40 Racketeering, money-laundering, organ-smuggling - is the Bible to blame? D.M. Murdock

(1) Brooklyn Rabbi arrested as human organ dealer. Pulled gun on 'donors' - only wanted his pound of flesh
(2) Rabbi Fraud Case: 'you could go to rabbis to get advice, financial or spiritual'
(3) Racketeering, money-laundering, organ-smuggling - is the Bible to blame? D.M. Murdock
(4) Hinduism on the rise in US; but (unlike Judaism) no bogus 'charities', no hand in the till
(5) German Politician Warns Israel: Settlements are Political 'Suicide'

(1) Brooklyn Rabbi arrested as human organ dealer. Pulled gun on 'donors' - only wanted his pound of flesh

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 03.08.2009 09:38 AM

Alleged Kidney Dealer Described as ''Thug'

Brooklyn Man Arrested for Organ Trafficking Reportedly Pulled Gun on Hesitant 'Donors'

CBS/AP  Friday, 24 July 2009

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/24/national/main5185902.shtml

NEW YORK — The Brooklyn man arrested for organ trafficking in connection with a massive federal corruption and money-laundering sting is described a "thug" who reportedly pulled a gun on kidney "donors" who were getting cold feet, according to a Daily News report Friday.

Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum allegedly bought kidneys from impoverished people overseas for $10,000 and turned them around for $160,000 in the US, according to the newspaper. His operation was first brought to the attention of the FBI seven years ago by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a University of California, Berkeley anthropologist who studied human organ trafficking.

She described Rosenbaum to the Daily News as "the main US broker for an international trafficking network." One of her sources, a man who worked with Rosenbaum, said he would pull a pistol on nervous kidney sellers, telling them "You're here. A deal is a deal. Now, you'll give us a kidney or you'll never go home."

Rosenbaum became part of the federal corruption probe, which netted more than 40 people, including rabbis and elected officeholders from New Jersey and New York, after an FBI informant crossed paths with him and learned of his organ trafficking operation.

The informant introduced Rosenbaum to an undercover agent whose uncle supposedly needed a kidney transplant. According to the report, Rosenbaum described himself as a "matchmaker" who pulled off "quite a lot" of transactions.

Arrests are headline news in Israel The scope of the probe extends well beyond Rosenbaum's trafficking operation, though. Tens of millions of dollars were allegedly laundered through religious charities and bribes were allegedly passed to New Jersey politicians, including three mayors, for shady development deals.

Local officials decried the 44 arrests Thursday as a remarkable number even for New Jersey, where more than 130 public officials have pleaded guilty or have been convicted of corruption since 2001.

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

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

The arrests were headline news in Israel on Friday morning, with the front pages of all three of the country's mass-circulation dailies featuring pictures of bearded ultra-Orthodox Jews being led away by law enforcement officials.

Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for Israel's national police force, said Friday that Israeli police were not involved in the investigation. He would not comment further.

Tens of millions laundered through Jewish 'charities'

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

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

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

Five rabbis among those arrested

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

Others arrested included building and fire inspectors, city planning officials and utilities officials, all of them accused of using their positions to further the corruption.

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

Hours after FBI agents seized documents from his home and office, New Jersey Community Affairs Commissioner Joseph Doria resigned. Federal officials would not say whether he would be charged. Doria did not return calls for comment.

Authorities did not identify the informant, described in court papers as a person "charged in a federal criminal complaint with bank fraud in or about May 2006." But the date matches up with an investigation that led to charges against Solomon Dwek, the son of a Deal rabbi.

$25-million bounced check

The younger Dwek was charged at the time in connection with a bounced $25-million check he deposited in a bank's drive-through window. He has denied the charges. Dwek's lawyer did not immediately return a call for comment Thursday.

Most of the defendants facing corruption charges were released on bail. The money-laundering defendants faced bail between $300,000 and $3 million, and most were ordered to submit to electronic monitoring.

Among those ensnared by the informant was Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, prosecutors said. The 32-year-old Cammarano, who won a runoff election last month, was accused of accepting money from the developer at a Hoboken diner.

"There's the people who were with us, and that's you guys," the complaint quotes Cammarano saying. "There's the people who climbed on board in the runoff. They can get in line. ... And then there are the people who were against us the whole way. ... They get ground into powder."

Cammarano was accused of accepting $25,000 in cash bribes. His attorney Joseph Hayden said his client is "innocent of these charges. He intends to fight them with all his strength until he proves his innocence."

