The Terrible Theater of Religious Terror

The following is a post that I wrote when I was teaching a course on comparative religious terrorism.

What do stories of piety and mayhem have in common?
Let's focus on an interpretive framework called the "Logic of Religious Violence." We try to enter into the minds of those who perpetrate acts of violence in the name of religion. Then we try to step back and analyze what we observe.

What are the constructed events that serve as the elements of performative violence?
Mark Juergensmeyer ("Terror in the Mind of God") presents a convincing definition of the phenomena we have studied that are made up of acts of religious violence and terrorism.

"Instances of exaggerated violence are constructed events: they are mind-numbing, mesmerizing theater. At center stage arc the acts themselves--stunning, abnormal, and outrageous murders carried out in a way that graphically displays the awful power of violence--set within grand scenarios of conflict and proclamation. Killing or maiming of any sort is violent, of course, but these acts surpass the wounds inflicted during warfare or death delivered through capital punishment, in large part because they have a secondary impact. By their demonstrative nature, they elicit feelings of revulsion and anger in those who witness them.

Juergensmeyer further defines and presents his theoretical framework as follows:

How do we make sense of such theatrical forms of violence? One way of answering this is to view dramatic violence as part of a strategic plan. This viewpoint assumes that terrorism is always part of a political strategy--and, in fact, some social scientists have defined terrorism in just this way: "the use of covert violence by a group for political ends." In some cases this definition is indeed appropriate, for an act of violence can fulfill political ends and have a direct impact on public policy.

Is Robert Allen Stanford Jewish?

No, we are pretty sure that Robert Allen Stanford is not a Jew.

Stanford is a prominent financial executive who was sought by U.S. marshalls 2/17/09 and charged with a multi-billion dollar fraud. (SEC Statement)

On 6/18/2009 he was arrested and indicted on criminal charges stemming from his operation of a massive investment fraud operation that bilked thousands.

He was convicted on 3/6/2012: "Stanford Convicted by Jury in $7 Billion Ponzi Scheme"

Stanford was born March 24, 1950 in Mexia, Texas. He is a fifth-generation Texan who resides in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands and holds dual citizenship, having become a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda ten years ago.

Our reasonably certain conclusion about Stanford's religion is derived from indirect evidence. Sperling's provides this data about religious affiliation in Mexia, Texas: 56.71% of the people in Mexia, TX are religious, meaning they affiliate with a religion. 3.64% are Catholic; 47.87% are Protestant; 0.00% are LDS; 5.19% are another Christian faith; 0.00% in Mexia, TX are Jewish; 0.01% are an eastern faith; 0.00% affiliate with Islam.

The SEC Complaint charged:

• Since 1994, Stanford International Bank claims it has never failed to hit investment returns in excess of 10 percent a year.
• In 2008, the bank said its "diversified portfolio of investments" lost only 1.3 percent, while the S&P 500 U.S. stocks benchmark declined 39 percent.
• SEC says the bank's historical returns are "improbable, if not impossible."
• The bank quoted certificate of deposit rates of more than 7 percent during 2005 and 2006, and quoted a 3-year CD at 5.375 percent annual rate in November 2008, against comparable U.S. bank CDs of 3.2 percent.
• Did not disclose that its investment portfolio includes a significant portion in illiquid private equity and real estate investments.

Boston.com: Will Public Schools in Texas Teach the Talmud Next?

The question about whether the Texas schools will teach the Talmud was of course raised tongue in cheek in the course of a discussion cited by boston.com from another discussion at reddit.com.

We opine (also ironically) that at least if the schools in Texas taught the Talmud, the children would learn some critical reasoning. No skills are inculcated when you teach children Bible stories.

The discussion following the post by Lylah M. Alphonse on the subject over at boston.com's Moms page is utterly enlightening, containing this morsel.

...I think it's fair to say that American history, politics, and even pop culture has been informed by Christianity and the Bible. But in today's multi-cultural, global society, where's the push to teach students about other religions? As a commenter at Reddit.com wrote: "I look forward to Texas schools offering classes on the Talmud, Q'uran, Tao Te Ching, LaVey's Satanic Bible, Dianetics, Eastern Orthodox Bible, Wicca, and Atheist/Agnostic texts as well. Wait, they're not doing that? Hmm."

That might be pushing it a bit, but still: Isn't it equally important that high school students in Texas have an understanding of how other religions have shaped the rest of the world?...

Concluding Questions on Religion and Terrorism

This is the final post in our series based on Mark Juergensmeyer's monograph, Terror in the Mind of God.

In these posts we employed an interpretive framework looking for the "Logic of Religious Violence." We entered into the minds of those who perpetrate acts of violence in the name of religion. Then we stepped back to analyze what we observed.

Here we look back and ask a few concluding questions.

The Continuum and the Characteristics

You have noticed by now that we have avoided labeling the forms of religion that we have studied as "fundamentalists" or "cults". We agree with Juergensmeyer that what we study is a single continuum of religion. At the same time, the sub-systems we have looked at share characteristics of radical forms of their parent systems. Juergensmeyer says,

The radical religious movements that emerged from these cultures of violence throughout the world are remarkably similar, be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or Sikh. What they have in common are three things. First, they have rejected the compromises with liberal values and secular institutions that were made by most mainstream religious leaders and organizations. Second, they refuse to observe the boundaries that secular society has imposed around religion -- keeping it private rather than allowing it to intrude into public spaces. And third, they have replaced what they regard as weak modern substitutes with the more vibrant and demanding forms of religion that they imagine to be a part of their tradition's beginnings.

The fact that these movements are marginal, however does not mean that they are intrinsically different from mainstream religion. As strident as some of them appear, I hesitate to label them "cultic" or "fundamentalist," as some observers have described these politically active religious movements that have emerged in the late twentieth century. In my view, it is not their spirituality that is unusual, but their religious ideas, cultural contexts, and world views--perspectives shaped by the sociopolitical forces of their times. These movements are not simply aberrations but religious responses to social situations and expressions of deeply held convictions. In talking with many of the supporters of these cultures of violence, I was struck with the intensity of their quests for a deeper level of spirituality than that offered by the superficial values of the modern world.

