India

Mumbai Attacks Recap
by Jake Rake, December 1, 2008 0 comments

While Americans were doing their Thanksgiving thing and the citizens of the rest of the world did whatever it is that they do on any given day, India was rocked by what may end up being their 9/11. At least 138 are dead, with sources putting the death toll as high as 172 as of Monday morning, and hundreds more have been injured in a series coordinated attacks on locations across Mumbai, the world’s most-populous city. The attackers have been called terrorists by the Indian and most international governments, and are believed to be Muslims primarily of Kashmiri origin.

Some of the attack locations (Wikipedia)

The attackers opened fire with a combination of machine guns, car bombs, and other explosives in a vast array of public locations, including a train stations, hotels, docks and a movie theatre. E-mails sent to various news outlets by a group calling itself “Deccan Mujahideen” claimed responsibility for the attacks, but international authorities are unsure of what to make of these claims, as their was little record of the group's existence prior to the attacks on Mumbai. An investigation is obvious ongoing, with much information being obtained via Azam Amir Kasav, a Pakistani man apprehended while reportedly attempting to escape one of the attack sites who is now cooperating with authorities. Kasav claims that the various attacks around Mumbai were in fact related, and that the goal of the attacks was to replicate other international terror acts, including the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the infamous bombings in Islamabad, Pakistan and Jakarta, Indonesia. The casualties of the attacks include citizens of at least 16 countries other than India, including America, Australia, Canada, Germany, Australia, China, Israel, Japan, and Mexico. Kasav claims that foreigners, particularly Jews, were targeted in the attacks.

Mumbai is the world's most populous city and fifth-largest metropolitan area, with a population of over 13 million within the city limits and over 19 million in the total metropolitan area. The city has experienced at least six other terrorist attacks since 2002.

Religion

The Long History of Jihad on the Subcontinent
Context for the latest terror attacks in Mumbai
by Andrew G. Bostom, November 30, 2008 3 comments

Sixty hours of jihadist terror depradations throughout India's financial capital, Mumbai -- during which nearly 200 innocent victims were murdered, and 300 wounded -- apparently ceased this Saturday, November 29, when Indian commandos slew the last three gunmen inside a luxury hotel, while it was still ablaze. Mainstream media coverage of these rampaging, cold-blooded murderous acts of jihad terrorism -- perpetrated by a self-professed "mujahideen" organization (i.e., "The Deccan Mujahideen") -- consistently ignored the clear ideological linkage to Islam. Simply put, "mujahideen" are Muslim jihadists, "holy warriors," because there is just one historically relevant meaning of jihad, despite present day apologetics.

The root of the word jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran and in subsequent Islamic understanding to both Muslim luminaries -- from the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam, to ordinary people -- meant and means "he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like." As described by the seminal mid-19^th century Arabic lexicographer E.W Lane, "Jihad came to be used by the Muslims to signify wag[ing] war, against unbelievers." A contemporary definition, relevant to both modern jihadism and its shock troop "mujahideen" was provided at the Fourth International Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research at Al Azhar University, Cairo -- Islam's most important religious educational institution-in 1968, by Muhammad al-Sobki:

...the words Al Jihad, Al Mojahadah, or even "striving against enemies" are equivalents and they do not mean especially fighting with the atheists...they mean fighting in the general sense...

Contemporary validation of the central principle of jihad terrorism -- rooted in the Koran -- (for example, verses 8:12, 8:60, and 33:26) -- i.e., to terrorize the enemies of the Muslims as a prelude to their conquest -- has been provided in the mainstream Pakistani text on jihad warfare by Brigadier S.K. Malik, originally published in Lahore, in 1979. Malik's treatise was endorsed in a laudatory Foreword to the book by his patron, then Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq, as well as a more extended Preface by Allah Buksh K. Brohi, a former Advocate-General of Pakistan. This text -- widely studied in Islamic countries, and available in English, Urdu, and Arabic -- has been recovered from the bodies of slain jihadists in Kashmir. Brigadier Malik emphasizes how instilling terror is essential to waging successful jihad campaigns:

Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy (sic); it is the decision we wish to impose upon him...

"Jihad," the Koranic concept of total strategy...[d]emands the preparation and application of total national power and military instrument is one of its elements. As a component of the total strategy, the military strategy aims at striking terror into the hearts of the enemy from the preparatory stage of war...Under ideal conditions, Jihad can produce a direct decision and force its will upon the enemy. Where that does not happen, military strategy should take over and aim at producing the decision from the military stage. Should that chance be missed, terror should be struck into the enemy during the actual fighting.

...the Book [Koran] does not visualize war being waged with "kid gloves." It gives us a distinctive concept of total war. It wants both, the nation and the individual, to be at war "in toto," that is, with all their spiritual, moral, and physical resources. The Holy Koran lays the highest emphasis on the preparation for war. It wants us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost. The test of utmost preparation lies in our capability to instill terror into the hearts of the enemies.

The political correctness of most mainstream media outlets -- which refused to consider such ideological motivations, rooted in jihad -- did not apply, however to Hindus, or Jews -- targeted infidel victims of the attacks. Blithely ignoring obvious Islamic and Muslim connections -- credit taken for the attacks by a mujahideen organization; or testimony from a Turkish Muslim couple briefly apprehended, and then released unharmed by the jihadists because, "...[w]hen the (Muezzinoglus) said they were Muslims, their captors told them that they would not be harmed" -- some media (at Fox; NPR) even voiced their own "speculations" about the possible culpability of "Hindu extremists," an absurd calumny, stated in full paranoid transference mode by the Muslim Brotherhood:

A photograph published in Urdu Times, Mumbai, clearly shows that Mossad and ex-Mossad men came to India and met Sadhus and other pro-Hindutva elements recently. A conspiracy was clearly hatched.

Yet these same media offered no speculation about Islamic Jew hatred as an obvious potential motivation for the transparently selective attack on Mumbai's Chabad House -- a focal point symbol of the miniscule Jewish community of 5000 (or 0.03%) in a city of some 15 million inhabitants. More egregiously, this neglect of any hateful Islamic motivations for the targeted murder of such innocent Jews -- including a young Lubavitcher Rabbi and his wife -- was accompanied by consistently dehumanizing and demeaning references to these victims as "Ultra-Orthodox," and their entirely false characterization as "missionaries."

