Another sensless death in New York, although the cause is stupidity, pure and simple.

A Merchant Marine Cadet Is Killed While Subway Surfing

INHUMAN BASTARDS. How else do you describe car bombs attacking synagogues on the Sabbath? And one of these was attacked for the third time in 10 years! How do the congregants have the balls to pray there without having a team of green berets outside?

I wonder if the Turks will agonize over this for years just as we Americans do over the bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama church over 40 years ago? I doubt it.

UPDATE: Perhpas a miracle? "It appears that no one inside the synagogue was hurt," said journalist Andrew Finkel, adding that most of those killed were passersby." Not that I'm glad that passersby were killed, but wow.

James Lileks has a great quote regarding George Soros' comments about President Bush's America and his support for Howard Dean:

"I was tempted to write about George Soros comparing Bush and America to the rise of the Nazis, but I’ve just had it with these people. I’m more interested in those who ride the coattails of their rhetoric. I want someone to ask Dean this question in the Presidential debate: “Governor Dean, one of your wealthiest backers has compared America in 2000s with German in the 1930s. Do you agree with this analogy?� The only acceptable answer to my ears is “No, I don’t.� Period. "

I have to say I'm kind of glad that the head of the ADL's Interfaith Affairs is leaving. He's the one who's been responsible for all the fire and brimstone surrounding "The Passion", Mel Gibson's upcoming biography on the life of Jesus which some claim to be anti-Semitic.

I am always very uncomfortable when those "in the know" try to tell the public whether something is good or bad before a final product is completed. I also agree that Mr. Gibson got more publicity from the ADL's outrage than a full-page color add in the New York Times. I do believe this was an attempt at censorship which we should never stand for under any circumstances. How the ADL decided to take on one of America's most beloved male actors regarding material that couldn't be seen by the public at large is beyond my comprehension.

Here's a neat way to make a small difference in the world. You can also find out at the same time that either the New York Jets and Giants are among the least-loved teams in football, or New Yorkers are incredibly stingy. Go, make the free donation to Campbell Soup's Click-for-Cans campaign and you'll see what I mean.

Speaking of the Jets, can a new football stadium in Manhattan be in the works...for real?

Sometimes I think that Thomas Friedman is the most educated level-headed thinker on issues regarding the Middle East. There's other times like today, when I wonder what he's smoking. This is my first offical "fisking" of someone's work. If you don't know what that means, ask me in the comments and I'll be glad to tell you.

Friedman states that "One could easily do a revisionist history of 9/11 and show how it was simply the opening salvo in an attempted coup within Saudi Arabia - with the attack on America meant only as a bank shot to undermine one of the main supports of the Saudi ruling family." And the bombings in Africa, Bali, etc.? These were meant to threaten the Saudi royal family?

He writes further that "Some 26 years ago Anwar Sadat responded to the food riots in Egypt by going to Jerusalem to make peace with Israel." This doesn't seem to have prevented the Egyptian government from sponsoring anti-Semitism and producing miniseries based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

But wait there's more - "The way to reduce these fires - which will only worsen with the growth of Muslim populations in Europe - is by forging a solution to the Palestine issue along the lines of the Clinton plan. Nothing would do more to extinguish this new anti-Semitism than an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal". Does he mean the deal that Israel accepted and the Palestinians rejected out of hand?

And now the piece de resistance - "Unfortunately, right now both the House of Saud and the House of Sharon prefer to buy time by relying on police rather than political initiatives. In the long run, this won't work. Both need to take on their Wahhabis: the Muslim Wahhabi extremists who are choking Saudi Arabia's future and the Jewish Wahhabi settlers who are doing the same to Israel. " First he compares the democratically elected Sharon to the House of Saud, then he compares ALL settlers to Wahhabi extremists. I don't remmeber the last time I read about a school in the settlements teaching children to hate their neighbors and declare holy war against all Muslims.

I wonder if he thinks the Palestinians should have a say in any of this?

I am NOT little!

"Today, we can say that these little people (Jews) are the root of evil" says Mikis Theodorakis, famous Greek composer as Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos and Education Minister Petros Efthymiou listen without reaction of any kind.

Another country to add to the Axis of Anti-Semitism with France.

I thought that Delta Airline's name for it's new short-haul subsidiary, Song, was silly. But "Ted"? What is United thinking? Why not Clarence or Jim Bob?

I'm sure that the celebrities mentioned in this article think that their fellow Americans are a caring people, willing to help others in times of distress; that we are strong defenders of freedom and human dignity.

However what they SAY is that we're all dumb as horsesh**. Nice.

Thanks to an editorial by Ted Rall, syndicated cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I see that we've been wrong all along about Iraq - in fact we're just as evil as the Israelis! How could we have sunk so low!

It does fascinate me sometimes how someone who grew up in the same culture as I did has such a different view of the world than I do. We're not talking about having different ideas on how to fund Social Security - I mean seeing the U.S. government as evil and people who blow up Red Cross facilities as brave defenders of freedom? Talk about bizarro world....

