Contents: Ephraimite Forum Issues 1 to 20

Ephraimite Forum-2
Contents:
1. Steven Maney: The Double Standards of the BBC
2. Brit-Am Reply to Question on Meat and Milk.
3. Other Peoples: Canaan, Ghana, Uganda

1. Steven Maney: The Double Standards of the BBC
From: steven maney <stevie.maney@hotmail.co.uk>
Subject: little britain
http://britam.org/jerusalem/JerusalemNewsPage.html#Physicist
Dear Sirs,

I read about the guy who wouldn't lecture in the UK because of the attitude in the media and universities.

I would like to say that I agree with him and wonder if this is a direct result of darkness hating the light?

For instance, while on an open university course, I was amazed to see how 'freedom of speech' was allowed when it came to criticising fat people, religious groups, men and poor people. BUT, no one was allowed to say ANYTHING critical about homosexuals.

Homosexuals have penetrated all levels of the BBC, government and higher education, and as a result, they are defended in cases where others would have been sacked or worse.

Could you imagine the police 'dropping the case' if a heterosexual person had been caught with a dead woman in their pool after a drug fuelled party, comparing the Michael Barrymore/ Lubbock case?

And what about Graham Norton, who is currently hosting the 'Joseph Choir Search' - looking for children to audition for the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical- what if he had been 'religious'? What would the BBC have done when he said, on air, that drugs were 'OK'? Would he have been allowed to work with children?

The BBC is also currently suppressing a report about its anti-Israel bias, so I would say the lecturer was right not to come and hopefully his stance will raise serious questions about where this bias is coming from.

Kind Regards

Stevie Maney

2. Brit-Am Reply to Question on Meat and Milk:
 (PS: Thanks for your earlier reply, but I noticed you used the milk & meat kosher example- didn't Abraham give the 'Lord' meat and curds with bread?)

Answer:
We are not about to get into a debate on this matter since that would take us too far beyond the field we have to concentrate upon.
You are referring to our notes on the Brit-Am Answers to Queries on Judaism entry


Q. 3.  Are Rabbinical Explanations derived from the Bible?
If so, can you give an example?

Meat and Milk

http://britam.org/Questions/QuesJudaism.html#Bible

You are also correct concerning Abraham.
[Genesis 18:8] AND HE TOOK BUTTER, AND MILK, AND THE CALF WHICH HE HAD DRESSED, AND SET IT BEFORE THEM; AND HE STOOD BY THEM UNDER THE TREE, AND THEY DID EAT.
Some explain this verse as first milk products and after that meat ones which is permitted.
However even if we assume that they really did eat meat and milk together this was before the beginning of the Torah.
Before the Torah was given through Moses the Patriarchs may have kept many of the laws but it was in a different format.
For example:
Jacob married two sisters which under the Law of Moses would have been forbidden.
Under the Law of Moses levirate marriage takes place when one brother dies without children one of the surviving brothers has to either marry the widow or formally release her (Deuteronomy 25:5). This only applies to the brothers.
Before the Giving of the Torah a similar practice existed but it could be carried out by any member of the family
and therefore in the case of Tamar either of the sons of Judah was eligible and so was Judah (Genesis 38).
A remnant of the earlier custom still remained (though not legally binding) even after the giving of the Law and so Ruth had to be "redeemed" by marrying one of the surviving kin of her deceased husband (Ruth 4:5 ).

    3. Other Peoples: Canaan, Ghana, Uganda
 
The following message was first seen at
[X-Sender: awendawn@yahoo.com
To: epigraphy@yahoogroups.com]
but has since been also available from other groups.
It is included here out of curiosity
 
Kenya: Maasais, Canaanites And the Inca Connection

 East African (Nairobi)
 
 COLUMN
 5 June 2007
 Posted to the web 5 June 2007
 
 Philip Ochieng
 Nairobi
 
 WHY IS ENKAI, THE Creator god of the Maasai, almost the same as Enki, who created the Sumerians, as well as Enoch, the Canaanite hero who  stormed heaven, and Inca, the divine chief of the ancient Andeans?
 
 Is it accidental that if you reverse the syllables of those names -
a  word-game which ancient societies played all the time - you get Ka'in of the Sumerians, Kainan of the Canaanites, Cain of Genesis and Chanes of Mesoamerica?
 
 Thus, although Genesis informs us that Cain was Enoch's father, a  scruple crosses the mind. For the book cannot make up its mind which one of them was the first city-builder. It says that Cain gave his city the name Enoch. But both words mean exactly the same thing - "founder,"  "settler," "city builder." It is thus certain that Cain is Enoch.
 
 What the Maasai share with the Canaanites, Sumerians and the autochthons of Central America is their Nilotic root.
 
 And, as is now well known, Genesis is drawn entirely from Israel-  Judah's bondage in Egypt and Sumeria (Babylon) and, between them, the religious subservience in Canaan called "idolatry."
 
 All the ancient Nilotes worshipped the creator goddess Maat (known also as Isis and a thousand other names). As the goddess of love and justice, her counterpart in Orphic mysticism was the mysterious Eros, known to the Vedic Indians as Kama and to the Romans as Cupid.
 
 By the time we meet this deity in literature, however, she is entirely male because, by that time, the whole matriarchal world of the Hamites has been overrun by Semito-Aryan patriarchy and all institutions of the goddess have been handed over to a new male supremo - for instance, Zeus on Olympus.
 
 Ptah-hotep, the Coptic guru, defined Maat as the truth, justice and  righteousness. For she it was who could transform a human individual  into a geru-maa, self-disciplined and virtuous. A geru-maa was likened to a tree growing in fertile ground, offering pleasant shade and yieding succulent fruit.
 
 This is extraordinary information. In ancient Hamitic languages - as we saw in an earlier piece - you removed "at" from a noun to masculinise it. If you masculinised Maat, you got Maa.
 
 MAAT HAD BEEN THE supreme goddess ever since she created herself and the universe. Now, under patriarchy, the need arose for the supreme divine office to go to a male god. It was thus that Maat became Maa.
 
 If, for its part, the geru in geru-maa is cognate with the Hindu- Sikh guru (the supreme teacher), then geru-maa can be translated as "Teacher of Righteousness." This is engrossing. For Genesis identifies the  "Teacher of Righteousness" with the Canaanite priest- king Melchizedek of pre-Israelite Jerusalem.
 
 The Maasai are likely to have come from around Napata and Meroe, the  seat of a celebrated Nilotic state where, at Nag Hammadi, ancient  gospels have recently been discovered which connects the authors with the Melchizedekian order to which Jesus belonged.
 
 All this may indicate why the worshippers of Enkai called themselves  Maasai. Cynthia Salvadori translates the word Maasai as "people of Maa speech." But that begs the question: What exactly is "Maa speech?" An answer that suggests itself is that Maa is another name for Enkai.
 
 Moreover, if Enkai is cognate with the Sumerian Enki, the Canaanite  Enoch, Genesis's Cain, the Andean Inca, the Mexican Chanes, to this list we can add the ancient Western African kingdom of Ghana and, in modern Ghana, the Akan.
 
 Robert Graves in The Greek Myths and Robert Temple in The Sirius Mystery report that Canaan is only a Hebrew corruption of Aganor - the Ugandan who became the eponymous father of the Canaanites - a name which closely resembles Ghana.
 
 They and Cheik Anta Diop - the great Senegalese archaeo-historian -  demonstrate a direct cultural, mythological, linguistic and blood link between Cush, Egypt, Crete, Arcadia, Thessaly, Armenia, Lemnos, Canaan, Garamantia (ancient Libya), Dogon, Bambara, Wolof and Akan.
 
  East Africa
 Kenya
 Arts, Culture and Entertainment
 
 
                
 

/>

Ephraimite Forum-3
Date: 24 Sivan 5767, 10 June 2007
Contents:
1. Tolkien and the Jews
2. Shakespeare and the Jews
3. Prof. Paul Eidelberg: The Hidden Cause of the Arab War Against Israel
[followed by Brit-Am Refutation]
 
1. Tolkien and the Jews
http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=7846

2. Shakespeare and the Jews

MYSTERIOUS TEMPEST
by David Basch
http://www.shaksper.net/archives/2004/2028.html

Humor: Was Shakespeare Jewish?
by David Verveer
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3309633,00.html

The one-man play "Shylock" by Gareth Armstrong
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/2002/11/17/stories/2002111700130500.htm

3. Prof. Paul Eidelberg:
The Hidden Cause of the Arab War Against Israel
[followed by Brit-Am Refutation]
 
From: eidelberg@foundation1.org
Subject: The  Hidden Cause
The Hidden Cause of the Arab War Against Israel
 
By Prof. Paul Eidelberg
Why Arabs want to destroy Israel receives only superficial commentary by students of the Arab-Israel War.
Most say the Arabs want to destroy Israel because it is a Jewish state.  Notice, however, that the state's political elites are only nominally Jewish.  In fact, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Tsippi Livni, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and Education Minister Yuli Tamir want to transform Israel into a multicultural society like Sweden, whose political elites have erased their own people's history and culture.
 
Others say that the Arabs want to wipe Israel off the map of the Middle East because it is a democracy that threatens, by its example, the autocratic power structure of the Arab-Islamic world.  And yet, despite the veneer of democracy--periodic multiparty elections--such is the concentration of power in Israel's (prime ministerial) government, on the one hand, and such is the impotence of its legislature on the other, that Israel should be classified as an oligarchy.  Indeed, since the government owns or controls almost 90 percent of the country's assets, Israel may rightly be called a corporate state.
 
Still other commentators say that the Arabs want to annihilate Israel because Islam is a militant and expansionist religion.  This is indubitably true.  But the question remains:  What is there about Israel that the Arabs most detest or fear if it is not, strictly speaking, a Jewish as well as democratic state?  Could it be the state's secular character, its having ever been dominated by secularists?  Consider what two Arab commentators say.
 
One writes:  "The propagandists of secularism, who leave out of account the religious factor in the Palestine problem, ignore the fact that this is the only bone of contention in the world which has persisted for thirty centuries." 
 
Another Arab spokesman declares:  "Apart from the political conflict, there is a basic philosophical and spiritual incompatibility between the two contending nationalisms.  Even if all political disputes were to be resolved, the two movements, Zionism and Arab Nationalism, would remain, spiritually and ideologically, worlds apart--living in separate 'universes of discourse' which are incapable of communication or meaningful dialogue." 
 
Notice that neither of these Arab spokesmen regards territory or geographical boundaries as a decisive issue in the Arab animosity toward Israel.  Which means that Israel's policy of "territory for peace" is doomed to fail, indeed, is leading to Israel?s territorial dismemberment. Territorial nationalism, however, is the paramount principle of secular Zionism.  This being the case, the "peace process" signifies the end of secular Zionism, the ideology of the Likud party!
 
What is crucial here, however, is not the noun "Zionism," but the adjective ?secular.?  From the Arab point of view, Israeli secularism is the greatest threat to Arab-Islamic civilization, as may learn from Moslem scholars such Harvard-educated professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
 
To be sure, Arabs murdered religious Jews even before the establishment of the secular state of Israel.  But anti-Zionism was the principal motive of such murders, and the Zionist movement was dominated by secularists--even self-professed atheists like David Ben-Gurion.
 
In short, Arab hostility toward Israel is primarily motivated by the fact that Israel is ruled by irreligious Jews, above all by those of the political Left..  In other words, the hidden cause of the war being waged against the Jews is Jewish rejection of the God of Israel.
 
            This conclusion accords with basic Jewish sources as well as with Jewish history.  When Jews turn away from God, God turns away from Jews.  Stated another way, when Israel fails to exalt God?s name, God will use various instruments, be it the United Nations or the Arabs, to condemn and humiliate Israel. 
 
            This underlying dynamic of Jewish history is obscured by the very brilliance of well-intended critics of the ?peace process??which is why they have had no discernible impact on the obviously irrational and suicidal behavior of Israel's government.  The same critics would accomplish infinitely more if they would but recognize that the irrational and suicidal nature of the ?peace process? is a consequence of the godless character of Israel's government.  They would then see that Arab despots are merely instruments of Divine Providence.   The Arabs are simply facilitating the demise of a secular state, a precondition of Israel's spiritual redemption.
 
Brit-Am Refutation to above article.
It is true that in the past some Moslem theologians have used the religious factor (or lack of it) amongst secular Zionists in their arguments.
This sentiment can also be found amongst the Moslem "Man in the Street" community.
Arabs are often religious to a degree. Their religious concepts can be divided into three basic categories:

a. A superstitious pagan sort of distant appreciation of cause and effect, good and bad luck, fate, etc.
Secular Jews especially immodestly dressed women and women in assertive public positions can upset the Arab sense of propriety and threaten their inner world.

b. Classical Moslem "Arabian" orthodox type.
This will tolerate the Jew to a limited degree as long as the Jew maintains an inferior status and allows himself to be periodically oppressed which oppression includes beatings, rape, abduction of women and children,along with occasional murder with life varying from barely tolerable to a living hell.
On top of all this under an Islamic regime they will perpetually have the threat of a capricious annihilation hovering over their heads.
Welcome to Islamistan!

c. General Monotheism that finds expression through Islam.
Arabs quarrel with each other and oppress one another.
An Arab who is disaffected with his peers may come to consider them basically "wicked" while finding the Jews relatively speaking to be "righteous".
Arabs often have or can come to quickly acquire a healthy "fear of God".
This can come into play at times of disaffection or after military defeats or even as a result of vigorous law enforcement measures.
The more religious the Jews are or seem to be the more these potentialities amongst Arabs can work for the Jewish good.

