Im Theater dieser Welt,
spiel'n wir nur Nebenrollen und Statisten.
Als Knallchargen sind wir angestellt,
billig und ganz hinten auf den Listen.
Die Opferrolle ist schon längst vergeben,
egal, das ist der Job nach dem wir streben!

Holocaust-Vergleiche will er nicht ziehen - dennoch wagt sich Großbritanniens muslimischer Entwicklungs-Minister Malik auf heikles Terrain: Er beklagt, die Muslime fühlten sich zunehmend als "die Juden von Europa".

Hier bei SPON

More than 700 educators from across the globe will participate next week in the largest educators’ conference in Israel on Holocaust. The 3-day international conference, “Teaching the Shoah: Fighting Racism and Prejudice” will provide hundreds of educators with the tools necessary to deal with the challenges of teaching the Holocaust in their countries. It will take place at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Jerusalem International Convention Center. Participants from 52 countries as varied as Rwanda, South Africa, Poland, Germany, Greece, Turkey, China, Japan, Korea, The United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, Panama, the Ukraine, Serbia, Australia and the United States will attend the conference which will start next Monday. The central theme of the gathering will deal with teaching the Holocaust in a multi-cultural society.

JNW + LOTB = JH

THE JH MOVEMENT
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Jeff Nipples World FORUMS

JNW + LOTB = JH

THE JH MOVEMENT
JOIN TODAY.....

Join the offical land of the banned Messageboard

Jeff Nipples World FORUMS

Dr. Seuss is one of my favorite authors. (This gives you a glimpse into my mental ability—or lack thereof.). One of my favorite books is Oh, the Places You’ll Go. So, in the spirit of Dr. Seuss and his book I offer this little Seussian poem of our days in Washington D.C.

Oh, the Things We Saw in Washington’s Town

Oh, the things we saw in Washington’s town.

The Capitol Building, where a pocket knife makes every guard frown,

The International Spy Museum, where the kids snuck around,

The Washington Monument, where at the top D.C. is in the round,

The WW II, Vietnam, and Korean War Memorials, where you bow your head down,

The Lincoln Monument, where his presence and words makes your heart pound,

The FDR Monument, where the best thing to see is the President’s hound,

The Thomas Jefferson Monument, where words of God should always sound,

The Holocaust Museum, where you remember souls crushed and ground,

The White House, where tours inside could not be found,

The National Archives, where words of Independence and Union are our crown,

The Natural History Museum, where dinosaurs and critters abound,

The Air and Space Museum, where planes and rockets break earth's bound.

These are the things we saw in Washington’s town.

Without a break from literary gloom, I went straight for Art Spiegelman's Maus. As I've mentioned before, comic books haven't been comic in some time, and this story of the Holocaust as told by a father to a son, was no exception. Initially, I had the same feeling. I thought to myself, what a fuckhead this Spiegelman is (in this case, the narrator is a writer and in fact, THE writer). He is hungry for this sellable story that he is almost battering his ailing father, Vladek, for. But then an amazing thing happened, Arty the mouse--the Jews in the story are mice, the Germas are cats, the Poles are pigs, the Americans are dogs, and so on--was talking to his wife about how much of a fuckhead he is. Ah! He KNOWS. He is aware! In fact, the whole book is hyperaware of itself. The reader is brought along for Vladek's story of his survival, and for Arty's story of getting the story, as well as how he struggled for a decade to finally get himself together enough to put together this book, this book you are reading.

The Kite Runner is a page turner. It starts out strong with a story of a childhood two boys, Amir and Hassan, spent together. They were inseparable despite the class difference between them. Amir was the son of a rich pashtun businessman, while Hassan’s father was only their crippled Hazara servant. The book is written from Amir's point of view and he tells of Hassan’s intelligence, natural athletic ability and nearly angelic disposition while portraying himself as weak, oblivious, and jealous. Hassan is loved by Baba, Amir's father, the way that Amir finds that he is not. And so, in return for Hassan's love and endless loyalty Amir can only give cruelty, betrayal, and then equally endless guilt.

After a third of the book is finished, the story becomes the generic incarnation of other immigrant stories, the hard work, the squalid living conditions and the culture shock. Also the snippets of a culture left behind now thriving in America at flea markets and family get-togethers. The final portion of the book is a story of penance and forgiveness, and although still a page turner, it is fairly obvious how everything will turn out. In fact, throughout the book, the story was not exactly boring, but even minute attempts at foreshadowing instead exposed the plot.

The story of Amir and his realtionship with Hassan as well as Baba takes place in the context of political upheaval, ethnic cleansing, and immigration to America. Meanwhile the extremely human characters marry, become ill, lose friends and relatives, give birth to children. These characters are what lends the book its page-turner status, you care and want to know what happens to them. But the most redeeming quality of the book is its use of literary device. If taken as metaphor, as a dichotomy within a human being, as something of a Jekyll and Hyde tale, it is very interesting. At face value, it is another piece of suffering sold to eager crowds.

The Kite Runner has become a motion picture, and from what I hear, a good one. Art Spiegelman’s Maus remains a black and white comic book. In Part II of Maus titled "And Here My Troubles Began" there is a series of panels of the writer, wearing a mouse mask, sitting at his desk surrounded by corpses. People come at him from every side, oblivious to the corpses, with cameras, microphones, contracts. He is bewildered, and distraught, shrinking, becoming a small child. When they all leave him, “Whew. They’re gone. Sometimes I just don’t feel like a functioning adult.” Then he too leaves, also walking on the flyblown starved corpses strewn around him.

I think this is the portion of the book that best expresses how I feel about these stories. These panels reveal what it is like to write something this appealing, that will attract audience through either curiosity or guilt or the human fascination with suffering, but what it is also like to reject further capitalization on history of murder.

I have always been bothered by stories told about the suffering of a people, or even the suffering of one child. I don’t mean to say I don’t read them, but I am always slightly annoyed. I believe that the world needs to be aware of the wrongs that are going on, especially right now, especially in the Middle East. We shouldn’t think of the people there as a “them” against an “us,” ignorant of their history except for the parts that have affected us, and this is where The Kite Runner becomes valuable because it is educational. It is sad, I suppose, that the only way we can learn anything is if it is put in a format of entertainment. Movies and books is how we learn of revolutions and deaths of thousands and how little by little atrocities come to be mundane. But I am always unnerved that each of these writers becomes a success leeching from the misery of his people. With books like A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer, the writer is at least using his own life, his own story (though it involves many other people whose sides we don't know anything about). But second-hand accounts (even of fictional characters going through what real persons may have gone through) disturb me.

