BLIND HATRED

By Ann Leslie

SO IT'S all George W. Bush's fault. President Bush is responsible for the death of British Consul General in Istanbul Roger Short, leaving his wife and three children utterly bereft. Bush killed Mr Short's secretary Lisa Hallworth who, like the consul, was blown to pieces by Thursday-'s bomb.

Bush is the reason why a busy shopping street was suddenly drenched in blood, scattered with severed hands and heads and the limbs of innocent passers
Bush is the reason why Muslin: mothers, fathers, sons and daughters are still desperately scanning hospital lists to see if their loved ones have been slaughtered like sacrificial cattle by fellow Muslims, who acted in the name of a bizarre and mutant version of Islam.

The world would obviously be much safer if Bush didn't exist; 60 per cent apparently consider him to be a danger to world peace.

Are we now so unhinged by global terror that we're actually going slightly mad? We have long ago abandoned the idea that each and every rape victim somehow "asked for it"; we regard as deeply uncivilised the idea, prevalent in some societies, that, by being raped, a woman has brought "dishonour" on her family, and therefore that she - rather than the rapist - must be punished for the crime committed against her.

Yet we say that we, and especially President Bush, because of our "provocative" actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, have "asked for" the carnage in Istanbul.

And that Muslim Turkey with a moderate Islamic government has, by being an ally of the West, also somehow "asked for" this carnage.

Frankly when I, as a Londoner, heard "my" Mayor Ken Livingstone declaring before the president arrived that Bush "is the greatest threat to life on this planet that the world has probably ever known", I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or simply be deeply embarrassed

One young woman, carrying a mass-produced placard with a portrait of Bush beneath the slogan ''The World's No. 1 Terrorist". was asked how she could accuse Bush of "terrorism" when it was bin Laden's disciples who were causing innocent people to die in the streets of Istanbul. She replied confidently: 'They're dying because of him!"

No, dear lady. they're dying, not because of Bush. but because a small and highly organised group of Islamic fascists chose to kill them. Islamic fascists have been murdering fellow Muslims for decades, long before Bush came to power.

Newspaper columns, written by journalists much younger than me, describe Bush as "the most vilified US president in history". Sorry, boys and girls, but most of you were still at school when Ronald Reagan was in the White House. He, too, was denounced as an affable but dangerous nincompoop.

(About 37 per cent of the British apparently believe "Dubya" Bush is "unintelligent" - but then they, unlike myself and others who have actually spent time with Bush one-on-one, have been deluded by the lazy media caricatures.)

You young things don't remember the uproar occasioned by Reagan's frank description of the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" (which, of course, it was).
You don't remember how, in the British House of Commons in 1982, he also gave a speech whose sentiments almost exactly mirror the speech given by President Bush on Wednesday.

Reagan said then: "I've often wondered about the shyness of some of us in the West about standing for those ideals that have done so much to ease the plight of man and the hardships of our imperfect world."

He was accused of "cultural imperialism" by stating that so-called Western values were, in fact, basic human values, and that people - whatever their culture or history - did actually want freedom whenever they were offered it: ''it would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that any people prefer dictatorship to democracy."

Today, similar "experts" denounce Bush for his refusal to believe that the Arab Muslim world is not culturally, or genetically, suited to freedom, democracy or the rule of law.

When Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided there was no 'moral equivalence" between the Soviet empire and Western democracy and that Western democracy had to be defended, they were denounced as warmongers, just as Bush is now.

To this week's protesters, Bush's "crimes" were, by implication, equivalent to those committed by Saddam Hussein. Bush, indeed, has his faults but, as far as I know,
America does not contain the mass graves of 300,000 innocent people who oppose the president; he does not cut out the tongues of those who criticise him; he does not order his army to massacre whole families, including small children who are tossed into their graves still clutching their toys; he has not gassed his own people; he has not caused the deaths of about a million of his co-religionists in order to remain in power.

Bush's vision will be vindicated in the long run, as Reagan's has been.
This vindication by history will not -- as Bush admits, and as Reagan did before him - come about easily or overnight. And yes, even in these dark and terrifying days, there is already a slim glimmer of hope.

China's Chairman Mao once declared that "the guerilla fighter is like a fish in water; and the water is the people". The more that the mass of ordinary people in the Muslim world (even those who resent the power and wealth of the West) realise that they - as much as we - are victims of Islamic fascism, the more they will turn against the "guerilla fighters" who pretend that they speak and act in their name.

