Behind the Aegis
Behind the Aegis's JournalTwitter may face legal action over anti-Semitic tweets (some very offensive pictures included)
Following a wave of anti-Semitic posts on Twitter, anti-racism groups in France say they were looking at all legal options to target the authors of thousands of offensive tweets - and possibly Twitter itself.
French anti-racist groups on Tuesday said they were launching wide-ranging legal action following a wave of anti-Semitic posts on microblogging site Twitter.
The move follows an explosion last week in the use of the Twitter hashtag #unbonjuif - meaning “a good Jew” - to spread anti-Semitic jokes online.
By October 10, the hashtag was trending third in France (meaning it was the third most popular tagged subject on the site in the country) and a deluge of offensive posts -- as well as tweets decrying the racist tone of many of the comments -- continued for days.
And with anti-Semitic hate crimes on the rise in France, organisations like SOS Racisme and the French Jewish Students Union (UEJF) said they were determined pursue those that took part through the courts.
more...
Samples of the tweets:
(Translation: A good Jew)
(Translation: A good Jew should be cooked just right)
(Translation: A good Jew with his friends and girlfriend)
Jewish-American voters not straying from Obama
Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution
The AJC — that’s the other AJC, the American Jewish Committee — has just released a new poll of Jewish-Americans. Its findings suggest that GOP efforts to make inroads with Jewish voters are having just as much success as are similar efforts to court black Americans, Hispanics and other minorities.
In other words, a biseleh.
In a similar poll four years ago, 56 percent of American Jews identified themselves as Democrats while 17 percent said they were Republican. Fifty-seven percent said they backed Obama, while 30 percent backed John McCain.
The numbers in 2012?
In other interesting numbers:
– 72.6% approve of Joe Biden as vice president.
– 63.3% disapprove of the selection of Paul Ryan as the GOP veep nominee; 41.4% disapprove strongly.
– Asked to name the most important issue driving their presidential vote, just 4.5% named U.S-Israeli relations. Just 1.3 percent named Iran’s nuclear program.
– 61.5% identified the economy as the most important issue. Health care was second, at 16%.
– 77.8% approve of Obama’s handling of national security.
– 64% would support U.S. military action against Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to end its nuclear program; 35 percent would oppose such action.
Read more: http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2012/09/28/jewish-american-voters-not-straying-from-obama/
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Full poll results here:
http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=846741&ct=12208961
Hat tip to aaaaaa5a for this in LBN...http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014249893
Semitic Anti-Semitism
At the risk of preaching to the choir (or the “minyan,” we guess?), there is an issue that we at the Jewish Voice would like to clear the air about, and that is, exactly what constitutes anti-Semitism, and when, if ever, it “doesn’t count.”
Anti-Semitism is defined as “Hostility and prejudice directed against Jewish people; (also) the theory, action, or practice resulting from this.” (Thank you, Oxford English Dictionary.) Note that nowhere in the definition of the term is it stipulated that the source must be non-Jewish, or “non-Semitic.” While one may assume that most instances of anti-Semitism involve non-Jews, this needn’t necessarily be the case, just as a person expressing racist views about people of African descent wouldn’t be rendered any less of a bigot by being black. A self-hater of any race or religion might be confused, but they still hate.
Why do we bring this up now, you ask? Comedienne Roseanne Barr, in her ongoing attempts to stay “edgy” and culturally relevant, managed to make waves last week with a Tweet about “Jewish mind control.” Now, Roseanne has a history of making nonsensical remarks (such as “I’m running for president”), some of them anti-Jewish or anti-Israel. What really bothers us, however, is her defense against critics: “I’m a Jew, so refrain from calling me an anti-Semite.” Maybe if Roseanne would refrain from acting like (and probably, being) an anti-Semite, perhaps people would stop calling her one. Being Jewish can’t shield you from factually-based accusations of anti-Semitism, any more than a rich person could rob a bank, then get away with it by telling the Judge “I can’t possibly be a thief; I already have money!”
On a related note, Arab activists will sometimes deflect charges of anti-Jewish bigotry by explaining that, being “Semitic” themselves, they are incapable of anti-Semitism. As world-renowned historian and Mid-East scholar Bernard Lewis once put it (and I’m paraphrasing here): this is the logical equivalent of saying that a translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion printed in London is anti-Semitic, but one printed in Cairo is not because Hebrew and Arabic are cognate languages.
more: http://jewishvoiceny.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1858:semitic-anti-semitism&catid=101:jv-editorial&Itemid=284
Austria investigates alleged anti-Jewish cartoon
VIENNA (AP) — Austrian authorities are investigating a cartoon on a rightist political leader's Facebook page that critics say smacked of anti-Semitism by showing a repulsive fat banker with a large hooked nose and what appeared to be Star of David patterns on his cufflinks, an official said Tuesday.