Spiegelman’s book sheds light on all the questions I have had about such stories. How do you come by them? If it didn’t happen to you, how do you ask your friends and relatives to give of themselves, just to then betray the privacy of their suffering and give it over for the amusement of the general public. Arty the mouse only begins to visit his dad when he gets it in his head to draw a comic about the Holocaust, he only learns about his past by basically telling his dad to shut up about his current troubles already and to just tell the damn story, because he needs it, for his book. He worries that his father is in actuality “a racist caricature” of a Jew, but feels it is right to stick to the truth. And he portrays his own character just as mercilessly. As the story goes on, Arty asks his father all the questions that I would have wanted to ask, “why did no one stand up to the Germans?” How could people jump down into mass graves and stay there just to be covered in gasoline and burn? And he gets simple honest answers.

Spiegelman used animals to tell his story, to allow for a remove, but at the same time, taking the reader almost off guard by telling the story just as his father must have told it to him. Somehow, it is easier to relate to the characters when they are mice or pigs, than if they were people. We are already aware of the Holocaust, desensitized to it, we don’t let it near our hearts or our minds because it is too horrible. But this book touches the reader through phrases like “And I saw, it’s not EVERYWHERE, my hell. It’s still LIFE things going on” from Vladek’s mouth as he was marched to Dachau at the end of the war, watching people spared from the purge still living their lives.

Where The Kite Runner wallows, Maus explains in sober tones. Where The Kite Runner waxes poetic, Maus has unrelenting dialogue between an annoyed son and an overly anxious frugal father. Where The Kite Runner finds forgiveness, Maus finished the story just as it was told to Arty by his father who was already having trouble separating the past from the present and who tired of reliving his demons. It may be an unfair comparison, but the stark contrast between methods of presentation of difficult history, both very effective, but one so much more honest was really brought home to me through the reading of these two works. I hope that you too pick up both books and consider what you learn from them and how.

• The Kite Runner
• The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale

An interesting fact that I picked up on this visit was that some Jews escape to China. Apparently, you didn’t have to have a visa to go to Shanghai (?). I wonder if there are populations of Jews still there–though I would imagine there are.

We ate lunch at the museum and had a fair amount of time to wander around. Some people decided to walk to the Valley of the Communities but I didn’t join them.  It sounded neat--a memorial to thousands of Jewish communities that had existed for hundreds of years, but had been wiped out during the holocaust.  Even though I’m from Texas, the sun here is just too much for me. The heat isn’t bad, its just the direct sunlight that gets to me.

Our other stop for today was the garden tomb. First we saw Golgatha, where you really can see a skull in the side of the hill. Who knows what 2,000 years have done to the erosion, but I guess its possible it could still look almost the same as in Jesus' time. The guide gave the scriptural authority for why they believe this place is the true place of the crucifiction. In the ‘valley’ (not really big enough to be called a valley, just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about) next to the hill there was a bus station parking lot, then a roadway, then the city wall. The guide explained that while we picture Christ being crucified at the top of a hill, the believe the cross was by the side of the road (scripture). I think they said that there was an ancient road underneath the modern one, which is another reason they believe this is the place. If you a standing at this spot looking at the hill, then you walk about 100 yards to the left you come to the garden tomb. Here they found evidence of a vineyard (small by US standards) with a winepress. This is a depression cut into the rock with a channel, then a lower vat. The idea is that the grapes would be pressed and the wine would run down into the vat to be collected. This is important because Mary thought that Jesus was the gardener when he appeared to her at the tomb. At the back of the garden, facing the city wall, is a 1^st century tomb that has a channel where a stone would have rolled over the opening. We were able to walk in and look; you could see a place where a body would be laid with a stone pillow and a cut-out for the feet. After we finished the tour, we gathered for some praise and worship and communion. Then it was time to head back to the hotel.  (Here is a good article by Chuck Missler that lays out some of the scriptural basis of why many believe this is the correct site.)

Sean Bell (May 18, 1983 - November 25, 2006) was the nephew of the University of Miami basketball coach Frank Haith. As a teenager, he studied acting in Flushing, Queens. He was a pitcher for John Adams High School in Ozone Park. His senior year season ended with an 11-0 record, a 2.30 E.R.A. and 97 strikeouts in 62.2 innings. Bell held odd jobs after the birth of his daughter. His former fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, told Larry King that Bell was an electrician by trade and in between jobs when the shooting occurred.

Bell had been arrested three times, twice for drug dealing and once for a firearms possession. In all cases, he was released on his own recognizance. The New York Daily News reported that, according to unnamed law enforcement sources, Bell sold crack cocaine twice to a confidential police informant in August of 2006.

Shooting incident

The night of the shooting, Bell was holding his bachelor party at Club Kalua in the Jamaica section of Queens, a venue that was being investigated by seven undercover police detectives, as a result of accusations that the owners of the club had been fostering prostitution.

The New York Post reported that, according to an unnamed undercover officer, Guzman had an argument inside the club with a woman and threatened to get a gun. One of Bell's friends was heard to say "yo, get my gun" as they left the scene. Fearing a shooting might occur, the detective followed the men to their car while alerting his backup team, prompting the team to confront Bell and his companions before they could leave the scene.The undercover, plain-clothed officer who allegedly never identified his status ordered Bell to raise his hands after getting in his car. Instead, Bell accelerated the car and hit Gescard Isnora then an unmarked police minivan. A toxicology report reportedly showed that he was legally intoxicated at the time of the shooting. An attorney for the Bell family said in response to the report, "No matter what his blood-alcohol level was, he's a victim."

Other accounts of the incident conflict with that of the undercover officers. According to Guzman and lawyer Michael Hardy, the detectives never identified themselves while they approached the vehicle with drawn weapons. Another source also told New York Daily News that the officers failed to warn Bell before opening fire and started firing immediately upon leaving their vehicles.

The police officer who initiated the gunfire later said that he saw a fourth man in the car, who fled the scene amid the chaos, possibly in possession of the alleged weapon. Jean Nelson, a friend of Bell, was speculated to have been the fourth man. Although present at the time of the shooting, Nelson denies being in the car or possessing a gun. According to The New York Times, a preliminary police report of the shooting contains

"... no meaningful discussion of a fourth man, a mysterious figure who some in the Police Department have suggested may have been present along with the three men who were shot. None of the witnesses whose accounts are in the report speaks of someone who may have fled — perhaps possessing a gun — and there are no indications that the police at the time were seeking anyone who may have left the scene."

Critics suggest that the scenario was concocted by the police officer in order to justify the shooting. Juan Gonzalez reported in the Columnist New York Daily News that, according to a law enforcement source, in the hours immediately following the incident, there was no mention of a fourth man in the police calls and no search was launched for the potentially armed man. This source thus contradicted initial reports that the police searched the neighborhood for the missing man.

