Posts from — February 2007

POJL got scammed by a panhandler. I think many of us have a fear of being homeless. I know I do, though I do not give to panhandlers on trains. But most homeless people do not panhandle, and the greater problem is that NYC uses the subway as a de facto homeless shelter. This is not only a bad use of a mass transit system; it is an utterly irresponsible one. And that is why it is (officially) illegal to panhandle on the subway.

Many cities do not have a twenty-four hour subway system because they do not want their metro filled with smelly, stinking vagrants. Most American cities do not have an extensive rail system to speak of period, and even those few that do are often limited because of township fears of what a stop in their neighborhood will bring in.

The cost for this is an important aspect in denizens not only being unable to live auto-free, but without a rail alternative, completely auto dependent, at least in the suburbs.

This aids terrorism and abets rogue regimes. There would not be an Iranian regime or Saudi Arabian “charities� as we know them without oil.

The U.S. consumes 25% of world oil. Half of that is by passenger vehicles.

This country is not comfortable with mass transit. It is considered dangerous and dirty, especially one that runs 24/7. Guess which city’s mass transit system people think of for that?

Most Americans are not willing to endure what we do, and part of that is because they have kids, and part of that is because the filth and the nonsense we allow in our subways is well known and not particularly desired by most suburban Americans.

If we are to get off oil, we all have to do our part, and we all have to sacrifice. That means many things, but it also includes New York liberal Jews accepting that we have to clean up the subway in order to prove to the rest of the country that a 24/7 metro system (which all cities should have) does not necessitate accepting a culture of homelessness, harassment, and incivility into our daily lives.

Or we can do what we have been doing, and give the country a great excuse for not getting off their oil and their cars, and shrug as we head towards a darker and more dangerous future.

We are making the wrong choice. By siding with the schizophrenic junkie panhandlers right to squat, sleep, and solicit in the subway, we are indirectly siding with Al Qaeda, Hizbollah, Ahmadinjad. etc.

And before you dismiss this as insane and reactionary, answer me this: Why did Al Qaeda attack the mass transit systems of London and Madrid? Was it only to kill a lot of people? Or was it also to discourage new mass transit systems?

Think about it, Pissed Off Liberal Jew. And talk to your friend Mik Moore about it as well. I am sure both of you would vastly prefer to see more mass transit projects, and doubt either of you think this is a small issue. It would be nice to be able to have a stinky, sometimes scary, homeless subway shelter AND broad public support for a massive undertaking of 24/7 mass transit projects across urban and suburban America. But we can’t have both. Something’s got to give. And if your answer is, “Well, then what do we do about them?â€? then it already has. If you demand homelessness be solved in its entirety first, you are effectively preempting a national mass transit system expansion. By voting for the panhandlers and for vagrancy in the NY subway, you are voting for the automobile in the rest of the country.

And then you are really getting scammed.

The NY Times reports,

When a Middle East discussion group organized a showing at New York University recently, it found that the distributors of “Obsession� were requiring those in attendance to register at IsraelActivism.com, and that digital pictures of the events be sent to Hasbara Fellowships, a group set up to counter anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses.

Failed Messiah notes that the Hasbara Fellowships are run by Aish HaTorah, and this Zionist front gives Aish HaTorah “a huge list of college-age Jews they can target with haredi missionary propaganda which, no doubt, is a major goal.â€?

Also – in case you missed it – see Failed Messiah’s story on where Big Aish recruits their kiruv machers. Apparently, if they were lying for and enabling Lanner, they are ready for Manhattan and online projects.

Shouldn’t they be in Hasbara?

For the 50th anniversary of his alma mater, Sholom the anarchist rabbi penned a heartwarming retrospective about his own Crown Heights yeshiva days, and reminisces about how his experience proves that a haredi background need not sacrifice one iota of so-called “secular� subjects, whether science, or what his rabbis called “the essentials of the essay.� Sholom also recalls the wonderful friends he made, and defends uniform dress at least for teenagers, because it “successfully masks the class divisions so evident in the secular world.�

While Sholom did not go into the professional corporate world like seven out of ten of his peers did, he remains tight with this world, and spoke to his fellow alumni about his experience posing for Fanorama.

The Jewish Week reports on “a proposal to put the umbrella Jewish group in line behind efforts to impose divestment on Sudan because of the genocide in Darfur.�

Let us be clear – if successful, this proposal will accomplish nothing in terms of stopping the bloodshed. But it will successfully put a big sign up that yids with glass houses like to throw stones.

Fortunately, this time there is resistance.

