Faithless Western women

A commenter at one of Laura Woods' articles discussing race puts it bluntly:

There is definitely something instinctive in men that is aroused by seeing women of their tribe being taken by men from competing tribes. Frankly, at a basic level, the motivation for men to conquer territory, create wealth, and do great things in this world is fundamentally to please and woo women. So when we see “the enemy” walking off with our women, especially the particularly beautiful ones, it is deeply infuriating. What makes it even worse is that we KNOW that those “enemy” men love their conquest of our women all the more because they are taking something that “belongs” to us. It’s really the ultimate victory over an enemy, because you are taking their most prized possession, the beautiful women of their “tribe”, without even having to conquer them – their women are actually voluntarily abandoning them to come to you! What a coup! And here, in this current liberal culture, we are expected not only not to do anything to stop it, but are expected to smile and be affable and act as if it is nothing at all. So there is naturally a certain degree of anger at the competing “enemy” male, but there’s even more anger at the women, who we feel deep inside should have some loyalty to us and some understanding of and concern for our feelings – should be on “our side” – but instead are happily handing our “enemies” the most devastating and demoralizing kind of victory over us that they can have. more >>

Bene dictum. It is Western women, too many of whom are spoiled brats who care only for themselves, who must take their fair share of helping to emasculate Western men. The race traitors among them are the faithless Tarpeias who have flung open the gates to the enemy invaders. They selfishly and hatefully remove one of the primary reasons for manly volition and reason of being, and then castigate us when we object. They expect us to be passive when we are in their way, yet expect us to act as attack dogs when they overreach or when they have their lusty eye on some baubel or other.

I sense that a majority of Laura's women readers are offended by these brutal truths, which just shows us how badly feminism has destroyed the natural healthy instincts of Western women. These women would gladly hand over our entire civization to the invaders, so long as they are not on a "terrorist watch list."

The only way Western men will be able to break the cyle of abuse and treachery is to take charge again, no matter what these feminazis say or do. Amici mei, women do not know what they want, so stop asking them. Most no longer have any sense of faithfulness to anything anyway except fleeting abstract concepts they hear in the popular culture. On the whole, our women are almost completely alienated from their own heritage, their own nation, and their own culture. So do what's right, Viri. Be men in order that your women may rediscover how to be real women.

M. responds correclty to one of these women, further in the comment thread: Regarding Rita’s comment:

“For the record I’m a white woman and I can’t believe what I’m reading. As a Christian, my only goal is to further God’s Kingdom. I don’t feel compelled to save the ‘white race.’”

That’s very nice for Rita, that she can live in the rarified atmosphere where only spiritual concerns matter. The rest of us have to live in a world where race and sex roles and civilizations matter, where men and women behave like men and women, competing for resources and mates, and not everyone is a white liberal Christian who turns the other cheek.

I think people like me and people like Rita are talking past one another. I have no objection to her fine and noble aspirations; but please consider, Rita, that there is a material world here where, whether you like it or not, you can be conquered and made quite miserable by hostile people happy to take whatever you’re unwilling to defend. You may be willing to accept dhimmitude, second-class status, even the extinction of the white race and all that means. I am not. And it doesn’t make me evil or any less spiritual than you are.

Karen Wilson, obviously faithful -- id est, a real woman -- and wise, agrees with Laura and makes a very sane recommendation:

Marriage is a tool for family formation, the preservation and transmission of culture, the maintenance of social stability and the production of a future generation of people who resemble their ancestors. It is also the primary institution for limiting state power and preserving private wealth. Thus the individual and potentially loving aspects of mixed race relationships are not relevant. Glen writes as though it is not possible to find love within one’s own race. There are six parties to be considered as stakeholders in a marriage – the bride, the groom, the bride’s family, the groom’s family, the unborn children and society at large. [Laura writes: That is an excellent point and very well stated by Karen. It cannot be stressed enough in a world that views marriage purely through the lens of self-interest.] If the interests of all are not upheld, the marriage should be vetoed. Two people of different races may love each other but their marriage is not in the interests of society at large and it is not in the interest of the next generation let alone the previous generation who end up with grandchildren who don’t look like them. The interests of society at large must take precedence over the interests of individuals. The majority of mixed race unions do not work out well in the long run and it is in the interests of most people that they be prevented from entering them.

