96 How much does Sabbath Mode add to the cost of Refrigerators, Ovens & other appliances?

Jews are a tiny fraction of the population; and about half of them are non-observant. Yet new appliances feature "Shabbat Mode", not in special models just for Jews, but in mainstream models bought by everyone. This complex feature must add to the cost. Why do we all have to pay for an expensive feature that only 1% want?

More to the point: what does it say about Jewish Power? Jewish Dominance?

(1) How much does Sabbath Mode add to the cost of Refrigerators, Ovens & other appliances?
(2) GE Introduces Sabbath Mode feature on Cooking Products
(3) Fisher & Paykel refrigerators with Sabbath Mode
(4) Reviews - Refrigerators offering Sabbath Mode
(5) Ex-staffer at Dimona nuclear reactor says made to drink uranium
(6) "Stalin resurrected the Russian Church after the Trotskyite excesses"
(7) Serbian gay parade called off
(8) Greens call for (pro-Putin) Chechen leader to be barred from Australia
(9) Trots call Semenya "an intersex woman"

(1) How much does Sabbath Mode add to the cost of Refrigerators, Ovens & other appliances?

I know someone who recently bought a new fridge. Its manual says it has "Sabbath Mode".

Shabbat mode

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_mode

Sabbath mode is a feature in many modern home appliances, including ovens and refrigerators which is intended to allow the appliances to be used (subject to various constraints) by Sabbath-observant Jews on the Sabbath and some Jewish holidays.

Jews are forbidden from doing creative work on the Sabbath. Observant Jews interpret this to include doing things such as closing a switch or pressing an electronic button (which "creates" a circuit), preparing food, and making a fire.

While raw food may not be cooked on the Sabbath, food that was already cooked beforehand may be kept warm until mealtime. On some holidays, food may be cooked fresh, but turning the heat on is problematic. In the past, both of these could be accomplished simply by lighting a stove or oven before the day began, and using its heat over the course of the day. In recent decades, however, appliance manufacturers have instituted a safety feature that automatically shuts off the heat after a number of hours. This renders the appliance useless for those who observe these religious laws.

When an oven is in Sabbath mode, the standard six- or twelve-hour automatic shutoff is overridden, and all lights and displays (for example, a light that might go on when the door is opened) are disabled. ...

With some Sabbath mode ovens that are controlled using a keypad to set the temperature, there is a pseudo-random delay triggered after a button is pressed before the temperature change takes place.

Those who feel that hitting the keypad closes a switch (and that completing a circuit is not allowed) do have other options, such as the "Tweaker" which was featured on the Torah Technologies web site[1] that emulates old manual ovens by adding a knob that confuses the accurate temperature measurement in a beneficial fashion.

In June 2008, a number of prominent Poskim signed a Kol Koreh (public pronouncement) stating that it was unequivocally forbidden to raise or lower the temperature on Yom Tov using the Sabbath Mode feature.[2] The Kol Koreh referred to the long-held lenient opinion of Rabbi Moshe Heinemann[3] as a Daas Yachid (a minority opinion that should not be relied upon - literally: the opinion of an individual).[4] However, it has been pointed out that Rabbi Heinemann's opinion is fully consistent with the rulings of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, who was not only one of the greatest Poskim of his generation, but whose understanding of electricity and technology was probably unparalleled among any of his peers.[5] [6] Indeed, none of Rabbi Auerbach's sons or sons-in-law, including Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, Rabbi Ezriel Auerbach,[7] and Rabbi Zalman Nechemia Goldberg, all prominent Poskim in their own right, participated in the Kol Koreh.[8]

A Sabbath mode refrigerator includes, at a minimum, the ability to disable all lights or other electrical activity from occurring when the refrigerator door is opened. Some Sabbath mode refrigerators include a timer for the compressor so that opening the door, which will normally indirectly cause the compressor to turn on as the temperature rises, will have absolutely no effect on any electrical operation of the appliance.

