitled because of Male oppression
Jewish are federally entitled because of Gentile oppression
Queers are federally entitled because of Straight oppression
Muslims are federally entitled because of Christian oppression
Disabled are federally entitled because of Healthy oppression
Afro-blacks are federally entitled because of White oppression
Latinos are federally entitled because of Gringo oppression
Hispanics are federally entitled because of Gringo oppression
Military Veteran are federally entitled because of Militia oppression
2-party System Dependents are federally entitled because of Independent oppression
Aboriginals are federally entitled because of Paleface oppression
Asians are federally entitled because of Occidental oppression
National Socialist are federally entitled because of Local-state Government oppression
Crony Capitalist are federally entitled because of Honest Businessmen oppression
Crooks are federally entitled because of Law-Abiding people oppression
Zionist are federally entitled because of Anti-Fascist oppression

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NOHO SCHOOL BUDGET CUTS DUE TO HIGH WHITE STUDENT PERCENTAGE SPARKS OUTRAGE

Posted on March 27, 2017 by Luke Ford

How long will whites put up with this discrimination?

NEWS: NORTH HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Outrage has grown at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, as the school faces layoffs and increased class sizes due to a law limiting funds for schools with a higher white student body.

The Los Angeles Unified School District provides more funding for schools where the white population is below 30 percent.

In a letter to parents, the district noted the highly regarded middle school had been above the percentage for the past couple years.

The racial formula was a condition imposed by court decisions dealing with desegregation in the 1970s.

Parents, however, remain frustrated with what the cuts might mean for their children.

“When your class sizes are getting larger and you’re taking resources away from students, I mean ss parents, you do want your kid to go out to college,” one parent, Rosemary Estrada, said.

In an attempt to lessen the budget cuts, the district changed the school’s spending formula to one based on the number of students.

“Thankfully we’re going to keep our librarian. We’re going to keep our nurse, but we may lose a few teachers, but not as many as we once thought,” said Sheila Edmiston, one student’s parent.

Several jobs will still be lost and class sizes could grow. For many parents, the race-based reason of “too many white students” has made the cuts more difficult to swallow.

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Why Are American Pundits More Conformist Than British Pundits?

Posted on March 26, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* I do think the cultural element may the the ur-source for the other differences. I say this because it is not just the pundit class who are less conformist. The British are less deferential to judges than we litigation-whipped Americans are. British are more cynical and dismissive of their politicians than we are, the US having too many secular cultists who cannot distinguish between the political and the religious. In the workplace too, British can be–or used to be–surprisingly candid and irreverent to their supervisors. They weren’t insubordinate, just extremely cheeky by US standards. Perhaps it was sort of safety valve for the class system? Since no one expected the class system to change, verbal fusillades from the inferior class harmlessly told the Establishment of their temperature without creating an obligation to do anything.

* In this country, the side switchers have tended to be people published in low circulation fora who had other income streams or could count on a ready stream of philanthropic funding (extended before or after switching sides). Right to left have included Garry Wills (academic posts), Edward Luttwak (in a way, and, again, academic posts), Michael Lind (misc. philanthropies), David Brock (sorosphere &c), and Damon Linker (whatever crumbs he gets). Left to right have included Irving Kristol (misc. philanthropies), Norman Podhoretz & family (American Jewish Committee), Seymour Martin Lipset (academic positions), James Q. Wilson (academic positions), Charles Murray (misc philanthropies), Richard John Neuhaus (misc. philanthropies, ministerial backstop), and Joseph Epstein (Phi Beta Kappa Society, academic post). Tacking one way and then another over the years have been Nathan Glazer, Robert W. Tucker, and Glenn Loury (f/t academics all).

* An American is his job, so it’s dangerous to be Mickey Kaus because you won’t get hired again by your former friends. The identification of job and status is not as extreme in UK. I remember Toby Young making this point about conformist Americans.