(2) Rabbi Fraud Case: 'you could go to rabbis to get advice, financial or spiritual'

From: Josef Schwanzer <donauschwob@optusnet.com.au> Date: 05.08.2009 03:13 AM

Rabbi Fraud Case in Los Angeles Echoes N.J. Scandal (Update2)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a11MsZUxfduo

By Linda Sandler, David Voreacos and Edvard Pettersson

Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Prosecutors in Los Angeles leveled charges in 2007 that sound like headlines in a fresh New Jersey corruption scandal: Rabbis in Brooklyn, New York, laundered money for an undercover informant, arranged phony charitable gifts and used secret Israeli bank accounts.

In Los Angeles, U.S. prosecutors charged Naftali Tzi Weisz, grand rabbi of a Brooklyn-based Orthodox Jewish group, seven other people and five charities with a scheme to evade taxes through use of phony donations. Weisz and four other defendants pleaded guilty today.

The case may prove a window onto New Jersey’s scandal. Defendants in California were charged with tax fraud, an accusation not yet made in New Jersey, and prosecutors in Los Angeles have targeted 100 more co-conspirators. Later indictments in California also provided enhanced details of illegal methods and of people and banks involved.

“The 2007 charges were the beginning of a much larger case we’re investigating,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel O’Brien, who is overseeing the Los Angeles case.

The organization charged has worked with related religious groups “to move money internationally,” he said.

Spinka Scheme

The Weisz scheme lasted at least from 1996 to 2007, according to his indictment. Staff of his religious organization, Spinka, gave donors back 80 to 95 percent of their donations, keeping the rest for charities in the U.S. and Israel, according to the indictment.

The cash repayment cycle began as Weisz or his aides wired money from Spinka bank accounts to Israeli entities, identified in Weisz’s plea agreement as Bircas Asher and Tzidkat Levy Yitzchak Ltd.

From there, the money went to couriers in the Los Angeles jewelry district and elsewhere. Then it went to contributors or to Israeli bank accounts controlled by the donors, according to the indictment.

Even after paying Spinka a 20 percent commission, a donor in a 30 percent tax bracket would come out ahead, keeping $80,000 of a $100,000 donation in cash and getting $30,000 because of the offset of the tax deduction.

The underground network maintained by Weisz and his associates also paid debts for clients, encouraging the smuggling of cash outside of legitimate banking channels, according to the indictment.

Sentence Agreement

Weisz, 61, pleaded guilty today to one count of conspiracy. He faces as long as three years in prison under his plea agreement. U.S. District Judge John F. Walter said at the hearing today in Los Angeles that he will read the pre- sentencing report before deciding whether to accept the sentence range agreed to by Weisz and prosecutors. If Walter rejects that agreement, Weisz can withdraw his guilty plea.

The maximum sentence under the law would be five years in prison, prosecutors said.

Walter scheduled sentencing for Nov. 16. Brian Hennigan, Weisz’s lawyer, declined to comment after the hearing.

Four men, Yaacov Zeivald, Moshe Arie Lazar, Yosef Nachum Naiman and Alan Jay Freidman, also pleaded guilty today before Walter. They admitted to participating in an unlicensed money transmitting network that funneled the fraudulent Spinka donations back to the people who had made them.

All four Los Angeles-area men have an agreement with prosecutors that caps their possible prison sentences to no more than six months.

A Spinka school, Yeshiva Imrei Yosef, is expected to enter a guilty plea later this week. The four other Spinka organizations charged in the indictment also signed a “case disposition agreement.”

Rabbi’s Plea

A Weisz aide, Rabbi Moshe Zigelman of Brooklyn, previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced to two years in prison. Joseph Roth, a banker in Tel Aviv with United Mizrahi Bank, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced to time served. A third man, a donor, also pleaded guilty.

The rabbis charged in Los Angeles are Hasidic, part of a movement founded in the Ukraine by Ashkenazi Jews. The New Jersey case involved rabbis and co-conspirators who are Sephardic with ancestors from Syria.

“People always knew you could go to rabbis to get advice, financial or spiritual,” said Sam Antar, a Syrian Jew who served six months of house arrest for his role in Crazy Eddie Inc.’s securities fraud in the 1980s.

The electronics retailer used an Israeli hospital to generate phony charitable tax deductions, Antar said in an interview. Antar has taught classes on white-collar crime for government agencies, including the Justice Department and the Secret Service.

