Rudi Stettner, a Member of the Winter Riders Group (also writes under the name "Magdeburger Joe"

The Truth About Jerusalem In Islam [Video]

2011-11-13T13:20:00.000-05:00

Photo by Jonas Hansel

This video is related to a posting on Globe Tribune.Info It is posted here to avoid its getting deleted from You Tube. It deals with the place of Israel, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in Islam. Because of reports that the video is offensive to Mulslims, I screened it with extreme sensitivity to the issue of incitement. On this web site, Magedeburgerjoe.com and Globe Tribune.info there is a clear policy against bigotry and incitement. This video passes those tests. Indeed, it is most informative.

Read an article based on this post on Globe Tribune.Info

Announcement to Readers

2011-04-17T11:41:00.000-04:00

Both Magdeburgerjoe.com and Rudistettner.com have been in existence since January of 2008. Both sites have followed an eclectic path, poth poliically and topically. The fact that both names are easily misspelled, as well as other technical issues have limited the growth of both sites. In response to this, a new site has been in existence since November of 2010. It is called GlobeTribune.info, and it can also be reached by the url "globetribune.com.

Globe Tribune.com will supersede Magdeburgerjoe.com and Rudistettner.com, which will both remain on line. Magdeburgerjoe.com and Rudistettner.com should really be considered the forerunners of GlobeTribune.Info.

The graphics of GlobeTribune.Info look a lot more like a news web site. Despite this, it will continue to encompass the mission of RudiStettner.com and MagdeburgerJoe.com, with an editorial policy against cutting and pasting articles from elsewhere, and instead introducing content with leadovers to original sources.

We will be producing a lot more articles than RudiStettner.com and MagdeburgerJoe.com, with the help of additional authours and editors. This is a promise we have kept since November, during which time our circulation on GlobeTribune.Info is well over double what the combined circulation of Magdeburgerjoe.com and RudiStettner.com were.

In short, this announcement does not mark the end of RudiStettner.com or MagdeburgerJoe.com, but a new chapter in the life of both sites.

Bully Video goes Viral

2011-03-16T21:11:00.000-04:00

Youtube has been repeatedly taking down this video, in which a bully finds out that it is payback time. I am posting it here, where it will be free from Youtube censorship

GlobeTribune article

Wartime Memories of a Jewish Boy in Uzbekistan

2011-03-06T19:30:00.000-05:00

The former rabbi of my shul, Rabbi Laufer, told a story of his boyhood in Uzbekistan. He teaches a class every week to a Bukharian congregation of orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. (Bukharians speak a dialect of Persian, not Yiddish.) In addition, he makes financial contributions to the upkeep of their synagogue. One day, one of the Bukharian congregants asked Rabbi Laufer as follows.
“You are from Poland. You speak Yiddish. Why do you come here to a congregation of Jews from Uzbekistan? What is your connection to us? Rabbi Laufer told them the following story

At the age of seven in 1939, I was living with my family in Poland. When Germany and the Soviet Union split Poland up( due to the Soviet German friendship treaty of 1939), we were on the German side. To save our lives, we escaped to the Soviet half of Poland. Our entire family was deported to Siberia. As presumed enemies of Germany, which was then a friend of the USSR, we were deported to Siberia. In 1941, when Germany attacked the USSR, we were transferred to Uzbekistan, where food was scarce but the climate far more benign than that of Siberia.
As religious Jews, we immediately started a secret synagogue in a basement. We had no sefer Torah( Torah scroll) and one Jewish book. It was the book of Leviticus, with the weekday prayers bound in together with it. With time, the congregation was able to acquire a few prayer books. Going to synagogue was dangerous. One Rosh HaShanah (Jewish New Year) my father was arrested in front of the entire congregation, taken away in his talis and kittel. (Prayer shawl and white robe) Congregating for prayer was illegal, and there was plenty of room in labour camps for those who didn’t care that it was.
Before Purim, we always tried to read Parshas Zecher, preferrably from a Sefer Torah .(The portion dealing with wiping out Amalek, the sworn enemy of the Jewish people) We had no Torah scroll. A few short years ago, we had been back in Poland, with an openly functioning kheder (Jewish school) and a synagogue full of seforim. (Jewish books) It felt bleak.

Click here to read complete story on GlobeTribune.Info

Obama Whispers Support For Iranian Protests [Video]

2011-02-23T09:47:00.000-05:00

It is interesting to contrast President Obama’s actions towards Egypt during its protests with his tepid support of protesters in Iran. Towards the end of Hosni Mubarak’s time in office, President Obama made it abundantly clear that he wanted Mubarak to step down. When asked at a press conference, President Obama stated that he felt that protesters in Iran should have the same rights as Egyptians have to voice opposition to their government. He qualified this statement of support with the statement that America did not have the right to the the Iranian government what to do.