Doug Chandler reports,

“The proposal, which comes up for a vote next week at JCPA’s annual four-day plenum, is drawing its critics, who fear that an economic boycott of any country could be used against Israel, itself the target of divestment efforts.�

So who are the realists? This is where it gets interesting.

“Hadassah’s leaders also discussed the issue, despite “a hard and fast policy� of not endorsing any economic boycott, said Ellyn Lyons, chairwoman of the organization’s Israel, Zionist and International Affairs Department. Although all of them clearly believe that Darfur is an “extraordinary situation,� she said, they also believe that any boycott could be a “slippery slope,� with unintended consequences for Israel.

Both Hadassah and the Philadelphia JCRC have been in the forefront of protesting the slaughter in Darfur, meeting with elected officials on the issue and sending large contingents to “Save Darfur� rallies.�

However we understand Darfur, I think we should all agree that there is no sense in promoting a policy which accomplishes nothing AND puts Israel at risk.

Ilana Mercer and Julia Gorin examine the Jewish community’s relationship with immigration and Holocaustism (Gorin does not use that term) in their respective essays.

I don’t want to give away the topic of Ilana Mercer’s essay “Jews Jeopardized By Muslim Immigration,� except to note that she asks the tough questions as to how a certain liberal Jewish fantasy will manifest itself differently here than in Europe or Canada. Mercer is openly a student of Dr. Stephen Steinlight, and that’s…a good choice!

Ms. Gorin is brilliant, innovative, and relentless. She is a “South Park Conservative.” On Front Page Magazine in “Radical Islam’s Dupes,â€? she uncovers how we were are once again being intentionally duped through Holocaustism, this time into supporting “a narco-Islamo-terrorist gangster state in Europe.â€? Jews and Jewish organizations and newspapers are specifically being targeted to facilitate this. Because we are suckers, and Gorin demonstrates how those scamming us have bragged about doing just that.

We will lobby for our own destruction just to show “we care.�

Shira Leibowitz Schmidt points out that the rule of mandating women to the back of the bus is “empowerment of women.�

Mrs. Schmidt explains,

“Miriam Shear, who objected to sitting in the back of an Israeli bus — not one of the special buses, incidentally — has been compared to Rosa Parks, a black woman who symbolized the U.S. civil rights movement by refusing to sit in the back of a bus.

A better analogy, however, is between Parks, who stood for empowerment of blacks, and religious women who view the right to sit separately, even if it’s in the back of the bus, as empowerment.”

Why not just take this nonsense completely off the cliff? Why not claim that the men who beat the crap out of Miriam Shear are the true heirs to Martin Luther King himself?

“Egged wants to make money and doesn’t want to lose haredi customers, so it added a few extra “mehadrinâ€? lines — optional and stringent — to provide separate seating for those who didn’t want men to have to mix with scantily clad women. This entrepreneurship is as American as apple pie.â€?

Actually, it’s as Middle Eastern as being stoned to death for a theological violation.

“This is multiculturalism and pluralism. “

No – this is fundamentalism. But it’s still an ism of some sort, so perhaps partial credit is warranted?

“Women who chose to ride in the rear of the bus see themselves as partners in, and beneficiaries of, the attempt to encourage family integrity by creating temptation-free comfort zones.�

We are worried about the ones who don’t choose that.

“The Orthodox need to do much introspection to minimize the offense to those who prefer mixed seating.�

No, the “Orthodoxâ€? are not monolithic. The Modern-Orthodox are not a part of this. They did some introspection, and decided it’s meshugeh. May I remind you, it was a Modern Orthodox woman who was beaten, not a “bare midriffed” secularist. The haredim need to do introspection, and quite frankly, I suspect the thugs are not of the B’nai Torah variety, but the dudes with the curlies, and even then, only from specific sects. There is no way Sloanim or Lubavitch Chassidim were pulling this nonsense. Nor, quite frankly, would it make sense for this to be Satmar (and they do have payos), for whom the state is an anathema, and nothing is expected of Egged, a secular Zionist mass transit system.

But such incidents are being committed by someones. But we don’t know who they are exactly, or where this aggressiveness is coming from. And this is the problem with the haredim. Not that they want a segregated bus system, but that they don’t identify the specific haredim who want to enforce it for everyone.

This ill placed solidarity is rampant in the haredi world. They consistently refuse to point the finger at the perpetrators and identify them and their sect, but only denounce their actions specifically, even while praising the stringency effusively.

And that’s empowering the assailants.

And don’t point to Hirhurim” title=”http://hirhurim.blogspot.com/2007/02/empowering-women.html\”>Hirhurim” target=”_blank”>hirhurim.blogspot.com/2007/02/empowering-women.html”>Hirhurim. Hirhurim is not haredi.

