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Dec 24, 2009

CS Monitor: The end of multiculturalism

 

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The end of multiculturalism

The US must be a melting pot – not a salad bowl.

By Lawrence E. Harrison 
February 26, 2008 

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2008/0226/p09s01-coop.html

Vineyard Haven, Mass. —

Future generations may look back on Iraq and immigration as the two great disasters of the Bush presidency. Ironically, for a conservative administration, both of these policy initiatives were rooted in a multicultural view of the world.

Since the 1960s, multiculturalism has become a dominant feature of the political and intellectual landscape of the West. But multiculturalism rests on a frail foundation: cultural relativism, the notion that no culture is better or worse than any other – it is merely different.

When it comes to democratic continuity, social justice, and prosperity, some cultures do far better than others. Research at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, summarized in my recent book, "The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It From Itself," makes this clear.

Extensive data suggest that the champions of progress are the Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden – where, for example, universal literacy was a substantial reality in the 19th century. By contrast, no Arab country today is democratic, and female illiteracy in some Arab countries exceeds 50 percent.

Culture isn't about genes or race; it's about values, beliefs, and attitudes. Culture matters because it influences a society's receptivity to democracy, justice, entrepreneurship, and free-market institutions.

What, then, are the implications for a foreign policy based on the doctrine that "These values of freedom are right and true for every person, in every society"? The Bush administration has staked huge human, financial, diplomatic, and prestige resources on this doctrine's applicability in Iraq. It is now apparent that the doctrine is fallacious.

A key component of a successful democratic transition is trust, a particularly important cultural factor for social justice and prosperity. Trust in others reduces the cost of economic transactions, and democratic stability depends on it.

Trust is periodically measured in 80-odd countries by the World Values Survey. The Nordic countries enjoy very high levels of trust: 58 to 67 percent of respondents in four of these countries believe that most people can be trusted, compared with 11 percent of Algerians and 3 percent of Brazilians.

The high levels of identification and trust in Nordic societies reflect their homogeneity; common Lutheran antecedents, including a rigorous ethical code and heavy emphasis on education; and a consequent sense of the nation as one big family imbued with the golden rule.

Again, culture matters – race doesn't. The ethnic roots of both Haiti and Barbados lie in the Dahomey region of West Africa. The history of Haiti, independent in 1804 in the wake of a slave uprising against the French colonists, is one of corrupt, incompetent leadership; illiteracy; and poverty. Barbados, which gained its independence from the British in 1966, is today a prosperous democracy of "Afro-Saxons."

Immigration

Hispanics now form the largest US minority, approaching 15 percent – about 45 million – of a total population of about 300 million. They're projected by the Pew Research Center to swell to 127 million in 2050 – 29 percent of a total population of 438 million. Their experience in the United States recapitulates Latin America's culturally shaped underdevelopment. For example, the Hispanic high school dropout rate in the US is alarmingly high and persistent – about 20 percent in second and subsequent generations. It's vastly higher in Latin America.

Samuel Huntington was on the mark when he wrote in his latest book "Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity": "Would America be the America it is today if it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil."

In "The Americano Dream," Mexican-American Lionel Sosa argues that the value system that has retarded progress in Latin America is an impediment to upward mobility of Latino immigrants. So does former US Rep. Herman Badillo, a Puerto Rican whose book, "One Nation, One Standard," indicts Latino undervaluing of education and calls for cultural change.

The progress of Hispanic immigrants, not to mention harmony in the broader society, depends on their acculturation to mainstream US values. Efforts – for example, long-term bilingual education – to perpetuate "old country" values in a multicultural salad bowl undermine acculturation to the mainstream and are likely to result in continuing underachievement, poverty, resentment, and divisiveness. So, too, does the willy-nilly emergence of bilingualism in the US. No language in American history has ever before competed with English to the point where one daily hears, on the telephone, "If you want to speak English, press one; Si quiere hablar en español, oprima el botón número dos."