Click here to read the rest of the article on Globetribune.Info

Public School Teachers: Not My Kids

2011-02-23T09:45:00.000-05:00

A big source of opposition to state tuition vouchers comes from unions representing public school teachers. From New Jersey to Wisconsin, any challenge to benefits and pay received by teachers is countered by a media blitz of opposition.
Where do public school teachers send their kids? The answer might surprise you. According to a study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 25 percent of teachers in Baltimore and Washington send their kids to private schools. Nationwide, one in five public school teachers sends their child to a private school. In some large cities, the percentage of public school teacher’s children in private aschools was way above the nationalaverage of 20%. The Washington Times notes as follows.

Click here to read the rest of the articl e on GlobeTribune.Info

Needed: A Conservative Alternative to NPR

2011-02-02T11:24:00.000-05:00

Right now there is a division in the broadcast media into spheres of influence. Television news, outside of Fox News is mostly well left of centre. Talk radio on the other hand is a medium in which the right has an upper hand.

There is one area that is solidly to the left, and that is National Public Radio. Despite its political orientation, it is a pleasure to listen to. They go into depth on a topic and provide background behind the issues as they see it. They will sometimes go totally off the beaten path and cover an endangered language or popular music other than American music. They can and do get their listeners interested in things they didn't know existed.

The problem with National Public Radio is that it tends to have a left leaning bias. If someone is anti western, they are very likely to get an abundance of sympathy from the program directors. There is to be expected. Even when you present the news, what you leave on the cutting room floor can be a subconscious political decision.

There is not a single politically conservative equivalent of National Public Radio. We have the National Review, the Hoover Digest and Hillsdale College making their own unique contributions to political discourse coming from the right. The list of conservative publications is considerable. But there is not one politically conservative equivalent of NPR, despite the fact that there is charm, allure and value to the tone and format of NPR.

NPR attracts not only government subsidies but corporate sponsors and "listeners like you".If "Conservative Public Radio" wrote off government subsidies and went exclusively for private sponsorship, that could attract a lot of public support. Conservatives attack NPR for taking government money. If CPR could make a successful launch without milking the taxpayers, it could be a challenge to NPR to do likewise

It is time for the political right to challenge the boundaries we now have in news programming. Imagine the slogan. "CPR. Reviving political discourse in America with intelligent news programming." It has a nice sound, doesn't it?

What Makes a Country and What Keeps it Together?

2011-01-31T11:00:00.000-05:00

What does it take to make a country last? On one side of the Aisle, you have France, Italy and Germany, which are all composed of regions with distinct identities and in some cases distinct languages. France has Alsatian, Provencal, Breton and Corsican, to name a few local languages. Italy has Piedmontese, Sicilian, Sardinian and Barese, to name a few. Germany has Bavarian and Plattdeutsch, and even a Slavic language known as Sorbian.Switzerland goes further than any country in making its very diversity the core of its identity.

In all of these countries, there is a firm commitment to remaining one country, despite strong regional identities and loyalties.

On the other side of the aisle are Yugoslavia, which had an explosive divorce, and Czechoslovakia, which had such a civilised breakup that it was more like an Ingmar Bergman movie. Like many civilised divorces, one was left wondering why they couldn't have put the same effort into staying together as they did into breaking up.

It was almost understandable why the USSR broke up. You had seething local resentments at being eclipsed culturally and economically by Russia. The Baltic nations were forced to join the USSR. And the Ukraine had the bitter memories of the forced famine of 1932-33.

So why do some nations break up and others stay together. Yugoslavia was more a state of mind than anything else at the end of World War I when it was founded. Slovenia and Croatia were loyal to teh Roman Catholic Church. Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro were more Eastern Orthodox. Then there was, of course the Muslims, who generally practiced a very assimilated and Western form of Islam. Maybe Yugoslavia was built on too many ethnic and political fault lines.Perhaps it took an emperor or a strong man like Tito to pull them all together.

Countries like Iraq, Syria and Lebanon owe their borders to colonialism. After independence, Kurds Arabs and Assyrians in Iraq ask themselves what they really have in common. Iran has Turkmen, Arab, Baluchi and other minorities who together make up about half of Iran's population. What will keep Iran together. Will it be a dictator or will they need an enemy like the US or Israel?

The US has various competing historical narratives. The north and the south, black and white, English speakers and Spanish speakers all have had different experiences in America and therefore different historical narratives. What will it take to keep us together as a nation.

A great deal went into forming the different pieces in the map of the world. countries that we see on the map as one colour actually incorporate a great deal of diversity. What brings these nations together and what keeps them that way?

The following are Catalonian and Basque anthems. The last song is a patriotic song recorded by the Corsican Liberation Front

Disorder In Class: A Look At Three Classrooms

2011-01-19T12:28:00.000-05:00

Three scenarios of classroom disorder flashed through my mind today. All were very different, yet shared a common denominator.

The first location is the English class in a yeshiva. Not all English classes in Yeshiva are disorderly. Some yeshiva administrators have high behavioral and academic expectations. In those yeshivas where this is not the case, students quickly pick up the message that they are not to take English seriously. Gerry Albarelli tells the story in his book "Teacha Teacha" of his year teaching in a chassidic yeshiva and paints a vivid picture of the experience.