The rightist Freedom Party has called criticism of the caricature politically motivated and said its leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, denies the cartoon posted on his Facebook page Sunday was directed against Jews.
Strache accused his detractors of "trying to link me to something insidious" and said they were seeing Stars of David where there were none. He also said that anyone who automatically assigns ethnicity or religion to a hooked nose is a racist.
Still, the investigation could lead to legal action against those who were responsible for the cartoon.
Thomas Vecsey of the Austrian Prosecutor's office said Tuesday that legal experts will decide in the next few days whether to charge those responsible for the posting with incitement to religious or ethnic hatred, a criminal offense in Austria.
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For the real 'good read', read the comment section.
The Sounds of Hate: The White Power Music Scene in the United States in 2012
The recent tragic shooting spree at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in which Wade Michael Page killed six people before killing himself after a shootout with police, has drawn attention to the shadowy world of white power music. Page, a committed white supremacist and member of the Hammerskins, a hardcore racist skinhead group, was heavily involved in the white power music scene in the United States. He played in a number of white power bands over the previous 12 years, most prominently the bands Definite Hate and End Apathy.
Page was just one of hundreds of white supremacist musicians listened to by thousands of white supremacists in the United States and beyond. Today, white power music permeates the subculture of the white supremacist movement. Not all white supremacists enjoy white power music, but many of them do, especially neo-Nazis and racist skinheads. For listeners, white power music is not simply entertainment. It is music with a message, a medium used to express an ideology suffused with anger, hatred and violence.
White Power Music in the United States
Today, white power music is well established in the United States, where it has existed for three decades. Hate music arose originally in Great Britain in the 1970s as the skinhead subculture that originated there diverged into two different streams: a traditional skinhead stream and a racist skinhead stream. As racist skinheads emerged, they created a white supremacist variation of the skinhead-related music genre called Oi! (sometimes also known by the deliberate euphemism “Rock against Communism” or RAC). In the late 1970s, and more so in the early 1980s, both the racist skinhead subculture and its music crossed the Atlantic to the United States and Canada.
During the 1980s, the racist skinhead subculture grew and evolved, especially on the West Coast, where it also interacted with the punk music scene that was strong there at the time. As a result of this intermixture, another genre of white power music was born: hatecore punk, a racist version of hardcore punk. Hate music grew as the racist skinhead movement spread, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s. By this time, a number of American hate music bands had formed—some of which, such as Bully Boys, still exist today.
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Anti-gay crimes rarely prosecuted in Texas by name
When Ruth Clattenburg found her son inside the apartment they shared off West Bitters Road the morning of February 21, 2010, he'd been dead for hours. Shot execution-style in the back of the head, Troy Martinez Clattenburg, 24, was propped up against a dryer in the hallway between his bedroom and bathroom in boxers and a T-shirt. After frantically notifying neighbors, the mother rushed back to the apartment to cover her son with his favorite blanket, trying to warm the cold body.
When details of the crime first began to surface, Clattenburg's death seemed to be textbook example of murder sparked by anti-gay hate. Cody Carmichael, who was eventually charged, convicted, and sent to prison for the murder, told police Clattenburg made an unwanted pass at him as he and another friend drank and smoked pot inside Clattenburg's apartment. Carmichael told investigators he left, borrowed a black .380-caliber handgun from the friend, and returned to the apartment. When Clattenburg turned his back after opening the door, Carmichael fired a single round. According to an investigator's report, Carmichael told police that Clattenburg "did not see it coming."
Clattenburg's mother never went back inside the apartment after her haunting discovery. And in the two years since the murder relatives of Clattenburg, along with local activists, have criticized authorities for not prosecuting the murder as a hate crime, either at the state or federal level.
Although the family "wanted a hate-crimes charge from day one," as Clattenburg's sister Ginger Hicks put it, the family never got one. "Hate-crimes laws were passed to protect people like my brother Troy, and who are they protecting if nobody's familiar with it and nobody's using it?" Hicks asked.