This current Jewish tragedy within a much larger non-Muslim, primarily Hindu tragedy, reminded me of the Indian Sufi "inspiration" for The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Ahmad Sirhindi. Nearing completion of my first book compendium, The Legacy of Jihad, in early 2005, specifically the section about jihad on the Indian subcontinent, I came across a remarkable comment by the Indian Sufi theologian Sirhindi (d. 1624). Typical of the mainstream Muslim clerics of his era, Sirhindi was viscerally opposed to the reforms which characterized the latter ecumenical phase of Akbar's 16^th century reign (when Akbar became almost a Muslim-Hindu syncretist), particularly the abolition of the humiliating jizya (Koranic poll tax, as per Koran 9:29) upon the subjugated infidel Hindus. In the midst of an anti-Hindu tract Sirhindi wrote, motivated by Akbar's pro-Hindu reforms, Sirhindi observes,

Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.

The biographical information I could glean about Sirhindi provided, among other things, no evidence he was ever in direct contact with Jews, so his very hateful remark suggested to me that the attitudes it reflected must have a theological basis in Islam -- contra the prevailing, widely accepted "wisdom" that Islam, unlike Christianity was devoid of such theological Antisemitism. Having originally intended to introduce, edit, and compile a broader compendium on dhimmitude in follow-up to The Legacy of Jihad, I was inspired by this stunning observation to change course and focus on the interplay between Islamic Antisemitism, and the intimately related phenomenon of jihad imposed dhimmitude for Jews, specifically.

Of course Jew-hatred was merely a sidelight to Sirhindi's hatemongering Islamic "ethos." He was an intensely anti-Hindu bigot, as revealed by these words:

Cow-sacrifice in India is the noblest of Islamic practices. The kafirs [Hindus] may probably agree to pay jizya but they shall never concede to cow-sacrifice...The real purpose in levying jizya on them [Hindus] is to humiliate then to such an extent that, on account of fear of jizya , they may not be able to dress well and to live in grandeur. They should constantly remain terrified and trembling. It in intended to hold them under contempt and to uphold the honor and might of Islam...

Completely uninformed about (and stubbornly resistant to any informed discussion of) the motivating Islamic ideology for the Mumbai attacks, the media "meta-narrative," repeated ad nauseum, is also oblivious to the living historical legacy of jihad on the Indian subcontinent. Thus journalists and even policymaking elites appear to accept at face value, and uncritically, the "rationale" for this wantonly murderous jihadism as stated, for example, by one of the Muslim perpetrators:

Are you aware how many people have been killed in Kashmir?...Are you aware how your army has killed Muslims?

The Muslim supremacist, jihad-inspired conflict in Kashmir -- really a tragic ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Hindus by Muslim jihadists which began in earnest during the 14th century -- re-emerged in late June of this year when the Indian government had the "temerity" to want to transfer 99 acres of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, a trust running the popular Hindu shrine (including the cave that houses a large ice stalagmite itself, revered by Hindus as an incarnation of Siva, the god of destruction and reproduction). Hundreds of thousands of Hindus visit the area as part of an annual pilgrimage to the cave.

Please view the poignant, elegantly produced video by Kashmiri filmmaker Ashok Pandit, "And the World Remained Silent," (linked here, Parts 1 and 2) which chronicles in gory detail the brutal ethnic cleansing of some 350,000 indigenous Hindus from Kashmir during early 1990, orchestrated by Pakistan and it's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. (Focus on the time period 2:15 to 4:00 minutes, from Part 1 above, and witness the jihadist speech of the late, much ballyhooed "modernist reformer" Ms. Bhutto. She was a jihadist, plain and simple; the head of what remains a jihadist state.)

Despite the brutal Islamization of India -- dating back to the initial 8th century Arab Muslim jihad ravages, and the subsequent more extensive campaigns under the Ghaznavids (Islamized Turkic nomads who annihilated the indigenous Hindus of Afghanistan by the mid-9^th century), through the Delhi Sultanate period (1000-1525 C.E.) during which an estimated 70-80 million Hindus were slaughtered -- due largely to bowdlerized educational and public discourse on Islam, even many modern Hindus remain ignorant of both this history, and the Koranic injunctions which inspired the brutal waves of jihad conquest, and Muslim colonization of India.

The Muslim chroniclers al-Baladhuri (in Kitab Futuh al-Buldan) and al-Kufi (in the Chachnama) include enough isolated details to establish the overall nature of the conquest of Sindh (in modern Paksitan) by Muhammad b. Qasim during 712 C.E. These narratives, and the processes they describe, make clear that the Arab invaders intended from the outset to Islamize Sindh by conquest, colonization, and local conversion. Baladhuri, for example, records that following the capture of Debal, Muhammad b. Qasim earmarked a section of the city exclusively for Muslims, constructed a mosque, and established four thousand colonists there. The conquest of Debal had been a brutal affair, as summarized from the Muslim sources by the renowned Indian historian R.C. Majumdar. Despite appeals for mercy from the besieged Indians (who opened their gates after the Muslims scaled the fort walls), Muhammad b. Qasim declared that he had no orders (i.e., from his superior al-Hajjaj, the Governor of Iraq) to spare the inhabitants, and thus for three days a ruthless and indiscriminate slaughter ensued. In the aftermath, the local temple was defiled, and "700 beautiful females who had sought for shelter there, were all captured". The capture of Raor was accompanied by a similar tragic outcome.

Muhammad massacred 6000 fighting men who were found in the fort, and their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoners. Sixty thousand slaves, including 30 young ladies of royal blood, were sent to Hajjaj, along with the head of Dahar [the Hindu ruler]. We can now well understand why the capture of a fort by the Muslim forces was followed by the terrible jauhar ceremony (in which females threw themselves in fire [they] kindled...), the earliest recorded instance of which is found in the Chachnama.

Practical, expedient considerations lead Muhammad to desist from carrying out the strict injunctions of Islamic Law and the wishes of al-Hajjaj by massacring the (pagan) infidel Hindus of Sindh. Instead, he imposed upon the vanquished Hindus the jizya (Koranic poll-tax, pace Koran 9:29) and associated restrictive regulations of dhimmitude. As a result, the Chachnama records, "some [Hindus] resolved to live in their native land, but others took flight in order to maintain the faith of their ancestors, and their horses, domestics, and other property."