The second scenario of classroom disorder was one that I experienced personally, that of a CCD class. CCD stands for "Confraternity Christian Doctrine" and it is a class that is taught once a week for a couple of hours. The class deals with all aspects of Catholic teaching.
When I was in such classes, they were taught by nuns whose clerical garb was melting into the sartorial mainstream like the vestiges of snow in early March. The best way to describe such classes is that they were exercises in crowd control.

In one class, a boy I remember as Kevin suggested that we be allowed to tell jokes.

"As long as they are suitable for a nice Catholic boy." the sister primly replied,

"In that case, forget about it." Kevin answered.

That was one of the quiet moments. Most of the time you could hear the classes outside the building.

The last example I heard of persistently disorderly education was afternoon Hebrew school. I heard about it from my friends who belonged to synagogues. I always felt sorry for them missing three afternoons of play a week. It seemed to me like they were being kept after school for being Jewish. A Jewish day school with afternoons free for play made a lot more sense to me.

I heard occasional stories from kids who were motivated to Hebrew literacy and Jewish commitment through their day school experience. I heard a lot more stories about boredom and acting up. In many cases, a bar mitzvah marked the end of a Jewish education.

One friend of mine told me of his life back in the 1930's he took a brick in his jacket one day to brandish at his Hebrew school teacher who had hit him one too many times. Although that was his last day in Hebrew school, he still grew up, appropriately enough to be a Jewish militant, dishing out the same pugnaciousness to anti semites who thought that Jews were an easy mark.

One common denominator to all of the experiences I have summarised is that each class had been labeled as secondary in importance. In yeshiva, English studies were secondary and in after school religious instruction, both Jewish and Catholic, it was clear that secular studies took priority.

In any recipe, you have a list of ingredients. When you bake bread, flour and water figure most prominently. If you leave out yeast or eggs, if they are called for in the recipe, you will have something that can be referred to as bread that might be barely edible.

A religious Jew who neglects secular studies may well find himself stuck in a lower paying job that soaks up time that could have been spent learning Torah or with his family. Failure to learn secular studies ultimately results in diverting time away from learning Torah.

Conversely, a person who is adept at secular studies but cares nothing for his or her faith and traditions does not pass these traditions on to the next generation. The achievements of such a person are far less likely to strengthen a faith community. At the extreme, they could become a money making machine divorced from a moral foundation.

While working in a bookstore years ago, I helped sort out the library of an old German doctor. His medical textbooks had pictures of burn and frostbite victims and a copyright date in the early 1940's. It was clear that these were the infamous photos of Nazi medical experiments, in which prisoners were burned and frozen. It was a chilling and graphic illustration of what happens when secular knowledge is detached from morality.

There are three dimensions to education.

The first is practical knowledge, reading writing, math and science, that one needs to earn a living and function in the world.

The second is education that enables one to appreciate the world, its beauty and the origins of its civilisations. A person who is properly educated in this regard is never bored. For them, every tree is a lesson, every word on the printed page is an artifact in a museum.

The third and most important dimension of education is moral. Freedom from fear of one's neighbours comes from internalised restraints. A society in which a Seeing Eye is a factor is a society that has far less need of undercover and secret police. Societies in which public order, with its roots in moral restraint prevails is a society in which wealth can be accumulated without fear and enjoyed. Moral behavior is tied to public order, which is tied to prosperity.

Education does not end in school. Ideally, the classroom is like training wheels on a bicycle, it is a means of support until one can learn on one's own.

Whether one places a higher value on religious or secular studies should be immaterial. Just because something is less important does not mean that it is unimportant. It is far better to think of the various sorts of knowledge as ingredients in a recipe, none of which should be left out and all of which should be added in the proper manner and sequence.

A Memorable Conversation From Shul

2011-01-08T23:20:00.000-05:00

There is a panhandler who comes to my morning minyan who looks to be well past the age of retirement. He speaks a beautiful Yiddish with a slight slavic accent, the kind of Yiddish that was not learned in America. Rather than work the crowd, he lingers in shul. He's polite in response to small donations and gives a warm expression of blessing to someone who gives him paper money.

Friday morning, my curiosity got the better of me, and I asked him where he was from, that he spoke such a beautiful Yiddish. He said that he was from a small town in Ukraine. His parents spoke to him in Yiddish, but he winced in embarrassment when his mother called out to him at dinnertime.

"Chaimke kum a kaim."

In his small village, he dis not want to advertise his Jewishness on the street.He went to communist schools, but his grandmother told him as much as she could about Judaism. He and his family were relocated to the Urals far to the east before the Germans reached his shtetl. It was one of the few kindnesses of Stalin's regime to the Jews, and it saved his life.

After the war, the climate changed. Contacts with relatives abroad became dangerous. His mother had two brothers in the US. They wanted to send money to their sister and her family. She wrote back and told them not to write anymore. She was afraid that a contact with Americans could mean trouble for her and her family.

