Somalian Pirates came to the attention of the World Jewish Community recently when a bunch of them (over a hundred!) gave up their lives to save Israel by hijacking a boat coming out of Iran with some horrible chemical weapons, of course, obviously, for the purposes of destruction. Who are these Awesome Africans? Warrenellis.com quotes cominganarchy.com quotes this article:

They live a high-profile life - driving luxury vehicles, using fancy mobiles and laptops, living in big, decorated houses, marrying beautiful women,' says Dahir Salaad Musse, a businessman in the port town of Bosasso in the semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland.

Piracy has changed into a highly lucrative industry as shipping companies cough up increasingly hefty ransoms for the release of their ships.

In particular, the business has snowballed over the last few years as young men, seeing the lavish lifestyles of their peers, flock to get their slice of the cake. The East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme says there are now well over 1,000 pirates patrolling the Gulf of Aden, compared to just over 100 in 2005.

As a consequence of what is Somalia's only growth industry, several pirate havens have sprung up in Puntland.

Settlements such as Eyl, Garowe and Harardhere are becoming boomtowns - at least compared to the rest of Somalia, where a bloody insurgency, drought and rising food and fuel prices have left millions dependent on food aid.

If the economy gets bad? If the government gives up on protecting you? Remember: there is hope– in piracy! Take responsibility for your community!

Piracy has its origins in the organized communities of the Puntland coast. In the 1990s, a group of fisherman in settlements there banded together to prevent illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic waste off their shores. This harmless community action inspired many analysts to designate Puntland a model for Somali civil society. When some ships illegally fishing were boarded in attempts to police the region, the reward offered for the boats return was enormous—amounts that were many times the monthly income of entire villages.

Piracy took off as an attempt to gain income from this type of civic policing, and slowly grew to what Kaplan called the “innocence” of piracy. It wasn’t long before the pirates became more ambitious, using the fishing boats they captured to hunt larger prey. And with the money that came in, small fishing towns were transformed into pirate havens. As responsible organizers, pirates have invested some of their profits back into the franchise, replacing barely seaworthy rafts with speedboats, AK-47s with modern arms, and GPS tracking systems to boot.

Remarkably, hostages are treated well, with some pirates even setting up special kitchens onshore to cook western meals for their captives. Medical care available on the ship is not withheld to force the hand of parties that would pay a ransom. The Somali pirates are more businessmen that extortionists, and the strategy is paying dividends—according to a report by London-based think tank Chatham House, shipping companies have forked over US$30 million in ransoms to Somali pirates this year. Welcome to growth enterprise in the anarchic societies of the 21st century.

For some negative effects of the piratical efforts, check out this video:Not everyone benefits.

hat tip to nanach.net

a site has gone up in honor of Johnny.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  http://rebjohnny.com

From 5-10PM

PUPPET'S JAZZ BAR

481 5the Avenue (between 11th and 12th Streets) in Park Slope

yossi piamenta

ylove

"The next big hing" -

a psychedelic rock band featuring the rapper -

mordochai avraham!!!!!

5$ cover

Yossi Piamenta will be performing 8-10PM

In the name of R. Gedaliah of Linitz who said in the name of his master the Mokhi’ah [of Polonoya] that the messiah will instruct good merit (melamed zekhut tov) upon all of Israel even upon the wicked, [saying] that they are all righteous, that they are correct (yid. “az zey zenen gerecht”). And because of the merit that he will instruct merit upon them they will return in repentance, and through this they will be redeemed, for in repentance one is redeemed.

And he would say - a little tzadik loves little resha’im, a great tzadik loves great resha’im, but the messiah will love and instruct merit even upon complete resha’im. And anyone who instructs merit upon all creatures is of the aspect of the messiah…   

(Sefer Baal Shem Tov, 61, note 100 in the name of Midrash Pinhas Ha-Hadash)

Maybe this applies to oneself as well. You are the messiah to the extent that you have redeemed yourself through the sweetening of Judgments…

In the final analysis we are all a priori vindicated – the messiah is just the one who takes it all the way…    

-atgate231

Let America Be America Again                                                                                                                                                                                              by Langston Hughes 

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

        (America never was America to me.)

 Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

          (It never was America to me.)

 O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

          (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?  

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--

And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--

Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home--

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free."

 The free?

 Who said the free?  Not me? Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet--

 And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine–the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME–

Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain.

 From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America!

O, yes, I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

 And yet I swear this oath-- America will be!

 Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain--

All, all the stretch of these great green states--

And make America again!

by Poster Boy 

I am not a drama critic, nor a critic for that matter, but am inspired to write of yesterday's reading of SIN, a stage adaptation of I.B. Singer's story "The Unseen," at the JCC in Manhattan.