Arthur Laffer,

financial hero of the neo-cons and radio babblers such as Daniel "The Money Man" Frishberg, author of Reagan trickle-down economics, proves himself an irresponsible economic charlatan. Be sure to watch both videos.

Is homeschooling the right choice for your child?

Yes. Do it now. You know that the public schools are dangerous Marxist indoctrination camps. Turn off the Talmudvision and think of your children for once. Don't be a jerk. Homeschoolers kick butt. Homeschool now, ask me how.

But seriously, Folks, from Homeschool World, Mary Pride sings The Unsung Benefits of Homeschooling. Don't buy her mags or books but do join a homeschooling group in your area and get involved.

Global Deadbeats

From The Thinking Housewife, concerning the Liberal belief that global poverty is the fault of men and the solution is free money for women:

What’s the solution to this reign of global deadbeats? Big bucks for women. Not only are women saints, but they are born with hidden financial management skills that will bring an end to all poverty on earth. The only reason women didn’t rule the world sooner is that there weren’t enough humanitarian agencies to give them a boost.

The women pictured in this report look stunning in their colorful saris and African dresses. The photographers were bowled over by this flagrant femininity. I wonder how their daughters will look a few years from now. When their traditional cultures have been killed off along with the sex roles that sustained them, will they wear the denim uniforms of Western women? When social chaos engulfs them and their children, will they wear fancy suits? Obviously, the men will be wearing aprons. Already in China they do much more housework than American men, we are told. Now there’s a way of life we can envy.

Many people from the late 1800's and early 1900's thought that when women were allowed to vote and hold public office, there would then be fewer wars, more prosperity, and more equal distribution of wealth and power. Instead, we got two world wars, global communism, and most of the world's wealth concentrated in just a few (foreign) hands.

Tea Party Charade

I know that we will not have to interrupt our little community's homeschool maths, history, Latin, and Greek studies and classes to attend the big tea parties scheduled for April 15th. It's easy to tell that the movement has been taken over by the usual RedTeam carpet-baggers.

Firstly, FauxNews, Limbaugh, WorldNetDaily, et alia, sternly warned that the BlueTeam would try to "disrupt" the events, proving that the RedTeam has no desire to unite real Americans in a fight to restore the old States-Rights Republic (a real teaparty is supposed to be disruptive, ya ignernt dillweeds). Second, we received an email invitation to the tea parties in our area with a giant picture of Newt Gingrinch's traitorous mug at the top. Then, the "conservatives" on the radio told us that the tea party is all about protesting Barry Hussein's economic policies. (Ita vero? Is that all the protest is about? Oh, by the by, did you nancy boys remember to get your government permits?) And today we see that Ann Coulter is pretending to like Ron Paul all of a sudden.

This is rich. It could not be more obvious what's going on here. For years the entire RedTeam did nothing but ignore or insult Ron Paul and his supporters, some aggressively, some passively so. Glenn Dreck and Sean Insanity -- and locally here in Houston, Dan Patrick and Edd Hendee, the vile voices of Texas -- went out of their ways to show their hostility to anyone who supported the traditional, Constitutional, limited government ideals of the Founders and early Americans. Most of the BlueTeam-ReadTeam machine just ignored us and lied about our message and our popularity. True American conservatism was, according to 99% of the RedTeam, pure evil. We were all kooky terrace, liberals, racists, anti-Semitic, fascists, nazis, anti-American, conspiracy theorists, et cetera, who should be rounded up, imprisoned, and shot.

But now, suddenly, Ron Paul is The Man and the RedTeam whores have rediscovered the wisdom of the Founders, limited government, sound money, and the utility of the Constitution.

