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February 28, 2010
Best of the Jewish Blogosphere: The Purim Edition
Marilyn regrets she never played the role of Queen Esther.
Hey, I've got a fab-u-lous Idea.
While you're noshing on your mishloach manot, check out Haveil Havalim # 258, The Purim Edition, enthusiastically edited by The Israel Situation.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:04 AM | Comments (3)
February 26, 2010
Friday Footwear
Unfortunate political associations aside, red shoes can be a fashion risk. The color not only pops but frequently overpowers whatever else you're wearing.
But this season, designers have embraced red in a big way, often pairing the powerful hue with bold arcitectural lines.
Red is the new black.
Prada does a clever boot that conjures the boxing
ring. A knock-out for the war between the sexes.
Flirty little red buds sprout on Carolina Herrera's
classic t-strap pump.
Christian Louboutin expertly layers multiple
textures and subtle patterns on this striking shoe.
The classic ballet flat in fire engine red by Omelle,
the hot new brand favored by Sex and the City ladies.
Okay, I'm going to buy these Sergio Rossi platform pumps
for Karen. Classic retro look, and the peep-toe is totally cute.
The late Alexander McQueen created towering platforms with
delicate and enchanting Chinese beadwork. Not recommended for
dancing—or walking. But hey, perfect for Purim!
Can you name the film and actress pictured?
Want to know where Seraphic Secret picks up some cool fashion trends, check out Karen.
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a meaningful Shabbat and a joyous Purim.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:26 AM | Comments (12)
February 25, 2010
Welcome to College Where You Can Major in Jew-Hatred
Learn more about Crossing the Line.
H/T Jack
When Hitler moved to solidify his power base in Germany, he discovered that the chattering classes, particularly university intellectuals, were early and enthusiastic supporters of the Nazi ideology. Scientists, lawyers, artists, and an overwhelming number of physicians were all too willing to provide an intellectual framework for Nazi oppression and genocide.
Moral clarity and courage are rarely found in universities. The chattering classes almost always find justifications for totalitarian rule.
During World War II Jean Paul Sartre—hero to the left— and his high-minded, highly libidinous existential buddies spent the war years yammering away in fashionable Parisian coffee shops while all around them Jews were rounded up and sent to the ovens of Auschwitz.
Thus, it's no surprise that American and European universities are natural breeding grounds for the Islamists who openly plot to destroy western civilization and finish up Hitler's Final Solution, finally.
As we have pointed out, Congo is the murder, rape and mutilation capital of the world, with 45,000 murdered every single month since 2007. Thus over 6.9 million people have been slaughtered.
You would think that the oh-so-compassionate left would be taking to the streets in protest.
But there is a deafening silence in regards to Congo.
Why?
Because there are no Jews to blame.
In fact, every odious charge brought against Israel/Judaism are crimes for which the Islamists and their western enablers are guilty. They are totalitarian thugs who cruelly oppress Jews, Christians, homosexuals and, of course, women. Apartheid is state law in Saudi Arabia—Jews are forbidden to set foot in this racist Muslim kingdom, and Christians are forbidden to worship. And Iran, with metronomic regularity, promises to wipe Israel/Jews off the face of the earth.
Jew-hatred is the coin of the realm in every single Muslim country on the planet. The Jews of Yemen, the last remnants of an ancient and proud Jewish/Yemenite community, are fleeing. Except for the 2,000 Jews of Morocco, the Arab Muslim world is Judenrein.
And the trend to expel Jews from their homes and lands of birth is spreading to Europe.
Jihad in Antwerp, Eurabia.
The Jews of Malmo, Sweden are fleeing.
In one generation, there will be no Jews living in Scandinavia.
The Jews of France and England have been targeted by Islamists and their leftist allies. French and British Jews are quietly making plans to leave their homes. The last time I was in Israel a real estate agent showed me blocks and blocks of empty apartments. “Purchased by French and British Jews who are waiting for the inevitable pogrom that will bring them to Israel,” he explained.
Europe has made a fateful decision. They have decided to trade loyal, productive Jewish citizens for disloyal, sharia-yearning Muslims who are frequently on the dole.
It's a recipe for national suicide.
Make no mistake about it, academic Anti-Zionism is the new Jew-hatred, and Western universities are the breeding ground for this malignancy, the new Reichstag.
UC Irvine, the epicenter of Islamist/academic Jew-hatred in California.
And guess which American church is ushering in the holiday of Purim with some old-fashioned Jew-hatred?
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:08 AM | Comments (9)
February 24, 2010
The Green Prince: Son of Hamas Founder = Israeli Spy
Mosab Hassan Yousef, The Green Prince.
He converted from Islam to Christianity and became one of Israel's most potent weapons against Islamic terrorism.
The Shin Bet is quite good at penetrating terrorist cells.
One can't help but wonder how many Mossad agents are active in Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might want to, um, rethink the next family circle.
The son of one of Hamas’s founding members was a spy in the service of Israel for more than a decade, helping prevent dozens of Islamist suicide bombers from finding their targets, it emerged today.
Codenamed the Green Prince by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, supplied key intelligence on an almost daily basis from 1996 onwards and tracked down suicide bombers and their handlers from his father’s organization, the daily Haaretz said.
Information he supplied led to the arrests of some of the most wanted men by Israeli forces, including Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader often tipped as a potential president who was convicted of masterminding terrorist attacks, and one of Hamas’ top bomb-makers Abdullah Barghouti, who is no relation of the jailed Fatah chief.
Snip!
