JUNE 2007
UPDATE:june 3rd:
Putin warns Europe in
missile row
Moscow may target weapons at Europe if the US builds planned missile defence facilities in the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
Russia has not pointed missiles towards Europe since the end of the Cold War.
Last week, Russia said it had tested a ballistic missile to maintain "strategic balance" in the world.
The US wants to expand its missile defences into Eastern Europe. It says the system is not aimed at Russia but Moscow says its security is threatened.
'Not our fault'
Mr Putin made the comments in an interview published in Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera ahead of the G8 meeting which starts in Germany on Wednesday.
He repeated warnings that the US defence shield could lead to a new arms race but said it would the fault of the Americans if this happened.
He said the US had "altered the strategic balance" by unilaterally pulling out of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty in 2002.
"If the American nuclear potential grows in European territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe," Mr Putin said.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has said a recent ballistic missile test was in answer to US plans to create a defence shield in Central Europe.
Mr Putin said it was a "response to maintain the strategic balance in the world", in what he called a "new round of the arms race".
He added that Russia would continue to improve its resources.
Russia tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile, which can be armed with up to 10 warheads, on Tuesday 29th May
(On Jan 26th 2006 it was announced - Russia
has developed missiles capable of penetrating any missile
defence system. President Vladimir Putin says the new
missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads,
adding that he had briefed French President Jacques
Chirac on the system. However, he refused to say whether
the Russian military had already commissioned the new
missiles)
BBC World News
War on war memories: how to stop it?
Gennady Bordyugov for RIA Novosti
MOSCOW. 09/ 05/ 2007- "We often say: why should we remember the past at all? Why not let bygones be bygones? ... Why should we irritate the public by remembering? ...
But then, I would gladly look back on being dangerously ill after I got well again. But I would try to forget it if I got worse and anxiously engaged in wishful thinking... Are bygones truly bygones? I believe the past just changes shape but always stays with us... Look at it - and you will see the truth about the present."
Leo Tolstoy's idea remains as true today as the day he put it down, however often it might occur to us that monuments and other symbols of the haunting past destroyed in spontaneous or instigated outbreaks of protest can obliterate that past.
Plans for a new war to regain our memories were drafted two years ago, shortly before the 60th VE Day anniversary, when the West came out to argue Russia's decisive contribution to the Allied cause. Many urged Russia to bring penitence to its neighbors and Warsaw Pact allies. A presumption of Russia's guilt was symbolized by the image of the Soviet soldier not as liberator but aggressor, who does not deserve to have monuments in the European Union.
That was when I first heard the painful words: "It's historians who are to blame!"
Really, the publication of thitherto classified documents about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Katyn massacre, and deported Caucasian and Crimean peoples at first aroused gratitude of nations eager for self-determination. The collapse of the Soviet Union and socialist regimes turned their gratitude into bitter hatred of Russians as alleged culprits of national tragedies. Naturally, some people wondered if it was worthwhile to expose the crimes of overturned regimes, when those crimes were ascribed to Russians alone.
Parallels were drawn between Stalinism and Nazism. True, the two totalitarian regimes had something in common, and their comparison could help us understand the mechanisms of mass psychology and ideological indoctrination. What came instead was likening the two regimes to each other, with an appeal to the Russian nation to repent as Germany repented its Nazi past - no matter that the Nazi and Bolshevik ideologies had mutually clashing bases. At any rate, no Soviet ideological program claimed Slavic superiority or scorned other nations and cultures.
Unbiased analyses of the positive and negative aspects of WWII strategies degraded into accusing the Soviet Union of beating Germany through incomparable casualties - burying the Wehrmacht under mountains of soldier bodies. No one cared about foreign demographic studies proving frontline casualties approximately equal on either side.
The plight of war monuments reminded me of Mike Davis, a U.S. historian who urged everyone to "save Private Ivan" on the eve of the 60th Operation Overlord anniversary. As Davis saw it, the liberation of Europe started in summer 1944 not on the shore of Normandy but in Byelorussia, when Soviet partisans left their hideaways in the marshy woods to deliver a sudden blow at the Wehrmacht rear.
