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Jewish Ethics
Israel: A Refuge for Swindlers
February 12, 2022 /42 Comments/in Featured Articles, Jewish Ethics, Jewish Traits, Jews in Economy/Finance/by Andrew Joyce, Ph.D.
Criminal proceeds recovered from a mass Israeli-run fraud ring by French police, 2020.
"Most of the Jews are thieves." Thus said the founding father of Israel, David Ben Gurion, when he heard about Jewish soldiers carrying Persian rugs from freshly looted Arab properties during the Arab-Israeli war. If he were around today, I don't think Ben Gurion would find any reason to radically change his opinion, and he probably wouldn't be surprised to find out that Israel has become a hub of international fraud. A recent hit for Netflix is the documentary The Tinder Swindler, which charts the outlandish career of Israeli con artist Shimon Hayut, the son of a rabbi, who manipulated a large number of predominantly Scandinavian women into collectively handing over more than $10 million. Hayut's modus operandi is that old favorite of Jewish white-collar criminals — the Ponzi scheme, though Hayut inflected it with a romantic twist. Using the alias Simon Leviev on the dating app Tinder, Hayut told his gullible victims that he was the son of Lev Leviev, CEO of one of the world's largest diamond traders. He would initially lavish the women with gifts and trips on private jets (funded by a previous victim), before introducing the idea that he was under threat from unspecified enemies, that his financial accounts had been inexplicably locked, and that he needed "loans" from the women that he would repay many times over when an "imminent deal" worth many millions was completed. The women were pressured into requesting, and then extending, bank loans in their own names, often until they were as much as $300,000 in debt. Once Hayut had extracted the maximum possible funds from a woman, he would begin using some of it to groom a new victim. Moving from woman to woman, and country to country, Hayut lived a lifestyle of private jets, international travel, caviar, and designer clothes until a Norwegian newspaper finally helped secure his arrest in Greece in 2019 for using a fake passport. He was then sent to Israel, where authorities released him after just five months. He remains a free man in Israel, and appears as wealthy as ever.
While the now-viral Netflix documentary is very interesting and well-made, it does a very poor job of contextualizing and framing Hayut's behavior. Hayut's career of fraud is presented solely in terms of the perils of online dating, and, ludicrously, as a kind of feminist revenge tale (despite the fact the women fell into Hayut's clutches in part through their own thirst for a lavish lifestyle, and the final justice served on Hayut was ridiculously weak to say the least). Very little is made of the fact Hayut began his career in fraud as a teenager, sparking questions of cultural influence, and there is no comment at all on the peculiar manner in which Hayut seemed to target Scandinavian women in particular. But the more egregious oversight is surely that Hayut fits incredibly well into a pattern that is absurdly common — the ubiquity of Israeli con artists of international reach, and their habit of finding a very accommodative justice system in the State of Israel.
An Israeli Specialty
International fraud of all kinds is an Israeli specialty. Israel's Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority receives frequent requests for information from financial intelligence units in at least 19 countries around the world. The main crimes that are the focal point of these requests are "money laundering, fraud, particularly investment scams, binary options and forex scams, bribery and corruption, forgery and illegal gambling." If there is a way for someone to be parted from their money, you can be sure there is an Israeli working very hard to accomplish it.
In June 2021, an operation led by German police secured the arrest of ten Jews of various nationalities for operating fake investment sites that defrauded European investors of around $36 million. In a fraud scheme that Europol said was "organized mainly by Israeli nationals," the criminals operated the fake investment sites Tradorax, Tradervc, Kayafx, Kontofx and Libramarkets. Tradorax used the platform supplied by Israel's SpotOption, which was charged with fraud by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in April 2021. According to Europol, the Jewish network lured thousands of victims through advertising on social media and search engines. These victims were then encouraged to invest in high-risk options, CFDs or cryptocurrencies. However, according to German police, the money was never actually invested but simply taken by the Jews involved. During raids in several countries, police seized electronic devices, real estate, jewelry, high-end vehicles and approximately $2.4 million in cash.
The case was reminiscent of the story of the Canadian-Israeli Cartu brothers. In May 2020, the Ontario Securities Commission brought civil charges against David, Jonathan, and Joshua Cartu for soliciting Canadians to trade binary options. The trio scammed residents of Ontario alone out of $1.4 million, but the total value of their globally-operated scheme was estimated at $233 million. The brothers live lavishly today in Israel, safe in the knowledge that "Israeli prosecutors have yet to indict a single binary options suspect on charges of fraud." The Times of Israel points out that the brothers' story is only part of a much wider scenario in which "hundreds of companies in Israel employed thousands of Israelis who allegedly fleeced billions out of victims worldwide."
8 Israelis arrested in the Philippines in 2018 for operating a multi-million dollar scam
Five months ago, 26 Israelis were arrested for running a cryptocurrency fraud scheme that targeted US investors. The suspects, known as the 'Wolves of Tel Aviv,' were said to be marketing products and investments, without providing returns, and keeping the victims' money. According to a police statement, "all of the 26 suspects of the alleged fraud are residents of Israel, and the victims all live abroad." The Israeli news station i24News commented that "Israel has been a major hub of online fraud in recent years." A month after the arrest of the 'Wolves of Tel Aviv,' a further eight Israelis were arrested, including Moshe Hogeg, who owns the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club. Israeli police said the group were detained on suspicion of "of cryptocurrency fraud of as much as hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars."
A Criminals' Paradise
A poor history of complying with extradition requests together with generous tax breaks for millionaires has resulted in Israel, and Tel Aviv in particular, being perceived as a criminals' paradise. Remarking on Israel's "massive fraudulent online and scam industry" and its potential to "undermine Israel's economic reputation and stoke anti-Semitism," the Times of Israel pointed out that a 2008 piece of legislation had acted as a "a nudge and a wink to would-be tax evaders and money launderers worldwide to settle in Israel and launder their money here." The law grants a 10-year tax exemption on income earned abroad to olim hadashim (new immigrants) as well as toshavim hozrim vatikim (returning residents who have lived abroad for at least 10 years) and other eligible new residents. It also gives a 10-year exemption on reporting earnings abroad to people in these categories. It's a magnet for Jewish thieves.
Last week, plastic surgeon David Morrow and his wife Linda, dubbed "The Jewish Bonnie and Clyde," faced the American justice system two years after it was discovered the pair had been operating one of the most extensive and sickening health care frauds in California history. In total, the Morrows are thought to have cost insurance companies between $25 million and $65 million for procedures that were medically unnecessary. According to the Jerusalem Post,
They were active and highly respected members of the Orthodox Jewish communities in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles and Palm Springs and very generous contributors to Jewish causes. … They were arrested in California on charges of cheating health insurance companies of more than "tens of millions of dollars for cosmetic procedures that were not medically necessary," according to the US Attorney's Central District of California office of the Department of Justice. Add to that a guilty plea of conspiring to commit mail fraud and filing a false tax return, Dr. Morrow was in huge trouble. He was sentenced in absentia to 20 years in federal prison and had his medical license revoked. In her ruling, Judge Josephine L. Staton noted that Morrow's "greed knew no bounds," and that he showed an "utter disregard for patients' well-being and safety."
The pair were sentenced in absentia because they quickly liquidated their assets and moved to Israel where they could be among their co-ethnics and not have their wealth probed or questioned. According to locals in Israel, before the FBI finally orchestrated a rare extradition (for Linda — David is still fighting the case from an Israeli prison) "they were very active in the congregation, went to shiurim (classes) and synagogue functions."
In 2017, the Times of Israel commented on the arrest of "35 individuals for allegedly running a network of scam boiler rooms." The gang operated secret call centers inside residential apartments in the cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Netanya, defrauding people in Europe and North America with a variety of different scams. One method was the CEO scam, where the fraudsters impersonated senior executives in a European company and persuaded employees to wire money to the Jews' Israeli bank accounts. Other employees called companies in Europe selling goods and services that never materialized. A government prosecutor worried that "The phenomenon has become a national scourge in both Israel and abroad. It is causing damage to the reputation of the state of Israel as well as to Jews in other countries." The Times of Israel remarked that many of those arrested were Jews from America and France, and that they were assisted by "thousands of Israelis."
The most prominent example, of course, is the so-called "sting of the century," in which over 1 billion euros was stolen via a tax scam between November 2008 and June 2009 from the French government. The theft was carried out by French Jews Arnaud Mimran, Marco Mouly, and Samy Souied from a Tel Aviv office. The trio were assisted by a significant number of co-ethnics, with the Times of Israel reporting that "six of the defendants were tried in absentia and are believed to be living in Israel." In a May 2016 interview with the Times of Israel, Laurent Combourieu, director of investigations for the the Autoritй des marchйs financiers (AMF), France's securities authority, said that there is overlap between the French-Israeli citizens who were involved in tax fraud carried out against the French government from Israel, and the perpetrators of the ongoing wave of online trading fraud targeting French speakers. In the past six years, according to the Paris prosecutor, French citizens had lost 4.5 billion euros to online trading and CEO scams, with many of these perpetrated from Israel.
