Last night Yivo Institute on W. 16th Street hosted a talk by the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson on “Jews and Money.” How excited I was to hand over my $15. The center dedicated to the study of Yiddish-speaking Jews was bringing in a heavyweight prof, a biographer of Rothschilds and Warburgs, to anatomize the culture of Jewish success.
What a fizzle. Niall Ferguson was overawed by the SRO New York audience and his Lazard Freres intoducer, an affable machine in a too-long red tie, and did not venture one bold thought on the matter. Most of his talk seemed aimed at gaining the audience’s approval by showing that he regarded the alleged affinity of Jews and money as anti-Semitic stereotype from Europe in the 1800s. Jews were no different from other ethnic minorities: Armenians in Turkey, Parsis in India, even Asians at Harvard today. O.K., but what are the facts? How wealthy are Jews? How much are “Wong and Chang,” as Ferguson blithely caricatured his top students at Harvard, worth? I read the ad: This was not a talk about history or aspiration but money. Ferguson offered zero data, that’s 0 data, on wealth in the U.S. today and confined himself to Germany during Weimar, where he stated Jewish overrepresentation in German elites was on a factor of 33 (to 1, was implicit; his statistics were sadly vague).
The talk took a safe slide at the end into the matter of intermarriage—again, not what Yivo said he was talking about when it asked for my $15, and again in historical terms. Ferguson said that in the 1920s, Hamburg (50 percent) and Berlin (43) had the greatest rates of Jewish intermarriage in Central Europe. Why? Was it the girl wanting to marry in, or the boy marrying out? The novelist/sociologist did not show up for this talk. Though Ferguson said, intriguingly, that high intermarriage rates were a motivator for Nazi ideology, Hitler wanting to purify Aryan blood from “self-assimilators.”
Intermarriage allowed him to conclude on a homiletic note that was calculated to please the (Jewish) crowd: “Jews don’t necessarily gain much from ceasing to be Jews.”
How would you feel if you bought a ticket to a show called “Angelina Jolie Nude” and the guy got out pictures of Angelina as a baby, and naked pictures of her baby? Sore. This is actually a fascinating subject. After all, it was Marty Peretz, the head of Yivo’s board of overseers (who had taken the stage first to charmingly introduce Ferguson and the Lazard machine), who warned in the New Republic, when Larry Summers exited Harvard, that it had lost several $100 million gifts. Who did he mean? Harvard, where Ferguson works, has also been subject to Jewish blackmail over former dean Stephen Walt’s brave statements on the Israel lobby. Can we talk about this? I guess not; not even Yivo is safe.
Niall—Nile? Kneel? Nail?—said that the true affinity is of Jews for knowledge, that once they have money, they move on to scholarship. He had little more to say on this point either. I thought he was biting his tongue. The only time he seemed halfway free in his expressions was when he said that his own brand, the Scots, tend to dominate England’s elites, and had incurred “flickers of resentment” but no expulsionist agendas.
“They know they can’t do without us!” he said, with the one emotion he forked over for my $15: pride.
That’s what I think about the position of Jews in the American power structure: They know they can’t do without us. This is an idea worth considering. I could have stayed home and read a scholar that the hashslinging Ferguson seems not to have read: the great Yuri Slezkine, who has studied the ways that Jews have been/are specially suited to modernity, in contrast to Parsis, Armenians, Scots, Changs and Wongs.
P.S. An interesting idea came up in the Q-and-A. Before he was shouted down, a speechifying questioner said that the ghettos in Eastern Europe and Paris, which were resistant to intermarriage, may have grown out of a desire by Jews themselves to stay apart. There is of course a segregationist element in Jewish organizational life today: the program of Jewish day schools and Jewish camps, aimed at preventing intermarriage. In fact, Peretz might have been endorsing this program in his introductory remarks, when he said (quoting Stephen Greenblatt) that Jews, having done so well at so many aspects of American life, from making money to being doctors and politicians, should do a better job of living as Jews. A pox on intermarriage. What about the poor shiksas?
hey dipshit, aren't you supposedly a "journalist"…
it wasn't "your $15", but rather the expense account of your employer The Observer. Stop whining about "your $15".
Editors of the Observer: lose this dipshit- it not journalism or new media or whatever else you may be deluded it thinking that it is.
Another day another column by little Philly ( I was really picked on has a little tyke ) Weiss. Jews and money, wow, obviously he didn't get the phone number to the elders in Jerusalem that the rest of us got on out Bar Mitzvahs and he is pissed off. Secondly, little Philly the Jew, intermarriage is specifically probibited by Jewish law ( Halachah ) Their are no ifs and or buts about this. I know little Philly that you married out, and that you have all the extras, Christmas tree and all. Your choice, but don't explain it has some act of bravery, it doesn't wash.