Soviet Operation Bagration started a few days later. With a comparison of the two huge Allied advances, Davis points out how deplorably little the American public knows about Operation Bagration. The ordinary American mind associates June 1944 not with the forced crossing of the Dvina River by Soviet troops, which started the Bagration, but with the Normandy landing - and never mind that the Soviet advance of summer 1944 committed several times greater forces than the Overlord and dealt the enemy a more devastating blow.
We do not mean that the Soviet Army did more than any other for the Allied cause but that none of the Allies paid dearer than the Soviet Union for the victory. Forty Private Ivans fell in battle to every Private Ryan. However, current VE Day celebrations ignore Soviet troops - a farmer from Samara, an actor from Orel, a miner from Donetsk or a schoolgirl from Leningrad. As it appears, some Americans are wary their country's feat of glory may be outshone if they recognize the leading Soviet contribution to the epoch-making 20th century cause, Davis warns.
He is not alone in that. Dr. Richard Drayton of Cambridge University regards the victory over Nazism as a moral font in which the Western Allies washed off the sins of many centuries' expansion.
Such opinions are scarce. The West skeptically regards any landmark of Russian history as a mere parallel to Russian leaders' present-day policies. It focuses attention on propaganda rebuff to any manifestation of Russian imperialist ambitions, with a biased use of history - if not shrugging history off altogether. At any rate, it treats memory as every country's personal matter. All that makes things look as if World War II is going on to this day. Throughout the 62 years since it finished, the war has been regarded through the prism of the postwar confrontation. This makes us Russians wonder if such historical pragmatism is truly a worthy tribute to the memory of those who fell to rid the world of fascism.
It takes honest attitudes of the West and Russia alike to the past to stop this ignoble war on WWII memories. There are good reasons to accuse Russians of forgetfulness - suffice it to mention State Duma debates on the Victory Banner, or a demolished war pilot monument in Khimki near Moscow, or again, postcards circulated in Kaliningrad for the VE Day anniversary to advertise a funeral parlor specializing in WWII veterans.
Fact juggling also works to the Russian moral detriment. Offices set up to preserve national memory use every pretext to conceal wartime documents. Ukrainian and post-Soviet Baltic historians still have no access to archive documents of 1939-40. Their research is insultingly impeded, and they nurture understandable prejudice against Russia. Then, a controversy around a Russian soldier monument in Tallinn led to a violent attack on the Estonian ambassador and embassy premises in Moscow.
Bitter truths about the horrible war will be revealed as before, whatever dishonest politicians and scholars might be doing to prevent it in Russia and other countries. We need the whole memory and the whole truth - or we will stay dangerously ill and only dream of convalescence.
Gennady Bordyugov is a research project manager with AIRO-XXI (Russian Social Research Association) and a member of the RIA Novosti expert council.
The opinions expressed in
this article are the author's and do not necessarily
represent those of RIA Novosti.
********************************
blog
comments on documents witheld in Russia:
RE. RUSSIAN CONTROL OF HOLOCAUST INFORMATION:
There is no way the "HoloHoax" could be
maintained without the Russian military archives being
CONTROLLED to prevent any conflicting data getting out -
CONTROLLED CONTINUOUSLY FROM THEN (1943 or so) UNTIL
NOW.well, I know you are thinking "easy, the jews
own the kremlin".
but it isn't that simple and here is why.
.....consider the last point BEFORE "the jews"
gained "control of the kremlin"(article below
this JB Editor)- the last moment when RUSSIAN MILITARY
INTELLIGENCE controlled the archives.
they would have seen "the jews" coming up the
corridors, and they would have squirrelled away all the
damning evidence to use to control "the jews"
from that point on.
as they in fact have been doing.
RB - re your point about keeping the Soviet military
archives closed and the "HoloHoax". Apart from
blackmailing the jews, there is another reason for the
Russians not spilling the beans. The awful stalinist
pre-WWII pogroms against the Russians was a blot on their
history, and while they are well known, by focussing on
the HoloHoax, they are glossed over.
Equally, the Allied war crimes against Germany &
Japan are glossed over by the HoloHoax, which gives them
a similar reason as the Russians for not exposing the
scam.
I had the impression that the British-French had a secret
protocol that aggression against Poland would trigger war
against Germany but not USSR. It was also stated in 'Red
Symphony' that Stalin knew the West would retaliate
against Hitler but not Stalin; indeed that was the
gambit's point.
