PDF Version: AncientInjustice.pdf

Growing up, my Jewish education consisted of an after school program (‘cheider’ to the Yiddish inclined) while I attended public school by day.  On my walk to Hebrew School I would often try to marry the two bodies of knowledge from the two respective school systems.  A happy romance occurred around 1987 between the religious and secular bodies of knowledge.  As many may recall 1987 was the year of the big crash on the stock market.[1]  Debt and the economy were on the lips of many in those days.

In the secular world there was tremendous talk of personal and national debt, interest rates, unemployment and the like.  All the while, the Torah I was reading in Hebrew school was definitely running on about the sabbatical forgiveness of debt and the precept that “there should be no poor among you”. (Deut 15:1-4)  Now my mental image of the ancient Israelites was that of a pastoral, agrarian people.  With hindsight I can say that this image was only slightly misguided.  Despite the rumored grandeur of the Davidic kingdom, archaeologists hold that their society was more rural than urban.

But this left me with a theological problem:  I saw debt as a product of banks which were on city streets.  I failed to conjure an image of rolling agricultural fields dotted with banks and/or ATMs at the Temple gates. (Parenthetically, it turns out that if the Gospels have any historical veracity, there may have been just such an ancient equivalent of an ATM at the Temple gates.  More to follow shortly.)  Failing to imagine ancient banks, I was puzzled about what the ancient Israelites knew of debt and how then did this prescient warning against the accumulation of debt make it into the Torah?  I questioned my Hebrew school teacher along these lines and I was given the answer that ‘the Torah contained the writ word of God and all His wisdom.  It was written for all times and addressed all the problems that we would encounter until the end of days.’

Platitudes such as this are to young inquisitive men, such as I was, like drinking sea water when thirsty:  quenching only at first and then leaving you more thirsty than ever.  If my teacher’s answer was to hold water (pun intended) then there were conspicuous absences from the ‘writ word of God’.  Where were the foundations for democracy?  Where were the specific prohibitions against slavery (beyond the sabbatical release of Hebrew slaves)?  Where was the discussion about protecting the environment beyond the scant ordinances for burying excrement beyond the outskirts of camp (Deut 23:14)?  From those grandiose absences there were more mundane absences like: Where were the prohibitions against smoking and where were the prohibitions against high cholesterol foods?  My attempts to marry the religious and secular belief systems were thwarted by the absence of these secular guidelines which I had determined to be legitimate and necessary.  After a brief flirtation the attempted marriage failed in divorce with the judgment pronounced by my rationality decreeing that the Torah was not indeed the writ word of God.

Literalists may be tempted by the previous sentence to toss this work out of hand directly into the fire.  Indeed this may provide needed warmth to those suffering the effects of debt.  Just the same, with a bit of patience on both sides of the theist/atheist debate, I believe there is commonality to be found in the good intentions of the Torah.  While we may debate its authorship I will not debate that it was written with the best of intentions.  Further, I hold that it was written to describe an ideal rather than the actual practice of the day.  There is a common modern Israeli expression: “The synagogue I don’t go to is Orthodox.”  Similarly, I believe that the Torah describes an ideal set out for the people to follow which was likely, based on archaeological evidence, considerably different than religion actually practiced by the ancient Israelites.  Specifically, archaeology reveals the rampant practice of polytheism and idolatry up to the Babylonian exile.[2]  Biblical archaeology contends that the Torah was a compendium of tales written by a reformist movement railing against the practices of the day.  Setting aside the issue of biblical authorship, I will continue the discussion in the context of the good intentions of the author presently.

The now dubious authorship of the Torah made my original question even more pronounced.  If the Torah was not written by God, then who wrote it and how were the ancient Israelites aware of debt and its effects?  My research would lead me to the field of biblical archaeology.  I studied the works of William Dever and Israel Finklestein amongst others with the following results.  The ancient Israelites never conquered Canaan as told in the Torah canon.  They were instead Canaanites themselves who survived and replaced a decaying social order with a more egalitarian one.  For those interested in how I arrived at this conclusion there is a wonderful précis of biblical archaeology available on Public Broadcastings’ NOVA series: “The Bible’s Buried Secrets.”[3]  There you’ll find a terrific summary of all the archaeological and scientific findings to date.  I only wish this series had existed at the outset of my research for it would have saved me much trudging through many inaccessibly written academic works on the topic.  Researching biblical archaeology was much like archaeology itself: sifting through piles of academic detritus to yield occasional relics and then putting the pieces together.