We cannot, as the 'peacemongers" insist, negotiate our way to a quiet life.
The demands of those who slaughtered the innocents in Istanbul are utterly non-negotiable - because their stated aim is to destroy Western civilisation itself.
Taking refuge in trivial, self-regarding, self-deluding stunts like pulling down the effigy of Bush in Trafalgar Square will simply play into the terrorists' hands.


Excerpts from Page 64 of “THE SUNDAY MAIL” (Brisbane, Australia) of November 23, 2003

FRANCIS BELLAMY, EDWARD BELLAMY & BIGOTRY & RACISM

Pledge of Allegiance, Looking Backward

By Rex Curry


The dogma behind the Pledge of Allegiance included bigotry and racism. Francis Bellamy, the author of the Pledge of Allegiance, was a bigot.  His cousin and cohort Edward Bellamy was also a bigot.

The pledge itself was inspired by xenophobia and bigotry toward immigrants.  The United States had long been a melting pot, but the 1880s brought increased immigration, especially from countries in eastern and southern Europe. Bellamy, whose family was not native American-Indians, joined similar Americans who feared that these "new" immigrants did not have the same education and skills of those from northern European countries.  They also worried about another difference: Most of the new immigrants were Roman Catholic and Jewish.

"The hard, inescapable fact is that men are not born equal. Neither are they born free, but all in bonds to their ancestors and their environments...," Francis wrote .

As editor of the magazine "The Illustrated American," he wrote editorials denouncing immigrants from southern Europe. "A democracy like ours cannot afford to throw itself open to the world," he wrote in 1897. "Where every man is a lawmaker, every dull-witted or fanatical immigrant admitted to our citizenship is a bane to the commonwealth. Where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another every alien immigrant of inferior race may bring corruption to the stock ... there are other races (e.g Irish, Jews, Italians, Latins) which we cannot assimilate without a lowering of our racial standard."

Other Bellamy quotes: "The leaders of the negroes have been unendurable, more than the negro voters themselves ... So ... (all parties) make common cause ... for the disenfranchisement of the negro"

"peon ... a shiftless and unreliable kind. The native Mexican works only that he may ... live for a month on the rewards of a week's work."

The Pledge of Allegiance was written by people who belonged to fraternal organizations that were racist and were segregated by race and sex. Francis Bellamy was a Mason in Little Falls Lodge No. 181, in Little Falls, NY.

Francis Bellamy was assisted in writing the pledge by James Bailey Upham, a Mason in the Converse Lodge in Malden Massachusetts.  Within the Masonic order, Upham was a Knights Templar, the most esteemed and discriminating order.  The word “discriminating” is a double entendre in that the Knights Templar is the only Masonic order that excluded (and still excludes) non-Christians (people they classify as Jews, Muslims and atheists) according to the book “To the Flag” by Richard J. Ellis.  The Masons also exclude women and there is a separate “auxiliary” organization for women called the “Order of the Eastern Star.”

Francis Bellamy promoted a government take over of schools, in an effort to eliminate all of the better alternatives, and the government schools imposed racism and segregation through WWII and even the 1960's.  It was the same segregation described in the book "Equality" by Edward Bellamy (Francis' cousin) where blacks are allowed to participate in Edward Bellamy's "industrial army" but kept separate from whites. http://rexcurry.net/pledgetragedy.html

Here is a quote from Edward Bellamy's book "Looking Backward," a fantasy of totalitarian socialism "....the great nations of Europe as well as Australia, Mexico, and parts of South America, are now organized industrially like the United States, which was the pioneer of the evolution. The peaceful relations of these nations are assured by a loose form of federal union of world-wide extent. An international council regulates the mutual intercourse and commerce of the members of the union and their joint policy toward the more backward races, which are gradually being educated up to civilized institutions."

Here is another quote from "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy "Perhaps more important than any of the causes I mentioned then as tending to race purification has been the effect of untrammeled sexual selection upon the quality of two or three successive generations. I believe that when you have made a fuller study of our people you will find in them not only a physical, but a mental and mortal improvement. It would be strange if it were not so, for not only is one of the great laws of nature now freely working out the salvation of the race but a profound moral sentiment has come to it's support. Individualism, which in your day was the animating idea of society, not only was fatal to any vital sentiment of brotherhood and common interest among living men, but equally to any realization of the responsibility of the living for the generation to follow. To-day this sense of responsibility, practically unrecognized in all previous ages, has become one of the great ethical ideas of the race, reinforcing, with an intense conviction and duty, the natural impulse to seek in marriage the best and noblest of the other sex."