Thus a lasting pattern of Muslim policy towards their Hindu subjects was set that would persist, as noted by Majumdar, until the Mughal Empire collapsed at the end of Aurangzeb's reign (in 1707):

Something no doubt depended upon individual rulers; some of them adopted a more liberal, others a more cruel and intolerant attitude. But on the whole the framework remained intact, for it was based on the fundamental principle of Islamic theocracy. It recognized only one faith, one people, and one supreme authority, acting as the head of a religious trust. The Hindus, being infidels or non-believers, could not claim the full rights of citizens. At the very best, they could be tolerated as dhimmis, an insulting title which connoted political inferiority...The Islamic State regarded all non-Muslims as enemies, to curb whose growth in power was conceived to be its main interest. The ideal preached by even high officials was to exterminate them totally, but in actual practice they seem to have followed an alternative laid down in the Koran [i.e., Q9:29] which calls upon Muslims to fight the unbelievers till they pay the jizya with due humility. This was the tax the Hindus had to pay for permission to live in their ancestral homes under a Muslim ruler.

Regarding the Islamization of Hindu Kashmir, although Mahmud of Ghazni made brutal forays into Kashmir in the early 11^th century, it was not until the mid-14^th century when the ruling Hindu dynasty was displaced completely by Shah Mirza, in 1346, and Kashmir was brought under Muslim suzerainty. During the reign of Sikandar Butshikan (1394-1417), mass Islamization took place as described by the great historian K.S. Lal:

He [Sikandar Butshikan] invited from Persia, Arabia, and Mesopotamia learned men of his own [Muslim] faith; his bigotry prompted him to destroy all the most famous temples in Kashmir-Martand, Vishya, Isna, Chakrabhrit, Tripeshwar, etc. Sikandar offered the Kashmiris the choice [pace Koran 9:5] between Islam and death. Some Kashmiri Brahmans committed suicide, many left the land, many others embraced Islam, and a few began to live under Taqiya, that is, they professed Islam only outwardly. It is said that the fierce intolerance of Sikandar had left in Kashmir no more than eleven families of Brahmans.

Lal also notes that,

His [Sikandar Butshikan's] contemporary the [Hindu] Raja of Jammu had been converted to Islam by [Amir] Timur [the jihadist, Tamerlane], by "hopes, fears, and threats."

When the Moghul ruler Akbar annexed Kashmir in 1586, the majority of the population was already Muslim. Lal summarizes the chronic plight of the Kashmiri Hindus during a half millennium of Islamic rule, through 1819, which explains the modern demography of Kashmir:

When Kashmir was under Muslim rule for 500 years, Hindus were constantly tortured and forcibly converted. A delegation of Kashmir Brahmans approached Guru Teg Bahadur at Anadpur Saheb to seek his help. But Kashmir was Islamized. Those who fled to preserve their religion went to Laddakh in the east and Jammu in the south. It is for this reason that non-Muslims are found in large number in these regions. In the valley itself the Muslims formed the bulk of the population.

There is also a modern era nexus -- rooted in jihad -- between the Hindus of Islamized Kashmir, and the Jews of Islamized Palestine. Hajj Amin el-Husseini, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, and Muslim jihadist, who became, additionally, a full-fledged Nazi collaborator and ideologue in his endeavors to abort a Jewish homeland, and destroy world Jewry, was also a committed supporter of global jihad movements. Urging a "full struggle" against the Hindus of India (as well as the Jews of Israel) before delegates at the February 1951 World Muslim Congress, he stated:

We shall meet next with sword in hand on the soil of either Kashmir or Palestine.

And el-Husseini's jihadist, Koran (and hadith)-inspired Jew hatred was shared by a seminal modern Muslim ideologue from the Indian subcontinent, Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi (d. 1976), a major late 20^th century Koranic commentator. An eminent scholar, Maulana Muhammad Shafi served as a professor and as a grand Mufti of Darul-Uloom Deoband, the well-known university of the Islamic Sciences in pre-partition India. In 1943, he resigned from Darul-Uloom, because of his active involvement in the Pakistan movement. When Pakistan came into existence, he migrated to Karachi devoting his life to the service of this new Muslim state. He also established Darul-Uloom Karachi, an renowned institute of Islamic Sciences patterned after Darul-Uloom Deoband, and considered today as the largest private institute of Islamic higher education in Pakistan. Here is Maulana Muhammad Shafi's commentary on the central antisemitic motif in the Koran, sura (chapter) 3, verse 112:

...verse 112 speaks of the general condition of the Jews. They played the most virulent role against the Holy Prophet [Muhammad] and the movement of Islam. It was not strange that they were the most malignant against the Holy Prophet because they had played a similar role against the Prophets before the advent of Islam. They had slandered Jesus Christ, they had plotted to kill him, they had slain so many Prophets before Jesus Christ. They had earned the wrath of Allah before the Holy Prophet by killing the Prophets and the Saints and by their vociferous opposition to the Divine Commands. This wrath increased when they deadly opposed the Holy Prophet and made treacherous and surreptitious plans to kill Muhammad and defeat Islam. They tried to harm the Muslims and prevented the common men from Islam. These activities enhanced the wrath of Allah, and curse became their eventual fate. The wrath of Allah manifested itself in conditional abasement, but permanent poverty. Their abasement could be suspended if they could cover a bond of Allah or they should be covered by a bond of the people. But the poverty and the general wrath of Allah was pitched without any suspension. Bond of God means adherence to some remnants of the Torah. Bond of men means either becoming the subjects of some Muslim State or some Christian State or some other constitutional State; or becoming a satellite or a protectorate of some powerful people, whoever they may be either Muslims, or non-Muslims, by means of some agreement, treaty, or merely political support. Their separate individual existence enjoying an inviolable sovereignty or commanding a good respect in the Comity of Nations is not implied in this verse because of the extreme wrath of Allah which is significant of their superlative Kufr [infidelity] against Allah and their extremely tremendous enmity against the Holy Prophet as compared to other non-Believers. For example, the modern State of Israel cannot survive if the Americans and Russians, etc., give up their support. [note: this commentary was written beginning in the 1960s] This is the bond of the people which has outwardly suspended their abasement. But so far as wretchedness (poverty) is concerned it is pitched on them permanently and the general wrath and anger of Allah surrounds them forever. Inner wretchedness can be reconciled with outer opulence. The Jews may have become billionaires but the wretchedness and poverty of hearts cannot leave them any moment. Parsimony has become a part and parcel of their internal self.