Speaking by telephone from California, Mr. Yousef told Haaretz he worried that the Israeli Government might release some of the prisoners he helped put behind bars in exchange for Gilad Schalit, a young Israeli soldier abducted by Hamas from the Gaza border more than three years ago.
“I wish I were in Gaza now," he said. "I would put on an army uniform and join Israel's special forces in order to liberate Gilad Schalit. If I were there, I could help. We wasted so many years with investigations and arrests to capture the very terrorists that they now want to release in return for Schalit. That must not be done."
Full story here.
Meanwhile, the excellent blog, Elder of Ziyon reports that a Don't Mess With the Mossad T-shirt is selling like hot cakes.
The Irish Times reports:
Sales of Mossad-themed T-shirts, available by mail order, have risen tenfold since the Israeli spy agency was linked to last month’s assassination in Dubai.
Despite the fact that Israeli leaders are refusing to confirm or deny Mossad involvement, orders for the garments have flooded in over the past few weeks — from Israelis and particularly from diaspora Jews.
Eran Davidov, marketing manager of a top mail order company selling Israeli-made products, told The Irish Times they have been overwhelmed by demand since they launched a special “Show off your Mossad and Israeli pride” campaign earlier this week.
Full story at Elder of Ziyon.
The T-shirt's popularity is not hard to comprehend.
Normal people understand, on a gut level, that terrorists need to get dead.
They should not be treated like common criminals, but as illegal enemy combatants.
They should bot be handed constitutional rights, nor tried in civilian courts.
The hit in Dubai is another in the Mossad's long line of greatest hits.
Terrorists have learned two important lessons from Dubai:
1. Israeli intelligence agents and field operatives have the ability to penetrate deep into the heart of the Arab Muslim world.
2. The Mossad has valuable assets in the Arab Muslim world. Thus, terrorist leaders are on notice that their circle of trusted operatives is compromised. This constricts their movements and sows fear and paranoia in every terrorist cell.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:06 AM | Comments (14)
February 23, 2010
Good News: Seas Not Rising, Bad News: Congo Is Sinking
I'm shocked. Just shocked.
Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.
The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.
At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study "strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results". The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.
Full story here.
Look, the global warming house of card is collapsing. Ordinary Americans realize that it's just a pretext for big government to exert even more control over our lives, to impose higher taxes, and to regulate, well, everything.
As I said before, global warming/climate change, whatever the label this week, is the new Socialism.
Leftists always manage to manufacture some great global crisis that, inevitably, involves massive government intervention because we, ordinary citizens, are just too dumb to recognize the Hollywood-like end-of-world threat, much less deal with it effectively.
There was the Bomb. We were going to blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons. The solution? Ban the bomb. This dopey movement still has some traction. Except when it comes to Iran. The Persian rush to nuclear power is getting a pass from those who, ostensibly, favor nuclear reduction.
Remember the population bomb? The earth was being overpopulated by filthy humans. The fix was, naturally, less human beings. Governments would step in and sterilize their over-libidonous citizens. India, from 1975-1977, forced sterilizations of the poor, until riots broke out and the government was forced to retreat.
(I'll spare you the The Gopher Tortoise Conservation, and for that you can thank me later.)
There was Global Freezing...
Time magazine, Dec. 1973.
... then Global Warming, and of course now it's just the Orwellian-themed Climate Change.
Have you noticed that the fanatics who rant about the weather almost never deal with true evil?
For instance, The Congo.
Evelyn Hockstein/Polaris
Since 2007 6.9 million people have been murdered. That's 45,000 a month.
Rape, torture and mutilation are part and parcel of the gruesome Congo landscape.
Nicholas Kristof has done a fine job of reporting on this hell on earth:
It’s easy to wonder how world leaders, journalists, religious figures and ordinary citizens looked the other way while six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. And it’s even easier to assume that we’d do better.
But so far the brutal war here in eastern Congo has not only lasted longer than the Holocaust but also appears to have claimed more lives. A peer- reviewed study put the Congo war’s death toll at 5.4 million as of April 2007 and rising at 45,000 a month. That would leave the total today, after a dozen years, at 6.9 million.
What those numbers don’t capture is the way Congo has become the world capital of rape, torture and mutilation, in ways that sear survivors like Jeanne Mukuninwa, a beautiful, cheerful young woman of 19 who somehow musters the courage to giggle. Her parents disappeared in the fighting when she had just turned 14 — perhaps they were massacred, but their bodies never turned up — so she moved in with her uncle.
A few months later, the extremist Hutu militia invaded the home. She remembers that it was the day of her very first menstrual period — the only one she has ever had.
“First, they tied up my uncle,” Jeanne said. “They cut off his hands, gouged out his eyes, cut off his feet, cut off his sex organs, and left him like that. He was still alive.
“His wife and his son were also there. Then they took all of us into the forest.” That militia is known for kidnapping people and enslaving them for months, even years. Men are turned into porters, and girls into sex slaves.
Jeanne and other girls were regularly tied spread-eagle and gang-raped, and she soon became pregnant. The rapes continued, sometimes with sticks that tore apart her insides and left her dribbling wastes constantly. Somehow the fetus survived, but her pelvis was too immature to deliver the baby.
One of the people the militia had kidnapped was a doctor who was forced to treat the soldiers. The doctor, seeing that Jeanne was close to dying in obstructed childbirth, cut her open with an old knife, without anesthetic, and removed the stillborn baby. Jeanne was delirious and almost dead, so the militia dumped her beside a road.
Full story here.