The three above categories intermerge and overlap in the Arab character.
The first two are usually dominant while the third may assert itself after traumatic experience.
The third category "Fear of God" is the only viable option that Jews should look to.

In order to get along with the Arabs the Jews should therefore be prepared to thoroughly beat the Arabs while themselves living a God-fearing existence.
Being "religious" in itself is not a solution.

/>

Ephraimite Forum-4
Date: 26 Sivan 5767, 12 June 2007
Contents:
1.Jewish Genealogy
2.Interesting Quotations from Thomas Jefferson
3.Richard Griffin: Want to help BritAm?
Start by making your own coffee

1.Jewish Genealogy
From: Craig Blackwood <cablack@westnet.com.au>
Subject: Avotaynu Guide to Jewish Genealogy

http://www.avotaynu.com/books/MenkNames.htm

2.Interesting Quotations from Thomas Jefferson
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_jefferson.html

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.
Thomas Jefferson

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
Thomas Jefferson

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
 
He who knows best knows how little he knows.
Thomas Jefferson

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Thomas Jefferson

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.
Thomas Jefferson

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
Thomas Jefferson

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Thomas Jefferson

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson

One man with courage is a majority.
Thomas Jefferson

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
Thomas Jefferson

3.Richard Griffin: Want to help BritAm?
Start by making your own coffee

Previous generations understood  God's advice  contained in Proverbs that a little bit of money here and there adds up quickly in terms of our personal wealth. So too a little bit of money saved here and there can free up  money we might not otherwise have to help God's work and other worthy causes. I typically spend 2 to 3 dollars a day buying coffee. I am now making my own at work and I am going to offer that money  to BritAm.   I suggest all of you do the same.

Dr. Griffith

Want to get rich? Start by making your own coffee
Russ Wiles
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 10, 2007 10:04 PM
The road to riches, like a long journey, begins with that first step. Most Americans aren't born with seven-digit net worths, but many get there by putting their money to work for them, one dollar at a time.
Saving anything can seem daunting to people living paycheck to paycheck. But if you earn income, you have a chance to put some of it away by reducing expenses.
Almost everyone could take their savings to a higher level. If you're among the 35 percent of workers counting less than $10,000 in savings and investments, it's time to get serious. Here are a few ways to start:
 
? Pay off your credit cards.
It's easy to dig a hole through reckless card use, and you'll stay bogged down if you don't pare your balance. Suppose you pay only a 3 percent minimum each month on a $3,000 balance with a 13 percent rate. At that pace, you would need 13 years to pay it all off while incurring $1,590 in interest. Run numbers at www.bankrate.com/brm/calc/min payment.asp.

? Make your own coffee.
All those high-priced lattes add up. If you could save $4 by forsaking just one cup of designer coffee each day, you'd save $1,460 a year. Run numbers at www.hughchou.org/ calc/coffee.cgi.

? Adjust the thermostat.
For many Arizonans, utility costs rank among the highest bills, especially in summer. Shave them by adjusting your thermostat, installing low-energy bulbs, planting shade trees and more. Read tips from Salt River Project at www.srpnet.com/ menu/energy.aspx.

? Eat out less often. As with coffee, you can save cash by purchasing fewer meals out. If you cut $4 a day by packing lunches five days a week, that's $1,000 or so over a year. Calculate your savings at www.hugh chou.org/calc/lunch.cgi.

? Downsize your auto. Cars are expensive in many ways - purchase price, gasoline, insurance, registration, repairs and more. One way to minimize that is with less-costly models.
For example, taking out a $12,500 auto loan rather than a $25,000 one will help you save more than the $12,500 difference. You'll also avoid $1,868 in interest (on a 48-month loan with a 7 percent rate), plus higher registration and insurance. Visit www.bankrate.com/brm/ auto-loan-calcula tor.asp.

? Entertain yourself.
Movie tickets, drinks and popcorn for two can approach $30. Shave $20 by renting a movie and watching at home. Trim costs further by borrowing a video at the library. Cutting entertainment by $20 a month frees $240 over a year.

Put money to good use
So you've saved up a lot of extra cash by cutting expenses. That's a good start. But now you need to invest it wisely.
Once you start building up cash, create an account for emergencies. Money-market mutual funds and certain bank vehicles are suitable for this.
Longer-term, workplace 401(k) plans and other retirement accounts offer a mix of tax and other incentives.
Young adults have golden opportunities to maximize wealth over time. A 25-year-old starting from scratch can reach $500,000 at age 65 by investing $424 a month and earning 4 percent above inflation. Someone who waits until 45 to start must sock away $1,364 a month to reach the same goal.
See Vanguard's "determine how much to save" calculator at https://flagship .vanguard. com/VGApp/hnw/planning education/retirement.
 
 

/>

Eugenics simply put means the "science" of good breeding.
Discourage people with genetic problems from breeding,
while encouraging they who are genetically gifted to have children and so the supposition goes
the whole "race" will be improved.
Eugenics was spoken of in the times of the Greeks and Spartans, became fashionable in the later nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, got a bad name under Hitler, but has since in a de facto fashion often ruled our lives.
Most social workers, fertility counsellors, etc, work according to the science of "eugenics".
The principle of "eugenics" are applied in many scientific explanations.
A recent article making "eugenic" assumptions was noted in
Jerusalem News-640
#1. Did Discrimination Enhance Intelligence of Jews?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/
news/2005/07/0718_050718_ashkenazim.html
This article crudely says that the European Jews were allowed only to work as money-lenders.
Money-lenders need to be intelligent.
Only money-lenders could have large families.
Since moneylenders were both able to afford families and intelligent they dominated the "genetic" pool and thus many of the Ashkenazi Jews are brainy.
It may sound like a bright idea but is not convincing.

What if a people decided to encourage all of its congenital idiots and misfits etc to have children?
What if in many cases there was no offspring, in some cases misfits etc like their parents,
and then at the fringes geniuses?
What if this continued generation after generation so that most of the "misfits" were gradually weeded out
and only the geniuses remained?
What if the genes for true genius are very close almost interlinked with those for idiocy
and that by eliminating "idiots" you are liable to be also killing off the truly gifted?
Sound far-fetched?
It may be BUT it has more historical evidence to support it than the money-lending story.

You heard this first on Brit-Am.
Quite a few truths of some consequence may have come your way through Brit-Am.
Remember Brit-Am.
 

  Ephraimite Forum-8
Date: 3 Av 5767, 18 July 2007
Contents:
1.The Germans in Denmark: Another Explantion?
2.Humor : Prerogative
3.Tribute to US Military Power

Ephraimite Forum-9
Contents:
1.Bible History:
Evidence for the Early Date of the Exodus
2.Anti-Semitism, Israelites, and the Rest: THE BLOOD LIBEL
3.Other Peoples : Genetic Differences Within Austria
4.Nice Overhead Picture of Jews Praying at the Kotel
5. DNA: Epigenomics?

Shalom,
The idea that you have proposed many times regarding the modification of a population's DNA based on where they are, all being affected together, has certainly interested me. It didn't understand the direct mechanism allowing this, but I thought it possible. Then the other day I was watching a public broadcasting program about the field of epigenomics and it all came together. It is not where we are but what we eat!
As a population migrates together, what it eats is directly affected by where they are. And that can and does directly affect the turning on and turning off of various DNA potential affects. This is a link to the program's website:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/02.html
These are good overviews of the technology, but more are available on the website above:
http://www.genome.duke.edu/genomelife/glarchive/issue8/maternaldiet
http://www.ehponline.org/members/2006/114-3/focus.html
Richard
Dallas, TX USA

 

Ephraimite Forum-10
Date: 14 Av 5767, 29 July 2007
Contents:
1. Bowl of tomato soup a day 'boosts fertility'
2. DNA: "Old" Article on Epigenetics Provides Good Introduction to Subject
3. DNA: Is There a Genetic Basis to Race After All?

1. Bowl of tomato soup a day 'boosts fertility'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=
TEFXLWDXEZIPBQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/earth/2007/07/28/scisoup128.xml

2. DNA: "Old" Article on Epigenetics Provides Good Introduction to Subject
11.22.2006
DNA Is Not Destiny
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/nov/cover/?searchterm=epigenetics

The new science of epigenetics rewrites the rules of disease, heredity, and identity.

by Ethan Watters
Short Extract Only

Remarkably, the researchers effected this transformation without altering a single letter of the mouse's DNA. Their approach instead was radically straightforward?they changed the moms' diet. Starting just before conception, Jirtle and Waterland fed a test group of mother mice a diet rich in methyl donors, small chemical clusters that can attach to a gene and turn it off. These molecules are common in the environment and are found in many foods, including onions, garlic, beets, and in the food supplements often given to pregnant women. After being consumed by the mothers, the methyl donors worked their way into the developing embryos' chromosomes and onto the critical agouti gene. The mothers passed along the agouti gene to their children intact, but thanks to their methyl-rich pregnancy diet, they had added to the gene a chemical switch that dimmed the gene's deleterious effects.

In recent years, epigenetics researchers have made great strides in understanding the many molecular sequences and patterns that determine which genes can be turned on and off. Their work has made it increasingly clear that for all the popular attention devoted to genome-sequencing projects, the epigenome is just as critical as DNA to the healthy development of organisms, humans included. Jirtle and Waterland's experiment was a benchmark demonstration that the epigenome is sensitive to cues from the environment. More and more, researchers are finding that an extra bit of a vitamin, a brief exposure to a toxin, even an added dose of mothering can tweak the epigenome?and thereby alter the software of our genes?in ways that affect an individual's body and brain for life.

The even greater surprise is the recent discovery that epigenetic signals from the environment can be passed on from one generation to the next, sometimes for several generations, without changing a single gene sequence. It's well established, of course, that environmental effects like radiation, which alter the genetic sequences in a sex cell's DNA, can leave a mark on subsequent generations. Likewise, it's known that the environment in a mother's womb can alter the development of a fetus. What's eye-opening is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the epigenetic changes wrought by one's diet, behavior, or surroundings can work their way into the germ line and echo far into the future. Put simply, and as bizarre as it may sound, what you eat or smoke today could affect the health and behavior of your great-grandchildren.

To the surprise of scientists, many environmentally induced changes turn out to be heritable. When exposed to predators, Daphnia water fleas grow defensive spines . The effect can last for several generations.

In November 2005, Marcus Pembrey, a clinical geneticist at the Institute of Child Health in London, attended a conference at Duke University to present intriguing data drawn from two centuries of records on crop yields and food prices in an isolated town in northern Sweden. Pembrey and Swedish researcher Lars Olov Bygren noted that fluctuations in the towns' food supply may have health effects spanning at least two generations. Grandfathers who lived their preteen years during times of plenty were more likely to have grandsons with diabetes?an ailment that doubled the grandsons' risk of early death. Equally notable was that the effects were sex specific. A grandfather's access to a plentiful food supply affected the mortality rates of his grandsons only, not those of his granddaughters, and a paternal grandmother's experience of feast affected the mortality rates of her granddaughters, not her grandsons.

This led Pembrey to suspect that genes on the sex-specific X and Y chromosomes were being affected by epigenetic signals. Further analysis supported his hunch and offered insight into the signaling process. It turned out that timing?the ages at which grandmothers and grandfathers experienced a food surplus?was critical to the intergenerational impact. The granddaughters most affected were those whose grandmothers experienced times of plenty while in utero or as infants, precisely the time when the grandmothers' eggs were forming. The grandsons most affected were those whose grandfathers experienced plenitude during the so-called slow growth period, just before adolescence, which is a key stage for the development of sperm.

Michael Meaney, who studies the impact of nurturing, likewise wonders what the implications of epigenetics are for social policy. He notes that early child-parent bonding is made more difficult by the effects of poverty, dislocation, and social strife. Those factors can certainly affect the cognitive development of the children directly involved. Might they also affect the development of future generations through epigenetic signaling?

3. DNA: Is There a Genetic Basis to Race After All?
It may not be a question of which genes, but how they behave.
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/is-there-a-genetic-basis-to-race-after-all
by Kathryn Garfield
 

 

Ephraimite Forum-11
Date:02/08/07 18th Ab 5767
Contents:
1. Presidents of the USA and Jewish Firsts
2.Early "Anglo" Immigrants to the USA and Jews who came later
3. Deepest Syria

1. Presidents of the USA and Jewish Firsts
From: JerseyShoreGuy1184 <jerseyshoreguy1184@yahoo.com>
Subject: A proud bit of trivia

GEORGE WASHINGTON was the first President to write to a synagogue. In 1790 he addressed separate letters to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, RI, to Mikveh Israel Congregation in Savannah, GA, and a joint letter to Congregation Beth Shalom, Richmond, VA, Mikveh Israel Philadelphia, Beth Elohim, Charleston, S. C., and Shearith Israel, New York. His letters are an eloquent expression and hope for religious harmony and endure as indelible statements of the most fundamental tenets of American democracy.
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON was the first President to appoint a Jew to a Federal post. In 1801 he named Reuben Etting of Baltimore as US Marshall for Maryland.
JAMES MADISON was the first President to appoint a Jew to a diplomatic post. He sent Mordecai M. Noah to Tunis from 1813 to 1816.
MARTIN VAN BUREN was the first President to order an American consul to intervene on behalf of Jews abroad. In 1840 he instructed the U.S. consul in Alexandria, Egypt to use his good offices to protect the Jews of Damascus who were under attack because of a false blood ritual accusation.
 