Nearly six decades ago, Sir Jadunath Sarkar (d. 1958), the preeminent historian of Mughal India, wrote admiringly of what the Jews of Palestine had accomplished once liberated from the yoke of jihad-imposed Islamic Law. The implication was clear that he harbored similar hopes for his own people, the Hindus of India, and those of their Muslim neighbors willing to abandon the supremacist, discriminatory, and backward mandates of Islam:

Palestine, the holy land of the Jews, Christians and Islamites, had been turned into a desert haunted by ignorant poor diseased vermin rather than by human beings, as the result of six centuries of Muslim rule. (See Kinglake's graphic description). Today Jewish rule has made this desert bloom into a garden, miles of sandy waste have been turned into smiling orchards of orange and citron, the chemical resources of the Dead Sea are being extracted and sold, and all the amenities of the modern civilised life have been made available in this little Oriental country. Wise Arabs are eager to go there from the countries ruled by the Shariat [Sharia; Islamic Law]. This is the lesson for the living history.

The jihadist carnage in Mumbai, and some 12,327 other acts of jihad terrorism since 9/11/2001 -- motivated by supremacist Islamic doctrine, and the atavistic hatred of Hindus, Jews, and other non-Muslims it inculcates -- provides ugly living proof that Sarkar's wistful admonition from 1950 remains almost entirely unheeded.

3 comments

Religion

Chabad Rabbi and Rebbetzen Holtzberg of Mumbai, India: Precious Lives Cut Short By Terrorists
by Elisa Shostack, November 28, 2008 6 comments

Hello everyone,

I usually like to write about funny moments in life or the importance of putting humor to the not-so-funny moments.

However, today is a day of mourning in Mumbai, India, and around the world. We must realize that in 2008 we are still "under fire" as a people. Whether you are chabad"nik", secular, reformed, conservative, it means nothing at times like this.

We are all Jews and we need to come together because I can guarantee you that the terrorists who killed the innocent Chabad rabbi and his wife in India yesterday, while leaving their son orphaned, see no difference. A Jew is a Jew to them, and they want us all dead. The only "weapons" the rabbi and his wife were "armed" with were their love of Judaism, people, and education and their dedication to Torah and to Chesed.

We have to pray, be stronger than ever, not judge each other and be positive that justice will come to those who are evil.

Good will continue and Chabad will step up its efforts even more now, in light of this terrible tragedy.

I have had the good fortune of being involved with Chabad for many years now, whether it was to help my friend bury her uncle when he had no family nearby and lived alone in the most remote part of Maine or introducing my father to Chabad of Kings Highway in Brooklyn so he wouldnt be alone on Shabbat, to the "word of mouth" promoting of Chabad that I do whenever I see someone unaffiliated or lost.

Chabad helped me when I was going through a very difficult time in my life a few years ago. At this time of great anxiety when much was piled upon me (loss of a close aunt, losing my job and still not having that significant other I dreamed of) I felt continuous anxiety and fraility. A Chabad rabbi said to me, "it was not my BODY which was in anxiety, it was my SOUL.' Something was missing and I needed to find out what it was so that I could go back to being the happy productive person I was. I learned how to take soul-filled small steps in order to regain my stability.

Chabad is everywhere and always there: from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to Raleigh, North Carolina, to Mumbai, India. Many who do not understand Chabad question their need to go to such remote and often unsafe regions of the world. This is their mission, and they will continue to carry out this mission in the glorious way which they do each day. Let us all do at least one mitzvah today and women please light a shabbos candle(s).

May Rabbi and Rebbetzen Holtzberg's memory be a blessing, may their work continue through others and one day through their beautiful baby boy, Moshe...

6 comments

Jewcy Zeitgeist: Obamarama, Dirty Deeds In Canada and a Tough Night For Al Franken
by Jake Rake, November 5, 2008 0 comments

The black guy won.
The Democrats now control the House and Senate as well.
Doggone it, it appears as though not enough people like Al Franken in Minnesota, as the comedian's Senate bid heads to a recount.
California's Proposition 8, which would ban gay marriages statewide, was too close to call as of 10:00am ET.
New Delhi is overrun with stray cows.
The US and Russia are at it again, building up missile reserves around Europe.
November 28th has been declared "AC/DC Day" in Vancouver.

Jewcy Zeitgeist: Vegas Likes Obama, Hookers Feeling the Pinch and the FCC Protecting Our Virgin Ears
by Jake Rake, November 4, 2008 0 comments

The Supreme Court clearly has its priorities straight, spending Tuesday morning hearing a case between the FCC and FOX over whether the FCC is allowed to levy fines against the network for instances in which people accidently use profanity during live broadcasts.
Los Angeles residents will vote today on Proposition 8, a ballot measure that would allow the city's homosexuals to wed.
One of Osama bin Laden's 19 sons and his beautiful blind wife are seeking political asylum in Spain.
A rare original pencil sketch of Winnie the Pooh is set to hit the auction block in England.
Japanese scientists have cloned a cryonically frozen mouse (not the famous one).
Benedict XVI is hosting a summit for Catholic and Muslim leaders in Rome.
The Indian space probe, Chandrayaan, sent back its first pictures of the Earth.
The top six online betting websites are heavily favoring Barack Obama in today's presidential election.
Nevada's hookers are feeling the effects of the recession.

Jewcy Zeitgeist: Lunar Hindus, Modern-Day McCarthyism and Good News For Johns in CA
by Jake Rake, October 22, 2008 0 comments

In case you were concerned that Congress was shirking its ideological policing duties, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Min) has proposed "an investigation of Congress for “pro-America or anti-America.”
John McCain has received the prestigous Al-Qaeda endorsement.
The Peabody, Mass Police Department is gunning to become the first employer in American to recognize September 11th as a paid holiday.
San Francisco residents will vote next month on Proposition K, which would decriminalize prostitution in the city.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy is threatening to sue the company responsible for a Voodoo doll featuring his likeness.
Look out, Moon, here come the Indians!
The World Series of baseball kicks off tonight in St. Petersburg, Fla.

FAITHHACKER

Love the Stranger: Bad News for Christians
A weekly look at persecution around the globe, from Christians and Muslims to Buddhists and Sikhs.
by Null, January 15, 2008 4 comments

Greetings From Moldova: where Jesus was a communist carpenter Greetings From Moldova: where Jesus was a communist carpenter Greetings from Moldova! You know, the former Soviet state bordered by Ukraine and Romania, whose special characteristics include being the poorest nation in Europe, as well as the first former Soviet state to elect a Communist as its president! It's hard to believe that a country where 98% of the population weighs in as Eastern Orthodox voted President Vladimir Voronin -- a Communist -- into office, but they did, and now priests, nuns, and assorted other believers are being intimidated and harassed by secret police.

