What does your misguided piety worship?

In February 1930 Freud was asked, as a distinguished Jew, to contribute to a petition condemning Arab riots of 1929, in which over a hundred Jewish settlers were killed. This was his reply:

Letter to the Keren Hajessod (Dr. Chaim Koffler)

Vienna: 26 February 1930

Dear Sir,

I cannot do as you wish. I am unable to overcome my aversion to burdening the public with my name, and even the present critical time does not seem to me to warrant it. Whoever wants to influence the masses must give them something rousing and inflammatory and my sober judgement of Zionism does not permit this. I certainly sympathise with its goals, am proud of our University in Jerusalem and am delighted with our settlement’s prosperity. But, on the other hand, I do not think that Palestine could ever become a Jewish state, nor that the Christian and Islamic worlds would ever be prepared to have their holy places under Jewish care. It would have seemed more sensible to me to establish a Jewish homeland on a less historically-burdened land. But I know that such a rational viewpoint would never have gained the enthusiasm of the masses and the financial support of the wealthy. I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives.

Now judge for yourself whether I, with such a critical point of view, am the right person to come forward as the solace of a people deluded by unjustified hope.

Your obediant servant,

Freud

See Also: McCain: Freud Much?, Behaviors, Human Papilloma Virus and Sex Act Cancers, Does Hamas Want War?, Israel to Gaza: It’s On, The Coming Battle In Gaza, and Is Israel Planning Large-Scale Gaza Operation?

[tags]israel, palestine, settlement, freud, jewish care, Jerusalem, jewish state, riots, holocaust, world war 2, arabs, christians, holy land[/tags]

Ralph Nader: Unsafe at Any Speed

“He thought that there was no difference between Al Gore and George Bush, and, eight years later, I think people realize that Ralph did not know what he was talking about.” – Barack Obama

See Also: Cartoon via Washington Post, Nader Again: A Snare and a Delusion, Ralph Nader Announcement, My Only Post on Ralph Nader, Lebanese Nader Calls Obama Pro-“Palestinian”, Nader Talks About Palestine and Impeachment, The Audacity Of Complacency In The System, and RALPH NADER ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

[tags]2008 election, ralph nader, republican, change and experience, barack obama, corporatism, corruption, democracy, independent, green party, democrats, liberal, political cartoon[/tags]

Red States Turning Blue

From the reports of a February 21st Rasmussen Poll:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Virginia voters found Democrat Mark Warner still holding a significant lead over Republican Jim Gilmore in the race for the U.S. Senate. Warner leads Gilmore by twenty percentage points, 57% to 37%.

More interestingly, Warner has significant back from conservatives:

Warner earns high levels of support from liberals (88%) and moderates (70%) and even a third of conservative voters (34%). Gilmore attracts 60% of conservatives and 24% of moderate voters.

Is this the ripple down effect we can expect in the 2008 elections from 8 years of the Bush Administration?

[tags]virginia senate race, polls, conservative support, red states, blue, democrats, republicans, mark warner, jim gilmore[/tags]

Views on The Rap Music

From Yahoo News:

“More than seven-in-ten among the U.S. public, including large majorities of both blacks and whites, offer a [tag]negative assessment of rap music[/tag], with 71% of blacks and 74% of whites agreeing that rap’s [tag]societal impact[/tag] is bad. Fewer Hispanics, however, hold this view (48%). Among whites, men are much more likely than women to say hip hop and rap have a [tag]bad influence on society[/tag]. Among blacks, however, the gender relationship tilts in the opposite direction ? women are more likely than men to say this form of music is having a bad influence. [tag]Younger blacks[/tag] and whites (ages 18-34) are far less likely than older respondents to see a negative societal impact of [tag]hip hop[tag] and rap music. No difference is seen in the percentage of young whites and young blacks saying this. Of all the race and gender groups in the survey, black men are most likely to give a positive rating to hip hop (18%) and rap music (11%). But these levels of positive rating are still quite modest.”

And more extensively from Pew Research Center:

“[tag]African Americans[/tag] see a widening gulf between the values of middle class and poor blacks, and nearly four-in-ten say that because of the diversity within their community, blacks can no longer be thought of as a single race, a new Pew Research Center survey has found.

The survey also finds blacks less upbeat about the state of black progress now than at any time since 1983. Looking backward, just one-in-five blacks say things are better for blacks now than they were five years ago. Looking ahead, fewer than half of all blacks (44%) say they think life for blacks will get better in the future, down from the 57% who said so in a 1986 survey.

Whites have a different perspective. While they, too, have grown less sanguine about black progress, they are nearly twice as likely as blacks to see black gains in the past five years. Also, a majority of whites (56%) say life for blacks in this country will get better in the future.

Similar race-based gaps in perception emerge on several other key topics explored in this survey. For example, blacks have much less confidence than whites in the fairness of the criminal justice system. Also, blacks say that anti-black [tag]discrimination[/tag] is commonplace in everyday life; whites disagree.

But there are also areas where the two groups largely see eye to eye. For example, blacks and whites agree that there has been a convergence in the past decade in the values held by blacks and whites. On the issue of immigration, blacks and whites agree that most immigrants work harder than most blacks and most whites at low-wage jobs. And on the popular culture front, large majorities of both blacks and whites say that rap and hip hop – two music styles with roots in the black community that have gained mainstream popularity in recent years – have a bad influence on society.

The survey finds that black and white Americans express very little overt racial animosity. As they have for decades, about eight-in-ten members of each racial group express a favorable view about members of the other group. Large majorities in both groups say that blacks and whites get along either “very” or “pretty” well, though in both cases a greater number say “pretty well.” More than eight-in-ten adults in each group also say they know a person of a different [tag]race[/tag] whom they consider a friend.”

See Also: Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes: Part I, CIA Gave Us Bum Rap (& America Too), Discussing The Decline on Hip Hop Radio, and Multiculturalism.

Arts, Briefly

In a new play at the [tag]National Theater in London[/tag], 27 actors perform for 90 minutes without uttering a word. The attraction is “[tag]The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other[t/ag],” by the Austrian playwright [tag]Peter Handke[/tag]. The script has 60 pages of stage directions and no dialogue, although there are bangs, crashes, screams and laughter, The Independent of London reported. Mr. Handke said that the idea came to him in the 1980s when he found dramatic meaning in the comings and goings in a town square near Trieste, Italy. “Is there much to discover in it?” he said of his play. “I don’t know.”

From the New York Times

See Also: Review – The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, National Theatre
Silence Is Olden