* Brits just like to argue. Debating is a national sport in Britain. Perhaps because their social life revolves around the local pub, where people gather to drink pints and talk for hours.
Another factor could be the great tolerance for individual quirks and excentricities, and for different opinions. Whereas conformity is a virtue in America, in England it’s perceived as a weakness and lack of character. There’s no greater sin than to be boring and conforming. Excentricity is feted and revered, unlike in America.
Of course, PC of late has greatly eroded UK’s freedom of speech and stifled debate.

* The British were a mono-culture until recently, with shared white ancestry. If you’re part of the in-group, you can say what you please among the other in-group members. They’re like your family, and you tolerate more obnoxiousness from your relatives than you would from a stranger. It’s only been recently that out-group members have appeared in Western cultures, and that certain cynical in-group people have been using them as a wedge to divide their own white group against itself.

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Tablet: “Jew Who Called in Bomb Threats Was Anti-Semitic”

Posted on March 26, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Only because he got caught.

If he hadn’t got caught he’d have been a mensch for helping to keep other Jews at the proper level of paranoia.

* Jews were not only not “terrorized” (Tablet) by the bomb threats, they were ecstatic to be targeted by what they imagined were Trump-inspired Alt-Right Nazis. It’s safe to presume the 19-year-old Israeli saw matters this way too. He was spreading joy, not terror.

*There is certainly a species of contempt among some Jews towards gentiles in general and against other specific groups of gentiles (e.g., Arabs, blacks). So just for the sake of the argument, let’s stipulate that there is this phenomenon called “anti-Gentilism” and is found (obviously) in the non-Gentile, that is, Jewish community.

Is the guy who made “Mad Men” “anti-Gentile”? Having never watched the show, but having read about his remarks, and his apparently carefully nursed resentments, I guess so. So now what? Is this really a widespread phenomenon?

On the other hand, were these phone threats made for the purpose of encouraging hatred of gentiles? I really don’t think so.

I mean I suppose someone could write “The History of Anti-Gentilism”, however, by definition, it would consist of nothing more than miscellaneous Jews saying and doing nasty things to non-Jews. So such a tome would probably be considered “anti-Semitic.” Next up, Talmudic quotes that say nasty things about Jesus and Mary.

I mean exactly what is the scope of Anti-Gentilism? It is not going to be same as Anti-White, which is already a word. It is not going to be the same as Anti-Christian, because that word also exists. What is being proposed is a new word describing a special kind of resentment Jews have for non-Jews. Okay, I’m fine with that. Except that I don’t think the phenomenon is that widespread and I still don’t think it applies in this case for the reasons given.

This goes to the idea that a “hate hoax” is identical to a “blood libel.” I would say this is wrong on three levels. In the case of a “hate hoax” I cannot think of gentiles being arrested, imprisoned, and put on trial for a hate crime that was later shown to be a hoax (I’m sure there must be some, I will let someone fill me in.) Certainly it did not happen in this case. But secondly, non-Jews (aka gentiles) do not feel that kind of group solidarity with other gentiles. I mean, both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman were gentiles. So, for that matter, so is OJ Simpson and Pablo Gomez, Jr. Finally, third, the reason we do not feel solidarity with these individuals is that no one is saying to us, “As a gentile, please explain Pablo Gomez, Jr. to me.” What, am I collectively responsible for everything any gentile does? To this day, anytime a Jew does anything wrong, any other Jew can expect someone to come up to them and expect them either to justify or condemn whatever it is.

I suppose the best one could argue is that “hate hoaxes” bring shame and scorn to all gentiles in a case like this, and to all whites in the case of hate hoaxes perpetrated by blacks (whites in this instance include Jews), and so on. But the problem is that the members of all of these splinter groups that are constantly lecturing straight white males about their wickedness are mostly gentiles themselves.

So anti-Gentilism has a certain utility in describing a certain type of Jewish resentment. And yet the term is still too broad. The Weiner guy, after all, didn’t resent all gentiles: just the straight white male Christians he went to school with.