Meanwhile, Christians in India aren't faring much better, what with increasing attacks by fundamentalist, nationalist religious groups such as radical Hindus and "anti-Christian fanatics."

And here in the U.S., a Burmese Christian refugee who gained asylum this past August is settling into his new life on the East Coast, while religious persecution in his homeland continues on.

4 comments

DAILY SHVITZ

Kosher Delhi: Addendum

by Abe Greenwald, October 3, 2007 0 comments

The Herald Tribune reports that a home furnishings company in India will destroy all promotional materials for its "Nazi Collection" linens, after India's Jewish community complained. The Nazi Collection packaging also featured swastikas.

"Furnishing dealer Jagdish Todi met Jewish community leaders to assure them that the family-owned company did not intend to hurt the sentiments of Jews, said Jonathan Solomon, chairman of the Indian Jewish Federation."

The swastika, as is fairly well-known, is an ancient Hindu good luck symbol.

The company claimed Nazi stood for "New Arrival Zone For India." Which sounds like a perfectly reasonable name for a linen collection?!?

DAILY SHVITZ

Kosher Delhi

by Abe Greenwald, October 3, 2007 3 comments

Hindu-Jewish Leadership SummitYesterday's New York Times ran a story about Indian-Americans finding an activist role model, and sometime partner, in American Jews.

Indians often say they see a version of themselves and what they hope to be in the experience of Jews in American politics: a small minority that has succeeded in combating prejudice and building political clout.

Sanjay Puri, the chairman of the U.S. India Political Action Committee, said: “What the Jewish community has achieved politically is tremendous, and members of Congress definitely pay a lot of attention to issues that are important to them. We will use our own model to get to where we want, but we have used them as a benchmark.”

One instance of Indians following the example of Jews occurred last year when Indian-American groups, including associations of doctors and hotel owners, banded together with political activists to win passage of the United States-India Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Act, which allows New Delhi to buy fuel, reactors and other technology to expand its civilian nuclear program.

I remember when Bush announced the passage of the United States-India Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Act. One of the administration's finer foreign policy moments. An overlooked commitment to global outreach at a time when the U.S. was taking a lot of flack for its supposed unilateralism and cowboy diplomacy.

I think the U.S. relationship with India these days has taken on a similar tint to our relationship with Israel in the following aspect: Its a non-zero-sum game. On the biggest issue of the day The U.S, India, and Israel are up against the same menace. As the Times article goes on to say: "[A]mong Hindus, who are a majority in India and among Indian-Americans here, some assert that a vital bond they share with Jews is the threat to India and Israel from Muslim terrorists."

Although, some Indian-Americans are leery of emphasizing that commonality.

This makes me relatively suspicious, because there is the desire to reduce the complexity of the issues in a conflict,” said Vijay Prashad, professor of South Asian history at Trinity College in Hartford.

The India Community Center in Milpitas, Calif., represents the nonsectarian approach many Indian-Americans take to replicating the experience of American Jews. When Anil Godhwani began talking to other Indians in Silicon Valley about opening a center, “more than one person talked to us about making this a Hindu community center — sometimes in very strong terms,” he said. That was never his intention, though he was raised Hindu.

Indians have worked with The American Jewish Committee on immigration and hate crimes legislation. The American Jewish Committee has also organized group trips to Israel for Indian Americans.

This is a golden opportunity, one that must not be wasted. Jewish Americans and Indian-Americans must join forces and figure out how to conquer that most formidable of our common antagonists: our over-protective mothers.

3 comments

FAITHHACKER

Be Fruitful and Multiply: Mitzvah or Sin?

by Null, September 11, 2007 6 comments

To Breed or Not to Breed: is that the question? To Breed or Not to Breed: is that the question?For a long time now, people have been insisting that I should have babies, and lots of them, and soon. It started around 9th grade when my best friend, a sweet, ingenuous, halachically-oriented, culturally traditional (does that paint a clear enough picture, for you?) gal who we'll call "Yael" disagreed when I told her that I "wasn't sure I wanted to have children."

"Oh, Helly," she scoffed, writing me off with a laugh and a condescending smile. "Of course you'll have babies. You'll have cute Helly-babies."

Sure, we were all of fourteen years old, still in our freshman year of high school--still virgins--but the conversation stuck with me. Here was someone--my best friend, no less--"disagreeing" with my most serious, emotionally-charged thoughts. She wasn't even willing (or maybe more to the point, able) to engage in a discussion about it. It was a wake-up call as intense and enduringly problematic as my first period, two years earlier. We were not going to have the conversation about whether or not I was going to have "Helly-babies," because there was no conversation to be had.

As I got older, the emphatic insistence that I should and would procreate came from other directions. I'm not so vain as to think that it's my babies in particular for whom people have this rapacious appetite. People are just baby crazy. Instinct is a bitch. This knowledge doesn't change the fact that certain relatives and friends of my mother are ravenous. And now that I've been in a serious, Jdate-procured relationship for the past year and a half, and I'm pushing 30, the pressure is on.

The problem, of course, is that even though I'm sixteen years removed from my 9th grade self, I still have the same reservations about procreating. Even worse: I know more, now, than I did then. I know that our world faces a number of serious issues related to population, for example:

It took all of human history until 1830 for world population to reach one billion. The second billion was achieved in 100 years, the third billion in 30 years, the fourth billion in 15 years, and the fifth billion in only 12 years. In 2005, world population exceeded 6.5 billion people, growing by nearly 80 million per year with virtually all of the growth taking place in the poorest countries in the world, where population already strains economies, environments and social services.
Rapid population growth causes or exacerbates poverty, hunger, environmental degradation, economic stagnation, resource depletion, disease and illiteracy – a surefire formula for global insecurity.

I know about the understaffed orphanages and "dying rooms" of China, the problem of female infanticide there and in India, the innumerable unwanted girls that are born in both countries each year. Knowing about the poverty, hunger, environmental degradation, economic stagnation, resource depletion, disease and illiteracy that exist in our world due to overpopulation, and knowing how many unwanted, abandoned babies need and deserve homes around the world, how on Earth can I rationalize honoring the Torah's first stated commandment to humankind?