The Militants v. the Mainstream

The groups that practice terror also preach a healthy disdain for the mainstream groups of the parent religion. As Juergensmeyer shows, this is often insulting and vituperative:

In America members of Christian militia groups have disdained liberal Protestantism and even mocked Christian conservatives. Richard Rutler left the Presbyterian ministry to form his own Church. William Pierce, writing in The Turner Diaries, observed that "the Jewish takeover of the Christian churches and corruption of the ministry is now virtually complete." Pierce went on to say that the liberal clergy was less interested in the teachings of Christianity than in "government 'study' grants. 'brotherhood' awards, fees for speaking engagements, and a good press." He was even more vituperative about conservative Christians, whom he called "the world's greatest cowards." Adding insult to injury, Pierce claimed that the cowardice of most Christian conservatives was "excelled only by their stupidity." It was the rare Christian who saw, as Pierce's characters did, that the governmental system played a key role in "undermining and perverting Christendom" and that its destruction was essential for the emergence of true Christianity. Matthew Hale took this position one step further and rejected Christian churches entirely, claiming them to be a Jewish conspiracy. His World Church of the Creator was intended, therefore, to be not just a branch of Christianity but an antidote to it.

The tension between militant and mainstream religion has existed within virtually every tradition. In Judaism, for example, at the rime of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the orthodox Jewish leadership in Israel was dubious that rabbis could be found who would give religious sanction to such an act, and their doubt turned to astonishment when several rabbis were located who indeed gave authorization for killing another Jew under the moral precedents of traditional law. Yoel Lerner told me that he regarded the rabbinic establishment in Israel as "comfortable" and "cowardly" -- "unwilling to rock the boat" over political issues that he thought their beliefs should command them to champion.

The Search for Hard Religion

Another commonality among the groups we have encountered is the quest for a harder and more real form of their own religions -- one that rejects indulgence and comfort. Juergensmeyer gives a salient example,

Mahmud Abouhalima told me that the critical moment in his religious life came when he realized that he could not compromise his Islamic integrity with the easy vices offered by modern society. Abouhalima claimed that he had spent the early part of his life running away from himself. Although involved in radical Egyptian Islamic movements since his college years in Alexandria, he felt there was no place where he could settle down. He told mc that the low point came when he was in Germany, trying to live the way that he imagined Europeans and Americans carried on: a life in which the superficial comforts of sex and inebriants masked an internal emptiness and despair. Abouhalima said his return to Islam as the center of his life carried with it a renewed sense of obligation to make Islamic society truly Islamic--to "struggle against oppression and injustice" wherever it existed. What was constant, Abouhalima said, was his family and his faith. Islam was both "a rock and a pillar of mercy." But it was not the Islam of liberal, modern Muslims: they, he felt, had compromised the tough and disciplined life the faith demanded.

Abouhalima wanted his religion to be hard, unlike the humiliating, mind-numbing comforts of secular modernity. His newfound religion was what he perceived to be traditional Islam. This was also the case with born-again Sikhs in the separatist movement in India: theirs, they claimed was real Sikhism.

Does Globalization Cause the Backlash of Religious Terrorism?

We categorically reject the line of reasoning that says because of oppression X people are driven to response Y. It makes no logical sense to us. Yet there are many who seek to discover the "cause" of our terrorist maladies in globalist terms. Juergensmeyer explains,

Is the rise of religious terrorism related to these global changes? We know that some groups associated with violence in industrialized societies have an antimodernist political agenda. At the extreme end of this religious rejection of modernism in the United States arc members of the American anti-abortion group Defensive Action, the Christian militia and Christian Identity movement, and isolated groups such as the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas. When Michael Bray and other members of the religious right cast aspersions at "the new world order" allegedly promoted by President Bill Clinton and the United Nations, what he and his colleagues feared was the imposition of a reign of order that was not Just tyrannical but atheist. They saw evidence of an anti- religious governmental pogrom in what they regarded as a pandering to pluralist cultural values in a society with no single set of religious moorings.

Similar attitudes toward secular government have emerged in Israel--the religious nationalist ideology of the Kach party is an extreme example--and, as the Aum Shinrikyo movement demonstrated, in Japan. Like the United States, contentious groups within these countries became disillusioned about the ability of secular leaders to guide their countries' destinies. They identified government as the enemy. In Israel, for instance, Hamas and the Jewish right have been in opposition not so much to each other as to their own secular leaders. This fact was demonstrated by the reaction of Jewish settlers in Gaza to a Hamas suicide bombing attempt in 1998, soon after the Wye River accords, in which an activist attempted to ram a car loaded with explosives into a school bus filled with forty of the settlers' children. One of the parents immediately lashed out in hatred--not against the Arabs who tried to kill her child, but against her own secular leader, Netanyahu, whom she blamed for precipitating the action by entering into peace agreements with Arafat. Her comments demonstrated that the religious war in Israel and Palestine has not been a war between religions, but a double set of religious wars--Jewish and Muslim--against secularism.

What makes them hate the Modern?

Calling religious terror a symptom of postmodernism does little to illuminate the phenomenon. Yet many seek this line of inquiry. For reasons that are clear, individualism and skepticism are the enemies. Juergensmeyer summarizes,

The postmodern religious rebels that we have examined in this book have therefore been neither anomalies nor anachronisms. From Algeria to Idaho, these small but potent groups of violent activists have represented growing masses of supporters, and they have exemplified currents of thinking and cultures of commitment that have risen to counter the prevailing modernism -- the ideology of individualism and skepticism -- that has emerged in the past three centuries from the European Enlightenment and spread throughout the world. They have come to hate secular governments with an almost transcendent passion. These guerrilla nationalists have dreamed of revolutionary changes that would establish a godly social order in the rubble of what the citizens of most secular societies have regarded as modern, egalitarian democracies. Their enemies have seemed to most people to be both benign and banal: modern, secular leaders such as Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat, and such symbols of prosperity and authority as the World Trade Center and the Japanese subway system. The logic of this kind of militant religiosity has therefore been difficult for many people to comprehend. Yet its challenge has been profound, for it has contained a fundamental critique of the world's post-Enlightenment secular culture and politics.