Speaking as a straight white Christian male: I was not overly concerned about these threats, and I didn’t feel any responsibility for them, no one asked me to speak out about them, and I don’t feel any outrage at this spurious blot on my gentile escutcheon. If I were a more sensitive and self-absorbed person, I might write about how I lost sleep for weeks, my cheeks burning with hot tears as I thought about the terrible shame I felt that these crimes were being committed by a fellow gentile. But I didn’t. I’m just not that kind of person.

* I once lived in a predominantly Hassidic ultra-orthodox community, so I came across more anti-gentilism than I really care to remember. While it may be “logically parallel” to anti-semitism, it wasn’t structurally parallel. They positively revel in ignorance of gentiles and, if necessary, feign it. They make bizarre comments like “the goyim think it’s fine to steal”, which they pull out of their arse and then talk about something else. If you ask them to name a doctrine of Christianity/Islam/Hinduism they will stare at you blankly. If you ask them the capital of the country they live in they usually can’t answer. Conversely, they are minutely interested in every detail of rival ultra-orthodox sects. They can tell you umpteen completely boring details about the the differences between the Haredi community in Montreal, Lakewood, Stamford Hill, Williamsburg etc. but they couldn’t find any of them on a map.

Anti-semites, on the other hand, love nothing more than to demonstrate their expertise in Judaism. An anti-gentilist would regard the idea of reading a four volume epic on the ways of the gentile by Kevin McHymiestein with bafflement. He would get bored 15 seconds into a youtube video.

In short, the main thing anti-gentilists and anti-semites have in common is that they are obsessed with Jews.

* Calling this person mentally ill relieves him of much of the motive and responsibility of this actions. If the calls were made by someone in the alt-right, I doubt many people would just throw up their hands and say “what are you going to do, he was clearly mentally ill”.

His actions resulted in a few things that many left-leaning Jews would consider beneficial:

1) Raised awareness of anti-Semitism in a major way
2) Donations to SPLC skyrocketed
3) Gave the impression that Trump’s election emboldened an anti-semitic base
4) Forced Trump and his administration to denounce the supposed acts as the worst form of hatred

For all of these elements to come together through some random act of mental illness is just not believable. The odds are that his political leanings drove him to do this, and the use of sophisticated precautions to hide his tracks suggests that he didn’t want to be caught and was behaving rationally.

* It also led Amazon to delete all of its Holocaust Denial titles.

Simple story: a Jewish guy, propelled by the prevailing moral panic among some Jews since Trump’s election, decided to goose the project a bit by making threatening phone calls.

So let’s put him in prison for a few years.

* Peter Beinart’s take:

At a press conference in mid-February, Donald Trump said something that was, even for him, astonishing. He predicted that when authorities discovered the perpetrators of the anti-Semitic attacks that had broken out since his election, “It won’t be my people,” who had committed them. “It will be the people on the other side.” He repeated the thought later that month, reportedly telling state attorneys general that the bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers across the country may be “the reverse” of what they appear and may have been committed “to make others look bad.”

Democrats and officials of Jewish organizations officials were appalled. Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, declared: “We are astonished by what the President reportedly said.” Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center, which combats bigotry, asked, “Mr. President, have you no decency? To cast doubt on the authenticity of Anti-Semitic hate crimes in America constitutes Anti-Semitism in itself.” When the Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci repeated Trump’s claims, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer called them “absurd and obscene.”

But it now appears that Trump may have been, partially, right. On Thursday, Israeli police arrested a Jewish Israeli American teenager for leveling some of the bomb threats. Earlier this month, prosecutors charged Juan Thompson, an African American who had previously worked at a left-leaning publication, with some of the others. There’s no evidence that either suspect tried to frame Trump supporters or white supremacists. And it’s still possible that right-wingers called in other bomb threats, or committed some of the other anti-Semitic incidents that have erupted since Trump’s election. Still, if two of the primary perpetrators of the JCC bomb scares turn out to be a Jewish Israeli and a left-leaning African American, that will, indeed, turn out to be “the reverse” of what Trump’s critics expected.