That Israel is a hub for Jewish international criminality is further indicated by a random sampling of the bank accounts of new immigrants who had moved to Israel between 2008–2012, carried out by the Israeli state comptroller. It was found that "one in six were found to have irregular activity that caused the bank to flag them for suspected money laundering." In 2013, the OECD Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes pressured Israel to cancel the exemption from filing tax returns by new immigrants and veteran returning residents, in an effort to remove what many saw as a clear incentive to international criminality. Israel agreed to change their legislation in May of that year, but almost nine years later it has yet to do so. In the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) issued by the U.S. State Department, Israel is discussed as a "a major money-laundering country." The report adds that
Israel's 'right of return' citizenship laws mean that criminal figures find it easy to obtain an Israeli passport without meeting long residence requirements. It is not uncommon for criminal figures suspected of money laundering to hold passports in a home country, a third country for business, and Israel.
Some Considerations
Writing in Mein Kampf, Hitler argued during a discussion of Zionism that "What [Jews] really are aiming at is to establish a central organization for their international swindling and cheating. As a sovereign State, this cannot be controlled by any of the other States. Therefore it can serve as a refuge for swindlers who have been found out and at the same time a high-school for the training of other swindlers." All things considered, this is obviously a very prescient comment that has an undeniable ring of truth in light of the facts presented above. Far from being an example of fortune-telling, however, the prediction rests on what would today be regarded as certain anti-Semitic assumptions based on stereotypical traits associated with Jews.
The first of these assumptions is that Jews have a special relationship with, or interest in, money. Assuming an ethnic group has a special relationship with, or interest in, money would obviously lead one to predict a number of things. The group might be, on average, wealthier than other groups. It might produce more billionaires. Its criminality might also be reflected less in violent offences than in those most directly correlated with the acquisition of wealth. By most metrics, Jews are indeed wealthier than other groups. In regards to crime, there is also a clear skewing towards wealth acquisition. In 1971 A. Menachem of the Berkeley School of Criminology published a study in Issues in Criminology titled "Criminality Among Jews: An Overview."[1] In this study, Menachem argued that 'the Jewish crime rate tends to be higher than that of non-Jews and other religious groups for white-collar offenses, that is, commercial or commercially related crimes, such as fraud, fraudulent bankruptcy, and embezzlement."
In 1988, Yale University's Stanton Wheeler published "White-Collar Crimes and Criminals" for the Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository. Among Wheeler's findings were that while Protestants and Catholics were under-represented among white-collar criminals relative to their share of the population, Jews were over-represented to a very large degree (2 percent of the population, 15.2 percent of white-collar convictions). Wheeler states that "It would be a fair summary of our data to say that, demographically speaking, white-collar offenders are predominantly middle-aged white males with an over-representation of Jews." While Stanton's statistics are enlightening in themselves, a more detailed picture emerges in David Weisburd's Yale-published Crimes of the Middle Classes: White-Collar Offenders in the Federal Courts (1991). Here Weisburd informs us that although Jews comprise only around 2 percent of the United States population, they contribute at least 9 percent of lower category white-collar crimes (bank embezzlement, tax fraud and bank fraud), at least 15 percent of moderate category white-collar crimes (mail fraud, false claims, and bribery), and at least 33 percent of high category white-collar crimes (antitrust and securities fraud). Weisburg's updated data showed that overall, Jews were responsible for an astonishing 23.9 percent of financial crime in America.[2] Given the statistical data, not to mention the well-charted historical trajectory of Jewish financial behavior,[3] the argument that a Jewish predilection for financial misdeeds is a mere "canard" is unsustainable.
Desiring to acquire wealth, and actually acquiring it either legitimately or illegally, are obviously two different things. Jews are equipped for wealth acquisition, including criminal wealth acquisition, through the same background traits that facilitate their efficiency in social and political activism: ethnocentrism, intelligence, psychological intensity, and aggression.[4]
Ethnocentrism clearly plays a large role in international Jewish scams based in Israel. Many of these large-scale frauds are perpetrated by groups consisting of Americans, Bulgarians, Canadians, Romanians, Italians, and so on, whose only substantial common ground is their shared ethno-religious background. Criminal activity is inherently risky, so the level of trust among individuals from such varied national groups is all the more astonishing. Coupled with the almost exclusive targeting of outgroups (U.S. citizens, Canadians, Europeans, and others), the clannish quality of these Jewish groups drawn from the diaspora and based in Israel emphasizes the strength of Jewish ethnocentrism as a foundational base for Israeli international financial crime. In a further demonstration of Jewish ethnocentrism, or trust in one's co-ethnics, the flight of many international Israeli swindlers to Israel, or their "disappearance" in the state, suggests a level of comfort and expectation from other Jews. Jews who have defrauded outgroups really do expect the government and state of Israel to be their refuge, and very often, through lenient sentences or lack of investigation, they are proved correct in having that expectation.
Intelligence is also key to the success and perpetuation of Israeli-based international fraud. Many of the schemes discussed above are relatively complex, requiring high levels of understanding of international financial markets, banking practices, legal loopholes, differing national standards and legislation, web and software design, search engine optimization, and all of the skills associated with money laundering. As mentioned above, Israelis are responsible for some of the biggest thefts in the financial history of several nations, often involving government-level fraud. These frauds have been executed thanks to the input of large numbers of highly intelligent and multi-skilled Jews who dedicated themselves to the criminal acquisition of wealth.
This extreme dedication to wealth acquisition is obviously driven by significant psychological intensity. In many cases, the frauds required an extraordinary level of audacity, e.g., involving the impersonation of major CEOs or even government figures. In one such example, in 2019 an Israeli scam operation obtained around $90 million after impersonating French foreign minister Jean-Yves le Drian, calling African heads of state, ambassadors, clergy and business figures, and asking them to help France pay ransom for French citizens abducted by ISIL or other terrorist groups in Syria. The impersonator donned a custom-designed silicone mask of the French minister's head and spoke to his targets via Skype from an office decorated with the French flag and a portrait of French Prime Minister Emanuel Macron. The four ringleaders were eventually arrested in Netanya, which seems to be second only to Tel Aviv in the number of international scams it has hosted. The French were sufficiently incensed for an Israeli police officer to tell a local judge that ""This is a case with international diplomatic repercussions. This is not an ordinary case but one with great international sensitivities that has caused a diplomatic incident between our two countries." The Times of Israel laments that "An Internet search for 'scam' and 'Israel' in French yields hundreds of articles, many of which are accompanied by anti-Semitic slurs in the comments section. … Despite the damage such fraudulent activities are doing to Israel's reputation, Israeli law enforcement has made very few arrests and prosecuted even fewer suspects in the decade or more since the phenomenon first arose."
Finally, Israeli international financial crime requires aggression. An interesting aspect of The Tinder Swindler involved the manner in which Shimon Hayut dropped the veil once he realized a particular woman had given him all the money she could or would. Threats and insults were immediate. The fundamental drive behind most of the discussed Jewish International scams is aggressive, involving forms of coercion and manipulation against a backdrop of callous disregard and disdain for the targeted outgroups. These aggressive aspects, of course, only highlight those instances in which some of the ill-gotten proceeds, as in the case of the Morrows for example, generously find their way to Jewish charitable causes — which brings us full circle to ethnocentrism.
The concern shown by the Israeli press, and some government officials, that such activity will lead to an increase in anti-Semitism is based for the most part on the implicit understanding that "anti-Semitic" assumptions about the traits associated with Jews (special interest in money, ethnocentrism, intelligence, psychological intensity, and aggression) have a basis in fact. Such concerns also imply the fear that wider knowledge or discussion of these large-scale frauds based in Israel will undo many decades of propaganda that has convinced outgroups that such assumptions are false or bigoted, and that Israel is a natural friend and ally to Western nations. The reality is that Israel is happy to welcome internationally looted funds into its economy, and cares little for the opinion of other nations. The nation's founder wouldn't be surprised.
[1] A. Menachem, "Criminality Among Jews: An Overview," Issues in Criminality, Volume 6, Issue 2, (Summer 1971), 1-39.
[2] D. Weisburg, Crimes of the Middle Classes: White-Collar Offenders in the Federal Courts (Yale University Press, 1991), 72
[3] For example, across Europe, between 1881 and 1914, Jews were over-represented in bankruptcy, forgery, fraud and libel. See P. Knepper, The Invention of International Crime: A Global Issue in the Making, 1881-1914, (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), 80. The trend, of course, went much further back in history.
[4] K. MacDonald, "Background Traits for Jewish Activism," The Occidental Quarterly: A Journal of Western Thought and Opinion (Summer 2003): 1-37.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Andrew Joyce, Ph.D. https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Andrew Joyce, Ph.D.2022-02-12 06:59:122022-02-12 06:59:12Israel: A Refuge for Swindlers
Jews and Vulture Capitalism: A Reprise, Part 1
March 6, 2020 /27 Comments/in Featured Articles, Jewish Ethics, Jews in Economy/Finance/by Edmund Connelly, Ph. D.
I recently wrote a long movie review (sort of) that focused on Wall Street stories that airbrush Jews out of the picture and instead create the impression that plain old goy males are responsible for all kinds of financial nastiness when dealing with sums over, say, a hundred million dollars (and MUCH more). The review came as Part 1 & Part 2. In the review, I emphasized the plots of popular Hollywood movies and deliberately downplayed detailed accounts of Jewish financial manipulation in institutions in Lower Manhattan, reasoning that many of today's readers would relate more to celluloid imagery than drier non-fiction.