The bigotry of the Bellamys explains their desire for socialism, government schools and a collective robotic recitation of the same "Pledge of Allegiance" every day upon the government's cue.  Socialism and Government schools are inherently racist and bigoted in that they are used to destroy individuality, individual liberty, and are used for regimentation, and to create a homogenous society where people are taught the same things in order to think, dress and behave the same.

As in all socialist dogma, the spokesmen were terrified of "foreigners stealing or destroying local jobs" either in person by immigration or by international free trade. Under socialism, the state is obligated to prevent family fathers and mothers from becoming unemployed because 'Fremdarbeiter' (German for "foreign workers") are taking away their jobs by working for "low wages."

Of course, the only way socialists try to achieve "equality" is by making everyone equally poor, bringing everyone down to the lowest level, and even that won't work. Ultimately they have to make everyone equally dead.

"Equality" was/is a euphemistic excuse for socialism's hate-spewing radical paramilitary "industrial army" in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (62 million killed), the Peoples' Republic of China (35 million killed) and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (21 million killed) etc.  http://rexcurry.net/socialists.html  Those socialists achieved "equality" for 62 million, 35 million, 21 million people respectively.   It explains the military-socialism complex. http://rexcurry.net/pledge_military.html  

Other motivations for the pledge of allegiance included anxiety about creeping materialism, which is a form of bigotry based on envy and jealousy toward anyone who is perceived as being "better off."  At that time the Bellamys and the Knights Templar and Masons in general lamented what they called capitalism’s crass commercialism, selfish materialism, and excessive individualism.

When a socialist says he wants "equality" he is saying that he doesn't like you and doesn't like the way you are, and wants to change you and he wants to use government force to do it.  He is saying that he dislikes all people because they are "different" and have different possessions, incomes, clothes, cars, property, families, ideas, educations, successes, cultures,  languages, interests, entertainment, etc.  He is saying he wants you to believe that changing everyone is a good idea.

That is why he supports government schools, as a way to use government to force change and stop differences and make everyone a cog in an "industrial army."

It is all spelled out in the novel "Looking Backward" and its description of the totalitarianism that Francis Bellamy promoted.

Francis Bellamy wrote in ways hauntingly similar to Hitler, as evidenced by Bellamy’s words in the Illustrated American in 1897:

"The hard inescapable fact is that men are not born equal. Neither are they born free, but all in bonds to their ancestors and their environments . . . . The success of government by the people will depend upon the stuff that people are made of. The people must realize their responsibility to themselves. They must guard, more jealously even than their liberties, the quality of their blood. . . . A democracy like ours cannot afford to throw itself open to the world. Where every man is a lawmaker, every dull-witted or fanatical immigrant admitted to our citizenship is a bane to the commonwealth. Where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another every alien immigrant of inferior race may bring corruption to the stock. . . . There are races, more or less akin to our own, whom we may admit freely, and get nothing but advantage from the infusion of their wholesome blood. But there are other races which we cannot assimilate without a lowering of our racial standard, which should be as sacred to us as the sanctity of our homes."


Some people make a to do about Francis Bellamy's remark that he wanted to include "equality" with "liberty and justice for all" but that Bellamy believed that "equality" was too much of an advanced concept for society. That is because Bellamy's concept of "equality" was backward socialism. Undermining Bellamy is the proper concept of non-socialist equality that was already an established part of American history. How different would our society be today if, instead of the Pledge of Allegiance, schoolchildren (in private or home schools, of course) were required, each day, to read or recite this paragraph from the Declaration of Independence:”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”What if, instead of starting every day being marinated in the language of submission (to pledge “allegiance,” after all, is to proclaim one’s status as a vassal bound in service to a feudal lord, or “liege”), youngsters were taught, on a daily basis, the principles of self-responsibility, individual liberty, and principled rebellion? If that kind of thing were to become common, politicians and other Bellamy-supporters would simply criminalize the Declaration. They’ve done it before, and they would be more than happy to do so permanently.The sobering truth is that, due to the cultivated docility of the American populace, Jefferson’s document, much like the Constitution created eleven years later, poses no threat to the designs of socialists today.

http://members.ij.net/rex/pledgebigot.html

Controversial study gives food for thought

Excerpts from an article in “The Times” [London] of 10 November, 2003

BY GLEN OWEN

ONLY the bravest academics dare to embark on the study of comparative intelligence, a field fraught with social, racial and sexual sensitivities. Professor Richard Lynn, a fellow of the British Psychological Society and a member of the editorial boards of the journals Intelligence and Personality & Individual Differences, has often provoked controversy. Despite being described by colleagues such as Oliver James as “kindly and unbigoted”, his findings have led some students to boycott his lectures.