But hey, the genocide in Congo is relatively minor compared to the global threat of the weather, and of course, Al Gore's polar bears.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:03 AM | Comments (21)
February 22, 2010
Lt. Col Allen West on Israel
At an event commemorating the first full year of weekly rallies in support of Israel held at Broward Boulevard and Northeast Third Avenue in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Congressional candidate Allen West details his reasons to support Israel.
West is a decorated war hero whose awards and decorations include the Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal (two Oak Leaf Clusters), Army Commendation Medal (two Oak Leaf Clusters, one Valor Device), Army Achievement Medal (one Oak Leaf Cluster), Valorous Unit Award, Air Assault Badge and the Parachutist Badge. And now he's running for Congress.
Here's his website, where Karen and I just made a donation.
Commenter Bill Brandt reminds us that:
For those who don't remember, Allen West was the officer forced out of the Army (court marshal was threatened) for essentially protecting his men.
They had caught a terrorist—roadside bomber—had him blindfolded while interrogating him.
They wanted to know where his [terrorist] cell was and he wasn't talking. West then fired his pistol into the air which got him talking and revealing the whereabouts of his associates.
And for that the Army wanted to prosecute him.
The pro Hamas rally Lt. Col West mentions featured terrorist groupies screaming, “Jews to the gas.”
H/T Joshua Pundit.
And while we're at it, let's take a look at some excerpts from The Hamas Charter:
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.”
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
“After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”
“The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him…”
“The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone. They make war against people's livelihood, plunder their moneys and threaten their honor … They took advantage of key elements in unfolding events, and accumulated a huge and influential material wealth which they put to the service of implementing their dream ….”
“(Jews) control of the world media (and use their) wealth to stir revolutions … They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions.”
“The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion. It does not refrain from resorting to all methods, using all evil and contemptible ways to achieve its end. It relies greatly in its infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations it gave rise to, such as the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups. All these organizations, whether secret or open, work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions. They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion.”
“There was no war that broke out anywhere without their (Jews') fingerprints on it.”
Hey, I have a fab-u-lous idea, let's hand over even more of the land of Israel to the so-called Palestinians.
As my friend Carl says: What could possibly go wrong?
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:28 AM | Comments (7)
February 21, 2010
Best of the Jewish Blogosphere
Anthony Perkins spies on the JBlogosphere, Psycho 1960.
Up and live, Haveil Havalim #257, this week presented by Ki Yachol Nuchal.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:11 PM | Comments (3)
February 19, 2010
Friday Fashion
Butterfly hat by Phillip Treacy for Alexander McQueen.
As a Hollywood screenwriter I've had the privilege of working with the hugely talented and conscientious craftsmen who labor behind the scenes of every movie and TV show. These are the people who create a universe of influential images that are the cultural engine for most every society on earth.
Wardrobe Designers hold a special place in my heart. I marvel at their ability to transform ordinary young men and women into objects of universal desire.
Contemporary fashion, the world of couture, frightfully thin models and diva designers, seems, at first glance, to exist in some rarified galaxy, but if you look carefully at today's fashion one can almost always find a classic Hollywood version.
Fashion Week in New York premiered several lovely, even wearable—if you're a size 2 and made out of money—collections. In particular, Michael Kors, Oscar de la Renta and Proenza Schouler showed confident, compelling and elegant creations.
But the entire affair took place under the cloud of Alexander McQueen's suicide.
McQueen, a young, hugely talented and provocative designer, sprang from the English working class—his father was a taxi driver. The forty-year old designer admitted to past drug and alcohol use. The image he projected was that of an angry young man. Sadly, McQueen's rage was profoundly inner-directed. His death is a tragedy and we offer our condolences to family and friends.
We especially take note of McQueen because his pricey, outrageous, scary shoes, made frequent appearances in our popular Friday Footwear editions.
All shoes by Alexander McQueen.
Alexander McQueen's last collection is startling but strangely beautiful. The theme of reptiles and birds dominated the cat walk. The dresses are notable for flowing sculptural lines, exquisite cut and drape, Victorian nipped-waists, and a poodle-skirt silhouette. The collection stirs up the image of a lizard exploding on the surface of an Audubon painting. McQueen's vibrant colors, with computer generated patterns, are nicely resolved and ultimately give the impression of a flirtatious young woman from another eco-system who wants you—for lunch.
From Alexander McQueen's Spring 2010 collection.
McQueen, along with several other important designers, showcased hats with their collections.
Seraphic Secret has, in the past, blogged about Hollywood hats, but here we're interested in contemporary millinery and their Hollywood antecedents.
Narciso Rodriguez featured this oversized leather pillbox hat. Its volume and weight appear military, like a bunker buster about to take flight.
Loretta Young, one of the most elegant Hollywood stars, strikes a rather wooden pose—studio portraits in the 50's were in decline—in a more traditional black pillbox hat.
Phillip Treacy for Alexander McQueen. Totally theatrical. The reference is to Chinese opera by way of the imperial Chinese menagerie. Hey, this might be a fab-u-lous look for that over-the-top Beverly Hills Bar Mitzvah.
Myrna Loy has been there and done that. Before settling into sophisticated comedy, most notably The Thin Man series, Montana-born Loy was frequently cast as an exotic vamp.
Down to Mexico for bad boy Jean Paul Gaultier. There were numerous interpretations of the traditional sombrero. Quite compelling when sitting atop Gaultier's signature corset armor outfits.