Today I'll do that drier writing and perform yeoman's work in describing instances of Jewish financial chicanery far more thoroughly, relying primarily on TOO writers such as Andrew Joyce and myself, though I will bring in a few outsiders to burnish our tale by using their more mainstream credentials.
I'll begin with a few exciting quotes about our topic before descending into a routine rendition of Jewish perfidy when it comes to large financial scandals. Recall the title of Joyce's dangerous title last December: "Vulture Capitalism is Jewish Capitalism." In that essay, Joyce employed provocative phrases, accusing Jewish firms such as Paul Singer's Elliot Associates of being one of the "cabals of exploitative financiers" possessing a "scavenging and parasitic nature" vis-a-vis gentile host nations. "Jewish enterprise — exploitative, inorganic" — results in "all forms of financial exploitation and white collar crime. The Talmud, whether actively studied or culturally absorbed, is their code of ethics and their curriculum in regards to fraud, fraudulent bankruptcy, embezzlement, usury, and financial exploitation. Vulture capitalism is Jewish capitalism." I daresay we are here teetering on the brink of introducing age-old canards regarding Jews and money. But are they true?
A Certain Cephalopod Encircling an Unnamed Planet
Before attempting to answer that question either way, it is unavoidable that I once again trot out Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi's timeless quip in The Great American Bubble Machine as he described the 2008 market meltdown:
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
And with that, we get down to the dirty business of recounting seminal instances of, well, dirty business. Or maybe it's an historical account of the transfer of wealth from various groups to Jews. Or a biological account of energy moving to one specific colony of living organisms from elsewhere. The phenomenon can be approached in many ways.
To give this essay a suitably serious tone, we begin with the Bible, where the twin themes of Jewish resource acquisition and deceit will be familiar. In A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, Kevin MacDonald describes the process:
The biblical stories of sojourning by the patriarchs among foreigners are very prominently featured in Genesis. Typically there is an emphasis on deception and exploitation of the host population, after which the Jews leave a despoiled host population, having increased their own wealth and reproductive success. Indeed, immediately after the creation story and the genealogy of Abraham, Genesis presents an account of Abraham's sojourn in Egypt. Abraham goes to Egypt to escape a famine with his barren wife Sarah, and they agree to deceive the pharaoh into thinking that Sarah is his sister, so that the pharaoh takes her as a concubine. As a result of this transaction, Abraham receives great wealth . . . .
Far from being a unique story, it portrays a pattern, with MacDonald concluding, "Like the others, the Egyptian sojourn begins with deception and ends with the Israelites obtaining great treasure and increasing their numbers."
The most famous Biblical story of deceit is the story of Exodus, where Joseph helps his relatives enter by telling them to deny being shepherds because the Egyptians dislike shepherds. The Israelites reside in Egypt and are successful: "And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt . . . and they got them possessions therein, and were fruitful, and multiplied exceedingly" (Gen. 47:27).
From biblical times, we jump ahead to the modern era, for Jews seemed to be in a kind of hibernation until their emancipation in Europe. With that emancipation came a resumption of the biblical trend toward obtaining great treasure and increasing their numbers. How they did this often contravened prevailing Christian norms, however, as attested to by two prominent gentile writers outside the realm of TOO or related enterprises.
These eminent writers and thinkers are Paul Johnson, a conservative British writer, and Albert Lindemann, a Harvard Ph.D. and retired historian who has written dispassionately on Jews for many years. Johnson caught my attention years ago when I somehow came across his book Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Eighties. I was a young man then, grappling with a humanities education that left me feeling major parts of life's stories had been left out. Given the prevailing reign of liberal thought (which was, of course, only to get far worse) I found Johnson's contrarian conservative views refreshing, but it was his emphasis on Jewish "rationalization" of the modern world, especially in economic matters, that truly caught my attention. I can still recall the ongoing frustration I had while reading his book, principally because he would not call Jews out for bad behavior.
Actually, that's not entirely true. What Johnson did was start by saying how much Jews had contributed to the modern world, then switch to a long, detailed list of behaviors that violated Western laws and customs. I remember wondering how he got away with that. After filling pages with shocking exposés of such conduct, he'd then close by saying how grateful we should be to Jews for "rationalizing" previously outmoded methods and beliefs. A few years later he wrote A History of the Jews, which is pretty much an expanded version of the Jewish parts of Modern Times. A History is a great reference book to have, though.
Johnson set the stage by documenting the rise of the Jews throughout Europe in the modern period:
Jews dominated the Amsterdam stock exchange, where they held large quantities of stock from both the West and East India Companies, and were the first to run a large-scale trade in securities. In London they set the same pattern a generation later in the 1690s. . . . In due course, Jews helped to create the New York stock exchange in 1792. . . . Expelled Jews went to the Americas as the earliest traders. They set up factories. In St Thomas, for instance, they became the first large-scale plantation-owners [and slave owners]. . . . Jews and marranos were particularly active in settling Brazil . . . they owned most of the sugar plantations [and their slaves]. They controlled the trade in precious and semi-precious stones. Jews expelled from Brazil in 1654 helped to create the sugar industry in Barbados and Jamaica.
Next, he shared how some gentiles reacted: In 1781 Prussian official Christian Wilhelm von Dohm published a tract claiming, in Johnson's paraphrase, "The Jews had 'an exaggerated tendency [to seek] gain in every way, a love of usury.' These 'defects' were aggravated 'by their self-imposed segregation. . . .' From these followed 'the breaking of the laws of the state restricting trade, the import and export of prohibited wares, the forgery of money and precious metals.'" In short, von Dohm described traditional Jewish communities as far more resembling a mafia-like group engaged in organized crime than what we think of as a religious community.
Continuing, Johnson wrote,
Throughout the twentieth century, American Jews continued to take the fullest advantage of the opportunities America opened to them, to attend universities, to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, professional men and women of all kinds, politicians and public servants, as well as to thrive in finance and business as they always had. They were particularly strong in the private enterprise sector, in press, publishing, broadcasting and entertainment, and in intellectual life generally. There were certain fields, such as the writing of fiction, where they were dominant. But they were numerous and successful everywhere.
This success, however, did not always come honorably, or at least that is what legions of gentiles have long claimed. Johnson described how Jewish involvement in financial scandals certainly became a prominent theme of modern anti-Semitism. As he wrote, "The Union Générale scandal in 1882, the Comptoire d'Escompte scandal in 1889 — both involving Jews — were merely curtain-raisers" to a far more massive and complex crime, the Panama Canal scandal, 'an immense labyrinth of financial manipulation and fraud, with [Jewish] Baron Jacques de Reinach right at the middle of it.'" (Reinach committed suicide because of the scandal.) Wikipedia tells us that
Close to half a billion francs were lost and members of the French government had taken bribes to keep quiet about the Panama Canal Company's financial troubles in what is regarded as the largest monetary corruption scandal of the 19th century. . . . Some 800,000 French people, including 15,000 single women, had lost their investments in the stocks, and founder shares of the Panama Canal Company, to the considerable sum of approximately 1.8 billion gold Francs. From the nine stock issues, the Panama Canal Company received 1.2 billion gold Francs, 960 million of which were invested in Panama, a large amount having been pocketed by financiers and politicians.
For once, Wiki includes the Jewish angle, writing that "The scandal showed, in Arendt's view, that the middlemen between the business sector and the state were almost exclusively Jews, thus helping to pave the road for the Dreyfus Affair."
Albert Lindemann chronicled similar episodes, particularly in his highly respected Esau's Tear: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews. In the book he noted that during the 19th century in Eastern Europe there were also persistent complaints about Jewish perjury to help other Jews commit fraud and other crimes. For example, in Russia a neutral observer noted that judges "unanimously declared that not a single lawsuit, criminal or civil, can be properly conducted if the interests of the Jews are involved." Writing in 1914, American sociologist Edward A. Ross similarly commented on Jewish immigrants to America that "The authorities complain that the East European Hebrews feel no reverence for law as such and are willing to break any ordinance they find in their way. … In the North End of Boston 'the readiness of the Jews to commit perjury has passed into a proverb.'"
Lindemann echoed Johnson's description of the rise of Jewish power paired with Jewish involvement in major financial scandals. In Germany, Jews "were heavily involved in the get-rich-quick enterprises" of the period of rapid urbanization and industrialization of the 1860s and 70s. "Many highly visible Jews made fortunes in dubious ways . . . Probably the most notorious of these newly rich speculators was Hirsch Strousberg, a Jew involved in Romanian railroad stocks. He was hardly unique in his exploits, but as Peter Pulzer has written, 'the . . . difference between his and other men's frauds was that his was more impudent and involved more money.'"
Like Johnson, Lindemann delved back into the nineteenth century, writing that
In the summer of 1873 the stock markets in New York and Vienna collapsed. By the autumn of that year Germany's industrial overexpansion and the reckless proliferation of stock companies came to a halt. Jews were closely associated in the popular mind with the stock exchange. Widely accepted images of them as sharp and dishonest businessmen made it all but inevitable that public indignation over the stock market crash would be directed at them. Many small investors, themselves drawn to the prospect of easy gain, lost their savings through fraudulent stocks of questionable business practices in which Jews were frequently involved.