JOHN TYLER was the first President to nominate a U.S. consul to Palestine. Warder Cresson, a Quaker convert to Judaism who established a pioneer Zionist colony, received the appointmen t in 1844.
 
FRANKLIN PIERCE was the first and probably the only President whose name appears on the charter of a synagogue. Pierce signed the Act of Congress in 1857 that amended the laws of the District of Columbia to enable the incorporation of the city's first synagogue, the Washington Hebrew Congregation.
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN was the first President to make it possible for rabbis to serve as military chaplains. He did this by signing the 1862 Act of Congress which changed the law that had previously barred all but Christian clergymen from the captaincy. Lincoln was also the first, and happily the only President who was called upon to revoke an official act of anti-Semitism by the U.S. government. It was Lincoln who
 canceled General Ulysses S Grant's "Order No. 11" expelling all Jews from Tennessee from the district controlled by his armies during the Civil Wa r. Grant always denied personal respon sibili ty for this act attributing it to his subordinate.
 
ULYSSES S. GRANT was the first President to attend a synagogue service while in office. When Adas Israel Congregation in Washington D.C. was dedicated in 1874, Grant and all members of his Cabinet were present.
 
 RUTHERFORD B. HAYES was the first President to designate a Jewish ambassador for the stated purpose of fighting anti-Semitism. In 1870, he named Benjamin Peixotto Consul-General to Romania. Hays also was the first President to assure a civil service employee her right to work for the Federal government and yet observe the Sabbath. He ordered the employment of a Jewish woman who had been denied a position in the Department of the Interior because of her refusal to work on Saturday.
 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT was the first President to appoint a Jew to a presidentia l cabinet. In 1906 he named Oscar S. Straus Secretary of Commerce and Labor. Theodore Roosevelt was also the first President to contribute his own funds to a Jewish cause. In 1919, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts while President to settle the Russo-Japanese War Roosevelt contributed part of his prize to the National Jewish Welfare Board.

 WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT was the first President to attend a Seder while in office. In 1912, when he visited Providence, RI, he participated in the family Seder of Colonel Harry Cutler, first president of the National Jewish Welfare Board, in the Cutler home on Glenham Street.
 
WOODROW WILSON was the first President to nominate a Jew, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, to the United States Supreme Court. Standing firm against great pressure to withdraw the nomination, Wilson insisted that he knew no one better qualified by judicial temperament as well as legal and social understanding, con firmation was finally voted by
 the Senate on June 1, 1916. Wilson was also the first President to publicly endorse a national Jewish philanthropic campaign. In a letter to Jacob Schiff, on November 22, 1917, Wilson called for wide support of the United Jewish Relief Campaign which was raising funds for European War relief.

 WARREN HARDING was the first President to sign a Joint Congressional Resolution endorsing the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate supporting the establishment in Palestine of a national Jewish home for the Jewish people. The resolution was signed September 22, 1922.
 
CALVIN COOLIDGE was the first President to participate in the
 dedication of a Jewish community institution that was not a house of worship. On May 3, 1925, he helped dedicate the cornerstone of the Washing ton, D.C. Jewish Community center.
 
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT was the first President to be given a Torah as a gift. He received a miniature Torah from Young Israel and another that had been rescued from a burning synagogue in Czechoslovakia. Both are now in the Roosevelt Memorial Library in Hyde Park. The Roosevelt administration's failure to expand the existing refuge quota system, ensured that large numbers of Jews would ultimately become some of the Holocaust's six million victims. Fifty-six years after Roosevelt's death, the arguments continue over Roosevelt's response to the Holocaust.

 HARRY S. TRUMAN, on May 14, 1948, just eleven minutes after Israel's proclamation of independence, was the first head of a government to announce to the press that "the United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new state of Israel." Truman was also th e first U.S. Presiden t to receive a president of Israel at the White House, Chaim Weizman, in 1948 and an Ambassador from Israel , Eliahu Elat in 1948. With Israel staggering under the burdens of mass immigration in 1951-1952, President Truman obtained from Congress close to $140 million in loans and grants.
 
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER was the first President to participate in a coast-to-coast TV program sponsored by a Jewish organization. It was a network show in 1954 celebrating the 300th anniversary of the American Jewish community. On this occasion he said that it was one of the enduring satisfactions of his life that he was privileged to lead the forces of the free world which finally crushed the brutal regime in Germany, freeing the remnant of Jews for a new life and
 hope in Israel.

JOHN F KENNEDY named two Jews to his cabinet - Abraham Ribicoff as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and Arthur Goldberg as Secretary of Labor. Kennedy was the only President for whom a national Jewish Award was named. The annual peace award of the Synagogue Council of America was re-named the John F. Kennedy Peace Award after his assassination in 1963
 
JIMMY CARTER in a number of impassioned speeches stated his concer for human rights and stressed the right of Russian Jews to emigrate. He is credited with being the person responsible for the Camp David Accords.

 GEORGE H.W. BUSH in 1985 as Vice President had played a personal role in "Operation Joshua," the airlift which brought 10,000 Jews out of Ethiopia directly to resettlement in Israel. Then, again in 1991, when Bush was President, American help played a critical role in "Operation Solomon", the escape of 14,000 more E thiopian Jews. Most dramatically, Bush got t o the U.N. to revoke its 1975 "Zionism is Racism" resolution.

 Consider the last two officeholders
 
BILL CLINTON appointed more Jews to his cabinet than all of the previous presidents combined and put Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, both 1st appointed to the federal bench by Jimmy Carter, on the Supreme Court.

2. Early "Anglo" Immigrants to the USA and Jews who came later
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/07/deepest-syria.php
 To new shores
Emma Lazarus'  famous lines
"Give  me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses    yearning to breathe free"  reflect in part the perception of some Americans of who the emigrants to the New World were.  A friend of mine in 8th grade told me proudly that his ancestors (Scotch-Irish) were the "trash" of Europe, but they had built the greatest country on earth.  The reality is more textured.  If you read "Albion's Seed" you will note that the various streams that settled the eastern seaboard prior to 1776 fit the "huddled masses" stereotype to varying degrees.
The Puritans of Massachusetts were very conscious of preferring literate and relatively skilled settlers. 
Not only did they exclude the majority of the poor peasantry from their City on the Hill via monetary hurdles but they implicitly rejected the migration of religiously like-minded nobility and gentry to their Commonwealth when they refused to transfer the inherited privileges of the English upper classes. 
Though as a schoolboy I learned that Virginia was founded by indentured servants, the reality is that the coastal colonies of the south were seeded from the two ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, the gentry and nobility and the destitute rural poor, who to some extent transferred their class relations and sensibilities to the New World.  Many of the leading families which cohered into the Virginia and Carolina planter aristocracies have their origins among the younger sons of the southwest British nobility (primogeniture excluded them from the greater part of their familial fortunes). 
States like Pennsylvania and New York clearly have more variegated origins, from the Dutch remnants of New Amsterdam to the Quakers and fellow travellers of Philadelphia, but overall one can say that this relatively heterogenous bunch had a central tendency toward "lower middle class" artisan origins which they leveraged into a positive attitude toward mercantalism.
 
Often not as as cerebral as the Puritans of New England, the citizens of Philadelphia and New York nevertheless did celebrate modern virtues of literacy and industry to the extent that worldly goods could be best attained in such a fashion.
 And then of course there was the massive Scot-Irish emigration to the uplands which later became Appalachia.
  Coming from the borderlands of Scotland and England and Ulster in Ireland, this group could best fit under the image that Lazarus' poem evokes in us.
  Lacking in the advantages of many of the other British groups who settled the eastern seaboard this group had to grasp opportunity physically and forced its way to the center of American life in part through its prowess in the arenas of battle and politics.

Of course Emma Lazarus was speaking to a later time, during the Great Wave of the turn of the 19th century when millions upon millions of southern, eastern and Jewish Europeans swelled onto the shores of the eastern United States.  The Jews were often the most likely to be literate and skilled of the new immigrant streams, and so they were the first who made their presence felt in the professions.
  Nevertheless, what was the character of the Jewish immigrants relative to their source populations?  We can perhaps spy a hint if we look at the character of mass conversions (assimilation) to gentile society in Europe.  In "The Pity of it All" a history of Jews in Germany from the first glimmerings of tolerance during the life of Moses Mendelssohn until 1933, Amos Elon states:
"Conversion was mostly a middle- and upper-middle-class phenomenon.
  The richest, most talented, successful and cultured men and women were often the first to convert.... (page 83)
At the very moment when the new Jewish middle class was beginning to enter German society and German politics, conversion deprived German Jews of their social and intellectual elite.
  The most influential segments of the middle and upper middle class abandoned the poor and petite bourgeoisie to their fate...." (page 90)

My impression (though I am not sure about this, further illumination would be welcome) is that some of the same dynamic characterized the conversion experience in pre-expulsion Spain, that assimilative pressures were felt strongest by the Jewish elite who moved in gentile circles.
But such assertions have a weaker weighting in my world that some quantitative documentation.  Which brings me back to the United States.
  In "The Jews in America", Arthur Hertzberg offers:
"in 1906, the year whem some two-hundred-thousand Jews...came to the United States, only fifty listed themselves as professionals (at that time, between five and ten percent of Jews in various countries of Eastern Europe, including Czarist Russia, were in the professions). (page 13)
This is a community which today has an over two times the frequency of college degree holders as the general population.
  Via psychometrics one can assert that the American Jewish community's median IQ  ranges from 107-115.
  It is interesting to reflect whether perhaps the peculiar familial experiences of the Jewish intelligensia (which I would estimate form about 1/4 of America's intellectual class, conservatively) might not influence their relatively lack of interest in strongly selective immigration in a manner remiscient of Canada.  After all, their forebears were not the great ones of the European Jewry, but rather those of modest means (and even less than modest), but they have clearly succeeded in this country

3. Deepest Syria
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/07/deepest-syria.php
Article briefly discusses minorities (Alawites etc) in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East
 

Ephraimite Forum-12
Date:08/08/07 24th Ab 5767
Contents:
1. Neanderthals still with us in Southwest France?
2. Study: Genes influence how we choose friends
3. The Alans: An Example of Inter-Continental Migrations in Ancient Times

1. Neanderthals still with us in Southwest France?
http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2007/07/neandertals_humans_gettin_alon.php

2. Study: Genes influence how we choose friends
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20149020/site/newsweek/
You've Got to Have ... Genes
by Sarah Kliff
Newsweek
Extracts:

A new study says that how we choose our friends is strongly influenced by genetic factors.

Genes figure strongly into the drive to socialize, researchers found

Aug. 6, 2007 - Almost everybody knows by now that genes play an important role in everything from how our bodies react to nutrients to our predisposition to some cancers to whether or not we get depressed. A forthcoming study in the Archives of Psychiatry says that we can add how we choose our friends to the growing list of traits strongly influenced by genetic factors. A team of Virginia Commonwealth University researchers found that genes, alongside environment, strongly influence who we choose as friends. The researchers studied the peer groups of approximately 1,800 male twins, having each subject describe the level of social deviance among their friends, such as how many of their friends got drunk, used or sold drugs, or damaged property. The research showed that an individual's selection of friends--whether they chose to socialize with fewer or more socially deviant peers--was shaped by genetic factors. Not only did the researchers find that selection of friends has a genetic basis, but also that the influence of genes actually increased over time, as individuals gain autonomy in selecting their peers and building their social world. NEWSWEEK?s Sarah Kliff spoke with lead author Kenneth Kendler, a professor of psychiatry in VCU's School of Medicine, about the role that genes play in determining our environments and our friendships. Excerpts:

Kenneth Kendler: When you?re considering behavior and genetics, you can think of the brain as a transducing device, where the genes help structure the brain. The brain then influences our behavior, although environment plays a big role too. Our behavior then dramatically influences our physical and especially our social environment. We?ve seen that a variety of what used to be considered solely environmental risk factors, things like difficulties with marriages, rates of accidents, levels of social support, are partially influenced by your genotype. Take depression, for example. Part of the way that genes might influence your risk for depression is by influencing your temperament, by making you have somewhat more conflicted relationships and by increasing marital conflict, which then feeds back on you to increase your risk of depression.

Imagine a person who is shy, likes to follow authority, very much enjoys doing socially acceptable tasks. He or she might have grown up in a family not so much like that, but by the time she?s 16, she?s finding a local church group of people like herself; at the age of 18 she decides to go to a Christian university. Her temperament allows her to shape more and more of her social world. By the time she?s 25 she?s made her own life that way. The opposite story is that you can have a hell-on-wheels 9-year-old, who thinks that nothing is more fun then getting into fights. At 10 years old, you find him by a heavily trafficked road throwing rocks at cars because he thinks that?s fun. That?s the kid who is going to get in trouble. He makes his own life too, but by the time he?s 25 he?s going to be able to shape himself much more. It?s not that the temperament or genetic dispositions are not there early on. But it?s the capacity you have increasing with time to be able to shape your own life. You really do get to make your own life as you grow up. That?s what being an adult is in some ways.