Chaim tells me that the things he learns in shul and the atmosphere he absorbs means more to him than the few dollars he collects. Speaking with him is a vivid reminder to me that history and local politics touch real human beings.

I always check what I read in the papers and the books against the recollections of flesh and blood human beings. Each human being is a library, and there is much knowledge to be gained from passers by. I look forward to speaking to Chaim again, to learning some new Yiddish words and to read some new pages of history not found in books.

Prison Librarian Shares His Experiences In “The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian”

2011-01-02T19:17:00.000-05:00

Particularly among crime victims and their families, the issue of prison can evoke a visceral response. The desire to put together a forbidding punitive environment for society’s malefactors is a compelling drive for many. Avi Steinberg worked for two years as a librarian in the Suffolk County House of Correction at South Bay, Massachusetts, running the library and supervising prisoners who assisted in its operation. In his book, “Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian.”, he provides many humanising portrayals of prisoners who ran and used the library that he ran.

The library in prison had the feel of its counterpart in the free world, with the notable difference that it lacked internet connections. Steinberg portrayed various people whose lives were touched by the library, such as Fat Kat, a man who was serving time for drug dealing who ended up developing a side of himself as a librarian that was instrumental in his rehabilitation. Another inmate he portrayed was a woman with a child who was living with relatives who had never been to a library outside of prison. So inspired was she by her experiences as a library patron that she promised to make a weekly visit with her daughter to the library upon her release.

Steinberg also portrayed other more peculiar aspects of the prison library, such as prisoners leaving each other messages in between the pages of books. Some people only came for movies and pimp biographies. Despite some of the less inspired uses for the prison library, Steinberg showed clearly how the world of the written word could elevate people who had forfeited their freedom to the state.

Most prisoners will return to society, and Steinberg makes a compelling case for introducing rehabilitative influences into the prison environment.

Read more about Steinberg and his book on Boston.com

Hermann Goering Psychiatric Evaluation Made Public After 65 Years

2010-12-30T16:38:00.000-05:00

Douglas M. Kelley was given an unusual assignment for any psychiatrist, one in which he had to balance his role as an employee of the US government and a doctor to the top Nazi war criminal in custody. He spent months interviewing and evaluating Goering, developing a detailed picture of his personality and what drove him in his personal and professional life. For 65 years, Kelley’s family had kept the papers pertaining to the Goering evaluation under wraps. Like the infamous man he treated and evaluated, Kelley bit down on a cyanide capsule in what many believe was a drunken suicidal gesture that went horribly awry. This horrifying moment ended Kelley’s short life in 1958. Undoubtedly it took great courage for his family to reopen a book that had been closed for over 50 years.

Scientific American published an article by Jack El Hai, based on a detailed examination of Dr. Kelley’s contact with Hermann Goering. Contrary to popular conceptions prevalent at the time, he found Goering to be clinically normal. El Hai described Kelley’s opinion as follows.

“He believed that Goering and his cohorts were commonplace people and that their personalities “could be duplicated in any country of the world today.” In the years before and during World War II, the opportunity to obtain power led them to embrace a chilling political philosophy. In other words, the Holocaust and the war’s other heinous crimes were the products of healthy minds.”

From Pol Pot in Cambodia to the Interahamwe in Rwanda, it is clear that genocidal impulses are alive and well in the human race. Whatever morbid fascination we may have with dictators, it is clear that countless normal people act as enablers when a society decides to euthanise its collective conscience.

The Goering psychiatric evaluation is a fascinating study of a man and the effect that working with him had on the psychiatrist who treated him. Anyone who is interested not only in the psychological drives of leaders and how they influence society at large should find the opening of the Goering psychiatric evaluation to be fascinating reading.

Scientific American article on Douglas Kelley and Hermann Goering (short version)

Phonics vs "Whole Word" Methods Of Learning To Read

2010-12-25T21:41:00.002-05:00

English stands apart among the major western languages, along with French because of its maddening departures from phonetic spelling. The silent "e" at the end of so many letters, silent "gh", "ph" that sounds like the letter "f" are among the features that make English spelling daunting to someone who is not a native speaker.

When I was a child, an educational fad swept public schools across the nation, of teaching "whole words". In this method of teaching, a student looks at a word and memorises it the same way a Chinese child would equate a character in Chinese with a word. Of course, Chinese is not a phonetic language but a pictographic language. English, despite its numerous detours from common sense, remains phonetic at its core. Exceptions to the rules can be taught.

Using millions of American children in the "whole word" experiment was a disaster. Children taught under this method lagged behind children who learned the phonics system. I was blessed with parents who saw the folly of "whole word" reading and who put me in a private school that used the phonics method.

Fortunately, the battle against this harmful educational fad is still being fought. One of my fellow bloggers, Bruce D Price on Rantrave.com is a writer, a poet and an advocate of phonics. He presents a persuasive case for phonics. Anyone who is sending children to school should familiarise themselves with this issue. I am providing some links for the benefit of my readers to educate themselves on this pressing issue, which has exacerbated the problems in our country of functional illiteracy and dysexia.