(Just a personal note to an old friend: Ann, Baby, ple-e-e-ase stop calling me at all hours. You know I won't respect you (you dirty wench! ;-) but this time I'm serious. Yes, we had some good times. I know, I know, we'd both enjoy it (you more than me) but we'd both regret it afterwards. Dang it! Will ya stop nibbling on my ear and listen to me?! You gotta face facts, Cara Mea, it's over. I still love you but just not in that dirty, 1960's lovefest, neo-con kinda way anymore. I've grown, I've matured. I've got some real conservative women now. You need to grow up too, Schatzi, and stop hanging around with those RedTeam-BlueTeam losers, they're taking you down with them.)

Auf jeden Fall, this so-called tea party is just the S.O.S., the same old Scheiße. Thank the gods that most people are still nothing more than I.C.U.'s (individual consumer units) and moronic Reagan-Bush / O-Banana-Billary robots, because our family is very busy doing real things. There will be no revolution -- not tomorrow, not this week, month, or this year.

But do let us know when the true revolution starts, perhaps in 10 or 20 years or so, when Americans get their heads out of their behinds and notice that they are now a penniless minority in the land their forefathers built for them. Maybe by then they'll have a clue and will stop soaking in FauxNews porno and multiculti sports and really do something. If ever that happens -- if the heads of our current leaders and RedTeam-BlueTeam leaders and their minstels begin literally rolling down the street -- we'll be available to help out. Til then, let us alone. We have a lot of studying to do, families to educate and raise, crops to grow, business to attend to, et cetera.

Oh!, almost forgot: Homeschool now, ask me how.

Learning German

Everyone wants to be able to speak German, natuerlich. It's just too cool. Here is the course you must complete, the grammar book you need, the online dictionary, the stories you should memorize, and the audio CD's you should listen to everyday. In a year or two of dedicated study you should be fluent enough to read most German newspapers, online news, and literature for teens and young adults. A possible long-term goal to keep you motivated. And another.

Why the West attacked Christian Serbia

according to Matthew Rafael Johnson:

Firstly, the main reason why the war was launched in 1995 against Serbia was that the government of Slobodan Milosevic, a firmly social-nationalist system, had refused to be a part of the currency system of the World Bank. Lukashenko had done similarly in Belarus a year before (though its closeness to Russia protected it). The second reason, very close in importance, was the coming oil pipeline what was to stretch from the Caspian Sea into western Europe. This demanded a cooperative government, and, therefore, the Socialists, as well as the Radicals, needed to go. Secondly, Kosovo is sitting on one of the most important centers of gold, silver, platinum, lead and tin in the world. Placing a tame government, or at least one that owes its position to the west, also was paramount. more >>

"Follow the money," as they say.

Good News: supply of White ho's unlimited

even though Whites are disappearing now faster than you can say Israeli White-Slave Traders or Muslim rape and abduction.

It's common knowledge that every O.J. Simpson, Snoop Dogg, and Tiger Woods demands an unlimited supply of luscious white skin and soft blond hair. But up until just a few years ago, America was a consciously White country, limiting immigration almost exclusively to other Northern Europeans. Adultery, porn, drugs, and violent crime were non-existent compared to today. Of course, race-mixing was illegal. Americans were a real nation and the country was a paradise on Earth. It was a tough place for jealous Blacks and Jews to do their thang to Whitey.

But the 1964 immigration act and the Civil Rights movement changed all that and now, thanks to the mainstreaming of Marxism / Globalism / Multiculturalism / Talmudism, there are more opportunities than ever to "get your fair share" of white American pie. FauxNews has the Tiger Woods' catalogue.

I'm sure glad the RedTeam and conservatives are here to speak up loudly and forcibly to protect our white nation against this kind of exploitation. Without their help, we'd be a minority in our own country, the target of all hatred from the press, academia and the government. There would be laws on what we could think about race and there would be millions of laws, quotas, and policies designed to steal our country, our heritage and our children away from us. Our white children would be lied to every day in school, told how evil and worthless they are. Our girls would think that being a whore for the dark rainbow of barbarian invaders would be a good thing, and our boys would be so discouraged that they wouldn't even put up a fight.