According to Michael Palladino, the head of the detectives union, a man who was working as a janitor in a nearby building while the incident occurred later told the detectives that he had seen a black man fleeing the scene, and that the man had fired a gun, at least once, at the police. The witness further stated that he had then heard the officers shouting "police, police." However, according to ballistic evidence, there was no indication of any other weapon, aside from those of the officers, fired at the scene.

In an interview on Larry King Live, accompanying Bell's former fiancée Nicole Paultre, Al Sharpton stated that according to his conversations with eyewitnesses, none of the three men who were shot mentioned a gun while leaving the club. Sharpton also felt that it would be impossible for the persons in the car to have heard the police from within the car, and that they were likely to fear that they were being car-jacked. Several of the witnesses received payment from Sharpton, and several groups, including the NYPD Detectives union have questioned the ethics of these payments, calling into question the witnesses' credibility, to which Sharpton has replied, "How can [the Detectives Endowment Association] support the detectives and I can't support the victims?"

Five of the seven officers investigating the club were involved in the shooting. Detective Paul Headley fired one round, Officer Michael Carey fired three, Officer Marc Cooper fired four, Officer Gescard Isnora fired eleven, and veteran officer Michael Oliver emptied two full magazines, firing 31 shots from a 9mm handgun and pausing to reload at least once.

An autopsy showed Bell was struck four times in the neck and torso. Guzman, 31, was shot 19 times Benefield was released from the hospital on 5 December 2006, while Guzman was released on 25 January 2007. Surveillance cameras at the Port Authority's Jamaica AirTrain station a half block away from the shooting site recorded one of the bullets fired by the officers shattering through the station's glass window and narrowly missing a civilian and two Port Authority patrolmen who were standing on the station's elevated platform. and Benefield, 23, who was in the back seat, was hit three times. Both men were taken to Mary Immaculate Hospital; at the time of admission Guzman was listed in critical condition and Benefield was in stable condition. Guzman and Benefield would ultimately survive the shooting.

Response to the shooting

Memorial to Sean Bell at the place of the shooting

Hundreds of protesters came out over the weekend following Bell's death to protest the amount of force used; protests continued into the following week.

Some have noted the similarity between this incident and past shootings of unarmed people, such as Amadou Diallo and Ousmane Zongo.^[2][34] The family has designated Al Sharpton as their advisor.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has said "it sounds to me like excessive force was used,"and has called the shooting "inexplicable" and "unacceptable". Ex-New York governor George E. Pataki has also stated that the shooting was excessive. Kelly has put the five officers involved on paid administrative leave and stripped them of their weapons, a move the New York Times called "forceful". He told the Times Both Bloomberg and Kelly have also noted that the shooting was possibly in violation of department guidelines prohibiting shooting at a moving vehicle, even if the vehicle is being used as a weapon. The Public Advocate extended condolences to Bell's former fiancée and family following the killing. that the officers were stripped of their guns because "there were, and are, too many unanswered questions."

On December 7, 2006, Nicole Paultre legally changed her name to Nicole Paultre Bell to "honor the memory" of Sean Bell New York State laws require a couple to obtain a marriage license prior to a wedding, and "although the marriage license is issued immediately, the marriage ceremony may not take place within 24 hours from the exact time that the license was issued." According to Nicole Paultre's attorney, a posthumous wedding was impossible since no marriage license had yet been signed.

On March 5, 2007, it was announced that a Rikers Island inmate offered to pay an undercover police officer posing as a hit man to behead New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly and bomb police headquarters in retaliation for the incident.

On March 25, 2007, New York Daily News reported that an unnamed Queens drug dealer, after being arrested, alleged that Sean Bell had shot him the previous year on July 13, 2006 over a drug turf dispute. Police sources called the drug dealer's account credible, but could not rule out the possibility of the drug dealer falsely identifying Sean Bell to garner favor with authorities. Sanford Rubenstein, (the attorney representing the Bell family, Nicole Paultre, and the two other occupants of the vehicle that were wounded during the shooting) denounced this development, saying, "We expected them to throw dirt at us and they are throwing dirt at us." NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau detectives say the dealer's tale has no direct bearing on the police shooting of Bell, though some legal experts said that it could help the defense by portraying Sean Bell as possibly armed and dangerous.

Investigation and criminal indictment

Some activists have called for a special prosecutor in the case, but former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer although Attorney-General Andrew Cuomo promised to keep a watch on the criminal proceedings. The Queens district attorney's office interviewed over 100 witnesses and presented more than 500 exhibits to a grand jury. An issue considered by the grand jury was the New York State Penal Code's description of circumstances under which a police officer can use deadly force, "The use of deadly physical force is necessary to defend the police officer or peace officer or another person from what the officer reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force."

On March 16, 2007, three of the five police officers involved in the shooting were indicted by a grand jury. Officer Gescard Isnora, who fired the first shot, and Officer Michael Oliver, who fired 31 of the 50 shots, faced charges of manslaughter, reckless endangerment and assault; while Detective Marc Cooper faced the lesser charge of two counts of reckless endangerment. All three detectives pleaded not guilty at the arraignment hearing on March 19, 2007. Detectives Isnora and Oliver were released on bail and Detective Cooper on his own recognizance.^[

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, Second Department, denied a motion by the detectives' attorneys to move the trial to a venue outside of Queens. Following the adverse ruling, the detectives waived a jury trial and instead submitted to a bench trial.

The District Attorney Richard Brown has faced some criticism from activists who believe he did not question the police officers involved quickly enough.

Acquittal on all charges

On April 25, 2008, all three of the police officers indicted were acquitted on all counts. The defendants opted to have Justice Arthur J. Cooperman make a ruling rather than a jury. The ruling was handed down in a state supreme court in Queens.

In the ruling, Justice Cooperman cited the fact that testimony by Guzman, and Benefield did not make sense. He also cited the fact that they had a pending 50 million dollar lawsuit against the city. After the ruling was made, the family, led by Sharpton and several others went to Bell's graveside in Port Washington, Long Island for a memorial service. Sharpton, Bell's family, and the rest of the crowd left after the services without incident.

All rights reserved@2008 Wikimedia Foundation

The argument is that the case wasn't really racism because two of the police officers were minorities, right? A growing trend in this country seems to be between those in authority and those who are powerless. Oftentime, those in authority are often time the same color and from the same minority background as the people they are hired to help "keep in check." I've seen examples of this from the highest law enforcement groups in the country, including the Department of Homeland Security to local police stations. The argument is that police brutality can no longer be called racist because the officers, such as in the case of Sean Bell, were African-American. However, the fact that they were assigned to patrol low-income minority neighborhoods with the intention to keeping the people "in check," and allowed to excessive and sometimes, even deadly force means that the intention behind it is to shift the blame from outside the group to inside the group but the underlying cause behind it is new millenium racism, or third-party racism.