Bruce Price article on phonics and "whole word" teaching methods.

Improve Education.org

Here are some great Tom Lehrer videos that explore phonics

YouTube Shrink Wraps Pro Israel Videos

2010-12-19T15:03:00.002-05:00

YouTube provides a forum to millions of people from around the world for everything from opinion to instruction, from entertainment to family videos. Understandably, they need a mechanism in place to remove material that is offensive, indecent or infringes upon copyright law. A lot of people vent their anger at each other. Serbs and Croats, Greeks and Turks as well as Democrats and Republicans diss and disagree with each other regularly. Sometimes it gets over the top, and YouTube removes the offending video. Other times, the video is deemed offensive enough that one has to log in as an adult and promise to absolve YouTube of any culpability for being offended. This is a needed protective mechanism, but one that can be misused.

Sometimes, it is not violence or sexual impropriety that gets a video quarantined, but the political sensitivities of a lobbying group. I have found two videos that were stirring in their presentation of the State of Israel as a law abiding and decent nation, faced with murderous opponents. There is one user on YouTube named puttingitmildly, who abides by any reasonable code of internet conduct in refraining from incitement, bigotry or obscenity.

Despite this, his video "I Am Israel" has been quarantined with TouTube's "offensive content" designation, which has been misused with regularity by Israel's opponents on YouTube. I viewed the entire video and found no racism, profanity or graphic depictions of violence. The video defended Israel and described the actions of its opponents in a manner that was well within any reasonable person's definition of reasonably conducted political debate.
In the interests of free speech, and because I support the message of both videos, I have uploaded both "I am Israel and "I am Palestine" to my web site "RudiStettner.com I have also cross posted this article on Globe Tribune.Info.

I do not support racism, profanity or obscenity at all on my own web sites, and I find the videos well within the parameters I have established for reasonable political discourse. At some later date I may well focus on racist and bigoted videos that have yet to be flagged on YouTube. My hunch is that a lot of the censorship and moderating that is done on YouTube is done by tabulating the number of caomplaints rather than judging their actual merit. I do not believe that YouTube has an anti Israel bias. Unless Blogger gives me a hard time, I expect these videos to be up for a while. I thank blogger in advance for their accomodation.

I am Palestine

I am Israel

Breaking The Wine Glass At A Jewish Wedding

2010-12-16T10:13:00.000-05:00

At a Jewish wedding, the ceremony is always concluded by the breaking of a wine glass, traditionally under the foot of the groom. The most common explanation for this is to remind those assembled at the wedding that even the times of our greatest joy are diminished by the destruction of the Bet HaMikdash, the Holy Temple.

A friend of mine, Simcha Adelstein, heard a different explanation from his grandmother, Sosha bas Shimon, a woman who grew up in the Ukraine steeped in Jewish tradition.

According to Sosha bas Shimon, a critical thing to note in the breaking of a wine glass is that the break is permanent. A wine glass can not, practically speaking ever be reassembled. According to Sosha bas Shimon, breaking the wine glass is an expression of hope that the couple being married should have a marriage as irrevocably permanent as the broken state of a wine glass, that like the shattered goblet, that the marriage should likewise be permanent.

It is most natural to see the breaking of a useful object as something negative. This interpretation of a distinctive part of a Jewish wedding extracts a positive message, a message of hope. This approach to life, of seeing the good in what seems on the surface to be negative, is an approach that strengthens any relationship. It is certainly a desirable attitude with which to begin a marriage.

There is wisdom not only in books, but in the people whose lives are shaped by those books. My friend Simcha learned a valuable lesson from his grandmother, a lesson cloaked in a metaphor that lends added resonance to one of life's truths. I thank my friend reb Simcha for sharing the wisdom of his grandmother. May her memory be a blessing.

Crash Tax Proposed To Pay For Emergency Services In NYC

2010-12-13T17:37:00.000-05:00

New Yorkers are seriously concerned about a proposed "Crash Tax" that will be levied effective July 1st in New York City. Under the measure anyone involved in a crash on the city streets can be sent a bill for emergency services. The Wall Street Journal describes the measure as follows.

"A vehicle fire or any other incident with injuries will cost $490. A vehicle fire without injuries will cost $415. And incidents without fire or injuries will cost $365.
These charges apply to every vehicle involved in the incident."

The measure will be enacted not by the City Council but by decree of the fire department. The Fire Department will have discretion at the scene of whether or not to bill people at the scene of an accident. The entire measure is being pushed through by administrative decree. An additional problem is that most New Yorkers do not have insurance that will cover ambulance fees levied by the city. Even those who do not have an accident are likely to pay increased insurance premiums.

According to the Wall Street Journal, some localities have banned the practice of fining people at the scene of an accident.

An additional unintended consequence of sending bills for accidents is that some people who need medical attention might leave the scene of an accident by common agreement in order to avoid being fined. If someone is suffering from a concussion or internal bleeding, this could have fatal consequences.