Possum Living

From SurvivalBlog.com:

Dear James Wesley,

In October 1978, with a seventh-grade education, 19-year-old Dolly Freed published a book called Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money, about the five years she and her father lived off the land on a half-acre lot outside of Philadelphia. The two of them lived in a renovated gas station bought "free and clear" in foreclosure for $6,100; they raised rabbits for slaughter in their basement and obtained the rest of their food by growing it in their garden and fishing in local creeks; neither chose to hold a job (jobs were scarce in any case), and instead avoided the kind of gracious one-upmanship that seemed to make so many Americans miserable. "We have and get the good things in life so easily it seems silly to go to some boring, meaningless, frustrating job to get the money to buy them," she wrote, "yet almost everyone does. 'Earning their way in life,' they call it. 'Slavery,' I call it.".

Following her success as an author, Dolly Freed grew up to be a NASA aerospace engineer. That is, after acing the SATs with an education gleaned from the public library and putting herself through college. She’s also been an environmental educator, business owner, and college professor. She now lives in Texas with her husband and two children.

Tin House Books will reissue the book in January, 2010, and it includes new reflections, insights, and life lessons from an older and wiser Dolly Freed, whose knowledge of how to live like a possum has given her financial security and the confidence to try new ventures. You can see Dolly Freed in a documentary made by Nancy Schreiber in 1980. Wishing You All The Best, - Nanci M.

The documentary: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

A more popular book on living independently is The Encyclopedia of Country Living, by Carla Emery.

From Log to Chair

An amazing video of a chair made the old fashioned way, from www.antoniross.co.uk. Video description:

As the title suggests, here is the making of a chair from a log to the finished item. The section of log comes from a tree felled only hours before. You will see various different traditional methods used from cleaving with a froe, trimming with an axe, shaping with a drawknife & carving knife. The back legs and slats are steambent into shape and all the component parts are them assembled. The Chair is then finished with a seagrass seat.

The Eleventh Day of Yuletide

From the Asatru Folk Assembly:

When we burn a sunwheel and urge the sun to return at Yule, exactly what are we doing? Are we trying to lend the sun some of our might so that it can come back to us, or are we celebrating something that we know for certain will happen in any case?

We are not childish enough to think that our ritual actions will make the sun return. The sun presumably turned in the heavens before there were humans to witness the fact, and should we annihilate ourselves in a nuclear war tomorrow morning the sun will continue in its course, unseen by human eyes, through the silent centuries. To think otherwise would be to deny the very attributes we recognize in the sun - dependability, predictability, rhythm, the essence of the rune Raido. This extrapolation from past events demonstrates the fundamentally scientific instincts of our ancestors.

Notwithstanding, there is another dimension to our actions, and it may best be summarized as "participation." The logical process described in the paragraph above applies to the normal world of human experience, but beyond cause and effect there is a level on which we participate in, or become one with, the act of the sun's return. We do not cause the return but we do more than merely observe and celebrate; we become a part of it. It is in this spirit that we burn sunwheels, pour libations, and make invocations - that we may transcend who and what we normally are, and partake of eternity.

So light your candle, and think on Loyalty - including, but not limited to, our loyalty to ourselves and to the highest, God-like potential that is within us.

Review: Two Hundred Years Together

by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, review by Friedrich Braun.

I just finished reading the French translation of Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together (2003) on Russian-Jewish relations since 1772 in two volumes (still no English translation available… "are we powerful or what?").

It’s both a quick and fascinating read; among other things, we learn that not only the October 1917 Revolution (really a just a well-organized, well-carried out Jewish coup) was dominated by Jewish agitators (a documented fact) but so was the 1905 Revolution (something I didn’t know).

We also learn from the grand old man the awe-inspiring extent of the Jewish domination of the Soviet Union during its first two decades of existence, including its ruthless and murderous internal security system: Tcheka, OGPU, NKGB, and NKVD. A Russian in the hands of the Tcheka, etc. was almost certain to be in the hands of Jewish torturers and executioners.