Stalin was always suspicious that Britain, France &
Germany would combine to war against USSR [ironically,
this is the NATO alignment post WWII]. Why didn't they?
It seems the Brits were concerned that if successful this
would make Germany the central power in Europe. The USSR
was the counterbalance to a powerful Germany. This was
seen to be in British interests.
Ideology against red communism was not a sufficient
reason to combine against the USSR, at least pre-WWII.
After the War, with Germany reduced, that was a different
story. Of course, this gives the Brits a reason to
persist with maintaining the "HoloHoax", as it
keeps the Germans in a state of mental prostration,
always a British obsession.
Spiritual Guidance:
In Russia, a Top Rabbi Uses Kremlin Ties to Gain Power
--- Putin's Support Gives Clout to Chabad Sect; A
'Takeover' in Omsk
By Guy Chazan
2657 words
8 May 2007
The Wall Street Journal
MOSCOW -- Of all the strange relationships that define
today's Russia, few are stranger than the alliance
between President Vladimir Putin and an ultra-Orthodox
rabbi named Berel Lazar.
Rabbi Lazar is a follower of Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic
sect based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that is on the
fringes of mainstream Judaism. Its devotees are known for
their love of the Rebbe, their late spiritual leader.
Some even think he's the Messiah.
In Russia, the Lubavitch are not a marginal sect but a
dominant force in Jewish life. Their leader, Rabbi Lazar,
goes by the title of Russia's chief rabbi and is viewed
by many to be head of the country's Jewish community.
Thriving on Mr. Putin's patronage, his organization, the
Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, is now one of
Russia's leading charities, with schools, clinics,
orphanages and community centers across the country. Some
credit it with single-handedly reviving Jewish life in
the Russian hinterlands.
But critics charge its success is based on a Faustian
bargain with the Kremlin. They say Rabbi Lazar has at
times deliberately played down anti-Semitism in Russia
and acted as a lobbyist for Mr. Putin around the world.
In exchange, Chabad-Lubavitch enjoys unparalleled
political influence and has been allowed to gain control
of millions of dollars-worth of communal property from
the Russian state, often trouncing rival claims from
other Jewish organizations, critics say.
"There were always court Jews under the Czars, under
the Soviets," says Yevgeny Satanovsky, a Jewish
community leader. "Lazar is firmly in that
tradition."
A jovial father of 12 in a traditional black gabardine
suit and fedora, Rabbi Lazar, 42 years old, says his
influence is exaggerated. "There's this myth that I
have the key to the president's office," he laughs.
But he quickly adds: "I think it's very important to
have a good relationship with the authorities."
Brushing off claims he's too soft on Mr. Putin and his
crackdown on democracy, he says it's not his place to
speak out on issues not directly related to Jewish life.
Rabbi Lazar's rise coincided with Mr. Putin's drive to
centralize power and crush dissent. After entering the
Kremlin in 2000, the new president silenced independent
media, jailed critical businessmen, neutered parliament
and nationalized energy assets.
But his reach also extended deep into civil society.
Organizations loyal to Mr. Putin, such as the Federation
of Jewish Communities, known in Russian as FEOR, were
protected and promoted, Kremlin critics say. Those he saw
as untrustworthy were pushed aside. Sometimes, when a
group was independent, the authorities simply created a
clone that was more pliant, critics have alleged.
FEOR's rise demonstrates how ambitious groups can take
advantage of the government's tightening grip on Russian
society in order to push their own agendas and sideline
rivals. FEOR is frequently accused of seeking to be the
sole voice of Jews in Russia in much the same way as the
Kremlin monopolizes Russian politics.
"Their Kremlin connections have allowed them to lock
themselves in place as the official leaders of the
community here," says Alexander Osovtsov, a former
vice president of the Russian Jewish Congress and an
outspoken critic of President Putin.
For centuries, the fate of Russia's Jews rested on the
whim of their rulers. In Czarist times they were confined
to a region in the west of the Russian Empire called the
Pale of Settlement, and were prey to Cossack pogroms.
Under the Soviets, religious life was forced underground
and Jews were subjected to quotas in universities.