Nicholas Kristof writes a rare commentary in the NY Times about how the left in this country are heading down the path to incivility and oblivion. From his op-ed piece:

In a fairly typical comment, one reader suggested that President Bush and his aides are "lying, cynical greedy pirates who deserve no better than a firing squad." At this rate, soon we'll all be so rabid that Ann Coulter will seem normal.

That's setting a pretty high bar for obnoxiousness. It's hard to find anyone can surpass it on either side of the political spectrum.

Until now, many in Saudi Arabia have supported terrorism against the U.S. since the ends justified the means. Now that they themselves are targets, their attitude seems to be changing.

This is why President Bush is right to call the current conflict a war against terrorism, not just a war against al-Qaeda. Unless terrorism in it's current form is stopped as a viable method of attack everywhere, things are bound to get worse for everyone on the planet. As opposed to the historical call against nuclear weapons use and proliferation which involves established states with some sort of desire for personal survival, the terrorists are actively seeking WMDs and don't care if they live to see the results of their use.

The U.S. isn't going to invade every country that disagrees with us, but if they support terrorists (and you know who you are), we're a-comin to git ya. The push for democracy is just the means by which we hope to deny terrorism a base from which to operate. It ain't altruism that's determining our policy.

As I walked toward the ferry that would take me to my hotel, I saw down the road this Traffic Light Tree. I'm still not sure if it's a sculpture or a working light, although I think it's the former. You can even see my office building in the background.

Cheerio from London, mate! Nothing much interesting going on here really. However, it is worth noting that the Michael Howard has been appointed as head of the Conservative Party (the Tories). He is the first Jew to head either England's Labour or Conservative parties - Benjamin D'Israeli who was prime minister had been baptized as a child.

Here's a quirk about the British parliamentary system that I love - the opposition party leader selects a "shadow cabinet" to mirror the existing cabinet appointed by the majority party. I think this would be a great idea for the U.S.

Well I'll be hopping the pond tomorrow and going to merry old England. Let's see what revelries await.....

Prince Charles accused of being homosexual (although British libel laws prevent the publication of much detail) and Is Charles Bisexual?

Cheeky council workers stunned motorists with rude road sign.

All kinds of excitement over Bush's visit the following week - most of it not good.

This is fantastic - a Church Sign Creator on the Internet. You know those signs you pass all the time with the cute sayings to get people to remember to believe in God and go to mass. This site let's you type in any four lines of text and it shows you what it would look like in front of a typical church. it's hard to explain, you just have to go there.

As much as I love books, I rarely spend a lot of money on "coffee table" books. Diaspora, though, seems like one of those that may well be worth it. Here's a nice write-up about it in my local paper, and here's the link to Amazon.com, where it's $30 off.

In constructing Berlin's Holocaust Memorial, is it just ironic or immoral that the company that made Zyklon-B (Degussa) plans to profit from the sale of anti-graffiti spray? To complicate matters, Degussa has supposedly been one of the most forthright companies regarding it's history of wartime activities. Read "The Price of Forgiveness" in today's New York Times.

Now, there could well be a very good reason for a Saudi man and unnamed female companion to be secretly videotaping a Jewish girls middle school, but I'm really stuck to think of a good one.

I would like to think that if I found this couple in my daughter's school that they would not have been able to make it to the parking lot, and boy had they better know how to speak English so that they could tell me exactly how far they would like me to shove that menorah up their....

But I digress.

I would most certainly stay abreast of the situation with the local authorities.

Last night I went to see Mary Blye Howe discuss her book "A Baptist Among the Jews" at the local JCC. I had read the book when it came out a couple of months ago and was intrigued by the insights that someone would have learning about Judaism not only from scratch, but with a previously held negative viewpoint.

What I found most interesting were her comments about how in many conservative Baptist churches, Jesus' break with the Pharisees and elders is taught as Jesus the Christian vs. the whole of the Jewish community as opposed to a Jew and his friends disagreeing with other Jews - therefore the thing about "all of us" killing Christ.

There was one woman in the audience who had the most obnoxious question of the night, basically accusing the author of not being able to love both the good in her Christian heritage and her newfound Judaism-based spirituality - telling her she had to choose one or the other but shouldn't claim to be able to enjoy the benefits of both. A lot of dirty looks followed, but no hissing. Mrs. Howe commented basically by saying that acceptance and sorting out of many ideas was better than rejecting everything outside of one's own immediate belief system regardless of what one believes.

In addition, I asked her what I could say to an evangelical Christian to get them to recognize me as a person practicing a valid religion instead of a target for conversion, and she said you can't do anything - they're to set in their ways like machines. That was very disheartening, but she herself had a very difficult time breaking away from that tradition herself and is still ostracized by a large segment of her own community outside of her particular church which is relatively liberal.

The best comment from the audience came when someone said that we should give the book to Children so that they can have a "Jew Among the Jews" experience since so few of us ever explore the various branches of our own faith.

There's a lot to learn here and it will reinforce your love and knowledge for the basic tenets of the religion as practiced by all Jews.