"It's obviously too late for Troy, but what about preventing other tragedies?"
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Hat-tip to douglas9 who has posted this in "Good Reads" here.
Because After 64 Years Together, Louis Halsey and John Spofford Morgan Finally Got Hitched.
(This story is a few months old, but I just saw it and thought it was very nice and I was needing something nice.)
When the Columbia Library closed each night at ten, it was the custom of John Spofford Morgan, who was studying for a master’s in international affairs, to hop on the subway and head downtown to the New Verdi on West 72nd. Back then, there were two kinds of bars for gay men, he says: pickup joints and old-friends joints. The New Verdi was the latter, but it turned into the former when at around 10:30 on May 17, 1947, Louis Halsey walked in. “Love at first sight,” says Lou now. “Was it?” John wonders. “For me it was slower.” In any case, Lou and John spent the night together, just as they have spent most nights in the 64 years ensuing. Last month, they got married.
John is 94, recovering from a broken hip but otherwise as hale and handsome as Lou, 88, says he always was. One snapshot shows the pair on a beach in Beirut in 1952. Lou looks like Tony Curtis, glossy and pompadoured. John looks like JFK except, as his mother used to complain when people compared their families, “we have chins.”
Both served in the Navy in World War II, but on different oceans, as in a way they were from different worlds on land. John, who still speaks in the accent of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century elite, worked as an economist. Lou, of Hungarian-immigrant stock, cut hair for decades at the Westbury Hotel. He wears rings and bright colors; John emphatically doesn’t.
more: http://nymag.com/news/articles/reasonstoloveny/2011/gay-marriage/
Alan Turing, the father of the computer, is finally getting his due
For Alan Turing’s many admirers, the centenary of his birth on Saturday is an occasion for both celebration and mourning. Here, after all, is the architect of the modern computer, the code-breaker whose ingenuity ensured an Allied victory in World War II and the father of artificial intelligence. Yet Turing was also a victim of a pernicious and paranoid strain of sexual hypocrisy in 20th-century England. Nor, in the 21st, has the victimization wholly ceased.
---snip---
From early in his adolescence, Turing understood that he was gay and saw nothing wrong with it. If the society in which he lived criminalized homosexuality, he believed the fault lay with the society, not with the men and women it vilified. He made little effort to disguise or efface his desire for other men, and when, in the early 1950s, he embarked on a businesslike affair with a youth in Manchester, his sense of how the world should be clashed with how it was.
Suspecting his boyfriend of robbery, he summoned the police to his house. They ended up arresting Turing under the “blackmailer’s charter,” which criminalized “acts of gross indecency” between adult men in public or in private. It was under this law — not repealed until 1967 — that Oscar Wilde had been sentenced to hard labor in prison.
To avoid a similar fate, Turing agreed to submit to a course of estrogen therapy intended to cure him of his homosexuality; as a result, he grew breasts and became impotent. Yet even after the treatment ended, the police, fearing that he might defect to the Soviet Union, stayed on his trail, interrupting every effort he made to live life as he saw fit. In June 1954, Turing committed suicide by biting into an apple laced with cyanide — a nod to his favorite film, Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”
more @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/alan-turing-father-of-computer-science-not-yet-getting-his-due/2012/06/22/gJQA5eUOvV_story.html
Hat-tip to Sgent who has posted this story in LBN: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014150355, please visit and "K&R" that thread!
ETA:
91 years ago...The Tulsa Race Riots (May 31 - June 1, 1921)
Many people aren't aware of this event. Being Oklahoma, I was surprised at the number of people here who had never heard of it. It is now being taught in public schools after years of never being mentioned. Here are a few educational/informational links.
The history of the United States has produced much in the way of race riots, from the New York City riots of 1862 to the Los Angeles riots of 1991, this country has experienced much civil unrest between blacks and whites. The year 1919 was particularly noted for the large number of riots in the urban areas of the North where returning white veterans of WWI competed with Southern Blacks for jobs during the post-war depression. Again, in 1923, a racial confrontation erupted in Rosewood, Fl. There eight blacks and two whites died during the destruction of the Black community of Rosewood. However, the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was perhaps the costliest incident of racial violence in American history. At the same time, it is perhaps the most marginalized, being almost forgotten until this decade.