In 1996 he annoyed feminists by concluding that more men were winning first-class degrees because their brains were about 80 cu cm (5 cu in) larger than women's, so that more men had IQs above 130 (which he calculated was needed for such degrees). He believes that males are innately more intelligent than females by about five IQ points from the age of 21 onwards.

Two years later he enraged social reformers by arguing that the tendency for intelligent people in good careers to delay having children and to have fewer of them — compared with the average — will knock half an IQ point off the average score in each generation.

His co-author, Tatu Vanhanen, the father of Matti Vanhanen, the Prime Minister of Finland, specialises in the study of democracy, in particular the social and economic preconditions necessary for its existence.

The longest shadow hanging over psychometrics — the measurement of intelligence — comes from The Bell Curve, the 1994 book on genetic influences written by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. It claimed that blacks in Western countries scored on average 15 points below the average white IQ of 100, and that a "cognitive elite", led by Ashkenazi Jews with an average IQ of 115, would come to lead developed societies. Opponents said the statistics were flawed and called the book racist.

IQ tests are nearly a century old. They were first used in France in 1904 to identify intelligent children, but adapted in the First World War to decide who should be promoted and who would remain in the ranks

IQ (Intelligence Quotient) is not a measure of general knowledge but instead how your mind thinks. It measures different aspects of the brain's skills, including verbal and non-verbal reasoning, visual abilities and mental arithmetic

The link to the full article from which this excerpt was taken is here

LEFTIST LATIN AMERICA

Brazilian blogger Luis Afonso blogs in Portuguese so he has sent me this English language summary of his present concerns about Latin America:

Some worrying news from Latin America... The events in Bolivia have flashed an alarm...

We didn’t notice that while we were worried about Brazil-Venezuela-Cuba connection, a newer link arose: Bolivia and its future cocaine-planters-defender president Evo Morales.

Morales is not yet the president, but the way he manipulated the poor population (of the poorest country of Latin America) to remove Lozada from the presidency suggests that the same thing will happen with the vice-president, until Evo himself reaches the presidency...

What was terrible was the international silence about this "coup détat". Here in Brazil all newspapers claimed that "peace" returned to the country...

Other bad news for us is that the accusations about connection between Cuba and Brazil (which Lula da Silva denied during the election race last year) are true: Brazil is sending money from our National Investment Fund to Cuba... I think Brazil (despite our poor situation) is going to be Cuba´s savior (like USSR once was..)

It´s depressing... I hope we may be better some day but I think Latin America is drowning....

A Rose on the Crematorium

By Arlene Peck

Describe Krakow? That's easy. It's a city full of cobblestone streets, interesting yet dismal buildings and a feeling that time stopped in 1955. Walking down the narrow streets, it's easy to get a feeling of deja vu. Krakow reminds you of the back lot from a Hollywood set, as your mind goes back to all those old movies on the television.

The same feelings were felt from the train that I caught from Warsaw to Krakow, where I sat with five others in a private compartment watching the countryside move swiftly by. My hotel, the Copernicus was a 15th century building with huge rooms that was truly amazing. President Bush had stayed there recently; my suite was large enough to land a plane in!

However, on the last night I moved to the Eden Hotel, which is located in the heart of the Old Jewish Quarter, and it is the only hotel with kosher food in Krakow. What I found interesting about this place is that while it is a kosher assessable hotel and most of the guests were orthodox from New York, there is another side to the hotel, which was absolutely fantastic. In the evenings, in another section of the hotel is a karaoke bar, held two or three times a week, where the local kids congregated.

The owner, Allen Haberberg was probably the most informative and helpful person who informed me about the Jewish community or, what's left of it. A community that once consisted of 75,000 Jews has been reduced to a community of only 120 Jews. Sadly enough from what I can see, there is not much leadership or education or much of anything from the ones that are left. At least in Warsaw I saw a slight resemblance of a typical Jewish community, although very slight.

Not so in Krakow, where I traveled to Casmir which was once the heart of the Jewish community. I traveled to three of the seven of the synagogues that are still remaining, but they are being used for museums now. Some have been rebuilt while the others are closed. I observed some of the Jewish restaurants that were on many of the street corners; deceptively called "Jewish style", but in fact, they were not really Jewish or kosher. They were all filled with Jewish art, mostly depicting Jewish scenes and I couldn't help but wonder where they acquired the paintings. Alan took me to several of these Jewish restaurants. None were owned or operated by anyone slightly Jewish. At one, which was named "Noah's Ark," I spoke with the owner and asked him why he opened up such an establishment and was told that he admired Jewish traditions and food.