Levi Okunov is a fashion designer on the rise.

The man is as talented as he is audacious, and prone to inflecting his custom shmattes with religious and cultural patterns and inflections, such as tallis patterns, fur hats, and earlock emphasized hairstyles. And perhaps the best retro-soundtrack for the catwalk I have ever heard. Zugges mir nachamol, indeed!

Hat tip: Radloh and Mentalblog

This is inspiring. Elements of left, right, and center, united to get the U.S. off oil. Note the important description of petro-dollars as “supply chains” to terrorists.

Listen to the music at the end. The situation is that ominous.

Hat Tip: Set America Free

Paul Belien writes in the Washington Times,

The Dutch are pampered by an extensive welfare system. They were the first in Europe to legalize abortion, euthanasia and homosexual “marriage.” Today, Islam is filling the void that was left when the Dutch created a religious vacuum in the heart of their culture. There are already 1 million Muslims in the Netherlands out of a total population of 16 million. Their number is rising fast because the Muslims are fecund while the secularist Dutch have hardly any offspring.
The native Dutch are moving out. Since 2004, more indigenous Dutchmen have emigrated each year than immigrants have moved in. People who have lost faith in God do not fight. They run. Since they do not believe in life after death, this life is the only thing they have to lose. One emigrant Dutchman, a homosexual author who lives in Brussels, writes: “I am not a warrior. I do not fight for freedom. I am only good at enjoying it.” This mentality has affected the whole of Western Europe. A young German woman recently said that it is “better to let yourself be raped than risk injuries while resisting, better to avoid fighting than risk death.” Europe has chosen the path of submission. Islamization is not the cause but the consequence of the collapse of Europe. The very word Islam means “submission.” Many Europeans have submitted already. In that sense, they have already become Muslims.

I am not in agreement with Bielen’s solution of a general and comprehensive conservative agenda. But I do agree we could face a similar problem like the one facing our friends in Holland, particularly since we are specifically hated.

But I have a much simpler solution. It’s called Immigration Reform. But hey, I better not say that. That’s intolerant. Better to allow for a situation where a small minority of a community will likely cause serious problems (especially for our community) into our country, and when shit goes down, we will have diversity training, quilt making, all sorts of ineffective dialog, when really, it’s all because we have foolishly invited enemies of the West into our homes. And when they start burning it down, we can blame root causes, foreign policy, and racism.

Time to close the gates. Jews, wake up. We need to change our immigration policies. This is madness. This is absurd. We are a naïve people, but we can’t be this naïve.

It won’t be as bad as it is in Europe. It will be much, much worse.

Oil and immigration. That’s it. That’s the focus. It has to be.

Or we are in for something ferocious.

Jewbiquitous is discussing the appropriateness of Jews celebrating Valentine’s Day in light of its Christian history, and therefore it’s Christian content.

But even if it were devoid of that, as a Litvak, I wouldn’t celebrate it. Because it’s “romantic,” which is a form of spirituality. Instead of getting all mushy eyed and paying through the nose for a prefixed dinner and watching some drivel with Hugh Grant, everyone should go read a good book, preferably non-fiction. And note the wisdom of my eight-year-old nephew, who gently declined his librarian’s suggestion noting, “I don’t usually read fiction, unless it’s really good.â€?

Now to be clear, I have no problem with mutual base desires (trust me on this one) and an intellectual connection, and in fact, (at least theoretically) recognize the importance of an emotional connection with a member of the opposite sex (even if I have never felt such a thing myself) provided each party in the relationship is willing to agree to disagree. But seeking romance itself is quite dangerous, and can be intellectually debilitating. Look how it clouds the judgment of many Conservadox men, who because they seek romance, cast aside their own intellectual faculties and reason itself, ascribing to social action and pseudo-feminism, and nod to an exaggerated importance of the 20th century role of Rabbi Abraham Heschel.

We risk losing an entire generation to such nonsense.

Quite frankly, I can think of no holiday as anti-Jewish (outside of the overtly Christian ones) than Valentine’s Day. It is fantasy, anti-intellectual, and worst of all, overpriced. If you must celebrate this holiday, but a bottle of wine at a liquor store (that’s still paying retail – and therefore special enough for an M.O.T.) for a quarter of what it would cost at a restaurant. Make some chicken, light a couple of candles from the discount store, and chill out (together!) in front of a decent documentary (those don’t have to be really good)exposing the destruction of segments of the middle class due to the bankruptcy “reform” law, or how deregulation is all too frequently a front for corruption.

That’s warm and fuzzy enough for a weeknight.

Happy Mitvuch.