Also like Johnson, Lindemann believed that accusations of fraud against many European Jews were not based on mere fantasy. With respect to the Panama Canal scandal of 1888–1892, for instance, Lindemann wrote:
Investigation into the activities of the Panama Company revealed widespread bribery of parliamentary officials to assure support of loans to continue work on the Panama Canal, work that had been slowed by endless technical and administrative difficulties. Here was a modern project that involved large sums of French capital and threatened national prestige. The intermediaries between the Panama Company and parliament were almost exclusively Jews, with German names and backgrounds, some of whom tried to blackmail one another . . . .
Thousands of small investors lost their savings in the Panama fiasco. . . . A trial in 1893 was widely believed to be a white-wash. The accused escaped punishment through bribery and behind-the-scenes machinations, or so it was widely believed. The Panama scandal seemed almost designed to confirm the long-standing charges of the French right that the republic was in the clutches of corrupt Jews who were bringing dishonor and disaster to France.
In many cases, the Jewish nexus of the financial scandal involved the idea that Jews implicated in financial scandals were being protected by other highly placed Jews. Lindemann: "The belief of anti-Semites in France about Jewish secretiveness was based on a real secretiveness of some highly placed and influential Jews. What anti-Semites suspected was not so much pure fantasy as a malicious if plausible exaggeration, since solid facts were hard to come by." This secretiveness among prominent Jews is another example of the operation of the Talmudic Law of the Moser (which forbids informing on other Jews) and once again shows that illegal and unethical behavior is sanctioned within the Jewish community. The only crime would be to inform on other Jews.
Not surprisingly, however, the best contemporary discussion of Jewish financial power over the last two centuries comes from E. Michael Jones, publisher of Culture Wars and author of the 1200-page Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History (2008). He outdid himself by releasing in 2014 an even longer book called Barren Metal: A History of Capitalism as the Conflict between Labor and Usury. Naturally, because usury was a key topic, Jews are a primary topic of discussion.
Jones' star is clearly rising, principally due to his presence on the Internet. Like TOO's Kevin MacDonald, Jones ceaselessly appears in podcasts and is catholic in his willingness to appear on a wide range of shows.
With respect to Barren Metal, I will begin my consideration of Jews and usury from Chapter 64, "Napoleon Emancipates the Jews." Previously, Jones had described many gentile financiers, but from Chapter 64 onward the pronounced Jewish role crescendoes to the point that, were the book divided in two and the second book to begin with Chapter 64, the sub-title would have to change to "Jews, Capitalism, and Usury."
A main theme of Barren Metal is that "Capitalism is state-sponsored usury." This is hardly a new idea, since German writer Werner Sombart explored the concept in depth in Jews and Modern Capitalism (1911). Jones describes Sombart's idea thus: "capitalism is the philosophical and political sanctification of usury. Because money-lending, according to Sombart, is 'one of the most important roots of capitalism,' capitalism 'derived its most important characteristics from money-lending.'"
Particularly with the rise of Protestantism in parts of Europe, usury lashed to state power altered the age-old economic foundation of the continent and Britain. In turn, this elicited the rise of modern anti-Semitism in Europe. For instance, Jones points to Wilhelm Marr, "the patriarch of anti-Semitism" (interestingly, three of Marr's four wives were Jewesses), whose racial animus toward Jews may have masked an economic cause, which was usury. Marr wrote:
The burning question of our day in our Parliaments . . . is usury. . . . The political correctness of our Judified society helps it to sail by the reef which is the usury question, and as a result poor folk from every class become the victims of the Usurers and their corrupt German assistants, who are only too happy to earn 20 to 30 percent per month off of the misery of the poor. . . . In the meantime the cancer of usury continues to eat away at the social fabric, and the animosity against the Jews grows by the hour . . . so that an explosion can no longer be avoided.
In short, "This looting is, of course, to no avail because no force on earth can keep up with compound interest, which is the heart of usury."
The climax of Barren Metal comes toward the end of the book in the chapter on the Vatican-approved periodical Civiltà Cattolica that in 1890 forthrightly addressed the Jewish Question. Far more than in modern America, enormous financial scandals in Europe of the era were directly and openly linked to Jews. In 1882, for example, the Union Generale bank collapsed and Jews were explicitly blamed for it. Its former head, for one, fumed that the Jewish financial power of the day was "not content with the billions which had come into its coffers for fifty years . . . not content with the monopoly which it exercises on nine-tenths at least of all Europe's financial affairs." This power, the man claimed, had "set out to destroy the Union Generale."
In response to this collapse, famed writer Emile Zola published a novel in which a fictional young Catholic banker seethed at Jewish deceit. The Catholic character
is overwhelmed with an "inextinguishable hatred" for "that accursed race which no longer has its own country, no longer has its own prince, which lives parasitically in the home of nations, feigning to obey the law but in reality only obeying its own God of theft, of blood, of anger . . . fulfilling everywhere its mission of ferocious conquest, to lie in wait for its prey, suck the blood out of everyone, [and] grow fat on the life of others."
While Zola employed fiction to make his point, Civiltà Cattolica used reason, facts and argumentation to chronicle how the Jews were able to foist their immoral ways (according to Christian mores) onto European society, and "the main way that the Jews achieved their hegemony over Christian societies was through 'their insatiable appetite for enriching themselves via usury.'" The verdict? "The source of Jewish power is usury."
From this central fact rolled well-known consequences:
Once having acquired absolute civil liberty and equality in every sphere with Christians and the nations, the dam which previously had held back the Hebrews was opened for them, and in a short time, like a devastating torrent, they penetrated and cunningly took over everything: gold, trade, the stock market, the highest appointments in political administrations, in the army, and in diplomacy; public education, the press, everything fell into their hands or into the hands of those who were inevitably depending upon them.
With control of gold came control of Christian society, particularly through the public press and academia, since "journalism and public education are like the two wings that carry the Israelite dragon, so that it might corrupt and plunder all over Europe."
In the same chapter on Civiltà Cattolica, Jones discusses how the writings of one German, Father Georg Ratzinger, informed discussions in the Vatican periodical. As the name suggests, Fr. Ratzinger was indeed related to Joseph Ratzinger (his great-nephew), who became Pope Benedict XVI. The elder Ratzinger pointed directly to Jewish usury as the bane of Christian culture, which, when left unchecked, resulted in the enslavement of the surrounding Gentiles. Previously, of course, traditional Christianity forbade usury, meaning that the popes thus "deprived [Jews] of their ability to occupy the choke points in the culture."
Ratzinger insisted it was foolish to abandon these tried and true Christian practices because Jews learned from their Talmud that "cheating the goyim was a virtue." Linking free trade, capitalism and Jewish methods of conducting business, Ratzinger concluded that it was "to be expected that the Jews, who with centuries of practice became skilled in the deceptions of economic warfare and acquired the arts of exploitation to perfection, would take center stage under the regime of free competition." It was not knowledge or ability, in Ratzinger's opinion, that "makes the Jew rich and admired in society" but, rather, "deception and exploitation of others."
Of course Ratzinger did not think Gentiles were totally blameless in these cultural and economic wars, for at a time "when Jews stand by even their own criminal element, we see Christian politicians and legislators betraying their own Christian faith on a daily basis and vying with each other to see who has the privilege of harnessing himself to the triumphal car of the Jews. In Parliament," Ratzinger wrote, "no Jew need defend another Jew when their Christian lackeys do that for them." (I wonder if there was a contemporary German term meaning "cuckservative.")
Civiltà Cattolica is a treasure, as valuable now as it must have been over a century ago. I strongly encourage every serious TOO reader to familiarize himself with this tract, which can be found here.
Another fascinating topic Jones covers concerns the relationship between landed English gentry and Jewish moneylenders. "Stated in its simplest terms, the Jewish Problem involved the inverse relationship between debt and political sovereignty." This antagonism toward growing Jewish power was common among the British aristocracy as well as politicians. The 1891 Labour Leader, for example, denounced the money-lending Rothschild family as a
blood-sucking crew [which] has been the main cause of untold mischief and misery in Europe during the present century, and has piled up prodigious wealth chiefly through fomenting wars between the States which ought never to have quarreled. Wherever there is trouble in Europe, wherever rumors of war circulate and men's minds are distraught with fear of change and calamity, you may be sure that a hook-nosed Rothschild is at his games somewhere near the region of the disturbance.
An exemplar of this was the extended Churchill family, which fell into the clutches of Jewish moneylenders. Randolph, father of Winston and born in 1849, grew up in an era in which "spectacular bankruptcies" would plague aristocrats for much of the century. Much of this suffering was, of course, brought on by shameless profligacy among landed aristocrats, and Jones offers the Churchills as an example of this blight. Randolph—and in turn Winston—were very much in this mold, and fell straight into the hands of Jewish moneylenders, with profound consequences for Britain and all of Christendom by the time of Winston's terms as Prime Minister.
As far back as 1874, the Churchill family was forced to sell wide swaths of land along with livestock to Baron Rothschild in order to settle a serious debt. Randolph, who had grown up amidst rich Jews with opulent tastes, made the mistake of thinking that he could indulge such a lifestyle without the necessary funds to back it. What he didn't understand was that "he was on the wrong side of compound interest and they [his Jewish friends] on the right side."
