SPECIAL POST

GROSS IRREGULARITIES ON THE PART OF THE TZFAT (SAFED), ISRAEL MUNICIPALITY DURING THE WAR WITH LEBANON

It's high time that this was made widely known outside Israel. I am ashamed of myself for having hesitated to broadcast this information earlier. My son was in the army and I was constrained to keep my silence.

Now that he has been released from the army, I searched for, and found, the message below, addressed to a cousin, in which I described the rip off on the part of the Municipal workers of Tzfat (Safed) during the Lebanon war last summer.

I'm making up for that mistake now and will make this known outside Israel because NO ONE HAS BEEN PROSECUTED OR EVEN CENSURED even though it is known exactly who the perpetrators are and a report, including the personal reports of those who suffered during the war as a result of what you will read below, was served to the State Ombudsman.

The workers at the Tzfat Municipality continue to work (usually until about 13:00 - that's supposed to be full-time) with the same sense of security, entitlement and lavishing "extras" on themselves that they did before the war in Lebanon - even as the City of Tzfat is on the verge of economic collapse and a programme of financial "recovery" so draconian is being discussed that we may not have lights in the streets at night or regular garbage removal.

Getting back to what happened during the war with Lebanon last summer:

1) 1000 of the 5000 meals that were donated by a charity went unaccounted for every day. The worker at the Municipality who was in charge of distribution told local reporters that he was told to put the 1000 meals aside daily and to leave no written record as to having received them.

2) A truck load full of air conditioners that were donated for the poorly-ventilated, sweltering bomb shelters vanished into, well, thin air.

3) Ditto for the TVs that were donated. In contradistinction, the workers of the Municipality (that is, the 17 out of 350 who didn't desert the city entirely) arranged deluxe, "VIP" shelters for themselves, replete with color TV, A/C and Internet.

4) The free days in hotels, including free meals, that were donated by the hotels themselves and were specifically designated for the infirm and elderly first and foremost were, instead, used by workers in the Municipality. As the result of not getting one of those rooms, one woman whose 8-year-old handicapped, wheelchair-bound daughter, who must be kept in sterile conditions, contracted an infection and had to be hospitalized. Some relative of some worker of the City got the room that little girl should have had. No matter, eventually she got a nice room - in the hospital.

5) A huge number of disposable diapers that was donated likewise disappeared. What the hell can someone do with tons of nappies???

As a result of most of the Municipality workers running for the own lives and leaving us here to die, the army sent in a regiment of reserve soldiers to run the city. They did an exemplary job of handling the exigencies, but the danger of the precedent of being deserted by the democratically-elected government of the city and being governed almost entirely by high-ranking officers in the army need not be elaborated upon.

I am LIVID. I am also mobilized and galvanized to speak up about this.


RECENT DEVELOPMENTS SINCE I FIRST DISSEMINATED THIS:

I received the e-mail message below from a member of the Tzfat Municipality. As the English is so poor, I thought it was spam and almost deleted it. Just as I was about to, I realized the name was vaguely familiar.

I opened it and found the following message, which, I have checked with a lawyer to make sure that I can repost it. I am fully within my legal rights to do so.

This is the content of the message:

Subject: "EVEN DO U R PROBABLY RIGHT

HI DOREEN I HAVE BEEN READING U R ARTICLE ABOUT THE THEFT DURING THE WAR AND EVEN DO U R PROBABLY RIGHT THAT THIS MAYOR AND WORKERS R CORRUPT U R EFFECTING OUR FUTURE REHABILITATION OF THE CITY I ASK U TO CONSIDER TAKING DOWN THE ARTICLE"

I fail to see entirely how keeping this information quiet will positively affect the "rehabilitation of the city".

I am of the opinion that the only thing that will rehabilitate the city is the prosecution of all those who were involved, and a complete revamping of the Municipality and how the city is run.

At this juncture, I will keep the name of the member of the Municipality to myself. However, during the course of the upcoming campaign; I may decide to publish the letter, with the name, including a translation.

If this person decides to run for Mayor of Tzfat, or openly supports a candidate; I will publish this letter with his name asking why this person is defending people who left residents of Tzfat for dead during the war.

Someone on the Tzfat Yahoo! list described me as "incorruptible". Evidently, the person who wrote that e-mail to me does not know the meaning of the word 'incorruptible' in English, or is so deep into politics that he has no concept what the meaning is at all.

But I am incorruptible and I'm going to keep on keeping on with this campaign to bring the events of last summer in Tzfat to international light.

Instead of taking his suggestion, I sent the text of "Dirty, Stinking, Tzfat Laundry" to every related charity organization, major Jewish newspaper in the US, Europe and elsewhere as well as to major news services internationally - mentioning the fact that I had been contacted by a member of the Tzfat Municipality who thinks that I should be quiet about having been left to die in order to rehabilitate the city.

If you can read Hebrew, read the synopsis of the recent State Comptroller's recent report here: http://tinyurl.com/2gzjll

If you cannot read it, it says that about a BILLION shekels in donations were received by the Northern part of Israel during the war with Lebanon last summer.

A large part of that did not go toward the intended purposes.

Let that sink in, a billion shekels is largely unaccounted for, while people were left TO DIE, abandoned by the Tzfat Municipality, except for 17 members (out of 350). My husband and I are two of those people.

Meanwhile, the city of Tzfat is in such economic straits that the education budget has been cut to the bone, our street lights will be turned off after 1:00; garbage collection will be reduced; social services have been drastically reduced; the cultural centers, which house the libraries, are closed...

I am making an international issue of this for the sake of justice and justice alone. Those who know me know I have no political or personal ambitions.

My only interest is that the perpetrators are brought to justice and that the money supply that keeps this corruption going is dried up.

I ask you to contribute to the betterment of Tzfat. I ask you to notify all of your loved ones and friends about what transpired here. Tell them to make the issue known in their local newspapers, other media, synagogues and communities.

As you can see from the response of this politician, politicians react to exposure. They don't like it. It is our most effective tool in the fight against corruption. Put the spotlight on them. Do not be afraid of them. Make them afraid of you. Politicians are very afraid of the truth coming to light. Let this ugly, ugly truth come to light.

There may be another war coming and it is expected, if it does occur, to be far worse than the last. If you do nothing to insure your safety, you can expect, without a shadow of a doubt, to be abandoned and stolen from again in the event of war.

If they get away with it once, they will be even more brazen next time.

We must make an international issue of this. By now, the report of the State Comptroller has most certainly been handed over to the Office of the Prime Minister. The State Comptroller can not do anything personally. All he or she can do is report the facts and known and recommend action. Nothing has been done inside Israel – and nothing will.

We must, MUST, take this story to the world - it is a story so shocking that it will make international waves if it is known.

Don't let the politicians fool you. This is the only way to rehabilitate the city.

Don't let there be a next time. Your life and the lives of your loved ones depend on the actions you take now. Believe it. The Municipality of Tzfat and the complicity of the national government have already proven that. We can only depend upon ourselves. No one else cares.

I have contacted many Jewish organizations, charities, synagogues and newspapers. I would appreciate the names of any that you think may have donated to Israel during the war or that may need to know this story.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

If you can read Hebrew, read this:

דו"ח המבקר: לאן הלכו התרומות לצפון

כמיליארד שקל הועברו כתרומות ליישובי הצפון במהלך מלחמת לבנון השנייה - אך מדו"ח המבקר עולה כי לעתים התרומות לא שימשו כלל למטרות הקשורות למערכה. למה כן

Source http://tinyurl.com/yvceqd

About a billion, a BILLION, shekels in donations went to the North during the war, much of it was not used for what it was intended for WHILE THEY LEFT US TO DIE.

Where is it???

Why is the city in such desperate economic straits???


Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

DIRTY, FILTHY, STINKING TZFAT, ISRAEL LAUNDRY

It's high time that this was made widely known outside Israel. I am ashamed of myself for having hesitated to broadcast this information earlier. My son was in the army and I was constrained to keep my silence.

Now that he has been released from the army, I searched for, and found, the message below, addressed to a cousin, in which I described the rip off on the part of the Municipal workers of Tzfat (Safed) during the Lebanon war last summer.