Hey Lil Phil,
Dad and I were also pretty ticked off at that cheap little Scotsman who refused to tell it like it is. We all know who has all the money in the world and who is really responsible for all the wars and troubles.
Why Crikey Mate!, why can't we just let the world know what these christkillers are up to?
Anyway, thanks for helping to spread the word.
Your mates,
Mel and Pop
I notice a pronounced uptick in the activities of the Hasbara trolls. You've got them worried, Phil.
Sounds like Prof. Ferguson wasn't likely to examine this interesting question: to what extent was Zionism a response to the "threat" perceived in the high intermarriage rates?
Bernard:
"Hasbara trolls" ouch, I'm wounded. You see we are all connected to the elders in Jerusalem. And little Philly Weiss has come to our attention. Therefore the LOBBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
will now swing into action. Personally I'm pushing for something like the bat signal to put us all into action. It will take a lot because everybody knows that to take on the LOBBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
is a profile in courage right up their with well who knows, after all when you go up against the Jews you risk an Op-Ed. But the Moslems, ask Theo Van Gogh what he thinks, or the women at the Seattle Jewish Federation, or maybe everybody in the WTC or the Pentagon, or flight 93. But I guess you can't, they're all dead from jihad
Bernard:
"Hasbara trolls" ouch, I'm wounded. You see we are all connected to the elders in Jerusalem. And little Philly Weiss has come to our attention. Therefore the LOBBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
will now swing into action. Personally I'm pushing for something like the bat signal to put us all into action. It will take a lot because everybody knows that to take on the LOBBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
is a profile in courage right up their with well who knows, after all when you go up against the Jews you risk an Op-Ed. But the Moslems, ask Theo Van Gogh what he thinks, or the women at the Seattle Jewish Federation, or maybe everybody in the WTC or the Pentagon, or flight 93. But I guess you can't, they're all dead from jihad
If Little Phlly Weiss dies slowly and painfully of starvation, I'll have a great holiday!
geesh, lil phil; with reviews like this no wonder you're upset.
Lurked Along With Noble Intentions and Good Works
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By JANET MASLIN
Published: June 21, 2004
AMERICAN TABOO
A Murder in the Peace Corps
By Philip Weiss
Illustrated. 369 pages. HarperCollins. $25.95.
The place: Manhattan. The year: 2002. The setting: a coffee bar in SoHo. The meeting: long-awaited. Philip Weiss has been working up to it for years. Readers of his ''American Taboo'' have been waiting for 340 pages that only feel like years.
Mr. Weiss is there to confront Dennis Priven, who was once a Peace Corps volunteer in the South Pacific island kingdom of Tonga. ''American Taboo'' has assembled considerable evidence that Mr. Priven murdered one of his fellow volunteers and got away with it. In preparation for this showdown, Mr. Weiss has hired a private investigator who wrote a book called ''Your Secrets Are My Business.'' The investigator has taught Mr. Weiss how to wear a baseball hat and to practice following people around.
When the two men finally have their encounter, readers learn how Mr. Priven helps Mr. Weiss adjust the zipper on his knapsack. There is talk about whether this conversation will be off the record. Mr. Priven says he doesn't want to discuss the case until 2007. One of them drinks juice; the other has lemonade. And nothing else happens.
''He didn't look back, I'm sure of that,'' Mr. Weiss writes. ''But then neither did I.''
In a real work of investigative journalism, this might qualify as a whopping anticlimax. But in ''American Taboo,'' it's just more of the same. The whole book is padded with repetitions, nonevents, paragraphs full of sawdust, marginal details, purplish flights of fancy and not-too-quotable quotes. To the extent that he has happened upon a never-told story of sex, scandal and cover-up, Mr. Weiss has done a remarkable job of sapping the life out of it.
Part of the problem lies with the book's iffy provenance. It came about because Mr. Weiss, no Tongan himself, with no ties to anyone involved, got wind of this decades-old killing and decided to investigate and imagine all its details. So as ''the smell of ripening guavas filled the air,'' and the murder of Deborah Gardner looms closer, Mr. Weiss pictures her dancing. He does it with characteristic overkill: ''Her mouth was open in laughter, her cheeks were dark with color, and thick strings of hair slapped around her face, slicked by saliva, sweat, life juice.'' Life juice? ''American Taboo'' would have been a much better book if it weren't drippy with the stuff.
''Why did you feel that you should write a book about something for which my family never sought any attention?'' Ms. Gardner's brother quite reasonably asks Mr. Weiss. Well, the answer has something to do with how attractive Ms. Gardner looks in old photographs. Then there are justice unserved, journalistic integrity to uphold and the apparent hot-stuff marketability of this material.
