General News

Romney: "The war that's coming to kill all the Jews – our church believes that."

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Mitt Romney’s end-times theological beliefs have largely remained in the shadows during this election. However, a secretly-recorded video has resurfaced from Romney’s first presidential run, bringing renewed attention to Romney’s apocalyptic beliefs. The video, recorded in 2007, shows Romney arguing off-air with conservative radio host Jan Mickelson, who prods Romney about his Mormon beliefs and attempts to get Romney to admit how different Mormonism is from evangelicalism. Angrily and somewhat haltingly, Romney explains the LDS Church’s end-times theology, and how parts of its apocalyptic Second Coming theology aligns with evangelical teachings. While all of the video is worth viewing, the part in question begins at the 1:30 mark, in which Romney says:
Christ appears – it’s throughout the Bible – Christ appears in Jerusalem, splits the Mount of Olives to stop the war that’s coming in to kill all the Jews.

General News

Mitt Romney's Foreign Policy: A Just Peace Interpretation

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When I read Mitt Romney’s remarks at Virginia Military Institute (VMI), a statement of his foreign policy, I am stunned by his idea that the United States of America has the power to work its will in the world. He says: “it is our responsibility and the responsibility of the President to use America’s great power to shape history, not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events.” He says at the end of his remarks: “The 21st century can and must be an American century. It began with terror and war and economic calamity. It’s our duty to steer it onto the path of freedom and peace and prosperity.”

Environment

Sandra Steingraber's Living Downstream

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Living Downstream, first published in 1997, fell into my hands about ten years ago, only a few years after my own cancer diagnosis and loss of both parents to cancer. At that time I suspected that the cancer in my life and all around me had something to do with our poisoned environment. Steingraber’s book answered my questions about the connections between pollution and cancer and opened up a new world of understanding.

Culture

Israeli Filmmaker On Grandparents' Friendship with Nazi

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“The Flat” (Hadira) is so compelling that I couldn’t refuse when invited to meet this award-winning documentary film’s creator, Arnon Goldfinger, even as I prepare for my departure for Israel at the end of this week. It is clever and engaging, with light moments that flow naturally into what turns out to be a heavy and mysterious theme. The story begins almost exactly like another recent but very different Israeli Holocaust-related documentary, “Six Million and One,” with unexpected discoveries as family members clean out the Tel Aviv apartments of a recently deceased parent (in “Six Million…”) and of a 98 year-old grandmother (in “The Flat”). Filmmaker Arnon Goldfinger discovers clippings of a series of articles published in a Nazi newspaper in 1934 Germany, which provides a glowing account of a high-ranking Nazi official visiting Palestine, accompanied by none other than his own grandparents, Kurt and Gerda Tuchler. His grandfather was a Zionist representative who guided Leopold Itz von Mildenstein, an S.S. and S.D. (Nazi intelligence agency) bureaucrat on what resembled a typical tourist excursion to Palestine, along with their respective wives, seeming from the photographs to be thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.

General News

Sorting It Out: Yoga, Politics & Off the Mat, Into the World

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The Yoga service organization Off the Mat, Into the World recently garnered some heavy criticism (see: It’s All Yoga Baby, The Babarrazi, Nathan Thompson on Elephant Journal & Salon.com)  for co-organizing and participating in the Huffington Post’s “Oasis” at the Republican and Democratic Conventions. Receiving a hefty sum of $40,000 from the HuffPo, Seane’s yoga group spent a year organizing and co-curating this “Oasis,” a super plush center in the midst of the “madness” that provides “private and group yoga classes, massages, mini-facials, makeup refreshes, sleep consultations, meditation and healthy snacks.” Why? They “want the politicians who are making decisions on our behalf to be centered and well-rested, not harried and sleep deprived.” While I certainly understand the concerns raised by the numerous bloggers I think the issue is more complex than it has been made out to be.

art

It's Personal: Filmmaker Documents Father's Survival

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When I think of my parents’ tale of survival, and what they lost, the Holocaust becomes personal. It also has occurred to me that my father was never more savvy nor persevering in his life than when leading his young wife and her widowed aunt to safety in the United States: through countries under attack (Yugoslavia and Greece) and in rebellion (Iraq) to the other side of the world (British India), and back around the horn of Africa, up to the Americas and to New Jersey where they first settled. Sept. 28 marks the commercial debut of “Six Million And One,” David Fisher’s true-life depiction of his Israeli family coming to grips with how the Holocaust affected them. Twelve years after his survivor-father’s death, he discovers his diary of remembrances from his months of captivity, first deported from his home in Hungary to Auschwitz and then to the slave labor camps of Mauthausen-Gusen and Gunskirchen in Austria.

General News

Scott Brown's Racial Stereotyping of Elizabeth Warren

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Disturbingly absent from the analysis of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown’s rebuke at last week’s debate of Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren’s claim that she has Native American ancestry is any reference to the racially insensitive nature of his reproach. After noting that “Professor Warren claimed she was a Native American,” he added pointedly, “And as you can see, she’s not.” Which raises the obvious question: which of her facial features alerted Brown that she has no Native American blood coursing through her veins? Surely, if she possessed whatever tiny fraction of one’s DNA must trace back to an indigenous tribe before he or she is deemed to be Native American, she’d have shiny, jet-black hair or a tan complexion. Or was it the absence of beads or a feather and a headband that tipped Brown off?

General News

Obama's Chutzpah Is Catching Fire Among Jewish Democrats

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Last week, President Obama refused to rearrange his schedule in order to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who will be in New York for the U.N. General Assembly in the coming days. And Obama stood defiant when Israeli officials publicly and loudly complained that Netanyahu would not be granted a private meeting with the Commander-in-Chief. Predictably, Republicans have piled on, with Mitt Romney blasting Obama for not meeting Netanyahu. With the criticism mounting, and with Netanyahu himself starring in a right-wing political ad in Florida, now is the time Jewish Democrats (even progressives) would typically fold. For when forced to choose between supporting Obama and caving to AIPAC, most leading Jewish Democrats have chosen the latter.