I'm making up for that mistake now and will make this known outside Israel because NO ONE HAS BEEN PROSECUTED OR EVEN CENSURED even though it is known exactly who the perpetrators are and a report, including the personal reports of those who suffered during the war as a result of what you will read below, was served to the State Ombudsman.

The workers at the Tzfat Municipality continue to work (usually until about 13:00 - that's supposed to be full-time) with the same sense of security, entitlement and lavishing "extras" on themselves that they did before the war in Lebanon - even as the City of Tzfat is on the verge of economic collapse and a programme of financial "recovery" so draconian is being discussed that we may not have lights in the streets at night or regular garbage removal.

Getting back to what happened during the war with Lebanon last summer:

1) 1000 of the 5000 meals that were donated by a charity went unaccounted for every day. The worker at the Municipality who was in charge of distribution told local reporters that he was told to put the 1000 meals aside daily and to leave no written record as to having received them.

2) A truck load full of air conditioners that were donated for the poorly-ventilated, sweltering bomb shelters vanished into, well, thin air.

3) Ditto for the TVs that were donated. In contradistinction, the workers of the Municipality (that is, the 17 out of 350 who didn't desert the city entirely) arranged deluxe, "VIP" shelters for themselves, replete with color TV, A/C and Internet.

4) The free days in hotels, including free meals, that were donated by the hotels themselves and were specifically designated for the infirm and elderly first and foremost were, instead, used by workers in the Municipality. As the result of not getting one of those rooms, one woman whose 8-year-old handicapped, wheelchair-bound daughter, who must be kept in sterile conditions, contracted an infection and had to be hospitalized. Some relative of some worker of the City got the room that little girl should have had. No matter, eventually she got a nice room - in the hospital.

5) A huge number of disposable diapers that was donated likewise disappeared. What the hell can someone do with tons of nappies???

As a result of most of the Municipality workers running for the own lives and leaving us here to die, the army sent in a regiment of reserve soldiers to run the city. They did an exemplary job of handling the exigencies, but the danger of the precedent of being deserted by the democratically-elected government of the city and being governed almost entirely by high-ranking officers in the army need not be elaborated upon.

I am LIVID. I am also mobilized and galvanized to speak up about this.


RECENT DEVELOPMENTS SINCE I FIRST DISSEMINATED THIS:

I received the e-mail message below from a member of the Tzfat Municipality. As the English is so poor, I thought it was spam and almost deleted it. Just as I was about to, I realized the name was vaguely familiar.

I opened it and found the following message, which, I have checked with a lawyer to make sure that I can repost it. I am fully within my legal rights to do so.

This is the content of the message:

Subject: "EVEN DO U R PROBABLY RIGHT

HI DOREEN I HAVE BEEN READING U R ARTICLE ABOUT THE THEFT DURING THE WAR AND EVEN DO U R PROBABLY RIGHT THAT THIS MAYOR AND WORKERS R CORRUPT U R EFFECTING OUR FUTURE REHABILITATION OF THE CITY I ASK U TO CONSIDER TAKING DOWN THE ARTICLE"

I fail to see entirely how keeping this information quiet will positively affect the "rehabilitation of the city".

I am of the opinion that the only thing that will rehabilitate the city is the prosecution of all those who were involved, and a complete revamping of the Municipality and how the city is run.

At this juncture, I will keep the name of the member of the Municipality to myself. However, during the course of the upcoming campaign; I may decide to publish the letter, with the name, including a translation.

If this person decides to run for Mayor of Tzfat, or openly supports a candidate; I will publish this letter with his name asking why this person is defending people who left residents of Tzfat for dead during the war.

Someone on this list described me as "incorruptible". Evidently, the person who wrote that e-mail to me does not know the meaning of the word 'incorruptible' in English, or is so deep into politics that he has no concept what the meaning is at all.

But I am incorruptible and I'm going to keep on keeping on with this campaign to bring the events of last summer in Tzfat to international light.

Instead of taking his suggestion, I sent the text of "Dirty, Stinking, Tzfat Laundry" to every related charity organization, major Jewish newspaper in the US, Europe and elsewhere as well as to major news services internationally - mentioning the fact that I had been contacted by a member of the Tzfat Municipality who thinks that I should be quiet about having been left to die in order to rehabilitate the city.

You all know that I care nothing for politics and am not doing this in order to gain political capital for myself.

I am making an international issue of this for the sake of justice and justice alone.

I ask you to contribute to the betterment of Tzfat. I ask you to notify all of your loved ones and friends about what transpired here. Tell them to make the issue known in their local newspapers, other media, synagogues and communities.

As you can see from the response of this politician, politicians react to exposure. They don't like it. It is our most effective tool in the fight against corruption. Put the spotlight on them. Do not be afraid of them. Make them afraid of you. Politicians are very afraid of the truth coming to light. Let this ugly, ugly truth come to light.

There may be another war coming and it is expected, if it does occur, to be far worse than the last. If you do nothing to insure your safety, you can expect, without a shadow of a doubt, to be abandoned and stolen from again in the event of war.

If they get away with it once, they will be even more brazen next time.

We must make an international issue of this. By now, the report of the State Comptroller has most certainly been handed over to the Office of the Prime Minister. The State Comptroller can not do anything personally. All he or she can do is report the facts and known and recommend action. Nothing has been done inside Israel – and nothing will.

We must, MUST, take this story to the world - it is a story so shocking that it will make international waves if it is known.

Don't let the politicians fool you. This is the only way to rehabilitate the city.

Don't let there be a next time. Your life and the lives of your loved ones depend on the actions you take now. Believe it. The Municipality of Tzfat and the complicity of the national government have already proven that. We can only depend upon ourselves. No one else cares.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

The following is written by a Jew, about Judaism. I can only write about that with which I am intimately familiar and can only bear witness for my personal experiences.

It was written primarily for those Jews who have lost the ability to discern between the wheat and the chaff, a phenomenon so very common today. But as it relates to some of the things that have been written on this list, I thought I'd post it here too.

What is written here may or may not hold true for the laws and customs of other religions. It is not my place to say. That is for the practitioners of those religions to decide.

The God of Israel as Engineer and Architect of Morality

My studies of Anarchy have recently brought me to consider mechanical and civil engineering and architecture insofar as they impact on societal structure. Those are subjects I never thought I'd really concern myself with (what I won't do for The Cause :0). It transpires that I have learned a very valuable lesson from those forays into formerly wholly foreign territory.

Over the years, an on-line epistolary pal has chided my tendency to see meta-messages everywhere and make the simplest, most straightforward matters into metaphors, moral metaphors at that. "Sometimes a fish is just a fish, Doreen", he has told me any number of times. Well, yeah, but sometimes a fish introduces us to an ocean of understanding.

For many years I have been concerned with how it is that Jews are able to learn very profound and subtle moral messages from commandments and narratives from Torah which, on the surface, are anything but moral or subtle. There is no logical bridge between what is said and what many of us are able to understand from the lessons. Often, they seem diametrically opposed.

Outsiders have an even harder time understanding this phenomenon and assume that we live according to what appears to them to be barbarous rules. We don't. We see something beyond the words, intuit something, something that it not immediately apparent. To be more precise, some of us do. Many, too many, of us never get beyond the surface.

In considering engineering and architecture as social phenomena and shapers of social structures, I saw plans on drawing boards in my mind.

I realized that Jewish Law can be likened to a grand plan on a drawing board. It is the outline. It is NOT the structure itself.

Just as the plans of the engineer or the architect must be made actual, must be fleshed out with actual material and are not fulfilled until they serve human needs, so Halakhah (Jewish Law) must be made actual in the form of livable and humanistic societies, livable dwellings, humanistic workplaces, safe day care centers, methods of supplying food to all, education to all, healthcare to all…justice for all.

Jewish Law is only the plan, it is NOT the actualization. The mere performance of the ceremony is not the fulfillment of the plan.

Those who live according to Halakhah and do not flesh it out with real social structures are people who confuse the plan with the structure. Can we live in the drawing of a building? NO! We must build the building itself.