This was virtually the same answer that I received from nearly all of the Jewish stores that were catering to the non- Jewish clientele. I had to restrain myself from shouting out to the German group that was eating in there how they sickened me. But I was totally appalled when I went to the Center for Jewish Culture, and again, there was nobody Jewish present with whom I could speak. The man working there he told me that before the war one out of every four residents in the town was Jewish. When I asked why they even had such a building he answered, "To protect the Jewish culture" Too bad they didn't think of that before their mass slaughters.

Next, I was taken to the "Seat of Jewish Community Center" and yet again, the same story. It was close to lunchtime and I was told about a Jewish 'soup kitchen' which was supposed to serve the elderly in Krakow. I was hoping to finally meet someone there who was Jewish and spoke English. I was wrong on both counts. Several Polish employees were working there but none of them were Jewish. In addition, they were incredibly rude. I then began to wonder if the Jewish community paid their salaries and, if so, why?

These people were starving. Not for soup kitchens or a lack of food, but for assistance from the outside. In fact, where is the aid from the Polish government? When I went to Auschwitz, I was told that they had four guides who spoke English for a fee of $50.00 which included a tour of the camp. This is incredibly expensive for Poland. I stopped for lunch and had a delicious lunch of soup, salad, fish potatoes, vegetables, desert and tea for a mere $3.00.

When I mentioned to the woman working at Auschwitz that the government should supply funding for such things she seemed truly surprised at my statement. I commented had it not been for many of her countrymen there wouldn't have been an Auschwitz.

I spoke with Rabbi Edgar Gluck, who is a member of the Presidents Commission for the Preservation of America Heritage, and I told him that he had his hands full. Starting with Poland. Rabbi Gluck told me "This is my 19th year of serving the Jewish community of Poland. Most of which were spent in Krakow during the High Holy days. I have also traveled almost the width and length of the former Jewish Poland reconstructing grave sites and 'ohels' which are small houses built at the site of a father grand rabbi tomb. Many of which have been burned and desecrated."

As bad as I found the situation in Warsaw, it seemed to me even worse in Krakow. The few Jews that are there, as in Warsaw are in dire need. I had a marvelous dinner with the rabbi, and even attended his Shabbat service at the only functioning synagogue, which was situated near the Eden Hotel. The service was Orthodox, however, they had no books, onag Shabbat or any of the 'perks' that we Jews typically take for granted. And, despite my liking of the man, we still differ in our attitude as to what should be the fate of the Jews of Poland. He is against conversion and feels most of the people who are looking to find their Jewish roots are not 'really Jewish" Perhaps he is right. However, in a situation like the present one in Krakow, or, even Poland, this is not the time for "us vs. them." The fledging resurgence of Jewish civilization should be helped in their efforts.

The rabbi is proud that he just spent his 19th year serving the Krakow Jewish community. He is getting assistance and was telling me how LOT airlines had helped him so much in cooperating in helping to bring kosher food to the entire community for the Jewish holidays. However, there is so much more that is needed. We discussed how he must get on the case of the Polish government and working with the American Embassy in rebuilding the desecrated synagogues and cemeteries on Polish ground. So much more needs to be done. The Jews of Warsaw and Krakow are Jews who should be salvaged.

Mostly I find a mixed crowd with many who were young and held the desire to be "Jewish." Sevyron Askonizy in Warsaw has taken over an enormous job of rebuilding the Jewish community of Warsaw. However, it cannot be a one-man show. Where is the outside help in giving them the organization that they need? The Progressive synagogue has no rabbi. The Orthodox rabbi, from what I gathered, travels to New York twice a year and raises funds for his salary. It would be a better situation if there were a combined effort to help the Jewish community as a whole. Both communities appeared to be in dire need of books, and many more of the necessities that we in the States take for granted.

The community, in my opinion, should be run as a business. There should be a governing board with outside checks on where the money ultimately ends up. Under this, their duties should be delegated. These duties should include education, membership and fund raising, directors assigned with committees under that, such as classes in Jewish history, political heritage, Hebrew language, Israeli dance, etc. This should include anything that comes under the realm of education. And, that includes the badly needed books in both English and Hebrew that are now missing. The same sort of committees should come under the director of membership, fundraising etc. And finally, the Rabbi and cantor should be paid a salary along with the outside employees who have been brought in to operate and manage the synagogue and surrounding grounds.