For this reason these acts of guerrilla religious warfare have been not only attempts at "delegitimization," as Ehud Sprinzak has put it, but also relegitimization: attempts to purchase public recognition of the legitimacy of religious world views with the currency of violence. Since religious authority can provide a ready-made replacement for secular leadership, it is no surprise that when secular leaders have been deemed inadequate or corrupt, the challenges to their legitimacy and the attempts to gain support for their rivals have been based on religion. When the proponents of religion have asserted their claims to be the moral force undergirding public order, they sometimes have done so with the kind of power that a confused society can graphically recognize: the force of terror.

Guardian: FBI Finds Robert Allen Stanford in Fredericksburg Virginia - Serves Him Papers

No longer on the lam, Stanford has been found and served with papers. Not arrested? What?

'We said, are you this guy? He said yes.' FBI finds Stanford
Ed Pilkington in St John's, Antigua, The Guardian

A two-day global hunt to find the cricket tycoon Sir Allen Stanford in the wake of allegations that he masterminded a massive financial swindle came to an end last night, when the FBI said it had tracked him down to Virginia.

The discovery of the Texas billionaire in Fredericksburg, about 50 miles south-west of Washington, spared the American financial regulators further embarrassment after they issued charges against Stanford on Tuesday but without being certain of his whereabouts.

It allowed the Securities and Exchange Commission to serve papers on the businessman, thus rendering its proceedings against him active in what it claims to be a financial fraud of "shocking magnitude".

The FBI said last night the businessman had been found as he was driving a car in Fredericksburg, noting he was not a fugitive and had been very cooperative. "He wasn't hard to find," the FBI said. "We said, 'Are you this guy?', he said, 'Yes', and we served the papers on him."

The SEC alleges Stanford misled investors in a fraud whose total value reaches $9.2bn (£6.4bn). He is accused of encouraging investors using false information about the performance of his banks, including claims that he put the money into tradable shares when in fact it went towards real estate and private equity...

Where is Robert Allen Stanford Hiding?

Reuters reports that Robert Allen Stanford is still on the lam - nobody can find him. Rightfully the court has seized his US assets and Venezuela has seized one of his banks.

...Stanford's whereabouts remain a mystery. CNBC television reported this week that he had tried to hire a private jet to fly from Houston to Antigua, but the jet lessor refused to accept his credit card.

The SEC says it does not know where Stanford is and says he failed to respond to subpoenas seeking testimony.

A federal judge appointed a receiver on Tuesday "to take possession and control of defendants' assets for the protection of defendants' victims."

Stanford's personal fortune was estimated at $2.2 billion last year by Forbes Magazine. He holds dual U.S.-Antiguan citizenship, has donated millions of dollars to U.S. politicians, and has secured endorsements from sports stars, including golfer Vijay Singh and soccer player Michael Owen.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has already severed its association with Stanford, and a planned Stanford-sponsored international cricket tournament is now unlikely to take place, ECB chairman Giles Clarke said.

In Antigua, Stanford owns the country's largest newspaper, heads a local commercial bank, and is the first American to receive a knighthood from its government. He has homes across the region, from Antigua to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands to Miami.

Mortgage Crisis Explained by David Faber of CNBC in Brilliant "House of Cards"

No matter that you don't know a mortgaged backed security from a collateralized debt obligation. You know that the mortgage companies, the banks and Wall Street created a monster financial mess that is causing a ton of suffering.

How did this happen? The basics of the mortgage crisis are all explained by David Faber of CNBC in his brilliant documentary, "House of Cards." [CNBC site page.]

We watched it tonight. Faber goes for interviews far and wide to tell the story with clarity and persistence. He speaks to the mayor of Narvik Norway, to former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, to contrarian investor Kyle Bass and to a whole lot of others, from financial scoundrels to ordinary hurting folk.

And guess what. Like a great professor, he translates complexity, teaches us what happened, when, where and how it happened and then he leaves it up to us to reflect on what needs to be done next.

TTB Rating: Must see! The best 2 hours you can invest in your economic education. And woven into a great story too.

Others agree, for instance Newsday rates the show GRADE A(+) in a full review, check it out.

Check out the Promo Preview Video or the Cramer Promo. Good work by all involved: An Emmy, Peabody, and Dupont award winner, David Faber is the anchor and co-producer of CNBC's acclaimed original documentaries as well as a contributor to CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." James Jacoby is writer and producer of CNBC's "House of Cards." Jill Landes is co-producer. James Segelstein is senior producer. Mitch Weitzner is the Executive Producer of CNBC's Long Form Unit. Jonathan Wald is the Senior Vice President, Business News at CNBC.
SHOW TIMES

Saturday, February 14th  7p | 10p ET
Sunday, February 15th  9p ET
Monday, February 16th  8p | 12a ET
Sunday, March 1st  Midnight ET
Sunday, March 15th  9p ET

In a Talmudic World We'd Use Exxon's $45 billion Profit to Bail Out the Automakers

Exxon Mobil sets record with $45.2 billion profit
By JOHN PORRETTO, AP

HOUSTON – Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday reported a profit of $45.2 billion for 2008, breaking its own record for a U.S. company, even as its fourth-quarter earnings fell 33 percent from a year ago.

The previous record for annual profit was $40.6 billion, which the world's largest publicly traded oil company set in 2007.  ... more ...

Time: Putting God on Trial

Time magazine interviews Peter Irons about what sounds like a sober book that treats the religious battles of the culture wars in America.

Putting God on Trial

The never-ending march of court cases about church and state sometimes seems so rapid that they blur together. But Peter Irons, a longtime professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and a member of the Supreme Court bar, has slowed down time to take in-depth looks at several highly symbolic disputes in his new book God on Trial: Dispatches from America's Religious Battlefields (Viking $26.95). He talked to TIME's David Van Biema about swing votes, death threats, and the rule of law.