The problem is that in cases such as Sean Bell, proving that the intention behind the shooting was in deed racist is much harder to prover because the victim and the police officer are the same race so then the case becomes a struggle between those who are in power and those who have no voice. That the police officers were acquitted could mean that these types of incidents could become commonplace. We at F.A.I.T.H. question why, with the high-level of these type of incidents that happen in New York City, why this kind of brutality continues? Particularly when unarmed African-American men are involved. After the case of Amadou Diallo, Michael Moore suggested on his show The Awful Truth, that African-Americans be given light and neon-colored wallets so when they pull them out, they would not be shot as in the case of Amadou Diallo.

But what about Sean Bell? Some allege that he was running away because he feared the undercover police officers were trying to shoot him. Yes, his blood was above the legal limit but if the police really felt the need to stop him, why couldn't they have shot out the tires or simply let him get away? I know this sounds radical but is every unarmed black man in New York City a criminal? What the NYPD and other law enforcement officials do over the new millenium will determine the answer to this question. We at F.A.I.T.H. hope that black police officers are not being used to redirect the methods of police brutality that are being used against the poor and minorities. Also, we at F.A.I.T.H. will continue to stand with our rainbow coalition of brothers and sisters and stand up for freedom.

Finally, we at F.A.I.T.H. give to the world one of our favorite songs, Tomorrow by Tevin Campbell and Quincy Jones. Here's the video:

   Firstly, chickens (The actual bird with feathers and beak) are not nuggets. but, anything small and slightly round enough to fit in you palm is. ex: gold nugget, nugget of food,etc. so, if you take a peice of chicken and fry it and do whatever, and in the end it is all served up in a tiny little NUGGET in the palm of your hand, then YES, it IS A NUGGET! Secondly, chickens are too stupid to even realize they are dead. If you have ever cut the head of one, you will find that they will keep runing around for DAYS without even the slight realization. I am not saying however, that it is perfectly fine to have animal cruelty and just 'throw' the chickens all over the place, but the fact that chickens are a significant amout of good protien just begs to differ. so if we could move too the next topic; FUR.

   If i were this raccoon, and I was frolicking in some forest minding my own business, and some guy just shoots me out of the blue, starts beating me with a rock, punches me in the stomach a few times, pulls my tail of and THEN kills me, i would be very sad. BUT if im sitting up in heaven watching my poor mutilated body getting turned into a hat, I would think "you know, now that i am dead, it doesn't really matter." and I would like the fact that the same person who tortured me 'till death was making a beautiful hat out of me. I would like for someone to come along and buy that hat, and enjoy the warmth it brings them, and to maybe ponder on the poor little creature that died for that hat every once in a while. I would NOT like a bunch of radical PETA members to come storming in, snatch the hat, and throw abunch of red paint all over my beautiful coat and start going on at how dispicable this act of torture was, and how disgusting this is, and completely ruining the only thing I had left on that earth.

   CAGES. we see these most in the human society, where cute little cats, dogs, and kittens are all caged up in these too-small prisons. but, we have to think, the only way the human society gets money is is we buy the cute little cats, dogs, and kittens. and PETA is too busing banning their use, so they don't get any money to buy bigger cages, or more food, or toys and whatnot. so really, its not the human society's fault, because they can't force people to buy pets, it's the fact that PETA is rallying everyone into not buying animals because it's "cruel". so now those poor little cats, dogs, and kittens are going without homes because PETA is too stupid to realize that they are actually working against what they want.

   The "HOLOCAUST". PETA has been saying that animal cruelty is like the holocaust in the fact that farmers have been treating the animals like jews. They are saying that the starvation and torture of six million innocent jews is EQUAL to the starvation and killing of cows. I should point out that there are meat inspection acts that look for starved beef. So if a cow was starved when it was alive, then the beef will be lean and unhealthy; there are guys who check the beef simply because of this. but the farmers with the "starved" cows need money. and the only way they get money is in their beef. so if the beef is bad, they get no money. and in order to get money, they need good, healthy cows for good, healthy beef. so who would be stupid enough to starve their cows so they don't get any money? I am not saying their isn't people out their who do this, because it still happens alot, but the fact that PETA is saying that 1 human life = 1 cow is really really demeaning. If I were a holocaust survivor, I would be incredibly MAD.

 lastly, using beautiful naked women for an animal campaign is ridiculous because it obviously relates to sexuality. and when a man sees that three women would rather bee naked that wear fur, that imediately triggers his sex response and the only reason he is interested is because there is naked women. given these women probably really aren't naked, but the fact that they are hinting and using their bodies to sell is immoral, and just wrong. PETA will not eat meat but they are willing to put naked people out on the streets to campaign for them? The will not eat flesh but they will "sell" it? what is wrong with these people?

   So i would finally like to say I will close with the fact that animal cruelty is wrong, and it is still out there, but the fact that these people will go so far into their own stupidity to say that a peice of a chicken is not a nugget, and that selling naked human flesh is perfectly fine, shows just how ignorant they really are.

“Show these pictures to all men who still can think! WAR: This most diabolical, meanest and lowest of all crimes of the State …. It is true that capital is the cause of every war. But the guilt of war rests on our shoulders. It is we proletarians that make the conduct of war possible; it is for us likewise to prevent wars!” Ernst Friedrich 1924 (WAR AGAINST WAR).

On the surface, the term, “LAW ENFORCEMENT” denotes an Agency controlled and empowered by the Government to ENFORCE Law and, by so doing, maintain Public Order. Here, in its plain written form, the end objective and method of achieving the objective is deceptively sequenced out of order. In reality, however, the converse is more true: Maintain Public Order by Enforcing the Law.

Once the formality of kindling Public awareness (not necessarily gaining Public concurrence or support) is accomplished through appropriately packaged propaganda and media hype, the Enforcement muscle of the State is flexed to defuse dissent (i.e. exercise control and maintain Public Order) and promote compliance with a predesignated PERT/ Gantt chart based route that conforms with State/Foreign policy (i.e., enforce the Law).

The noted British historian Lord Acton (1834-1902) framed the famous dictum, "...Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. ... Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

And History has also shown repeatedly that corrupt people do seek absolute power.

So how do corrupt, unscrupulous leaders generate popular support (or, at least, indifference, noninterference) with their policies, particularly those policies that are generally considered barbaric, downright evil, and shock the conscience; for instance, enable mass slaughter of a targeted race of defenseless citizens, yet maintain an air of respectability?