"Be fruitful and multiply," we're instructed in Genesis 1.28. My translation actually reads "be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it." Well, I think it's safe to say that we've completed that task. So, now what? Aren't there enough people (over 6.6 billion, thank you very much) on the planet already? Isn't it wrong to bring a child into a world plunging headfirst into impoverishment and destruction? What boggles my mind most of all is how still, to this day, my concerns are laughed off, unheard, unanswered. People are still rooting for the "Helly-babies." Why? Is it ignorance? Denial?

In their 2004 book, One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future Paul and Anne Ehrlich write:

Americans, probably the chief contributors to the population-consumption problem, broadly defined, seem mostly oblivious to the potentially massive threat posed by increasing numbers of people. Many Americans apparently have been lulled by contrary claims into believing that the population explosion is over, or that further growth doesn't matter. You would never know by reading the newspapers or watching television today that the numbers of people will greatly affect our own and our children's futures.
The affluent not only have a duty to learn the basics of how the world works; they also bear a responsibility to help their destitute cousins share in the rewards of modern life. The rich are primarily the ones who have the resources and opportunities to get the job done. To us, that implies a necessary, substantial change in the behavior of the citizens of industrialized nations, not just in how much we consume and how much assistance we give the needy but also how many children we have.

What's a 30 year old, Jewish gal to do? For me, the jury is still out, but here's what the Ehrlichs seem to be prescribing: Educating ourselves and each other, Supporting family planning campaigns in the poorest, least developed nations, Supporting the education of women in those countries (educating women and giving them job opportunities has been associated with sharply declining birthrates, and female literacy particularly has been negatively correlated with family size), Consuming less, Giving more, and Limiting the number of children we have. It sounds like an honorable plan steeped in Tikkun Olam, but it won't be easy to live up to.

No kid-ding.

6 comments

DAILY SHVITZ

The Week in Jews

by Avi Kramer, July 11, 2007 0 comments

ON THE RUNWAY: PHILANTHROPY AND CONDOMS

THE NEWS:
Israeli fashion designers draw attention to the plight of women denied divorce by their husbands. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

THE CHATTER:
They may be chic, but the ensemble isn’t complete: Israelis can’t get their fashion-conscious paws on Apple’s illustrious iPhones. [Israel Today]

In Far East fashion, Beijing designers show off condom-covered gowns to raise AIDS awareness. [Reuters]

ROLLING THROUGH THE HIMALAYAS

THE NEWS:
Israeli vacation enclave in the Indian Himalayas. [Times of India]

THE CHATTER:
But the plans for all-night raves below snowcapped peaks had to be put on the hold: Israeli authorities discovered their million-tablet Ecstasy shipment. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

No need to travel abroad: it’s all reggae music and mind chemicals at the Jewish Woodstock. [Yahoo]

MATZAH: THE NEW FEED FOR CAGE-FREE CHICKENS

THE NEWS:
Eco-Kosher movement gains momentum. [The Washington Post]

THE CHATTER:
No shrimp in my mao pu tofu! China tours go kosher. [The Jerusalem Post]

Warning: if you want to live, don’t market bad seafood. China’s ex-food and drug guy gets whacked. [The New York Times]

IT WASN’T THE 15 SAUDS. IT WAS THE JEWS!!

THE NEWS:
Jews responsible for 9/11. [WingTV]

THE CHATTER:
What’s on your nightstand? I just can’t put down “The Synagogue of Satan.” A real page-turner! [WingTV]

Young “G.I. Jew” on the frontline in Iraq. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

WHAT DO YOU CALL A JEWISH VIDEO? JEWTUBE!

THE NEWS:
Jewish entrepreneur launches JewTube. [Ceo Smack]

THE CHATTER:
They’re gonna have to do better than a montage of lady Mossad soldiers soundtracked to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. YouTube’s got dogs on skateboards! [JewTube]

The site’s founder, Jeremy Kosen, seeks “to create a community of filmmakers, musicians and artists who share Jewish themes.” [Haaretz]

Young Jewish innovators come together in Jerusalem. Makes our hearts flutter. [Jewish Telegraph Agency]

IF HAARUTZ HA-RISHON CAN’T SHOW NAKED BABES...

THE NEWS:
Haaretz reports today that Internet censorship in Israel could start within one year. [Haaretz]

THE CHATTER:
Politician Ammon Cohen of the ultra-orthodox Shas party proposed the bill in May. [Pulverblog]

A blogger argues that it’s more than a person’s right to see boobs. Liberty is at stake. [Hooqs]

Maybe Ammon Cohen should censor the Hebrew alphabet too since some letters look like Kama Sutra.

DAILY SHVITZ

Shvitz Spritz: La Sagrada Familia (and sharks) in Coney Island

by Avi Kramer, June 21, 2007 0 comments

U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill first top official to visit Pyongyang in 5 years. [NY Times]

Nantucket, Mass police say you ain't documented (and take that posing ACK sticker off your beat-up car). [The Inquirerer and Mirror]

"There's talk of a modern India. But the truth is India can't truly move ahead with caste in place," said Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit writer and expert on India's caste system. "In all ways, it's worse than the Jim Crow laws were in the American South because it's completely sanctioned by religion." [The Washington Post]

Now brewing: Yirgacheffe, Harar and Sidamo, Ethiopia's new trademark coffees. [MSNBC]

Inside presidential palace in France, BlackBerrys pose security threats. [The Washington Post]

"One of Gaudi's kids" (sort of) to design new Coney Island aquarium. [Papermag]

According to horror movie guru Wes Craven, Pauly Shore caused "slope failure/landslide" (and emotional suffering) in their L.A. neighborhood. [TMZ]

DAILY SHVITZ

Lucifer vs. Martha Nussbaum

by Lila Rajiva, June 4, 2007 4 comments

Lila Rajiva is the author of The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media, and the co-author with Bill Bonner of the forthcoming Mobs, Messiahs and Markets. She blogs at http://lilarajiva.wordpress.com. This is her first contribution to the Daily Shvitz.

In an earlier Shvitz post, Rohit Gupta criticized Martha Nussbaum’s latest piece in The Chronicle for Higher Education, in which Nussbaum positions herself as liberal by taking on Samuel Huntington’s famous thesis of clashing civilizations.

Rohit enumerated some of Nussbaum's specific errors, but I would like to dissect her theoretical position, which I think is what enables her to make those errors.