Although border security and environmental concerns are also in play, the immigration debate has been framed largely in economic terms, producing some odd pro-immigration bedfellows, for example the editorial pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Among the issues: whether the US economy needs more unskilled immigrants; whether immigrants take jobs away from US citizens; to what extent illegal immigrants drain resources away from education, healthcare, and welfare; and whether population growth, largely driven by immigration, is necessary for a healthy economy.

But immigration looks very different when viewed in cultural terms, particularly with respect to the vast legal and illegal Latino immigration, a million or more people a year, most of them with few skills and little education. To be sure, the US has absorbed large numbers of unskilled and uneducated immigrants in the past, and today the large majority of their descendants are in the cultural mainstream. But the numbers of Latino immigrants and their geographic concentration today leave real doubts about the prospects for acculturation: 70 percent of children in the Los Angeles public schools and 60 percent in the Denver schools are Latino.

In a letter to me in 1991, the late Mexican-American columnist Richard Estrada captured the essence of the problem:

"The problem in which the current immigration is suffused is, at heart, one of numbers; for when the numbers begin to favor not only the maintenance and replenishment of the immigrants' source culture, but also its overall growth, and in particular growth so large that the numbers not only impede assimilation but go beyond to pose a challenge to the traditional culture of the American nation, then there is a great deal about which to be concerned."

Some recommendations

If multiculturalism is a myth, how do we avoid the woes that inevitably attend the creation of an enduring and vast underclass alienated from the upwardly mobile cultural mainstream? Some policy implications, one for Latin America, the others for the US and Canada, are apparent.

We must calibrate the flow of immigrants into the US to the needs of the economy, mindful that immigration has adversely affected low-income American citizens, disproportionately African-American and Hispanic, as Barbara Jordan stressed as chair of the 1990s Immigration Reform Commission. But the flow must also be calibrated to the country's capacity to assure acculturation of the immigrants.

We must be a melting pot, not a salad bowl. The melting pot, the essence of which is the Anglo-Protestant cultural tradition, is our way of creating the homogeneity that has contributed so much to the trust and mutual identification – and progress – of the Nordic societies.

As with immigration flows of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an extensive program of activities designed to facilitate acculturation, including mastery of English, should be mounted. A law declaring English to be the national language would be helpful.

The costs of multiculturalism – in terms of disunity, the clash of classes, and declining trust – are likely to be huge in the long run. All cultures are not equal when it comes to promoting progress, and very few can match Anglo-Protestantism in this respect. We should be promoting acculturation to the national mainstream, not a mythical, utopian multiculturalism. And we should take care that the Anglo-Protestant virtues that have brought us so far do not fall into disrepair, let alone disrepute.

• Lawrence E. Harrison directs the Cultural Change Institute at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, where he also teaches. This article is adapted from a longer essay in the January-February 2008 issue of "The National Interest."


-- 
NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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Buchanan: Whites Down To 10% Of World Population By 2060— Does It Matter?

 

May 01, 2008

Whites Down To 10% Of World Population By 2060— Does It Matter?

By Patrick J. Buchanan 

http://vdare.com/buchanan/080501_population.htm

"This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper," wrote T.S. Eliot in the closing couplet of "The Hollow Men."

Eliot's poem was written after the Great War of 1914-1918 had carried off 9 million soldiers, wounded twice as many more, brought down the Romanov, Hohenzollern and Habsburgempires, and ushered onto the world stage LeninStalin, Mussolini and, soon, Adolf Hitler.

Readers have ascribed various meanings to Eliot's words. One college professor of English suggested Eliot was looking back to the "whimper" in the cradle in Bethlehem that signaled the end of the old world, the Pax Romana, and the coming of the new Christian age.

Some saw it as the whimper of a man facing the executioner's axe. Others say Eliot was referring to the middle-aged protagonist of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, who had"measured out my life with coffee spoons" and soon would"wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

Recent reports suggest God has another end in store for us.

An Augusta, Ga., group, The National Policy Institute, has meshed the figures on fertility rates with the continents and races on Planet Earth—to visualize what the world will look like in 2060. [Global White Population To Plummetdownload it here.]