In 1991 communism collapsed, Russia's borders opened, and
hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated, mainly to
Israel. Foreign rabbis flooded in to help Jews who stayed
behind reclaim their ethnic and religious identity. They
had a lot of work to do: The vast majority of the 600,000
to 1 million Jews in Russia are secular, assimilated and
divorced from Jewish tradition.
Among the foreign rabbis were followers of Chabad. Born
in the late 18th century in the then-Russian town of
Lubavitch, Chabad survived the Holocaust by moving to the
U.S., eventually settling in Brooklyn. Under the Rebbe,
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Chabad grew from a tiny sect
into a global movement dedicated to bringing nonobservant
Jews back to their faith. Its New York City activists are
famous for driving around in specially outfitted vehicles
known as "Mitzvah Tanks" and handing out
Sabbath candles or holding short religious ceremonies
with passing Jews.
Chabad -- an acronym made up of the Hebrew words for
wisdom, understanding and knowledge -- now has 4,000
emissaries, known as shluchim, operating in 73 countries
around the world. Just over 150 of them are in Russia,
including Rabbi Lazar. Born in Milan, the child of
shluchim parents, he studied at seminaries in the U.S.
and came to Russia in 1990, with a plan to stay for one
year. He never left.
Initially, Chabad was a small presence in Russia. It was
overshadowed by more-established local groups that had
grown in strength by aligning themselves with Jewish
oligarchs -- the tycoons who used their connections to
build up huge fortunes and wield vast power in 1990s
Russia. The biggest was the Russian Jewish Congress, a
philanthropic group set up in 1996 by media mogul
Vladimir Gusinsky.
But Chabad's fortunes improved dramatically with the 2000
election of Mr. Putin, who was determined to curb the
power of the oligarchs. Mr. Gusinsky, who had used his
media outlets to fiercely attack the government, was at
the top of his hit list.
Soon, tax police were raiding Mr. Gusinsky's media
company. Over the ensuing months,it was taken over by the
state gas monopoly. Then the authorities began targeting
his other stronghold, the Jewish Congress, critics say.
"Putin perceived the Congress as a threat,"
says Tancred Golenpolsky, one of the Congress's founders
and publisher of one of Russia's oldest Jewish
newspapers. "It was a gang of oligarchs who he
couldn't rely on."
A Kremlin spokesman denies it targeted the Congress. As a
charitable foundation, it "could not be perceived as
a political threat to the state," he says.
The Kremlin didn't challenge Mr. Gusinsky directly at the
Congress, which was packed with the magnate's supporters.
Mr. Putin instead backed a rival group -- FEOR, which was
created in 1999 by Rabbi Lazar and the Uzbek-born Israeli
diamond dealer Lev Leviev. This strategy helped the
Kremlin deflect accusations that its campaign against the
Congress was anti-Semitic.
FEOR's founding gathering at Moscow's Olympic Penta hotel
was lavishly covered in the state media. The organization
claimed to represent dozens of Jewish communities. But
from the start, Chabadniks dominated FEOR's governing
body, programs and policies.
FEOR's main goal was to have its man installed as chief
rabbi -- the officially recognized head of the Jewish
community in Russia. At the time, the position was held
by Adolf Shayevich, who backed Mr. Gusinsky's Jewish
Congress.
In May 2000, Rabbi Shayevich says, Mr. Leviev offered him
$240,000 to step down and hand power over to Rabbi Lazar.
He says he retorted that his post was not for sale. Mr.
Leviev declined to comment, and Rabbi Lazar says he knows
nothing about the alleged offer.
Less than two weeks later, FEOR assembled in Moscow and
elected Rabbi Lazar as chief rabbi, claiming that the
organization represented the entire Russian Jewish
community. That same day, Mr. Gusinsky was arrested.
After spending four days in jail, he fled Russia, never
to return.
Rabbi Lazar says the initiative for his election came
from local communities frightened of being identified
with Mr. Gusinsky's brand of opposition politics.
"They said if this goes on we'll have the whole
country against us," he says.
But many wondered how the Italian-born envoy of an
ultra-Orthodox sect who spoke broken Russian had come to
assume leadership of all of Russia's Jews. By some
estimates, less than 5% of Russia's Jewish population is
Chabad. Rabbi Lazar had received a Russian passport just
a few weeks before his election.