Trump’s critics—and I’m one of them—should learn from that.

Many critics have a narrative in their heads: That Trump and his supporters think and do bigoted things.

It’s not just the JCC bomb scares. It’s become commonplace to hear Jewish liberals claim that, in the words of former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Trump has given “license and permission to anti-Semites” and thus “opened the floodgates” for anti-Semitic attacks.

But have the floodgates really opened? According to the FBI, anti-Semitic incidents did rise 9 percent between 2014 and 2015, when Trump announced his candidacy. And New York City has announced that there were substantially more anti-Semitic incidents during the first two months of 2017 than during the equivalent period in 2016. But neither the FBI nor the Anti-Defamation League has yet reported national data for 2016. And defining what constitutes an anti-Semitic incident is tricky. If the JCC bomb threats—many of which appear to have been carried out by an Israeli Jew—boost the numbers, does that really show that anti-Semitism is rising in Trump’s America?

And a February Pew Research Center poll found that Republicans and evangelical Christians—two core Trump constituencies—feel even more favorably towards Jews than Democrats do. Since Trump’s takeover of the GOP, Republican fondness for Jews has actually increased.

If liberals have been too quick to blame Trump supporters for anti-Semitism, they’ve also been too quick to blame Trump’s advisors. Liberals frequently hurl the charge at Steve Bannon or his old publication, Breitbart. But the two Breitbart articles critics most commonly call anti-Semitic—an attack on the Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol that called him a “renegade Jew” and an attack on the Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum that called her “a Polish, Jewish, American elitist scorned”—were both written by Jews.

* Peter Beinart: Who You Callin’ Anti-Semite? Reserve The Term For The Worst Offenders

We’ve been playing this game for months now. First with Michael Flynn. Then with Stephen Bannon. Now with Sebastian Gorka.

Liberals accuse a Donald Trump adviser of having ties to right-wing anti-Semites. Trump’s Jewish supporters defend him. And, not content to stop there, they throw the charge back in the accusers’ faces — claiming that they have ties to left-wing anti-Semites.

You’re an anti-Semite! No, you’re an anti-Semite! It’s not doing anyone any good.

Both sides deserve blame for this dialogue of the deaf. Conservatives need to stop pretending that “supporting Israel” (by which they really mean “supporting the Israeli government”) exonerates Gorka, Bannon, Flynn or anyone else of anti-Semitism. It’s entirely possible to admire Benjamin Netanyahu’s government because it is nationalistic, militaristic and religious and to revile American Jews because most of them are cosmopolitanism, dovish and secular. It’s also possible to love Jews when they’re in their own country, because that means they’re not living in yours. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder details in his book “Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning,” the Polish government was fervently Zionist in the 1930s, since Zionism offered a rationale for moving Poland’s Jews somewhere else.

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Torah Talk: Vayikra (Leviticus 1:1 – 5:26)

Posted on March 26, 2017 by Luke Ford

This week’s Torah portion begins the Book of Leviticus.

* Who wrote the Torah? God or people?

* Deut: 32:8: “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.”

*The presence of God comes with a price — divine justice. (Dennis Prager)

* When we study Torah, are we mainly studying the progression of ideas (such as monotheism) or the development of a particular people with a particular genetic code interacting with other particular peoples in particular environments? Culture is a product of genes and environment.

* One key Torah idea may be that the land of Israel demands a certain level of holiness and decency from the people living there, and if they don’t live up to this demand, the land vomits them out. Or is that an elaborate justification and propaganda for kicking out the original inhabitants to make it a Jewish homeland? Is the Torah fair to the natives of Canaan by describing them as child sacrificers? Or is this propaganda? Chaim Potok claimed this was propaganda.

* Is Jewish cohesion and love based on commonly shared ideas or on peoplehood (genetic ties aka kinship)? When you go to shul, people are not divided up, generally speaking, based on their ideas about abortion.