TIME: Your book treats six First Amendment religion cases, several of which went to the Supreme Court. Briefly, what were they?

There was the San Diego case against a 43-foot Latin Cross erected in a veterans cemetery in San Diego; the football-game prayer case from Santa Fe, Texas, two Ten Commandments cases, the attempt to remove "under God " from the Pledge of Allegiance and the Intelligent Design case in Dover, Pa. ...

JTA: Jew v. Christian v. antiSemite - a Tempest in the Land O'Lakes

The repugnant congresswoman knows that Jews is news and is using that to get publicity yet again. She has no point to make. She is repugnant, repugnant, repugnant. [For those of you who don't understand overdone critiques - I am trying to be reflectively ironic.]

Please recall that in every county, save two, in Minnesota, there are more lakes than Jews.

A Minnesota congresswoman declined an invitation to attend "A Night to Honor Israel," saying the views of the event's evangelical founder are "repugnant."

A Minnesota congresswoman declined an invitation to attend "A Night to Honor Israel," saying the views of the event's evangelical founder are "repugnant."

The Living World Christian Center in Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb, is hosting the evening on April 29. The event is a project of Texas televangelist Pastor John Hagee, who founded Christians United for Israel.

"Well-publicized statements by Pastor Hagee demonstrate extremism, bigotry and intolerance that is repugnant," U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democrat, said in a two-page reply declining a form invitation from Pastor Mac Hammond.

McCollum cited comments by Hagee describing Hurricane Katrina as the "judgment of God" against sinners in New Orleans and that "those who live by the Koran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews."

McCollum noted Jewish criticism of Hagee and said, "unlike Pastor Hagee I support working for the 'road map for peace' in the Middle East, Israel living side-by-side in peace and security with an independent Palestinian state."

Steve Hunegs, director of the Minnesota/Dakotas Jewish Community Relations Council, said he would attend the event because "coalition building means finding common ground with people of diverse views." Of Hagee's controversial remarks, Hunegs said, "Those statements are wrong, but we're attending for their support for feeding the hungry and helping the widows and orphans in Israel. It's a Jewish value to say thank you."

David Brog, director of CUFI, said the "Night to Honor Israel" was a "big tent" event.

"We all enter this tent knowing that while we don't agree on everything, we do agree on one urgent proposition -- that we must stand with Israel against those who daily threaten to destroy her and her people," Brog said. "It's unfortunate that Rep. McCollum has decided to exclude herself from this big tent rather than seek to work with us in a constructive fashion."

Last year, McCollum broke for a few weeks with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee after a Minnesota AIPAC activist allegedly accused her of "supporting terrorists" because she voted against a bill banning assistance to the Palestinian Authority. She later reconciled with the organization.

NY Times: Yeshiva University - Good. Regent University - Bad

Op-Ed Columnist Krugman says about the religious right, "This conspiracy is no theory." He writes about what we all know. Bush frequently prefers a religious litmus test over a routine literacy test. The results are both corrupt and scary.

For God’s Sake

By PAUL KRUGMAN

In 1981, Gary North, a leader of the Christian Reconstructionist movement — the openly theocratic wing of the Christian right — suggested that the movement could achieve power by stealth. “Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure,” he wrote, “and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order.”

Today, Regent University, founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” boasts that it has 150 graduates working in the Bush administration.

Unfortunately for the image of the school, where Mr. Robertson is chancellor and president, the most famous of those graduates is Monica Goodling, a product of the university’s law school. She’s the former top aide to Alberto Gonzales who appears central to the scandal of the fired U.S. attorneys and has declared that she will take the Fifth rather than testify to Congress on the matter.

The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda — which is very different from simply being people of faith — is one of the most important stories of the last six years. It’s also a story that tends to go underreported, perhaps because journalists are afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists.

But this conspiracy is no theory. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to “dispel the myth of the separation of church and state.” And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge.

...One measure of just how many Bushies were appointed to promote a religious agenda is how often a Christian right connection surfaces when we learn about a Bush administration scandal.

...And there’s another thing most reporting fails to convey: the sheer extremism of these people.

You see, Regent isn’t a religious university the way Loyola or Yeshiva are religious universities. It’s run by someone whose first reaction to 9/11 was to brand it God’s punishment for America’s sins.

Two days after the terrorist attacks, Mr. Robertson held a conversation with Jerry Falwell on Mr. Robertson’s TV show “The 700 Club.” Mr. Falwell laid blame for the attack at the feet of “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians,” not to mention the A.C.L.U. and People for the American Way. “Well, I totally concur,” said Mr. Robertson.

The Bush administration’s implosion clearly represents a setback for the Christian right’s strategy of infiltration. But it would be wildly premature to declare the danger over. This is a movement that has shown great resilience over the years. It will surely find new champions.

Next week Rudy Giuliani will be speaking at Regent’s Executive Leadership Series.

Honest Cabbie Returns 30 Lost Diamond Rings

The Daily News reminds us that there are some really honest people in NY City.

New York Daily News - A heavenly hack
BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

Chowdhury Osman is one gem of a cabbie.

Not only did the Queens taxi driver graciously accept a passenger's 30-cent tip on a nearly $11 ride, but hours later he tracked her down and returned the black travel bag she left in the cab's trunk.

It contained two small display cases with 31 diamond rings tucked inside.

He never considered keeping the sparkling treasure for that would have darkened his soul, he explained yesterday.

"I'm a hard worker," the soft-spoken cabbie said. "I enjoy my life. I'm satisfied. I'm not going to take someone else's money or property to make me rich. I don't want it that way."

The woman, who said she was a jeweler, wanted to give Osman, an emigrant from Bangladesh, a handsome reward. He grudgingly accepted $100 as compensation for the income he didn't make picking up passengers because he was on his mission to do the right thing.

"When I find something left in my cab, and I can return it to the owner, I feel very happy. I feel proud," he said.