3. The Alans : An Example of Inter-Continental Migrations in Ancient Times
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/archives/2007_05_01_gene-expression_archive.php
I've been having a correspondence with a reader about phylogeographic issues, and one thing that I told him was that I think he underestimates the possibility of long distance travel for steppe peoples. It may be correct that in pre-modern times that "most people did not move more than 10 miles from where they were born." I also believe that it is likely correct that the size of "barbarian hordes" was relatively small in proportion to the local peasant population which they ruled after the fall of Rome. But, none of this negates the possibility that in particular circumstances long distance travel and migration did occu.  Obviously living a world where European descended peoples dominate North American, Australasia and are non-trivial presences in South America, we are aware that such migrations do occur. But even 4,000 years ago, a man born in what is today Switzerland <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s781364.htm">found himself buried</a> at Stonehenge!  Though the expectation of travel was low in pre-modern times, there was a variance.  I think one illustration of this can be the Alan peoples.  Today the remnants of this Iranian speaking ethnic group reside in the North Caucasus region as the Ossetes.  2,000 years ago their precursors as the Alans were part of the Sarmatian hordes which battled the Roman Empire.  In the 4th century some were driven forward from the plains of Pannonia (Hungary) and they eventually settled parts of France as Roman federates.  Others became the dominant power in early 5th century Spain, but after their defeat at the hands of Roman armies they were absorbed by the Vandal monarchy.  When the Vandals set up their kingdom based out of Carthage in modern Tunisia the Alans were still a distinctive part of their nation. The rulers of North Africa were the "kings of the Vandals and Alans" up until their conquest in the early 6th century.  Another portion of the Alan peoples roamed the West Eurasian steppes (between the Carpathian mountains and the Volga). These eventually gave rise to the Ossetes.  But, interestingly, I read once that there were Christian priests in the Mongol capital in the 13th century because there were Alans who served the Khan.  So here you have an ethnic group whose members have spanned the World Island, from Tunisia to China.
 

Ephraimite Forum-13
Date:15/08/07 1 Elul 5767
Contents:
1. Epigenetics
2. Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century
3. Narth Understanding Homosexuality:
4. Etruscan Genius?
5. Discrimination Against Redheads in Britain

1. Epigenetics : the hippest field on the block
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/archives/2007_02_01_gene-expression_archive.php
Extract:             
      The <a href="http://www.cell.com/content/issue?volume=128&issue=4">current issue of Cell</a> is dedicated to the rapidly changing field of epigenetics, loosely defined at the ensemble of chromatin and DNA modifications that structure the genome and control gene expression. The only review I've worked my way through yet is this one:
Timescales of Genetic and Epigenetic Inheritance.
<blockquote>According to classical evolutionary theory, phenotypic variation originates from random mutations that are independent of selective pressure. However, recent findings suggest that organisms have evolved mechanisms to influence the timing or genomic location of heritable variability. Hypervariable contingency loci and epigenetic switches increase the variability of specific phenotypes; error-prone DNA replicases produce bursts of variability in times of stress. Interestingly, these mechanisms seem to tune the variability of a given phenotype to match the variability of the acting selective pressure. Although these observations do not undermine Darwin's theory, they suggest that selection and variability are less independent than once thought.</blockquote>

The authors limit themselves largely to bacteria and yeast, but they document a great deal of evidence that parameters like the mutation rate change in response to external stimuli, perhaps in almost a "directed" fashion.
Some work in primates</a> has shown a correlation between the amount of mutation raining down on a population and the amount of beneficial mutations that arise. Could "directed" mutagenesis be an explanation for this?

2. Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm#100yrs
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-faq.htm
Extract:

For example, you hear news and debates every day about the smallest events in Israel but rarely about events in Indonesia, yet by every objective standard, events in Indonesia are a lot more important. Indonesia has more people, more resources, more struggles and more exports. Still, I'm sure that the number of Anglophones who can name three leaders of Israel far outweighs the number who can name three leaders of Indonesia. In fact, any attempt to defend the attention we pay to Israel seems to be either 1) circular reasoning (Israel is important because we consider it important.), or 2) incredibly self-centered (Israel is important because it effects me personally.)

3. Narth Understanding Homosexuality:
http://narth.com/
Site contains interesting and useful articles on the subject of homosexuality,
how it may be avoided, and/or treated, and how its advocates are refuted
by known evidence.

4. Etruscan Genius?
Quote:
<<Where did come from the genes of Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galilei and  other  hundreds if not from Etruscans? I remember to you all that the greatest Romans had an Etruscan origin (Schultz, Zur Lateinischen Eigennamen). The ?Fiorentini? were few thousands: only the Athenians had a comparable geniality, neither the genial Jews, with their 25% of Nobel Prizes, who were 15 millions. >>
Source: Gioiello Tognoni del Badia

5. Discrimination Against Redheads in Britain
Is gingerism as bad as racism?
by Finlo Rohrer
BBC News Magazine
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6725653.stm
Extracts:
A red-haired family claims to have been driven from their Newcastle home because of abuse. Why is the harassment of redheads dismissed as just harmless fun?

Here's a joke. "What's the difference between a terrorist and a redhead?"

Here's the punchline. "You can negotiate with a terrorist."

Verbal abuse

Carrot-top, copper-top, ginger-nut, ginger minger, bluey (among Australians), Duracell, Ronald McDonald, Simply Red, Queen Elizabeth. And so on for hours and hours of the typical redhead's life. No wonder some gloss over their hair colour as "auburn" and "strawberry blonde" and even "titian".

Photographer Charlotte Rushton has been chronicling the UK's redheads for a book, Ginger Snaps. Of the 300 she snapped, only two have been spared bullying because of their hair. She herself has suffered verbal abuse from complete strangers.
 
LEGENDARY REDHEADS
 
King David
Queen Boudicca
Pharaoh Ramses II
Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I
Sir Winston Churchill

In adult life, women get stereotyped and red-haired men take much of the worst abuse. Treatment of red-haired children in school ranges from mild taunts to grim persecution.

Michele Eliot, the American director of British children's charity Kidscape, regularly has significant numbers of red-haired children in courses on coping with bullying.

Racism row

While there has been at least one report of a serious anti-red hair hate crime in the UK - a 20-year-old stabbed in the back in 2003 - it's unclear whose responsibility it is to monitor discrimination.

 
RED HAIR ROOTS
 
Caused by mutated MC1R gene
Most prevalent in far northern and western Europe
May have survived due to increased vitamin D production in pale-skinned
'Sexual selection' also possible
Disagreement over redheads' reputed higher pain tolerance
"It is certainly not us," says the Commission for Racial Equality.

Conservative backbencher Patrick Mercer, when recently sacked for alleged racism, sought to get himself out of a hole by comparing treatment of black soldiers to those with red hair.

"That's the way it is in the Army. If someone is slow on the assault course, you'd get people shouting: 'Come on you fat bastard, come on you ginger bastard, come on you black bastard.'"
 
RED HAIR MYTHOLOGY
Redheads sacrificed in ancient Egypt
Associated with witches and vampires in Europe
Reputed to bleed more
Mary Magdalene, Adam, Judas and even Jesus depicted as redheads

Red hair has great cultural resonance. Red is the colour of heat, danger and warnings. When applied to women, it is the colour of sensuousness, fiery temperament and emotional instability.

"Lilith [Adam's lover] was a redhead. It indicates red hair was bad. Shakespeare made all his most menacing characters wear red wigs. That seeps into culture," Ms Rushton says.

Stress release

So when does this date from? Some claim it could be a throwback to anti-Irish sentiment from the 19th Century and before when the Irish, with a greater prevalence of red hair, were regarded as ethnically inferior.


Redheads are feared because they are believed in folklore to be the devil's children and have red hair because they were conceived during their mother's menstruation.A welsh proverb says "os bydd goch, fe fydd gythreulig" or "if he's redhaired then he is of the devil". Yesterday's superstition has become today's teasing.
L, Wales

I oppose "bluey" being included as some of a red-head's taunts. In Australia, this isn't a prejudiced comment, it is a term of endearment. As an Australian living in London, I do not comprehend the prejudice surrounding red-head's. A red-head woman is considered beautiful down under!
Laurel, London

In primary school I would tell boys my red hair was actually gold, and if they married me they would be rich forever! Boys (although 5 years old!) fell for it! As soon as I got a little bit older, the bullying started. I have been spat at, as well as physically and verbally abused in the street because of the colour of my hair. Abuse is abuse, whether sexist, racist, because of the colour of someones skin or because of the colour of someones hair, and abuse should never be tolerated.
Hannah Smith, High Wycombe

As a white redhead, I would agree that racism is different from "gingerism" - redheads have not suffered centuries of systematic abuse ranging from slavery to institutional racism. Abuse of redheads is usually personal and does not, for example, affect our life or job prospects.

However, I would say that I have experienced abuse (although not so much as an adult) and I was mightily relieved that none of my children have turned out to have red hair and so they will not have to suffer similar abuse.
Rachel Pearce, Matlock, England

 

Ephraimite Forum-14
Date: 21/08/07 7 Elul 5767
Contents:
1. Changes in the average height of different nationalities
2. Did Prince Madoc of Wales Move to North America in 1170 CE?
3. Fertile Mules?
4. Isotopes and Human Migrations: Bavaria
5. Notes of Interest on Big Power Division of the World and US Interests

1. Changes in the average height of different nationalities
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/04/05/040405fa_fact
Extract
The Netherlands, as any European can tell you, has become a land of giants. In a century's time, the Dutch have gone from being among the smallest people in Europe to the largest in the world.
Tall Tale

". . . in Northern Europe over the past twelve hundred years human stature has followed a U-shaped curve: from a high around 800 A.D., to a low sometime in the seventeenth century, and back up again. Charlemagne was well over six feet; the soldiers who stormed the Bastille a millennium later averaged five feet and weighed a hundred pounds. "They didn't look like Errol Flynn and Alan Hale," the economist Robert Fogel told me. "They looked like thirteen-year-old girls."

"The men of the northern Cheyenne, he found, were the tallest people in the world in the late nineteenth century . . . they averaged nearly five feet ten."

"In both Europe and the Americas, he discovered, humans grew shorter as their cities grew larger . . . Heights also fell in synch with global temperatures, which reached a nadir during the Little Ice Age of the seventeenth century"

http://gnxp.com/blog/oldarchives/2004_03.html
Ok, but the article's main issue is this: The Dutch are the tallest people in the world {average 6 foot 1}, while Americans are mysteriously short {average 5 foot 9.5; white Americans apparently being among the shortest European peoples in the world}. This was not always the case, in fact it seems to have gone 180 degrees in about a century: Americans were about the tallest in the world for two centuries while the Dutch were the shortest people in Europe. American colonists at 5 foot 9 were basically the same height as modern Americans, and three inches taller than Europeans at the time, and four inches taller than the Dutch through most of the nineteenth century. Somewhere around the mid 1950s though, Europe started rapidly growing and America stopped. Now Americans are the ones who are about three inches shorter than the {Northern} European average . . . almost the same as Japan even {5 foot 8 1/4}, which has had some rapid growth spurts of its own.

Four inches taller to four inches smaller in about a century.

2. Did Prince Madoc of Wales Move to North America in 1170 CE?
http://www.thestar.com/article/238511

3. Fertile Mules?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule#Fertile_mules

4. Isotopes and Human Migrations: Bavaria
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Germanic-L/message/17543
There is a lot of new research out on detecting migrations using isotope analysis in bones and teeth. For example, there are several studies now conducted by the biology department of the University of Munich (e.g. Schweissing & Grupe).

The scholars investigated several bavarian cemetaries, such as Alten Erding, Peigen, Straubing, Neudorf. The graves date mostly to the 5th century. They found that a third to one half of the people buried there had grown up elsewhere, mostly in Bohemia and Moravia. These people would probably have been the name-givers of the Bavarians as "men from Boiehenum".

A further 10 to 20% of the people buried in these cemeteries had spend much of their childhood in the middle and lower Danubian region up to southern Russia. These would probably have been various East Germanic people, Sarmatian and/or Huns. Interestingly, the studies find that the "strangers" are more often females. Another interesting finding is that there is only a weak correlation between seemingly "foreign" grave goods and actual "foreign" isotopes. One explanation is that these occurrences are second generation migrants who were buried with inherited grave goods. If that was the case the percentage share of migrants would be even higher.

Cheers,
Dirk

5. Notes of Interest on Big Power Division of the World and US Interests

Europe and America: Sharing the Spoils of War

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Limited Extracts Only.
Article biased, anti-Anglo-American, and incorrect in many ways but contains some points of interest.
Article brought to to our attention by the
Origin Of nations List
Mailing-List: list origin@yahoogroups.com;
contact origin-owner@yahoogroups.com

Complete Article at:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=6423
Global Research, August 19, 2007

Europe and America have been long-term partners as well as rivals. New spheres of influence between the European Union and the United States have unfolded. The Middle East and its peripheral geographic areas lie at the heart of this process.