The Riot began on May, 31,1921 because of an incident the day before. A black man named Dick Rowland, stepped into an elevator in the Drexel Building operated by a woman named Sarah Page. Suddenly, a scream was heard and Rowland got nervous and ran out. Rowland was accused of a sexual attack against Page. One version of the incident holds that Rowland stepped on Page's foot, throwing her off balance. When Rowland reached out to keep her from falling, she screamed. The next day, Rowland was arrested and held in the courthouse lockup. Headlines in the local newspapers inflamed public opinion and there was talk in the white community of lynch justice. The black community, equally incensed, prepared to defend him. Outside the courthouse, 75 armed black men mustered, offering their services to protect Rowland The Sheriff refused the offer.
A white man then tried to disarm one of the black men. While they were wrestling over the gun, it discharged. That was the spark the turned the incident into a massive racial conflict. Fighting broke out and continued through the night. Homes were looted and burned.
http://www.mc.cc.md.us/Departments/hpolscrv/VdeLaOliva.html
The Tulsa Race Riot was a large-scale racially motivated conflict on May 31 and June 1, 1921, between the white and black communities of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which the wealthiest African-American community in the United States, the Greenwood District also known as 'the Negro Wall Street'[1] was burned to the ground. During the 16 hours of the assault, over 800 people were admitted to local hospitals with injuries, more than 6,000 Greenwood residents were arrested and detained at three local facilities.[2] An estimated 10,000 were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire. The official count of the dead by the Oklahoma Department of Vital Statistics was 39, but other estimates of black fatalities have been up to about 300.[2]
The events of the riot were omitted from local and state history; "The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place."[3] In 1996, the state legislature commissioned a report, completed in 2001, to establish the historical record. It has approved some compensatory actions, such as scholarships for descendants of survivors, economic development of Greenwood, and a memorial park, dedicated in 2010, to the victims in Tulsa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot
Historical events, be they great or small, do not exist in isolation, but are a product of the age during which they occurred. Often times, the reasons why a particular historical incident turned out the way it did can be readily located, while for others, the causes may be more difficult to locate. In both cases, one rule still holds true: that the events of the past cannot be separated from the era when they occurred.
The same applies to the Tulsa race riot as well. To understand the riot, one cannot begin with the first shot that was fired, nor even with the seemingly insignificant chain of events that led to the first signs of real trouble. Rather, we must begin with the spirit of the times. Only seeing the world as Tulsans did in 1921, and by grasping both their passions and their fears, can we comprehend not only how this great tragedy could occur, but why, in the end, that it did.
Of all the qualities that impressed out-of-town visitors about Tulsa in the days before the race riot, one of them was just how new and up-to-date everything seemed. From the modern office buildings that were rising up out of downtown, to the electric trolleys that rumbled back and forth along Main Street, to the rows of freshly painted houses that kept pushing the city limits further and further into the surrounding countryside, compared to other cities, Tulsa was nothing short of an overnight sensation. Indeed, Tulsa had grown so much and so fast -- in a now-you-don't-see-it, now-you-do kind of fashion -- that local boosters called it the Magic City.
The elixir which had fueled this remarkable growth was, of course, oil. The discovery of the nearby Glenn Pool -- reputed to be the "richest small oil field in the world" -- in 1905, and by the farsightedness of local leaders to build a bridge across the Arkansas River one year earlier, the sleepy rural crossroads known as Tulsa, Indian Territory. was suddenly catapulted into the urban age.
http://www.tulsareparations.org/TulsaRiot.htm
Much enthusiasm, muted criticism in Jewish reactions to Obama’s gay marriage support
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- As soon as President Obama wrapped up the television interview in which he endorsed same-sex marriage, he called an evangelical minister who advises him to offer a heads up. Jack Lew, the White House chief of staff, made a similar call to the Orthodox Union.
The calls, made Wednesday before excerpts from the interview hit the Internet, demonstrated the White House's determination to preempt any backlash that the endorsement might engender from religious groups. Obama administration officials have been careful to emphasize that the president also backs protections for religious groups that oppose same-sex marriage.
“He called to inform us about what the president was going to announce and put it in context,” Nathan Diament, the OU’s executive director of public policy, said of the call from Lew, himself an Orthodox Jew.
The move appeared to have yielded some dividends.
The OU said in a statement that it was “disappointed" by the president’s new stance and reiterated Orthodox Jewish opposition to "any effort to change the definition of marriage to include same-sex unions." But the group also said that it “appreciated” Obama's praise of New York State's same-sex marriage law, which offers some protections for religious institutions that oppose same-sex marriage.
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