So, accepting for the moment that the Israelite race emerged from the nadir of the Canaanite civilization, Zephaniah 1:11 becomes ever more clear:
“The dwellers of Machtesh [, a quarter of Jerusalem,] howl;/ For all the tradesmen [nation of Canaan] have perished, All who weigh silver are wiped out.”
Two things are critical in this passage.  First the time of Zephaniah, well past that of the Canaanite era, and second the reference to the weighing of silver.  Zephaniah was not admonishing the Canaanites but rather the Jewish merchants of Jerusalem who were acting like Canaanites.[4]  As to the reference to the weighing of silver, silver was then as it is now, a monetary metal.  All throughout history, every society has been plagued by the manipulation of their currency leading to their ultimate downfall.  Economists call the process seigniorage gain.

Seigniorage gain is the process by which the minter (usually the government) gains on the difference between the face value of the coin and the actual value of the metal used to make it.  I often think it is the job of economists to construct palatable names for what in the end turns out to be sheer larceny.  Those unfamiliar with the term may be more familiar with the contemporary synonyms such as ‘inflation’.  Whatever you choose to call it, ‘a lemon by any other name would taste as sour’ and inflation, currency manipulation, or seigniorage gain is quintessentially a tax on the middle class leading to widespread debt, poverty and wealth inequality.  It is a fundamental violation of the biblical injunction to have “fair weights and measures” (Deut 25:13-16).

It is my supposition that it was an economic collapse brought about by currency manipulation which spelled the end of the Canaanite civilization.  I will support this supposition by reviewing the log roll of history vis a vis currency manipulation and the subsequent unfolding of the relevant civilization.  Biblical archaeology tells us that the proto-Israelites literally fled for the hills in the face of the collapse of the Canaanites.[5]  There they regrouped and sought to set themselves apart from the evils of their past.  After the dust had settled they returned with a renewed spirit and purpose to set out a more equitable system.  To that end they developed laws against the accumulation of debt and the slavery that results.  Those laws were later canonized in the Pentateuch around the end of the Babylonian exile (4th to 6th centuries BCE).[6]

Some 600 years later we know that these laws were largely being ignored and that corruption again loomed large.  We have the historical testimony of the gospels of Luke and John which recount Jesus’ banishing of the money changers from the temple gates.  Around the time of the year 0 CE Roman currency was the common currency in the holy land.  These coins typically bore the images of pagan gods and were unacceptable for use in temple worship.  At the temple gates, benches of money changers would exchange these coins, at predatory exchange rates, to Levite coins for use in temple services.  These same money changers would charge the Levites unreasonable rates to change these coins back into Roman coins such that the Levite priests could make purchases in the markets.  Jesus found the entire process abominable and forcibly drove them from the temple.[7]  Whether you believe the historical veracity of the gospels is beside the point here.  What is known is that currency manipulation was clearly on the mind of the authors of the gospels and the gospels were known to be written around this time (admittedly within 400 years).  As a pertinent aside, the word ‘Bank’ comes from the Latin for ‘bench’ precisely referring to this historical antecedent.[8]  I believe it is social disarray caused by the financial ruin of Israel which led to its overthrow by the Romans.  There is textual evidence for this in the bible itself:  Jeremiah 7:11 reads “Is this house, whereupon My name is called, become a den of robbers in your eyes?”  Amos 5:7 reads “Ah you who trample the heads of the poor into the dust of the ground, and make the humble walk a twisted course.”