WordNet reports that KitchenAid introduced the feature in 1994.

[edit] See also

 39 categories of activity prohibited on Shabbat
 blech
 cholent, especially the section on serving hot foods on Shabbat

[edit] References
1.^ "Shabbos Mode Oven Temperature Adjuster ". 2007-12-13. Retrieved 2009-07-16.
2.^ "Preventing Transgression: Gedolei HaPoskim Asur Pressing Buttons on ‘Shabbos Mode Ovens’ on Yom Tov ". 2008-06-05. Retrieved 2009-07-16.
3.^ "Regarding Star-K certified Sabbath Mode ovens ". 2008-06-06. Retrieved 2009-07-16.
4.^ Rabbi Heinemann was not mentioned by name.
5.^ This is evidenced by the fact that Rabbi Auerbach wrote a pioneering Halachic work on electricity when he was only 25 years old (Meorei Aish, first published in 1935, with glowing approbations from, among others, Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski).
6.^ See [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] , and [6] .
7.^ Rabbi Ezriel Auerbach is a son-in-law of one of the prominent signatories of the Kol Koreh, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv.
8.^ Rabbi Auerbach took a more lenient position regarding electricity than did the Chazon Ish. However, although the Chazon Ish was perhaps the greatest Posek of his generation, his view, that virtually all use of electricity on Shabbos and Yom Tov involves a Biblical prohibition (even where no light or heat is created) is not the majority opinion. See [7] ; see also Electricity on Shabbat in Jewish law.

 http://www.wordspy.com/words/Sabbathmode.asp
 http://www.star-k.org/kashrus/kk-cooking-SM.htm
 An early sabbath mode patent in the USPTO database: #5,808,278

 This page was last modified on 16 July 2009 at 15:34.

(2) GE Introduces Sabbath Mode feature on Cooking Products

http://www.geconsumerproducts.com/pressroom/press_releases/appliances/cooking_products/sabmod.htm

GE Introduces New Sabbath Mode Feature on Cooking Products to Meet the Needs of Observant Jewish Consumers

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- New technologies in kitchen appliances, such as electronics and safety features on ranges, have added complexity and challenges to life in the kosher kitchen. With this in mind, GE is introducing a Sabbath Mode feature on over 65 models including all of its wall ovens, smooth top electric slide-in and smooth top electric drop-in ranges, as well as on the majority of its freestanding ranges. This feature meets the certification requirements of a nationally recognized Kosher certifying agency, Star-K. This capability can be utilized, if desired, but otherwise it stays inactive and unnoticeable to the non-Jewish consumer.

"GE's Six Sigma methodology stresses a consumer-focused approach to product and feature development. There are over 6,000,000 members of the Jewish faith in the United States. The voice of our customers led to the identification of this need," explained Len Kosar, general manager for cooking products.

"Although the Sabbath and holiday laws, especially as they relate to the cooking and heating of foods, are rather complex, the engineers at GE are to be congratulated on their ability to have appreciated and comprehended the intricacies of Halacha (Jewish law) as they developed a Sabbath mode that will enhance the Sabbath and holidays of observant Jewish families," noted Dr. Avrom Pollak, president of the Star-K Kosher Certification. "This new feature is truly kosher consumer friendly and we at the Star-K are confident that the observant Jewish community is going to show significant interest in GE cooking appliances," he continued.

Most modern ranges are equipped with an integrated twelve- (12) hour shut-off safety device. This feature shuts down the oven's power after the oven has been operating consecutively for twelve hours. The GE cooking products with Sabbath Mode will override the twelve-hour shut-off. The oven will not shut off automatically making it possible to keep cooked foods warm on the Sabbath or use the range over religious holidays for cooking and warming food.

In addition to overriding the shut off, the Sabbath Mode feature will meet the observant Jewish consumer's restrictions for observing the Sabbath and other holidays by:

    * Eliminating tones or timer beeps.
    * Not displaying icons.
    * Permitting temperature adjustments on holidays without displays or beeps.