On July 23, U.S. prosecutors in Newark, New Jersey, charged five Syrian Jewish rabbis with using payments to charitable groups to launder money. The five Syrian rabbis charged in New Jersey were among 44 defendants in a case that involved people charged with political corruption, including three mayors and two state assemblymen.

Laundering Network

The Syrian rabbis’ financial network laundered “at least tens of millions of dollars” through charitable entities in New York and New Jersey, prosecutors said in a statement last month. Some of the money moved through Israel, prosecutors said. One defendant recorded by investigators said he’d been laundering money for 30 years, according to his criminal complaint.

Prosecutors in New Jersey used a cooperating witness, Solomon Dwek, to infiltrate the money-laundering network, according to three people familiar with the matter. Dwek is a rabbi’s son and New Jersey real estate developer charged in 2006 with scheming to defraud PNC Bank out of $50 million.

In Los Angeles, prosecutors used a California businessman charged in a separate criminal case, Robert Kasirer, to help gather evidence secretly, according to court documents. Kasirer laundered $1.65 million through Spinka for a 7.5 percent fee, or $123,750, using an Israeli bank, court records show.

Matthew Umhofer, Kasirer’s lawyer, didn’t return a call and e-mail requesting comment. Michael Himmel, a lawyer for Dwek, didn’t return calls or e-mails requesting comment.

Soul Searching

The cases in both Los Angeles and New Jersey brought soul- searching in the Jewish community. In a court filing before his March 30 sentencing, Zigelman, a son of Holocaust survivors, said he pleaded guilty even as the Spinka leadership fought the charges.

“Mr. Zigelman continued his courageous attempt to atone for his actions by repeatedly telling his story to others in the Hasidic and Jewish community,” according to his sentencing memo. “While others might have tried to hide their shame, Mr. Zigelman saw it as an opportunity to educate, and help, others in the community.”

The case is U.S. v. Weisz, 06-cr-775, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles)

To contact the reporters on this story: Linda Sandler in New York at lsandler@bloomberg.net; David Voreacos in U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net; Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: August 3, 2009 19:37 EDT

(3) Racketeering, money-laundering, organ-smuggling - is the Bible to blame? D.M. Murdock

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 06.08.2009 04:26 PM

D.M. Murdock

Does the Old Testament foster corruption?

July 25, 3:18 PM

http://www.examiner.com/x-17009-Freethought-Examiner~y2009m7d25-Does-the-Old-Testament-foster-corruption

The recent arrest and indictment of several - 19 according to one source - members of Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and New Jersey on racketeering, money-laundering and organ-smuggling charges reminds us that this is not the first time Orthodox Jews have allegedly engaged in financial and other crimes.

In 2007, the Grand Rabbi of the Spinka sect of Orthodox Judaism, also located in New York, was indicted on tax fraud and money laundering, along with "several other defendants and five Spinka charities," according to the Los Angeles Times. In March 2009, one of the co-conspirators in that case, Rabbi Moshe Zigelman, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for these crimes. Unfortunately, the list goes on, with rampant sexual abuse charges as well within these tight-knit communities.

The resentment within the Orthodox Jewish community itself concerning such activities is clear from the resultant commentary by one of their own in an "Open Letter to the Money-Grubbing Jews" by Ben Sales, published in the National Jewish Student Magazine:

"Because you make me look bad, me and everyone else who wears a kippah, a long skirt and long sleeves, a black hat, a t-shirt with Hebrew writing on it, a necklace with a silver chai. Every kid who goes to Jewish school and Jewish camp, every college student who attends Hillel, every Zionist and post-Zionist, Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Reform, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Hasidic, secular must now bear the brunt of those who read of your exploits and think: there’s another Shylock, another Madoff, another Jew for whom the bottom line is more important than his own community."

Sales adds, "This concept, as I would think you know, is called a chillul hashem, a desecration of God’s name."

The "Good Book?"