Fundraising for salaries has no place being done representing a group. At this point in time, the issue should be to realize that the Jews of Poland haven't left as a whole and probably will not. These are for the most part young people who are looking for leadership, managerial skills and education. Thank G-d for the Ronald Lauders and Sevyron Ashkenazi's but that's not enough. Who is going to send the Rabbis who not only make them feel accepted but also have personalities and knowledge to keep them interested within the fold? If there are going to be Jewish restaurants, clubs, Cultural committees, bookstores, synagogues, and Jewish community centers, better they should be manned by Jews and not Polish employees, as is the case now. Money must be raised to pay their salaries.

I wanted to buy a Kiddush cup, Shabbat Candlesticks... anything in the synagogue in Krakow and found absolutely nothing available to purchase. Worse, nobody working there even knew what I was talking about. At Auschwitz I was appalled to learn that there were only four guides who spoke English and there was not one on the premises who spoke Hebrew. Why is the Polish government not picking up the slack in simple remedies like this? When I mentioned this to the guide I had arranged, she responded, "Why should the Polish government pay anything? They had nothing to do with it." I answered, "Maybe they should take some of the billions of dollars that they stole from the homes they confiscated?" She seemed truly surprised and said "Oh no, that was the communist. The Poles had no choice. They were assigned where to live."

The Germans in their maniacal efficacy were so devious in the building of these death camps that I remember thinking while traveling through Majandak Concentration Camp in Lublin a few days earlier how in another place, or another time those peaceful looking wooden barracks could have been Camp Barney Meditz where I went to summer camp outside of Atlanta, Georgia as a child. Driving into the camp I passed lovely scenery and picturesque houses. I couldn't help wonder what memories or better yet, nightmares the residents living in them have. Nothing can prepare one for the rare barbarianism and cruelty, which these people have done. I will never be able to look at a German or even some Poles without feelings of contempt and disgust.

And finally, speaking of Auschwitz. I can describe Krakow but Auschwitz is beyond description. As much as the mind can envision, the life under these animals, the Nazis, was unspeakable. However, after traveling to Prague and Lubin and also visiting places such as Thereseinstadt, Birkenau, Majdanek, and Treblinka by the time I got to Auschwitz I thought I had become desensitized. That is, until I walked inside a lone barracks building looked in the semi darkness and looked down the long rows of shelves where these poor souls slept and saw one long stem red rose lying there. Shortly after, I walked down the path to the crematorium and saw two more of the long stem roses placed gently on top of the oven. That's about the time I lost it.

MUSSOLINI AND THE JEWS

Some excerpts from an article by Andrew M. Canepa published in “Patterns of Prejudice” 1979, 13 (6), 18-27.

The Fascist racial laws of 1938 surprised and shocked Jewish and non-Jewish Italians alike. Even after the so-called "Manifesto of the Race" of 14 July, Italian Jews still thought that the storm of government-inspired antisemitic rhetoric would pass, as in the past, without leaving traces in the legislation of the Kingdom or in the basic attitude of the Regime. This, at least, was the impression gathered on the spot by the distinguished American-Jewish journalist Martin Agronsky, shortly after the fond hopes of his Italian coreligionists were belied by the racialist decrees of September and October. According to another contemporary foreign observer, Sir Andrew McFadyean, the 50,000 Jews of the peninsula were struck dumbfounded by the unexpected laws, "like people stupefied by a bad dream from which they had not yet awakened." The reaction of Gentile Italians, most Fascists included, was not dissimilar. The secret reports of local Fascist Party officials testify to widespread dissent and opposition throughout the Kingdom, and, according to the historian D. A. Binchy, the majority of the population greeted the antisemitic campaign with "resentful shame." Indeed, students of the period now argue that the racial laws of 1938 marked the first major break between the Italian people and the Regime, ended the so-called "years of consensus," and sounded the death-knell of Fascism.

Given the context of modern Italian history, the feelings of perplexity and resentment shared by Jews and Gentiles were natural. Emancipation in Italy, extended to the whole of the peninsula in 1870, had been a unique success, in both its positive and its negative aspects: in the security, opportunities and acceptance accorded Italian Jews, and in the progressive erosion of their Jewish identity. The genuineness of Jewish equality in Italy has been attested to by informed and not uncritical sources such as Cecil Roth, Max Nordau, Chaim Weizmann and the late Italian Zionist leader Dante Lattes. Jews were fully integrated into Italian society and politics and had access to careers in diplomacy and the military, careers generally closed to them elsewhere in the West. In this light, it is no mere coincidence that both the first Jewish minister of war and the first Jewish prime minister in Europe, respectively, Giuseppe Ottolenghi (1902-03) and Luigi Luzzattt (1910-11), were Italians. Until at least 1936, antisemitism on the peninsula was a marginal phenomenon isolated from the mainstream of Italian life. To be sure, after unification, there had been fleeting instances of anti-Jewish polemics in anarcho-syndicalist, in nationalist, and even in liberal circles. However, even the only consistent current of antisemitism in pre-Fascist Italy, the clerical campaign from the early 1880s to the turn of the century, was an exception which proved the rule. That is, far from being an asset, the Judeophobia of Catholics served only to further isolate them from the politics of the Kingdom, and as clerical forces finally became integrated into the Italian political system under Giovanni Giolitti, they concurrently muffled their anti-Jewish polemics. Nor did the favourable situation of Italian Jewry change with the transition from the Liberal to the Fascist State. Indeed, as we shall have occasion to discuss, during the first fourteen years of the Regime - the "honeymoon period," as Meir Michaelis calls it - a symbiosis developed between Fascism and the Italian Jews, and in certain respects (though not in others) their legal status was actually enhanced.

