Nigel Savage, founder of Hazon, has written a moving letter about legacy of Jack Nash, who passed away today at the age of 79. Nash had a huge impact in the Jewish world, and may his memory serve as an inspiration and a blessing.

New York

Thursday July 31st 2008 / 28th Tammuz, 5768

Dear All,

A man named Jack Nash died last night, may his memory be for a blessing.

His name is not mentioned anywhere on Hazon’s website, and nor has his name appeared in any previous Hazon email. But there would be no Hazon were it not for Jack Nash: no bike rides, not the more than 700 people who’ve traveled to Israel with Hazon, the thousand families now members of Jewish CSAs, the couples who met at our Rides who’ve got married, the kids who’ve been born, the man who came to our New York Ride and converted to Judaism, the two bat mitzvahs we’ve hosted, the staff and alumni, the programs we’ve supported in Israel and the US, the Jewish food curricula, the teens and families who’ve grown through our programs – none of it.

I met Jack just twice. The first time was when he agreed to give the money to launch Hazon – an extremely significant amount of money, given to an English 30-something who’d never previously worked in the Jewish community, never run a non-profit, never worked in the United States and, for good measure, could barely ride a bike – and had certainly never been on, much less led, a 3000-mile bike ride. (One memorable interchange in that first meeting was when he said “a cross-USA Jewish environmental bike ride? That’s an interesting idea. But why don’t you go by bus – you’d get there quicker…” In this way he taught me my first lesson in the need to explicate more clearly what Hazon was about. )

Jack and his wife Helen and their family in fact provided not only the money but also, initially, everything else we needed: for Hazon’s first year of operations I worked in the offices of the Nash family’s foundation.

To this day, I don’t fully understand why he and his family decided to support the launch of Hazon. But his son spoke at the funeral today of his father’s “incredibly creative and impactful” generosity. Being the person who enabled Hazon to come into existence certainly qualified as creative, and today it is clear that his gift has been impactful beyond what either of us could have imagined eight years ago. He enabled the birth of Hazon because he cared about the Jewish people and because he was willing to take a risk on an unknown 30-something. (more…)

… and I hope they won’t get weighed at check-in.

One of the flipsides of having a big family is that whenever I go someplace that’s not my workplace, I’m expected to bring souvenirs. Now, not only have I somewhat run out of gift ideas – not everbody finds NYC mini mugs as thrilling as I do -, I find it particularly difficult to find souvenirs for those in my family who are well beyond their best-before-dates a little older and culturally more conservative than me.

One of my grandmothers hinted at liking the silk scarves I brought her from the past half a dozen trips (creative, I know), so I set out on my quest to find her another. Problem is she only wears beige. At all times. No exceptions. No off-white. No cream-white. No pastel rose. No taupe. No sand. Just plain beige. No patterns in such striking colours like, uh, black, red, dark green, and, Golemforbid, blue allowed. Eventually, I found one beige silk scarf that is printed in three shades of beige. Heureka!

The other grandma’s getting a blouse by Kenneth Cole. Just because she’s 80 doesn’t mean she’s got to dress as if she were ready to go, does it?

So, unless you want to keep me from travelling during both my grandmothers’ lifetimes, I’d appreciate a few suggestions on souvenirs for elderly ladies (in their eighties) that neither require understanding a foreign language, dusting (the above-mentioned grandmother won’t put up any decoration as they might catch dust), or intense chewing.

And how is all of that Jewlicious? Well, grandmothers are.

Since I posted a few days ago about the Olympics + China + Darfur connection, I thought I’d give an update of what’s going on in the intersections of those subjects.

Recent developments in intergovernmental bodies:

A few weeks ago, on 7 July, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, asked the Court to indict Sudanese President Omar al Bashir on charges of genocide and other human rights abuses. This will be the first time that a sitting head of state will be charged thus.

People have both cheered and condemned this move. Alex de Wall, recently listed in Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Intellectuals list, sums up the argument on his “Making Sense of Darfur” blog post: “Will this be a historic victory for human rights, a principled blow on behalf of the victims of atrocity against the men who orchestrated massacre and destruction? Or will it be a tragedy, a clash between the needs for justice and for peace, which will send Sudan into a vortex of turmoil and bloodshed?” Those who criticize the latter view say there are no prospects for peace under Bashir anyway.