What followed was predictable. Randolph eventually contracted syphilis and lost large sums of money while gambling in Monte Carlo. In this instance, a Rothschild came to his rescue—but at a price. "The Jews who were supporting Randolph's syphilitic fantasies and the extravagant lifestyle that went along with it . . . [were] willing to write off 70,000 pounds in bad debt because [Natty Rothschild] needed a friend in high places who would share Cabinet secrets that could be turned into hard financial gains." Finally, consider this unsettling conclusion: In time, "the British Empire would become an essentially Jewish enterprise over the course of the 19th century." By the end of the century, Jones concludes, "The British Empire had become one huge, Jewish usury machine, administered by impecunious, extravagant, perennially indebted, morally depraved agents like Randolph Churchill."
Since Jones saw a reason to largely skirt over events from the 1890 publication of Civiltà Cattolica until the late 1940s, I'll do the same. The founding of the Federal Reserve, for instance, is covered in a scant eight pages, the Depression is not much more than a footnote, and The Second World War is ignored. Jones resumes his tale with the rise of University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman, who was instrumental in creating the Chicago School of economics. Being helpful, Jones translates this development as: "The Jewish usurers' Utopia which Milton Friedman promoted under the name of Chicago School economics was the mirror image of Communism, another Jewish Utopia, because both claimed that if their programs were implemented heaven on earth would follow." Naturally, these claims were insincere (or could have been part self-deception) and Friedman's advocacy of transferring public works projects into private hands, therefore, "was another looting operation."
These assets that were the product of years of investment of public money and labor should, in Friedman's view, "be transferred into private hands, on principle." This public to "private" wealth transfer will soon be the focus of another discussion about Jews and money later in this essay.
First, however, I'll mention in passing the subject of Jones' Chapter 98, the leveraged buy-outs of the 1980s. Professor Benjamin Ginsberg was hardly alone in noticing that Jermome Kohlberg, Jr., Harry Kravis and many others involved in these buy-outs were Jews. As always, Jones does not disappoint in his ability to summarize this trend: "The concentration of the nation's wealth in the hands of a few avaricious Jews has led to corruption of both discourse and culture."
This era was the focus of my recent essay, Vulture Capitalism, Jews — and Hollywood, where I showed how Jewry hides in plain sight their ongoing looting of gentile wealth by creating blockbuster movies which feature no Jews, instead casting famous gentile actors as financial malefactors. (See Part 1 & Part 2 here.) Thus, I'll pass over this important era in order to focus on another looting operation that is still almost invisible to the world's public. This operation is the one a mostly Jewish cast imposed on a newly freed Russia that was ripe for exploitation at the hands of Jews "skilled in the deceptions of economic warfare."
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Edmund Connelly, Ph. D. https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Edmund Connelly, Ph. D.2020-03-06 06:23:162020-03-07 09:31:00Jews and Vulture Capitalism: A Reprise, Part 1
Stefan Molyneaux on Israel and the Nature of Judaism
August 1, 2014 /34 Comments/in Jewish Ethics/by Kevin MacDonald
A while ago Mondoweiss banned comments implying that Israel's bad behavior had anything to do with the nature of Judaism. So it's a safe bet that Stefan Molyneaux would be banned from the site. As a libertarian with a knowledge of history, Molyneaux finds the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the natural outgrowth of trends within Judaism going back hundreds of years—a view that is quite compatible with a biological perspective.
The essential plot line is as follows. Drawing on Israel Shahak (e.g., Jewish History, Jewish Religion and Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel), he paints a picture of historical Judaism in Eastern Europe as communities ruled by autocratic rabbis who had absolute control over life and death of their subjects. These were communities in which free speech and tolerance of dissent were ruthlessly suppressed, with ne'er-do-wells sometimes murdered. Then came the Enlightenment which is the origin of all the trends libertarians hold dear. Rabbis began to lose control of their congregations, and there was the rise of secular Judaism in Western societies.
Fearful of loss of power and the specter of assimilation, rabbis needed a new idea to retain control (13:33). They therefore welcomed Zionism because it prevented assimilation and would provide a new opportunity to create closed communities under strong rabbinical control. This is something of an oversimplification of the forces within the Jewish community favoring Zionism and their motives. For example, fear of assimilation and intermarriage also motivated the racial Zionists, many of whom were not religious, who were very prominent in early Zionism (see here, p. 157ff). In the words of Jewish racial Zionist Elias Auerbach, Zionism would return Jews "back into the position they enjoyed before the nineteenth century—politically autonomous, culturally whole, and racially pure" (John Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe, 1994, 136). Read more
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2014-08-01 19:21:552015-08-13 20:11:01Stefan Molyneaux on Israel and the Nature of Judaism
Is Immigration Really A "Jewish Value"?
April 6, 2014 /5 Comments/in Featured Articles, Jewish Ethics/by Kevin MacDonald
Also posted at VDARE.com
GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's ominous squishiness in the face of the Amnesty/ Immigration Surge drive, which has provoked a primary challenge from Economics professor Dave Brat, may be due to personal greed, but Jewish organizations clearly think he can be motivated by ethnic appeals. A friend recently forwarded me this email (links in original except where noted):
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, March 24, 2014
CONTACT: Emma Stieglitz, emmaS@berlinrosen.com, (646) 200-5307
BEND THE ARC MARSHALS JEWISH VOTERS TO PRESSURE ERIC CANTOR ON IMMIGRATION REFORM
Jewish voters are ratcheting up the pressure on Majority Leader Eric Cantor to move comprehensive immigration reform [VDARE.com note: a.k.a. amnesty/ Immigration Surge] through the House. On Monday, Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice launched a petition calling on Rep. Cantor to bring immigration reform to a vote. The effort, spearheaded by Bend the Arc, is a collaboration of many of the nation's leading Jewish organizations.
The petition (at www.entrydenied.org) makes clear that immigration reform is a priority issue for the Jewish community:
"As American Jews, we believe in a nation that grants today's immigrants access to the same basic freedoms and opportunities that drew our ancestors and yours."
Jewish organizations are unanimous in support of the Amnesty/ Immigration Surge drive. This support for liberal immigration laws has a long history—the granddaddy of them all being the 40-year campaign to enact the 1965 immigration law that opened the doorto heavy immigration of all the peoples of the world.
But what is striking is that Jewish immigration enthusiasts have portrayed themselves as motivated entirely by a set of ethical values that are unique and central to Judaism. Thus Bend the Arc proclaims:
We are building a national movement that pursues justice as a core expression of Jewish tradition….Jewish tradition is about liberation and love for humankind. We believe in the dignity and inherent right of all people to live in a just, fair and compassionate society. As Jews immigrated to America, this belief was stowed in their luggage. Throughout American history, courageous Jews have worked with others to hold the nation to its promise, whether in the abolitionist movement, the anti-sweatshop movement, the movement against child labor, the modern labor movement, the civil rights movement or the movement for LGBT inclusion (just to name a few).
And it boasts:
Over the past year, Bend the Arc has organized around the issue of immigration, arranging meetings between Jewish leaders and congressional staff, hosting immigration-themed Shabbats, organizing petitions and participating in marches, vigils and town halls to deliver the message that immigration reform is a top priority for Jewish voters. In October, Bend the Arc's rabbi-in-residence was arrested at a national demonstration for immigration reform alongside members of Congress during an act of civil disobedience on the National Mall. Read more
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2014-04-06 00:55:502016-08-25 20:29:16Is Immigration Really A "Jewish Value"?
Two Ingroup Morality Items
January 12, 2014 /4 Comments/in Jewish Double Standards on Immigration and Multiculturalism in Israel vs. the Diaspora, Jewish Ethics/by Kevin MacDonald
As noted ad nauseum at TOO, while Diaspora Jews in the West continue to promote immigration and multiculturalism as intrinsic goods and unquestioned moral ideals, in Israel the whole point of public policy is to retain its Jewish character. The most recent example is shipping to Sweden dozens of African refugees living in Israel. Patrick Cleburne's account at VDARE says it all:
The similar size and ethnic diversity of the two countries means that the only rationale for sending Africans to Sweden is that Sweden cares nothing about retaining a Swedish identity, whereas Israel cares deeply about remaining a Jewish state;
While the U.S. government policy on immigration and multiculturalism remains at odds with the interests of the traditional people of the West, especially the working class (so, as Cleburne notes, we can expect many of these African refugees to end up in the U.S.), the Israeli government sticks up for their own people: Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar said he was "not very impressed with all the crying and complaining" by business owners whose employees were on strike. "With all due respect to the restaurant and café owners in crisis, or those whose cleaning staff didn't show up, this will not determine Israel's national policy. On the contrary, let's think about those Israelis who have lost their jobs [to migrant workers]."
Given that immigration and multiculturalism are presented as moral imperatives in the West, this results in a double moral standard—one morality for the ingroup and a quite different morality toward the outgroup; the theme of Jewish moral particularism. Unlike the addiction of the West to moral universalism, Jewish groups behave as a foreign policy realist (or evolutionary psychologist) expects states to behave. They simply pursue their interests with the aim of surviving and prospering.