It was no less a figure than Rabban Gamliel, the son of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (the initiator of the redaction of the Talmud), who said: "It is good [to combine] the study of Torah with an occupation, for the effort required by them both keeps sin out of mind, while all Torah study not combined with work will in the end cease and leads to sin. All who occupy themselves with the affairs of the community shall be engaged with them for the sake of Heaven, for the merit of their fathers assists them and their righteousness endures forever. And upon you [says God] I will bestow great reward as though you had accomplished it all by yourselves." (my italics) PIRKEI AVOT (ETHICS OF THE FATHERS), Chapter II, 2.

Those who do not build society based on their Torah learning feel that something is somehow missing. They fill the void they feel inside themselves with excrescent minhagim (assumed customs) and chumrot (assumed stringencies), which, because they serve no purpose and actually impede social change, are nothing but emunot t'faylot (superstitions).

What then is the Halakhah if not the actual behaviors we are intended to perform? Is it mere symbol? NO!

Halakhah is that which arouses, activates, educates and hones the moral sense within us.

Morality is something beyond logic, beyond reason. As David Hume aptly observed, reason cannot tell us why we should prefer the destruction of the entire world to our own finger being scratched. Morality exists on a level that is not rational. That is not to say that it is irrational. It is to say that it is non-rational. It is super-rational. That is the reason that the narratives and mitzvoth are often so very strange to the mind. They are communicating messages to us that go past the level of the conscious mind. They speak another language.

The Torah with its strange-sounding commandments and narratives speaks to us on a level that is beyond reason. It activates the ability to be able to perceive that which is moral, to yearn for that which is moral to recognize that which is moral. It inoculates us against the confusion of moral relativism and prevents us from becoming entangled in that endless morass.

Learning Torah correctly, we become imbued with morality. It becomes an indelible and inherent part of our psyche, our very bodies. We are thoroughly infused with morality until we react to it reflexively. We cannot but react to it. We desire it above all other desire. When we are moved to tears of love and joy at the sight of loving-kindness and moved to tears of outrage and repulsion at the sight of cruelty, when the desire for the Good is above our every other desire, we can be sure that we have been fully inculcated with the Halakhah, and not before that. No matter how "observant" we may be, if we can conscience injustice if we can rest when another suffers, we are not imbued with Torah.

Once we have reached this level we need not be concerned with the minutiae of the religion on an everyday basis. We are living embodiments of Torah. "Those who are busy with a mitzvah (commandment, good deed) need not be disturbed to do a mitzvah."

But neither can we jettison the religion entirely. This is true for two reasons:

1) We do not evolve morally on all of our levels uniformly. Some aspects of our characters are extremely developed, while others lag behind.

2) We must be aware of the Law and not forget it so that we may teach it to the next generation, who will need to learn it before they will be fit to set off on a life devoted to human welfare and justice.

Just as it is true that we cannot live the plan alone, we must flesh it out, make it actual in the form of social systems and structures, so it is true that without the plan we do not know what to build.

If we attempt to build a bridge or a highway without a plan and without knowing the materials we set out to build with, disaster will occur. So it is if we set about attempting to be moral without having our moral sense aroused and developed by Halakhah.

We must learn and do Halakhah for the sake of what is called in German and in Yiddish das Menschenleben, never are we to sacrifice human living, human welfare, justice for actual human beings for the sake of customs, practices or Laws. The latter serve the former, prepare us to undertake the former, bolster our strength and resolve and give us courage to endeavor to better the world. They are means to that purpose, not ends in and of themselves.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

WORK HOURS

"The so-called "division of labour" has grown under a system which condemned the masses to toil all the day long, and all the life long, at the same wearisome kind of labour. But if we take into account how few are the real producers of wealth in our present society, and how squandered is their labour we must recognise that Franklin* was right in saying that to work five hours a day would generally do for supplying each member of a civilised nation with the comfort now accessible for the few only.
But we have made some progress since Franklin's time, and some of that progress in the hitherto most backward branch of production--agriculture --has been indicated in the preceding pages. Even in that branch the productivity of labour can be immensely increased, and work itself rendered easy and pleasant. If everyone took his share of production, and if production were socialised--as political economy, if it aimed at the satisfaction of the ever-growing needs of all, would advise us to do--then more than one half of the working day would remain to everyone for the pursuit of art, science, or any hobby he or she might prefer; and his work in those fields would be the more profitable if he spent the other half of the day in productive work--if art and science were followed from mere inclination, not for mercantile purposes. Moreover, a community organised on the principles of all being workers would be rich enough to conclude that every man and woman, after having; reached a certain age--say of forty or more--ought to be relieved from the moral obligation of taking a direct part in the performance of the necessary manual work, so as to be able entirely to devote himself or herself to whatever he or she chooses in the domain of art, or science, or any kind of work. Free pursuit in new branches of art and knowledge, free creation, and free development thus might be fully guaranteed.. And such a community would not know misery amidst wealth. It would not know the duality of conscience which permeates out life and stifles every noble effort. It would freely take its flight towards the highest regions of progress compatible with human nature." – Chapter VIII, F F & W, Kropotkin

"In the domain of agriculture it may be taken as proved that if a small part only of the time that is now- given in each nation or region to field culture was given to well thought out and socially carried out permanent improvements of the soil, the duration of work which would be required afterwards to grow the yearly bread-food for an average family of five would be less than a fortnight every year; and that the work required for that purpose would not be the hard toil of the ancient slave, but work which would be agreeable to the physical forces of every healthy man and woman in the country.
It has been proved that by following the methods of intensive market- gardening-partly under glass-vegetables and fruit can be grown in such quantities that men could be provided with a, rich vegetable food and a profusion of fruit, if they simply devoted to the task of growing them the hours which everyone willingly devotes to work in the open air, after having spent most of his day in the factory, the mine, or the study. Provided, of course, that the production of food-stuffs should not be the work of the isolated individual, but the planned-out and combined action of human groups.
It has also been proved-and those who care to verify it by themselves may easily do so by calculating the real expenditure for labour which was lately made in the building of workmen's houses by both private persons and municipalities 1 -that under a proper combination of labour, twenty to twenty-four months of one man's work would be sufficient to secure for ever, for a family of five, an apartment or a house provided with all the comforts which modern hygiene and taste could require.
And now, in the presence of all these conquests -what is the reality of things?
In industrially developed countries, a couple of months' work, or even much less than that, would be sufficient to produce for a family a rich and varied vegetable and animal food.
One month of work every year would be quite sufficient to provide the worker with a healthy dwelling." – Chapter IX, F F & W

"For centuries science and so-called practical wisdom have said to man: "It is good to be rich, to be able to satisfy, at least, your material needs; but the only means to be rich is to so train your mind and capacities as to be able to compel other men-slaves, serfs or wage-earners -to make these riches for you. You have no choice. Either you must stand in the ranks of the peasants and the artisans who, whatsoever economists and moralists may promise them in the future, are now periodically doomed to starve after each bad crop or during their strikes and to be shot down by their own sons the moment they lose patience. Or you must: train your faculties so as to be a military commander of the masses, or to be accepted as one of the wheels of the governing machinery of the State or to become a manager of men in commerce or industry." For many centuries there was no other choice, and men followed that advice, without finding in it happiness, either for themselves and their own children, or for those whom they pretended to preserve from worse misfortunes.
But modern knowledge has another issue to offer to thinking men. It tells them that in order to be rich they need not take the bread from the mouths of others; but that the more rational outcome would be a society in which men, with the work of their own hands and intelligence, and by the aid of the machinery already invented and to be invented, should themselves create all imaginable riches. Technics and science will not be lagging behind if production takes such a direction. Guided by observation, analysis and experiment, they will answer all possible demands. They will reduce the time which is necessary for producing wealth to any desired amount, so as to leave to everyone as much leisure as he or she may ask for. They surely cannot guarantee happiness, because happiness depends as much, or even more, upon the individual himself as upon his surroundings. But they guarantee, at least, the happiness that can be found in the full and varied exercise of the different capacities of the human being, in work that need not be overwork, and in the consciousness that one is not endeavouring to base his own happiness upon the misery of others.
These are the horizons which the above inquiry opens to the unprejudiced mind." End of Chapter IX, F F & W

"Overwork is repulsive to human nature--not work. Overwork for supplying the few with luxury--not work for the well-being of all. Work is a physiological necessity, a necessity of spending accumulated bodily energy, a necessity which is health and life itself. If so many branches of useful work are so reluctantly done now, it is merely because they mean overwork, or they are improperly organised. But we know--old Franklin knew it--that four hours of useful work every day would be more than sufficient for supplying everybody with the comfort of a moderately well-to-do middle-class house, if we all gave ourselves to productive work, and if we did not waste our productive powers as we do waste them now." - Peter Kropotkin, ANARCHIST COMMUNISM: Its Basis and Principles, 1887

*Benjamin Franklin (January 17 [O.S. January 6] 1706 – April 17, 1790). That's right, sometime in the 18th C. Franklin uttered these words concerning the really necessary work hours per day (4-5), decades before the Anarchist economic researchers and Marx arrived at the same conclusion.