In the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a unified stance has developed within both the E.U. and NATO in regards to this geopolitical re-division. This unified stance is a reflection of an unfolding political and strategic consensus between the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany.

While Iraq falls within the Anglo-American orbit, the Eastern Mediterranean and its gas resources have been set to fall into that of the Franco-German entente. In fact, the entire Mediterranean region, from Morocco and gas-rich Algeria to the Levant is coveted by Franco-German interests.

The Franco-German Entente and Anglo-American Alliance: Rivalry and Partnership
 
The Anglo-American alliance and Franco-German entente are economic, political, and military alliances that have been forged by historic and socio-cultural realities that gave rise to opportunities of great magnitude. The Franco-German entente is a continental European entity, whereas the Anglo-American alliance is the incarnation of maritime trade and the overseas legacy of Britain.

The Franco-German entente is based on the post-war partnership of France and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) after the Second World War. After the unification of West Germany and East Germany the Franco-German partnership evolved, strengthened, and spawned the European Economic Community (EEC). France and a unified Germany were the basis for the evolving structure of the European common market and later the European Union.

European nations such as Belgium and Luxembourg are members of the Franco-German entente. These European countries are economically integrated with France and Germany. This is why Belgium and France have been aligned together in an economic face-off against the Anglo-American alliance in the African continent. Countries like Belgium, Luxembourg, and Austria also sided with Paris and Berlin against the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. In February of 2003, Belgium even assisted France and Germany in obstructing Anglo-American plans involving the use of NATO in Iraq.

The Anglo-American alliance is formed from the remains of Britain?s overseas colonies and territories. Unlike the Franco-German entente, the base of the Anglo-American alliance is outside of Eurasia. This becomes apparent after one considers the island nature of Britain in addition to the geographic situation of America. This is additionally reflected in the naval strength of Britain and America.

Australia and Canada fall within the orbit of the Anglo-American alliance. English is also the official language of many of the nations within the alliance, which are also part of the Anglosphere (English-speaking World). This is a reflection of the historical roots of the Anglo-American alliance. The Anglo-American alliance also has an intimate relationship with Israel. Countries like the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and Guam that have been under the military control of America in the past also fall within the orbit of the Anglo-American alliance.

America: The European Union's Fourth Power

 The E.U. is the creation of France and Germany, but it has become a shared body for the four most powerful nations of the so-called Western World. Without giving recognition to the fact that the E.U. is a creature of France, Germany, Britain, and America, it is hard to conceptualize Anglo-American foreign policy objectives being implemented through Europe. It should also be remembered that the E.U. is not the sole representative of the European continent or European civilization.

The three major powers in the E.U., the so-called "European Union-Three," are France, Germany, and Britain. Yet, these three European countries are not alone. America in reality is the European Union's fourth power, which acts through, or more properly with, Britain. The alliance between Washington and London makes America a de facto power in the European Union. London is also America's voice in Europe. Several other mechanisms including control of Eastern European E.U. members and NATO also allow America to exert itself in Europe.  

When it is recognized that the E.U. is a creature of both the Anglo-American alliance and the Franco-German entente, it can be recognized that American interests, like those of the British, are served through E.U. expansion. The expansion of the E.U. is an indirect expansion of America's orbit and interests. This is why the E.U. is called a part of America's bridgehead in Eurasia.

E.U. expansion also serves a second purpose for Anglo-American interests. The strength of the Franco-German entente can also be diluted or undermined as a result of E.U. expansion. However, this depends on the rate or velocity of E.U. expansion. A fast rate of E.U. expansion, but not exceedingly fast, serves Anglo-American interests by not allowing the Franco-German entente to consolidate its power within the E.U. and commandeer it. A steadier rate of E.U. expansion is in the best interests of the Franco-German entente. This is one of the reasons why tensions existed between Britain and France over E.U. expansion in Eastern Europe. This is also the reason why the U.S. openly called for the entry of several Eastern European countries such as Poland into the European Union.

Although the E.U. is a body of both the Anglo-American alliance and the Franco-German entente, the European bloc is overtly managed by the Franco-German side. France and Germany, with their allies, are still the dominant forces within the European Union. When international analysts talk about rifts or arguments between the E.U. and America they really mean the disagreements are between the Franco-German entente and America (and by extension Britain).    

Dividing the World between the Twin Pillars of NATO
 
When NATO acts it does not necessarily serve Anglo-American interests. Just as when one conceptualizes that the E.U. also serves the interests of America they must also recognize the Franco-German relationship in NATO. NATO is the iron rod that both alliances share within the broader trans-Atlantic framework which evolved after the Second World War. In parallel to the dichotomy of the E.U., NATO is also divided into two main branches: the Franco-German entente and the Anglo-American alliance. The stronger of the two is the Anglo-American side because of the military might of America.

NATO-German entente which, with the help of Russia, created a worldwide political firestorm for Britain and America.

Despite the fact that new governments have taken office in Berlin and Paris, under Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, Franco-German objectives have not changed. French and German policies like American are part of a continuum. The administrations of Merkel and Sarkozy are continuations of their predecessors, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder . 

At a summit between the U.S. and E.U. both sides stated that economics was the most important factor in their relationship and that politics was merely secondary. What appear to be radically pro-American governments in Europe are merely European administrations which reflect the merging of Franco-German and Anglo-American interests.
 
United States Central Command (CENTCOM)

Tension has gradually been building up in the Middle East.. This area also roughly corresponds to what the U.S. military identifies as US Central Command (CENTCOM or USCENTCOM).

The U.S. military, through the inheritance and legacy of British geo-strategic projects, is acquainted with the pivotal area and has identified it in roughly the same corresponding areas that have just been defined. CENTCOM is the active manifestation of this conceptual geographic area. 
..
CENTCOM is one of five U.S. military regional active theatre-stage command zones. It is also no mere coincidence that the geographic area that CENTCOM encompasses is also the most active plain of U.S. military action on the face of the earth.

CENTCOM is composed of East Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Although the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus (Caucasia), and Russia are located within the operational boundaries of another U.S. military region, United States European Command (EUCOM or USEUCOM), they are also vital to CENTCOM operations and are integrated into the preparation and the planning of CENTOM by the Pentagon and NATO.

It should be noted that Israel is not within the boundaries of CENTCOM by the Pentagon. Syria and Lebanon were also recently, in 2004, re-categorized or redrawn into the borders of CENCTOM. Both Syria and Lebanon were previously included as part of EUCOM, like Israel and Turkey, prior to 2004. This is an important fact to keep in mind and it is linked to the interests of the E.U. in the Mediterranean area.
 
With the recognition of a strategic consensus within NATO, the Franco-German entente has allowed NATO and the E.U. to play a far stronger role in the outer periphery of the theatre of operations from Central Asia to the Mediterranean Sea and the coast of Somalia.

Anglo-American occupied Iraq, Eastern Syria, the Persian Gulf, portions of Turkey, and Iran seem to be the centre of this strategic area. The outer peripheries are currently the following; (1) the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, (2) NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan and Pakistan, (3) the ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia, (4) the Horn of Africa and East Africa, and (5) the Balkans.

The encirclement of the Eurasian core, which was where the Soviet Union was geographically placed, is still a U.S. objective after the end of the Cold War. Containment theory it appears may really have been more about "penetration."

Penetration of the Eurasian core is underway. NATO is a bridgehead from Europe that is pushing towards Russia. An Asiatic sister-alliance of NATO is being forged against China.

The Geo-Strategic Importance of the Middle East in regards to Eurasia

The Middle East, formerly called the Near East, is an abstract geographic concept that has been shifting with geo-strategic, political, and socio-economic policy. For example, there was a time when academics, map makers, and geographers considered the Balkans as a part of the region. In the mind of many the Middle East is a synonym for Arab World or for Southwest Asia, but both terms are different. The Middle East includes non-Arab countries like Iran, Turkey, and Cyprus. The term Southwest Asia also excludes Egypt, the European portion of Turkey in Thrace and even Greece, depending if you categorize it as a part of the region. The Middle East is a region that embraces three continents (two if you look at Europe and Asia as Eurasia); Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is from here that Anglo-American geo-strategists believed they could establish global hegemony by controlling Eurasia.

Three important maritime passages and five important bodies of water also are located or embrace the area around the Middle East. The important maritime passages and straits can be used to manipulate, cut, and control global navigation, international trade, maritime traffic, and energy supplies. Theses strategic maritime passages are the Suez Canal of Egypt, the Bosphorus/Bosporus of Turkey, and the Gate of Tears (Bab al-Mandeb) located between Djibouti and Yemen at the southern tip of the Red Sea. The five important bodies of water in this area are the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Control over these maritime passages would have grave ramifications for Russia, China, Iran, and any adversaries of NATO in regards to trade, naval movements, and energy supplies.

Yugoslavia was effectively divided by the "Big Four" of NATO as Henry Kissinger refers to America, Britain, France, and Germany.  In the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), NATO operations wield great control over the country and its government. Germany and the U.S. both play major roles. Under the shadow of the E.U., NATO still plays a role in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Slovenia, the northernmost and smallest republic of the former Yugoslavia, has been absorbed into both NATO and the European Union. Nothing remains of the Yugoslav Federation.  Serbia, the last and declining bastion of independence in the Balkans, is under siege and has been reduced to a landlocked and paralyzed status.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, NATO used to reside as the Implementation Force (IFOR) and the Stabilization Force (SFOR), before operations were handed over to the so-called European Union Forces (EUFOR). France, Britain, and the U.S. divided the Slavic country into three militarized sectors before the "Global War on Terror." Despite the name change, nothing changed on the ground in Bosnia-Herzegovina in regards to the deployment of NATO troops. EUFOR was merely a facelift for Franco-German and Anglo-American operations.

While Bosnia-Herzegovina was divided between France, Britain, and the U.S., the German military was deployed to Croatia, where Germany had major interests. In fact, in regards to the former Yugoslavia, both Germany and the U.S. played the lead roles of dismantling the federation.

After the Kosovo War of 1999 between NATO and the remnants of the Yugoslav Federation, Serbia and Montenegro, the province of Kosovo was occupied and divided under a formal UN mandate into sectors. Kosovo Force (KFOR) was created by NATO to be in charge of Kosovo. Kosovo was divided into five zones by NATO. The U.S., France, Britain, Germany, and Italy all commanded one zone and the military forces of other NATO members in their respective zones of responsibility. However, Russian forces rushed into Kosovo to secure the area and their interests. Thus, the situation in Kosovo was complicated for NATO by the presence of Russia.

The other step being taken to alleviate the concerns of Asian societies about the militarization of Japan is the formulation of an Asiatic military alliance. This is where Australia has played a key role, by creating a framework for an alliance with Japan. In the mantle of collective security, a militarily robust Japan will not be seen or feared as a threat. It will be China and China's allies which will be portrayed as the threat to Asian security. Thus, Japan and Australia will lead a military front in Asia as American surrogates.

 

Ephraimite Forum-15
Date: 24/08/07 10 Elul 5767
Contents:
1. Synagogue Goers Live Longer
2. Jay: Average Heights and Personal Case
3. Words of Wisdom
4. Winston Churchill and Anti-Semitism
5. The Neocon Movement: pro-"Anglosphere" and pro-Israel
6. Redheads Liable to Disappear?
7. Interesting Genetic Marker

1. Synagogue Goers Live Longer
From: Menachem <mma2@gmx.net>
Subject: Study: Synagogue Goers Live Longer

Study: Synagogue Goers Live Longer
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/131982
(IsraelNN.com)

A Hebrew University study found recently that adults who attend synagogue regularly live longer than those who do not attend synagogue. The research was conducted by Professor Howard Litwin of the Israel Gerontological Data Center (IGDC), and was published in The European Journal of Aging.

 The study?s data showed that the death rate was 75 percent higher among the group that did not attend synagogue than it was among the group that attended synagogue regularly. ?Those who attended synagogue regularly clearly had the highest rate of survival," said Litwin.

  The Talmud in tractate Berachot 8a, coincidentally, makes a similar statement: "R. Yehoshua ben Levi said to his children, "Go early and stay late in shul [synagogue] in order that you should live a long life."

  The study was based on a 1997 Central Bureau of Statistics survey in which 5,000 Israeli men and women aged 60 and above were interviewed about their way of life.

2. Jay: Average Heights and Personal Case
re Ephraimite Forum-14
http://britam.org/Ephraimite/EphraimiteForumLatest.html#14
#1. Changes in the average height of different nationalities

Shalom Yair:

In regards to changes in average height:  My adoptive father was of Dutch origin.  He died in 1980 but never knew this.  I discovered this after seeing his grandfather's record in the 1881 Canadian census from the Mormon's family history site.  Dad's ancestors probably settled in Manhatten (New York City).  His ancestor emigrated to Canada in 1778, no doubt he was a British Empire Loyalist.  There's evidence that Dad's ancestor changed his name to something that was English.  Dad was 5' 7" tall; none of his relatives that I remember were any taller.

My own biologcal ancesters could have been Dutch also, immigrants from Holland during the 1600s to Suffolk and Norfolk Counties.  Based on a surname similar to Da Vinci, my ancestors could have been Roman or Italian.  This is a only a speculation.  My height is also 5' 7".  I may have inherited this stature from my maternal grandfather who was 5' 9" tall.  From a WW I record, I see that my paternal great grandfather, born in 1857 was 5' 4 1/2" tall in 1916, when he enlisted.