And that means pursuing radically different strategies depending on whether Jews are a demographic majority or a tiny minority. In the West, the organized Jewish community avidly pursues displacement-level immigration and multiculturalism as tools to render the traditional majorities relatively powerless and incapable of mounting attacks on Jews. In Israel, the goal is to retain Jewish identity and minimize the presence and the influence of non-Jews—goals that are enthusiastically supported by Diaspora Jews and Jewish organizations.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2014-01-12 14:27:542015-09-02 09:24:51Two Ingroup Morality Items
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Ethics: Gaming the System
August 10, 2013 /1 Comment/in Featured Articles, Jewish Ethics, Orthodox and Hasidic Jews/by Kevin MacDonald
At TOO we have had several articles on the culture of corruption that pervades many traditional Jewish communities. Edmund Connelly's "The Culture of Deceit" presents examples going back to the 18th century, citing Wilhelm von Dohm, a Prussian official that Jewish communities were engaged in "the breaking of the laws of the state restricting trade, the import and export of prohibited wares, the forgery of money and precious metals."
In short, von Dohm describes traditional Jewish communities as far more resembling a mafia-like group engaged in organized crime than what we think of as a religion. Alexander Solzhenitsyn describes how Jews invented elaborate ways to get around laws on selling liquor and to avoid the military draft; they also sold shoddy goods to the Russian military with all that that implies (see "The Mesira Mentality: Laws are Made to be Broken"). Read more
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2013-08-10 11:45:472015-09-09 20:12:22Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Ethics: Gaming the System
Traditional Jewish Ethics
July 8, 2012 /37 Comments/in Jewish Ethics, Jewish Moral Particularism/by Kevin MacDonald
A recurrent theme here is the contrast between the moral universalism of the West versus Jewish moral particularism. Moral universalism is a corrollary of individualism: Groups have no moral standing. Stealing doesn't become right depending on what group the victim belongs to.
But Jewish ethics is based fundamentally on the group status of perpetrator and victim. It's okay if the victim is from a different group. And within the group, ethics is structured so that the group as a whole benefits: What's good for the Jews.
Dennis Praeger has a nice column on traditional Jewish moral particularism ("Can Halachah ever be wrong?").
Suppose you ordered an electric shaver from a store owned by non-Jews, and by accident the store sent you two shavers. Would you return the second shaver?
Nine said they would not. One said he would.
What is critical to understand is why they answered the way they did. The nine who would not return the second shaver were not crooks. They explained that halachah (Jewish law) forbade them from returning the other shaver. According to halachah, as they had been taught it, a Jew is forbidden to return a lost item to a non-Jew. The only exception is if the non-Jew knows a Jew found the item and not returning it would cause anti-Semitism or a Khilul Hashem (desecration of God's name). The one who said he would return it gave that very reason — that it would be a Khilul Hashem if he didn't return it and could be a Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of God's name) if he did. But he, too, did not believe he was halachically bound to return the shaver.
The nine were not wrong, and they were not taught wrong. That is the halachah. Rambam (Maimonides) ruled that a Jew is permitted to profit from a non-Jew's business error.
Traditional Jewish law had different penalties for a variety of crimes—theft, taking advantage of business errors, rape, and murder (reviewed in Ch. 6 of A People That Shall Dwell Alone, p. 148ff). Even proselytes who had converted to Judaism had a lower moral standing than other Jews—a fact that has doubtless weighed heavily with prospective converts. Read more
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2012-07-08 16:34:052017-02-21 14:02:03Traditional Jewish Ethics


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Narrow escape for elderly couple after landslide crashes into house
Alina Doodnath Created : 27 August 2018 T&T News
Photo: Joyle Morris and his wife had a narrow escape after a huge landslide crashed into their home on Sunday afternoon.
An elderly Laventille couple could have been crushed to death in their own kitchen after a landslide fell on top of their home on Sunday.
Joyle Morris, 69, said to LoopTT that his wife, 67, who is a cancer patient, was in the kitchen only moments before the giant rock crashed into their house, almost killing her.
Morris said there were some small stones which fell from above last Tuesday after the 6.9 earthquake. But he said it was just minor damage.
However, on Sunday morning they never expected the giant land mass to break away and tumble directly onto their house.
"We were in the kitchen, my wife is a cancer patient, and I heard something fall on the galvanise, and I thought it was gravel."
Morris said when they moved to investigate the sound, they heard and saw the mass of earth smash into their kitchen, exactly where they stood only moments earlier.
"When we move out from the corner we saw this thing come crashing into the kitchen. Stove, fridge, washing machine, dryer, everything smash-up.
"Where my wife was standing, the stone stopped right there, which means it would have crushed her to powder, she started to bawl, everybody was frightened," he said.
The couple now has nowhere to stay and is wondering how they will recover from this terrible incident.
"It's frightening, the house is destroyed, it's devastating," he said.
Morris said they also need extra materials to cover their house as the rains may fall and destroy whatever belongings they have left.
"Tonight we don't know where we will sleep, but God is good, we will find a way," he said.
Morris and his wife are currently using disposable plates and cups and troubled as to how they will be able to repair their home.
He said the councillor for the area visited their house on Monday along with officers from the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) and said engineers and others would assess the damage in order to render assistance.
"Thank God we're alive, we will survive somehow, I have faith," he said.
Persons wishing to help Morris and his wife can contact him on his mobile phone at 321-9184.
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Joyle Morris
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bears of the Board of Managers.
Powers and Duties of the Board of Managers.
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Duties of the Monthly Committee.
Duties of the Special Committees.
of clothing, which shall be furnished by the Committee on Clothing.
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President . . . . . . . . . . MRS. A. H. EVERETT.
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text:
Barry Lundquist Named Interim President of
PORTLAND, Maine – June 25, 2009 – The Council for Disability Awareness (CDA), a Portland, Maine-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to raising public awareness about the likelihood of becoming disabled and the need to prepare for the potential financial consequences, announced the appointment of Barry Lundquist as Interim President, effective immediately.
"Barry Lundquist is well suited to build on the momentum CDA has achieved since its founding in 2005," said Joseph Foley, chairman of the CDA Board of Directors. "Barry has over 30 years of experience in both the management and sales side of group and individual disability. I know he'll bring the same dedication he has for his work to the task of ushering CDA through a seamless leadership transition."
In his role as CDA Interim President, Lundquist will leverage his experience in the disability insurance industry and his leadership role as founder of Eastport Marketing Group to review CDA's recent successes and determine how to move the Council forward and better serve the American workforce.
"It is a privilege to help CDA continue to evolve as an important resource for American workers and the disability industry," said Lundquist. "The CDA has accomplished a great deal in the last four years, through research and advocacy of disability awareness, prevention and income protection. I am honored to assist in shaping CDA's next chapter."
Lundquist takes the reigns from CDA's first president, Robert Taylor, a 35-year veteran of the disability insurance industry. Taylor was instrumental in establishing the CDA as the preeminent public resource for information about disability awareness, prevention and preparation.
The CDA provides the public with a wide array of disability awareness resources through its main Web site, disabilitycanhappen.org. The CDA most recently launched an innovative new online tool, www.WhatsMyPDQ.org, which calculates an individual's own unique Personal Disability Quotient (PDQ), or chances of becoming disabled.
The Council for Disability Awareness (CDA) is a non-profit group dedicated to helping the American workforce become aware of the growing likelihood of disability and its financial consequences. The CDA engages in communications, research and educational activities that provide information and helpful resources to wage earners, their families, employers and others who are concerned about disability and the impact it can have on wage earners and their families.


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Executive Board and Supervisory Board members
Harald A. Summa – CEO DE-CIX Group AG
Harald A. Summa, founder and Chief Executive Officer of eco – the Association of the German Internet Industry, has managed and developed both the eco Association and the Internet Exchange operator DE-CIX since 1995, and has been CEO of DE-CIX since 2003, when it became an independent company.
A vocal representative of the Internet industry in Germany and internationally, Summa has written numerous industry articles and frequently lectures on topics including communication, marketing and sales. From 1981 until 1992, he was a lecturer at the University of Cologne in Applied Informatics, and he is currently undertaking a Ph.D. at the University of Cologne in the Department of Business, Media and Technology Management.
Through his work for eco and DE-CIX, Summa has helped to shape the legal and political framework for the liberalization of the telecommunications market in Germany, and has supported the development of Internet infrastructure from its inception in Europe, and, increasingly, throughout the world.
He is the co-initiator of the European associations EURO-ISPA and Euro-IX, acts as an industry consultant, and serves on a range of advisory committees in Germany, at both the state and federal levels.
Ivo Ivanov – COO DE-CIX Group AG
Ivo A. Ivanov is Chief Operating Officer of the DE-CIX Group AG and also responsible for the international business activities of the Internet Exchange Operator. Ivo has more than 15 years' of experience in the regulatory, legal and commercial Internet environment. Ivo joined DE-CIX in January 2007. In recent years, Ivo has been deeply involved in the establishment DE-CIX sites in Istanbul, Palermo, Madrid, Marseille, New York, Dallas, Dubai (UAE-IX powered by DE-CIX) as well as Mumbai (Mumbai IX powered by DE-CIX), and several DE-CIX consultancy projects in Africa, Asia and Europe.