This seemingly pervasive problem of "desecrating God's name" may lie not necessarily in the apparent corruptability of so many individual rabbis and other members of the Orthodox Jewish community but within the very scriptures themselves that create such religions, sects and cults. In this regard, it is clear from biblical traditions and dictates that "chosen people" are to be rewarded by God for their piety by being given the booty of "the nations," i.e., non-Jewish lands. Consider the following scriptures from the Old Testament part of the Bible, called in Judaism the "Tanakh" - which, as in Christianity, is considered by Orthodox Jews to be "God's Word":

For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth." (Deuteronomy 7:6)

When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the LORD your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourseves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you. Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save nothing that breathes..." (Deuteronomy 20:10-16)

He [the Jew] should not press his fellow [Jew] for payment ...the foreigner [Gentile] you may press for payment." (Deuteronomy 15: 2-3)

You must not make your brother pay interest, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything on which one may claim interest. You may make a foreigner [Gentile] pay interest but your brother [fellow Jew] you must not make pay interest." (Deuteronomy 23: 19-20)

Foreigners (Gentiles) shall rebuild your walls, and their kings shall minister to you ...Your gates shall be open continuously; day and night they shall not be shut; that men may bring to you the wealth of the nations, with their kings led in procession. For the nation or kingdom that will not not serve you; shall perish; those nations shall be utterly laid waste...." (Isaiah 60:10-12)

You shall suck the milk of nations, you shall suck the breast of kings; and you shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob." (Isaiah 60:16)

And strangers [Gentiles] shall stand and feed your flocks, strangers shall be your plowmen and vinedressers; but you shall be called the priests of the LORD, men shall speak of you as the ministers of our God; you shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory." (Isaiah 61:5-6)

Lest we underestimate the scope and influence of such Jewish writings within their own community, let us consider the experience by a dear friend of mine, now deceased, who was born and raised within the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York. Her father was a rabbi who had survived Auschwitz. Yet, she - a very lovely, intelligent, kind and generous individual - felt the need to escape from the oppression of her community, which made her shave her head, marry a man she did not love and suffer assorted other indignities and deprivations, including being barred from studying the Jewish text called the Talmud because she was a female. My friend was very aware of this exclusion because she knew how important that book was to her community, as she used to hide behind the door listening to her father teach it to the younger men.

The Talmud - which is not "Holy Writ" in itself but which frequently cites the Tanakh/Old Testament - is one of the most important texts within Orthodox Judaism. Not only did this exhaustive legal text take centuries to compile but it is pored over endlessly by Orthodox Jewish rabbis. Along with the Tanakh, the Talmud is repeatedly consulted for the very minutest details of orthodox Jewish life. As Jewish apologist Herman Wouk says in This is My God (181):

The Talmud is not only an encyclopedia of law but a work of folk art, a hymn to the Lord rising out of many generations of men who spent their lives in the quest for him. This quest for God, the confident search for the holy in every busy detail of life, is its grand single theme. The Talmud recaptures a long golden age of intelligence and insight, and it is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs, or ceremonies we observe - whether we are orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or merely spasmodic sentimentalists - we follow the Talmud. It is our common law."

Following are some quotes from the Soncino edition of the Talmud:

...R. Hanina also said: He who smites an Israelite on the jaw, is as though he had thus assaulted the Divine Presence; for it is written, one who smiteth man [i.e. an Israelite] attacketh the Holy One. (Sanhedrin 58b)

It was taught: R. Judah used to say, A man is bound to say the following three blessings daily: "[Blessed art thou...] who hast not made me a heathen, [non-Jew]" ".... who hast not made me a woman"; and "... who hast not made me a brutish man."... (Menachoth 43b-44a)

And he who desires that none of his vows made during the year shall be valid, let him stand at the beginning of the year and declare, ‘Every vow which I may make in the future shall be null.1 [HIS VOWS ARE THEN INVALID,] PROVIDING THAT HE REMEMBERS THIS AT THE TIME OF THE VOW. (Nedarim 23b)

These are but a few of the passages in the Talmud that reflect an "anti-goyim" or accountability-shirking attitude. Indeed, within both the Talmud and Tanakh appears a disturbing amount of material that foments xenophobia - the "stranger-fear" so evident from the clannishness of these communities - and apparently fosters corruption in the form of "sucking the milk" and "eating the wealth of the nations." This attitude can also be found in various quotes from Jewish leaders over the centuries, revealing that this mentality definitely does exist.

The question is why? Is it all blameable as a reaction to perceived "anti-Semitism?" Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Certainly, the Old Testament record of Israelites rampaging through the "Holy Land" and slaughtering non-Jews to steal their booty and virgin girls occurred long before "anti-Semitism" was ever conceived.