Kropotkin treats the matter of how many hours of work are required of whom and under what conditions in depth in Chapter VIII of THE CONQUEST OF BREAD (See: http://tinyurl.com/fdtvn)

CAPITAL by Karl Marx, Volume One, Part III, The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value, CHAPTER SEVEN, SECTION 2, THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS-VALUE, (See: http://tinyurl.com/hwkvr)

Albert Parsons: "With regard to the feasibility of this (eight-hour) law, Congress has the power, under the Constitution, to pass it. We ask it; we demand it, and we intend to have it. If the present Congress will not give it to us we will send men to Congress who will give it to us.... The eight-hour league, and the trades unions, and the other organizations of the country that are making this demand do not propose thereby to paralyze industry. They do not propose to bring an industrial collision or a state of anarchy, or to precipitate revolution or a state of anarchy, or to precipitate revolution in this country. We are peaceable citizens, husbands, fathers. We are citizens of the State and law-abiding men.... The working classes simply seek to improve their condition. This is a natural feeling, and I cannot say that there is anything unnecessarily seditious or criminal in such a desire. We simply want less work and more pay, knowing that only through short hours and high wages can our condition be improved. We know this, and hence we struggle for it. We wish to get at it by degrees.. . . The first thing that we demand is a measure that will diminish the immediate power of wealth, and will remove the worst forms of poverty. The immediate power of wealth consists in this power to enforce men to submit to the terms dictated by wealth, out of which men will perform a day's labor. That is the immediate power of wealth. This is an evil which should be removed, and we want to remove the worst disability of poverty by reducing the hours of labor; by the distributing of work that is to be done more equally among the workingmen... By making labor scarce we will increase its value. Under our system of labor there is no such thing as freedom of contract." http://tinyurl.com/2olrd7

Parsons wrote that if the eight-hour day were won then the employing class will have to pay us as much for eight hours' work as they do now for ten. Employers will put labor-saving machinery to work instead of the high-priced laborers. The laborers will then for the same reason that they reduced the hours to eight, have to reduce them to six hours per day. A voluntary reduction of the work hours is a peaceful solution to the labor problem.... Wages in this way will increase until they represent the earnings, instead of, as now, the necessities, of the wage-laborer. This would result in a system of universal cooperation and distribution. http://tinyurl.com/3cwosr

See: Johann Most's speech: " THE BEAST OF PROPERTY", c. 1884, which can be found on the following URL: http://tinyurl.com/kxr8w

"Under socialism…With the idle rich and the idle poor working and the work day four hours long their bodies will grow strong again and their minds sane." – "Brutal Treatment of the Unemployed in Sacramento Star" – Helen Keller, March 16, 1914

"It can be statistically proven that three hours' work a day, at most, is sufficient to feed, shelter, and clothe the world and supply it not only with necessities but also with all modern comforts of life." – Alexander Berkman, Now and After: THE ABC OF COMMUNIST ANARCHISM, Chapter 22, New York: Vanguard Press, 1929.

"THE ABOLITION OF WORK" by Bob Black: http://tinyurl.com/f8wq6

"The living man can, in truth, not only work to live but he wants to feel his life in work, and during work to rejoice I his work. He needs not only recreation, rest and joy in the evening, he needs, above all, pleasure in his activity itself, strong presence of his soul in the functions of his body. Our age has made sort, the unproductive, playful activity of muscles and nerves into a sort of work or profession. In real culture work itself again becomes a playful unwinding of all our energies." - FOR SOCIALISM, Gustav Landauer, pg. 95

"No one wants to spend their whole life in the factory or workshop, but everyone needs nails, transportation, or rope at some time, It would only be fair that all people spend a few hours every week helping to provide these useful products in co-operation with their fellows. Machines do help us make these things more easily; people only become slaves to their machines because they are slaves to their bosses and to a wasteful, growth-oriented economy. If there were no useless bosses who collect the profits but do no work at the machines they own or oversee, and if production did not always have to be increased to fuel an ever-expanding, growth-oriented consumerism, then it is doubtful that any of us would have to work more than a few hours per week. Those who are by temperament "workaholics" could spend their time improving upon, and experimenting with, products or projects of their choice." - "ANARCHO-SYNDICALSIM, TECHNOLOGY and ECOLOGY" by Graham Purchase http://tinyurl.com/el9fs, writing in 1995.

The Catholic Worker Movement: Societal structures need to be built so that it will be "easy to be good." Advocates the four-hour work day in order that workers become scholars and Scholars workers. (See: http://tinyurl.com/oou45 ).

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

HILLARY FOR PREZ!

Isn't she just loverly?

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel

DoreenDotan@gmail.com

MENDACIOUS RELIGIOUS "TEACHINGS" AND PSEUDO-WISDOM

There are those who would "comfort" us with "teachings" such as these:

"The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness." - William Saroyan

and worse still:

"And this is the noble truth of the arising of sorrow. It arises from craving...
And this is the noble truth of the stopping of sorrow. It is the complete stopping of that craving...being emancipated from it." - The Pali Canon

While there is certainly much wisdom in being emancipated from the craving for incidentals and luxuries, one can hardly be expected to be "emancipated" for the craving for bread or love.

The resignation with which we have been taught to regard our being damned to living lives and then going silently to our graves without ever knowing the love we need is beyond perversion, beyond cruelty, on the part of those in whose diseased minds and twisted hearts the concept of resignation arose and those who perpetuate the lie.

Never can the need for love be surrendered and there can be no emancipation from it any more than we can be emancipated from out need for physical sustenance.

And it is you men who must be the first to demand and reclaim those most basic rights. Women of their nature never can become very alienated from the need for love. We transvalue it into depression, we sublimate it into saint-like dutifulness, but the feeling is never very far from conscious awareness and we can, and do, access it.

It is primarily the men who have been emasculated of their love. The fight, then, must be primarily yours.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

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Who Said This: LABOR VIS-À-VIS CAPITAL?

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Abraham Lincoln's First Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861.

My, my how things have changed in the US. Can you so much as imagine a President saying any such thing today? In an *address to Congress*?

Here are some more quotes from Lincoln. Bush would not know how to spell, or probably the definition, of many of those noble words:
http://tinyurl.com/39bt9h

Now add this quote, from earlier the same year, to the quote below about Labor vis-à-vis Capital:

"I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence." Abraham LincolnSource: February 22, 1861 - Address in Independence Hall

and while you're at it, consider this one:

"That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or any denomination of Christians in particular." Abraham LincolnSource: July 31, 1846 - Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity

Source: http://tinyurl.com/yuebj3

The thinking of the greatest Presidents and statesmen of the United States, those people whose humanistic and enlightened vision it was that served as the wellspring and foundation of the desire for freedom from Britain, the Declaration of Independence and creation of the Nation and those who followed in their Spirit, before she was derailed, was far more in line with that of the Left Socialists than with the Capitalist and Rightists.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Mom, do you think any of our relatives could have been Nazis?"

The other day my son turned to me and said: "Mom, do you think any of our relatives could have been Nazis?"

I looked at him amazed and said: You know that your Great-Grandfather fought alongside his Jewish wife, your Great-Grandmother, and with two of their sons in the underground against the Nazis. You know that they were all captured and died terrible deaths. How can you ask a question like that?!