Keep reading, and why I’m writing about this on the Lish will all become clear.
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Since Heeb Mag’s release is tomorrow night at NYC’s Bowery Electric, we figured we would share something from the Issue that they will be celebrating! This piece is written by our good friend Arye Dworkin. BUT, Before we get into that….Diwon just remixed her single, “New Soul“ for the club kids. Check it out (or download it free) HERE or listen to it now using the player below. “Yael Naim does in fact have a MacBook Air Notebook, and yes, it was free. Apple gave it to her because she recorded the perfect song to launch its revolutionary laptop. You know the commercial—it’s the one in which a jaunty piano introduces a fragile female voice with a slight accent singing about a new soul while an anonymous hand pulls the tech desirable from an interoffice envelope. The delicately petite, Israeli-raised singer is keenly aware of the attention that 30 seconds gave her and appreciates it greatly, but still wants to set the record straight: “Steve Jobs did not pick the song himself…. It says that on the Internet [on her Wikipedia entry] for some strange reason, but this is not the story.” Naim found out the true story of how “New Soul” was chosen by a computer super-company to accompany the unveiling of a sexy piece of aluminum when the song was, at the time, still unavailable as a domestic release. “It was a guy at the company who heard it on a radio station there. I don’t know how they found the song. But he came into work that day and said, ‘We have to use this song.’”

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You know you’ve landed in Facebook hell when your favorite Scrabulous dies an early death due to a legal battle. Then to make things worse, the beta substitute of Hasbro’s Scrabble crashes and burns. However, you know you’ve landed in some kind of Jew heaven when Yiddish rules the National Scrabble Championship.

On NPR’s “All Things Considered,” the Wall Street Journal’s Stefan Fatsis reported the big news. More than 660 players played for four days in 28 games in Orlando. Nigel Richards, a security engineer from New Zealand, who lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia was holding steady in a tie-breaker at 370 points against Brian Cappalletto (all you word geeks out there: just look at all those double letters). Cappalletto is an options trader from Chicago and a former national and world Scrabble champion. The boys were at a stand-off. There was nary a tile left in the bag.

These guys are smarties. Brian had played words like scerrying and sarcine, Fatsis reports. Nigel had played innerve and penates.

Nigel’s winning word?

Shuln. The Yiddish plural for shul.

That’s right, people. Shuln as in synagogues.

ck, this one’s for you!

This short film was created to promote the 1st Annual Arab-American Comedy Festival and has been re-released in order to promote the 2nd Annual Arab-American Comedy Festival which will be taking place at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center in Dearborn, Michigan on August 15th 2008. The film is 13 minutes long and you can get more info about the Festival at mizna.tv.

Why is this here? Well… it’s kind of funny – reminds me of my 1st generation immigrant family (we also had a living room no one was ever allowed to use), they use the same logo as Jewlicious and… it’s really so over the top! Look, we can all sit in a circle, sing Kumbaya and then I can tell you that this is really some sort of plea for better relations between our communities. Of course I’d like nothing more than for the Arabs and the Jews to live in peace and all that, but really? I put this up because it’s well shot, well acted, well scripted and? Totally retarded.

It’s true, they do. (so says DJ Balagan) But for real check out his mix entitled “Germans Wear Obama Pajamas”, a mix that he made on trains and planes coming back through Germany last week right before Obama spoke in Berlin…
Grab it for a week before its gone! EXCLUSIVE! (download here)

also, pay special attention to O.C.’s – “Time’s Up”. The beat and rhymes are very Edan. You could see where Edan got his influence from….O.C. and mad old school joints….

Tracklisting:
Muddy Waters – Tom Cat
Annex Productions – www.com
Jorge Ben – Hermes Trimegisto Escreveu
Yusef Lateef – Mushmouth
El Guincho – Palmitos Park
MC Lyte – Cha Cha Cha
Stink – Girls Anthem
Leon Haywood – I Wanna Do Something Freaky To You
Grammatik – Friko
O.C. – Time’s Up
Los Pico Pico – Pico Pico
The Sylvers – Misdemeanor
Tones On Tail – Go!
Kaveret – The Grocery Store
Murderbot – Onlyworld

Note: The Messiah image was made by Yossi Belkin

Not soon enough for some.
CNN (as well as everyone else) is reporting that in a special address this evening in Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert announced that “he will not be his party’s leader going into the next election.”