It is an irony of history, if not a recurring leitmotif, that the very same financial snare which destroyed Israel also destroyed its captors.  In Hebrew school we all learned of the famous (infamous) “Judea Capta” coin.[9]  This coin depicts the pride of the Romans in defeating ancient Israel.  It is in the silver or precious metal content of roman coinage with which we can track the decline of the Roman Empire.  The backbone coin of the Roman economy was the Denarius which started out with a silver weight of approximately 4.5 grams.  Have you ever noticed the ridges on the edge of a quarter?  These same ridges were present on the Denarius and there intention is to make any shaving of the coin obvious.  This made it harder for individuals to debase the currency but the government was free to mint coins with less and less silver content.  By the year 274 CE under Aurelian’s reign the coins had almost no silver content at all.[10]  The causes of the fall of Rome are admittedly complex, including the outsourcing of their military defense to barbarian mercenaries.  Just the same, the economic decline of Rome is certainly one of the principle causes and is yet another exemplar of the debasement of currency leading to the debasement of the underlying civilization.

The collapse of the Roman Empire led the world into the dark ages.  The Christian religion took hold championing the cause of the poor all through these long dark ages.  Eventually a fair monetary system was developed called the tally stick system.[11]  Very strict Christian based laws against usury (interest) prevented any monetary abuse.  However, in the 1500’s Henry VIII, obviously unaware of the peril, deregulated the economy and allowed for certain forms of usury.[12]  The economic maelstrom unleashed destroyed the English economy.  In the wake of the upheaval and in the aftermath of the English revolution of 1642, the Bank of London was established.  Oddly enough, the initial shares were bought with no other currency than talley sticks.  The bank of England replaced this monetary system with their own manipulated (or ‘fiat’) currency.  Currency manipulation was now institutionalized in the form of this ‘Central Bank’ put in place to ‘protect and regulate’ the money supply.

Just around this time, gold was being used as a currency.  Carrying ones gold on their person could be cumbersome and moreover, dangerous.  A robbery could erase ones savings.  The goldsmiths of the day agreed to hold gold for consumers at a nominal fee and issued them a certificate which they could then use to redeem their deposits.  These little slips of paper were much easier to work with and in a very short time, the slips of paper would be used in transactions instead of gold.  The goldsmiths made an astute observation.  Not all of their clients came to collect their gold at one instant.  As such they could lend out some of the deposited gold at interest making money on money they did not really have.  While this seems relatively harmless provided customers do not all come for their gold at once, it is in fact at the core of everything wrong in the world today.  The fraud is subtle yet essential to understand.  By using gold that say a farmer had deposited to make loans, you are using the hard labour of the farmer to make money with very little labour.  In a nutshell, this practice siphons up the value of labour and puts it in the hands of the advantaged few who are in a position to leverage it.  This is the practice of fractional reserve banking with is with us to this very day.[13]  When a middle class family takes out a loan to get an SUV, the bank does not lend you their money.  They lend you the savings of an auto worker who drives a compact sedan.  The banker turns interest on money s/he never owned and drives a luxury sports car on the profits.  Such is the food chain of fractional reserve banking.  Bankers love the practice for obvious reasons.  Politicians love it because they can finance their projects without reaching for tax dollars.  Projects can now be financed with thusly conjured money with only a nodding concern for inflation and the ever growing national debt. The average person neither loves it nor hates it because they do not understand it.  Hopefully, that is, until now.

The Bank of England was aware of the practice of the goldsmiths but instead of outlawing it, embraced it.  As such they succeeded in protecting and regulating the money supply insofar as her citizens of wealth were concerned but all to the detriment of the English parliament and the general public.  The bank so bankrupted England that England was forced to place a heavy tax burden on its colonies.  The American colonies revolted to the cry against ‘taxation without representation’ in the war of independence of 1762.  By the end of this revolution, with the effects of the Bank of England in mind the Americans set out to “form a more perfect union”.  Into their new constitution section 10 forbids “…emit[ing] Bills of Credit; mak[ing] any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts…”.[14]  It was pursuant to this section that the United States was on the Gold Standard for most of its existence up until 1933.  The Gold Standard ensured that every bill was backed by gold.  Bills printed prior to 1933 were marked “redeemable in gold”.  After 1933 they were marked as only “legal tender”.  The founding fathers knew of the threat of a manipulated currency but that memory and warning was, as we now see, historically fleeting.

