Tuesday 26 May 2009

Israeli report: Venezuela sends uranium to Iran - USATODAY.com

Israeli report: Venezuela sends uranium to Iran - USATODAY.com

Canada minister blasts 'dangerous' leftist-Islamist anti-Semitism - Haaretz - Israel News

Canada minister blasts 'dangerous' leftist-Islamist anti-Semitism - Haaretz - Israel News

O bama

Book review: Animal Farm by George Orwell | English classic | Culturazzi

Animal Farm - George Orwell

Posted by Andrew Cotlov On May - 25 - 2009

animal_farmposterIn 1943 when George Orwell wrote Animal Farm, his caustic critique of Stalin’s Russia, the Soviet Union was so popular in the United States and Great Britain that he couldn’t find a publisher for his novel. In fact, the Russians were so strongly associated with the fight against the Nazis that it wasn’t until 1945, when the Second World War was over, that Animal Farm was finally published. After reading the manuscript Orwell sent him, TS Eliot wrote a letter of rejection actually explaining that an anti-Russian novel would not fare well in the political atmosphere of the moment. He also said that the novel’s allegory was “unconvincing” and suggested that if Orwell’s goal was to make a case for Trotskyism he should’ve created “more public spirited pigs”.

Indeed, while he was a socialist, Orwell was more enchanted by Trotsky than his counter-part Stalin because he knew about Stalin’s unchecked political power, and the length he was willing to go to maintain it, first-hand. “We were very lucky to get out of Spain alive,” Orwell once wrote, and he wasn’t talking about the skirmishes he was involved in against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, rather; he was talking about the politically charged violence the Stalinists brought with them from Russia when sent to support the Spanish democracy. In Spain, Orwell was in a Trotskyite band of soldiers and later wrote

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Book review: Animal Farm by George Orwell English classic Culturazzi

How to Brainwash a Nation

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The Torah Revolution: Ringing bells

The Torah Revolution: in 30 years

The Torah Revolution: in 30 years

DoubleTapper: Middle East Peace

DoubleTapper: Middle East Peace

DoubleTapper: Another Dry Bones Classic

DoubleTapper: Another Dry Bones Classic

DoubleTapper: Israel is the place to live

DoubleTapper: Israel is the place to live

Life in Israel: Le-SheeTascha Criticism

Life in Israel: Le-SheeTascha Criticism

Life in Israel: Stephen King on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Life in Israel: Stephen King on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Life in Israel: Quote of the Day (qotd)

Life in Israel: Quote of the Day (qotd)

Pleading for my Land by Herbert Pagani

Pleading for my Land by Herbert Pagani

November 11, 1975

Last Night, I was in the subway when I heard two ladies say:

“Did you see these Jews with their stories at the U.N.? What jerks! ”

It’s true. We are jerks. For centuries we have been the world’s jerks. It’s in our nature, what can you do?

Abraham with his single God, Moses with his 10 Commandments, Jesus with his second cheek always available for a second slap, then Freud, Marx, Einstein, all were intruders, revolutionaries, enemies of the Order.

Why?

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Pleading for my Land by Herbert Pagani

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SIXTH GENERATION AND THE DEFEAT OF DEMOGRAPHY

Sixth Generation and the Defeat of Demography

The Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv has just had a great-great-great-grandson. That means, his grandson is now a great grandfather. Or if you prefer, his great-grandson is now a grandfather.

The Rav is either 99 or 100 years old (there seem to be no witnesses left to confirm which), so if you do the maths you'll see that such a thing is possible, so long as each generation gives birth at 20, or even if one generation misses but the next recompenses by starting at 18.

Elyashiv, the most important Rabbi in the Misnaged (non-Hassidic) part of the Ashkenzi Haredi world, and as the patron of some of the Haredi MKs also an influential political figure, is by all accounts lucid, active and thus aware of his new status, though I'd be surprised if he can keep track of all his descendants. He and his wife had 12 children; one was killed in the War of Independence and another died in infancy, but all the others so far as I know had children. But then, his contemporary, Benzion Netanyahu, also closing in on 100 and lucid, doesn't have any great grandchildren at all, so far as I know, and by the time they get born and become grandparents the present generation of Elyashivs will easily be ahead by another six generations.

The story of the Haredi fecundity is truly an oddity. Those of you who have studied demography know that the demographers have their models, and along with the sociologists and others they have all sorts of neat explanations for why birthrates rise and fall; I remember when I took some courses about this it all sounded plausible. Nothing I learned then explained how an entire section of society, living in a country with modern medical facilities and low rates of child deaths, could have a birthrate that rises from generation to generation over generations. And no, it's not Israel's willingness to subsidize their children, because that willingness flows and ebbs according to the Haredi MK's ability to coerce the government while the birthrate rises steadily; anyway, the Haredi birthrate in America is also consistently high. It's not economics, because extraordinarily wealthy Haredi billionaires have lots of children, and impoverished ones with five kids in one room also do. And no, having Haredi women enter the marketplace doesn't seem to make much difference, either. There's a whole brigade of 30-something Haredi women trained as system analyst-types in the high-tech world (my experience has consistently been that they outsmart everyone in sight), and each of them has six or eight children alongside her career.

If I had to name one single reason for all this, my guess would be the Holocaust. The Haredis are trying to refill. There's ample anecdotal evidence for this, of course, but I doubt anyone has proven it.
taken from:Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
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