Citing “a wave of investigations and criticism” at the hands of his political opponents, he said he will resign once his Kadima party elects a new chairman… “I am not doing this out of a feeling that I cannot do my job … I believe in my ability to continue,” he said at a news conference at his official residence… “When forced to choose between my own personal standing and considerations that relate to the welfare of the state, it is the latter that will take precedence.”

Olmert’s party, Kadima will be choosing a new leader on September 17th. General elections will be held some time next year although no date has been set. Olmert seems to have gone back on his previous assertion that he would resign only if he is indicted on corruption charges.

Recent peace overtures with Syria and the Palestine Authority, which many have claimed were a stunt meant to deflect attention from corruption investigations, will probably be stalled as Israel deals with being lead by a lame duck leader.

I have to say this whole affair, and the general corruption one finds amongst many of our elected leaders has been kind of, well… embarrassing. The image of Olmert chowing down on lobster with his son in New York at a meal paid for with scads of cash provided by Moshe Talansky, a shul going Modern Orthodox New York Jew is like, just tip of the iceberg. Will this embarrassment, this national shame be the straw that broke the camels back? Will it lead to much needed electoral reform and a system of checks and balances in the justice system that will help ensure that this never happens again? I hope so, otherwise we’ll just keep plotzing along – condemned to living in what is effectively a banana republic run by a corrupt, materialistic and greedy political elite.

Remember how horrified you were as a Jew when you read that Barack Obama’s Western Wall note was snatched and then republished by Israeli newspaper Maariv? And then afterward, how touched you were by the humility demonstrated by what was supposed to be a private message between Obama and God? Now it’s time to feel a little peeved and indignant if the claims of a Maariv spokesman are true that the contents of the note were approved for publication by the Obama campaign prior to the note’s insertion into the Western Wall. IsraelInsider claims that:

it now appears that Maariv had collaborated with the Obama campaign in getting the “private” prayer, with its “modest” supplicaton to the Lord, out to the public, buffing his Christian credentials and showing his “humility.” … It appears that Obama made Maariv an instrument of his will. The paper, of course, was a most willing tool … If the Maariv statement about pre-approval of publication of the note is true, it would mean that the Obama campaign had managed the event brilliantly, if deceptively, getting the double benefit of appearing to be victimized by the invasive Israeli press and prayer-thieving Jew while at the same time leaking out his humble Christian plea to the Lord … Revelation of this latest Obama collaboration with the media might detract a bit from the perceived sincerity of the prayer and strike some as an especially cynical use of the Kotel and an obstensibly private prayer to the Deity as a campaign prop. Most politicians suffice with getting a photo-op. Obama may be the first to take a prayer-leak on the Wall.

So either Obama was in fact a victim of some slimeball Kotel rat who filched his note and sold it to an Israeli newspaper, or the paper already had the contents of the note and may have been the victim of cynical manipulation or right wing elements are using this incident to paint Obama as a cynical manipulator or… Or all of the above. Or none of the above. Or people are just out to fuck with me.

UPDATE: Yeah. I think people are just out to fuck with me. Zvika Krieger over at the New Republic reports vis-a-vis the statements by the unnamed Maariv spokesman:

I just got off the phone with a Ma’ariv spokesman who says that the accusation is “completely false,” and that he has no idea who these papers were quoting from Ma’ariv. “No official spokesman for Ma’ariv told this to any of the papers.” I’ve got some calls in to these papers to find out where they got the quote. (I’ll update here when I hear back.) He told me definitively that “the Obama campaign did not give us a copy of the letter or approve it for printing.” … UPDATE 1: I just spoke with an editor at one of the four publications who quoted the alleged “Ma’ariv spokesman.” This editor broached the possibility that Ma’ariv was trying to deflect criticisms of it by releasing these spurious rumors about the Obama campaign, but upon realizing that they’ll have to back up those accusations, is now disavowing them. This editor is going to look into this alleged “Ma’ariv spokesman” they quoted in his publication so we can try to ascertain if this is a Ma’ariv cover-up. I’ll update here when I hear back from him and if I get anything interesting from the other publications who also quoted this alleged spokesman.