* This week’s parasha is about creating a place for God to dwell among the people and repeats sections of the three previous parshiot.

* From last week’s parasha, Ki Tisa, Artscroll says: “The equal participation of all of the people symbolizes that all Jews must share in achieving the national goals, that everyone should pass through the census by giving up his selfish, personal interests for the sake of the nation. One who does so gains infinite benefit, because the mission of Israel is dependent on the unity of the whole.” That the welfare of the nation is more important than the happiness of the individual, well, if the goyim talked like this, it would sound fascist and dangerous to Jews.

Artscroll: “There is great power in the unity of a nation striving toward a common goal.” Judaism prefers that men pray in a quorum (minyan) rather than alone.

* Last December in Texas, Rabbi Matt Rosenberg said to Richard Spencer: “You come here with a message of radical exclusion. My tradition teaches a message of radical inclusion, as embodied by Torah. Would you sit down and study Torah with me and learn love?”

“Do you really want radical inclusion into the State of Israel?” Spencer responded. “Jews exist precisely because you did not assimilate to the gentiles… I respect that about you. I want my people to have that same sense of themselves.”

* If I Were A Gentile White Nationalist, How Would I Feel About Jews?

* If I Were A Black Gentile, How Would I Feel About Jews?

* If I Were Born An Orthodox Jew, How Would I Feel About Luke Ford?

* If you were a Muslim, how would you feel about Jews?

* Casey: If I were Rod Dreher, and so concerned about secular-liberalism encroaching on my conservative Catholicism that I proposed setting up intentionally identity-retrenched Christian communities amid a Babylonish empire, I would be realistic about how many people would be coming with me — possible 10% of existing Christians, or (generously) 7% of Americans. That would leave us a small minority in every location we found ourselves, and what could we do then, politically? — how would we advocate? Ironically, we would advocate for the broadest and most open liberalism possible… ?

And if I were a middle class daughter of an Iranian immigrant, a born US citizen, I would cling to my religious identity until and unless I saw evidence of a “consensus center” identity emerging to which I might then consider assimilating… but I’d look around in America and all I would see is degenerates like Nicki Minaj and Beyonce dancing like whores and uptight academic lesbians on the other hand, owning cats and working as pharmacists, and I would decide I wanted none of that… and I would think to myself, I hope I can find a strong Muslim man who isn’t going to let himself or his children turn into water-down cosmopolitan working units… and so to attract that kind of a man, I need to guard my hymen with my life, study cooking, and wear the veil everywhere I go.

If I were an unmarried white woman in my mid-20s I would be nervous about not finding a husband, and I wouldn’t realize that I had made my job become “my identity,” so I would throw myself into my job, where I would become more and more “professional” and androgynous and therefore less and less appealing to men. I’d have sex with men not because I enjoyed it, but as a kind of duty to prove my strong independence to myself. I would vote against Trump, but only because I didn’t have a husband to steer me to better judgment. But again, this would make me still less attractive to men… except!! If *i* were this young woman, I’d be smart enough to figure this out and so I’d quickly marry any guy I could find.

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Eitan Arom: Is Zionism a bad word?

Posted on March 24, 2017 by Luke Ford

Upon reading the headline, my immediate response was, “For whom?”

For some people, Zionism is naturally a bad word because it represents something that is an affront to their people (Arabs and Muslims) or to their value system (leftism).

If you believe that ethnic and religious ties are of little importance compared to economic class, then you are a leftist and you are likely to be offended by all ethno-nationalisms including Zionism.

Eitan Arom writes:

I’m not immune to my generation’s ambivalence on the matter of Jewish nationalism. In the vocabulary of my education on a liberal campus, the word “nationalist” is likely to follow the word “white” or “militant” or “ultra.” In other words, mine is a Zionism that’s not without reservations.

But to say that I’m post-Zionist would be tantamount to saying that I’m post-Jewish — which is simple and easy but altogether untrue. The struggle for Jewish nationhood was written into my biography long before I was born.