Ivo has an educational background focused on Law and Business. Fluent in German, English, Russian and Bulgarian, he graduated from a German business school in 1995 and holds two Law degrees, from the Universities of Sofia (Bulgaria) and Bonn (Germany). After graduation, he worked as a lawyer, with a focus on e-commerce law, IP law, telecommunications law and data protection law.
Sebastian Seifert - CFO DE-CIX Group AG
Sebastian Seifert is Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the DE-CIX Group AG, a role he took on in December 2018. A qualified economist, his previous roles have included CFO for the IT service provider SEVEN PRINCIPLES AG, and most recently, CFO of Reflex, a paper manufacturer from Düren (Germany).
Sebastian Seifert has more than 15 years' know-how in the establishment of structures and processes in growing organizations. Through his previous activities as an Investment Manager for a Venture Capital company and as CFO of the SEVEN PRINCIPLES Group, which experienced strong inorganic growth, Seifert also has proven experience in the areas of Mergers & Acquisitions and Integration.
Parallel to his in-company training as a banker, Sebastian Seifert studied Business Administration. Following his studies, he worked as an Investment Manager for a VC company. This was followed by various senior management positions, as well as positions on supervisory boards, in growing companies in the IT sector. Before joining DE-CIX, Seifert was employed as the CFO of the paper manufacturer Reflex, with a focus on Restructuring and Turnaround.
Felix Höger – Chairman of the Supervisory Board DE-CIX Group AG
Since 1 January 2018, Felix Höger has been Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the DE-CIX Group AG. In his preceding role as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of DE-CIX International AG, assumed at the beginning of 2013, he closely accompanied and successfully drove forward DE-CIX's global expansion.
Felix Höger is one of the industries well-known pioneers and leaders of cloud computing in Germany. During the course of his traineeship in 1995, he founded the Internet Service Provider NDH, which he merged with the software manufacturer PIRONET in 2000 to become today's CANCOM PIRONET, and which he then further developed into a major German cloud provider. Following the sale of his shares in CANCOM SE and the successful merger of the company, Felix Höger was subsequently responsible as COO/CTO at QSC AG for the realignment and further development of the corporate group into a modern cloud service provider and for the operation of its entire ICT and cloud portfolio, a role he continued until 31 December 2017. Today, as a consulting partner, supervisory/advisory board member, and investor, Felix Höger supports in particular small and medium-sized enterprises in a diverse array of digital projects and investments – with such support spanning the design of business models through to successful establishment on the market.
In his functions as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of DE-CIX Group AG and member of the management boards of both eco – Association of the Internet Industry and Eurocloud Deutschland, Felix Höger is closely affiliated with both the key players and the ongoing developments in the technology industry as a promoter and lobbyist.
Klaus Landefeld – Member of the Supervisory Board DE-CIX Group AG
Klaus Landefeld is a Member of the Supervisory Board of the DE-CIX Group AG.
He is an expert on the topics of infrastructure and networks, Internet neutrality, data retention, telecommunications surveillance, and IT security. As early as 1984, he was already setting up mailbox systems and LAN infrastructure, and in 1995 he founded Nacamar Data Communications GmbH, one of the first independent IP service providers in Germany. Following the sale of the Nacamar Group to World Online N. V., Klaus Landefeld was CTO of the pan-European technology division, where he was responsible for 1,500 technicians in 17 national subsidiaries. Since 2013, Klaus Landefeld and nGENn GmbH have been advising companies on the establishment and operation of WLAN and broadband networks, data centers, and IP-based services. He also acts as data protection and security officer for diverse carriers.
As a member of various committees worldwide, Klaus Landefeld provides advice and support to organizations and authorities. Among other roles, he is a member of the Committee for Technical Regulation in Telecommunications (ATRT) of the German Federal Network Agency, and a founding member of DENIC eG, AMS-IX, and MINX. Klaus Landefeld is also Vice Chair of the Management Board of eco – Association of the Internet Industry, where he has been a member of the management board since 1997.
Rudolf van Megen – Member of the Supervisory Board DE-CIX Group AG
Since January 2018, Rudolf van Megen has been Member of the Supervisory Board of the DE-CIX Group AG. In his preceding role as Member of the Supervisory Board of DE-CIX International AG (since 2013), he closely accompanied and successfully supported DE-CIX's global and international expansion.
Rudolf van Megen is one of the startup pioneers in Germany. In 1982 he co-founded SQS Software Quality Systems AG as a new service for independent testing and quality assurance. In his role as CEO he drove the expansion from a German market leader to the largest international market leader for this specialized service in IT development and maintenance. In 2005 SQS made an IPO in London on LSE/AIM as the first Germany company, since at that time the financial market for technology companies was only available in the United Kingdom. That further supported the international growth of SQS to become the digital quality assurance services provider. After 30 years he relinquished his role as CEO, but he remained a large shareholder and supporter of independent testing. At the end of 2017, SQS was acquired by Assystem Technologies.
Since 2012, Rudolf van Megen has functioned as a business angel, advisor, and co-founder and/or investor in numerous startups in Germany and the UK. Rudolf is Chairman of the Board of German ICT & Media Institute e.V. (since 2015) as well being a member of the Advisory Board of InsurLab Germany (since 2017). Rudolf van Megen volunteers additional time for different organizations: He is an Industry Ambassador of the City of Cologne, a Board Member of the Council of Media and IT for the City of Cologne, and Head of the ICT Committee of Cologne Chamber of Commerce.


text:
Q: How to display a popup Window just when a browser is started running from nodejs I want to popup a window on Internet explorer windows 10 from nodejs.
I did research on google but I found only the window-popup, popup packages but it is throwing me error something like this ReferenceError: window is not defined
    at windowPopup
Even after installing the packages thrpugh npm.
I am doing this on WebStorm ide.
exec(`START iexplore.exe`, (err, stdout, stderr) => {
if (err) {
    throw err
}

console.log('stdout', stdout)
console.log('stderr', err)
});

var popup = require('window-popup').windowPopup;
What is the correct way to do this, please help me out where I am going wrong.
Thanks.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Tapage nocturne
Photogénie
Peterborough invests in public arts for 2016 and beyond
http://trentarthur.ca/peterborough-invests-in-public-arts-for-2016-and-beyond/
Article for Arthur Newspaper
Fuck the Facts headline The Spill
http://trentarthur.ca/fuck-the-facts-headlines-at-the-spill/
The Subject of Change (Alain Badiou)
Conference Proceedings, 2013 (and publishing opportunities)
My paper on Georges Bataille is included here.
#BREVITY
We are proud to announce the first conference proceedings from the 15th Annual MLL Graduate Conference, "Good Laugh, Bad Laugh, Ugly Laugh, My Laugh". The proceedings are housed at scholarship@Western, an online academic repository supported by the Western University library system, and are searchable through Google Scholar. They can be found at: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/mllgradconference/.
The proceedings have been considered as pre-publications, meaning that the authors keep the authorship rights and are free to submit versions of their own work to journals, or to post in blogs.
In addition, we will be looking for papers to publish in the conference proceedings for the 16th Annual MLL Conference on Brevity, which will take place on March 6-8, 2014. Those who are interested in presenting a paper and, eventually, be published can submit an abstract at brevitywestern@gmail.com by January 1st, 2014.
Finally, we would like to thank Jaime Brenes Reyes…
three cities
At the bar of the Okapi Taberna, I drink a café leche and eat pintxos. The bartender is busy, and frustrated by my lack of Spanish. Through the window across the street, on the second floor, I watch people learning to dance. A man ordering next to me notices too, and we smile at them together.
In the streets, people kick soccer balls, smoke cigarettes, and drink wine. The air is cool, and my knit mitts are not enough to keep my fingers warm as I write. Even back at the Aloha Hostel, with a cup of chamomile in my hands, I still cannot feel the tips of my fingers.
A young man staying at the hostel sits across from me, and we swap stories. Matt. He sets up temporary hostels for festivals all over the world, and is visiting Pamplona to prepare for San Fermines – the…
Jackson and His Computer Band releases new album
Published in Trent University's Arthur Newspaper, September 16th, 2013: http://trentarthur.ca/jackson-and-his-computer-band-releases-new-album/
Jackson and His Computerband is the pseudonym of Jackson Fourgeaud. This French IDM artist has been cranking out tunes since 1996 and is a smash hit in Europe, performing at various festivals and venues across the continent.
Released this month, Jackson's newest and second album for Warp Records, Glow, is a mix of electronic genres not crafted into a sound that is uniquely his own but varying with each track depending on his whim. This description may have the ring of a criticism, however, what we get from Glow despite its superficial lack of originality, is quite the opposite.
Jackson showcases his talents with electronic music across a range of tempos, rhythms and beats, with or without vocal tracks. Warp frequently delivers the best and Jackson is part of the label's excellent roster.
The two opening tracks differ greatly and also set the tone for the pieces to follow. In the first track "Blow," and later in "Memory," there is the distinct sound of the early 2000s pop band sensation Pinback. The tracks' soothing tempo and vocals will lull you into a warm and cozy slumber.
Tracks like "Seal" and "More" remind me of Jackson's label mate and equally competent IDM musician, Chris Clark. Jackson and Clark have the superb ability to create groovy dance tracks without the annoyance of incredibly loud and overpowering drum and bass. The rhythm, the melody and its variations, as well as the overlapping vocal tracks in these two pieces are exemplary in their innovativeness, providing renewed surprises with each spin and also something for listeners to nod their heads to.