Oy. Stay tuned?

The Associated Press reports the following:

Two prayer services will be held at St. Louis gas stations to thank God for lower fuel prices and to ask that they continue to drop. Darrell Alexander, Midwest co-chair of the Pray at the Pump movement, says prayer gatherings will be held Monday afternoon and evening at a Mobil station west of downtown St. Louis… Participants say they plan to buy gas, pray and then sing “We Shall Overcome” with a new verse, “We’ll have lower gas prices.” … An activist from the Washington D.C. area, Rocky Twyman, started the effort, saying if politicians couldn’t lower gas prices, it was time to ask God to intervene… The group thinks the prayer is helping, saying prices are starting to fall below $4 a gallon.

I’m going to have to ask these people to please stop or else risk divine wrath. I mean if I were God and people started petitioning me for sub-$4 a gallon gasoline in a world full of poverty, hunger, disease and misery, well, let’s just say I’d be pretty annoyed. Besides, if you were going to have special transportation-related prayers, wouldn’t it make more sense to ask for better public transit or more environmentally friendly sources of energy? So as to, you know, better preserve and protect God’s green earth? At times like this, I would ask my Christian friends to consider “What would Jesus do?” and the answer to that is “He’d walk.” I mean do you really think Jesus would tool around the holy land in some crazy gas guzzling, smog belching SUV? Dudes! He’d walk! Maybe on special occasions he’d ride a donkey – but that’s as far as it would go.

So yeah, good people of St. Louis? Cut it out. Please.

June Walker, the chairperson of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and former national president of Hadassah, has died.

Walker died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer. She was 74 and lived in Rockaway, N.J.

“Leaders of the United States and Israel held her in high regard and respected the person even more than the positions she held,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, the Presidents Conference’s executive vice chairman. “They, as we, recognized immediately her integrity, her intelligence and the sincerity of her advocacy. I am personally, as is the conference collectively, devastated by her passing.”

Walker took over last year as chairperson of the Presidents Conference, an umbrella group of some 50 Jewish organizations that aims to forge a communal consensus on matters of foreign policy.
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“Where are you my ratty assed Compadre?”

It’s really an irresistible combination – a smokey latin tune by Venezuelan-raised Banhart, featuring his girlfriend Natalie Portman in an only somewhat over the top Bollywood style scenario. It’s very cute, although I can certainly do without the peek at Banhart’s pubes…

The response to Heeb Magazine’s “Girls of 69″ Swimsuit calendar has been nothing short of spectacular, but this isn’t the case for all religion-based sexy calendars. Case in point: Chad Hardy, a lifetime member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and producer of both the 2008 and upcoming 2009 “Men on a Mission” calendar. Chad’s calendars feature shirtless Mormon missionaries as well as photos with them in their traditional white shirt, black tie and name tag outfits and biographical information outlining their religious beliefs. It seems kind of harmless, right?

Not so say the Church Elders who recently excommunicated Hardy for his role in producing the controversial calendar. Hardy, who has sold nearly 10,000 2008 calendars at $14.99 a pop and donated part of the proceeds to charity, is no longer an active Mormon so while he is a bit upset, it’s not likely this will affect him too much. As for Heeb’s calendar, you can probably order a copy from Heeb’s Web site, but if Ron Jeremy hasn’t been excommunicated by the Jews then it’s unlikely that Heeb Editor Josh Neuman will be.

Although really? They ought to excommunicate David Kelsey already. Not that he would care though.

Source: Jonathan Turley

McCain on offshore drilling in May:

[W]ith those resources, which would take years to develop, you would only postpone or temporarily relieve our dependency on fossil fuels…We are going to have to go to alternative energy, and the exploitation of existing reserves of oil, natural gas, even coal, and we can develop clean coal technology, are all great things. But we also have to devote our efforts, in my view, to alternative energy sources, which is the ultimate answer to our long-term energy needs, and we need it sooner rather than later.

McCain in June:

We have untapped oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production…It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions.

Oil Companies in June:

Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month — three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban — compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

Not that we are a political blog or anything.