Jay

3. Words of Wisdom
From: Ned Jimmerson
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2007-08/1187796989
Subject: [DNA] testing email address
To: GENEALOGY-DNA@rootsweb.com

hello everyone.
No Matter; Where ,You go, There You ,are.

4. Winston Churchill and Anti-Semitism
http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001446.php

5. The Neocon Movement: pro-"Anglosphere" and pro-Israel
http://www.antiwar.com/spectator/spec280.html
Extracts:
"The neocons and allied British conservatives like Conrad Black and John O'Sullivan, now editor of the Washington-based journal the National Interest, are enthusiastic about the idea that the world should be led by the "Anglosphere"...As for the Israeli connection "a familiar feature of neocon ideology" Churchill, a lifelong supporter of Zionism, was a social Darwinist who preferred Jews to Arabs."
 
6. Redheads Liable to Disappear?
Gingers
extinct in 100 years, say scientists
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22289183-2,00.html?from=mostpop
REDHEADS are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years, according to genetic scientists.

The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than two per cent of the world's population has natural red hair, created by a mutation in northern Europe thousands of years ago.

Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and producing little redheads of their own.

It takes only one red-haired parent to produce ginger-headed babies, but two redheads obviously create a much stronger possibility.

If the gingers really want to save themselves they should move to Scotland.

An estimated 40 per cent of Scots carry the red gene and 13 per cent actually have red hair.

Some experts say that redheads could be gone as early as 2060, but others say the gene can be dormant for generations before returning.

National Geographic says the gene at first had the beneficial effect of increasing the body's ability to make vitamin D from sunlight.

However, today's carriers are more prone to skin cancer and have a higher sensitivity to heat and cold-related pain.

The Daily Mail, in The Courier-Mail

7. Interesting  Genetic Marker
The HLA-B18 antigen is a genetically transmitted function granting a degree of immunity against certain allergies(?).
It interests us since it suggests a certain degree of ancestral connection between areas where it is the most frequent.
[This is if we do not assume that it was initially triggered by environment and then after that is transmitted by heredity - which could be so in this and other cases as Brit-Am repeats often.]
Though transmitted genetically it is defined as "autosomal" and not associated exclusively with either YDNA (Male) or mtDNA (female) and so does not coincide with commonly accepted ancestral divisions popular at present.

We came across it by chance.
It does not prove anything.
We  just thought it a curiosity and worth noting where it does occur and where it does not,
http://milosb.users.sbb.co.yu/hlab18.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_leukocyte_antigen
Aside from the genes encoding the 6 major antigens, there are a large number of other genes, many involved in immune function located on the HLA complex. Diversity of HLA in human population is one aspect of disease defense, and, as a result, the chance of two unrelated individuals having identical HLA molecules on all loci is very low.
 

Ephraimite Forum-16: Issue on Islam
Date: 12/09/07 29 Elul 5767
Contents:
1. Aram Paquin: The Moon god?
2. O.Shane Balloun: Israel versus Ishmael
3. Thomas Malloy: Note the Differences

1. Aram: The Moon god?
From: Aram <yarnia@charter.net>
Subject: Not in MY house!
Yair,
here's another good article which identifies Allah as not only a pre-Islamic moon god but as the very antithesis of the God of Abraham,, Isaac and Jacob.  Call our God Allah?  Oh, sure!  Or why not Dagon, Zeus or, even, Moloch!
Aram Paquin

Extract:
The latest post-Christian theological spectacle comes to us from the Netherlands (of Ayaan Hirsi Ali fame), where the Roman Catholic Bishop of Breda, Tiny Muskens, says he wants Christians to start calling God "Allah" because he believes such a gesture would promote "rapprochement between Christianity and Islam". Appearing on Dutch television, the 71-year-old cleric said: "Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? [...] What does God care what we call him??

Inquiring minds want to know: If the bishop really thinks the names "God" and "Allah" are interchangeable, why doesn't he ask Muslims to start calling Allah "Yahweh", the biblical name for God? But he won't, because he knows they won't.

...During the last two centuries, prominent archaeologists have unearthed thousands of inscriptions which prove beyond any doubt that the dominant religion of Arabia during Mohammed's day was the cult of the moon-god.

In fact, for generations before Mohammed was born, the Arabs worshipped some 360 pagan gods housed at a stone temple in Mecca called the Kabah. According to archaeologists, the chief deity of Mecca was the moon-god called al-ilah (meaning the god or the idol), which was shortened to Allah in pre-Islamic times. Pagan Arabs even used Allah in the names they gave themselves: Mohammed?s father (Abdallah), for example, had Allah as part of his name.

What History Says about Allah

Historians say that pre-Islamic Arabs worshipped the moon-god by bowing in prayer toward Mecca several times a day. They would also make a pilgrimage to Mecca, run around the Kabah seven times and throw stones at the devil. And they fasted for one month, which began with the appearance of the crescent moon and ended when the crescent moon reappeared.

These same rites form the core of Islam today: Muslims bow in prayer toward Mecca; they make a pilgrimage to Mecca and run around the Kabah seven times; and they still throw stones at the devil. They also observe the fast of Ramadan, which begins and ends with the crescent moon.

Moreover, the ancient symbol of the pagan moon-god, the crescent moon, is the official symbol of Islam; it appears on the flags of Muslim countries, as well as on the tops of mosques and minarets everywhere....

No surprise, then, that some scholars refer to Islam as monotheistic heathenism.
 
This article was originally published at the American Thinker website on August 23 .

---

2. O.Shane Balloun: Israel versus Ishmael
From: "O.Shane Balloun" <o.shane@gmail.com>
Subject: YHWH vs. Allah
Yair,

To further this discussion, let me add my two shekels.  This is from an email I wrote to some coworkers a little over a year ago.  I work for a company that has free and open discussion lists about everything under the sun.  This came up on our politics (which includes religion) list.  By "this" I mean the supposed belief that YHWH and Allah are one and the same.  My responses follow with my own notes from today encapsulated by carets (<>):

The recorded character of Allah is different from the recorded character of "I AM THAT I AM".

If The Divine Being is self-referentially coherent, then there's no way at all that Christians and Jews worship the same God as Muslims, given what each group says God told them.

<Of course, I mean to imply that even using the Muslim's own holy words from the koran, one easily discovers that Allah is beneath YHWH.  A friend then asked me this instead, " Ah, thanks for the edification. In your knowledge then, what are the inconsistencies between the sayings of the different Gods of Jews/Christians and Muslims? The recorded character (I'm assuming you mean a "written word", not a "part played by an actor") is not really a convincing difference to me."  So of course I replied simply by contrasting the different pronouncements by YHWH in the TNK vs. the so-called pronouncements by Allah:>

Sure.  Let me point out a few quick contrasts:

Oaths made by Deity
The God of the Bible swears by His own name, because He knows there is nothing greater than it:
I have sworn by Myself, the word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that to Me every knee shall bow..." (Isaiah 45:23)

I swear by Myself, says the LORD." (Jeremiah 22:5)

Allah swears by things less than him:
By the Quran, full of wisdom. (S 36:2)
By the sky and the night visitant... (S 86:1)
By this city (S 90:1)

Commands to worship / angels
God:
You shall fear only the LORD your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name.  (Deut. 6:13)
You shall have no other gods besides me (Exodus 20:3)
What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?  For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor" (Psalm 8:4-5)

Allah:
Lo!  I am creating a mortal out of potter's clay of black mud altered, so, when I have made him and have breathed into him of My spirit, do ye fall down, prostrating yourselves unto him.  So the angels fell prostrate... (Surah 15)

Character
God of the Bible:
For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil dwells with You.  The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity. (Psalm 5:4-5)

Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and You cannot look on wickeness with favor... (Habakkuk 1:13)

Allah:
Verily the hypocrites seek to deceive Allah, but it is He Who deceives them... (S 4:142)
...They scheme and plot, but the best of schemers is Allah. (S 8:30)

(Note in this sense, the word for schemer or deceiver is "makr", which always has a negative connotation vis-a-vis character in Arabic)

O.Shane Balloun

---

3. Thomas Malloy: Note the Differences
From: thomas malloy <temalloy@usfamily.net>
Subject: Further comments on Islam
Jonathan Tillotson wrote

Hope that sheds some light. Do check it all for yourself, don't trust me. But I would say that a Christian calling God 'Allah' is just Political Correctness gone bonkers.

I think that calling G-d Allah is another sign of the coming world religion. There are some Eschatologists who believe the the Man of Lawlessness will forge a religion which many Jews, Christians and Muslims accept. This will include worship of the Holy Mother or the Blessed Virgin. The book Mary, Queen of Everything talks about this.

Based on my reading of the Bible, I would expect there to be two companies of nations; both claiming descent from Abraham, both claiming to worship the G-d of Abraham. However one of them reverenced the Holy Torah, and the other believes that the Jews corrupted it. One has produced many democratic nations with first and second world economies. One respects the rights of women, the other treats them as chattel. One detests war but is quite good at waging it the other loves war, but can't win.

Allah is the Moon god, which explains the use of the crescent moon. Back then he was known as Senna. One of the kings who conquered Israel was Sennacherib, his name as based on this idol. Before that he was know as Baal, the master, who expects submission.


 

Ephraimite Forum-17
Date: 17/09/07 5 Tishrey 5768
Contents:
1. Genetics: Face-scan can spot genetic illnesses
2. Voltaire: On Originality
3. Amnon Goldberg: Christian Jews
4. Arabs and Islam: Some Past Notes of Interest
5. Archaeology: Brit-Am Version of  Explorator 10.21

 

1. Genetics: Face-scan can spot genetic illnesses
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1443502007

2. Voltaire: On Originality
From: dailyquote@thequoteboard.com

Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism.

 Voltaire.

3. Amnon Goldberg: Christian Jews
From: thaxted@netvision.net.il
THE death of Paris cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger reminded me of how there has been a steady trickle of apostates to Christianity.

This is despite the vast majority of Jews remaining loyal to their faith over a millennia of threats, torture, inquisition, pogroms, cultural censorship and economic repression.

Notable Jewish apostates included Pablo Christiani, Petrus Alfonsi, Artephius, Nicholas Donin, Abner of Burgos, Petrus Schwarz, Joshua Lorki, Johann Pfefferkorn, the parents of Nostradamus, Abraham Benveniste, Pfaff Rapp, Jacob Frank, Domenico Gerosolimitano, Paul Levertoff, the daughters of Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, Aloisius Wiener, Franz Wentzel, Moshe Schneerson (son of the first Lubavitcher Rebbe), Bonaventura Mayer, George Lazarus, Isaac d'Israeli (father of Benjamin d'Israeli), Michael Bernays, Heinrich Marx (father of Karl Marx), Hans Herzl (the son of Theodore Herzl), Franz Rosenzweig and the composer Gustav Mahler.

More recently, there have been Heinrich Heine, Boris Pasternak (author of Dr Zhivago), the grandparents of 1964 US presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, Bernard Berenson (art historian), Marcel Dassault (French industrialist), the nun Edith Stein, Chief Rabbi of Rome Anton Zolli, Moshe Rosen (US director of Jews for Jesus), Clifford Goldstein (leading Seventh Day Adventist), Rev Robert Weissman (of the London Christian Jew Foundation), musician Bob Dylan (on and off!), British MPs Robert Adley and Edwina Currie, Bishop Hugh Montefiore, singer Helen Shapiro, the father of former US Defence Secretary William Cohen, Israeli atom spy Mordechai Vanunu, James Rubin (former US State Department spokesman) and the grandfather of Nicolas Sarkozy.

Amnon Goldberg,
Safed,
Israel.