The Jews of Italy, for their part, were more than grateful to the beloved patria for the equality and opportunities accorded them and were anxious to express this gratitude......

During the "honeymoon period" - which, as far as the Regime's official attitude is concerned, could be extended to 1936 - not only were relations between Mussolini and the Jews (both Italian and foreign) cordial, but to some extent an actual symbiosis developed between Fascism and Italian Jewry. In the decade following the March on Rome, the religious and civil rights of Italian Jews were respected and safeguarded; the Duce issued a series of antiracialist and warmly philo-Semitic statements; the government even encouraged (up to a certain point) the activities of the Italian Zionist Federation. Italian Jewry, for its part, because of the favourable attitude of the Regime and because of its own largely middle class makeup, on the whole accepted Fascism and the Fascist State. By 1933, 7,300 Jews had enrolled in the PNF (Partito Nazionale Fascista); and, though there were numerous Jews in the anti-Fascist camp, until 1938 there was no specifically Jewish opposition to the Regime. The symbolic highwater mark of cordial relations was reached in the spring and summer of 1932, when Mussolini made his most noted denunciation of antisemitic racialism in an interview with Emil Ludwig and, as a confirmation of his convictions, appointed Guido Jung as Minister of Finance.....

Similarly, the facilitated entry to Italian universities (reduced rail fares, cancellation of fees, scholarships), accorded in the 1920s and '30s to thousands of Jewish students from Central and Eastern Europe hit by the numerus clausus at home, was granted with an eye to creating a generation of professionals who would presumably spread admiration for Italian culture and Fascist institutions abroad. As late as 1942, Fascist officials still viewed Italian citizens of Jewish "race" residing in Tunisia and Rumania as the vanguard of Italian economic penetration in those areas, and accordingly sought to protect them against the German forces of occupation....

....the basic elements of the Duce's thought in relation to the Jewish question. One of these constants was Mussolini's personal rejection of the doctrine of biological racialism, an unfeigned conviction which he repeated to intimates and family members even after the promulgation of racialist legislation. Paradoxical as this may seem, it only serves to underscore the dictator's cynical opportunism (an attitude not limited, of course, to his policy vis-a-vis the Jews)....

The beginnings of a reorientation in Fascist policy towards the Jews coincided with the Nazi seizure of power in Germany. For the following three years, until the summer of 1936, Mussolini performed a "balancing act" between Hitler and the West, antisemitism and philo-Semitism. It was during this transitional phase that the evolution of the Jewish policy of the Regime became intimately linked to Italian foreign policy in general and to German-Italian relations in particular.....

After the assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss by pro-Nazis in July 1934, the Italian dictator temporarily switched back to his previous tactic of exploiting the Jewish issue (and Jewish grievances against Germany) for political and propagandistic gains. Thus, for example, in a September 1934 article for the official Party organ, Il Popolo d'Italia, Mussolini ridiculed the "Aryan" myth and contended that the vaunted racial purity of the Germans led only to congenital idiocy, citing as evidence the statistics of mental illness in the Reich. A month later, in the course of a meeting with Nahum Goldmann, the Duce called Hitler an idiot and a good-for-nothing and declared himself a Zionist ready to back the formation of a true Jewish State, "not the ridiculous National Home that the British have offered you." What's more, in this case, Mussolini's sympathetic declarations were accompanied by promises of diplomatic action which he in fact honoured: Italian support for the evacuation of Jews from the Saar in the face of impending German occupation, and opposition to the revision of the minority rights guarantees of the peace treaties, with specific reference to the status of the Jews in Poland.