The oven will stay at the temperature the user selects when entering the Sabbath mode. The digital control display will not show time, temperature, or selected oven function until the Sabbath mode feature is manually de-activated at the conclusion of the Sabbath or holiday. This makes it possible for observant Jews to serve warm food on holidays, the underlying principle being that it is permissible to use electricity that is already on but not to turn it on or off during the duration of the holiday. Observant Jews are thus prohibited from turning on or off the oven, or taking an action that causes the oven control display to change during the Sabbath or religious holidays.

(3) Fisher & Paykel refrigerators with Sabbath Mode

Active Smart™ operating instructions

Models: 635mm wide E331T, E372B, E381T, E402B, E411T, E415H
680mm wide E406B, E413T, E440T, E442B
790mm wide E521T, E522B

Sabbath mode

To activate the Sabbath mode press the compartment select button on the temperature control panel for 10 seconds.
When the product is in sabbath mode:
The light will not operate when the door is opened.
The door alarm will not operate.
The display will not be illuminated.
Opening the door will not affect the compressor or fans.
If the power to the refrigerator is turned off whilst in this mode, the product will continue in
Sabbath mode when the power is restored.
Sabbath mode will automatically de-activate 80 hours after activation.
To de-activate earlier than 80 hours press the compartment select button on the temperature
control panel for 10 seconds. ==

Fisher & Paykel Ovens
With the Sabbath Mode Feature:

http://www.star-k.org/cons-appl-fp.htm

(4) Reviews - Refrigerators offering Sabbath Mode

http://reviews.cnet.com/4566-17899_7-0.html?filter=505039_16801467_

(5) Ex-staffer at Dimona nuclear reactor says made to drink uranium

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1107980.html

Last update - 00:18 01/01/2009

By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent

Workers at the nuclear reactor facility in Dimona were made to volunteer to drink uranium in 1998 as part of an experiment, according to a lawsuit filed four months ago in the Be'er Sheva Labor Tribunal by a former worker at the facility.

The experiment was allegedly carried out without obtaining written consent from the workers or warning them of risks or side effects, as required by the Declaration of Helsinki on human experimentation.

The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said in a statement that the Dimona facility "has the safety and health of its workers as its highest priority."

The commission statement added that the amount of uranium the Dimona staffers drank in the experiment (100 micrograms) was less than the amount Be'er Sheva residents drink from their taps in one month.

The worker who submitted the lawsuit, Julius Malick, recently retired after he said he was threatened by the former director of the facility, Yitzhak Gurevich, and the director of human resources, Gary Amal, that if he did not retire he would be fired.

Malick is suing the Dimona facility for a total of NIS 1.8 million in compensation. According to the suit, Malick was "asked by his superiors to take part in an experiment on five workers. In the framework of the experiment, Mr. Malick and the other workers drank uranium. The experiment was conducted without medical supervision and no explanation was given as to the health risks to participants. Mr. Malick, out of fear for his livelihood and future in the department, agreed to the demand that he participate."

Malick, who worked at the Dimona reactor for 15 years before retiring in 2008, received his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry at Bar-Ilan University. He has another degree, in industrial engineering and management, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva.

The lawsuit also notes that, while the workers did not receive the results of the experiment, an article about it appeared in the scientific journal Health Physics. According to the suit, the article, written by a number of researchers - headed by Drs. Zeev Karpas and Avi Lorber, the directors of the Dimona facility's analytical chemistry lab - included the subjects' names without their permission.

The subjects were given grape or grapefruit juice containing uranium to drink and were then asked for a urine sample, which was then analyzed to determine how uranium is excreted from the body through urine. The researchers said it was not supposed to be dangerous, Malick told his lawyer, Alexander Spinrad. "Lorber and Karpas said that even they took part in the experiment themselves, although to this day it's not clear to me whether they actually did. Afterward co-workers to whom I told this said I was stupid for drinking it and they wouldn't have agreed under any circumstances to do it," Malick also told his lawyer.