"It was as if 30 Catholic priests from Poland and
Ireland elected . . . (the) Patriarch of the Russian
Orthodox Church," says Mr. Satanovsky, who was
president of the Jewish Congress from 2001 till 2004.
Rabbi Shayevich refused to cede his title. The two have
been at odds ever since, with both claiming to be chief
rabbi. Some organizations and publications recognize both
of them.
But Mr. Putin quickly made it clear whose side he was on.
In September 2000 he opened Chabad's new $10 million
community center in Moscow, praising FEOR as a
"constructive and influential organization." A
photo of him cutting the ribbon by Rabbi Lazar's side
graces the rabbi's conference room.
When Mr. Putin gave his first State of the Nation speech
in July 2000, he invited Rabbi Lazar to attend, leaving
Rabbi Shayevich off the guest list -- the first of many
snubs. The following year, the president replaced Rabbi
Shayevich with Rabbi Lazar on a council that advises him
on religious issues.
The Kremlin denied playing favorites. "We don't
interfere in the internal affairs of the Jewish
community," the spokesman said.
Rabbi Lazar quickly endeared himself to his new patrons.
In media interviews, he stressed that the crackdown on
Mr. Gusinsky had nothing to do with anti-Semitism. On
numerous trips to Washington, he lobbied members of
Congress, made speeches and gave countless media
interviews against the Jackson-Vanik amendment. That Cold
War law, which curbed U.S. trade with nations restricting
emigration, has long rankled the Kremlin.
He also praised Mr. Putin for presiding over a steep
decline in anti-Semitism. Speaking in Jerusalem in
October 2004, he said Russia was "one of the safest
places for Jews in Europe," a statement that
provoked outrage among some Jewish leaders back home.
The facts suggested he was exaggerating. An Israeli
government organization, the Global Forum Against
Anti-Semitism, said the number of violent incidents
against Jewish targets in Russia rose from four in 2003
to 55 the following year. In January 2005, some 500
nationalists, including lawmakers from a Kremlin-backed
right-wing party, published a letter demanding the
authorities ban all Jewish organizations in Russia,
accusing them of extremism and hostility to ethnic
Russians. Last year, vandals in six different cities
attacked Jewish schools, community centers and
synagogues, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Rabbi Lazar came under pressure to toughen his rhetoric
-- especially after a Chabad rabbi was beaten up by
racist thugs while walking through a Moscow underpass in
January 2005. Gradually he began expressing concern about
Russia's rising tide of anti-Semitism and xenophobia.
Still, he continued to enjoy countless invitations to the
Kremlin and interviews in the state media. That benefited
Chabad-Lubavitch: Local Jewish businessmen began to
donate heavily to FEOR.
"They saw Lazar as a channel to the Kremlin, someone
who might put in a good word for them with Putin,"
says Zinovy Kogan, a prominent Moscow rabbi.
Avraham Berkowitz, a senior federation official and
Chabad member, says, "Donors support us because they
believe in the work we are doing and see the success of
our programs."
The Kremlin spokesman denies FEOR acted as an
intermediary. "Putin doesn't need bridges to the
business community" he says.
It wasn't just Chabad's Kremlin ties that earned it
support. With its fund-raising, lobbying and
public-relations skills, the group proved highly
effective at organizing community life. Outsiders were
impressed by Chabad rabbis' willingness to take up jobs
in some of Russia's most depressing and remote provincial
towns.
Soon, Federation coffers were overflowing with funds from
some of Russia's richest men. Tycoon Roman Abramovich
financed Chabad orphanages and poverty programs. Mr.
Leviev, a Lubavitcher whose business interests have
flourished under Mr. Putin, created a network of Chabad
schools throughout Russia. And the New York-based
investment manager George Rohr, one of the biggest
investors in the Russian stock market in the 1990s,
donated vast sums to build Jewish community centers.
Last year alone, the Federation raised $38 million in the
U.S. for programs in the former Soviet Union. In
contrast, Rabbi Shayevich's rival organization has an
annual budget of $3.5 million. (Neither Mr. Rohr nor Mr.
Abramovich comment publicly on their philanthropic
activities.)
Flush with cash, Chabad has been able to offer a host of
new services to congregants. There are now 9,000 children
studying at Chabad day schools and 5,000 at Chabad
kindergartens. FEOR has restored dozens of synagogues and
built 16 community centers across Russia. This year,
150,000 people in Russia attended free FEOR-sponsored
Passover meals.