Playful in an oversize sombrero, Rita Hayworth, real name Margarita Carmen Cansino, started her career as a teenage flamenco dancer. Hayworth hated being a movie star and claimed she was only happy on-screen when dancing.
Phillip Treacy for Alexander McQueen. Women's hats have, from earliest times, been about brilliant plumage. This lively, sleek creation is like some lovely bird of prey.
Before settling into comedy, Lucille Ball was groomed by the studios as a glamor girl. Here's Lucy displaying serious plumage. No doubt, that's how she snared the love of her life, serial adulterer Desi Arnez.
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:11 AM | Comments (14)
February 18, 2010
Ginger Rogers is Not Looking at You
Who says tinsel town is a sinkhole of shallow narcissists?
In our never ending attempt to paint an accurate portrait of this thing called Hollywood, Seraphic Secret unveils The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood, a new feature.
“When two people love each other, they don’t look at each other, they look in the same direction.”
—Ginger Rogers
via: Old Hollywood
Ginger Rogers, real name: Virginia Katherine McMath, (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) looked in the same direction as five husbands: Jack Pepper (1929–1931) Lew Ayres (1934–1941) Jack Briggs(1943–1949) Jacques Bergerac (1953–1957) and William Marshall (1961–1969). There were no children. Rogers, an only child, was closest to her mother Lela Rogers, a newspaper reporter, screenwriter and producer.
Rogers is best known for the ten musicals in which she starred with Fred Astaire, nine films for RKO and one for MGM.
But my favorite Ginger Rogers movie is Billy Wilder's first feature,The Major and the Minor, 1942, a delicious screwball comedy where she plays a tough “scalp massager”—code for escort—masquerading as an innocent teenager in a boy's military academy. It's a virtuoso performance that calls for sharp comic timing and an emotional vulnerabilty that is exquisitely expressed through wide eyes and the contours of her body.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:55 AM | Comments (8)
February 17, 2010
Climate Meltdown
From planet San Francisco:
Seven months ago SFGate reported:
The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it’s about to get even foggier.
That’s the conclusion of several state researchers, whose soon-to-be-published study predicts that even with average temperatures on the rise, the mercury won’t be soaring everywhere.
Flash forward:
The Telegraph this week reported:
The sight of Golden Gate Bridge towering above the fog will become increasing rare as climate change warms San Francisco bay, scientists have found.
The coastal fog along the Californian coast has declined by a third over the past 100 years – the equivalent of three hours cover a day, new research shows.
Heads I win, tails you lose.
This perfectly encapsulates the derangement of the global warming/climate change cultists.
H/T Gateway Pundit
The house of cards that is an excuse for Soviet style social engineering is rapidly collapsing as evidenced by this morning's WSJ editorial:
Yesterday's corporate defections from the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) won't be greeted with the same hosannas as last year's departures of Nike and Apple from the Chamber of Commerce over its global warming stance, but they're undoubtedly more important. This scales-from-eyes moment shows that some big American businesses are putting shareholders and consumers ahead of politics.
The departing are BP America, Conoco Phillips and Caterpillar, which were among the original members of USCAP, a coalition of green pressure groups and Fortune 500 businesses that tried to drive a cap-and-trade program into law. Some corporate members concluded that climate legislation was inevitable and hoped to tip it in a more business-friendly direction. Others—ahem, General Electric—are in our view engaged in little more than old-fashioned rent-seeking. Through regulatory gaming, Congress would choose business winners and losers, dispensing billions of dollars in carbon permits to the politically connected.
The climate bills the House passed in August and Senate liberals are contemplating have stripped away that illusion. Carbon tariffs and other regulations would have damaged heavy manufacturing against global competitors, which explains Caterpillar's exit, while oil companies would suffer as transportation, refining and power generation via natural gas were punished. Then there's the harm to long-run growth, which would slow under the economy-wide drag of new taxes and federal mandates.
Businesses thrive on regulatory certainty, and when cap and tax seemed inevitable maybe an outfit like USCAP could be justified. But the costly reality of the climate agenda is resulting in a change of heart among both the business and political classes even as climate science comes under new scrutiny—and we suspect that several other corporations may follow these three to the exits. It's a measure of liberal overreach that they've managed to alienate the biggest companies that were cheerleading their climate ambitions.
Robert F. Kennedy once remarked: “Liberals are suicidal.”
He was referring to the hard-core idealogues in the Democrat party who chronically overreach and alienate what is essentially a center right country.
I fully expect the climate cultists to persist in their cognitive dissonance.
Consuming valuable political bandwidth on fraudulent science that demands massive taxes and government regulations is a recipe for disaster in a country that is leaking jobs and facing a ruinous national deficit.
The outcome is predictible: a circular firing squad that will drive the Obama administration from office to be replaced by a Republican White House, Senate, and Congress.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:00 AM | Comments (15)
February 16, 2010
Brown Shirts in Green
Several weeks ago, Karen and I visited old and beloved friends in New Jersey. A long-married couple, our friends are Democrats, but that has never diminished our affection and loyalty. Usually, we don't discuss politics, but the issue of so-called global warming came up. When Karen and I expressed skepticism, our friends were, literally, horrified.
“You don't believe in global warming?”
From their irate tone and expressions, you would think that Karen and I had just—G-d forbid—denied the Holocaust.
We shook our heads and suggested that Climategate should, at least, give pause to their faith in a science that supports global warming/climate change/whatever they're calling it this week.
Our friends had no idea what we were talking about.
“The science is settled,” they insisted
And that was that.
There is no dialogue possible when one side is armed with information and facts, and the other side insists on a fossilized, delusional narrative.