"To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors." - Nobel Lareuate Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

To promote an insidious agenda, tyrants seek first to dehumanize the “minority” target population and influence the gullible “majority” to perceive them as “Evil-Parasitic-Inimical– Foreboding-A Threat-Criminal”. Pseudo-patriotic propaganda that instills fear, or insecurities or fuels prejudice amongst the citizenry, has been known to influence and promote justification for Leaders to seize carte blanc powers and deal with this new (created) “menace”. It becomes easier to victimize the target population with public support or, alternatively, it becomes possible to victimize absent public support but with public knowledge and concession to an unpopular state of affairs: A real-time enactment of the Predator-Prey equation disguised as a National Security imperative.

This is not an instant accomplishment. If one remembers the chronological events in Nazi Germany, the first step was to disarm the Jewish citizens (Firearms registration, regulation, confiscation - cf. Düsseldorf Manifesto), then ostracize and socially segregate through appropriate "legislation". Then follows relocation of these unarmed "parasitic undesirables" including millions of aged, women, children, and the handicapped to concentration camps where they would be put to "good use" by the State: e.g. stripped of all possessions and dignity, forced into inhumane labor, tortured as subjects of demented medical experiments, murdered en mass, cremated en mass, stripped of any gold in their dentures, their skin made into wallets, handbags, belts and such; bones and ashes that fertilized fields in the Fatherland! Most tyrants have been known to follow this template. Do a Google Search for "Holocaust", or "Third Reich", or "Nazi Atrocities" and see for yourself - PLEASE!

Along with persuasive propaganda and the time-honored advise on How To Take Over a Country, there are at the very present a host of other more sinister devices secretly molding public thought and opinion. Without delving too much into the validity of some "conspiracy theories", the general public is beginning to see only the “tip of the iceberg” that conceals a major inventory of Hyper-Tech mind altering enforcement tools developed for domestic "crowd control", suppressing riots, and to maintain Public Order in the very near future. Such futuristic technology that intrudes on the sovereignty of one's mind, or genetics, or beliefs, etc., have always given rise to public outcry. Yet such technology and research has continued unabated in secret.

During a quiet moment, have you ever wondered why we rarely respond to heinous acts perpetrated by our leaders? And when (IF) we do, how come it is typically half-hearted and fleeting? What made us so damn "tolerant" toward the victimization of others? And what makes us so damn certain it won't happen to us next? Soon, people shall realize that the term “Public Order” is an euphemism for “Resigned Servitude”. There are creative means at work to accomplish this.

One sees red flags all over the horizon when such technology has been approved for use and its purpose is clearly yet another implement to suppress dissent. But when the underlying purpose and resulting consequences of other State run experiments are unknown or mostly conjecture, it is prudent to view them (and the motives) suspiciously.Case in Point: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful, $5.8 billionatom-smasher ever built. We are told that scientists expect some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space when it’s switched on in August. But some critics fear the LHC could exceed physicists' wildest expectations, like spawn a Black Hole that could realistically swallow Earth. [But I have been assured by reliable extraterrestrial sources that it most likely will create a much sought after Inter-galactic Doorway (Stargate) for celestial visitors carrying Duty Free gifts for the downtrodden Earthlings!]

Looking at these pictures, one wonders if these atrocities could TRULY be the doing of human beings? “Civilized” human beings, at that? If so, we need to reevaluate our inventory of qualities that give credence to our claim that we're human and civilized.

This macabre drama has been played out kazillion times in the past; avarice is still manifesting disguised as religion, politics, or some purportedly noble undertaking, as though such flimsy excuses bestow a tunic of respectability and validate gross criminal acts. Just as stealing is unacceptable by universal standards and one’s own conscience (no matter how convincing the reason sounds), so is stealing another’s very right to exist.

These pictures represent a frightening peek into oneself that awakens a sober realization of the corruption and degeneracy lurking hidden in us all: a part of us that should never be allowed to surface. But then again, “Life is but a stage and we must flay apart all their parts”! (Sorry, Elvis!). Unless, of course, you happen NOT to be the “flay-ER”, but the “flay-EE”!

More government and law enforcement resources are being re-allocated to fight dissenting opinion from the "enemy within." And a new class of weapons is being developed to fight "bloodless" battles, fry computer circuitry and control human minds en masse. "Less Than Lethal anti-personnel weapons" are seen in some influential quarters as being the ideal remedy for future domestic revolutionary disturbances. It may be necessary for western democracy to avert severe set-backs and become increasingly repressive and oligarchic. Armed with innovative technological weapons that do not necessarily kill, but which render disenfranchised segments of society physically inactive, emotionally stupefied and incapable of meaningful thought is a goal of those who favor a "psycho-civilized society." This is a frightening and all too realistic scenario. Whether by design or by default, such an outcome is nothing short of a dictatorship. [Synopsis from David G. Guyatt’s Some Aspects of Anti-Personnel Electromagnetic Weapons].

"Domine, Quo Vadis"?

I CAN’T THINK OF A WITTY PUNCH LINE TO THE WRITING ABOVE. Perhaps because I fail to see any humor to it. So I think I’ll drown my depression in sleep; perhaps tomorrow will usher in a better era.

Good Night and God Bless …

Arbeitskreis fordert angemessene Entschädigung und Gedenkstätte. Der Arbeitskreis "Marginalisierte - gestern und heute!" zeigt sich fassungslos, dass die Bundesregierung sich in der Beantwortung einer kleinen Anfrage der Fraktion DIE LINKE zum Gedenken an die Nazi-Aktion "Arbeitsscheu Reich" im Jahr 1938 auf den Standpunkt stelle, sie wisse nichts und wollen nichts wissen. "Zehntausende NS-Opfer der im Jahr 1938 durchgeführten Aktion 'Arbeitsscheu Reich' wurden als 'Asoziale' überwacht, verfolgt, in Konzentrationslager eingesperrt und an Körper und Seele gequält. Viele von ihnen wurden sterilisiert und so der Möglichkeit beraubt, eigene Kinder zu zeugen oder zu gebären. Öffentlich rehabilitiert und angemessen entschädigt wurden sie niemals", so der Arbeitskreis. Nicht selten hätten sich gebrandmarkte Opfer, die die Stätten des Grauens überlebt hatten, im Jahr 1945 mit Mitarbeitern von Behörden konfrontiert gesehen, die ihre Einweisung in ein Konzentrationslager zu verantworten hatten. Das Stigma "asozial" habe den Opfern seitdem jedwede Zukunftsperspektive verwehrt. Noch heute prozessierten sie ihren Akten hinterher, da diese für sie nicht einsehbar in Bundes- und Länderarchiven fest verschlossen lagern.

Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe's beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again.

Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. Though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know -- that they, too, would remember, and bear witness.

And now, I stand before you, Mr. President -- Commander-in-Chief of the army that freed me, and tens of thousands of others -- and I am filled with a profound and abiding gratitude to the American people.