He calmly answered: "Ema (Mother), I also know that we don't know very little about the Aba's (Daddy's) family. We know he was an author of some renown who wrote under a pseudonym, but we don't know the pseudonym. We don't know about the rest of his family or what they might have been or done."

Stunned, I was amazed that so simple a thought had never crossed my mind and realized that it did not because in my mind there was a permanent separation between us and them. I simply could not think that thought.

I recalled a man I've argued with any number of times on line whose parents were government clerks in Germany during the war and whose uncles were in the SS and still have business dealings with the Mengele family. I recalled how that always made my skin crawl. He, in my mind, was one of them, but I am smugly comfortable being one of us.

I admit that I always wondered if the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Nazis have some sort of taint, some dark shadow in them that they keep at bay. I wondered if that might be aroused and brought to the fore and, if so, if some terrible gene specific to them would induce them to repeat the unthinkable deeds of their recent forebears.

And there was my son who when serving in the army said to me: "Mom, I really don't think I could kill anyone" asking me if one of his relatives, and closer still one of my gentle husband's relatives, might have been a Nazi.

I thought about my daughter and about my grandson that perfect baby whose absolute pristine purity and innocence brought me to tears the first time I saw him.

When Dan came home I related the conversation to him. He didn't bat an eyelash. I said to him: "Don't you understand? You might have the blood of Nazis in you. What do you think of that?"

"So what?", he answered levelly. That is not who I am. There is no such thing as Nazi blood. There is no Nazi gene. I am who I am, not whatever my forebears were."

Somehow, his words did not convince me. Yet, he is the gentlest and most Human being I have ever known and would remain so if it transpired that he does share blood and genes with some unimaginable monster. He would still remain the father of my children and my best friend and revered Teacher of Torah and Hebrew.

What a rearrangement of thought one must undergo when them might be us.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Who Said This: LABOR VIS-À-VIS CAPITAL?

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Abraham Lincoln's First Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861.

My, my how things have changed in the US. Can you so much as imagine a President saying any such thing today? In an *address to Congress*?

Here are some more quotes from Lincoln. Bush would not know how to spell, or probably the definition, of many of those noble words: http://tinyurl.com/39bt9h

Now add this quote, from earlier the same year, to the quote below about Labor vis-a-vis Capital:

"I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence." Abraham LincolnSource: February 22, 1861 - Address in Independence Hall

and while you're at it, consider this one:

"That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or any denomination of Christians in particular." Abraham LincolnSource: July 31, 1846 - Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity

Source: http://tinyurl.com/yuebj3

The thinking of the greatest Presidents and statesmen of the United States, those people whose humanistic and enlightened vision it was that served as the wellspring and foundation of the desire for freedom from Britain, the Declaration of Independence and creation of the Nation and those who followed in their Spirit, before she was derailed, was far more in line with that of the Left Socialists than with the Capitalist and Rightists.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Photos of Kibbutzim (and of Towns) – Israeli Ministry of Tourism Site

I found a new site administered (amateurishly as per usual for an Israeli gov't ministry) by the Ministry of Tourism.

There are some pretty good pictures of kibbutzim on the site that show various aspects of life there. The kibbutzim shown are found from the north to the south (starting with the south) of the country and represent kibbutzim of various sizes, ages and types of agriculture, horticulture and industry.

Just go to Kibbutz on the first drop down menu (Location) and do not specify anything for the groupings. Thus, you will get all of the photos of kibbutz. Unfortunately, some of them should have been rotated.

The pictures of the celebration of "Pentecost" (Shavu'ot) are particularly interesting. Shavu'ot is the holiday of the bringing of the first fruits of harvest to the Temple. On kibbutz the members celebrate the holiday in their own special way. Except on the very few religious kibbutzim it is celebrated as a secular holiday, emphasizing the agricultural aspects. The kibbutz members throw in their own experience. Tractors, as pictured, have nothing whatsoever to do with the holiday. They are brought into the celebrations on secular kibbutzim because they are so much part and parcel of kibbutz everyday life.

The housing shown in the photo picturing the guest houses on kibbutz were once very typical. Today, much richer, the kibbutz tends to build detached villa-like houses. The types of houses seen in the photos are reserved for guest houses; young, single members; soldiers who call the kibbutz home base during their service for one reason or another; people learning Hebrew in the kibbutz ulpan program and volunteers.

The typical kibbutz is verdant, as you will see and very well kept. Kibbutz members are most meticulous about keeping the kibbutz aesthetically pleasing and very well gardened.

Of course, there are photos from the towns and cities and many walks of life on the site as well that are interesting viewing, but my heart will always remain with what I consider to be the crowning Israeli social achievement - Kibbutz and so I take this opportunity to share a very brief glimpse of a way of life so little understood or appreciated.

http://tinyurl.com/254prf

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

TWO PEOPLES BLINDED BY HATRED AND HUBRIS

Israeli Gov't Officials: Islamic Jihad to Bear Brunt of IDF Response to Kassams

"Islamic Jihad will likely bear the brunt of Israel's military response to the Kassam rockets that hit the western Negev on the second day of the school year, including one that slammed into a day care center's courtyard, government officials said Monday night. Islamic Jihad was responsible for all nine of the Kassam attacks, the officials said. The rockets were timed to hit when parents were taking their children to school, defense officials said...."

Source: http://tinyurl.com/2s762y

Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that both the Jews and the Palestinians are being set up to for "culling" a few at a time here, a few at a time there, and are not being allowed to engage in any serious kind of deliberations or implement real plans for the benefit of all that will stop this madness, so that someone can make A LOT of money in the arms business?

Unfortunately, both sides are so filled with hate, hubris and absolute certainty in their own absolute righteousness and superiority that they can't see. They can't see that both Peoples are being set up and that this is the "legacy" that the British left before they folded up the Mandate.

Instead of being stupid and letting those who are setting our teeth against one another to play us for fools at the expense of our lives, we should be joining forces to get the Western dirty business interests out of this area.

Ego always makes for easy victimization.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

RATIONAL RELIGION

It is common nowadays to speak of religion and rationality as though they are mutually exclusive, as though never the twain will, or can, meet.

This premise should not be accepted as a foregone conclusion. It needs to be carefully examined. Upon doing so, we will see that it is in gross error.

The basic premises of religionists and atheists, the latter of whom claim that they are rationalists and hold sole claim to rationality, are equally non-rational. To say that we can reasonably posit the existence of a Being that is Ineffable, wholly non-corporeal, without qualities of any kind and so vastly beyond our comprehension that we cannot begin to fathom It, is a wholly irrational position. Such a position may be taken on an experiential claim, on the basis of hope that such a Being exists or on blind faith, but it is not a rational statement.

The position of the atheists is equally irrational. To say that we can, with any degree of certainty whatsoever, posit that there does not exist a Being that is Ineffable, wholly-incorporeal, without any qualities of any kind and so vastly beyond our comprehension that we cannot begin to fathom It, is a wholly irrational position as well. The only difference between this position and the former is that this position is one that smacks of hubris.

Having demonstrated that the starting points of both the religionists and the atheists are equally without rational basis, we can proceed to examining whether or not rationality can play any part in a religious take on the world.

The afflatus of this treatment of the subject is a new restaurant, the owner and founder of which, Ya'akov Avni (brother of the actor Aki Avni) insists that it not be called a soup kitchen, which opened in the most disadvantaged area of the city of Tzfat, the notorious South (where the author of this essay chooses to make her home).

The restaurant provides full-course meals to come whoever may, no questions asked, for the price of two NIS (about 47 cents American). Great pains have been, and are, taken to provide not only nutritious meals, but to having created a pleasant ambiance in the restaurant, having the meals served by a staff of dedicated volunteers with respect and a smile and giving those who patronize the restaurant the feeling that they are coming to dine (thus the nominal charge) and not having favors dished out to them by a charity.

One can find equally rational and pseudo-scientific reasons for feeding the poor, making them feel wanted and cared for and not. So, it is not therein that the rationality resides.

Having made the leap of faith and deciding to feed the poor and give them a feeling of honor and dignity, the rationality comes in in the planning and implementation of the programme.

It takes a great deal of rational, systematic and methodical thinking to plan such a project, implement it and keep it going.