Osman drove the jeweler from the Hilton New York to an E. 35th St. apartment building Monday night. The fare was $10.70. She gave him a $20 and asked for $9 back.

He took the three-dime tip in stride.

You never know what's in people's minds or purses, he said, explaining his thinking. They might be distracted. They might be broke. Besides, most passengers tip well, he said.

A group of three travelers with luggage who hailed Osman's cab at 10 p.m. Monday discovered the abandoned bag when they opened the trunk.

Osman returned to the E. 35th St. building but didn't go in. There were more than a dozen apartments, and it was late. He feared that roaming the halls and banging on doors might startle a resident, who might then think he was an intruder.

"They might shoot me," he said.

The cabbie - still unaware what was inside the bag - took it to the Manhattan headquarters of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a drivers' advocacy group with whom he also is an organizer. He and the alliance president, Bhairavi Desai, peeked inside as they looked for a name or telephone number for the owner.

Osman, who makes as little as $300 a week when business is slow, was stunned by what he found.

After many telephone calls, a relative of the diamond dealer was contacted in Texas. The woman dealer was alerted to the find. She hurried to the alliance office about 12:30 a.m. yesterday.

"This shows that that taxi drivers are heroes of our streets," Desai said. "They are hardworking and honest and selfless."

The woman, whose name is being withheld by the Daily News, couldn't be reached for comment.

Princeton Allows Google to Scan its Library

The value that this project brings to the world is beyond calculation. Scanning the libraries of the great universities and making them available to anyone will advance human knowledge by a factor of googolplex. The company name Google was an obvious allusion to Googolplex, the name given to the large number . The Google headquarters in Montain View in fact is called the Googleplex.

Princeton libraries join Google book-scan project

Mon Feb 5, 8:28 PM ET

Princeton University has become the 12th major library system to join Google's ambitious, sometimes-controversial project to scan the world's great literary works and make them searchable over the Web.

The Web search leader said on Monday Princeton had agreed to work with it to digitize about 1 million public domain books -- works no longer covered by copyright protections.

The combined collections of the university's libraries total more than 6 million printed works, 5 million manuscripts and 2 million nonprint items.

A Google spokeswoman said her company and the 250-year-old Princeton library system would work together to determine which portions of the collection would be digitized.

Two years ago, Google Inc. began the book-scanning project with a core group including the New York Public Library and academic libraries at Harvard, Oxford, Stanford and the University of Michigan.

Six months ago, the University of California became the first of a second round of libraries to join, followed by the University Complutense of Madrid, the National Library of Catalonia and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, University of Virginia, and the University of Texas at Austin.

Only the Michigan and Texas libraries agreed to scan works that are still under copyright. The rest have said they are focusing on public domain works or are still considering whether to scan copyrighted works.

More details can be found at http://books.google.com/.

In October 2005, five big U.S. publishers, together with the Association of American Publishers, sued Google seeking to block its plans to make libraries' works searchable online.

The case has yet to come to trial.

The Guide to Assistant Football Coaching for fun and profit

Riddle: How many highly paid assistant college football coaches does it take to get into the Texas Bowl?
Answer: Nine.

This tale of overpaid coaches is a front page story of the Bergen Record. Why? because it so obviously demonstrates the lopsided value system that governs our institutions of higher education. First the sidebar:

What they're paid

Rutgers full-time assistant football coaches got hefty raises, even as the program struggled to break even financially. Each of these coaches also gets an annual car stipend of $7,200 and a bowl bonus of one month's salary. The hikes came as the rest of the university was dealing with unprecedented cutbacks.

These are some of the assistant coaches, their 2007 salaries and the percentage increase.

1. Jay Butler $125,675 (10.1%)
2. Chris Demarest $143,000 (10%)
3. John McNulty $160,000 (23.1%)
4. Kyle Flood $122,500 (22.5%)
5. Joseph Susan $144,000 (15.2%)
6. Cary Godette $143,000 (10%)
7. Darren Rizzi $145,750 (10%)
8. Robert Jackson $115,000 (9.5%)
9. Craig Ver Steeg $185,000 (7.8%)

Now the facts. In November the Record told us, "Coach Greg Schiano, who's led the Scarlet Knights to an 8-0 start, is the highest paid state employee and will make more than $1 million this year. The university also pays $998 a month for his Cadillac Escalade and has spent at least $158,000 preparing a piece of its ecological preserve that Schiano bought to build a new home."

Today they tell us more:

Rutgers assistants get raises while university slashes jobs
By JEAN RIMBACH and PATRICIA ALEX

Special Report: Rutgers' price of glory

Rutgers University gave hefty raises this season to football coach Greg Schiano's inner circle, with one assistant getting a bump of nearly $30,000, according to a review of employment contracts.

Most of Schiano's six-figure coaching assistants got double-digit raises even as the university reeled under state budget cuts that forced the elimination of 825 jobs.

Salaries for nine coaches now range between $115,000 and $185,000, according to the contracts obtained by The Record under the state's Open Public Records Act. Each also gets a $7,200 annual car stipend and an additional one month's pay -- a bonus for getting the Scarlet Knights into the Texas Bowl.

The contracts for 2006-07 were signed in the fall as the team embarked on its most successful season, one that saw the once-downtrodden program crack the national rankings for the first time in 30 years.

At the same time, the rest of the university was suffering from nearly $80 million in state aid cuts that resulted in the job cuts and cancellation of at least 459 course sections. Athletic Director Robert E. Mulcahy III also announced plans to cut six high-performing Olympic sports that cost a combined $800,000.

But football was spared the pain. As much as $3 million from the university was pumped into the $13 million football budget this season.

Mulcahy said he hoped that increased revenues from ticket sales would close the gap and allow the program to be self-supporting as early as next season. Experts say it generally takes consistent winning seasons for programs to begin to turn a profit.

Mulcahy said season-ticket sales for next season's home games already have doubled to 23,000 and sellouts are anticipated. When asked about possible expansion of the 41,500-seat stadium in Piscataway, Mulcahy said: "We have to look at all options. I'm a businessman."