In 1950, whites were 28 percent of world population and Africans 9 percent, a ratio of three-to-one. In 2060, the ratio will remain the same. But the colors will be reversed. People of African ancestry will be 25 percent of the world's population. People of European descent will have fallen to 9.8 percent.

More arresting is that the white population is shrinking not only in relative but in absolute terms. Two hundred million white people, one in every six on earth—a number equal to the entire population of France, Britain, Holland and Germany—will vanish by 2060.

The Caucasian race is going the way of the Mohicans.

Arabic peoples, 94 million at the birth of Israel in 1948, outnumbered seven to one by Europeans, will rise to 743 million in 2060, a tenfold increase, and will be 75 percent of the white population.

Fleshing out the NPI picture is the U.N. population survey of mid-2007 that points to the 21st century disappearance of Western Man.

By 2050, a fourth of all the people of Eastern Europe will have vanished. Ukraine will lose one-third of its population. Russia, 150 million at the breakup of the Soviet Union, 142 million today, will be down to 108 million.

Such losses dwarf what Hitler and Stalin together did to these countries.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said this week that Russia will have to import workers from the Caucasus, Central Asia and China, exacerbating already serious racial and religious tensions in a nation with thousands of nuclear weapons.

With Russians east of the Urals outnumbered 100 to one by the Chinese, there is little doubt who will control the oil, gas, gold and timber of Siberia and be staring hungrily across the Bering Strait at Alaska.

By 2050, Iran's population will have risen from today's 71 million to 100 million. Pakistan will add 84 million to reach almost 300 million, the U.S. population today. Afghanistan's population will triple from 27 million to 79 million. Iraq's will go from 29 million to 62 million. The destinies of these nations will be beyond the capacity of an aging, dwindling, dying West to dictate.

The U.N. statistics, however, show the populations of Northern, Western and Southern Europe stabilizing or falling only slightly.

How can this be when only Iceland and Albania have fertility rates—2.1 children per woman—that can stop population declines, and all the rest have birthrates that would put bears, birds and wolves on the endangered species list?

Answer: Western Europe's populations are being sustained by immigrants from the Maghreb and Middle East, Asia and Africa—and the baby boom among these black and brown peoples is lifting and changing the face of the Old Continent forever. Islam is returning to Iberia, Italy and the Balkans. The Third World is coming to colonize the mother countries.

And America? According to the Pew Research Center, the Hispanic population of the United States will triple to 127 million by 2050, as Mexico's population grows to 130 million. An erasure of the U.S. border, or merger of the two countries, or the linguistic, cultural and social annexation of the American Southwest by Mexico appears fated.

Yet, last October, in another Pew poll of 45,000 people in 47 countries, a majority in 46 expressed fear of a loss of their traditional culture.

Sixty-two percent of Americans told Pew we should do more to protect our way of life. Three-fourths of Americans wanted more restrictions on immigration. Yet all three presidential candidates voted amnesty for the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens.

Hopefully, the peoples of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, who are about to inherit the earth as we pass away, will treat us better than our ancestors treated them in the five centuries that Western Man ruled the world.

Otherwise, we all go out with a bang.



--
NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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The little-known Jewish holiday of Christmas Eve. Seriously. - By Benyamin Cohen - Slate Magazine

 


NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

__._,_.___
.

__,_._,___

MIND BOGGLING: Little-known Jewish holiday of Christmas Eve...

 

http://www.slate.com/id/2238708/

FAITH-BASED

Holy Night

The little-known Jewish holiday of Christmas Eve. Seriously.

By Benyamin Cohen

Updated Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009, at 7:03 AM ET


'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, Jews were playing dreidel, being celibate, and tearing toilet paper. Allow me to explain. Please.

The Jewish community has long had a tense relationship with Christmas. You wouldn't know it by the two main customs observed by many 21st-century Jews on Dec. 25: eating Chinese food and being the first to see the Christmas blockbuster. But less well-known are the more historic—and, to be blunt, more bizarre—Christmas Eve customs that Jewish communities have kept secret, even from most Jews. As a public service announcement, I'm here to let you in on what the rabbis thought about Christmas Eve. Gather round, little ones. This is a scary tale.