I believe that even if our friends were aware of the scores of corruptions of science, it would not make a difference.
That's because so-called climate change is the new Socialism.
And many Democrats have morphed into Socialists.
Marx also claimed that his work was scientific, beyond reproach. His theories of the withering of the state and the fall of capitalism were and are advanced as “inevitable.”
Marxism/Lennism is nothing less than a fanatic, religious cult.
And so-called climate change is the opiate of the new Socialists.
This new leftist hysteria—remember The Population Bomb and Global Freezing—is designed to alarm citizens—that's why Osama bin Laden recently jumped on the climate change bandwagon—grow government, redistribute wealth, and create a new politburo of climate bureacrats who will dictate every detail of how we live our lives.
These are brown shirts in green.
My informed and articulate friend Wolf Howling presents A Summary of the Not So Settled Science of Anthropogenic Global Warming. This is an important post.
Over the weekend came a series of revelations and admissions by one of AGW's most influential figures, the current head of East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU), Phil Jones (technically, he is on leave). His bombshells concerning paleoclimatalogical data, the Medieval Warming Period and its ramifications, and the current period of alleged global warming are a dagger in the heart of AGW. Also over the weekend, yet another major research paper documented that modern climate records are untrustworthy and have been significantly manipulated.
To prove the theory of AGW, climate scientists had to show that global warming is occurring at a historically unprecedented rate and that such warming is caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide. Yet, in light of Climategate and revelations both before and since, it would appear that the "unequivocal" and "settled" theory of AGW is anything but.
Full story here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:46 AM | Comments (46)
February 15, 2010
Shopping With Sarah Palin, Sorta
So after parking in Ralphs, I reach for my shopping list and realize that I left it at home.
Panic.
I'm not kidding. If I walk into a grocery store without a list I end up cruising the aisles like a zombie grabbing anything and everything that looks interesting, colorful and natch, kosher.
I need structure.
Scrambling for pen and paper to compose a new list in the car, I find a pen but no paper. Okay, I can make this work. I scrawl a short list on my hand.
Hey, I'm just like Sarah Palin.
Hope I don't get mugged by some deranged liberals.
In the produce aisle I examine the blueberries. A young woman in jeans, Uggs, and a cut-a-way t-shirt chuckles when she glimpses the ink on my hand.
Smiling sheepishly, I notice ink on her skin, a tattoo on her shoulder the size of an eggplant.
I have to admit, tattoos—especially on women—really make my stomach go all kinds of queasy. Isn't this just another form of self-mutilation, a return to pagan rituals?
Tattoo lady says: “Shopping crib sheet?”
“Forgot my list, y'know...”
Tattoo lady whips out her iPhone and shows me the screen. She's got a shopping list app with all her foods neatly listed along with little pictures of the item.
“Wow.”
“Pen and paper is so done.”
She shows me all the new and novel ways her app can organize her food lists. Clearly, she's one of these incredibly capable high-tech people.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Your tattoo, what is it?”
“Paw print. My dog died a few months ago. This is a memorial.”
“Oh, gee, I'm sorry.”
“He was like my son.”
“Oh.”
I do not tell her that Karen and I lost our son almost seven years ago. That would be stupid and inappropriate. But I am grateful that we could channel our grief in ways other than a tattoo.
She says: “Can I ask you a question?”
“Okay.”
She's gonna ask me about my yarmulke. Why do I wear it? How does it stay in my head? I get this all the time.
“I see you have tofu on your list. How do you make it?”
I'm like totally knocked out.
“It's for my lunch. I make a huge salad, slice the tofu into thin strips, fry lightly, then dip them in lemon juice and shmear a little humus on.”
“Sounds totally yummy. What aisle is the tofu?”
Oh joy, I'm giving recipes and supermarket directions to a genuine female shopper!
At the checkout counter, I spot tattoo lady again. She points to her cart. She's got tofu, hummus and lemon juice.
I still don't like tattoos, but I do feel a stab of remorse for judging the nice young woman so harshly.
And here's Caroline Glick's take on Sarah Palin's friendship.
If her address wasn’t enough to convince Americans — and specifically American Jews — that Palin thinks supporting Israel and standing up to Iran are the keys to U.S. national security, then there was her interview on Fox News Sunday. Asked how Obama can win reelection in 2012, Palin responded, “Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really to come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do.”
And if that still isn’t enough, there is her lapel pin. The politician who leads the populist opposition to Obama decided to make her most important speech since the 2008 election wearing a pin featuring the U.S. flag and the Israeli flag.
Full article here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:30 AM | Comments (22)
February 14, 2010
Best of the Jewish Blogosphere
Brigitte Helm keeps an eye on the Jewish Blogosphere, Metropolis 1927.
Up and live, Haveil Havalim, this week edited by Shiloh Musings.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:29 AM | Comments (11)
February 12, 2010
Friday Fotos
Ma'ayan Ariel says: “Mommy what's that?”
Mommy answers: “That used to be called snow, but now we call it climate change white stuff.”
“What makes the white stuff, Mommy?”
“Global warming, honey.”
“That doesn't make sense, Mommy.”
“That's because you haven't been properly educated.”
“Grandpa says it's raining like crazy in California.”
“That's climate change wet stuff.”
“So everything is climate change stuff?”
“Exactly.”
Ma'ayan Ariel wishes all her friends and relatives a lovely and peaceful Shabbat, hopefully free from the horrors of climate change.