Gratitude is a word that I cherish. Gratitude is what defines the humanity of the human being. And I am grateful to you, Hillary -- or Mrs. Clinton -- for what you said, and for what you are doing for children in the world, for the homeless, for the victims of injustice, the victims of destiny and society. And I thank all of you for being here.

We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium. What will the legacy of this vanishing century be? How will it be remembered in the new millennium? Surely it will be judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms. These failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations -- Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin -- bloodbaths in Cambodia and Nigeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in the gulag and the tragedy of Hiroshima. And, on a different level, of course, Auschwitz and Treblinka. So much violence, so much indifference.

What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means "no difference." A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil.

What are its courses and inescapable consequences? Is it a philosophy? Is there a philosophy of indifference conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?

Of course, indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction.

Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz, the most tragic of all prisoners were the "Muselmanner," as they were called. Wrapped in their torn blankets, they would sit or lie on the ground, staring vacantly into space, unaware of who or where they were, strangers to their surroundings. They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it.

Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. Better an unjust God than an indifferent one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment than to be a victim of His anger. Man can live far from God -- not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering.

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.

Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.

In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps -- and I'm glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance -- but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.

And our only miserable consolation was that we believed that Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets; that the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on behind those black gates and barbed wire; that they had no knowledge of the war against the Jews that Hitler's armies and their accomplices waged as part of the war against the Allies.

If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene. They would have spoken out with great outrage and conviction. They would have bombed the railways leading to Birkenau, just the railways, just once.

And now we knew, we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew. And the illustrious occupant of the White House then, who was a great leader -- and I say it with some anguish and pain, because, today is exactly 54 years marking his death -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April the 12th, 1945, so he is very much present to me and to us.

No doubt, he was a great leader. He mobilized the American people and the world, going into battle, bringing hundreds and thousands of valiant and brave soldiers in America to fight fascism, to fight dictatorship, to fight Hitler. And so many of the young people fell in battle. And, nevertheless, his image in Jewish history -- I must say it -- his image in Jewish history is flawed.

The depressing tale of the St. Louis is a case in point. Sixty years ago, its human cargo -- maybe 1,000 Jews -- was turned back to Nazi Germany. And that happened after the Kristallnacht, after the first state sponsored pogrom, with hundreds of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues burned, thousands of people put in concentration camps. And that ship, which was already on the shores of the United States, was sent back.

I don't understand. Roosevelt was a good man, with a heart. He understood those who needed help. Why didn't he allow these refugees to disembark? A thousand people -- in America, a great country, the greatest democracy, the most generous of all new nations in modern history. What happened? I don't understand. Why the indifference, on the highest level, to the suffering of the victims?

But then, there were human beings who were sensitive to our tragedy. Those non-Jews, those Christians, that we called the "Righteous Gentiles," whose selfless acts of heroism saved the honor of their faith. Why were they so few? Why was there a greater effort to save SS murderers after the war than to save their victims during the war?

Why did some of America's largest corporations continue to do business with Hitler's Germany until 1942? It has been suggested, and it was documented, that the Wehrmacht could not have conducted its invasion of France without oil obtained from American sources. How is one to explain their indifference?

And yet, my friends, good things have also happened in this traumatic century: the defeat of Nazism, the collapse of communism, the rebirth of Israel on its ancestral soil, the demise of apartheid, Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, the peace accord in Ireland. And let us remember the meeting, filled with drama and emotion, between Rabin and Arafat that you, Mr. President, convened in this very place. I was here and I will never forget it.

And then, of course, the joint decision of the United States and NATO to intervene in Kosovo and save those victims, those refugees, those who were uprooted by a man whom I believe that because of his crimes, should be charged with crimes against humanity. But this time, the world was not silent. This time, we do respond. This time, we intervene.

Does it mean that we have learned from the past? Does it mean that society has changed? Has the human being become less indifferent and more human? Have we really learned from our experiences? Are we less insensitive to the plight of victims of ethnic cleansing and other forms of injustices in places near and far? Is today's justified intervention in Kosovo, led by you, Mr. President, a lasting warning that never again will the deportation, the terrorization of children and their parents be allowed anywhere in the world? Will it discourage other dictators in other lands to do the same?

What about the children? Oh, we see them on television, we read about them in the papers, and we do so with a broken heart. Their fate is always the most tragic, inevitably. When adults wage war, children perish. We see their faces, their eyes. Do we hear their pleas? Do we feel their pain, their agony? Every minute one of them dies of disease, violence, famine. Some of them -- so many of them -- could be saved.

And so, once again, I think of the young Jewish boy from the Carpathian Mountains. He has accompanied the old man I have become throughout these years of quest and struggle. And together we walk towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope.

Dar este clar că omul care o problemă cu evreii... Daţi-mi voie să vă întreb, stimaţi lectori şi chiar pe dumneata - nea Savatie - cine a inventat pogromurile? Dar falsul ordinar Protocoalele Înţelepţilor Sionului? Nu sunt oare Protocoalele, în a căror autenticitate poate crezi, o invenţie a lui Serghei Nilus, agent al Ohranei ţariste?

Dacă eşti prost, stai acasă la Moldova şi nu mai scoate cărţi pseudo-religioase care otrăvesc minţile tineretului! Asemenea propagandă obscurantistă şi reacţionară trebuie interzisă!

Te înţeleg, Savatie, că eşti împotriva germanilor şi faci caz de credinţa dumitale pravoslavnică, dar de Nietzsche te rog eu frumos să nu te iei. Voi ruşii nu aveţi organ pentru Nietzsche! Nu spunea el că filosofează cu ciocanul? Voi aţi rămas la nivel de seceră, la o mentalitate îngrămădită şi reacţionară.

Savatie este un negaţionist al Holocaustului, deoarece îi ia apărarea unui dubios ca Norman Finkelstein. Citiţi aici articolul domniei sale: Un revizionist evreu pierde titularizarea în învăţământ. Articolul este şi de un anti-americanism feroce. Şi eu condamn excesele Americii, mai ales imperialismul ei, dar de pe poziţii de stânga, democratice.

Omul nostru este obsedat de conspiraţia mondială evreiască. Citiţi: Kremlinul-bastion evreiesc. Faptul că Savatie este obsedat de evrei se reflectă şi în numărul mare de articole dedicat "chestiunii evreieşti." Omul are şi categorie - Iudaism & creştinism (chiar aşa, cu & comercial... :) Halal cultură! Nema kultura, gaspadin Baştavoi, nema edukaţia!) - 14 articole... de departe cea mai consistentă secţiune. Şi blogul este pornit doar de o lună...