Schiano will be paid more than $1.13 million for 2006-07 as a series of bonuses has kicked in for milestones in the team's winning season. The coach's contract, which runs through 2012, also provides him with a Cadillac Escalade.

The contract may be renegotiated upward, however, after the team's celebrated 11-2 season. Schiano, 40, won several national coaching awards, sparking interest from other teams. The charismatic coach has also snagged some of the nation's top recruits for next year.

"I am going to treat him fairly, given all the great interest in him,'' Mulcahy said, when asked whether Schiano will get a better contract....

A Cheery Chrismukkah to you

I was just asking someone today whether everyone forgot about the invention of the OC TV show called Chrismukkah. Here is a story about its current status from the Baptist Standard.

Chrismukkah? Hybrid holiday shows tension in religiously blended families
By Hannah Elliott
Associated Baptist Press

DALLAS (ABP)—There’s a new winter holiday on the rise, and it could be the perfect opportunity to enjoy Fa-La-La-La Latkes, Blitzen’s Blintzes, and Christmas trees filled with “menorahments.”

It’s not Christmas. And it’s not Hanukkah. It’s both. And the humor and religious syncretism behind the hybrid holiday “Chrismukkah” cut to the heart of modern-day tensions in American society.

According to the United Jewish Communities’ National Jewish Population Survey, roughly 31 percent of married Jews in the United States have non-Jewish spouses. For Jews who married after 1995, the intermarriage rate is nearly 50 percent.

Chrismukkah was invented for Jewish-Christian families who decide to celebrate both holidays. The term had its first wide pop-culture appearance in 2003, thanks to a mixed-faith family featured on the now-canceled Fox television show The O.C.

But several new books are taking the holiday at least semi-seriously, reflecting the increasing number of American families that blend Christianity and Judaism.

Chrismukkah: The Official Guide to the World’s Most Beloved Holiday by Gersh Kuntzman, and Chrismukkah: Everything You Need to Know to Celebrate the Hybrid Holiday by Ron Gompertz, both extol the virtues of the Dec. 15-25 celebration. Judaikitsch: Tchotchkes, Schmattes & Nosherei by Jennifer Traig and Victoria Traig also highlights the new holiday alternative.

Gompertz, a Jew who moved from New York to Bozeman, Mont., founded the website http://www.chrismukkah.com/. He is married to the daughter of a pastor in the United Church of Christ, and the couple has decided to raise their daughter in the Jewish faith.

Gompertz’s family chooses to celebrate Hanukkah. But in addition to lighting the menorah and frying latkes—that’s a traditional Hanukkah potato pancake—they add a Christmas tree.

“Frankly, it’s fun to challenge the status quo and question tradition,” he said. “Chrismukkah has gotten people talking, allowing expression of diverse opinion, and it’s helped bring Jewish intermarriage issues to mainstream cultural awareness.”

While he sits on the board of directors for Bozeman’s synagogue and calls himself “a proud Jew,” Gompertz recognizes compromise as a key part of fostering a good marriage with his wife, Michelle. It’s one of the reasons they launched the website as a project to express their views as a “real interfaith family.”

“While we are typical in the sense that … we never had a political or theological agenda, we certainly don’t believe we represent the beliefs of all interfaith couples,” he wrote on his website. “That said, it has been a nice surprise to find how many others share our beliefs and values. We’ve found that by celebrating both December holidays … we manage to keep peace and harmony within our family.”

Chrismukkah fans say the event celebrates both Christian and Jewish beliefs, even if it is a bit tongue-in-cheek. It’s a state of mind for the season—a “multicultural mish-mash of the cherished holiday rituals we grew up with,” Gompertz wrote. And that’s one of the reasons the website is popular, he said.

But the reason Gompertz likes his new holiday is exactly why Chrismukkah critics dislike it.

In 2004, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and the New York Board of Rabbis issued a joint statement disparaging the holiday for misrepresenting the spiritual aspects of Christmas and Hanukkah.

“Chrismukkah is a multicultural mess that glosses over the historical significance of both Hanukkah and Christmas,” said William Donohue, the Catholic League’s president.

“In this vein, we would agree with the recent statement on mixed marriages prepared by the U.S. Catholic-Jewish Consultation Committee. It branded attempts to raise a child simultaneously as both Jewish and Catholic a ‘violation of the integrity of both religious traditions, at best, and, at worst, syncretism.’ From a Catholic perspective, anything which contributes to this phenomenon should be resisted, and that would include Chrismukkah.”

The term has also been used disparagingly in recent years by some as a way to describe the commercialization of Hanukkah and the dominance of commercialized Christmas in American culture.

Rabbi Jeremy Schneider of Temple Shalom in Dallas said Hanukkah is ultimately about maintaining a Jewish belief system in the face of a larger majority belief system surrounding the Jewish community. To create a “hybrid” holiday, he said, insults both Christianity and Judaism.

“Even if the majority of Christians do not take their religious symbols seriously, that does not give Jews license to adopt them and proclaim them secular or American symbols,” he said in an e-mail interview. “I urge my congregants to (imagine) how we would feel if Christians started wearing a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, or a yarmulke, a Jewish head covering, and ‘de-Judaized’ them for their own purposes.”

In an essay called “Confronting the December Dilemmas,” Ron Wolfson said that by adopting Christmas and its customs, Jews introduce symbols and traditions into their families that are foreign to Judaism. Wolfson is a Jewish educator and president of Synagogue 3000, a Jewish networking and resource center with offices in New York City and Los Angeles.

Christmas celebrates the birth of a Messiah whom Jews do not recognize, and Hanukkah celebrates the right not to assimilate into the dominant non-Jewish culture—the very thing that Jews who celebrate Christmas are doing, he said.

“Many Jewish educators will advise parents to give children who want to celebrate Christmas a very important message: Christmas is someone else’s party, not ours,” Wolfson wrote. “Just as we can appreciate someone else’s birthday celebration and be happy for them, we can wonder at how beautiful Christmas is, but it is not our party.”