After all, if it weren’t for the itinerant Zionism that motivated my grandfather Shmuel to drag his wife, the daughter of a cultured and well-to-do German-Jewish family, to hardscrabble Palestine, where they slept in tents and toiled without end, it might very well have been somebody else’s byline on this story; I may well have never been born. Israel is the center of gravity for world Jewry. You may object to its pull, but you simply can’t free yourself from its orbit.

To be sure, mine is not the blustering, self-assured Zionism of my parents. Even having this conversation with my mother sets her singing an interminable series of Israeli folk songs. Recently, standing in her kitchen, I pressed her on whether she truly believes that God gave us all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. “Listen,” she replied, “I don’t know who gave it to us, but it’s ours.”

I’m not so sure about that. But that doesn’t mean we’re not part of the same movement, she and I, the same multigenerational struggle for identity and soil. The panel at Sinai Temple landed repeatedly on the idea of “big-tent Zionism.” The tent has to be big enough for my parents and me.

Sometimes, that prospect feels doubtful. But nothing could be more necessary for the continuance of the movement. If Zionism is little more than a narrow political creed, it can be shouted down or reasoned away. What ultimately will win over the next generation of Zionists is what Yebri called “the beautiful aspect and miraculous magical aspect of Zionism.”

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Haaretz: Kingdom of Israel: Extremist rabbis dream of Jewish monarchy, with a special role for non-Jews

Posted on March 24, 2017 by Luke Ford

These rabbis don’t seem extremist to me. They are simply explicating Torah. If Torah is extreme, then these rabbis are extreme.

Haaretz: After explaining when it is allowed to kill non-Jews in widely vilified ‘Torat Hamelech,’ rabbis Shapira and Elitzur are downplaying their second volume. They call it a theoretical work, but liberal rabbis fear it may serve as a call to arms.
Having a king seems like such a simple concept. Instead of the tiresome processes of democracy, a king can be anointed – a single sovereign with extraordinary rights who can enslave prisoners of war and do as he pleases. No elections and no High Court of Justice.
The second part of “Torat Hamelech” (“The King’s Torah”) – written by rabbis from the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar – is written in the language of halakha (Jewish religious law) and quotes Jewish sources, while revealing the secret aspirations of the most extremist settlers.
The compendium is devoted entirely to laws pertaining to “the public and the kingdom.” In other words, to the establishment of a religious-Jewish monarchy that will replace secular democracy in Israel. It describes a world in which the king is omnipotent, owning slaves and handmaidens. A world in which Jews have extra rights and non-Jews cannot hold public office; a world in which there is no private property (everything belongs to the king) and rebels are put to death.
Od Yosef Hai has justifiably become the emblem of extremist yeshivot in the West Bank. Much of its notoriety comes from the first part of “The King’s Torah,” published by its rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur in 2009. That book permits the shedding of non-Jewish blood under certain circumstances, and the shedding of Jewish blood under others. The book’s publication led to a police investigation of its authors on suspicion of incitement to racism, but no one was prosecuted.
This affair greatly raised yeshiva members’ distrust of the Israeli media (albeit not the religious outlets). Mainstream journalists presented the book as a racist document, a halakhic abomination – and rightly so. Its title became synonymous with extremism and racism, partly because the yeshiva’s members are perceived as extremists even within the religious-Zionist camp.