Malick, a chemist, also said that a long time after the experiment, Lorber told him it was his and Karpas' private project. "That's ridiculous, of course, because the article listed other partners, whose names appear under their names and listed as workers of the Dimona facility," Malick said.

Malick also said he once complained that no records were being kept and Karpas "joked with me and said I was making a tempest in a teapot." The suit also states that his superiors never recorded his participation in the experiment in his medical records. ...

(6) "Stalin resurrected the Russian Church after the Trotskyite excesses"

From: George Wesley Buchanan <gwesb@comcast.net> Date: 20.09.2009 12:23 AM

> America Sees Red
> By Israel Shamir
> http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Red_Ed.htm
>
> Hatred of Stalin, the man who stopped Hitler,
> created modern Russia and resurrected the Russian
> Church after the Trotskyite excesses,
> is the common ground of these anticommunists.

How could Stalin have resurrected Christianity by annihilating 80,000,000 of them?
George

Reply (Peter M.):

80 million is much too high.

The impetus for the original attack on Christianity came from the Jewish Bolsheviks (the later Trotskyists).

Their age-old resentment lay behind it. It's still playing out in the US, where the same force is at work today.

Don't forget the "White Christian" toll of "natives", when they invaded the New World. Every attempt to construct a New Society on the ruins of the old must start by decimating what's there already.

The same applies today in the Open Borders movement and Minorities movements. If they continue long enough, they'll displace the "White Christians".

Just be thankful that Stalin turned the tables on them. If he had not, a Jewish-led USSR may have teamed up with Jewish-led America to give us a World Government.

You yourself venerate the Jewish Bible - you even call it the "First Testament" (rather than the "Old Testament") to avoid offending Jews.

Have a look at these verses:

"... you will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow; you will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you" (Deuteronomy 15:6).

"You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow. The LORD will make you the head, and not the tail; you shall be only at the top, and not the bottom ..."
(Deuteronomy 28:12-13).

Yuri Slezkine (himself Jewish) wrote in The Jewish Century:

{p. 294} Everything changed, however, atter the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine.

{p. 295} Before the war, being a Komsomol member of Jewish descent had meant being an internationalist ... After the war - and apparently still in the spirit of Leninst-Stalinist nationalities policy - it meant being a proud ethnic Jew too. ... Jewish national redemption equaled anti-Fascism equaled Soviet patriotism. ...

{p. 296} Indeed, some went so far as to make "unheard-of, shocking" statements (as one JAFC presidium member described them) to the effect that Palestine was their homeland. But what was even more unheard-of and shocking was that thousands of people were making such statements publicly and collectively. On September 3, 1948, the first Israeli ambassador to the USSR, Golda Meyerson (later Meir), arrived in Moscow. What followed was a series of improvised, spontaneous, and unsupervised political rallies - something the Soviet capital had not seen in more than twenty years. For Golda Meir, who had been born in the Russian Empire, visiting the Soviet Union was a kind of homecoming. On the very first Saturday after her arrival, she went to the Moscow synagogue and, having greeted the rabbi, broke into tears. The purpose of her visit, however, and of course the purpose of the new state she repre-

{p. 297} sented, was to remind the Jews of all countries that their true home was not their home. During the next month, every one of her public appearances was accompanied by a demonstration of Soviet Jewish identification with Israel. On October 4,1948, on Rosh Hashanah, thousands of people came to the Moscow synagogue to see her. Some cried, "Shalom"; most had probably never been to a synagogue betore. And on October 13, on Yom Kippur, a large crowd followed the Israeli diplomats from the synagogue to the Metropole Hotel, chanting, "Next year in Jerusalem."

The two trends - the ethnicization of the Soviet state and the nationalization of ethnic Jews - kept reinforcing each other until Stalin and the new Agitprop officials made two terrifing discoveries.