The Talmud, with its share of rabbinic repudiations against Jesus, was never a big fan of Christmas. Call it the Grinch. Indeed, the rabbis looked at it as a day of mourning—perhaps due to the suffering that Jews encountered in Jesus' name throughout history. And Christmas Eve—named "Nittel Nacht" by Jewish scholars in the 17th century—took on a life of its own. Some Jewish mystics were under the impression that many apostates were conceived on Christmas Eve (which is one reason the rabbis forbade sex on Dec. 24; more on that later). In Europe, the Jewish community was victim of more acts of violence on this night. All in all, it didn't end up being a festive evening for Jews.

And so the rabbis decreed that the public study hall be closed and that no Torah learning take place on this night. I guess it's our version of "Silent Night"—literally. The edict came about partially because of pogroms, but the leaders were also concerned about the popularly held belief in Judaism that studying the Torah brings spiritual benefit to the world at large. Many didn't want to make this positive contribution on what they considered a "pagan" night.

Although there is no exact demarcation as to the genesis of this odd holiday, the renowned Talmudist Rabbi Samuel Eides (commonly known as the Mahrasha in Torah circles) observed Nittel Nacht as early as the late 1500s. The Baal Shem Tov, a famous Jewish mystic and the founder of Hasidism, popularized the holiday in the 1700s. Many rabbis after him added on their own special rules. By the mid-1900s, when Judeo-Christian relations matured, the Christmas Eve customs fell mostly by the wayside as the Jewish community wanted to show their support for their Christian neighbors. While there are still some Orthodox groups that observe Nittel Nacht, these are not widespread customs among modern Jews. Indeed, in doing research for this article, I found that asking for information on Nittel Nacht was sort of equivalent to asking for directions to the nearest Freemasonry.

Although Torah study was forbidden, some privately studied what's called Toledot Yeshu—a medieval manuscript that tells the story of Jesus from a non-Christian perspective. A few didn't even sleep on Christmas Eve for fear that they might dream about Torah study. It's probably the only time the rabbis would prefer visions of sugarplums dancing in your head. Hassidic legend says that dogs, often and quizzically seen in ancient Jewish texts as a symbol of evil, appear to those who study Torah on this night.

The rabbinic sages behind Nittel Nacht also decreed that a married couple should not have sex on Christmas Eve. I guess they would shudder at all the unmarried Jews today who use the night to hook up at Jewish singles events. (There are similar customs—no Torah study, no sex, etc.—on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, the historic date on which both of the Jewish Temples were destroyed. Ironically, many rabbinic authorities actually suggest this was the actual day of Jesus' birth.)

In classic Talmudic fashion, there are debates as to when Nittel Nacht actually begins. Chaim Saiman, a law professor at Villanova who specializes in Jewish legal theory, calls it the "Russian nesting doll" theory. Ask one question and several others pop out. You can't study Torah on Christmas Eve? Great … when does that start? Midday? Sunset? Nightfall? And since Orthodox Christians observe Christmas in January, there was actually a rabbinic debate about when to "celebrate" Nittel Nacht. Not surprisingly, extra-strict Jews decided to hedge their bets and observed Nittel Nacht on both nights.

So what would Jews do on Christmas Eve?

1) Tear toilet paper. I kid you not. Bear with me, as the reason is a bit convoluted: Observant Jews do not tear anything on the Sabbath as they consider it a form of "work." As such, they either don't use toilet paper on Saturdays (opting instead for pipe-clogging tissues) or pre-rip toilet paper before sundown on Friday. (I reluctantly confess, this is something I was exposed to while growing up the son of an Orthodox rabbi.) Since Jews were not allowed to study Torah on Christmas Eve, the rabbis still wanted the community to be doing something, um, productive. So they suggested people spend the time pre-ripping toilet paper for the entire year. I wish I was joking but, alas, I am not.

2) Play cards, play chess, spin a tiny top. Many synagogues held poker games on Christmas Eve; some say this is where the custom of spinning the dreidel on Hanukkah matured from, as a way for Jews to pass to the time.