The growing Italo-German rapprochement, though, did not prevent Mussolini from keeping his options open and issuing statements which were as much bridges to the West as they were reassuring overtures to the Jews. Thus, in autumn of 1935, the Duce reaffirmed the equality enjoyed by Italian Jews and even claimed that "Italian and Jewish ideals are fully merged into one. It should be noted that, indeed, during the entire transitional period surveyed above, irrespective of the attitude of the Fascist press (for which the dictator was fully responsible), no alteration in the favourable legal status of Italian Jewry was either effected or contemplated, and no anti-Jewish measures, official or unofficial, were taken by the Regime.

Ironically, the Duce's final break with the Jews was to some extent conditioned by Fascism's earlier, diametrically opposed policy towards them. For, as Michaelis incisively argues, the existence of Jewish generals and admirals, of Jewish government and party functionaries, which the Duce's previous stand had encouraged (or at least facilitated), was now inadmissible in light of Italy's new alignment in world politics. On the one hand, even convinced Fascist Jews could not be expected to maintain wholehearted loyalty to an alliance with the Reich; while, for his part, Hitler would never agree to collaborate with his ally's Jewish servants. The way out of this dilemma Mussolini found in the adoption of a discriminatory criterion which would eliminat the embarrassment and inconvenience posed even by "exception Jews":

In these circumstances the Fascist dictator felt the need for an ideology which would allow him to rid himself not only of the "disloyal Italian Jews" (who were being eliminated anyhow), but also of the "loyal Jewish Italians" (who had hitherto been regarded as a definite asset). This ideology was racialism. However, though side by side, the two allies never marched in step, and this was again reflected during the course of the war in the field of Fascist Jewish policy. Because Mussolini remained committed to the Axis until the bitter end, and because of Italian military dependence on the Germans, the Duce would not back away from his antisemtic legislation, nor could he mitigate the official racialist ideology of the Regime. On the other hand, the Jewish question outside Italy served the Fascist authorities as a means of asserting what little freedom of action from their Nazi senior partners they were able to maintain. Together with genuine expressions of spontaneous humanitarianism, this eminently political consideration explains why the zones of Italian military occupation in France and the Balkans became havens of refuge where Jews were unmolested.....

Mr. Kristof,

In your subject column titled "God On Our Side" you wrote

"Mention the words "evangelical missionary," and many Americans conjure up an image of redneck zealots'

Tell me Mr. Kristof what is a "redneck ?" Perhaps you can provide a concise definition. Is it a perjorative term - similar to the words "Wop" or "Mick" or " Spic" or " Nigger?"

Does it negatively describe a group of people not because of their ethnicity or race rather because of their social or geographical origins?

Should a Harvard and Oxford educated NY Times columnist use such a term in his column? Or do you believe it permissible simply because you are a Harvard/Oxford educated New Yorker and as you make it a point of saying:

"I disagree strongly with most evangelical Christians, theologically and politically"

The American Heritage dictionary provides two definitions for "redneck." It says the term is Offensive Slang :

"1. Used as a disparaging term for a member of the white rural laboring class, especially in the southern United States."

2." A white person regarded as having a provincial, bigoted attitude."

I would say - using definition #2 - Mr. Kristof you qualify as a redneck.
For an organization like the NY Times that claims to be sensitive to diversity and prejudice, to use such a term reveals its hypocrisy.
Sincerely,

Michael P. Tremoglie

Personality and Individual Differences, 30 (7), 2001, Pages 1147-1160



Age changes in personality traits and their heritabilities during the adult years: evidence from Australian twin registry samples

J. C. Loehlin [a] and N. G. Martin [b]

a University of Texas, Department of Psychology, Austin, TX 78712, USA
b Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia



Abstract

Short versions of four Eysenck personality scales had been included in questionnaires given to several adult samples from the Australian Twin Registry, comprising altogether some 5400 pairs. Means and regressions with age are compared for three samples at average ages of 23, 37, and 61 years, and for two samples of retested individuals, one tested twice at average ages of 29 and 37 years, and one tested three times at average ages of 48, 56, and 62 years. For both males and females the trends for Psychoticism (P), Extraversion (E), and Neuroticism (N) were generally downward with age, and for Lie (L), upward. However, in the longitudinal sample between ages 56 and 62 the trends for P, E, and L stopped or reversed, although N continued downward. Heritabilities were reasonably stable across age for P, E, and N, and the effects of shared environments negligible, but L showed some influence of shared environment as well as genes in all but the oldest age group.

Author Keywords: Eysenck scales; Heritability; Age trends; Twins

Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-512-475-7008; fax: +1-512-471-6175; email: loehlin@psy.utexas.edu

I have posted this abstract here because it seems to be impossible to link to it at its original source. If you are patient enough, however, you can find it via: http://www.sciencedirect.com/