Hey! Wanna make loads of cash? Seems like all you have to do is follow me around and wherever I live, buy up as much nearby property as possible and you are sure to make a killing. When I lived Gennevilliers it was a sleepy suburb north of Paris with a mixed North African and French population. It eventually became a great place for students and artists to live in due to it’s being serviced by both an RER and RATP line into Paris, it’s cheap rents and spacious apartments. Now it’s trendy and more expensive. My apartment in Park Slope Brooklyn was a one bedroom, close to the subway and cost $1150 a month. Now the same apartment goes for $2400 as the lesbians, students and actors have been pushed out by breeders and Wall Street assholes. The last place I lived in in Montreal was located at the intersection of old Montreal and Downtown. It was a warehouse district full of artists, DJs and new media types. My 1200 square foot loft cost $550. Canadian. When the Canadian dollar was worth 63 cents US. That same loft just sold for nearly $400,000 when the building went condo, thus ushering my move to Jerusalem and the exodus of all my interesting neighbors who were replaced by annoying mostly European condo owners, Americans and French Canadian Yuppies.

Looks like the same thing is about to happen to my current neighborhood – I live adjacent to Jerusalem’s Central Market, aka Machaneh Yehudah aka The Shuk. The Shuk’s been around for over 100 years, serving the meat, fish, fruit and vegetable needs of the residents of West Jerusalem and providing inexpensive housing for middle eastern immigrants, foreign workers and a few Haredi Jews. Of late it’s also become a bit of a cultural hub – live music every Sunday, independent cafes, fancy “foodie” stalls, several upscale restaurants and a couple of bars. This creeping gentrification accelerated greatly with this week’s opening of the newest branch of Café Aroma – a Jerusalem based coffee shop/resto with locations all across Israel and even in Greenwich Village in New York – smack dab in the heart of the Shuk.

Tahel Frosh in Haaretz wrote a great article about the reaction to the opening of Café Aroma at the Shuk:

Yael, a young native Jerusalemite who comes to the market every week, also says that in her opinion, “the arrival of the chain crossed the line. It’s something commercial in a place that’s unique. I have some civic pride, because these are guys from Jerusalem, but the market is like a nature reserve. I would have liked them to prevent the entry of such chains, so that the unique character can be preserved.” … These reactions prompt the question of whether to allow market forces to set the tone in Mahaneh Yehuda. Yoram Amir, chairman of the Mahane Yehuda market committee until 2000 and owner of a photography gallery opposite the new coffee shop, has an answer: “The market is like a kind of museum. It is the only place where a person with a tattoo and a nose ring can stand beside a religious man in a black hat and the two will get yelled at by an avocado seller… Pini Levy, who for years had a meat store in the market and then became owner of a restaurant in Jerusalem and later in Tel Aviv. He describes the market lovingly as “my childhood playground.” … “They won’t finish off the shuk. I forgive them for Aroma. The shuk is growing slowly and developing and moving in the right direction,” says Levy. But he adds, “one is enough. I hope that Cafe Hillel doesn’t run there, too.”

Oy. Time to start scoping out the last, cheap, centrally located real estate in Jerusalem. The poor can move to Sderot I guess.

You decide.

I have to make do with what I can get, haven’t I?

“Lord — Protect my family and me,” reads the note published in the Maariv daily. “Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.”

Someone – most likely a yeshiva student police say in Jerusalem – grabbed the note that Sen. Barack Obama placed in the Western Wall during his visit there last week. Then he sold it to Maariv Newspaper (who may face charges for publishing it.)

The letter, written on stationary from the King David Hotel, is a beautiful prayer to God. The rabbinic authorities that run the Western Wall – what we call the Kotel – are furious for this invasion of privacy. As they point out – Jewish law explicitly forbids intercepting and reading private mail.

Now that the letter is public and in papers around the world, I can publish the content here without violating that law.

Cynics will say that the letter is too good – that he must have known, or in fact even set up this whole thing. They will say that he used Judaism’s Holiest site to pursue more votes from Jews with this letter. Well duh, as my kids say. Every politician that has ever visited the Kotel did it with an eye to Jewish votes. What is more impressive are the contents of the letter.