And hey, let's dance our way into Shabbat with Fred and Ginger in The Gay Divorcee, 1934.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:34 AM | Comments (6)
February 11, 2010
Hope and Change Persian Style
Today is—drumroll please—Revolution Day in Iran.
The Mullahs celebrated by torching choice Western flags and parading effigies of Barack Hussein Obama down the streets of Tehran.
Good thing Obama offered to unclench his fist to the Muslim world. As Sarah Palin said: ”How's that hope n'changey stuff working out?”
So clever. Obama holds Lady Liberty who has blood dripping from her mouth. That's what I like about post-modern Persian art: subtlety.
Burning the American, British, French and Israeli flags. I'll bet the British and French are really annoyed—about being lumped together with Israel.
No demonstartion in the Muslim world is complete without burning an effigy of POTUS. Obviously, the Persians did not get the memo that Obama is so much nicer than Bush.
This is my favorite. Obama wears an Israei tie and wow, he's got a humongous nose. And check out the massive ears. They look, er, simian. Al Sharpton alert. Anyhoo, the Persian regime is not a bunch of malignant Jew-haters. No, they're merely anti-Zionist. Hey, just like Obama's buddies, William Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, and spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright who cleverly referred to Israel as, “... that dirty word.”
Persia is well on its way to crossing the nuclear red line. Nothing to worry about. Obviously, Obama's got the situation covered. He's even holding up Apache helicopter sales to Israel “dismayed” at their use during Operation Cast Lead. Because the Jewish State had the chutzpah to defend itself against a genocidal yearning bunch of Islamist lunatics.
Rob Miller AKA Joshua Pundit, suffered a mild heart attack on Moday afternoon. Mrs. Joshua Pundit has posted that Rob is resting comfortably and doing well. Seraphic Secret is greatly relieved. We had lunch with Rob and Omri Ceren of Mere Rhetoric a few weeks ago and as always, our conversation was lively, informative and rollicking good fun. Rob is one of the smartest guys I have ever met and we wish him a refuah shlemah, a speedy recovery. You can leave your good wishes at his website Joshua Pundit.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:53 AM | Comments (13)
February 10, 2010
Hollywood: The Fictious, Fabulous, Topsy-Turvy World
Head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, 1956.
In 1949, director Charles Vidor (Gilda, '45), brought a lawsuit against Harry Cohn, founder and President of Columbia Pictures. Vidor charged that Cohn constantly abused him through the use of obscene language. Vidor demanded to be released from his contract with Columbia Pictures.
In fact, Harry Cohn was famous for his liberal use of expletives. He was a deeply insecure studio chief whose coarse and vulgar mannerisms were part and parcel of tinsel town.
Cohn groomed Rita Hayworth into Hollywood's greatest star and she hated him with every fibre of her being, claiming that he demanded sex in exchange for good roles.
Jean Arthur, perhaps Columbia's most versatile and talented star—the myth is that she was reclusive and shy, but Arthur was in the grip of a severe personality disorder—was so consumed with hatred for the tyrranical studio chief that she carefully plotted Cohn's murder and was only talked out of the lunatic scheme by a friend who convinced Arthur that she was bound to be caught.
The great director Frank Capra, whose string of brilliant films catapulted Columbia from poverty row into studio respectability, also despised Cohn and fled Columbia Pictures as soon as it was feasible.
Cohn was the classic builder and destroyer.
And when Cohn died of a heart attack in 1958, Red Skelton said of the well-attended funeral, “It proves what Harry always said: Give the public what they want and they'll come out for it.”
In any case, Judge Harrison recognized that Vidor was using Cohn's foul language as a legal pretext to break his contract with Columbia and move on to a more luctrative deal with another studio. After nine days of deliberation he decided against Vidor:
The court finds that Harry Cohn was accustomed to and in the habit of using obscene language in talking to Mr. Vidor and others. Such language was part of Mr. Cohn's speaking vocabulary. It was used by him as superlative adjectives, not intended by him as insulting or used for the purpose of humiliating the plaintiff , and the plaintiff so understood that.
In the course of the trial, Judge Harrison was afforded a glimpse into Hollywood's unique sub-culture and the view left an indelible impression. Harrison's verdict is amended with this simple yet profound observation:
Both [Cohn and Vidor] inhabit a fictitious, fabulous, topsy-turvy, temperamental world that is peculiar to their way of life. Their standards are not my standards. Let them be judged by those people of decency who inhabit their world of fantasy and fiction.
Sources: King Cohn, by Rob Thomas. Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew by Jon Oller. If This Was Happiness, A Biography of Rita Hayworth by Barbara Leaming
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:22 AM | Comments (10)
February 09, 2010
Michele Bachmann: “America Will Be Cursed If We Reject Israel.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann (Republican) spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Los Angeles last week.
Keep in mind that Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin are both relentlessy disparaged by liberals, cruelly characterized as stupid right wing extremists.
That's because both women believe in defeating Islamist terrorists, and treating foreign terrorist as war criminals. They are fiscal conservatives, passionate about defending the rights of the unborn, and both are ardent supporers of Israel.
Why the liberal hatred and obsession with Bachmann and Palin?
It's not hard to understand.
Articulate and appealing Conservative women—Bachmann, Palin, Coulter, Malkin—are a direct and powerful rebuke to the liberal so-called feminist narrative. A narrative that is based on the Orwellian notion that only liberals can be authentic feminists, and by implication authentic women. Those who deviate from this political and social orthodoxy are not just ideological opponents, but existential enemies.
As Lenin said, “We are not interested in debating our opponents but in destroying them.”