3) Everything from managing finances to reading secular books to, get this, sewing. (That last one was actually a custom of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.)

It's obviously important to keep in mind that the often bizarre customs of Nittel Nacht were, as Rabbi Ari Enkin points out, "born out of political realities rather than theological ones. … Nittel Nacht comes to us from an era when relations between Jews and Christians, the Church and Judaism, could be described as 'tense' at best. We are fortunate to be living in a day and age where relations between these two groups have flourished immensely."

I couldn't have said it better. This is an era of remarkable religious tolerance. Hanukkah menorahs get erected next to Christmas trees at the mall. Kwanzaa gets its own postage stamp. The Gap's holiday commercials name-check winter solstice. Which is why most Jews no longer celebrate (or even know about) Nittel Nacht. It is, on many levels, a holiday far past its expiration date.

Regardless, because it's the nature of the beast, there will be Jews gone rogue: holding poker tournaments and furiously ripping toilet paper this Christmas Eve. And to them I simply say, "Merry Nittel Nacht, and to all a good night."

Benyamin Cohen is the author of My Jesus Year: A Rabbi's Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith, named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. He is also the content director for the Mother Nature Network. Visit him online at www.myjesusyear.com.


Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2238708/


Copyright 2009 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC



--
NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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TABLET MAGAZINE: Have Yourself a Jewish Little Christmas

 


Here's what's new today on Tablet Magazine.

Have Yourself a Jewish Little Christmas

Music

By Marc Tracy | 7:00 am December 24, 2009

"The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ—the divinity that's the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity—and what does Irving Berlin do? He de-Christs them both! Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow." Philip Roth, in Operation Shylock, was referring to Berlin's "Easter Parade" and, of course, "White Christmas." But it's not just Berlin: as Michael Feinstein recently reminded us in the New York Times, Jews wrote lots—most—of the great American Christmas songs. David Lehman, author of A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs, from Nextbook Press, says that this Christmas phenomenon is just one example of his larger point: that the story of American popular music is massively a Jewish story. Tablet Magazine asked Lehman to list his ten favorite Christmas songs written by Jews. His only regret? "I really wish that 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' was by Jews," he says. "That would definitely be in the top five."

My Yiddishe Santa

Visual Art & Design

By Marissa Brostoff | 7:00 am December 24, 2009

For many immigrants and their children in the era of mass Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe, the ubiquitous Yiddish accent was a source of shame and a barrier to upward mobility. For the cartoonist and animator Milt Gross, that accent was the funniest thing he had ever heard.

Inheritance

Music

By Alexander Gelfand | 7:00 am December 24, 2009

When Cioma Schönhaus fled to Switzerland from Berlin on his bicycle in 1943—a story he tells in The Forger, a memoir of the four years he spent living by his wits as a Jew in the heart of wartime Germany—there wasn't much that he could take with him. Not much that he could touch, at least. "The songs from his family were the only belongings he was able to carry with him over the border," his son David said in an email to me. (The email is in German, which I don't speak. My wife, Ingrid, who attended the Swiss equivalent of junior high school with David in Basel, translated for me.) "He sang many of these songs over and over again. When he was driving the car, or walking the dog, he was always singing."

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NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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NORMAN FINKELSTEIN BEING HUMOROUS OVER AUSCHWITZ SIGN

 


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Israel demands $10 billion in Holocaust compensation from Poland for theft of Auschwitz sign — "It was made of solid oak," Israeli official explains.  ---NORMAN G. FINKELSTEIN BEING HUMOROUS



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NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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David Horowitz's BLOG: The Myth of Hitler's Pope

 


2009 DECEMBER 23


http://newsrealblog.com/2009/12/23/tis-the-season-for-holocaust-revisionism/

Google News Alert for: bishop williamson

David Horowitz's NewsReal Blog
'Tis the Season for Holocaust Revisionism
David Horowitz's NewsReal Blog
In January, the Catholic Church rightfully earned a black eye for revoking the excommunication of unrepentant Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson. ...

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NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com


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.

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