First, the Jews as a Soviet nationality were now an ethnic diaspora potentially loyal to a hostile foreign state. After the creation of Israel and the launching of the Cold War, they had become analogous to the Germans, Greeks, Finns, Poles, and other "nonnative" nationalities presumed to be beholden to an external homeland and thus congenitally and irredeemably alien. The official assault on the Jews would be a belated application of the ethnic component of the Great Terror to an ethnic group that had escaped it (as an ethnic group) in 1937-38.

Second, according to the new Soviet definition of national belonging and political loyalty, the Russian Soviet intelligentsia, created and nurtured by Comrade Stalin, was not really Russian and thus not fully Soviet. Russians of Jewish descent were masked Jews, and masked Jews were traitors twice over.

All Stalinist purges were about creeping penetration by invisible aliens and here was a race that was both ubiquitous and camouflaged; an ethnic group that was so good at becoming invisible that it had become visible as an elite (perhaps the Soviet elite). Here was a nationality that did not possess its own territory (or rather, possessed one but refused to live there), a nationality that did not have its own language (or rather, had one but refused to speak it), a nationality that consisted almost entirely of intelligentsia (or rather,

{p. 298} refused to engage in proletarian pursuits); a nationality that used pseudonyms instead of names ...

{p. 301} Who were the guardians of Marxism-Leninism? In 1949, "passport" Jews made up 19.8 percent of all Soviet professors of Marxism-Leninism, 25 percent of all those teaching Marxism-Leninism in the colleges of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov, Rostov, Saratov, Kazan, and Sverdlovsk, and 7 out of 19 faculty members in the Dialectical and Historical Materialism Unit in the Philosophy Department of Moscow University. At the main Soviet research institute for the study of political economy (wrote the head of Agitprop to the head of the State Planning Agency), out of 51 senior researchers, there were 33 Jews, 14 Russians, and 4 others.

{p. 302} Perhaps worst of all, a review of the main academic mini-Stalins (every discipline was supposed to have its own) revealed that the deans of Soviet philosophers (M. B. Mitin), economists (E. S. Varga), historians (I. I. Mints), and legal scholars (I. P. Trainin) were all ethnic Jews. (Varga had come from Buda- pest, the others fi om Russia's old Pale. ) Finally - and most disconcertingly - B. I. Zbarsky, the man who had embalmed Lenin's body and was still the keeper of Communism's most sacred relics, was not only a Jew from the Pale of Settlement hut also, according to the obligingly efficient secret police, a wrecker and a spy.

And what about those other pillars of official ideology Russian patriotism and high culture? A group of concerned scholars informed the Central Committee of the Party that 80 percent of the members ofthe academic council at the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Literature (the "Pushkin House") were Jews.

{p. 303} The more frequent the contact with the enemy, the greater the danger of infection. In whose hands - still speaking of journalists - was Soviet overseas propaganda, an area where political confidence was so hard to earn and so easy to abuse? Jews made up 23 percent of the top managers in the Telegraphic Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS), and 49 percent in the Radio-Telegraphic Agency of Ukraine (RATAU). The "national composition" of the Soviet Information Bureau was 48 percent Jews, 40 percent Russians, and 12 percent others; the Russian Section of the Foreign Literature Publishing House was 90 percent Jewish; and the official Soviet English-language newspaper, Moscow News, was being produced by 1 Russian, 1 Armenian, and 23 Jews.

The economic base was as rotten as the ideological superstructure. Who was building Soviet cars? Forty-two Jews were arrested and thirteen executed in connection with the "Jewish nationalism" affair at the Moscow Automobile Plant. Who was designing Soviet airplanes? Sixty Jewish researchers were fired from the Zhukovsky Institute (but not S. A. Lavochkin, the creator of LA fighters, or M. L. Mil, the creator of MI helicopters). Why was Soviet tank production being entrusted to Isaak Moiseevich Zaltsman, from the shtetl Tomashpol in Podolia? Why, at the end of the Great ratriotic War, did Jews constitute one-third of all chief engineers

{p. 304} at Soviet armaments plants? And who (stage whisper) was building the Soviet atomic bomb? And how were they connected to their kinsmen building the American atomic bomb? And what about the spies who were, in their own way, trying to connect the two atomic bombs?