If people are programmed from birth with these various "religious" texts - some of which are said to be the very "Word of God" - is it any wonder they will behave in this manner? Defenders of such writings claim that these prejudicial parts are "taken out of context" and constitute only a small portion of the massive texts. Regarding this "out of context" quote mining, Wouk (181) also states:

In a word, one can say almost anything about this tape recording of the talk of wise men through seven centuries, and then find a passage to support it. The enemies of Judaism in all ages have snipped out the harshest, strangest patches they could find, run them together, and offered the result to the world as the true face of the Jews' mystery book. The same technique could make a preposterous dummy of the New Testament or of the Old, of the works of Plato, Shakespeare, or Dickens, or the utterances of our American presidents."

These contentions are somewhat true, in that some of the passages used by Talmud-bashers are certainly taken out of context and paraphrased poorly, and that there is much more to the Talmud. But in light of the "holier-than-thou" attitude frequently developed by the most pious, can we really just ignore the effects that these "relatively few" bigoted writings have upon the human mind, particularly when searching for a source for the corruption of so many leaders of the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and when factoring in the numerous scriptures from the Old Testament/Tanakh cited above that clearly dictate megalomania and hegemony?

Instead of conditioning children with anachronistic, ethnocentric and prejudicial "scriptures" from ancient times, let us portray and recreate humanity in a more evolved manner. The solution is not to pit culture against culture, with shrill cries using "hate speech," but to provide less hate speech in the first place in our "holy texts," which need either to be rewritten or to be scrapped entirely in favor of more enlightened creations.

(4) Hinduism on the rise in US; but (unlike Judaism) no bogus 'charities', no hand in the till

http://www.examiner.com/x-17009-Freethought-Examiner~y2009m7d28-Hinduism-in-America-on-the-rise

Hinduism in America on the rise

July 28, 12:35 PM

D.M. Murdock

Festivities in a new temple dedicated to the Indian monkey god Hanuman  in Frisco, Texas, earlier this month remind us that a minority of religions exists within the shores of the United States that is relatively silent. The faith that is the subject here, of course, is Hinduism, which in that North Texas town, at least, is enjoying an "expanding population," according to the Dallas Morning News. Despite the fact that Indians have been quietly enriching the American melting pot for decades to centuries, few non-Indians know much about the colorful religion of Hinduism.

In actuality, the term "Hinduism" represents not a monolithic faith but a conglomeration of more or less varied religions, sects and cults largely originating on the Indian subcontinent and often incorporating beliefs, doctrines and traditions dating back several thousand years. What we perceive of as "Hinduism," then, encompasses and embraces a wide variety of beliefs, to the extent that even recent icons such as Elvis Presley, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa have reputedly made it into the extensive Hindu pantheon of a traditional "333 million" deities, demigods and saints, etc. As the national newspaper of India, The Hindu, reports (11/27/03):

    KHUSHBOO'S HAD it, Amitabh's had it, Bob Marley's had it and now Elvis Presley and Princess Diana will get one each. An award? No, too boring. A temple, no less."

According to his hairdresser-cum-spiritual advisor Larry Geller, the "King of Rock and Roll" Presley, who was raised a Christian, was fond of reading books about Eastern spiritual traditions. The affection for Indian philosophy by members of the music group the Beatles is legendary, especially in the case of George Harrison. Many Indian gurus and yogis have found welcome on this side of the Atlantic and Pacific, and the ancient physical and spiritual exercise of yoga in a myriad of forms is practiced by up to 20 million Americans.

Yet, Hinduism remains a mystery to most Americans, both at times intriguing and bizarre with its sundry gods and goddesses. Part of the reason for this oversight is because Hinduism in its fullness seems so alien to cultures largely dominated by either the Abrahamic faiths with their aloof monotheistic God or the "New Atheism," which has a tendency to ridicule and dismiss such lively piety, and not necessarily without reason.

Another reason Americans as whole are largely oblivious to Hinduism is because its practitioners in general do not rabblerouse, set up terrorist camps, call for the destruction of the U.S. Constitution, bilk the American public for millions, establish bogus "charities," engage in unethical and seedy "televangelism," lobby Congress for special favors and consideration, challenge constantly the principle of separation of church and state, abuse the First Amendment and all of the fun stuff (sarcasm) we are used to seeing from fervent religionists in our country and elsewhere.

This lack of aggression by Hindus in America does not reflect that they do not take their faith very seriously, as they certainly do. Like Christians who proclaim that Jesus Christ is real because they have had visions of him, devout Hindus often feel as if their deities have made their very real presence known, as in the case of Cheeni Rao, author of In Hanuman's Hands, who while going down the destructive path of drug abuse was "saved" by the monkey-headed god. Rao's experience was every bit as life changing as that of Christians in a similar position - and this instance illustrates that the form of a profound spiritual presence purportedly experienced is largely if not entirely dependent upon one's cultural conditioning, not upon any "ultimate reality" or "absolute truth."