Many of the numbers in Glow take their cue from Battles's game-changing Mirror (2007), also on Warp. We find this influence in "More," but it comes out most explicitly in "Dead Living Things." This tune could not quite find itself on Mirror but could certainly appear on the newest Battles record, the barely audible and electronically saturated singing reminiscent of Tyondai Braxton before his departure. It is no shock then, like the first single "Atlas" from Mirror, "Dead Living Things" is the first official single with a video, from Glow.
The cues from other artists and bands does not stop there. The upbeat "G.I. Jane (Fill Me Up)" could be equally at home on a Daft Punk or Depeche Mode album. When I researched Jackson I was not surprised to find "G.I. Jane" released as a single prior to Glow – the verse/chorus structure should get every listener up to dance. Similarly the quick tempos of "Blood Bust," "Pump," and "Arp #1" along with eight-minute closer "Billy," borrow upon the sound of Toronto's Holy Fuck, and would not be out of place in a club with a creative DJ.
Two tracks caught me off-guard: the slow (and poorly titled?) "Orgysteria" and the classic-pop inspired "Vista." The former seems a cross between Imogen Heap's immensely popular "Hide and Seek (Whatcha Say)" and the relaxed and hallucinogenic sound of Eluvium. The track features a hypnotizing hum and piano which, by the time of the coda, turns into a muffled and fuzzy instrument that should, like "Blow" and "Memory," leave us with a sense of comfort. On the other hand, "Vista" seems to be a bit of a failure. It attempts to recreate an 80s dance/pop sound and does not do the decade justice. Perhaps for fans of Cyndi Lauper this track would not leave such a sour taste on the musical palette.
Glow is one of the more interesting electronic albums of the last few years, if only for its range. There are at least two tracks here for even the most distinguished of musical tastes. If you are familiar with the Warp Records catalog then add Jackson and His Computer Band to your collection. If you have never listened to the likes of Battles, Squarepusher, Clark, or Jamie Liddell—pick up Jackson and His Computerband anyway. It will not disappoint.
Para-Academia: From Conceptual Point to Intuitionistic Concept
A few years ago now I tried to open up my own (para-)academic space. I think part of its failure is addressed here. What I attempted was less something outside the university than a space which worked in conjunction with it, overlapped, and at times, depending on the event, was indiscernible from it.
Column, The Language of (Non-)Monogamy
Murray Street: a microcosm of the City
Dollhouse World Premiere
Intronaut: a performance and a new album
Paintings by the Shilling Brothers at Christensen Fine Art
On Breaking Your Pro… on Language and Practice: An Etym…
On Breaking Your Pro… on Badiou contra Contemporary…
On Breaking Your Pro… on Non-monogamy is for commi…
On Breaking Your Pro… on We have never been ethical: Re…
On Breaking Your Pro… on The Lion, the Cage, and Non-Mo…
Sex and Romance
Theatre and Literature
Trent Univeristy


A Liberal Democrat peer has said Israel will not last for ever, with her remarks prompting calls for the party's leader, Nick Clegg, to take disciplinary action.
Lady Tonge, who was sacked as the Lib Dem children's spokeswoman in the Commons in 2004 when she suggested she could consider becoming a suicide bomber, made her remarks in a meeting at Middlesex University.
"Beware Israel," she said. "Israel is not going to be there for ever in its present form. One day, the United States of America will get sick of giving £70bn a year to Israel to support what I call America's aircraft carrier in the Middle East – that is Israel. One day, the American people are going to say to the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough."
The Liberal Democrat leadership criticised Tonge for the remarks but stopped short of calling on her to withdraw her comments. A spokesman said: "Jenny Tonge does not speak for the party on Israel and Palestine. Her presence and comments at this event were extremely ill-advised and ill-judged. The tone of the debate at this event was wholly unacceptable and adds nothing to the peace process. The Liberal Democrats are wholehearted supporters of a peaceful two state solution to the Israel- Palestine issue."
Ian Austin, a former Labour minister, said: "There is a cross-party consensus that a two-state solution is the only way to bring peace to the Middle East. At the very least, Nick Clegg must make Baroness Tonge withdraw these remarks."
The Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel group dismissed Tonge as an "irrelevant, siren and marginal voice" and called on her to resign the party whip.
Gavin Stollar, chairman of the group, said: "LDFI strongly condemns Baroness Tonge's latest outburst not only because it is wrong but because it is contrary to Lib Dem party policy. Jenny Tonge is an irrelevant, siren and marginal voice in the Liberal Democrat party and we call on her to resign the Lib Dem whip.
"If she truly believes the things she says, how can she justify being a member of a party whose policies are diametrically opposed to her views on Israel and the Middle East, a subject on which she talks on almost a daily basis?"
John Woodcock, the chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, said: ""This is the latest in a series of outrageous remarks from Baroness Tonge - words of excuse or apology in response are no longer enough. Nick Clegg needs to take disciplinary action against his offensive peer to reassure people the government remains serious about a two-state solution."


text:
Rob Dahm's 1,000-HP, Quad-Rotor RX-7 Spits Monster Flames On the Dyno
The quad-rotor, all-wheel drive Mazda is almost ready to hit the streets.
byChris Teague| PUBLISHED Feb 28, 2020 5:26 PM
Chris TeagueView chris teague's Articles
TeagueDrives
YouTuber Rob Dahm is nearing the end of his multi-year, multi-thousand dollar, quad-rotor, all-wheel drive RX-7 project, and we're finally starting to see the fruits of his labors. In a couple of recent videos, Dahm showed off two days worth of dyno tests for the car, which ended up cresting the 1,000-horsepower mark on its final runs. The runs are so violent that the Mazda looks like it's going to rip itself off the platform, as it spits fire when the throttle is lifted.
Rob and his team have been working on the car since the project was announced in 2016, and as of our last check-in back in January, they'd just gotten it rolling under its own power. Though the Mazda's appearance hasn't changed all that much since our last story—it's still kind of a stripped-down roller right now—the powertrain and tuning appear to be on point. The videos above and below, which should be watched at low volume or with headphones to avoid scaring anyone within earshot, shows Dahm and his team making repeated runs on the dyno to nail down the car's tuning. The RX-7's engine had to be rebuilt after aluminum entered the block and caused lost compression, so the first few runs in the video are done without turbo.
Rob says it's the first time the car had run properly on boost, but the setup quickly maxed out the capability of the fuel injectors. The next day, the team heads back to the dyno for more runs with a fixed-up car and the real fun begins. Once the boost is cranked up and the AWD system is on, the Mazda turns into a fire-breathing dragon on the dyno.
Several runs and plenty of noise later, the results came in: 1,014 horsepower. Dahm is near tears as he reads the results, and for good reason. He has spent the last four years building the FD RX-7 and had been told by everyone along the way that he was going to fail. Not only did he not fail, the repeated runs on the dyno just helped "break the car in". Rob says his goal is to get the car up to 1,600 horsepower, so the sky's the limit with this build.
Got a tip? Send us a note: tips@thedrive.com


text:
package org.archive.util.iterator;

import java.util.LinkedHashMap;
import java.util.Map;

public class CachingStringFilter implements StringFilter {
	private LRUCache cache;
	private StringFilter inner;
	public CachingStringFilter(StringFilter inner, int max) {
		this.inner = inner;
		cache = new LRUCache(max);
	}

	public boolean isFiltered(String text) {
		Boolean v = cache.remove(text);
		if(v == null) {
			v = inner.isFiltered(text);
		}
		cache.put(text, v);
		return v;
	}

	public class LRUCache extends LinkedHashMap<String, Boolean> {
	     /**  */
		private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
		private int max = 100;

	     public LRUCache(int max) {
	    	 this.max = max;
	     }

	     protected boolean removeEldestEntry(Map.Entry<String,Boolean> eldest) {
	    	 return (size() > max);
	     }
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Equipo Nizkor - U.S. states, regulator drop objections to $8.5 billion BofA deal.
The New York and Delaware attorneys general and the U.S. housing regulator on Friday dropped their objections to Bank of America Corp's (BAC.N) proposed $8.5 billion settlement with investors in Countrywide mortgage-backed securities, according to court filings.
Other parties, including American International Group Inc (AIG.N) and several Federal Home Loan banks, remain opposed to the deal.
The attorneys general were not expressing a view about the settlement's "adequacy or the reasonableness or propriety of the trustee's or any other party's conduct," they said.
It was negotiated by Bank of New York Mellon Corp (BK.N) as trustee for the 530 residential mortgage-securitization trusts with an estimated $174 billion of unpaid principal.
BlackRock Inc (BLK.N), Metlife Inc (MET.N) and Allianz SE's (ALVG.DE) Pacific Investment Management Co were among the investors who signed onto the accord, which affected all certificate holders in the trusts.
The hearing "should provide the court an adversarial presentation of all the available facts and legal arguments," the attorneys general said in their filing.
New York and Delaware sought permission last year to intervene in the case and raised questions about the "fairness and adequacy" of the proposed settlement.
In Friday's filing, the attorneys general said the "adversarial proceeding might have been avoided had the trustee provided notice to all certificate holders at an earlier point in the settlement negotiation process."