There is nothing wrong with fining people after due process and forwarding the proceeds to the Fire Department. What is being proposed with the "crash tax" is a denial of the rights of the people to due process and an attempt to bypass the legislature of the City of New York. The measure should be scrapped.

WSJ article

An Update On Globe Tribune.Info

2010-12-09T22:03:00.001-05:00

I have spent the last couple of days focusing on attempting to launch my new news site, Globe Tribune.Info. At the last minute, I managed to stop a launch of the site which would have been disastrously inappropriate to my needs. In the long run, it will save me money, but I did pay a cancellation fee. The technical end of running a web site is truly bewildering. Fortunately, I am getting some guidance. Once the site is up, I will be able to establish my focus, tone and priorities. Until the setup is done, I will be tied up in the end of running a news site that I least enjoy, which is the technical end of things.

Once I have my platform set up, I expect to be posting with much greater frequency, doing what I enjoy most, which is presenting news, world music and other matters of interest to me.

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Although I try in my focus to be sensitive to the tastes of my readers, I still like to be at times recklessly indifferent to popular taste in my choice of topic. It is in this spirit that I offer my readers some very nice music from Berdi & B, a musical group from Turkmenia.

Soldat Louis, Brittany and Celtic Music [Video and Audio Link With French and English Language Advisory]

2010-12-07T18:51:00.001-05:00

The part of France known as Brittany fascinates me. A significant number of people in Brittany speak Breton, which belongs to the Celtic family of languages, along with Irish and Scottish Gaelic. The language is continuing to be passed on, thankfully to a younger generation. A paradoxical effect of the institution of the European Union is that regional languages such as Catalan in Spain and France as well as Piedmontese in Northern Italy are making a comeback.

I heard a story about a farmer in Brittany who was proudly Breton, and wanted to give his children Celtic rather than French names. The French government had a law that required people in France to give their children French names from an approved list.

This stubborn farmer, who had 10 children refused to give his children French names. The government retaliated by refusing to give the farmer his monthly subsidy for each child. He took the French government to court.

After years, he was allowed to name his children according to Breton traditions and received every Franc of monthly subsidies for the years that the case dragged on in court. As an added bonus, he received interest on the payments that were withheld from him, his wife and family. I wish I could find this story in the news. I greatly admire those who are willing to go to impractical lengths to preserve their heritage. One of the things that the Jews in Egypt did was very similar. They named their children with Jewish rather than Egyptian names.

One of my favourite Breton singers is a group with a lead singer named Soldat Louis, which translates as "Private Louis". Some of his songs express solidarity with the Irish in Northern Ireland. Breton Flags are a common sight at his concerts. Some of his music falls under the genre of French drinking songs. A lot of the music sounds like Irish music, with bagpipes and a Celtic beat. I have not found any Soldat Louis songs in Breton. I am looking for music in Breton that would fit into the folk rock genre. I'm sure it is out there.

I found a song "Juste un gigue en do", which translates as "Just a jig in C". I ran it through Google translate, which provided a very sketchy translation which was very sketchy and incoherent. I could tell that it was laced with French profanity and expressed anger and cynicism about the government. It sounded like me when I'm blowing off steam about politics after a few shots of slivovitz and some beer chasers. There are some IRA songs that curse out the British that have a somewhat similar feel.

I grew up around Boston, where the Irish influence is strong. My thoughts often return to Ireland, Celts and Celtic heritage, especially when I read of Israel's independence struggle against the British. I hope my readers will appreciate the music I have presented today.

Sexual Abuse Allegations Stun Brooklyn Orthodox Jewish Community

2010-12-05T13:01:00.000-05:00

The latest news about Gershon Kranczer, 58,is not encouraging. According to the Daily News, Kranczer and his 20 year old son have fled to Israel on the heels of allegations that Kranczer has sexually abused four of his daughters, ranging in age from 8 to 20. The minor children in the Kranczer home have been removed by child welfare authorities. Investigations are under way to determine if additional children may have been involved in the alleged abuse.

At this point, no one has been found guilty. But if Kranczer and his son have fled to Israel, they should be returned to face justice. If they are guilty, they should face real jail time, and if they are innocent, the story of their exoneration should appear as prominently in the news as that of their arrest. Israel is meant to be a place of refuge from persecution and a place of welcome to Jews returning to their homeland. It is not meant to be a place of refuge for rapists and murderers.

Are Kranczer and some of his sons guilty of awful crimes? We don't know. Sadly enough, past abuse scandals in orthodox Jewish communities render such accusations thinkable. It would be good if we could be a light unto the nations by virtue of being free from sexual abuse. But if we have not reached that lofty level, it is at least possible to set an example by isolating and resolutely punishing such behavior.

We do not have a Sanhedrin that can rule in capital cases. We as Jews do not have a Jewish court system that addresses the full range of civil and criminal law. Our rabbinical courts are decentralised and struggle to deal equitably with civil and monetary matters.This being the case, there should be no hesitation in cooperating fully with the Israeli and US governments in extraditing alleged criminals who are accused of incest, rape, murder or other grave offenses.