''Do you want me to give you a letter from my publisher?'' Mr. Weiss asks when he tries to persuade participants to talk to him. (Many refuse.) He often refers to Deborah Gardner's story as a legend, mostly because other written accounts (including a roman à £lef by a fellow Peace Corps worker) have found no takers. They provide some of the life juice that is recycled here.
The story of the crime is so simple that it appeared in a recent magazine excerpt, compressed to a few pages without the loss of anything important. Among the Peace Corps volunteers who landed in Tonga in 1975, quite a few had crushes on Ms. Gardner. She was a free spirit, as recalled by many anecdotes of varying interest.
One admirer remembers the sight of her squeezing a pimple. ''No chick had ever done that right in front of him,'' Mr. Weiss writes. ''But Deb didn't care.'' Another admirer remembers thinking: ''Boy, is that Debbie Gardner gorgeous, and why is it that the lives of the beautiful are so often tragic?''
Ms. Gardner flirted freely enough to rattle Mr. Priven, a Peace Corps worker teaching math to Tongans. (The book includes sine-cosine mnemonics for trigonometry formulas, because no detail is too small.) He scared the others by painting a diabolical image on his door. He was said to smell like a bat (a very bad thing by Tongan standards — consider what happens to the excrement of a creature that sleeps upside-down). And he was seen grappling violently with Ms. Gardner on the night she was stabbed many times, as eyewitnesses would later testify at his Tongan trial.
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Ladies and Gentlemen, the starvation thing wasn't my posting. But, I can see that I'm up against some great intellects here. It's like the Algonquin round table. But it does explain the vast strides in human progress that are being made betweeen Islamic world. What are they you may ask, well they've given us jihad
Phil: Tell us what will make you happy. A speaker who expatiates frankly on "Jewish blackmail" and offers affordable rates on gas chamber construction?
You filthy bastard.
Thanks for that review- it fully describes the weird, crappy nature of Weiss' so-called "journalism".
The "Lobby" is his latest neurotic, delusional obsession…I feel bad for the guy.
Enlightened article.
Mostly unenlightened comments.
Decide between revelation and reason.
Even Thomas Aquinas has discovered some values in reason.
It became a gift of God to mankind.
this describes this blog perfectly:
"…repetitions, nonevents, paragraphs full of sawdust, marginal details, purplish flights of fancy…investigate and imagine all its details."
this describes this blog perfectly:
(from a review of Phil "Lifejuice" Weiss' book)
"The writing is bizarre and strange, disjointed, rambling, nonsensical much of the time. … Some cognitive problem? We are told this was written by a journalist,an editor no less, yet over and over as I read I kept asking myself: what? when? who? huh? where? huh?"
Are the Editors of the Observer PAYING ATTENTION???
Are they going for a new modality of junk journalism?
I don't get it.
lil phil weiss, failed journalist and "observer";
from the New York Times Janet Maslin;
In a real work of investigative journalism, this might qualify as a whopping anticlimax. But in ''American Taboo,'' it's just more of the same. The whole book is padded with repetitions, nonevents, paragraphs full of sawdust, marginal details, purplish flights of fancy and not-too-quotable quotes. To the extent that he has happened upon a never-told story of sex, scandal and cover-up, Mr. Weiss has done a remarkable job of sapping the life out of it.
another awful review for phil weiss;
A sad, intriguing story, poorly told, February 6, 2006
Reviewer: Anonymous "booksandcookies" (Charleston, IL USA) – See all my reviews
This book seems to have been published before being proofread or edited in any way. Based on radio interviews heard with this author, I bought this book, but it has been a very frustrating read. It almost appears to be the rough draft/writer's notes for the book, rather than a finished work. The writing is bizarre and strange, disjointed, rambling, nonsensical much of the time. A reader keeps wondering: are these the author's rough notes? The writer's stream of consciousness? Some cognitive problem? We are told this was written by a journalist,an editor no less, yet over and over as I read I kept asking myself: what? when? who? huh? where? huh?
The story itself is a very sad one, but also frustrating. It leaves the reader feeling angry and disgusted by the crime committed by the murderer and by the consequent atrocities committed by the various and many people in authority – and also by the fellow "volunteers" who, at least as portrayed in this odd book, were complicit in the foul results of the trial which enabled the murderer to go scot-free. It seemed that those fellow volunteers displayed so much concern and assistance for the murderer and little to none for the victim, just as the Tongans observed. This book certainly does taint the Peace Corps in its, supposedly, most idealistic hayday and even contemporarily as a result. What a horrendous shame and what a horrendous embarrassment, but most of all, what a vicious, horrible criminal went free and presumably remains free – after a long career working for the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT in the SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION!! – yet another crime of this awful case, told in this awful book. I regret not giving this book a positive review because the author must have devoted much time and travel to the effort, but more time to editing would have been a good idea. I do appreciate that he has brought this very disturbing case to wider public attention.
mam justifies rape of unveiled women
Australia's top Muslim cleric compares victims to 'uncovered meat' that attracts cats
WorldNetDaily
Published: 10.26.06, 20:07
Australia's top Muslim cleric rationalized a series of gang rapes by Arab men, blaming women who "sway suggestively," wear make-up and don't cover themselves in the tradition of Islam.