Theoretical document
The first volume of “The King’s Torah” concerned laws relating to life and death between Jews and non-Jews. It detailed the laws that permit the killing of non-Jews under different circumstances – such as during wartime, or when a non-Jew threatens a Jew.
The new volume gives a set of – totally dystopian – laws that will prevail in the kingdom of Israel. It discusses how the king will be chosen; what his rights will be; and what rights (if any) his subjects will have.
The authors’ associates and students strongly reiterate that their book does not pretend to offer an operative plan. They describe it as a theoretical document, a literary one, almost artistic – not a plan of action.
Upon its publication, the weekly newsletter Shvi’i (handed out in synagogues belonging to the religious-Zionist camp), conducted an interview with the book’s co-author, Rabbi Elitzur. In it, he laid out his vision for the state and its institutions. Among other things, he said his book was “boring,” and that the principles in the book and in reality are on parallel lines. “Taking a sentence from the book and applying it to what’s happening today, without thought or analysis, is a very bad idea,” he noted.
Rabbis Chaim Navon and Amichai Gordin from Har Etzion yeshiva (which is part of the moderate stream of religious Zionism), published a strong response in the following week’s newsletter. They stated that “claims that this is purely an academic or halakhic debate are simply untrue. It is not a theoretical book but one calling for action, with practical conclusions at its end.”
They also referred to the first part of “The King’s Torah,” noting: “The halakhic discussions in the book seem to be geared to serving one purpose – to find as many rulings as possible permitting the killing of as many non-Jews as possible. To this end, they use unreasonable assumptions and manipulate the old sources of our sages. Beyond the halakhic conclusions, there is an evil wind blowing from this book. It makes it seem that the life of a non-Jew is worthless, like that of a fly. Even when killing a non-Jew is forbidden, it seems that this is like a prohibition on killing a fly on Shabbat. This is a destructive and distorted way of thinking, which could drive confused youth into criminal and repulsive acts. Such youngsters have indeed been found and criminal acts were committed. Can the authors claim to be innocent?”
Navon and Gordin may be referring to the murder of East Jerusalem teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July 2014 and the torching of the Dawabsheh family home in Duma the following year.
It’s not certain the second volume will also be read only as an imaginary fantasy. It opens with a letter of “consent” and a blessing by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, the spiritual leader of the royalists on the extreme right. He devotes his letter to his “beloved students” Shapira and Elitzur, noting that “the issues discussed in the book are very relevant to our current situation, in which we are blessed to be settled in Israel, together with a large part of the Jewish people, in a situation where we hold the power.”

Posted in Israel, Torah | Comments Off on Haaretz: Kingdom of Israel: Extremist rabbis dream of Jewish monarchy, with a special role for non-Jews

The War On Terror Killed Over 1.3 Million Muslims Since 2001

Posted on March 24, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* The “War on Terror” has killed over 1.3 million Muslims (conservative estimate) since 2001.
This may have played at least a minor role in why terrorism is increasing in Muslim populations.

If you really think about it, this “War on Terror” is pretty bizarre. Almost all the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis (a few were also from the UAE, Egypt, and Lebanon). America and its Western allies responded by attacking Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and several other Muslim nations. Over 1 million are dead, while millions more are injured and internally displaced.

America responded to Saudi terrorist hijackings by ruining the lives of millions of random Muslims. Sort of strange when you think about it.

So, reason would suggest that we need to be a lot more prudent about who we let in in the near future because immigration could still be causing problems for our great-grandchildren in the distant future.

Reason would also suggest that we should refrain from randomly decimating countries for no discernible reason.

I’m not a particular fan of Muslims, but our political leaders (Bush, Clinton, Obama) are pretty much war criminals.

Remember that time we bombed Baghdad?

By the way, where are those weapons of mass destruction? Did we ever find them?

The Taliban nearly eliminated opium production. After the US-led “War on Terror” began, opium production skyrocketed.

Much of this opium has ended up on the streets of the U.S. Not surprisingly, overdose deaths have skyrocketed in the last 15 years.

Here’s another interesting news story on how Big Pharma have fueled the overdose epidemic, which disproportionately hits working&lower class whites.

It’s interesting how conservative “small government” policies (“War on Terror,” deregulated pharma market, minimal healthcare coverage, limited safety net, free trade) have ended up being bad for Red State whites. It’s also interesting how lots of “socialist” policies (Medicaid expansion in Obamacare, pharma regulation, community health clinics) would probably be pretty good for the people of Appalachia.

Getting Red Staters to vote against their economic and social interests is truly an act of Republican marketing genius.