The litany of Jewish crimes committed against the long-suffering Russians (and other Slavic peoples: Ukrainians and Belarussians) and coldly listed by the author is simply nauseating and one should approach both volumes on an empty stomach.

To this day there has been no acknowledgment on the part of international Jewry of Jews’ overwhelming support of the Bolshevik dictatorship during its first two decades. No asking for forgiveness. No reparations paid out to Russians. No chest-beating. No calls for repentance. No nothing…how un-Jewish that would be! Those few, rare Jewish voices who dared to speak out about the Jewish role in the establishment of the communist terror machine in Russia were inevitably greeted with hostility and enmity by other Jews and told to shut their “self-hating” mouths.

It must also be remembered that it was Russian Jewry that saved the Bolshevik “experiment” in the early days when the old order civil servants went on a general strike to protest Bolshevik methods and measures. When that happened, educated and sympathetic Russian Jews were able to step in and literally save the nascent Bolshevik administration.

Another interesting aspect brought up by the author concerns the so-called era of “National Bolshevism” (a real misnomer) allegedly inaugurated by Stalin. Solzhenitsyn points out that Stalin was as much hostile to Russian interests as rest of review & reader comments >>

Swamp Yankee weighs in over at IncogMan :

Kaganovich, the most powerful Jew in the Soviet Union, supervised the collectivization of Ukrainian farms, beginning in 1929. To break the spirit of the farmers, Ukraine was subjected to an artificial famine. Jewish NKVD (secret police) officals went from farm to farm, directing the Red Army’s confiscation of crops and livestock. None was left for the farmers. And in 1933 and 1934 seven to ten million Ukrainians died of starvation, while Kaganovich and his fellow Jews watched and gloated from the Kremlin.
...
To sum it up, Lazar Kaganovich was a Jew raised in the Jewish tradition, a yeshiva boy taught to guide himself on the basis of doing always what is best for the Jews, and this precept actually is cited explicitly several times in the book. He attended his first Communist Party meeting in 1911, when he was 18, to hear the Jewish communist Trotsky give a speech in a synagogue in Kiev; that’s right: in a synagogue. He rose rapidly in the inner circle of the Communist Party, which contained many more Jews than Gentiles. His success was due primarily to his aggressiveness and his ruthlessness. In his communist activity he held back from nothing, no matter how brutal or bloody.
...
When the Gentile communist Nikita Khruschev accused Kaganovich in 1957 at a Soviet Party Congress of having murdered 20 million Russians during his career, Kaganovich didn’t even deny it. He only accused Khruschev of being a murderer too. “Your hands are blood-stained too,” Kaganovich told him. Khruschev pointed out that the difference was that he, Khruschev, had merely followed Kaganovich’s orders, while it had been Kaganovich who had formulated the policies of mass murder and had given the orders for carrying out those policies.

It’s a fascinating book and if you really want to gain some insight into the Jewish mentality, into the way they justify themselves, into the way they view the non-Jewish world, you should read it for yourself. Kaganovich wants to boast about the power he once held, and at the same time he wants to evade responsibility for his crimes, and one can see this ambivalent attitude throughout the book.
...
And we understand why the Germans back before the Second World War really wanted to get the Jews out of their country and off their backs. We understand why Stalin decided in 1953 that he would leave as his gift to the Russian people something that they would be eternally grateful for by getting rid of every Jew in the Soviet Union.