Once someone is convicted, two things should be borne in mind.

1) The shame belongs not to the victim but to the perpetrator.

2) If someone brings a truthful accusation against a sex offender, it is not their responsibility for having besmirched someone's name, but the responsibility of the perpetrator.

We read about the crime of being "moises u mediach" of sinning and leading others to sin. Sexual abuse and other forms of abuse lead people to abandon Judaism. An abuser is as guilty of this as anyone who attempts to get a Jew to convert to another religion or otherwise abandon Judaism.

I don't know what happened in the Kranczer home. The courts will have to sort that question out. What I do know, is that abuse has happened often enough in our community to make the charges thinkable. By dealing seriously with allegations of sexual abuse, and exiling known perpetrators from our midst, we will take the first steps needed to correct this problem.

Daily News story on sex abuse allegations

Fond Thoughts Of Munkacs on Channukah

2010-12-02T22:25:00.001-05:00

It is hard to look at the Chanuka lights without thinking of people. illuminated by souls, anchored to the wick of a body and yet drawn upward in a perpetual state of tension. "Nishmas adam, ner Hashem". The soul of man is the candle of G-d. Looking at the Chanuka candles draws me to such thoughts.

Part of my ancestry is Hungarian. Marriage has drawn Carpathia into one part of my familial orbit. Carpathia fascinates me. Its local language is a mix of Slavic and Hungarian. Although it currently is in the Ukraine, it has in the past been a part of Austria Hungary. Although its inhabitants are anchored in regional loyalties, it is their borders that have wandered around them.

Munkacs, known also as Munkatch and currently known as Mukachevo is in Carpathia. In Brooklyn and elsewhere are Munkatcher Chasidim. Living in Brooklyn, I had lost my feel for their connection to that town. Fortunately, there is precious video footage of Jews who lived in Munkacs before the war. The footage captures the feel of the Chasidim in the greater social context of a fairly large town in which lived secular Jews, Zionists and "Neolog" (reform) Jews. Many, if not most of the people who appeared in the videos did not survive the war. Although the people in the video come from different social and religious sections of society, I feel a connection to all of them. I have been to family gatherings that spanned the spectrum of religious affiliation and observance.

To me, all of the people in the video are like family to me. I am grateful that some footage remains of their lives on earth. Along with love, I feel an empty echo of the descendants they should have left whose chance at life ended when these people were murdered. It is this sadness, this love and yearning that is my master key to understanding other peoples who have faced genocide and mass murder in this century, from the Tutsi of Rwanda to the Africans of the Sudan who are murdered and enslaved under Arab apartheid. Not a day goes by that I don't think of the sparks of life in Munkacs and elsewhere that were extinguished and dispersed. The drive to kindle lights and lives in their memory is a powerful one.

I have left the room in which my Chanuka lights flicker to face my computer screen and kindle the flame of memory. May we all be blessed with peace and light in this season of Chanukah.
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The pictures above were shot by Roman Vishniac in Poland. They show Jews who are hiding from the Endeks, a Nazi like group that was active in Poland before the German occupation of that country.

Obama's Own Cuban Missile Crisis

2010-12-01T19:49:00.000-05:00

Back in 1962, when the Soviet Union wanted to station nukes in Cuba, the Kennedy administration blockaded Cuba to stop the transportation of nuclear weapons to Cuba. The crisis, which started in mid October 1962, was defused by the end of October of that year. Historians generally agree that the crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Today, it is not Castro's Cuba but the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez that presents a similar threat to peace in the Western hemisphere. In a story largely overlooked in the western news media, Germany's Die Welt reported last week that Venezuela has agreed to host a military base with medium range missiles that could reach the United States. The base would be staffed by Iranian missile specialists as well as members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

The base will also be a storage facility for Iranian weapons, which will as part of the cooperation agreement between Iran and Venezuela be made available to the Hugo Chavez government in case of an emergency.

Die Welt reported that the troubling arrangement is the fruition of a meeting and resolution of Supreme Security Council of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and religious leader Ali Khamenei a few months ago. Venezuela is a major repository of uranium reserves and therefore useful in circumventing efforts to deprive Iran of material for its nuclear program. Flights between the two countries take place , in a military section of Venezueala's international airport away from international scrutiny.

The United States government, of course views the close cooperation between Venezuela and Iran with alarm and concern. Despite this,the extensive military cooperation between the two countries continues unhindered, causing intense concern not only in the United States but among Venezuela's neighbours as well.

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Following is the original article in Die Welt as well as its Google translation.

Child Robbed At Gunpoint In Crown Heights

2010-11-30T15:48:00.000-05:00

For the second time in about a week, a 10 year old kid has been robbed in Crown Heights. In the first case, which occurred on November 25, a boy was coming home from yeshiva and was approached by a man who was about 20 years of age who was riding a bicycle. The man asked the boy for the time and when the boy said he didn't have the time then demanded his knapsack. In the course of the incident, the man then fled on his bicycle with the boy's knapsack, running him over and causing some injuries as he did so.