{see http://mailstar.net/atomic-spies.html; on "connecting the two atomic bombs", see the 1946 Baruch Plan for World Government: http://mailstar.net/baruch-plan.html, and the associated "One World Or None report of 1946", largely Jewish-written: http://mailstar.net/one-world-or-none.html}

Aliens were everyvhere: in your home, under your bed or even in your bed. Was it a coincidence that Comrade Stalin's elder son, Yakov, was married to a Jewish woman? (She was arrested atter Yakov's capture by the Germans but released soon after his death.) Or that Comrade Stalin's daughter kept falling in love with one Jew after another? (Svetlana's first love, A. Ya. Kapler, was sent into exile, and her first husband, G. I. Morozov, was asked to move out and given a new passport with the marriage entry removed.) And what about all those wives: Comrade Molotov's, Comrade Andreev's, Comrade Voroshilov's?

Most frightening of all was the realization that the "vigilant Chekists" combating the forces of evil were themselves werewolves. A special secret police investigation of the secret police revealed a massive "Zionist conspiracy" and a hopeless confusion of friend and foe.

{p. 306} For as long as Stalin was alive and incontestably infallible, such reasoning and the world it held together seemed to make sense to most members of the Soviet elite. There were three professions, however, that questioned the sacred unity of knowledge and virtue simply by performing their regularly assigned tasks. One was the secret police, which sought out corruption within the Party and thus persisted in acquiring secret knowledge that the Party had no direct access to. ...

{p. 307} Another professional group that undermined the official orthodoxy as a matter of course were the nuclear physicists ... Because the building of the bomb was of paramount importance, the official orthodoxy (including the newly mandated mistrust of ethnic Jews) had to be partially waived for the duration of the project. ...

Finally, there were the physicians. Under normal circumstances, their expertise did not obviously challenge the Party's monopoly on truth, but when Stalin entered his seventies and began to lose his vigor, it became clear that the life of the "great leader and teacher" - and thus the fate of world socialism - was in the hands of professionals whose claim to vital knowledge could not be checked or verified except by other professionals. ...

{p. 308} Doctors, who fought death for a living, had been featured as "poisoners" at the Bukharin trial of 1938 and in numerous rumors about the untimely deaths of various Soviet leaders. They were never targeted as a class, however until Stalin confronted limits to his immortality and Jews were identified as key agents of contagion. The first court physicians to be arrested were ethnic Russians, but as the "doctors' plot" thickened, the campaign against "murderers in white robes" became fused with the assault on "Jewish nationalism." The most alien of nationalities had merged with the most lethal of professions.

{Although Slezkine, like Sudoplatov, dismisses the Doctors Plot as false, other authors present new evidence that Stalin was murdered. The best coverage is the book The Death of Stalin: An Investigation by 'MONITOR': http://mailstar.net/death-of-stalin.html.}

Stalin's attack on the Jews was similar to numerous other attempts to rid the Soviet Union of variously defined groups associated with the pre-Soviet past or the anti-Soviet present. While filling out his personnel form, Viktor Shtrum, in Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, comes to Line No. 5, "nationality," and writes "Jew."