It was a ground-breaking literary experience for me. I was swept into another world, and felt moved, lifted, changed, inspired as to new possibilities for life, for art.

It was a drug and I'm still not off it. F. Murray Abraham was a magnetic presence on the stage and became, like electric, Satan. To convince an audience that you are Satan must be a pretty difficult task. The audience was swept away, with Royze Temerl, played so Jewish-beautifully by Marilyn Chris, I.B.'s creation sprung to life.

While this was just a reading, the actors were immersed in the text and characters, and the text was golden, adapted splendidly by Mark Altman who seemed to be able to capture the Yiddish nuances in the English, a difficult feat, pulled off so well. The text was so damn good that F. Murray Abraham, stopped after one of the lines, and exclaimed, "Isn't that a great line?!" and everybody cracked up, including the actors, and he then added, "This is Yiddish Theatre!"

I am sure the reading will lead to a full scale production and I await to re-experience and to be re-invigorated.

Singer And ‘Sin’

F. Murray Abraham is part of a star-studded reading of “Sin,” based on I.B. Singer’s “The Unseen.”

by Ted Merwin

‘Sin,” wrote Andre Gide, “is whatever obscures the soul.” In Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story, “The Unseen,” a prosperous, middle-aged Jewish man named Nathan is tempted by Satan to leave his loving wife and run off with his lusty housekeeper. He ends up broke, living on an upper floor of a dilapidated guesthouse at the rear of his own former property, dependent on his ex-wife’s continued generosity and reduced to being a ghostly witness to the townspeople as they go back and forth to the synagogue for the High Holy Days. Now, just in time for Yom Kippur, comes Mark Altman’s theatrical adaptation of the story, entitled “Sin.”
Directed by Robert Kalfin, “Sin” will be presented this Sunday afternoon at the JCC in Manhattan

in a star-studded reading featuring F. Murray Abraham as Satan, Paul Hecht as the main character and Alvin Epstein as his wife’s second husband, Moshe Mecheles.
Time and again, in his many novels and stories, Singer created memorable male protagonists who gave themselves over to their passions — think of “Satan in Goray,” “The Magician of Lublin” and “Enemies, A Love Story.” But what struck Altman in particular about “The Unseen,” which he called “crushing and merciless,” was its exploration of the very idea of sin.
“I tried to question all of our concepts about sin,” Altman, who formerly worked with the Folksbiene and the New Worlds Theater Project, told The Jewish Week. “Our connection to God seems so tentative. But unless you have a real relationship with God, how can you sin against Him?” Altman pointed out that while “The Unseen” seems on the surface to refer to the protagonist, the title can also refer to God, who never appears or resists Satan in any way.
Abraham, who is not Jewish, is frequently drawn to playing Jewish characters. The Academy Award-winning actor appeared Off Broadway last year in Theater for a New Audience’s twin productions of “The Merchant of Venice” and “The Jew of Malta.” But “Sin” brings him back to Singer; he starred in the Yiddish author’s “Teibele and Her Demon,” which ran briefly on Broadway in the late 1970s.
“Satan is the ever-present evil in each of us,” Abraham said in an e-mail message.
“And yet we do indeed make our own demons.” This is why, he recalled, he was “so carried away” by playing Shylock. “I never thought of him as a demon, but as a proud man of great dignity who was trampled upon.” Abraham noted that “the greatest contribution of the theater is the collective experience of shared torments that each of us thought were shameful and personal.”
“Sin” will be read on Sunday, Oct. 5 at 3 p.m. at the JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th Street. For tickets, $10, call the box office at (646) 505-5708.

(the fucked-up sound in the beginning is part of the music)

System of a Down - Soil

The phoenix he helped create,
Out of control boy without a dad,
Shot the gun that startled my life,
While I drove him with a forty-five.

Friends for years images in red,
Blew off his own mother-fuckin head,
Confidence, death, insecurity,
Men fall unrealized,
Unrealized, unrealized.

Making a decision of death,
While everyone around you pled,
Now you fly in peace,
I hope, my friend,
A man can't avoid what he's meant to do,
When he's meant to do it,
Even if he doesn't really want to,
My memories are of fun and friendship,
Of weakness within the strength of youth,
For reasons undefined, reasons undefined,
Reasons undefined, reasons undefined.

Friends for years images in red,
Blew off his own mother-fuckin head,
Confidence, death, insecurity,
Men fall unrealized,

Don't you realize,
Evil, lives in the mother-fucking skin,
Don't you realize,
that-Evil, lives in the mother-fucking skin,

Why the fuck did you take him away from us you mother fucker?