According to Ynetnews.com Obama said during his 5am visit that, “America loves Israel and the Jewish people and will stand by the Jewish people, he said, standing at the Wall. The US, he added, will continue to look out for Israel’s security need and is Israel’s true friend.”

Personally, the letter is the best Western Wall prayer that any politician could have ever written, let alone a potential leader of the USA, and the most powerful man in the world. I am enough of an idealist to hope that he meant what he says in the prayer, but enough of a realist to acknowledge that a person’s actions are not always inline with their prayers.

Reuters video follows – a single heckler during he entire visit yells “Jerusalem is not for sale” perhaps pausing for a moment when Obama is praying. As he walks away from the Kotel, shouts of “Obama, Obama” from Israeli supporters (sic) drown out the hecklers. Rush Limbaugh’s headline “Messiah heckeled at Wester Wall.” [Video may not appear - click on link]

Allah willing, I will get the chance to kill more Israelis

Tsk, Tsk, Israeli penal system. Some reforming job you guys managed here!

Shabbat Shalom!

In this video promoting Marty Beckerman’s new book Dumbocracy, available September 30th, Marty rips into extremists of all stripes:

In DUMBOCRACY, journalist Marty Beckerman spends four years with foot soldiers of the Left and Right-pro-choice and anti-choice, pro-gay rights and anti-gay rights, pro-war and anti-war-and delivers a searing, hilarious indictment of the True Believer mentality… Whether it’s banning free speech to protect people’s feelings or banning adult entertainment to enforce morality, extremists have no use for our civil liberties. The ends justify the means for each side-such as brainwashing children and criminalizing dissent-because culture warriors have no other reason for living than victory. However, Beckerman is unafraid to expose their tactics-and their never-ending hypocrisies-with comical, over-the-top glee worthy of “South Park” or “The Daily Show.” … No extremist will escape unscathed…

The original title of this book was Retard Nation and Beckerman, an ROI120 and Jewlicious Trip alum seems to really tap into the current zeitgeist of moderation. In this stage of the US Presidential election campaign, both candidates are making moves on America’s undecided voters, those that vote based on issues rather than on pure ideology. While Professor Gil Troy in his book Leading From The Center suggests that being a muscular moderate is the best way to lead, Dumbocracy might suggest that soon enough, both campaigns might descend into renewed partisanship, unable to resist the temptation to act like, well… retards.

Dumbocracy will be available starting September 30th, and Leading From the Center is now available at book stores near you.

[UPDATED]
On the ballots in Seattle is a tricky little bill called Initiative 97 by a group called “Seattle Divest from War and Occupation.” The initiative calls for Seattle to divest and would impose guidelines on how the city invests employee retirement funds, mandating that funds cannot be invested in companies “profiting” directly from our occupation of Iraq — and here is the rub — Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian territory.

According to Robert Jacobs, Northwest Regional Director of StandWithUs:

With respect to I-97, it’s an initiative that proposes to divest from companies investing in Iraq – but MOST of the initiative would use the City of Seattle and Seattle City Light’s retirees’ pension funds to make an anti-Israel political statement. I-97, the “Divest from War” initiative, would have Seattle divest from companies selling products to the Israeli government. Companies such as Microsoft, Boeing, PACCAR, even Coke. Neither the title of the initiative nor the pitch from the signature gatherers tell you this.

Seattle is not a town known for hard-core pro Israel activity, but this initiative might just change that. It is not just the chance that this thing will pass that has Jews in Seattle worried, it is that it further erodes support for Israel in the city that ran My Name is Rachel Corrie for over a month to great reviews and crowds.

And as if proof was still needed that this was an anti-Israel effort – Cindy Sheehan has endorsed them! Read more from JT News and StandWithUs, let your friends and cousins in Seattle know about it, and keep an eye out for a copy-cat effort in a city near you.

Heh, I went to NYC again, and since I promised ck to try to post something, I will.