4. Arabs and Islam: Some Past Notes of Interest
 
"Brit-Am Now"- 458
#3. Future Biblically-predicted Expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from the Land
of Israel
http://britam.org/now/now458.html

Jerusalem News-362
http://www.britam.org/jerusalem/jerusalem361to390.html#tag2
#2. Brit-AM on Hosea 9: Arab Moslems Liable To Bring Disaster to Ephraim

"Brit-Am Now"-726
http://britam.org/now/726Now.html
#1. The Brit-Am (ca. 1995) warning against Islam and possible terror and disaster

5. Archaeology: Brit-Am Version of  Explorator 10.21

From: david meadows <rogueclassicist@gmail.com>
================================================================
explorator 10.21 September 16, 2007
================================================================

================================================================
ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND EGYPT
================================================================
The Egyptians mummified cats with great care:

http://www.newkerala.com/oct.php?action=fullnews&id=154
http://in.news.yahoo.com/070914/139/6kr7k.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070912155750.htm


Remains of a secret tunnel found in Jerusalem:

http://tinyurl.com/2coy5z (IAA)
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10462804
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/104085.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22391492-23109,00.html
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/09/11/10152880.html
http://tinyurl.com/2uew4c (USA Today)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070910085142.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6986869.stm
http://www.physorg.com/news108627337.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20682245/
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070909-0956-israel-ancientescapehatch.html
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123640
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6909651,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/2slwbg
http://tinyurl.com/ywtyal (AFP via Yahoo)
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/09/africa/ME-GEN-Israel-Ancient-Escape-Hatch.php
http://tinyurl.com/2ffp4y (El Pais)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2947458.ece

This week's Temple Mount coverage ... first, an opinion piece
by Herschel Shanks:

http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/091307/commAThunderingSilence.html

... a story on what they're finding:

http://tinyurl.com/2k4dh6 (JPost)

... legal manoeuvres:

http://tinyurl.com/3c37ra (JPost)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/902491.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=902475

... more op ed pieces:

http://tinyurl.com/3bmzv9 (FP)

... alia:

http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/104117.html
http://tinyurl.com/2k4dh6 (JPost)

Report on excavations on Mount Zion:

http://web.infoave.net/~jwest/zion.pdf

Nice overviewish thing on Beit She'an:

http://tinyurl.com/2twk29 (JPost)


More coverage of biblical beehives:

http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/news/?content_id=3652


Persepolis Fortification Archives:

http://persepolistablets.blogspot.com/

================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
Ancient Scots mummified their dead too, it appears:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/09/14/mummifiedscots_arc.html

A prehistoric building in a Swiss lake:

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=281502

Some recently-found Avar burials:

http://burgenland.orf.at/stories/220730/ (German)

Some Viking remains were removed from their mound this week:

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1988891.ece

... not sure if this is the same:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070910/sc_nm/vikings_dc

A Viking ship beneath a British pub?:

http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/11/2029239.htm
http://tinyurl.com/3cydlc (AFP via Yahoo)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/6986986.stm
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2947402.ece

How Scotland lost her empire:

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/politicspast/story/0,,2166523,00.html

The UK's ten oldest recipes:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10463655
http://tinyurl.com/372wxz (UPI)
http://tinyurl.com/3x2f9y (Daily Mail)


================================================================
OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST
================================================================
Phoenician DNA is the latest bit of genetic material of
interest to us:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070910/sc_nm/phoenicians_dna_dc_2

... while quite a few folks in Egypt claim descent from
Mohammed:

http://tinyurl.com/2syas9 (El Pais ... Spanish)

On potatoes and evolution?:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6983330.stm

Another xray technique for reading ancient manuscripts:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/sep/13/4
http://www.indiadaily.com/breaking_news/93089.asp
http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/?jp=mhcwqlojauoj
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6991893.stm

Latest replica ship launch ... a Roman Galley (sort of):

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/107767.html

Medieval women had 'girl power' (scary photo):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/6987874.stm

Genghis Khan was not, shall we say, 'tolerant':

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/30/genghis_khan_code/

A sort of 'state of the thing' thing on the Odyssey odyssey:

http://tinyurl.com/2nwk2f (CNN)

... and a story on Rosh Hoshanah in a New York temple:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/13/nyregion/13eldridge.html

================================================================
GENERAL MAGAZINES AND JOURNALS
================================================================

Archaeology Briefs:

http://archaeologybriefs.blogspot.com/
================================================================
PERFORMANCES AND THEATRE-RELATED
================================================================
King Lear:

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/theater/reviews/14lear.html

================================================================
OBITUARIES
================================================================
John Crook (Roman Social History):

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2964531.ece

Alexander McKay (Classicist):

http://cac-scec.ca/ccb/ccb13/ccb13_12_3.html

Douglas Eugene Savoy:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070916/ap_on_re_us/obit_savoy_4

 

Ephraimite Forum-18
Date: 28/09/07 16 Tishrey 5768
Contents:
1. Archaeology: Brit-Am Version of Explorator 10.22
2. Physical Anthropology: Uselessness of Blood Groups?
3. Top 20 WebSites followed by britam.org

1. Archaeology: Brit-Am Version of Explorator 10.22
From: david meadows <rogueclassicist@gmail.com>
================================================================
explorator 10.22 September 23, 2007
================================================================

================================================================
ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND EGYPT
================================================================

A Bronze Age structure from the Gaza Strip:

http://tinyurl.com/3dclb2 (JPost)

... and one from the Negev:

http://tinyurl.com/2s66pr (JPost)

Developments in the Temple Mount legal proceedings:

http://tinyurl.com/3xyf38 (JPost)

Excavating (the possible site of) Sodom:

http://www.star-telegram.com/religion/story/227912.html

Tourism plans for the Phrygian Valley:

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=83193

More on the Tel Rehov beehives:

http://tinyurl.com/2u9vmx (GFT)

Review of Sean King, *God's Gold*:

http://tinyurl.com/3yx4nv (Inquirer)

================================================================
ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME (AND CLASSICS)
================================================================
You can own your own Roman bath house:

http://tinyurl.com/2bls4s (Times)

Another Thracian tomb has been excavated:

http://international.ibox.bg/news/id_1784704374
http://tinyurl.com/2kob5x (Echo)

... and another:

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=85385
http://tinyurl.com/3yohkt (TN)
http://www.newkerala.com/oct.php?action=fullnews&id=1987


================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
A Bronze Age burial near Peterborough:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/6998614.stm

Sites from various periods in Malta:

http://www.andhranews.net/Intl/2007/September/17/Bronze-settlement-15860.asp

More coverage of the ancient Scots mummifying their dead story:

http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/2035481.htm
http://in.news.yahoo.com/070917/139/6kugt.html
http://www.newkerala.com/oct.php?action=fullnews&id=1380
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/110754.html

Review of Richard Aldous, *The Lion and the Unicorn*:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/books/19grim.html

Archaeology in Europe Blog:

http://www.archaeology.eu.com/weblog/index.html

================================================================
CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
================================================================
40 more Peruvian mummies have been found:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-09/20/content_6759375.htm

Aztec child sacrifice:

http://www.tercera.cl/medio/articulo/0,0,3255_5726_299127960,00.html
(Spanish)
================================================================
OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST
================================================================
An update on the Odyssey kerfuffle:

http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_12616.shtml


A pile of rare medical and astronomical manuscripts were
'rediscovered' in Egypt's National Library:

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070917/139/6ku5b.html
http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/EgyptOnline/Culture/000001/0203000000000000000832.htm

Interesting item on the Brunel Tunnel:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6996161.stm

The annual 'endangered languages' piece:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2976695.ece

... and another:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/science/19language.html

Aftermath of Europe's last 'witch hunt':

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7003128.stm

Genetic origins of morality?:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/science/18mora.html

The British Post office has a set of stamps commemorating 350
years of British military uniforms:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7004044.stm

Strange mummified baby story (even made it to our local news):

http://www3.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO62590

Sloppy revisionism in the Joan of Arc story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2174481,00.html


Interesting research into 'handedness':

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/science/18obleft.html

================================================================
TOURISTY THINGS
================================================================
Delphi:

http://www.startribune.com/1513/story/1435497.html

Petra:

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/travel/201299.php

Bologna:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/travel/23explorer.html

================================================================
EXHIBITIONS, AUCTIONS, AND MUSEUM-RELATED
================================================================

Israel's Archaeological Centre holds an annual auction:

http://tinyurl.com/2mraan (JPost)

================================================================
DON'T EAT THAT ELMER (A.K.A. CVM GRANO SALIS)
================================================================
Haven't heard about that 'Japanese Atlantis' in a while:

http://www.cdnn.info/news/science/sc070918.html

---

2. Physical Anthropology: Uselessness of Blood Groups?
http://racialreality.blogspot.com/2005/08/uselessness-of-blood-groups.html

---

3. Top 20 WebSites followed by britam.org
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none
1.  Yahoo!
2.  Microsoft Network (MSN)
3. Google
4. YouTube
5. Windows Live
Search engine from Microsoft.
6. Myspace
Social Networking Site.
7. Orkut
Social networking and discussion site operated by Google.
8. Facebook
A social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study, and live around them.
9. Wikipedia
10. Baidu.com
The leading Chinese language search engine,
11. Hi5
Social networking site offering media sharing, affinity groups, and messaging.
12. Rapidshare.com
13. Blogger.com
14. Megaupload
15. 51Snap.Com
www.qq.com
16. Friendster
Friendster is a leading global social network
17.Yahoo!
API
18. Microsoft Corporation
Main site for product information, support, and news.
19. Fotolog.com
a great online community of interconnected photo-weblogs.
www.fotolog.net
20. EBay
Ranking for Brit-Am
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=britam.org
Brit-Am
Not in top 100,000
britam.org has a ranking of 1,458,365
Note: We are not sure that this figure is accurate but it was the only one we could obtain
for the present.
 

Ephraimite Forum-19
Date: 5/Oct/07 23 Tishrey 5768
Contents:
1. Archaeology: Brit-Am Edition of Explorator 10.23
2.The Practice of Human Sacrifice
3. Study shows genes exert behavioural influence

1. Archaeology: Brit-Am Edition of Explorator 10.23
From: david meadows <rogueclassicist@gmail.com>
================================================================
explorator 10.23 September 30, 2007
================================================================

================================================================
ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND EGYPT
================================================================
Interesting new (!) finds from Tut's tomb:

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_7009272
http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL24428432.html
http://tinyurl.com/2s3c5f (AFP via Yahoo)
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j7PwdB3jIye5ggAVG3SwOhM2JqUA
http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070925-045035-7519r

Zahi Hawass is also on record that Tut was not black:

http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070925-115047-2690r
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iB6u3XEMp9IrJfl-kH6FHNgZCg_A
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070925/wl_africa_afp/egyptarchaeologytutankhamunrace

Plenty of coverage of the discovery of the quarry used to build
the Second Temple:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5glGujsIFl1M38VZe4Zng-VZgtoFg
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1524412007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070923/wl_nm/israel_temple_dc_1
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5g5_ue2qL2NedhbxPYz7ga_vKF2pQ
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/104294.html
http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070923-105435-5277r
http://tinyurl.com/2ju263 (JPost)
http://tinyurl.com/3ypztl (JPost)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3453394,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/2salt7 (AFP via Yahoo)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070924/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_temple_stones

Interesting controversy brewing over Nadia Abu El-Haj's tome on
archaeology in Israel:

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/?q=node/26830

Nice article on 'Biblical Archaeology'(with a sidebar):

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/09/30/raiders_of_the_faux_ark/
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/09/30/true_treasures_of_the_holy_land/

On the Ramel Rahat excavations:

http://tinyurl.com/39br69 (JPost)

Plans are afoot to excavate at Karkamis:

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=84139


Excavations at Cyrus' palace have resumed:

http://www.chnpress.com/news/?section=2&id=7317

The Tel Dor shipwreck may provide evidence of 'fire fishing' in
antiquity:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/09/25/firefishing_arc.html

An interview with Gabriel Barkai on the damage being done to
Temple Mount:

http://tinyurl.com/2zq568 (infolive)

... not sure whether this is a 'twist' in the saga or not:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=906483

================================================================
ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME (AND CLASSICS)
================================================================
Evidence of a settlement near a Roman fort at Perthshire:

http://tinyurl.com/2r4u2x

Teaching Latin is a good thing:

http://www.register-mail.com/stories/092607/EDU_BED8NJDE.GID.shtml


More 'colorization' efforts:

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/09.27/01-gods.html

More coverage of that shipwreck found off the coast of Albania:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20912743/
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/69047.html

More on that Roman bath house that's for sale:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/7016636.stm

Visit our blog:

http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism

================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
3500 b.p. child burial near Peterborough:

http://www.thelondonnews.net/story/285294

1000 b.p. 'portable altar' from Sweden:

http://www.thelocal.se/8628/20070927/
http://tinyurl.com/2atno9 (DI)

================================================================
ASIA AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC
================================================================
Ice Age Australians lived in caves:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/2039661.htm

The Hawaii-Tahiti connection has been proven:

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/070924-9.html

Gotland and Easter Island try to preserve their heritage:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/10/arts/trgotland.php

New Zealand Archaeology eNews:

http://www.nzarchaeology.org/netsubnews.htm
================================================================
NORTH AMERICA
================================================================
Still looking for the 'lost colony':

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5ig4Sl_hoqgKBpJ8WwaqEPljh3zJw
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20912608/

PreColumbian canoes in Lake Trafford:

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070927/NEWS01/70927015/1075

Mapping Mannahatta:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/10/01/slideshow_071001_maps

A mystery cannon from Virginia:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070925/ap_on_sc/mystery_cannon
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20968916/

Interesting remains at Toronto's Don Jail:

http://tinyurl.com/2lnocf (CTV)
http://www.canadaeast.com/news/article/82778
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/CityandRegion/2007/09/27/4529632-sun.html

Nice feature on the House of the Seven Gables:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/arts/design/28anti.html

Assorted theories on the peopling of the Americas:

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2007/09/23/helena_life/c010923_02.txt

Searching for Indiana's past:

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007709240431

Problems for 18th century intellectuals when they went to Big Bone
Lick:

http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070928/LIFE/709280348/1005

================================================================
OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST
================================================================

That comet/Ice Age theory is back in the news:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/nau-rts092407.php


================================================================
TOURISTY THINGS
================================================================
Queens:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/nyregion/25ink.html
================================================================
GENERAL MAGAZINES AND JOURNALS
================================================================
Interesting story about American Digger magazine:

http://tinyurl.com/22r45p (AJC)

About.com Archaeology:

http://archaeology.about.com/

Archaeoblog:

http://archaeoblog.blogspot.com/

Archaeology Briefs:

http://archaeologybriefs.blogspot.com/

---

2.The Practice of Human Sacrifice
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/human_sacrifice_01.shtml
Extracts:

By Dr Mike Parker-Pearson

[Extracts Only]
 
Garrotted, throats slit, bludgeoned to death - preserved bodies that have been sacrificed to the gods are being discovered the world over. But were these people victims, or did they surrender themselves in a bid to woo supernatural powers? Dr Mike Parker-Pearson explores the dark history of human sacrifice.