So, the question now is, what can we do to free ourselves from the Jews? What can we do to break their death-grip on our mass media of news and entertainment and on our political system? How can we bring about an end to their racket of using us to extort money from the rest of the world for them? more >>

Matthew Johnson, writing about two other of Solzhenitsyn's novels, writes about the spirit of the madness created by the Soviets :

Solzhenitsyn’s writings are not attacks, per se, on the USSR, but the absurdities of the system are merely an excuse for an attack on the Enlightenment and its open worship of Prometheus, the “light bearer,” that will permit the domination of nature in exchange for sacrifice, that is, the slavery and enserfment of labor, and of course, a huge grid of power that must come into existence in order to keep the wheels of industrial society running: a huge, regulatory state, foreign wars and colonies, maintenance of cheap fuel sources, the continuing battle between the state/employer complex and labor, and the continuing squeezing of labor for increased profit and market share. In addition, a Regime is formed (in the literal definition of the word), a System where private, state and quasi-private capital all create a authoritarian grid of thought and action that is put in the service of power. more >>

Thomas Allen at sums it up in Solzhenitsyn, The National Question, Russia’s Revolution, and The Jews.

So far the MSM commentariat has failed to find some obvious connections between globalization and a relatively recent social experiment—the Russian Revolution. Apparently, it’s easier to speculate about the nascent internationalism of Alexander the Great, the Knights Templar(mentioned by the Economist as the earliest multinational company) or Genghis Khan than it is to try to explain critical events of 90 years ago.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Europe imagined itself on the threshold of worldwide enlightenment. The growth of international socialism would end nationalism, it was widely believed. At most, “national questions” had become mere irritants to be swept aside on the road to the Great Enlightenment.

More recently, all this has been happening again. But this time the triumphalism is capitalist (at least Davos-style capitalism). Thus Wall Street Journal late editor Robert Bartley notoriously declared the nation-state dead. Bartley never explained, at least in public, what he thought would replace it. But I suspect he would have shared the Economist’s enthusiasm over the fact that General Electric "seems able to train … its recruits to think as GE people first and Indians, Chinese or Americans second."[Globalization’s Offspring, The Economist, April 7, 2007]

However, long before the editors of the Wall Street Journal and The Economist were acting as if the primacy of international commerce and consumerism had trumped the nation-state, the creators of the Soviet empire were insisting that all peoples would blend peaceably together into one. For the Bolsheviks too, there was no "national question" and no nation-state.

For instance, both Lenin and Stalin regarded Jews as a nation which existed on paper only. They predicted the 4,000 year-old people, along with all other nations, would soon become part of a new nationality-free human race. Trotsky, the supreme internationalist, ostentatiously disavowed his Jewish identity.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn addresses post-nationalism directly in his latest work 200 Years Together. (Volume 1, on pre-Revolutionary Russia, was published in Russia in 2001; Volume 2, covering the Revolution and the Soviet era, in 2002). In a remarkable cultural development, 200 Years Together has yet to find an English-language publisher, arguably because of its frank focus on Russian-Jewish relations, although the eminent Jewish scholar Richard Pipes, reviewing the first volume in the New Republic, concluded that Solzhenitsyn “absolves himself of the taint of anti-Semitism”.

Solzhenitsyn’s work, however, ranges far beyond Russians and Jews.

He observes that doubts about the validity of national identity tend to rise at various times when more >>

Das Buch auf Deutsch, Zweihundert Jahre zusammen. Die Juden in der Sowjetunion.

Is Obama Really Preparing For Civil War?

by Chuck Baldwin. All I can think of to say just now is, "Death to tyrants and traitors."

In other news, Max Keiser reports that China has executed a bankster. Finally, some sanity in the world.

What if that idea were to catch on here and grow? Just think of the benefits we would gain from eliminating all the banksters, government tyrants, sundry Marxists and other traitors. The huge number of new job openings in entertainment, academia, media, banking, government, lobbying and other illegal businesses would cause overall confidence to surge to record highs. There would be no resistance to ensuring the soundness of our money. The economy would bloom overnight. Filth would begin to disappear from the airwaves. The porn industry would vanish. Multiculturalism would begin to fade and the borders could fianlly be shut. The crime rate would start dropping toward pre-"civil rights" levels, some honesty might even creep back into the media and the classroom. Our children would once again have a future.

I say, Giddyup. If the Eternal Tribe of nation-wreckers is going to continue creating another Weimar Germany disaster here in America, then we will gladly play our part.