One has, first and foremost, to rationally and correctly assess the socio-economic situation in which people are found. One must then determine correctly and rationally the needs of real people in real situations. Next, one has to rationally and correctly assess one's own abilities to help them. One has to be able to formulate a plan or programme of assistance in one's mind. Having done so, one has then to arrange for subsidization of the food costs and costs of operation. One has to systematically go about finding an umbrella organization that will assist the program if need be and find donors. One has to go about finding suppliers of the food, buying the necessary equipment, furnishings, arranging the permits from the city, paying the bills, finding the fitting staff for the operation and do on.

Rationality comes into religion in the application of its principles.

Rationality can not be said to be the basis either for a religious position or lack of it, as we demonstrated at the outset of the essay. It must reside in how we carry out the articles of our faith and what we believe to be right.

To date, because many Human societies are so very cruel and do not provide for Human needs rationally or with compassion, people have turned to religion for all the wrong reasons. People turn to God in desperation: for the love they do not get from others, for the security that society does not provide them with, for the fulfillment of their hopes and dreams that society does not allow or has dashed and so on. They come in desperation and, as an inevitable result, their religious practice is pathological.

A society that will foster healthy religion must be created. We cannot dismiss the possibilities of what religion can be and can offer in healthy societies based on the reasons that people turn to religion in sick societies.

I have witnessed in the secular Kibbutz Movement, on wealthy kibbutzim the residents of which have all of their socio-economic needs provided for, that a feeling of superficiality and meaningless begins to creep into the hearts and minds of a good percentage of the members. They begin to feel that, though they have everything they need and want materially, something profound is yet missing. Some of those who feel that way, and they are a goodly number, turn to religion.

They turn to religion not in desperation, not in fear, not in loneliness and not in insecurity or need. They turn to religion for a final fulfillment.

The religion that they consider is based on their traditional religion, but they are not afraid to experiment with new forms of ceremony or discard those which do not seem meaningful to them. They feel free to innovate, to question and to improvise. This to my mind is all very healthy and I believe that were we all living in a communalistic society, as are the members of the Kibbutz Movement, this seminal spiritual/moral enterprising would arise spontaneously and would prove to be fecund, producing new expressions of ancient religions and new religions that would provide the deepest fulfillment of the Human experience.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

TRUE GENIUS

Someone wrote a disparaging description of the character of a well-known scientist.

In response to that I wrote:

I've read a very little bit about (the named scientist) and his intelligence, but that is all I know of him. I cannot, therefore, comment about his character in particular.

I will speak in generalities.

In my experience there is no such thing as a person of degraded character, no matter how bright, who can see more than the superficies of that which they study.

They may have vast vocabularies; they may have waded through massive amounts of data; they may be able to rattle off, parrot like always parrot-like, the work of others; they may have eidetic memories. But they understand the profundities of *nothing*. They have no appreciation for the depth or the significance of *anything* for they respect nothing. They collect factoids for the own vainglory and display them as though they were baubles. Profundities, then, are degraded to mere trifles in their hands.

They are essentially worthless to the intellectual endeavor, especially nowadays. Whereas once their eidetic memories were useful, the computer has obviated their usefulness entirely. They have been supplanted by machines that do what they do better. How worthwhile could they really ever have been as anything other than tools? They are, as the pithy modern, if overused, expression has it, a waste of protoplasm.

They are what the inspired and true polymath Avraham ibn Ezra called: "Nothing but a basket of books." See: http://tinyurl.com/27rehb for a brief overview of who Avraham ibn Ezra was and what his accomplishments were and to gain an appreciation of what a genius worthy of the name is.

Deep-abiding philanthropy is the wellspring of all great intellectual endeavor. No one who loved himself or herself, or was in love with their own mind, ever produced work that advanced and benefitted Humankind.

When scientists will begin to understand, really understand, that knowledge cannot be abstracted from moral application, that there are no morally neutral data, that learning is not a process separable from the purification of motives and impulses; it will begin to make the progress it should.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

AT FIFTY

I am astounded, perplexed, overwhelmed, delighted and dismayed by the many physiological, emotional, cognitive and social changes that are taking place within me in so short a period of time.

Not since I married and became a mother to my first child have I undergone such extreme and rapid changes.

But my reaction to them is much more like my reactions were to the changes I was experiencing when I was an adolescent. With some of the changes, I find myself asking: Is this normal? When I was an adolescent the changes I didn't understand made me wonder if I was deformed. Now they make me wonder if some pathology is present. Yet, now, as then, it is all so very wonderful. I've embarked on a journey. I have arrived at maturity. From here the path leads to the glory of a ripe and beautiful old age.

True to my INTJ personality, there are few people I feel comfortable enough asking directly about all this. I prefer to do research. So, I scoured the net for information about women in the 50-60 year age range.

I found a good deal of sites about the pros and cons of hormone replacement therapy (that is out of the question for me).

I found a number of very good sites relating to nutrition appropriate at this time.

I found some sites discussing plastic surgery (Yikes! Heaven forfend!).

A few sites speak about dating once again at age 50+. A goodly percentage of women at this age find themselves back on the dating circuit and they are trying to cope with that. Hey; if I wanted to "cope" with that, I'd just revert to my Polyamorous ways, which somehow seems far less exciting as I've moved away from the time during which sex was largely a showcase for the body beautiful and death-defying acrobatics.

One site that I found is a compendium of the personal reports of women in the 50 to 60 year old bracket about their experiencing "aging". This was the most disappointing of all.

I'll offer some excerpts here:

"Sarah is 55, married, a marketing executive and thinking about making a change in her career. She does not fear her own aging process and tries each day to count her blessings. But in the next breath she says: “I just hate my sagging buttocks, and that pants are defining me at this age. No stretch pants for me.”

God! Is this what a woman comes away from 55 years of life experience with - defining herself by how her butt looks in pants?!

"Ruth is dreading turning 51 on her next birthday. Her biggest worry is becoming “invisible” to her coworkers. As a professional stockbroker, her job requires her to look good, perform well and compete with other money managers rising through the ranks, both male and female, many of whom are much younger than she...Most of the time, though, she keeps busy working and draws tremendous satisfaction from being able to bring home plenty of the green stuff."

I suppose if you can't be much of anything else, having money can be a comfort – and a distraction. But, having money is no excuse for being a nothing otherwise. Finding comfort in one's income is a cop-out.

"Ruth wishes she didn’t feel invisible. “In my 30s, I could turn heads with no trouble. I enjoyed seeing those necks twist.” It’s been a long time since that happened though, and she’s beginning to let that go."

I believe, and it is my experience, that an *interesting*-looking woman continues to turn heads, perhaps not for her youthful beauty, but because she radiates something (of course having a meter of silver hair and dressing in caftans in a country that has solidly adopted Western dress, as I do, may help in this).

Jane's way of dealing with aging involves embracing narcissism. Behind her are the days of living for others. Jane is one of those women who never got the balance between being for others and being oneself quite right.

None of these women can serve as a fitting role model for me, neither do I relate to any of them profoundly.

I'd be a liar if I said that some of those concerns don't cross my mind. They do, but fleetingly. Those are not my main concerns.

None of the sites I've searched for, read and reread over the last few days gave me the profound answers I seek.

The Talmud says: "...an old woman is a treasure."

*That* is what I am looking for: how to grow into being a treasure.

In a culture that does not revere the aged; that does not use the term "elder" with deep-abiding respect; in fact, one of the commonest uses of the term 'elder' is in the phrase 'elder abuse', which is all too common; in a culture in which the word 'aging' is derogatory; in which the wisdom of elders is not sought out, indeed is not so much as acknowledged, or, for that matter, cultivated and in which the elders are shunted aside, even institutionalized; it is no wonder, but so terribly, abysmally sad, that the advice offered to women over the age of 50 is to have plastic surgery, take synthetic drugs that can cause terminal illnesses and try, desperately, to look and act young for as long as possible.

The elders, for their part, are guilty too: How can youth respect a mature woman whose foremost concern is her sagging butt and who grieves that she can no longer wear stretch pants?