When the prehistoric site at Fiskerton in Lindisfarne was first excavated in 1981, archaeologists found part of a human skull lying among the swords, spears, tools and other items that had been placed along the causeway. It represented the back of a man's head and was badly damaged.

Fissured Fred, as the skeleton became known by the excavators, had been hit by a sword, which had taken out a chip of his skull. Other than a couple of bones, the rest of Fissured Fred was never found, so there is no further evidence of how he met his death. The sword blow by itself would not have killed him, but it was inflicted around the time of his death 2,500 years ago.

Was Fissured Fred a human sacrifice? We shall probably never know for certain but there is circumstantial evidence to suggest he was. His remains were mixed up with weapons and equipment, which had themselves been sacrificed and thrown into the water.

The evidence for human sacrifice in this period of the Iron Age is most prolific in Denmark, Germany and Holland, where many bodies have been found completely preserved in peat bogs. Some were hanged or strangled, the noose still around their neck, and others were bludgeoned on the head or had their throat slit.
They too, like Fissured Fred, were found in special places, where people had made offerings to an afterworld. It seems clear that these were not murders, but deliberate, socially sanctioned, killings.

Writing much later, in the first century AD, the Roman historian Tacitus tells us that these Germanic peoples executed their social outcasts - cowards, shirkers and those of disrepute - by pressing them down into bogs. So were these bog victims in fact executions and not sacrifices? If such a distinction could be drawn between the two, it does seem most likely that they were sacrifices, because bogs were places where other, inanimate offerings were made.

 Julius Caesar and other Romans were appalled by the custom of human sacrifice among the Celts. 'They used to strike a human being, devoted to death, in the back with a sword, and then divine from his death struggle,' wrote Strabo. According to Diodorus Siculus, the Gauls 'kill a man by a knife-stab in the region above the midriff, and after his fall they foretell the future by the convulsions of his limbs and the pouring of his blood'.

'Julius Caesar and other Romans were appalled by the custom of human sacrifice among the Celts.'

Yet the Romans had double standards; although human sacrifice had ended in Rome a century earlier, gladiatorial games and feeding people to lions were regular sport, whilst many thousands of conquered Celts in Gaul were victims of Roman atrocities, such as cutting off their hands and feet and leaving them to die slowly. By accusing the Celts of practicing human sacrifice, the Romans thought they had an excuse for their own unlicensed cruelty.

The Romans reserved their comments about sacrifice to the Celts and Germans, with no reference to such practices in the British Isles. Bog bodies have been found in Britain, however, which indicates that human lives were sacrificed to the gods in these islands too.

Three bog bodies (or parts of them), for example, were found in Lindow Moss in Cheshire, dating from the beginning of the Roman period. The best preserved of the three was a man who had been hit on the head with sufficient force to detach chips of his skull into his brain, and to crack a molar. His throat had been slit and there was also a leather garrotte, tightened with a slip-knot, around his neck. He was almost naked except for a fox-fur armband and, amongst his stomach contents of burnt bread was pollen of mistletoe, a plant sacred to the Celts and Britons.

One member of the investigating team thought that this was an ancient murder rather than a ritual killing, but this seems unlikely in the light of the body's context.

Of the two other bodies, one was very unusual in having a sixth finger. A surprising proportion of bog bodies from northern Europe have physical defects - such as spinal abnormalities or foreshortened limbs - and these people may have been selected for sacrifice because they had been 'touched by the gods'.

Human sacrifice requires the exchange of a life - willingly or not - in return for supernatural assistance or for a greater cause. Exactly where we draw the line between altruism and coercion is not always clear, as a surviving account of a Viking's funeral in Russia in AD 921-2 makes plain:

'The dead man's slave girls were asked who wished to die with him; one volunteered to be burned in his ship with him... When she went to her death the men began to strike with the sticks on the shields so that her cries could not be heard and the other slave-girls would not be frightened and seek to escape death with their masters... a dagger was plunged between her ribs repeatedly, and the men strangled her with the cord until she was dead... The flames grew and engulfed the pyre and the ship.'

Human sacrifice was practiced at least 5,000 years ago among the early agricultural societies of Europe. Danish farmers sacrificed their stone axes and flint tools, their amber jewellery and their food, by depositing them in pots, together with human offerings, in bogs. Probably the earliest case in the world is that of two girls found at Sigersdal near Copenhagen, killed about 3500 BC. One was about 16 while the other, who was about 18, still had a cord around her neck.
Mass human sacrifices were particularly a feature of ancient states whose dead leaders required their courtiers and followers to accompany them into the afterworld. The tombs of the first dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs (3100-2890 BC) were each surrounded by the graves of their courtiers.

In the royal tombs of ancient Mesopotamia the courtiers - guards, musicians, handmaidens and grooms - died at their posts in the tomb, having taken a lethal draught of poison. Some of the largest mass sacrifices accompanying dead rulers are the royal tombs of the African kingdom of Kerma, around 1500 BC, where 500 people at a time were buried in huge grave pits next to the dead king, and covered by a large mound.

Around the same date, the royal tombs of the Shang Dynasty at Anyang in China were similarly provided with sacrificed bodies. In the second century BC, workers and soldiers were buried in the tomb of the first Chinese emperor and, in addition, he was provided with an other-worldly army of terracotta substitute soldiers.

The ancient civilisations of the Americas are also well known for their human sacrifices. Aztec priests believed that the sacrifices they performed in the temples on top of pyramids - cutting out the still-beating heart of their victims with the blood flowing down the steps of the pyramid - were necessary to keep the sun on its daily path.

There is evidence that human sacrifice still continues today in isolated parts of the world, and researchers have known cases where it is practiced by shamans on behalf of people - including cocaine traffickers - seeking to avert natural disasters or to improve their wealth.

Earlier this year in London, an archaeologist was brought in as an expert by the Metropolitan Police to help them identify a southern-African style ritual killing thought to be a human sacrifice.

Some anthropologists interpret the executions of condemned men and women on death row in America as another form of sacrifice, perceived as removing evil and thereby cleansing American society. The suicide bombers of Palestine and the 11 September terrorists are also modern-day human sacrifices.

---

3. Study shows genes exert behavioural influence
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/10/02/scigenes102.xml
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Evidence that some people are born to play fair, while others can't help being cads, has come from a study of twins.

For the first time it has been shown that genes exert influence on people's behaviour in the idealised setting of a game, revealing that identical twins are more likely to behave the same way, whether fairly or unfairly, as non-identical siblings.

Traditionally, social scientists have been hesitant to acknowledge a role for genes in explaining economic behaviour. But a study indicates that there is a genetic component to people's perception of what is fair and what is unfair.

 The paper, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at the ultimatum game, in which a proposer makes an offer to another person on how to divide a sum of money.

The researchers found that twins were more likely to behave in the same way as each other when deciding whether to accept an offer.

"This raises the intriguing possibility that many of our preferences and personal economic choices are subject to substantial genetic influence," said the study's lead author, Bjorn Wallace of the Stockholm School of Economics.  

For Previous issues see:
Ephraimite Forum Archives

Site Contents by Subject	Home Research Revelation Reconciliation	Publications	Site Map Contents in Alphabetical Order	This Site

Ephraimite Forum-20
Date: 10/Oct/07 28 Tishrey 5768
Contents:
1. Archaeology: Brit-Am version of Explorator: 10.24
2. The Benefits of Flaxseed Oil
3. Geneaology: Royalty in the USA?

1. Archaeology: Brit-Am version of Explorator: 10.24
From: david meadows <rogueclassicist@gmail.com>
================================================================
explorator 10.24 October 7, 2007
================================================================

================================================================
ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND EGYPT
================================================================

Some significant discoveries at Ebla:

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90782/6277024.html

A Parthian fort in Malayer:

http://www.cais-soas.com/News/2007/October2007/05-10.htm

Ancient documents portend a major earthquake, apparently:

http://tinyurl.com/2o6pkk (UPI)

Now Cyrus' tomb is threatened:

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2007/10/05/255.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21107456/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071003/lf_nm/iran_cyrus_dam_dc_2

The Sanhedrin at Sepphoris:

http://tinyurl.com/2lx8jf (JPost)

================================================================
ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME (AND CLASSICS)
================================================================
This piece on the ancient Greeks building wonderful things
without fully understanding the math involved is being picked
up in a lot of places:

http://tinyurl.com/yqmqsq
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071002144301.htm
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/hu-ewm100207.php

The Archimedes Palimpsest is in the news again (although I don't
see anything 'new'):

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20071006/mathtrek.asp

'300' is still being analyzed for meaning:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3918

... while Mary Beard is commenting on what it got right and
wrong:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2007/10/10-things-the-m.html

More coverage of Rome Reborn:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article2583317.ece

================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
Bronze Age remains in Edinburgh:

http://www.andhranews.net/Intl/2007/September/30/4000-year-Bronze-pits-17500.asp

Scotland's earliest settlement:

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1589142007

Viking remains in Norwich:

http://tinyurl.com/22c7td (EN)

A mysterious face in a tapestry depicting the Battle of Culloden:

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1596772007

A runestone which was built into a Norwegian church has been
deciphered:

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2033018.ece

... related:

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2030287.ece

Archaeology in Europe Blog:

http://www.archaeology.eu.com/weblog/index.html
================================================================
ASIA AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC
================================================================

New Zealand Archaeology eNews:

http://www.nzarchaeology.org/netsubnews.htm
================================================================
NORTH AMERICA
================================================================
A bunch of Confederate documents were auctioned off this week:

http://www.kentucky.com/216/story/190111.html

Latest video at the Archaeology Channel is about the Queen Anne's
Revenge:

http://www.archaeologychannel.org/
================================================================
CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
================================================================
Plenty of coverage of this story of Inca children being
"fattened up" for sacrifice:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/wt-sui100107.php
http://www.tercera.cl/medio/articulo/0,0,3255_5726_302034262,00.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071001/ap_on_sc/inca_sacrifices
http://tinyurl.com/29xaxc (Telegraph)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21089132/
http://tinyurl.com/26mc5z (LAT)
http://tinyurl.com/2hpbhp (Reuters)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071003-inca-sacrifice.html
================================================================
OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST
================================================================
Nice pair of essays on Islam, the Greeks, and the Scientific
Revolution:

http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=3559&cid=3&sid=9
http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=3568&cid=3&sid=9

More 'culture cards' for US troops in Iraq:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119145397259448308.html

Antispam technology is helping to preserve old books:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7023627.stm

The Vatican is about to release an important document about the
Templars:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/05/wvatican105.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7029513.stm

Erosion and rising sea levels threaten sites:

http://environment.independent.co.uk/article3015288.ece

On historical revisionism:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2185468,00.html

================================================================
ON THE WEB
================================================================
Ostia: Topographical Dictionary:

http://www.ostia-antica.org/dict.htm

Danaos Project (deepwater archaeology in the Aegean):

http://ina.tamu.edu/danaos/

================================================================
EXPLORATOR is a weekly newsletter representing the fruits of
the labours of 'media research division' of The Atrium. Various
on-line news and magazine sources are scoured for news of the
ancient world (broadly construed: practically anything relating
to archaeology or history prior to about 1700 or so is fair
game) and every Sunday they are delivered to your mailbox free of
charge!

The Brit-Am Version of EXPLORATOR is a basically an abridged version of the original produced by Brit-Am and concentrating on those issues that are more likely to interest Brit-Am subscribers. It is produced with the permission of EXPLORATOR itself.

---

2. The Benefits of Flaxseed Oil
Flaxseed or Steroids?Why did Marion Jones and Barry Bonds think they were taking flaxseed oil?
http://www.slate.com/id/2175474/nav/ais/
An Interesting Article worth reading for the athletically involved

---

3. Geneaology: Royalty in the USA?
http://www.amazon.com/Descents-Immigrants-American-Colonies-United/dp/0806313951
Amazon.com: The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants to the American

Outlined on 466 pages of charts in this work are the best royal descents of 576 immigrants to the American colonies or the United States who were notable themselves or who left descendants who were notable in American history. Based on a comprehensive survey, undertaken over a period of more than 25 years, of virtually all printed sources that lead to these lines, this book quantitatively and qualitatively redefines the entire discipline of royal genealogy and outlines--definitively to date--American genealogical links to medieval kings and their forebears. Fully half of the 570 immigrants treated here have never appeared in earlier books on royal genealogy. Mr. Roberts, Director of Publications at the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, has also prepared an excellent summary of all pertinent royal genealogy research published through mid-1993. Although his book does not supersede such works as Weis's Ancestral Roots and Magna Charta Sureties, or Stuart's Royalty for Commoners, it builds on and outlines the best royal descents in these and similar works, providing a ready means of access to royal descent literature.

For Previous issues see:
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