Jewish people have many more holidays than just Hanukkah to celebrate, Wolfson continued. It may be difficult to convince Jewish children that they don’t need to trim a Christmas tree or wait for Santa, but once they have experienced the meaning and beauty of their own Jewish traditions, he said, children “will understand that to be Jewish is to be enriched by a calendar brimming with joyous celebration.”

Who knows? The kids might not even miss that kosher fruitcake.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

No Rev. Hagee, Non-Jews are "going straight to hell with a non-stop ticket"

About the time I recently reviewed David Brog's book about Christian Zionists, Mr. Brog went to work for Rev. Hagee. Now the media is abuzz because of something Hagee preached last Sunday. It's not that he said certain things about non-Christians. It's that the Texas Governor was in the Church and when asked later he would not disavow anything the Rev. said. (See the story from UPI below.)

So now I've emailed David and asked him about the quote, "going straight to hell with a non-stop ticket"? David replied to me that Hagee has been mistreated. He was talking in church to his followers and reminding them about a belief that is at the bedrock of the church, that they must find Jesus or find hell.

I'm still bothered by this bedrock teaching.

What troubles me is the "non-stop ticket" part of the statement. I'm confused about how we non-Christians get our tickets to hell. Xpedia.com? And how does Hagee know that the trips will be "non-stop"? Maybe we get to stop in purgatory or at least in limbo. Perhaps Chubby Checker is there in limbo singing his hit song, "Jack be limbo, Jack be quick. Jack go unda limbo stick." I like that song.

But I guess I'll have to go non-stop to hell then because Hagee says it is so.

I liked Hagee. He raises money for Israel and supports Zionism. He also provides Internet services that protect you from porn, http://www.jhmonline.com/, John Hagee Online. He seems to be an all around okay guy.

Why then this dumb remark that we Jews are, "going straight to hell with a non-stop ticket"?

Texas governor's religious remarks slammed
Nov. 6, 2006 at 11:29AM

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has drawn criticism from rival candidates for saying he agrees non-Christians are condemned to spend eternity in hell.

Perry was among some 60 mostly Republican candidates for Tuesday's midterm election attending a Sunday service at San Antonio's Cornerstone Church, where pastor John Hagee said in his sermon non-Christians were "going straight to hell with a non-stop ticket," The Dallas Morning News reported.

Afterward, Perry told reporters there was nothing in the sermon he could disagree with, prompting quick condemnations from opponents.

"He doesn't think very differently from the Taliban, does he?" said independent candidate Kinky Friedman. "Being obsessed with who's going to heaven and who's going to hell is kind of a pathetic waste of time."

Democrat Chris Bell said a state leader should have been more cautious in his remarks.

"God is the only one who can make the decision as to who gets into the kingdom of heaven," Bell said.

WSJ: "Think 'Pimp My Ride' meets the MIT Sukkah"

On a Jewish Holiday, Backyard Parties Get More Elaborate --- The Ritual Huts of Sukkot Now Feature Hammocks, Organza and Sukkah-tinis
By Katherine Rosman 12 October 2006 The Wall Street Journal

Sukkot, the annual Jewish "Feast of Tabernacles" commemorating the 40 biblical years Jews spent wandering in the desert, is getting a makeover.

The weeklong holiday, which ends this weekend, is best known for the leaky rustic temporary huts celebrants put up to eat, sleep and entertain in during the holiday. They symbolize the tents lived in by Israelites after they were cast out of Egypt in Exodus.

Now, amid the do-it-yourself home-improvement craze and a movement among young Jewish families to integrate more ritual into their lives, families around the country are toting tools and prefab sukkah kits into the backyard.

One nationwide prefabricated sukkah manufacturer has sold out of its top-of-the-line model. It is made in China with pressed-wood walls and can be ordered with a bamboo roof and fake stained-glass windows. It sells for as much as $2,600. A Chicago Judaica company has sold 150 sukkah kits that range in price from $300 to $2,000 -- nearly twice as many as it sold two years ago. Last month, a Home Depot in Oklahoma City sponsored its first sukkah-building seminar.

A 12-by-14-foot sukkah was erected on Tuesday near Farragut Square in downtown Washington, D.C., with a rabbi offering lawyers and lobbyists the opportunity to eat pizza in the hut. Last Thursday, a Jewish organization at Massachusetts Institute of Technology held its first party devoted to elaborate sukkah decoration. "Think 'Pimp My Ride' meets the MIT Sukkah," said the invitation, alluding to a popular MTV show about decorating cars with extravagant details.

"At this rate, I can imagine Sukkot soon becoming as widely observed as Passover," says Steve Henry Herman, a co-owner of a company in Chapel Hill, N.C., that makes sukkah kits and golf-tee targets. Dr. Herman's business is doing so well he quit his day job as a professor in the psychiatry department at Duke University Medical Center.

The recent embrace of Sukkot represents a marked increase in stature for a holiday that until recently was largely overlooked by all but the most observant Jews. "It was way, way down on the ladder," says Rabbi Judah Dardik of Beth Jacob Congregation in Oakland, Calif. In part that was because of where the festival fell on the Jewish calendar, after the most solemn holidays of the year, Rosh Hashana and then Yom Kippur.

The other big change is that people traditionally didn't spend $5,000 erecting elaborate sukkot for the harvest holiday, and they didn't have marketers and event planners on hand to urge them to party.

On Monday night, a Jewish professionals group in Los Angeles hosted a "Sukkah Sports Night." Fifteen dollars at the door entitled attendees to "Kosher wings, cold beer and Monday Night Football," according to the event's promotional material. Also in Los Angeles, 700 revelers attended "Hookah in the Sukkah 2006," a party at the Vanguard nightclub featuring a picture of a water-pipe on the promotional material. Tickets at the door cost $25. On the club's back patio stood a 10-foot-by-10-foot sukkah. Yesterday, a group of Jewish community activists were to hold a Sukkot party at a club in Portland, Ore. On the drinks menu: the Etrog Lemon Drop and the Sukkah-tini.