"Hinduism" as a monolith has its flaws - and non-Hindus both religious and secular will no doubt point them out - including taking itself too seriously to the point where, in its native land, a certain amount of strife and atrocity can be traced to Indian beliefs, such as the rare but ongoing practice of widow-burning or sati in various districts, as well as other sexism, prejudices - exemplified in the brutal caste system - and violence committed by its fanatical minority. The grinding poverty, cruel bigotry and debilitating superstition that Hinduism has not only failed to solve but has actually fostered in India - there are many problems with this ancient religion as practiced overall in that nation, and we are not advocating its adoption by anyone as the "one true faith."

However, we would like to emphasize the civil behavior of Hinduism's better educated adherents in the United States. While some "enlightened gurus" have been opportunists preying on a gullible American public with enticing stories of metaphysical and supernatural wonders, so far traditional Hinduism's practitioners generally have not brought unsavory and violent "traditions" along with them to their new homelands and demanded they be allowed to break the law of the land in practicing them, unlike members of other faiths. If there comes a point when Hinduism in America degenerates to the same fanatical state it is in India, then it will need to be assailed further as a source of unethical and corrupt behavior.

In the meantime, we can only hope that other religionists in the United States and elsewhere will follow suit and behave in a similar, more spiritually mature manner as the American Hindu population, rather than bullying and elbowing their way in, exploiting the system and creating enmity. Rarely if ever do we hear complaints or derogatory news items about Hindus in America, while members of other groups such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam often make it into the news for disreputable and illegal behavior. Does this frequent broadcasting of these three faiths result because they are under a bigger microscope, or could there be a problem with the Abrahamic monotheism itself, whereby it insists on its own way, to compel and force itself upon people against their will, with dire threats of eternal punishment for rejecting it?

Concerning the fanatical monotheism depicted in the Old Testament, from which the Abrahamic faiths arose, in Pagan Christs (17-18) John M. Robertson remarked:

    Monotheism of this type is in any case morally lower than polytheism since those who held it lacked sympathy for their neighbors. Most of the Jewish kings were polytheists. What I am concerned to challenge is the assumption - due to the influence of Christianity - that Jewish monotheism is essentially higher than polytheism, and constitutes a great advance in religion.... If the mere affirmation of a Supreme Creator God is taken to be a mark of superiority, certain primitive tribes who hold this doctrine and yet practice human sacrifice must be considered to have a 'higher' religion than the late Greeks and Romans."

Monotheism in America will simply need to become accustomed to the fact that this country is inhabited by polytheists such as the Hindus as well as atheists, humanists and secularists, and to stop being so aggressive and insistent upon its own way. That's America under the U.S. Constitution, a fact that freedom lovers everywhere will appreciate.

(5) German Politician Warns Israel: Settlements are Political 'Suicide'

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org>  Date: 08.08.2009 05:03 PM

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,637280,00.html

07/21/2009

SETTLEMENT CONSTRUCTION
German Politician Warns Israel against Political 'Suicide'

A leading German politician with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party is warning Israel to cease its settlement-building activities in Jerusalem. If it doesn't, there will be little chance for a two-state solution and Israel will be committing political "suicide," he warns.

REUTERS

Workers examine blueprints at a construction site in a settlement near Jerusalem.
A top conservative German politician is making headlines on Tuesday for his unusually sharp stance against Israel's settlement-building policies. Ruprecht Polenz, who is chairman of the Bundestag's foreign policy committee and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union party, has warned Israel that it will be committing "political suicide" if it doesn't cease construction of settlements in the Palestinian territories.

If the government in Jerusalem continues with construction, Polenz told the Düsseldorf daily Rheinische Post, it would run the danger "of gradually committing suicide as a democratic state."

Israel's goal of living within secure borders, he warned -- speaking as a "friend of Israel" -- will only be possible with a two-state solution. And that, he said, would only be conceivable if East Jerusalem could be used as the capital of a Palestinian state. With its continuing settlement construction efforts, Polenz argued, Israel is attempting to cut East Jerusalem off from the West Bank.

In doing so, he cautioned, Israel was overlooking the fact that neither the Palestinians nor the Arab states would accept a solution without East Jerusalem. In Islam, Jerusalem is the third most important holy city after Mecca and Medina.