General

Crusading Popes in Defense of the West

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Paul Crawford’s essay, “Four Myths about the Crusades” is a wonderful antidote to the received wisdom about the Crusades. According to the standard account,

the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.

He recounts the long history of Muslim conquest and threats against the West beginning in 632 and extending right up to the First Crusade in 1095. The Popes were key players in the defense of the West.

This is not the absence of provocation; rather, it is a deadly and persistent threat, and one which had to be answered by forceful defense if Christendom were to survive. The crusades were simply one tool in the defensive options exercised by Christians.

To put the question in perspective, one need only consider how many times Christian forces have attacked either Mecca or Medina. The answer, of course, is never. Read more

We’re Rich; We’re Jewish: We Rule.

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Steven A. Cohen: "I'm rich. Obey me."

Thanks to “Tom”, who by posting a link to it in the comment thread to my blog SEC’s Becker/Madoff saga: How could it smell worse? alerted me to Donors to G.O.P. Are Backing Gay Marriage Push by Nicholas Confessore and Michael Barbaro The New York Times May 13, 2011

As gay rights advocates intensify their campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, the bulk of their money is coming from an unexpected source: a group of conservative financiers and wealthy donors to the Republican Party, most of whom are known for bankrolling right-leaning candidates and causes.

Predictably, the NYT avoids the most significant aspect to this story, but the Capital J blog at the JTA.org website is made of sterner stuff:

The New York Times runs a piece today on how the big money behind the push for sanctioning gay marriage in New York State is coming from Republicans.

The figures named are also Jewish….But I mean every name. Here’s what a quick Google search came up with:
–Paul Singer: on the boards of Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and Commentary
–Daniel Loeb: Appeared at events for YIVO and the Jewish Enrichment Center.
–Clifford Asness: Likened Obama’s proposed tax policies to pogroms. (Yes, philanthropy would be nicer than name calling, but this is still a form of identification.)
–Steven A. Cohen: this excellent Tablet piece by Allison Hoffman exposes a rabbi who tried to use Cohen’s Jewishness in a scheme to extort money from him, but otherwise notes that Cohen’s philanthropy does not have much of a Jewish slant…
And then there’s former Republican National Committee chairman, Ken Mehlman, who’s organizing the whole GOP push, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who also backs the initiative (but is no longer a Republican.) Jewish, Republican, pro-gay rights by Ron Kampeas – May 14, 2011 Read more

Bin Laden’s Assassination: Wake Me When It’s Over

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I must admit to feeling a bit unpatriotic. I just can’t get into the non-stop hoopla on the bin Laden assassination. On Monday, with only a small lead time the LA Times had 8 articles on it, beginning with a monster headline screaming “U.S. KILLS BIN LADEN” in 96-point type that took up around 4 inches in two rows across the entire front page. But they were just warming up. On Tuesday, there were 24 articles, headlined by “OBAMA’S GAMBLE” in 72-point type recounting the decision process of our daringly brilliant president, much loved by the Times. (Now the Times has even more reason to ignore Donald Trump’s  request for Obama’s college grades.) Read more

Is observing the Mesirah prohibition compatible with being American?

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In our essay Is the Madoff Scandal Paradigmatic? Kevin MacDonald and I noted that suspicions of Madoff were quite widespread amongst financially sophisticated elements of the Jewish community. For instance we reported David Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee saying:

the Madoff name had come up here in the AJC’s investment committee some months ago when someone suggested we ought to explore investing … with Madoff. And the chairman of our investment committee actually said, “No, I think it’s a Ponzi scheme.” He actually used those words to the ten or fifteen people in the meeting.

We asked

With so many prominent Jewish investment industry figures apparently aware that something was wrong with Madoff, the question arises: Why did they not turn him in?

We concluded that the reason was the echo of the traditional ban on “Mesirah” or “Mesira” (informing – an informer is a “Moser”). In medieval times, Jews were absolutely forbidden to tell the Civil Authorities about law-breaking by a fellow Jew, a prohibition sometimes enforced by death, as discussed in this article in the Jewish Encyclopedia. Read more

Darkness At Noon For Richard Goldstone

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Those fortunate enough to live in countries where questioning the Holocaust is not illegal will have noticed the irony of the stance Israel and her apologists seem pleased to take up in the aftermath of Judge Richard Goldstone’s recent groveling in the Washington Post (Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes Friday, April 1, 2011). Just as the Holocaust deniers argue that there is no documented line of command from Hitler himself to the WW2 atrocities against Jews, so Goldstone’s extremely limited concession:

While the investigations published by the Israeli military…have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

This of course gives the green light for Israel’s defenders to happily claim that the Israeli Government was not responsible. Not, it should be noted that blood was not deliberately shed by Israeli soldiers. The historically-minded will see a difference between the proportion of German and Israeli High Command archives in the public domain.

Goldstone’s Breaking brings another historical parallel to mind: the Soviet Show Trials of the 1930s. These of course featured devastating confessions from the accused, often so absurd as to completely defy credibility. Many observers overseas were deeply puzzled by the extent of the reversals involved. The Goldstone charade chillingly echoes these events – for understandable reasons, as Kevin MacDonald has pointed out. Read more

“The Evolution of Prejudice”: Less than advertised

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A recent article in Scientific American (“The Evolution of Prejudice: Scientists see the beginnings of racism in monkeys“) is less than advertised. The study shows that monkeys are sensitive to group boundaries–they are especially concerned with monkeys from outgroups even if they are former ingroup members with whom they are familiar. But even if true it would not provide a firm evolutionary basis for negative attitudes toward other races because the negative attitudes on occur if those other races are in different groups. The monkeys are keying on the group status of the other monkeys, not on genetic differences.

In fact, evolutionary psychologists have been busy showing that if one sets up two very very clearly marked racially integrated groups (i.e., with different colored uniforms–exactly the situation in most sports), people have negative views toward the outgroup that are independent of race (Cosmides, L., J., Tooby,  & R. Kurzban. (2003). Perceptions of race. Trends in Cognitive Science 7:173–179).  Read more

Jews and Japanese Imperialism

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The institution of the United Nations (UN) Holocaust Remembrance Day and the UN outreach programme to promote the worldwide teaching of the Holocaust is a dubious policy of this supra-national organization: Is the suffering of one people more significant than the suffering of another? Is the suffering of ethnic persecution a sound basis for universal morals?

The Holocaust education and subsequent teaching of Jewish history also can be very embarassing, especially when Jews were complicit in foreign occupation and brutal oppression. In this article, Part 2 of a series (Part 1 is here), I discuss the Jewish role in facilitating Japanese imperialism.

Jews and Japanese Imperialism

In 1905 the Russo-Japanese war for the domination of Manchuria—nowadays the northeast of China—was in a deadlock with neither party gaining the upper hand. Japan could not sustain a long-term expensive land war with Russia and their opponents knew that. Moreover the Russians had the advantage that the White nations were not willing to support an emerging non-White nation to compete over foreign markets and colonies. Read more