The Eighth Day of Yuletide

From the Asatru Folk Assembly:

On the Seventh Day of Yuletide we lit a candle to Community. Today we light a candle to its apparent opposite, Individuality.

Contradictory? Paradoxical? No, just another fundamental trait of the Northern European psyche, one illustrating the need for a consciously-maintained, dynamic balance rather than the will-less absorption of the self into a featureless consistency.

Historically, the peoples of Europe are comfortable with cooperation and hierarchy - hence the value of Community. We are also the most ego-driven, self-assertive, and individualistic primates on the planet. Both these traits are perfectly capable of existing in the same human heart at the same moment.

So light that candle for Individuality, hold it high, and defy any attempt by the group to blow it out!

Ilana Mercer Interviews James Ostrowski

and they make some excellent points about the recent tea parties. And James Edwards boldly discusses the forbidden topic which not even most libertarians are brave enough to discuss.

3 NJ mayors, lawmakers arrested in corruption case

From Yahoo News:

NEWARK, N.J. – An investigation into the sale of black-market kidneys and fake Gucci handbags evolved into a sweeping probe of political corruption in New Jersey, ensnaring more than 40 people Thursday, including three mayors, two state lawmakers and several rabbis.

Even for a state with a rich history of graft, the scale of wrongdoing alleged was breathtaking. An FBI official called corruption "a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state."

Federal prosecutors said the investigation initially focused on a money laundering network that operated between Brooklyn, N.Y.; Deal, N.J.; and Israel. The network is alleged to have laundered tens of millions of dollars through Jewish charities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey.

Prosecutors then used an informant in that investigation to help them go after corrupt politicians. The informant — a real estate developer charged with bank fraud three years ago — posed as a crooked businessman and paid a string of public officials tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to get approvals for buildings and other projects in New Jersey, authorities said.

Among the 44 people arrested were the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, Jersey City's deputy mayor, and two state assemblymen. A member of the governor's cabinet resigned after agents searched his home, though he was not arrested. All but one of the officeholders are Democrats.

Also, five rabbis from New York and New Jersey — two of whom lead congregations in Deal — were accused of laundering millions of dollars, some of it from the sale of counterfeit goods and bankruptcy fraud, authorities said.

In rounding up the defendants, FBI and IRS agents raided a synagogue Thursday morning in Deal, a wealthy oceanfront city of Mediterranean-style mansions, with a large population of Syrian Jews.

Those arrested included Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, who was charged with conspiring to arrange the sale of an Israeli citizen's kidney for $160,000 for a transplant for the informant's fictitious uncle. Rosenbaum was quoted as saying he had been arranging the sale of kidneys for 10 years.

The politicians arrested were not accused of any involvement in the money laundering or the trafficking in human organs and counterfeit handbags.

The number of arrests was remarkable even for New Jersey, where more than 130 public officials have pleaded guilty or have been convicted of corruption since 2001.

"New Jersey's corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation," said Ed Kahrer, who heads the FBI's white-collar and public corruption division. "Corruption is a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state."

Gov. Jon Corzine said: "The scale of corruption we're seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated." more >>

Ya, right. I suppose next they'll be telling us they are going to audit the Fed banksters/oligarchs and find out where the missing trillion$ went and send the thieves to prison. Like Bernie Madoff, only the super-careless are getting caught, the vast majority going on pillaging and raping, raping and pillaging.

Happy Easter, Anyway

I hope your service, if you go to one, was better than ours. Our pastor brought in a "fourth generation Jewish Christian" to entertain us on this holiest of Christian holy days.

After our pastor -- or M.C., as you prefer -- made his introductions, the roadies dimmed the lights over the pews and threw the spotlight onto our guest speaker and his prop table. This was an exciting set up, much different than usual. One could just feel the specialness of the moment.