{quote} He had no way of knowing what filling in Line No. 5 would soon mean for hundreds of thousands of people who called themselves Kalmyks, Balkars, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Jews. ... He did not know that ... in a few years many people would be filling in Line No. 5 with the same feeling of doom with which, in past decades, the children of Cossack officers, noblemen, factory owners, and priests had filled in Line No. 6 ["social origin"] . {endquote}

{p. 309} The anti-Jewish campaign was both public and relatively clear about its objectives. It was directed at some of the most vital and articulate elements of the Soviet state and it contradicted some of that state's most fundamental official values. As Lina Kaminskaia, a conege student, active Komsomol member, and daughter of a former employee of the Commissariat of Aviation Industry, said in 1952, "Our country's policy on the national question is incorrect. After the war, the country was hit by a wave of anti-Semitism, which is an expression of fascist ideology. ... My point of view is the result of what I have been hearing and seeing. ... Everything I say is based on a firm conviction. My opinion is shared by all my close friends from among the intelligentsia: doctors, engineers; lawyers, students."

Kaminskaia was expelled from both the university and the Komsomol, but it does appear that her views were widely shared by members of the Soviet intelligentsia well beyond her circle of friends. As the prominent film director M. I. Romm wrote to Stalin several years earlier,

{quote} Examining my feelings, I realized that for the past ten months I have been forced to recall my Jewish origins quite frequently, even though I had never thought about them during the previous twenty-five years of Soviet rule because I was born in Irkutsk, raised in Moscow, speak

{p. 310} only Russian, and have always felt completely Russian. So, if even people like me are beginning to wonder, the situation in our movie industry must be very alarming indeed, especially if one remcmbers that we are fighting against fascism, which has anti-Semitism emblazoned on its banner. {endquote}

For the first time since the revolution, the ethnically Jewish members of the Soviet elite were being attacked directly and unequivocally not because of some "alien elements" in their midst, as in 1937-38, but because they were ethnically Jewish. (My ethnically Russian father, who graduated from Moscow State University in 1949, could enroll in any graduate school he wished because his Jewish peers, a majority of the applicants, were not welcome. His "gentry origins" were no longer a factor; his "indigenous" nationality was.)

{p. 311} Even Pavel Sudoplatov, an ethnic Slav, top secret police official, and faithtul Party warrior, was confused and dismayed by the attack on the Jews. As the head of the security ministry department in charge of assassinations and sabotage, he had participated in numerous political "liquidations," but the only murder he unequivocally condemns in his memoirs is the murder of Mikhoels (with which, as he points out, he "fortunately" had nothing to do). ... some of Sudoplatov's best friends were Jews. The best of them all was his wife, Emma Kaganova, a professional agent provocateur who had spent most of her career reporting on Moscow intellectuals but had to retire as a lieutenant colonel in 1949 because of the anti-Jewish campaign. ...

{p. 313} The great alliance between the Jewish Revolution and Communism was coming to an end as a result of the new crusade against Jewish Communists. What Hitler could not accomplish, Stalin did, and as Stalin did, so did his representatives in other places. In the fall of 1952, a large show trial was staged in Czzechoslovakia. Eleven

{p. 314} of the accused, including the general secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Rudolf Slansk, were identified as ethnic Jews and accused of being agents of international Zionism and American imperialism.

Other Soviet dependencies had to follow suit, whether they wanted to or not. In Hungary, Romania, and Poland, a high proportion of the most sensitive positions in the Party apparatus, state administration, and especially the Agitprop, foreign service, and secret police were held by ethnic Jews, who had moved up the ranks because of their loyalty and now had to be squeezed out because of their nationality.

All three regimes resembled the Soviet Union of the 1920s insofar as they combined the ruling core of the old Communist underground, which was heavily Jewish, with a large pool of upwardly mobile Jewish professionals, who were, on average, the most trustworthy among the educated and the most educated among the trustworthy. There were important differences, however. On the one hand, the experience of World War II in East-Central Europe had made Jews the only possible candidates for some sensitive positions; on the other, the creation of the new Stalinist regimes had coincided with Stalin's discovery of Jewish untrustworthiness.

{endquote} More at http://mailstar.net/slezkine.html

(7) Serbian gay parade called off

From: Josef Schwanzer <donauschwob@optusnet.com.au> Date: 20.09.2009 01:25 AM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8264514.stm

Serbian gay parade is called off

A Gay Pride march in Serbia has been called off after police told organisers they could not guarantee its safety.