Some of the posters here (and the overwhelming bulk of Red State whites) insist that “Big Government liberal socialists” are your enemies, while “free market, small-government conservative constitutionalists” are your friends. Perhaps you should reconsider your views…..

* If I heard it once on the lame news broadcasts today, I heard it 20 times: “Native born British man…” “A native of Britain…” “A native Briton (sp?)…” on and on and on. the very first thing on the report. Of course as soon as we hear news like this, we all know immediately “Another muzzie.”

* One thing that the events of the past 48 hours indicate is that the most lethal threat may come from 2nd Gen Muslims who have had decades to marinate in the CultMarx narrative of Whitey-is-Oppressor; People of Color are repressed, etc.
The truly chilling thing is that the same effete mandarin class agitating & conspiring (eg Peter Mandelson) to flood western countries with 3rd world immigrants are also feeding them the Evil Whitey narrative. They are literally importing, then weaponizing a new demographic to wage war on the host population.

* As someone who’s in favor of single payer and a more robust safety net all around, I agree with you. However, neither party is a friend to red state whites. The Republicans are simply the lesser of two evils. The Democrats – and the left in general – are openly anti-white. They’re not the American version of European social democrats, and voting for them in order to obtain better public assistance is tantamount to making a deal with the devil.

One good example was Obamacare. Was the ACA an unalloyed good? Of course not. Insurance premiums skyrocketed for middle class white people who were already covered.

How about the practice of setting up housing projects in largely white neighborhoods? Does that benefit the residents? No, it doesn’t. How do red staters benefit from having Somali refugees settled in their small towns? Who was edified by the practice of busing?

On top of that, they’re controlled by the same powerful interests as the Republicans.

* If the U.S. had a 90% white demographic, I believe we’d have a social and economic system more aligned with the interests of working-class whites. We actually did set up such a system from the 1930s through the 1970s. Unfortunately, we’ve mostly dismantled that system over the last 35 years. The effects of that are being seen throughout America.

Before blacks were enfranchised on a wide scale in the 60s, Southern whites hardly cared about “small government” and “low taxes.” They used to be huge fans of big-spending leftist politicians, such as FDR and Huey Long. For Southern whites to now be “constitutional Republicans” is just too bizzare.

A few days ago, Bernie went to McDowell County (the poorest mostly-white county in America). The crowd seemed to like him. Watch from 10 seconds through 1:40. That’s exactly what the Red States need.

Yes, I agree with your point about oligarchs. It’s a divide and conquer strategy. Oligarchs divide a people, keep them quarreling, and then steal wealth while everyone is distracted.

* Quick update on the ‘British-born’ killer. He’s the son of a white mother (17 when she had him) and black father, with a 20-year criminal record including GBH. He was first named as “Adrian Elms”, then “Adrian Russell”, latest name is “Adrian Russell Ajao” – the last being presumably Dad’s name, though it might be the stepdad’s name – he married the mum only a couple of years later. I guess some bad decisions catch up with you.

Mum lives in rural Welsh-speaking Wales, keeps chickens and makes cushions and bags to sell – hippie type?

Posted in Islam | Comments Off on The War On Terror Killed Over 1.3 Million Muslims Since 2001

Jewish Businessman Jona Rechnitz Pleads Guilty To Bribing Public Officials

Posted on March 24, 2017 by Luke Ford

Forward: A Jewish real-estate investor and prominent donor to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said he exchanged money for favors from public officials, according to the New York Daily News.
Jona Rechnitz’s admission came up in court papers quietly unsealed earlier this month during a federal investigation of de Blasio for possible illegal fundraising. De Blasio was cleared of charges.

In the court papers, Rechnitz, 33, pleaded guilty to providing “financial and personal benefits and political contributions to public officials including law enforcement officials in exchange for official action.”

Posted in Jews | Comments Off on Jewish Businessman Jona Rechnitz Pleads Guilty To Bribing Public Officials