Sheik Taj el-Dene Elhilaly's comments in a Ramadan sermon in a Sydney mosque have stirred a furor in the country with even Prime Minister John Howard weighing in with condemnation.
The cleric also said the judge in the case, who sentenced the rapists, had "no mercy."
"But the problem, but the problem all began with who?" he said, referring to the women victims whom he said were "weapons used by Satan."
The victims of the vicious gang rapes are leading the national outcry with some calling for deportation of the sheik. In a Sydney Daily Telegraph online poll, 84 percent of people said the Egyptian-born sheik should be deported.
"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?" the sheik said in his sermon.
'Remarks appalling and reprehensible'
"The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."
A 16-year-old girl, whose gang rape investigation was the subject of a secret police report, issued an open letter yesterday.
"You are a sad person who has no understanding of what really happens when these people inflict harm and degrading acts upon me or any other young girl," she said.
Initially, the mufti of Australia would not back away from his comments. But today he apologized.
"I unreservedly apologize to any woman who is offended by my comments," he said in a statement today. "I had only intended to protect women's honor."
Howard said the sheik's remarks were "appalling and reprehensible."
Reprinted by permission of WorldNetDaily
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This Bill Pearlman guy should be in an asylum. Thanks for your enlightening columns.
Ram, that was a stunning refutation of the facts. Bravo
Not content with unleashing the Cult of Yahweh upon an innocent and unsuspecting world, the chosen people follow up with Homus Judaicus Agonistes (variant, pearlman)–ever alert to the fundamentalist sex negative rant from Islamists, whilst his sisters shave their heads and mikvah that pussy each time it bleeds (better they should bathe their heads and shave their pussies, but I digress…)
Its obvious from topics such as Hasbara and the collusion of the Warburgs / Rothschild / Morgans in the financial and lobbying interests that the progression of the common public has been intentionally inhibited. Much of the American History, not to mention early 1900 Russian/ Ukrainian and German (to name a few) has ties with the socialist/communist/anarchist/ marxist conceptualism. Media has been monopolized since the Jekyll Island Club(first name club/ Secrets of the Federal Reserve) when local newspapers dropped in volume drastically to form a small web of ragsheets with the same points of view and unfortunately same articles. What other motives does a community/ group of individuals have in centralizing ownership of media, finance, and newspapers than to control popular belief? Israel's occupation of Gaza (the longest in history of 35+ years) and the PR movement incepted in 82 should raise much concern. To have knowledge of a small group of families spawning a system that is orchestrated for the extrication of state money into a central banking system can agitate one's senses. American interests should be just that. The self reliant attitude is the seed of American conception and has been trampled on for over one hundred years.When atleast one of the central banking fathers (warburg) travels to Russia only to participate or simply be conducive to the genocide taking place in eastern Europe (bolshevicks), questions should arise. Where did communism come from? I know this answer. So does everyone else. When any form of Literature is destroyed in America, brows should wrinkle. Reparation? That can be a contradictory term when applied to the correct section of history. I am a peaceful soul. I have no hate for any tribe on this Earth. I am not the only one concerned with a group of families making infinite credit and profit from world tragedies like the agricultural depression, depression,World Wars (they funded both sides of many wars) and the transfer of securities/ reserves (american) to European banks. Their interests were not in the American commonwealth. Its comical that history records particular 'philanthropists' surfacing to overcompensate for the truth of their actions right when disaster takes place. A knight in shining armor… This is apparent to any intelligent person.What raises additional inquiry is the punctual stifling of any whistle blowing that does take place in regard to some of these atrocities. Or even a simple debate… Europe is much more harsh, though, the U.S. seems to be regressing toward this mean. (prohibition of thinking) I assume that it may be a lost cause to even approach this on a large scale. Sadly, it may even be dangerous to personal survival. The information is present to behold by all eyes. This is the information era. I suspect that ample embarrassment might be felt by some of these families. If not, then there must be endless distraction at their dispense. 'Usury' is in the Old Testament, if I am correct. This and repossession of one's home appear to negate loving nature of the SOURCE/ CREATOR/ ALL THAT IS. Though,common sense could illustrate this. How long will people be required to PAY inflating COST to LIVE in a world that they are BORN in? Who felt this was humane to generate infinite wealth of from glorified extortion or, more kindly, loan sharking? It would be well advised for more Americans to research these topics. Intelligent people research a subject prior to forming an opinion. Such hateful and dark antics from a seemingly holy people. One…