FEOR cites statistics like this to support its claim to
represent the bulk of Russia's Jews. "Our biggest
claim is how many people come to our services and how
many go to other synagogues," says Rabbi Lazar.
But some Jewish leaders have condemned FEOR for using its
political clout to engineer what critics call
"hostile takeovers" of communal property. They
cite examples of cities like Samara on the Volga, where
local authorities intervened to give FEOR control of a
synagogue once affiliated with a rival group.
FEOR denies the accusations. "There was never a
question of taking property from other
organizations," says Mr. Berkowitz, the federation
official. "Most of FEOR's major projects were built
from scratch, anyway."
Critics also accuse FEOR officials of luring away
provincial communities already served by other Jewish
denominations by promising them bigger budgets, more
money for synagogue restoration and salaries for staff.
In the Siberian city of Omsk, authorities handed the
city synagogue to the local Reform Jewish congregation in
the early 1990s. But in 2001, Mr. Abramovich visited Omsk
community leader Leonid Khayit, taking with him the local
governor, and offered a huge boost in funding if he
switched allegiance to FEOR. He agreed.
"He thought FEOR was a more heavyweight organization
politically," says Ilya Edelshtein, who succeeded
Mr. Khayit after his death three years ago.
Mr. Abramovich said through a spokesman he could not
recall the conversation.
Some congregants in Omsk were disappointed by the new
direction. The town's new rabbi, a Chabadnik from Israel,
surprised them by organizing special celebrations in
honor of the Rebbe, who died in 1994 but is still revered
by Lubavitchers, who often hang portraits of him in their
homes. "People here don't really understand why we
should have special prayers for the Rebbe's
birthday," says Mr. Edelshtein. "It feels like
idolatry."
What's more, the new rabbi has taken a tough stand on
members who didn't qualify as Jews according to Halacha,
or Jewish law. People whose mothers weren't Jewish were
made to feel unwelcome at services, say officials of the
Omsk synagogue.
Rabbi Lazar says the choice of whether or not to enforce
Halacha is often left to the discretion of individual
rabbis, but he denies FEOR is dogmatic on the issue.
"We never push anyone out," he says.
Despite the controversy that dogs him, Rabbi Lazar is now
firmly part of the Russian establishment. In 2005,
President Putin tapped him to join the Public Chamber, a
newly-created consultative body of prominent citizens.
Civil-rights advocates have denounced it as an ersatz
parliament, typical of the Kremlin's top-down approach to
building civil society.
Rabbi Lazar says Russia's Jews have seen a remarkable
turnaround in their fortunes and Mr. Putin deserves some
of the credit. "What we've seen over the last 20
years is nothing short of a miracle," he says.
From xymphora.blogspot.com comment by US taxpayer who
adds: Chabad reminds me of Opus Dei
US Taxpayer´s Wallstreet Journal - informed
article above shows, god forbid, not the Chabad Lubavitch
to have occupied the Kremlin (yet), but that Pres.Putin
prefers them madmen to be in charge of the jewish
community, rather than the robber Oligarchs "
Russian Jewish Congress, a philanthropic group set up in
1996 by media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky".
Comment by David Shasha:
The
"Jewish" Genius, By: Charles Murray
When
I was first made aware of this repugnant article I
thought that it would be best to simply ignore it.
But I continued to receive it from a number of our
readers and felt duty-bound to make it available to all
of you.
The
discredited racism of Charles Murray, based on what he
called "The Bell Curve," is now well-known and
has been discussed and debated for a number of
years. As far as this particular article goes, its
thesis too has become part of the public record since the
publication of the 2006 study referred to that asserts
the genetic superiority of the Ashkenazi Jews.
I.Q.
Tests have not been discredited perhaps as much
as they should be, but there is enough skepticism about
the motivations behind the use of standardized tests and
the socio-ethnic bias that is inherent in them to
put into question a definitive scientific
measurement of actual intellect and the capacity for
what Murray wrongly calls "genius."
"Genius"
is a completely subjective term that is bound to cultural
context. It lacks the moral component.
To wit, we might for example judge the mental capacity of
Albert Einstein as massive, but this would not be taking
into account Mr. Einstein's moral capacity.