As every screenwriter knows, a compelling narrative deperately needs a worthy antagonist. Thus Bachmann and Palin—in fact, all Conservative women—have become the anatagonists of choice for the rapidly collapsing liberal narrative.
Here's a partial transcript of Michele Bachmann's speech.
I am convinced in my heart and in my mind that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States . . . [W]e have to show that we are inextricably entwined, that as a nation we have been blessed because of our relationship with Israel, and if we reject Israel, then there is a curse that comes into play. And my husband and I are both Christians, and we believe very strongly the verse from Genesis [Genesis 12:3], we believe very strongly that nations also receive blessings as they bless Israel. It is a strong and beautiful principle.
Right now in my own private Bible time, I am working through Isaiah . . . and there is continually a coming back to what God gave to Israel initially, which was the Torah and the Ten Commandments, and I have a wonderful quote from John Adams that if you will indulge me [while I find it] . . . [from his February 16, 1809 letter to François Adriaan van der Kemp]:
I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.
. . . So that is a very long way to answer your question, but I believe that an explicit statement from us about our support for Israel as tied to American security, we would do well to do that.
Full story here.
H/T Weasel Zippers
This is the lapel pin I wear in my suits displaying the American flag and the Israeli flag. Sarah Palin frequently wears the exact same pin. In fact, she wore this pin when delivering her address to the Tea Party convention last week.
And from the WSJ, a must read: Cheney's Revenge.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:59 AM | Comments (38)
February 08, 2010
The Right Commercial to Unhinge the Unhinged Left
Well played.
Focus on the Family dangled some tidbits of information to the media knowing that the chronically hysterical left would get, er, hysterical.
And then came the commercial.
Yup, that's the 33 seconds that caused the pro-abortion fanatics to foam at the mouth.
The commercial, as far as I can tell, is about how much a mother loves her healthy and rambunctious son.
But hey, I'm not well versed in post-modern literary deconstruction.
How much do you want to bet that the pro-abortion forces are going to howl that the commercial advocates violence—becaue abortion is, y'know, not violent—against women?
Just a reminder:
Pam Tebow chose to ignore her doctor's advice, risk her own life and give birth to her son, Tim.
Just as Sarah Palin chose to have a child she knew was mentally challenged.
These two women present a narrative the left is determined to demonize. A narrative that advocates free choice.
You see, the left only believes in choice when the choice is their choice.
And oh yeah, Barack Hussein Obama picked The Colts.
The man is the kiss of death.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:34 AM | Comments (10)
February 05, 2010
Friday Footwear
Seraphic Secret readers have become enthusiastic consumers of Friday Footwear. We get more mail about this feature than our oh-so-carefully written poltical and Hollywood essays.
Sigh.
Look, we admit that the insanely pricey stilletos of Christian Louboutin, the multi-tiered heels of Nicholas Kirkwood and the deliriously alien footwear—favored by Lady Gaga—designed by Alexander McQueen...
Shoes by Alexander McQueen
... are, um, architecturally and culturally fascinating, if physically and financially crippling, but we do recognize that real people in the real world usually favor just plain old hard working footwear.
A few of our readers took the liberty of sending in pictures of their favorite shoes.
Enjoy!
And feel free to send in snapshots of your footwear.
From a long time friend and reader: “My mom really wanted me to forward you the pic of her new boots. These are real Lucchese Boots. In Dallas—where I was born and raised, and of course my parents still live there—these are acceptable for Shabbat and the symphony, and she says they are also perfectly comfortable for walking.”
From Earl O'Neill, one of our Australian buddies, a fine photograph of his steel-toe capped workboots shot by his beloved Tanya. We admire the lunar landscape that is inscribed in the worn leather of Earl's boots. Perfect for working in the garden or hiking in the outback.
Frequent commenter/philosopher and good friend Bill Brandt displays the boots he wore in the Army. Look at the shine on those beauties, you can shave in the reflection. Thanks so much for your service.
Rahel, one of our many friends from Israel, practically lives in her Israeli made Teva Naot boots. They are beyond rugged and so unfashionable that they are actually fashionable.
And finally, Karen's mother Celia, proudly displayed her Granny boots to yours truly, saying: “I'll bet you'll never feature my boots on Seraphic Secret. Not fancy enough, right?”
Hey mom, never is not as long as you think.
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a lovely and restful Shabbat.
I missed February 3, Four Chaplains Day, a story my father, a Chaplain, told me when I was just a child.
The chaplains who sacrificed their lives were the Methodist Reverend George L. Fox, Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, the Roman Catholic Priest John P. Washington and the Reformed Church in America Reverend Clark V. Poling.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (Rep.) did not forget:
Baruch Dayan Ha-emet
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:53 AM | Comments (12)
February 04, 2010
Lancet: Phony Medicine, Sincere Jew-Hatred
The Lancet Medicine Show is coming to your town.
The Lancet, an allegedly prestigious British medical journal, has retracted claims that vaccines cause Autism.
It's a little late.
Phony medicine kills:
Meanwhile, Britain's child vaccination rates had plummeted to below 70% in some areas, down from more than 90% in the mid-1990s. The country has since suffered waves of measles outbreaks. In 1998 England and Wales had 56 cases; by 2008 the number was 1,370. In 2006, the first British child died of measles in more than a decade.
Meanwhile The Lancet has yet to retract a “study” recently published which claims that Palestinian wife beatings are the fault of—who else?—the Jooz.