Am şi eu o întrebare: Biblia sau "biblia" cum scrie Savatie cu b mic, nu a fost scrisă de evrei? Ooops! Iisus era născut la Fălticeni? (nu că nu ar avea şi rude pe-acolo...) Eu cred că Biblia face parte dintr-o conspiraţie evreiască menită să înşele vigilenţa revoluţionară a monahului nostru... :)

Astfel de obsedaţi şi spirite incoerente otrăvesc tineretul cu miasmele propagandei religioase anti-semite şi ar trebui interzişi şi pedepsiţi cu toată asprimea. Sper să se audă mai sus! Savatie, sunt pe urmele tale!

Atrag atenţia asupra acestui fenomen periculos persoanelor publice din BlogRollul meu: Adrian Năstase, Andrei Chiliman, Corina Creţu, Ion Iliescu, Maria Barbu, Mihai Mălaimare (ordinea este cea alfabetică). Nu mă aştept la nici o reacţie publică, m-am obişnuit să ne temem să luăm apărarea evreilor, mai ales într-un an electoral... Dar să ştiţi că va veni clipa când veţi da socoteală de indiferenţa voastră... Holocaustul nu ar fi fost posibil fără indiferenţa oamenilor cumsecade. Există şi o culpă politică, aşa cum spunea Karl Jaspers! :( Dar mă interesează şi părerea voastră, a persoanelor mai puţin publice, a oamenilor de bine ai acestei Ţări.

Eu doar îmi fac datoria filosofică să trag un semnal de alarmă. Mă voi mai ocupa de Savatie...

P.S. Cultura lui Savatie este superbă, dar lipseşte cu desăvârşire... scrie Raich, în loc de Reich. Vezi aici. Şi, ca Om al Domnului, scrie biblie cu b mic. Vezi aici. Ultimul link este spre un articol care ilustrează negativ preocupările mele privind Antisemitismul Creştin. A, şi Antichristul, cartea lui Nietzsche, se scrie cu ch, e mai bine aşa, e etimologic, e litera chi din greacă, dacă ai auzit... nu Anticristul cum ai scris tu.

P.P.S. Şi pentru cei care mai şi citim, pentru Spiritele Luminate şi Tolerante care frecventează acest blog, cum ştiu că sunteţi majoritatea, vă recomand o carte deosebită despre relaţia dintre Nietzsche şi evrei.

YIRMIYAHU YOVEL. HEGEL, NIETZSCHE ŞI EVREII. O ENIGMĂ ÎNTUNECATĂ. BUCUREŞTI: HUMANITAS, 2000.

Cinste Profesorului meu Gabriel Liiceanu pentru publicarea acestei minunate cărţi!

Nu mai spun despre minunatele pagini şi chiar volume dedicate lui Nietzsche de Marele meu Profesor Ion Ianoşi, sau de traducerile din Nietzsche ale soţiei dânsului Janina Ianoşi. De la aşa o tradiţie a Toleranţei filosofice mă revendic şi eu!

P.P.P.S. Ca amuzament! Savatie nu vine de la Shabbat? Ooops! :)

P.P.P.P.S. Şi în final, pentru că sunt un îndrăgostit de sufletul rus, o melodie de suflet pentru fratele meu Savatie, Farewell of Slavianka. De ce mă superi, moi daragoi? Et encore, Marusia! Ce zici, facem un ghişeft împreună?

All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves is stay alive

All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves is stay alive

Ragged lines of ragged grey
Skeletons, they shuffle away
Shouting guards and smoking guns
Will cut down the unlucky ones

I clutch the wire fence until my fingers bleed
A wound that will not heal—a heart that cannot feel
Hoping that the horror will recede
Hoping that tomorrow we'll all be freed

Sickness to insanity
Prayer to profanity
Days and weeks and months go by
Don't feel the hunger—too weak to cry

I hear the sound of gunfire at the prison gate
Are the liberators here? Do I hope or do I fear?
For my father and my brother, it's too late
But I must help my mother stand up straight

Are we the last ones left alive?
Are we the only human beings to survive?*

When it comes to media coverage of U.S. and Israeli affairs in the Levant, conscientious journalists are nearly extinct. While the virtually omnipotent corporate media are concealing state terror and corruption by practically stove-piping cookie-cutter bureau reports and omitting entire stories, a precious few others actually have integrity. Their sense of humanity is matched only by their bravery in the face of tyranny and death. Those rare voices for the voiceless are courageously reporting those state crimes, on location. Endless respects to them and to the suffering people for whom they are the only voices.

* Lyrics and musical performance of "Red Sector A" © Rush (Lee, Lifeson, Peart). YouTube source: 21Xanadu12.

"Polacy to antysemici. Dlatego naziści ich wybrali"

Kontrowersyjny duchowny twierdzi, że jest to powód tego, że tak późno (pierwszy raz od drugiej wojny światowej) w Warszawie wyświęcono ortodoksyjnych rabinów - uczynił to Michael Schudrich, rabin Warszawy.

Zdecydowali się oni na święcenia w Polsce w geście odbudowy społeczności żydowskiej na ziemi naznaczonej piętnem Holokaustu. Rabin Tel Avivu Yisrael Meir Lau, twierdzi, iż nie ma lepszego odwetu na nazistach i ich pomocnikach. Sam wspomniany fakt określa mianem "historycznego wydarzenia", szczególnie, że miał miejsce po próbie "ostatecznego rozwiązania kwestii żydowskiej". Yisrael Meir Lau urodził się w Polsce i przetrwał zagładę Żydów.

- Żydowska społeczność i jej rabini żyją i mają się dobrze w Warszawie - mówi Lau.

Jednak w Izraelu są i odmienne głosy. Rabin Shlomo Aviner, szef szkoły talmudycznej w Jerozolimie i rabin Beit El, twierdzi, że Żydzi z Polski powinni wyjechać do Izraela. - Polska to nie jest miejsce dla nas. Polacy to antysemici - powiedział Aviner w "The Jerusalem Post". W jego opinii, "prawdziwy odwet nie polega na tym, żeby odbudowywać tam społeczność tylko na tym, aby być tutaj, w Izraelu".

Obaj jednak uważają warszawskie uroczystości za fakt o pozytywnym wydźwięku.

- To była ceremonia o historycznym wymiarze - wspiera ich Shalom Ber Stambler, rabin Chabadn, który dwa lata temu założył jesziwę w stolicy Polski. Była to pierwsza szkoła talmudyczna w Warszawie po Holocauście.

Thema und Tagung haben mich brennend interessiert, doch, argh, leider blieb mir nicht die Zeit daran teilzunehmen. Das ist ein Nachteil der Festanstellung. Ein Vorteil: man kann freie Autoren hinschicken und die dann darüber berichten lassen. Antonia hat das dankenswerterweise für den zuender gemacht.