Einstein's knowledge created the Atomic Bomb - but as
Einstein himself understood, the knowledge might have
been used in a misguided fashion.
Knowledge left to itself does not add up to anything.
In addition, we should also be able to factor in the pragmatic capacity of the individual. We know that there are in existence what are called "idiot savants" - a form of autism that mixes extremely high levels of mental acuity with developmental disabilities preventing the individual from fulfilling the simplest of tasks such as tying their shoelaces or understanding elementary concepts such as the difference in cost between an automobile and a pack of gum. We see this presented in the popular film "Rain Man" where an autistic savant is shown as lacking practical skills both social and conceptual.
What we have in the Murray article is a valorization of Ashkenazi Jews for the specific mental criteria that are measured by the studies. And while examinations of Murray's analytical methods and often tendentious use of empirical data have been discussed in the debate over the Bell Curve, in this particular case we must be careful to note that his analysis hinges on the final line in the essay: the fact that the "Jews" - not ALL JEWS - but a specific segment of the Jewish community - the Ashkenazi - is "chosen" by God. SIC(K)!!!
The standard accusations of racial eugenism and scientific prejudice as espoused and made into a legal epistemology by the German Nazis is here at work. It is rather startling that such genetic racism - which was once imposed on the Jews to send them into Concentration Camps - is now the currency of "scholars" and their polemical followers who wish to prove now that it is the Ashkenazi Jews who are the Uber-Menschen.
Could it be that we have yet again another inner-Ashkenazi transformation that senses its own arrogant ability to espouse such racist ideas with the proviso that Jews cannot be "racists"?
And while Murray is no Ashkenazi, it does appear from the prominent placement of the article in Commentary Magazine, a publication whose own virulent racism is well-documented, that his thesis is part of a larger Ashkenazi-led polemic to assert a repugnant superiority and elitism that has traditionally been used to keep Jews and other minorities in their lower status in society.
So far as the Sephardi question that is provoked by Murray in the discussion goes, we can point to the many centuries of Sephardi intellectual production against the impoverishment of the Ashkenazi mind and its refusal to engage in the larger culture of the world. The recent movement of Ashkenazi Jews - secular, not religious Ashkenazi Jews - into global civilization is a recent development that we should well note. Whether such genetic studies would have shown that the obscurantist and fanatic Ashkenazi sages of the Middle Ages and Modernity would have the same disposition for high IQs is something that at this point should be irrelevant. Whether destructive people have high levels of intelligence or not is irrelevant. The point here is that we should weigh intelligence against practical ability and most importantly against the moral backdrop of our lives.
But Sephardim need to prove nothing.
Taking this into account, over the course of many centuries, until the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 which almost overnight turned the Sephardim into second class citizens after centuries of substantial intellectual, social and economic achievement, Sephardim have recorded an important string of achievements that cannot be denied. Ashkenazim have been best known as Jews who have fought with one another as they have fought with others. As a community they have exhibited signs of misanthropy and a lack of the sort of cognitive skills that transcend issues of IQ and genetics.
So while the present writer is no expert on the science of genetics and biology, I do not think that one needs be an expert to smoke out racism where it lives. I do not think that a person has to be a scientist to attack the profane and genocidal genetic theories of the Nazis in order to assert the humanity of the Jewish people. That these theories are currently being adopted by "Jews" does not make the situation any different.
And here we see ultimately the same logical argument that sent the Jews to their deaths in Germany: one "race" is deemed to be "chosen" and to be "superior" to another and "science" is carted out to establish the point without any possibility of argument. It would be stupid for us to permit "science" - whatever that might mean - to consume and eliminate our moral sense regardless of how the evidence might be spun out. I
ntelligence is what it is - part of a larger human context that must perforce be assessed from multiple contexts that cannot limit us to becoming wedded to immorality or idiocy at the expense of some raw biological data on knowledge capacity. There is far more to the story than brain mass.
And
Ashkenazi Jews who buy into this should be ashamed of
themselves. David Shasha
[shamireaders] Why
there are so many Ashkenazi Jews click here if you
want to read Charles Murray's moronic document, or you
are an Zionist Jew anxious to find out how it is Murray
believes you are in league with the god you don't believe
in.....