The Americans had the first and second Banks of America which again started to manipulate the currency.  Andrew Jackson famously put a temporary stop to the banking cartels saying: “You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out.”[16]  For a short while he succeeded.  From 1836 to 1913 the United States was free of a central bank and the currency manipulation they bring with them.

During this hiatus in central banking while financial crises persisted, inflation was flat.  That is to say that one dollar was worth one dollar for this interim period.[17]  This allowed for the accumulations of savings which is the true practice of capitalism.  Indeed by the early 1900’s bankers were concerned with the prevalence of self-financing of business development.  So concerned were the bankers that they sought to reassert themselves and in 1913, taking advantage of a recent (some say engineered) financial crisis, the Federal Reserve was born and central banking was reborn in America.[18]  Again too, the promise of the Federal Reserve was to regulate the money supply and again, so it did, to the advantage of the wealthy few.  As it has always been throughout history, currency manipulation manufactures debt and poverty.  Since the inception of the Federal Reserve, the purchasing power of the dollar has decreased by 95%.  Inflation has increased by 1929% (that’s 19 hundred and twenty nine percent!).[19]  The effect of this is that wealth inequality is now staggering.  As of 2001, in the U.S., the top 20% held 84% of all the wealth.[20]  For those who have trouble dealing with math, what this means is that if you are in the class of the remaining 80% (most of us are) then in a more fairly distributed economy – which would necessarily feature a fair currency – you would have approximately 5 times your current assets.

As common as monetary manipulation is throughout history, so too are the attempted fixes when the system gets out of whack.  A fiat currency (recall a ‘fiat’ currency is an ‘on faith’ currency) is a sort of monetary Golem: this time made of minted coins instead of clay.  Generally it functions impeccably as designed, siphoning wealth upwards but occasionally and often dramatically, it causes large financial upset.  When this Golem takes a swat at its banker creators the solution is to placate it with, yes, ever more printed or minted money.  This maneuver results in one of two results: 1) a temporary stabilization of the monster or 2) a hyperinflationary death when the monster collapses under its own weight.  Note that in either outcome, the best that can be accomplished is a temporary shoring up of the system.  Inevitably, the Golem collapses back into the imaginary ore it came from, only after raping the value of the land and passing it into the hands of the elite few.  Revisiting the economic death of Rome, Nero and other Emperors debased the currency via inflation fiddling and minting as it were while Rome burned.

However, one need not look as far afield to find a terrific example of the hyperinflationary death of an empire.  Just recently, the Weimar republic died just such a death.[21]  In the 1920’s Germany forced under the WWI reparations act to make payments to the victor nations.  The victor nations, most notably France and England who were in their own financial distress due to – you may have guessed by now – their own currency manipulation, pressured the Germans to make good on their obligations.  The German coffers were largely empty and as a result they decided to print money to meet their obligations.  The German citizens were wary of the stability of their currency and began to hoard cash fearing a crisis.  Simultaneously the German creditors began to fear default on their loans and closed the taps of credit.  The German economy stalled and went into a brief bout of deflation.  The Germans did what every other economy has tried all throughout history to solve the problem:  they threw more money into the market to try and jumpstart it.  The German citizens feared for their nest eggs which caused them to attempt to convert any cash they had on hand to real assets.  This unleashed a torrent of cash on the market which immediately lead to hyperinflation.[22]  Hyperinflation is runaway inflation fueled by panic and distrust of the underlying currency.  A corollary to the loss of trust in currency is an inevitable loss of trust in the government that promotes it.  It was thus that the Weimar republic fell leaving a political vacuum in its wake which would soon be filled by the Nazis.  Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote that: “It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.”[23]  History will record that this is equally applicable to the cessation of belief in government.