The etrog is a citron grown in northern Israel and elsewhere and is part of the observance of Sukkot. Avrom Fox, the owner of Rosenblum's World of Judaica in Chicago, says he has sold about 3,000 etrog this year. The fruit can cost between $40 and $200. "Some people are willing to spend a lot" for an etrog that is "perfectly shaped, like a jewel," he says.

Part of the allure of Sukkot is its festive tradition. Sukkot are meant to be welcoming -- just as Abraham sat outside his tent, looking for guests to invite in.

For newlyweds Jay and Kari Ceitlin, both 28 years old, Sukkot has presented the perfect opportunity for them to become closer to their religion, and to entertain friends at their home in Dallas. The Ceitlins' sukkah had the traditional elements but also hinted of nightclub decor: Harvest fruits and vegetables, including miniature pumpkins, hung from the roof of the lighted sukkah, casting shadows over the guests lounging on a brown and white polka-dot day bed and a plush couch with thick white pillows.

Musicians played songs like "All My Ex's Live in Texas" on their guitars until nearly 2 a.m. "It's important for Kari and me to establish a Jewish home and share that experience with our friends," says Mr. Ceitlin.

This year, for the first time, Dan Cohen, 37, built a sukkah outside his Piedmont, Calif., home. It's a place for festive family dinners with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. It's also an after-bedtime lair where he and his buddies can smoke Hoyo de Monterrey cigars and drink 1974 Glen Spey scotch. "I get to build a clubhouse for the first time in 30-plus years," he says.

For a bar mitzvah last year that took place during Sukkot, party planner Debbie Geller says she oversaw the construction of a sukkah that took up the back garden of the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. The structure was 60 feet by 40 feet and the walls were made of green organza. In the party's main room, floral arrangements were shaped like miniature sukkot.

In Far Rockaway, Queens, an architect and his father have decked out the family sukkah with hammocks, glass windows and a sculpture of city skyline made from cut bamboo. "It brings everything together -- my family, my religion and my artistic cravings," says Elliot Lazarus, 27.

Jassi Lekach Antebi, 24, says that last year she built a sukkah in her Golden Beach, Fla., yard in the hopes of impressing her fiance who was visiting from New York. With the help of hired handymen, she built the sukkah with fresh bamboo poles that were set in wood boxes and secured in concrete. The roof was made of palm branches and bamboo. From the roof, she hung glass globes with candles inside that glowed on the shimmering white gauze drapery that made up the sides of the sukkah. In all she spent about $5,000.

Some worry that commercializing Sukkot is contrary to the spirit of the holiday. Todd Stern, a vice president at Goldman Sachs in New York, says his sukkah, sitting on his driveway in White Plains, is decorated with artwork created by his nieces and his two-and-a-half-year-old son. Using duct tape, Mr. Stern attached a lamp to the roof of his sukkah so he and his friends can see their cards when playing "sukkah poker." Otherwise, his hut is fairly threadbare. "If you get too high end, I would be concerned that you miss that sense of being outdoors, of being exposed," he says.

People who put a lot of care into their sukkah say the purpose is not to be over-the-top but to create something beautiful as a family. Before marrying a Jew 12 years ago, Michelle Golland, a psychologist in Los Angeles, converted to Judaism from Catholicism. Dr. Golland, 37, embraced the religion fully -- even insisting on building a sukkah eight years ago despite her husband's initial lack of enthusiasm. Now it's a family tradition and evokes sentiments that transcend religion. Last year, as Dr. Golland was preparing to erect the prefab sukkah, her 4-year-old son ran up to her, wanting to know whether he could help hang the plastic fruits, vegetables, birds and orange raffia bows that always adorn the booth. "He was just like I was with Christmas when I was little," she says.

First "Kosher" Wal-Mart in Dallas (of all places)

So now acccording to the news flash in the elevator that I was reading today, there is a Kosher Wal-Mart in Dallas. This is the only evidence I could find about the story:

Clued in on kosher: Wal-Mart in Far North Dallas is retailer's first to cater to Jewish diet
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
By MARIA HALKIAS / The Dallas Morning News

Wal-Mart is picking up some street smarts in the big city.

Now, at the new Supercenter on Montfort Drive in Far North Dallas, in a neighborhood of synagogues and across the street from the Jewish Family Service office, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is getting a lesson in kosher foods.

John Murphy, Wal-Mart's regional vice president, wants to make the Montfort Drive Wal-Mart the first kosher-certified store in the chain. But he admits the company got off to a slow start and has a long way to go.

"I'm driving the surrounding neighborhoods with our dairy buyer, Dan Irwin, and he says, 'Do you notice there are several synagogues?' " Mr. Murphy said.

As a company, he said, "we thought we could order some jars of gefilte fish and matzo ball mix and put it in a section on Aisle 3 and we'd be serving this community. That's basically what's in our computer database."

Fortunately for Mr. Murphy and Wal-Mart, there is no shortage of helpful local residents to set them straight. ... (more)

I'm not sure how Kosher that Wal-Mart will be. Any ideas?

Chevy Chase to play drunk anti-Semitic Mel Gibson on L&O

From the NY Times site:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - While Mel Gibson secretly roams the United States testing reaction to his latest movie, ''Apocalypto,'' one of television's longest running shows has decided to incorporate his recent legal troubles into an episode.

Staying true to its ``ripped from the headlines'' style, ``Law & Order,'' says it will air an episode on November 3 starring comedian Chevy Chase as a celebrity who is pulled over for drunk driving and then delivers an anti-Semitic rant at the arresting officers.

But ``Law & Order'' creator Dick Wolf said that while a viewer could draw comparisons to Gibson's anti-Semitic comments after being arrested for drunk driving last July, the TV story goes a bit further.

In the ``Law & Order'' episode, the Chase character turns out to have blood on his shirt belonging to a Jewish woman who had been the producer of his failed sitcom.

Gibson pleaded no contest to drunk driving charges and was placed on probation. He is currently getting ``Apocalypto'' ready for release in December by showing it to test audiences. Over the weekend, he screened it in Oklahoma and Texas.