The plane was crowded with people on their connecting flight from Australia, where they had attended the World Youth Day. So, apparently, there was a lot of frum-quality Catholic folks around (I don’t mind Catholics per se, but these had an extra pious quality). One of the ladies desperately tried to buy a sandwich with US cash from a vendor at the gate in Frankfurt; I thought I’d be nice and help her out, but she gave me a look as if I were the Lord of Darkness himself. Tsk. I was just being polite. Then I spotted him. That short, hyper priest that I’d already encountered on a flight a couple of years ago when he was returning from the World Youth Day in Germany. Back then, my elder brother and his girlfriend had given me a lift to Frankfurt after they’d been out clubbing the previous night, so they were still in full hardrock / black metal ado. They were hanging out with me during check-in, and probably left quite an impression on that 5′3″ priest, possibly also because my bro’s 6′7″ and his gf 6′6″. Back then, that priest was seated in my row. He wouldn’t talk to ,me and spent most of the time praying. I could as well have been sitting next to some Chasid who was afraid of somebody seeing him talking with a secular female.
Anyhow, I refrained from singing all those popular Catholic youth songs like “Kumbayah”, “Lauda to si” (or something like it), and the ever abused-classic “Give peace a chance” (which isn’t exactly pro-religion if one gives the lyrics a closer look). I was being nice.

I’m aware this isn’t exactly the most eloquent blog post, the style could also be way better, but I’ve at least fulfilled my duty of blogging something. Maybe I’ll blog more. We’ll see. I shan’t be online too much. Luv ya, peeps.

That’s a study of the NYT, not a study by the New York Times. Honest Reporting spent a year collecting stories and comparing articles, pictures and headlines of reports on Israeli and Palestinean violence, concluding that the reporting was assymetrically balanced against Israel. Muffti doesn’t know what to make of these studies since he is doubtful of the methodology: in fact, he had trouble finding the methodology these guys use despite bold claims such as:

75 percent of the photographs that could be objectively determined as drawing sympathy for one side or the other in the conflict favored the Palestinians.

Nonetheless, the study cites interesting facts about proportions of words used and ‘greater context’ provide or withheld.

So take a look if you are interested. Here are a few of the facts they cite:

-82 percent of headlines that introduced articles describing Israeli military operations were written in a direct style in which the words “Israel” or “Israeli Forces” (or a similar phrase) were the subject.

-Only 20 percent of headlines that introduced articles describing Palestinian attacks named the group responsible.

-75 percent of the photographs that could be objectively determined as drawing sympathy for one side or the other in the conflict favored the Palestinians.

If you missed the demonstration this morning outside of NBC studios in drizzly NYC, here’s what went down:

A diverse group of about a hundred people, organized by the American Jewish World Service, protested outside of the filming of the Today Show, demanding more coverage of the events and issue surrounding the genocide in Darfur.

Why protest now, when the genocide has been raging on for years, when the ICC has finally decided to prosecute Sudan’s head of state al-Bashir? Why protest NBC coverage of the Beijing Olympics?

1) Because China is Sudan’s largest trading partner and a major supplier of weapons to Sudan, who uses its weapons against its own people.

Follow the money. China buys oil from Sudan. China protects Sudan in the UN Security Council. Coincidence? In another vein, NBC is providing the only official coverage of the Olympics in the U.S. (NBC spent $900 million for the exclusive broadcasting rights. $900 million. I know the dollar’s gone down, but still…)

2) Because China is about to host the 2008 Olympics.

What do the Olympics have to do with anything? Not much, except that awarding the hosting to Beijing honors a country that has been committing and enabling human rights atrocities around the globe. Broadcasting from China should include coverage of China’s involvement in human rights crimes.

As Ruth Messinger of AJWS says, this is China’s “coming-out party.” Welcome to the world, China. Stop being a**holes.

3) Because we need coverage of real news.

What else does the Olympics have to do with it? We read and hear about people like JLo, Brit, Bam’s hot bod (seriously, he’s running for President. He has a real name.) all the time. What about real news? What about the destruction and violence that occurs regularly in places like Chad and all of Sudan? In refugee canps, where people are supposed to be safe? What about what’s documented regularly on the US Holocaust Memorial and Museum “World is Witness” blog? A blog is all we can offer the victims of the janjaweed? NBC is providing official coverage to the Olympics. In the past four and a half years, NBC has dedicated less than seven hours to the situation in Darfur. How many hours will be NBC spend covering sports competitions? They should cover China’s and Sudan’s atrocities as well.

As the protesters chanted this morning, “NBC, we want more; tell the world about Darfur! Don’t let China off the hook; give Darfur another look!”