The crowd already warmed up from the outlandish antics of the little Africans and Mexicans in the children's Easter singing presentation, he started right in with the wisecracks. "Oy! Who let all these gentiles in here?" Laughter. "Can I get an 'Oy vey'?" "Oy vey!" shouted the congregation. Uproarious laughter. Ha! It was great, just great. Hey, if you can't go to Vegas to catch a show today, why not bring a Vegas show to you? Can I get a 'shalom' up here?!

While he was ingratiating himself and knockin' us over with his lame jokes, I was debating whether to escape into the foyer or stay to see if he might, against all odds, say something worth hearing. Using his Jewish superpowers, he sensed my indecision among the hundreds of ridiculous goyish souls, reached over to his prop table, and put on his little skull cap.

I walked alone through the empty foyer on my way to the back office to search for a yellow pages but was stopped dead in my tracks by a table someone had recently placed right in the walkway. The top of it was completely covered with the speaker's books, keychains, CD's, bookmarks, t-shirts, and other Jewish junk he had brought to sell to us. Every article had a large, prominent six-pointy star on it. I sighed. But then, as I caught sight of the two plastic "We Take Visa" teepees at the edges of the table, my mood changed instantly from consternation and confusion to amusement. This was too much. What could I do but laugh? "How typical," I smiled.

Please don't condemn me for not turning over the table. It would've been very loud and would've disrupted the chosen one and his schtick inside the sanctuary (sic). The congregation was truly enjoying themselves, judging by the laughter. Besides, who am I to turn over the tables of the money-changers in someone else's temple? Would anyone in this God-forsaken place understand the gesture? I seriously doubted it. Anyways, I did at least put my hands under the edge of the table, to see how heavy it was.

Happy Oester. May the rest of the day be a happy one, first of many more to come. It promises to be very nice. The earlier rain watered the fruit trees and my newly planted garden, und die Sonne scheint jetzt ganz hell. The birds are chirping, the women folk are preparing the traditional Easter dinner, and I have the yellow pages open to "churches." Ahhhh, a time for new beginnings. Spring is here. Bonam Fortunam, Amici.

How to Master Greek (and Latin)

From Laudator Temporis Acti:

The same arduous type of challenge, without compulsion but with all its difficulty, was given to one of the most distinguished of American educators, Mr. Abraham Flexner. His adviser, Professor Morris of Johns Hopkins, told him that if he wanted to master Greek, he should get a compact little shelf of Greek books and read nothing but Greek for five years. "Read the daily papers to keep up with the world," he said, "but don't read books in any other language. Read Greek only." The ambitious young student took this hard advice, and, like the pupils of Agassiz, he gazed at the intricate subject until he really felt at home in it. Just as they could take a new specimen and see a thousand things which would escape the untrained eye, so he could pick up a book (an immortal book, a permanently valuable book) in Greek, and read it through with ease and pleasure. Such efforts are painful; but without effort there is no reward.

I have not mastered Greek or Latin yet, but I am to the point now where I recognize the truth of the above paragraph.

My somewhat more detailed direction: First get through your ancient Greek beginner book as efficiently as you can. I don't have a favorite to suggest. Then work through a couple of composition books while you read, read, read. Then read some more. Latin mastery comes the same way.

Here are a couple of good Greek composition books:

- North & Hillard - Greek Prose Composition
- A. Sidgwick - Intro to Greek Prose Comp

Remember to also buy the answer keys.

Some good "first readers":

- C.M. Moss - First Greek Reader
- F.H. Colson - Stories and Legends
- Rev. E. Fowle - First Easy Greek Reading Book
- F.D. Morice - Easy Stories in Attic Greek
- G.S. Farnell - Tales from Herodotus with Attic Dialect

All are here listed by order of difficulty. The readers can be downloaded for free from Google books, Textkit.com, Gutenberg, and similar sites.

Another suggestion: skip the Koine (Biblical) Greek courses and go straight for the richer Attic. You'll still be able to read Koine if you study Attic, and Attic is the dialect in which most interesting ancient and modern texts are written (except Homer, which is written in "Epic" or "Homeric" dialect).

Tυχη αγαθη!