Huntington’s work was widely taken to justify a clash between the Western and the Islamic worlds. Nussbaum relocates the clash. It isn’t between Western, Latin American, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist and Japanese, and the possible ninth, African - (a very loaded ordering in its own right, of course) as Huntington claims. Instead, she says, it’s internal to each culture -- between those who are willing to “live on terms of equal respect with others who are different,” and those who “seek the protection of homogeneity,” who are also (with a leap of logic here) the ones who want to dominate others. All fundamentalists, purists, exceptionalists and even the merely orthodox apparently belong in the Luciferian category, while liberal religions and secular universalists (who see citizenship as premised on political entitlements) are cast in the role of St. Michael.

Here I take the part of Lucifer. “Terms of equal respect” begs the question. What equal respect consists of is what’s at the heart of the dispute. Luciferians feel that their variegated beliefs - are in fact, not equally respected by an evangelical monotheism of “universalism” and “secularism” that seeks to dominate them through the state.

And I don’t believe this throws them suicidally onto the path of the onrushing engine of science either. Nussbaum herself concedes that when she anxiously describes a Hindu devotee, who on one hand claims his guru’s voice comes directly from god, but, on the other still knows how to get fiber optic cable into his temple.

Nonetheless, this “combination of technological sophistication with utter docility” so terrifies her she thinks it can only be remedied by – (drum roll here) -- education in the arts and humanities. Bada-bing!

Still, I take her point. Not knowing history is what frees the revolutionary to break with the past most completely. Turgenev said the same thing in Fathers and Sons. But, set her theory on the ground today and see how it works. Do four years of women’s studies and French psychoanalysis, maybe with a minor in “conflict resolution,” really make non-technical folk “imagine the pain of another human being” better? If so, why did so many people use feminist language and universal human rights to justify invading Iraq? And how balanced are humanistic studies today, anyway? Are we much served by replacing an unbalanced emphasis on profitable skills, as she calls it, with an unbalanced emphasis on unprofitable skills?

How much more balanced are the theoretical perspectives that dominate major Western and Indian universities than, say, the Catholic perspective that dominates a Jesuit university? Marxist (or other) approaches to history are just that - approaches. Useful, enriching, plausible, but not inscribed in stone. That is what makes Nussbaum’s argument internally contradictory.

The bait she tempts us with is that technical studies need to be supplemented by the “humanities” (defined as interpretative). But, what she actually gives us is a bit of a sham -- history as pure fact, not interpretation. Nussbaum wants us to believe that facts presented by religious historians are guilty until proven innocent, but facts presented by Marxists historians are prima facie facts. She would have us believe that, since this immaculately conceived history is free of the original sin of hierarchy, it must lead us to a paradise of justice and mercy on earth.

4 comments

DAILY SHVITZ

The Ganges Freezes Over? No!: A Response to Martha Nussbaum

by Rohit Gupta, June 1, 2007 0 comments

This preview from Martha Nussbaum's The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence and India's Future has generated at least one passionate response in the burgeoning Indian blogosphere. Her essay is a paranoid summary of the rise of Hindu fundamentalism and its relationship with 1930s European fascism. She tries to scale up the microcosm of Gujarat, as if it represents the whole mosaic of modern India, and fails miserably. While devoid of any new insights on our predicaments, the preview essay contains strangely amusing notions such as:

Well, for a start, the people who spoke Sanskrit almost certainly migrated into the subcontinent from outside, finding indigenous people there, probably the ancestors of the Dravidian peoples of South India. Hindus are no more indigenous than Muslims.

Even the most liberal Hindu would be offended. This image brings to my mind that great genetic journey we have all made, all the peoples of the world - branching out from the dark heart of Africa, the cradle of Man, the source and origin of all nomadic drift. By Nussbaum's logic the Hindus are no more indigenous than Muslims because the Hindu identity as a coherent unit was only established after the arrival of Islam in as a force in the subcontinent, in the same way as the idea of India as a national entity was only conceivable after its assembly within the British Empire. It would be far too laborious to point out the historical errors and faulty assumptions in Nussbaum's story, which would have benefited from a little research.

For anyone looking for the most authoritative guide to post-1947 democratic India, please refer to historian Ramchandra Guha's awesome tome - India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy . The hyperlink will take you to a review of the book by Amit Chaudhuri in The Guardian, who describes it thus:

FEATURE

Magic and Mayhem
Learning to treasure peace and quiet in Delhi
by Neille Ilel, May 4, 2007 0 comments

I saw a huge contrast between the rich and the poor everywhere I went in India, but it was most pronounced in Delhi, where the Plaza Hotel bar rivals any in Los Angeles and little children with bloodied arms bang on car windows begging for coins. “The blood’s fake, I know it is,” insisted one of the American wedding guests.“Well, I fucking hope so,” I said to myself. The carpool lane: Kids in DelhiI didn’t stay in the city long, but four days was enough to get me off my bearings. ...

FEATURE

Where Are All the Indian Yoga Students?
In Rishikesh, enlightenment caters to foreigners.
by Neille Ilel, May 1, 2007 2 comments

I started with an Iyengar yoga class at the giant ashram down the road. The teacher was not a smiling bearded Indian yogi, but a tiny, angular, frowning American woman. Karin O’Bannon was all business. Rumor had it she was in her 70s but it was quite clear she could kick your ass. She was like the Debbie Allen of India. There was no fucking around in Karin’s class. On the waterfront: Many ashrams have shrines along the Ganges“Someone tell her to spread her legs wider,” she barked, pointing at me. One of her assistants mimed to me to spread my legs. I was too scared ...

2 comments

FEATURE

	The Enlightenment Industry
	Failing to find inner peace in India
	by Neille Ilel, April 29, 2007 0 comments

KarmaI realized I probably wasn’t going to find enlightenment in India about four days into my trip. I was drinking chai in the restaurant of the Shiva Hotel before a yoga class, talking with Iryse, a snarky Belgian woman who I’d just met. We chatted briefly about the weather, where we came from, and real estate prices in our respective cities, and then she asked me if I believed in Karma.Hmm. “I don’t not believe in Karma,” I said. “But I can’t say I believe in it either.”Iryse told me that she was in a car accident months back. Part of the reason she came to the holy city of Rishikesh was to figure out if there were healing Karmic forces at work. I cringed.