One of the organisers said Serbia's prime minister had urged them to switch Sunday's rally from central Belgrade, but the proposal was "unacceptable".

President Boris Tadic vowed on Friday to protect the participants.

Anti-gay groups had threatened violence if the march were allowed to go ahead. "We're expecting you" posters had been stuck around the Serbian capital.

"Pride parades are traditionally organised in the main streets of big cities," said one of the organisers, Dragana Vuckovic.

It is "unacceptable" to stage the parade in a "field", she told the media.

“ The Republic of Serbia has capitulated. We have not ”
Gay Pride organising committee

The decision had been taken after a meeting on Saturday with Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic.

Nationalist and religious leaders have opposed a Serbian bill banning discrimination against homosexuals.

The ultra-nationalist Serb Popular Movement 1389 hailed the cancellation of Sunday's march as "a great victory for normal Serbia".

"In our city infidels and Satanists will not pass," it added.

Homosexuality in Serbia is still far from accepted, says the BBC's Mark Lowen in Belgrade.

The gay scene is underground and members of the community are regularly the target of discrimination.

Belgrade's first gay parade in 2001 descended into chaos amid widespread violence by mobs of protesters - with television images of bleeding participants and police firing rubber bullets broadcast around the world.

The organising committee of the planned Sunday march will certainly keep up the pressure, says our correspondent.

"The state has failed the fundamental test," it says in a statement. "The next exam period is approaching fast. The Republic of Serbia has capitulated. We have not."

(8) Greens call for (pro-Putin) Chechen leader to be barred from Australia

'Ban blood-stained dictator from Cup'

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26099906-12377,00.html

September 20, 2009

Australian Associated Press

A "BLOOD-STAINED" dictator must be stopped from running a horse in the Melbourne Cup, the Greens say.Chechnyan President Ramzan Kadyrov is preparing his gelding Mourilyan for the Melbourne Cup, outraging activists who object to his human rights record.

Australian Greens leader Bob Brown called on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to ban Mr Kadyrov - and his horses - from the country.

Mr Kadyrov was a brutal dictator who had overseen the torture and suppression of his opponents, Senator Brown said.

"Can you imagine the appalling prospect of Governor-General Quentin Bryce being asked to hand a Melbourne Cup to the blood-stained hands of Mr Kadyrov?" Senator Brown said in Canberra.

"The very thought of him coming to the Melbourne Cup runs a shiver up my spine."

Senator Brown said Australia's leaders should stand up now and declare that neither Mr Kadyrov nor his horses would be allowed into the country.

Mourilyan is trained by England's Gary Moore. Mr Kadyrov has another horse in preparation for the spring carnival, the stallion Bankable listed for the Mackinnon Stakes.

(9) Trots call Semenya "an intersex woman"

The Caster Semenya case: sports and sexuality

Farida Iqbal
20 September 2009

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/811/41716

Eighteen-year-old South African athlete Caster Semenya has done nothing wrong. Yet she has been accused of deceiving the world about her gender. There is nothing wrong with Semenya’s body. Yet her body has been paraded in front of the world by the mass media as if she were a sideshow freak.

Semenya is a talented athlete. Yet her career is at stake.

Semenya won the 800 metres in the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Championships on August 19. She was accused by the international media of having won the race due to her unfair disadvantage of “really” being a man.

Semenya, like many other female athletes, has been subjected to sexist judgement of what a female body is supposed to look like.

Semenya is an intersex woman. But intersex women are not the only women who have been subjected to such scrutiny. The accusation of looking “too masculine” has always been used to degrade female athletes, including Martina Navratilova. For years the media focused on her highly developed biceps.

Semenya was subjected to invasive “gender tests” (actually testing biological sex, not gender). The test results were leaked to the international mass media. Australia’s Daily Telegraph was the first to run the story, revealing Semenya has internal testes and no womb. This may or may not be true. ...