Phyllis Chesler reports on the Lancet Blood Libel:
Their study is titled: “Association between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cross-sectional study.” And yes, they have found that Palestinian husbands are more violent towards Palestinian wives as a function of the Israeli “occupation”— and that the violence increases significantly when the husbands are “directly” as opposed to “indirectly” exposed to political violence.
I believe that Arab and Muslim men, including Palestinian men, are indeed violent towards Arab and Muslim women. I also believe that war-related stress, including poverty, usually increases “intimate partner violence,” aka male domestic violence. But beyond that, how does one evaluate this study?
Full story here.
This is all part of a well-orchestrated plan to delegitimize the Jewish State. The attacks come every day, from every corner of the globe. The infamous Goldstone Report is a blood libel on an international scale. Ultimately, the Arab Muslim world and her leftist Western apologists are seeking to turn Israel into a pariah state, another South Africa. Israeli passports will no longer be recognized—first in Europe, then South America and finally North America—thus Israel wll be transformed into the final Jewish ghetto, ripe for genocide.
That is the plan.
What is our plan?
Fighting a defensive war is a sure road to defeat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:55 AM | Comments (12)
February 03, 2010
Mission to Moscow
During January, Turner Classic Movies, presented Shadows of Russia, a look at Russia and the Soviet Union as seen through Hollywood's lens. This fascinating series was conceived and programmed by film blogger Self-Styled Siren and the New York Post's Lou Lumenick.
Siren explains how it happened here.
I've been covering the series for Big Hollywood—Part I, Part II—and here's today's post:
Mission to Moscow (1943), based on the memoir of the same name by Joseph P. Davies, is, well, jaw dropping. Not because it’s so bad, which it is. But because it’s a piece of slick Stalinist propaganda produced by Warner Brothers.
How did this wretched film come into existence?
With the Soviet Union abandoning the Soviet-Nazi pact, and joining America and the allies against Germany and Japan, Roosevelt understood that the American people needed to be, um, reeducated in their attitude towards the Soviet menace. Thus, Roosevelt asked Hollywood to cooperate and produce films that cleared up all the alleged misunderstandings about totalitarian Soviet Communism and mass murdering Josef Stalin.
Or that’s the standard story. In Red Star Over Hollywood, Ronald and Allis Radosh report that:
In a newspaper interview, Davies said that it was he who had approached Harry Warner about the book, after other film companies had shown interest. If it was to be a movie, he told Warner, “I want you to make it.” Warner agreed, and Davies was paid $25,000.
Whatever the truth of the film’s genesis, using Davies 1941 memoir, Hollywood went to work.
A credulous dupe, Davies, Roosevelt’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, was, like New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, a reliable apologist for Communism and Stalin’s murderous policies. Davies was, as Lenin famously labeled Western liberals, “a useful idiot.”
Most shocking in Davies memoir is the treatment of the Moscow show trials that took place between 1936 and 1938. In a major purge, Stalin accused the old Bolshevik leaders of plotting with Nazi Germany to overthrow the Soviet regime. The defendants were primarily old buddies of Lenin who had been celebrated as the first heroes of the Soviet Revolution. They were now accused of working with Trotsky to sabotage industry, assassinate Stalin, and bring down the Soviet regime.
The charges were absurd and most of the defendants were executed. Their confessions are lovingly rendered in a courtroom scene that paints the Soviets as scrupulous jurists. In fact, the hapless defendants were drugged, horribly tortured and told that their families would be murdered unless they confessed.
To read the complete article, head on over to Big Hollywood.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:51 AM | Comments (7)
February 02, 2010
Roy P. Benevidez: Medal of Honor
I live in the failing state of California. From the once golden state I watch Barack Hussein Obama declare, like Willie Stark, a populist war against the financial institutions of this country. Obama's budget is a fiscal nightmare that will bury this country in red ink for generations to come. Islamist terrorists are Mirandized by Obama's Justice Dept. And Iran has only contempt for Obama's unclenched fist and vows to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
It's enough to make a grown man cry.
Here's a necessary reminder of one man's greatness.
A reminder that there are, among us, individuals who will defend freedom no matter what the cost.
I urge you to take 6 minutes from your busy schedule and watch this video.
You will honor a great American soldier and thereby honor all American soldiers.
And an astonishing footnote posted at You Tube:
I did this as a way to honor all those who have struggled to come back from serving our country in times of war. The most interesting part for me was something I didn't find out until after I created this photoplay, was that this was Roy's second tour. He had been so gravely wounded, by stepping on a landmine, on his first tour that he was drummed out of the Army after returning. Roy built his body back up and returned to the service after proving himself fit and joined the elite Green Beret's and went back to Vietnam for a second tour for which he received the Medal of Honor.
H/T Weasel Zippers
And if you want to keep up with the U.S. Army, here's an iPhone app that features tons of articles and photos.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:13 AM | Comments (11)
February 01, 2010
Barack Hussein O'Bow... Here We Go Again
January 28, 2010, Barack Hussein Obama bows to... the Mayor of Tampa, Florida.
A little history:
Tampa mayor, Pam Iorio, proclaimed Nov. 15th "CAIR Day"
—By virtue of the authority vested in me as mayor of the city of Tampa, I do hereby proclaim November 15, 2008, as ‘Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Day' in the city of Tampa, Florida.
Iorio was finally informed—talk about a clueless liberal—that CAIR, an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, has ties to Islamist terrorists: Whoops, I made a boo-boo.
Obama's repeated public displays of (false) humility are a sign of the narcissism that is the abiding feature of this man's character.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:59 AM | Comments (6)