DAILY SHVITZ

The Aerial Politics of Asia

by Rohit Gupta, April 12, 2007 0 comments

[Note: This the first in a five-part series of posts by Rohit Gupta on politics in India.]

If the late 19th century and early twentieth were shaped by the movement of railways, it stands to reason that aviation will shape the politics of our times, through it's unique expression of movement by flight. Last week, I noticed at least three curious incidents in Asia that pertained to aerial flight or airports. In all three cases, while we are aware that an event has occurred challenging a territory, the territorial line being violated is entirely virtual, a kind of Maginot Line in the clouds, as it were:

1. The Tamil Tigers rebel group (or LTTE) in Sri Lanka orchestrated an aerial attack on a Sri Lankan government airstrip. They now hold the distinction of being the world's first insurgent group to stage an air attack, or to possess any kind of airforce. This should have boosted the Tigers' fundraising operations abroad, apart from flaring up clashes between the old rivals in recent days. It wouldn't be surprising if LTTE conducted an operation in Indian territory by crossing the narrow strait between the two countries.

I should mention the mythological aspect of this event. In the Ramayana, the main Hindu epic, one incident describes the monkey-god Hanuman flying over the sea and going to Lanka from India's southernmost tip - Kanyakumari. He is insulted in the court of Ravana, the Lord of Lanka, who burns his tail. Hanuman escapes and with his magnificent tail in flames (in popular interpretation of the myth, the jet engine), the flying monkey-god torches down a major portion of the golden city of Lanka.

2. In France, Pakistani tourism minister Ms. Nilofar Bakhtiar went on a paragliding session as a fundraiser event for the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. After the jump was successful, she hugged her French coach, a man. The photographs of this embrace were tagged as posing in an "obscene manner" by some extremist clerics in Pakistan who promptly issued a fatwa against the lady.

In simple terms, the lady had "crossed a line", but which line was it? It is the surface of the lady's body, which belongs to an Islamic code according to the clerics – Islam owns her body. Ms. Bakhtiar replied to the fatwa saying that the event was for the benefit of Pakistani people, and she would "do it again" if needed. She didn't clarify whether "the event" in question was the flight or the hug, because ostensibly, the flight could not have been possible without the support of a trained instructor, and for her the flight would thus have been synonymous with the hug.

3. In another strange incident the US ambassador to India David Mulford and wife were found standing at the Mumbai airport taxiway for 30 minutes, after their pilot reported smoke in the cockpit of their US defense aircraft. Ambassadors of foreign countries are exempt from security checks at Indian airports, but apparently the pilot argued and flouted the rules of conduct on the taxiway as dictated by the Air Traffic Control. According to the rules, he should not have asked them to disembark in the middle of the taxiway.

Airports are transit zones, you are in transit at each point whether in the taxi-bus or airplane. As long as you are escorted in a vehicle, you are in movement, and therefore within permissible territory. The transit zone, by definition – is neither here nor there, it is the zone between the source and the destination. To be static is read as a threatening gesture.

FAITHHACKER

No, Really...Your Cousin is a Mormon

by Laurel Snyder, February 13, 2007 0 comments

The Lost Tribes: Still people of the book. The Lost Tribes: Still people of the book.If you read my earlier post (or if you already knew your tribal history) then you’re aware that there are a bunch of lost tribes. The obvious question is, “What happened to them?”

Of course, the short answer is that the Assyrians kicked them into oblivion (Damn you, Sargan II!) But we have to wonder (or at least, a bunch of wingnuts have to wonder) how that could happen? Why would our oh-so-protective god be watching out for us in Babylon and in Poland, but not be keeping an eye on those other 10 tribes during their Assyrian expulsion/captivity.

Hmmm….

Nova has this to offer:

Over 2,700 years ago, the Assyrians exiled the ten tribes of the Kingdom of Israel. The ten tribes would have returned at once to the Holy Land had not the Lord encircled them with the legendary river, the Sambatyon. All week long, every week, the great and terrible river Sambatyon seethes with wild rapids, churning great rocks in billows up to the heavens. On the Sabbath, however, the river rests from its fury. But the ten tribes cannot cross because of their great piety and their reverence for the day of rest.

Which is myth, of course. But this site has done a great job of compiling what faint history there is. Pointing out moments when a tribe has claimed to surface… totally worth reading!

Beyond that, there are a lot of wacky sites on the web with explanations for where the lost tribes landed. Some far-out Christians LOVE the tribes. And people have had a lot of fun trying to track them down. Some of the claims aren’t so crazy, and maybe the tribe of Ephraim did land in India. Maybe the Ethiopian Jews are descended from Dan. All but Simeon. Nobody wants to be from the tribe of Simeon. Poor Simeon.

But be careful in reading on this subject… some of the wingnuts are more than nutty, and you should be on guard. “Lost Tribe” literature runs closely alongside conspiracy theory literature, evangelical literature, and anti-Semitic literature. This site claims that the antichrist will come from the tribe of Dan. They include a disclaimer:

To suggest that the Antichrist will be from one of the tribes of Israel is likely to incur accusations of "anti-Semitism" from those who would like to conceal this fact. However, we believe that the Biblical admonition to bless the descendants of Abraham includes exposing the identity of the man of sin who will lead many Jews to their destruction.

Yeah, that makes me feel better.

Finally… the most famous argument comes from the Mormons, who seem to think that native Americans might be the remnants of the lost tribes. Which (I guess) would make a little more sense out of their religion. People are even using DNA evidence to try and prove this stuff…

Crazy, huh?

DAILY SHVITZ

This Just In: Our Men Have Small Penises

by Joey Kurtzman, December 11, 2006 1 comments

If the sign of a healthy democracy is a media that publishes “inconvenient truths,” then Indian democracy has no peer.

This weekend, the Times of India offered 450 million Indian men the following news in an article titled "Indian men don't measure up": Indian men: Have had better weekends Indian men: Have had better weekends

Scientists at the country's premier medical research institute have just concluded an extensive two-year study of the penis sizes of Indian men. The data is still being collated and analysed by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), but..."data collected in Mumbai till 2001 showed that 60% of the participants measured 126 to 156 mm in length and 30% between 100 and 125 mm," said a city researcher, pointing out that [Indian penises averaged 5 cm shorter than the international average].

I'll never again complain about Ha'aretz carrying B'tselem reports.

Compounding the bad news is that a parallel study launched by the Pakistani Council of Medical Research has determined that Pakistani men have the largest penises in the world.

1 comments