Hier ist der Text, den sie von der Konferenz mitgebracht hat, heute im zuender veröffentlicht. Es geht ihr dabei im Speziellen um den sogenannten Genocide Pop - provozierende, geschmacklose Werke junger, jüdischer Künstler (cf. Mirroring Evil).

Hier ist mein Beitrag, vom Büro aus: eine Info-Galerie mit einer kleinen Auswahl von Filmen, Büchern und Musiken, deren Urheber sich an neuen Formen der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Holocaust versuchten.

[EN]

""" Israeli military forces have told the residents of the village of Arab ar-Ramadin that they will all be expelled from their homes in the coming weeks, as part of the Israeli project of expansion onto Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Since the Israeli government began construction of their Annexation Wall on the village's land in 2004, the residents of Arab ar-Ramadin have maintained an increasingly tenuous hold on their ancestral lands, which have been rendered inside 'Israeli' area, due to the placement of the Wall.

There has been a low-intensity siege warfare on the village since 2004, in which residents have been forced to show an ID card which has not been issued to them, harassed at checkpoints and refused entry to their homes under the force of the Israeli military.

On June 5, an Israeli military commander, accompanied by a force of 20 soldiers, arrived in the northern part of Arab ar-Ramadin. The commander informed the head of the community that the village needed to move to the other side of the Wall. Upon the villagers refusal to cooperate, Occupation forces threatened them, stating that they would be forced to leave.

If the eviction is carried out, 207 people will be expelled; 30 homes and animal pens will be destroyed and an estimated 1,500 sheep, the main source of income for the people, will be adversely affected. Since 2004 demolition orders have been issued to the village. The most recent demolition took place in March of this year, when residential structures housing 10 people were bulldozed.

Since the building of the Wall, daily life in Arab ar-Ramadin has become a constant struggle. The village, which is located in the same pocket as Ras Tireh, Wadi Rasha, and Daba, is isolated by the Wall and the Alfe Menashe settlement from the rest of the West Bank. People are consistently harassed or completely barred passage at the gates that close them off from the rest of the world. Furthermore, they are unable to bring in fodder for the sheep as the Occupation military prohibits both the crossing of vehicles and anyone without a permit.

Arab ar-Ramadin does not have schools within the village. As of 2003, 46 students were travelling daily to Habla and six high school and two university students were studying in Qalqiliya city. Habla was, prior to the Wall, a 2.5 km walk for the students, today they must walk 5 km and await the opening of one of the Wall’s gates.

At least 2,339 dunums of the village's land have been confiscated in the southern area for the Wall. Some of these lands are used for grain (839 dunums) and the rest (1500 dunums) are pasturelands used for grazing animals.

According to the Popular Committee Against the Wall, the case of Arab ar-Ramadin is symptomatic of the Occupation’s policy of ethnic cleansing. This project is paired with the creeping expansions of the Wall, settlements, settler-only roads, checkpoints and a complex of military orders and restrictions that creates permanent pressure on the Palestinian population centres. Villages like Arab ar-Ramadin, which are surrounded completely by the Wall and settlements, live with the most serious threat.

Currently, there are 14 villages with a total population of 6,314 inhabitants that face the imminent destruction of their homes and expulsion from their land. """

~~~

[RO]

""" Forţele militare israeliene le-au zis rezidenţilor din satul Arab ar-Ramadin că vor fi cu toţii evacuaţi din casele lor în următoarele săptămâni, ca parte al unui proiect israelian de expansiune pe pământurile palestiniene din Cisiordania.

De când guvernul israelian a început construirea Anexei la Zid pe pământul satului în 2004,rezidenţii din Arab ar-Ramadin au menţinut cu o subtilitate crescândă proprietatea pământurilor lor ancestrale, care au fost încadrate înăuntrul zonei „israeliene”, din cauza plasării Zidului.

Încă din 2004 asupra satului este un asediu, de intensitate mică, în care rezidenţii sunt obligaţi să prezinte un document de identitate care nu le este eliberat, hărţuiţi la punctele de control şi le este refuzată intrarea în propriile case sub forţa armatei israeliene.

Pe 5 iunie, un comandant al armatei israeliene, acompaniat de o forţă de 20 de soldaţi, a ajuns în partea de nord a Arab ar-Ramadin. Comandantul a informat şeful comunităţii că satul trebuie să se mute de partea cealaltă a Zidului. Pe baza refuzului de cooperare al sătenilor, Forţele de Ocupare i-a ameninţat, declarând că vor fi forţaţi să plece.

Dacă evacuarea este dusă până la capăt, 207 de oameni vor fi expulzaţi; 30 de case şi ţarcuri pentru animale vor fi distruse şi aproximativ 1.500 de oi, principala sursă de venit pentru săteni, vor fi afectate în mod negativ. Din 2004 au tot fost eliberate ordine de demolare pentru sat. Cea mai recentă demolare a avut loc în luna martie a acestui an, când structurile aparţinând localnicilor, care adăposteau 10 oameni, au fost dărâmate de buldozere.

Înca de la construirea Zidului, viaţa de zi cu zi în Arab ar-Ramadin a devenit o luptă continuă. Satul, care este localizat în aceeaşi zonă izolată ca Ras Tireh, Wadi Rasha şi Daba, este izolat de către Zid şi aşezarea Alfe Menashe, de restul Cisiordaniei. Oamenii sunt hărţuiţi în mod continuu sau le este interziă complet trecerea la porţile care îi închid faţă de restul lumii. Mai ales că nu pot să aducă fân pentru oi, deoarece armata Ocupaţiei interzice atât trecerea vehiculelor cât şi a oricui nu are permis.

Arab ar-Ramadin nu are şcoli în limitele satului. Începând din 2003, 46 de studenţi călătoreau zilnic până la Habla şi şase elevi de liceu şi doi studenţi universitari studiau în oraşul Qualqiliya. Habla era, înainte de Zid, la un drum de doar 2,5 km pentru studenţi, astăzi ei trebuie să meargă 5 km şi să aştepte deschiderea uneia dintre porţile Zidului.

Cel puţin 234 de hectare din pământurile satului au fost confiscate în zona de sud pentru Zid. Unele dintre aceste pământuri sunt folosite pentru grâne (84 de hectare) şi restul (150 de hectare) sunt pământuri pentru păşunat, folosite pentru animale.

Conform Comitetului Popular Împotriva Zidului, cazul Arab ar-Ramadin este unul simptomatic al politicii de Ocupare pentru epurarea etnică. Proiectul este însoţit de expansiunea lentă, dar sigură, a Zidului, a aşezărilor şi a drumurilor numai pentru ocupanţi, a punctelor de control şi a complexităţii de ordine şi restricţii militare care creează o pres