The second incident was a good deal more serious. A 10 year old boy was grabbed from behind by an unidentified assailant in front of the laundromat in front of the laundromat at Troy Avenue and Crown Street. Crown Heights.Info described the incident as follows.

"The terrifying incident took place at around 4:15pm in front of the Laundromat on Crown street and Troy Avenue, where the boy was suddenly grabbed from behind and was told calmly “don’t scream, I have a gun…” and the mugger pressed a hard object into his back “…can you feel it?” paralyzed with fear the boy nodded, “hand over your phone, and then keep walking away calmly and do not yell, if you do I will shoot you.” And the mugger ran off."

This is the second crime against a minor in less than a week. Being threatened with a gun is a traumatising experience. Crown Heights.Info should be applauded for highlighting these incidents, because all too often, violent crimes in Crown Heights have been classified out of existence. How this gunpoint robbery and the earlier bicycle attack will be handled by police depends in good part on how they are classified. Too many Crown Heights residents have been stonewalled when attempting to simply get a complaint number for a crime committed against them. Too many times, crimes get "dumbed down" to minor offenses.

A possible solution to this would be for Crown Heights residents to register their complaints not only with police but to share the same information with a civilian, non governmental organization that would check police records to assure that the crime was recorded correctly and that the police report was not "lost" or misclassified as something trivial. This could be a function of a civilian patrol or a community group.

Crime hurts everyone here in our community. Despite the fact that the last two incidents were "black on white" does not negate the fact that many African Americans and Hispanics in our community have been victimised as well. The war on crime should bring us together, not set us against each other. No child in our community should fear walking to or from school. And that is why all of us who live in Crown Heights must take the latest incidents seriously.

Classic Banned German Cigarette Cartoon Ads

2010-11-26T15:31:00.002-05:00

In America, back in the days when we had cigarette ads on television, you could even find Fred Flintstone selling Winston cigarettes. How many people were conditioned from an early age to smoke by seeing their favourite cartoon hero lighting up a Winston? Banning those ads was a good idea.

In Germany, there was a cartoon character named "HB Mannchen" (Little HB man") who from 1957 to 1984 used to get into comically stressful situations and find relief with a cigarette. conveniently for the producers of HB cigarettes, it was always an HB cigarette that calmed the HB man down. "HB Mannchen" commercials ran from 1957 to 1984, although at the end of their run, they only appeared in movie theatres. They reinforced the idea that you reached for a cigarette to calm your nerves, a notion that makes sense only if you are addicted to nicotine.

The idea of using cartoons to push tobacco is awful. Despite that, these ads are classic. Advertising is a battle for the mind of the consumer, and I always enjoy seeing how such battles are waged. "HB Man is a classic of this genre. Here are a few of the ads.

Update On Globe Tribune.Info

2010-11-20T23:12:00.000-05:00

My new site, Globe Tribune.Info is being developed. Far from being an inactive or abandoned project, I am working actively on user friendly design with simple graphics. Unlike my past attempts at publishing, the content will be hosted on Globe Tribune.Info rather than having GlobeTribune.Info simply forward to the Blogger web site. The new site will look far more professional than the current page. Until the new site is fully operative, here is a link to the old site.

Click Here

Iraqi Mandaean Survival Endangered By Dispersion

2010-11-18T11:41:00.001-05:00

One of the casualties of the war in Iraq has been the presence of the Mandaean community in Iraq. The Mandaeans are a gnostic, monotheistic religion that venerates John the Baptist and prohibits circumcision. They are completely pacifist and do not accept converts. The only way to become a Mandaean is to be born to two Mandaean parents.

Mandaean faith is not only individual and familial but communal. They require running water for their weekly baptism rituals and access to Mandaean clergy. In the course of the war in Iraq and because of persecution in Iran, 60,000 Mandaeans have fled Iran and Iraq in recent years. Lack of education in their faith has resulted in the decline of Mandaeanism in exile. The older generation that grew up in Iraq fears that they may be the last generation to practice the faith.

Getting one nation to accept a bloc of refugees from one ethnic group is difficult. Boston.com quotesVincent Cochetel, who represents the UN High Commisioner for refugees explained the problem as follows.

"It makes sense to keep them together, but no one nation can provide them with effective protection," said Cochetel, who represents the U.S. and the Caribbean for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "Nations also have to take into consideration affordable housing available. That's just the social reality."

That may well be the case, but Mandaeans seem to be very good low risk candidates to accept as refugees. They are pacifists, they do not proselytise and have an attitude of extending charity to Mandaean and non Mandaean alike.

The largest community of Mandaeans in the US is the greater Boston area with about 450 of them.It would be good for the various countries that have taken in Mandaeans to work with the Mandaean leadership to at least settle groups of Mandaeans in close enough proximity that they can easily maintain regular contact. The Mandaeans have endured terrible trauma as a community since the start of the war in Iraq. It is not hard to understand their desire to survive as a community. We should try to work with them on this issue.

Photo by Max Becherer