The only guides I seem to have are the teachings, memories and the Spirit that my Grandmother and her Sisters left entrusted within me. They were true treasures and my Grand-Aunt Bea, now well over 90 years old remains so.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

COLOR COORDINATED CLOTHING AND OTHER COPING STRATEGIES

http://tinyurl.com/39wz4k

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

IT USED TO BE: COVER YOUR ASS

Now it's: Cover your face.

"New airport agents check for danger in fliers' facial expressions By Kaitlin Dirrig McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Next time you go to the airport, there may be more eyes on you than you notice. Specially trained security personnel are watching body language and facial cues of passengers for signs of bad intentions. The watcher could be the attendant who hands you the tray for your laptop or the one standing behind the ticket-checker. Or the one next to the curbside baggage attendant. They're called Behavior Detection Officers, and they're part of several recent security upgrades, Transportation Security Administrator Kip Hawley told an aviation industry group in Washington last month. He described them as "a wonderful tool to be able to identify and do risk management prior to somebody coming into the airport or approaching the crowded checkpoint." The officers are working in more than a dozen airports already, according to Paul Ekman, a former professor at the University of California at San Francisco who has advised Hawley's agency on the program. Amy Kudwa, a TSA public affairs specialist, said the agency hopes to have 500 behavior detection officers in place by the end of 2008. Kudwa described the effort, which began as a pilot program in 2006, as "very successful" at identifying suspicious airline passengers. She said it had netted drug carriers, illegal immigrants and terrorism suspects. She wouldn't say more. At the heart of the new screening system is a theory that when people try to conceal their emotions, they reveal their feelings in flashes that Ekman, a pioneer in the field, calls "micro-expressions." Fear and disgust are the key ones, he said, because they're associated with deception. Behavior detection officers work in pairs. Typically, one officer sizes up passengers openly while the other seems to be performing a routine security duty. A passenger who arouses suspicion, whether by micro-expressions, social interaction or body language gets subtle but more serious scrutiny. A behavior specialist may decide to move in to help the suspicious passenger recover belongings that have passed through the baggage X-ray. Or he may ask where the traveler's going. If more alarms go off, officers will "refer" the person to law enforcement officials for further questioning. The strategy is based on a time-tested and successful Israeli model, but in the United States, the scrutiny is much less invasive, Ekman said. American officers receive 16 hours of training — far less than their Israeli counterparts_ because U.S. officials want to be less intrusive. The use of "micro-expressions" to identify hidden emotions began nearly 30 years ago when Ekman and colleague Maureen O'Sullivan began studying videotapes of people telling lies. When they slowed down the videotapes, they noticed distinct facial movements and began to catalogue them. They were flickers of expression that lasted no more than a fraction of a second. The Department of Homeland Security hopes to dramatically enhance such security practices. Jay M. Cohen, undersecretary of Homeland Security for Science and Technology, said in May that he wants to automate passenger screening by using videocams and computers to measure and analyze heart rate, respiration, body temperature and verbal responses as well as facial micro-expressions. Homeland Security is seeking proposals from scientists to develop such technology. The deadline for submissions is Aug. 31. The system also would be used for port security, special-event screening and other security screening tasks. It faces high hurdles, however. Different cultures express themselves differently. Expressions and body language are easy to misread, and no one's catalogued them all. Ekman notes that each culture has its own specific body language, but that little has been done to study each individually in order to incorporate them in a surveillance program. In addition, automation won't be easy, especially for the multiple variables a computer needs to size up people. Ekman thinks people can do it better. "And it's going to be hard to get machines that are as accurate as trained human beings," Ekman said. Finally, the extensive data-gathering of passengers' personal information will raise civil-liberties concerns. "If you discover that someone is at risk for heart disease, what happens to that information?" Ekman asked. "How can we be certain that it's not sold to third parties?" Whether mass-automated security screening will ever be effective is unclear. In Cohen's PowerPoint slide accompanying his aviation industry presentation was this slogan: "Every truly great accomplishment is at first impossible."

This is pseudo-science. Determining people's intentions based on "micro-expressions" is no different, or scientific, than phrenology. It serves the self-same nefarious intentions. Unscientific as phrenology as a "method" of determining people's character was, at least the shape of one's cranium does not change appreciably enough to be noticed by the human eye. Any slight fluctuations in shape that may be due to affective states couldn't be taken into account. Our facial expressions and body language do change appreciably - especially when we are self-conscious or stressed. If people feel that they are being surveilled for potentially suspicious behavior, they are going to start to act differently and may, wholly inadvertinently, send out one of those bogus "micro signals" that they are someone with a guilty conscience.

America is a dangerous place. It was already a dangerous place when I left near the beginning of the Reagan administration. Things have gone from bad to worse, far worse, in the intervening generation.

I'll express myself plainly.

You are being forewarned of future events, terrible events. You see from day to day that US society becomes increasingly unfit for human habitation. You see your rights not being whittled away, not being chipped away - but being cast away in blocks, at a fast and furious pace. You know that the President of the USA is the grandson of the man who bankrolled Xyclon B gas and the erection of death camps in partnership with I.G. Farben. You know that on October 20, 1942, under authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act, the U.S. Congress seized Prescott Sheldon Bush's holdings and liquidated them after the war. The seizure was confirmed by Vesting Order No. 248 in the U.S. Office of the Alien Property Custodian and signed by U.S. Alien Property Custodian Leo T. Crowley. You can find it in the Library of Congress if any doubts linger in your mind that this may be an urban legend. Also check the texts of Vesting Orders No. 126, 261 and 259, also signed by Crowley. They demonstrate that Prescott Sheldon Bush, et.al., had interests in Silesian-American Corporation, which profited from slave labor at Auschwitz. While it is most certainly true that the sons, and in this case grandsons as well, are not responsible for the acts of their fathers (and grandfathers) *so long as they do not walk in those same footsteps and foreswear any identification with them*, their guilt is compounded if they do follow in their forebears' footsteps. The flouting of rights held dear in the US since her birth on the part of GWB would indicate that he has been inculcated with the execrable tradition of that branch of the Bush family.

As a Jew, whose People refused to see the writing on the wall because they believed in modernity and that civilization would out because it was so entrenched that it could not betray them; I tell with with utmost certainty - you are being forewarned of dark and terrible days to come, and not in the distant future. The wise among you will get out while the getting's still good - or at least permissible.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

PRINCE PETER KROPOTKIN

He was not only born into the royal family of Czarist Russia, he was a prince among men.

Every time I encounter his life's dedication and work, I am overcome with admiration and awe of him anew. Though I have tried time and time again to pour out the admiration I feel for him and others like him, "if all the seas were ink and all the pine trees quills", still there would not be resource enough to praise them sufficiently.

He was a scion of one of the most respected lines in the Russian aristocracy. His family was directly related to Rurik.

He was trained in the Corps of Royal Pages and was offered a military career in an elite corps in the military.

But his scientific proclivity would lead him elsewhere. He became a geographer and insisted upon studying the geography of Siberia. It was there, in the unspeakable cold and harshness of Siberia, that he would develop his theory of Mutual Aid as the basis of survival and he argued his position forcefully against that of Darwin.

He developed a new theory about the structure of the Siberian mountains. His new findings garnered international acclaim.

The Russian Geographic Society offered him a position as its General Secretary.

Torn between the opportunity set before him and that which was in his heart from his early youth he wrote:

"Science is an excellent thing. I knew its joys and valued them...

But what right had I to these highest joys, when all around me was nothing but misery...when whatsoever I should spend to enable me to live in that world of higher emotions must need be taken from the very mouths of those who grew the wheat and had not bread enough for their children?...

Knowledge is an immense power. Man must know...What if that knowledge - should become the possession of all? Would not science itself progress in leaps, and cause mankind to make strides in production, invention, and social creation, of which we are hardly in a condition now to measure the speed? The masses want to know: they are willing to learn: they can learn...only give it to them, only give them the means of getting leisure. This is the direction in which, and these are the kind of people for whom I must work...So I sent my negative reply to the Geographical Society." – MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONARY (New York: Dover Publications 1971) pp. 239-41

He went on to become a member of the revolutionary Anarchist underground in Russia, where he was jailed for his efforts. He escaped from prison in Russia after two years' internment and fled to Switzerland. In France he was interned once again for another two-year stint. Finally, after having been very active in the underground for years, he arrived in England.

He spent his mature years in England where he dedicated his life to research. He continued his studies of geography. He studied zoology, sociology, economics and history as well. The conclusions that he came to as a result of those studies culminated in the publication of two masterpieces in addition to his MUTUAL AID - A Factor of Evolution, those works being THE CONQUEST OF BREAD and FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS.

He explains his purpose in carrying out that research and in writing FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS thus:

"Most socialists had hitherto said that in our present civilized societies we actually produce much more than is necessary for guaranteeing full well-being to all; that it was only the distribution which was defective; I thought, on the contrary, that under the present conditions of private ownership production itself had taken a wrong turn, and was entirely inadequate even as regards the very necessaries of life. None of these necessaries are produced in greater quantities than would be required to secure well-being for all.

But in all civilized countries the production, both agricultural and industrial, ought to and easily might be immensely increased, so as to secure a reign of plenty for all. This brought me to consider the possibilities of modern agriculture, as well as those of an education which would give to everyone the possibility of carrying on at the same time both enjoyable manual and brain work. I developed these ideas in a series of articles in the "Nineteenth Century" (a periodical in his time, my parentheses) which are now published as a book under the title FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS." ibid. pp. 447-48

Kropotkin was invited to return to Russia after the revolution of 1917. He was afforded respect there, but was deeply pained by the treatment he saw the Anarchists receiving at the hands of the Communist Party. After his death in 1921, the same year that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman fled Russia after witnessing the treatment of Nestor Makno and other Anarchists, no holds barred persecution of the Anarchists would be conducted by the Russians.

I come from two great traditions of learning selflessly, only for the sake of betterment of humanity - that of Judaism and that of Anarchism. All of my role models are people who devoted themselves to amassing knowledge not for the sake of vainglory and not for the sake of personal power, but in order to put that knowledge at the disposal of Humankind for our common welfare.

My religion enjoins everyone to learn insofar as the person is able to. Kropotkin too speaks of the ability of all to learn and the right of everyone to access as much knowledge as they can. I too am a staunch believer in the right and the ability of everyone to access knowledge and believe that this will advance the cumulative body of knowledge to a now unimaginable extent. I bristle at every expression of elitism and exclusivity when it comes to knowledge.

A book has been running around in my mind for a long while. Like many who were persecuted and died as martyrs for their religious beliefs, so many Anarchists were persecuted and died horrible deaths for their beliefs. Though the latter group consists mainly of people who considered, and consider, themselves atheists; they are remarkably like the greatest religious personalities that the world's religions have produced. The thesis of my book will be the demonstration of the fact that the Anarchists are the true inheritors, and continuation, of the Prophetic tradition. Do they not, like the Prophets, continue to hope in a future of common peace, prosperity and welfare?

It is because I so dearly love and admire the people who were, and are, scholars for the sake of humankind, who put their genius at the service of humankind without thought to themselves and because I am so very painfully aware of their sacrifice for me, for a world of people they never knew, that I find selfish, frivolous, look at me! amassing of factoids so very revolting.

Isn't the story of Kropotkin's early life and the compassion he exhibited from so young an age for the poor and disenfranchised remarkably reminiscent of the account of the early life of Siddhartha?

And he was not alone. Bakunin too was of noble birth, as was Tolstoi.

More remarkable than Siddhartha, they, most Kropotkin and Bakunin, did not go off in search of "enlightenment" or self-realization.

These men left palaces to live among the people they loved. Everything they did, all that they were, was for others. Nothing daunted them - not rejection by their families and the nobility, not the forfeiture of promising futures, not imprisonment, not exile in Siberia and in foreign countries, not ill health. They fought on till they breathed their last expecting nothing in return for what they did, nothing at all but the betterment of the lot of humankind.

That's as great as it gets in my book.

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

ENCOUNTER WITH AN ANGEL

Once in my life I saw a full on halo around someone's head.

There was an Arab man, an older man, very kind, gentle and loving, who worked as a street cleaner when I lived in the desert.

When I would learn Torah, I would sometimes look out my window pondering something and I'd see him going about his work. I was always amazed how he did his work year in year out faithfully, without the least resentment in his demeanor.

Sometimes Ramadan would fall out during the summer. He would continue to work apace, without food or water, in the 40-50 degree heat.

The children loved him and he would always have a big smile on this face when the children came around.

So it went for five years.

Then, one day, I saw him crying. He told me that he had received a letter from the town council saying there would be cuts in staff and that he would be laid off. I cried with him. Furious, I wrote to the Mayor, with whom I had a good relationship and tried to plead for the man's job, but to no avail. I told him that I tried to help him, but was unsuccessful.

Just before he was to end his work there was a hail storm. Marble-sized hail fell. When it stopped the children wanted to go outside and play with the hail stones. We ran down and they were scooping up handfuls of hail and eating them, when suddenly this man appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

He began to explain to me how the Angel Gabriel is commissioned to create the natural phenomena. I did not understand most of what he explained to me, but I listened respectfully as something inside me told me he knew of what he spoke.

I asked him: "How do you know so much about the Angel Gabriel?"

He smiled in response to my inquiry. Then a gentle gust of wind came along and his kaf'i'eh billowed in the breeze.

The halo around his head was enormous. I can still see it. It was a turquoise color and gold, at once. It was rarified, yet looked almost solid. There appeared to be some sort of beings moving within it, but I could not see them clearly.

I was shocked by what I saw. Then he was gone, just as he came, he left. He simply vanished.

I turned to the children. They were both standing there agape.

I asked them: "Did you see what I saw?"

They both nodded yes, obviously stunned.

As we went into the house my daughter said: "I didn't know you speak Arabic."

I answered that I didn't.

She said: "Mom, you spoke to him in Arabic."

I said: "I spoke to him in Hebrew, not Arabic."

My daughter answered: "Mom, Hebrew is my language. If you would have spoken in Hebrew I would have understood you. You were speaking to him in Arabic."

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

Sex With a Girl Under Three in Jewish Law: "It is Nothing"

This is a quote that anti-Semites often "dig up" and present to those unfamiliar with Jewish Law as "proof" that Jewish Law condones pedophilia:
Kethuboth 11b : "When a grown-up man has intercourse with a little girl it is nothing."

The subject of discussion is the marital property rights of virgins vs. non-virgins. Virgins have greater entitlements. The rabbis discussed the hypothetical case of a girl raped at an age less than three years old - for the purposes of her rights at marriage, is she considered a virgin or a non-virgin? The answer is that she is considered a virgin. The quotation is out of context - _for the purposes of determining her rights, if a girl less than three has sex with a man, it is nothing. The phrase "it is nothing" is a common Talmudic idiom meaning "it has no bearing on the matter under discussion" (in this case, her property rights at marriage). It does NOT mean "it is perfectly acceptable."

Source: http://tinyurl.com/3458u8

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com

NIHILISM: Gloomy Agnostication

EINSTEIN'S INSIGHT INTO THE DESIRE FOR SELF-EXTINCITON ON THE PART OF SOME ANARCHO-PRIMITIVISTS

We were discussing the Anarcho-Primitivists on a group for Anarchists. Some of the Anarcho-Primitivists are neo-Malthusians and a very few of them have resorted to murderous measures. As a result, there are Anarchists who call for disavowing them from the Movement, for expunging the Anarcho- prefix from their chosen self-description.

While most certainly not justifying them in any way, the quote below from Einstein's famous essay "Why Socialism?", which was first published in 1949 in the premier edition of the Marxist journal MONTHLY REVIEW as is republished in the book ALBERT EINSTEIN from the Rebel Lives series published by Ocean Books, lends some insight into their thinking:

"Innumerable voices have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered. It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong. In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience. I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supranational organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?"
I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering these days. "

While I am wholly against violent methods unless attacked, I do understand the neo-Maluthusian sentiments of some Anarcho-Primitivists and think that a compassionate hand should be extended to them instead of them being pushed away from the fold. It is only being shown compassion that hold out the hope that their will to live will be restored to them.

Solidarity,

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com