Historians and economists alike may be quick to point out that there would appear to be a historic precedent for economic spending or stimulus as an escape to recession.  They undoubtedly would point to the Roosevelt era and the “New Deal”.  So hope filled were the citizens of the day that the New Deal was rhapsodized into the Great Depression era musical: ‘Annie’.  Daddy Warbucks swooned “I know the depression is depressing… But we’ll get a new deal for Christmas this year.”[24]  The character Daddy Warbucks was modeled after Paul Warburg.[25]  It was common knowledge at the time that this was so.  Warburg was one of the chief architects of the Federal Reserve which is the United States arm of the Bank of England.  The bitter irony here is that it was the Federal Reserve System which caused and exacerbated the Great Depression.  They were anything but the cure.  The famed economist Milton Friedman spent a lifetime promoting this interpretation of events.  On the occasion of his 90th birthday Ben Bernanke, the current chairman of the Fed said: “I would like to say to Milton… Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”[26]  While I believe that Roosevelt was well intentioned, he was fatally naïve.  His New Deal served only to confiscate all public monetary gold and transfer yet more power to the Federal Reserve to manipulate currency.  The hidden tragedy of the musical Annie is that while she shares a stage with the theatric Roosevelt and Warbucks (Warburg) singing their accolades as her saviour, she is actually praising the instrument of her orphan plight.  (Annie was orphaned due to the financial insolvency of her parents.)

While unwittingly kissing the hand that starves you may be tragic when it occurs on stage, it is far more tragic when it occurs in the real world.  It is still a mainstream notion that Roosevelt’s New Deal was what rescued the Americans from the Great Depression.[27]  Even though all through history, government salvation through spending has led to financial ruin at every attempt some still espouse the idea that it is possible to spend our way out of the damage wrought by currency manipulation.  Currency manipulation is good for bankers and bankers fund business schools which produce bankers.  It is no wonder then that currency manipulation which goes hand in hand with government spending ‘has’ to be a good thing.  If you want to be at the top of this pyramid scheme you have to support the bricks that build it.  In this light, when the financial meltdown of 2008 hit, how did the pyramid builders propose to deal with the ‘Gre08er Depression’?  You guessed it, with more government spending.

Journalists are already pointing out the similarities in circumstances between Barack Obama and Roosevelt.[28]  I believe the comparisons are justified and that Obama is, like Roosevelt, well intentioned but critically misguided.  Mind you, not only is Obama misguided but most people are ill aware of monetary policy and its implications.  Obama promises trillion dollar deficits running for the next many years.[29]  It is his hope that this massive spending will shock the economy back to life.  The only shock it can reasonably hope to achieve though is shocking the Frankenstein of currency manipulation to life to turn on its creator.  The only reason Roosevelt’s New Deal appeared to work was that by the end of WWII, the US had developed tremendous manufacturing capabilities and the US was a burgeoning economy; the US emerged from the Great Depression despite Roosevelt’s New Deal, not because of it.  The situation in this Gre08er Depression is different.  There is no new manufacturing potential, indeed it is declining.  The US is not a burgeoning nation but is instead a declining one.  Thus the only shock government spending is capable of producing on the US economy is an electrocution.

Growing up I had trouble relating to the ancient Israelites I was reading about.  I could relate only to their enslavement in Egypt which I read as an allegory for my forced attendance at school.  Beyond that, they were a people very far from me both spatially and temporally.  My time was dominated by discussions and anxious anticipation of new technologies and new scientific discoveries.  While I could ‘upconvert’ an ordinance to help a neighbour right a fallen cattle to a more modern equivalent of assisting ones neighbour with a crashed computer in general the setting for torah morality written in terms of cattle, oxen and sheep failed to connect with me.  I was always amazed then as to how these seemingly simple people understood concepts such as debt.  Most debt in modern times comes from securing shelter.  In ancient Israel this could be accomplished by erecting four poles and securing canvas.  So where did these biblical injunctions come from, what wrong were they trying to right?

In trying to answer that question I would have to journey through studies of biblical archaeology and general history.  After so doing, I have found a new connection with the ancient Israelites.  They were trying to solve a very old and fundamental problem:  how to govern a large group of people equitably while preventing corruption.  Currency is one of the fundamental cornerstones of any civilization.  It is fundamental to most of our interactions and if it is corrupt, so too will inevitably be anything built on top of it.  Disappointment then comes in reading the scroll of history with each entry echoing the previous:  “Empire rises with high ideals.  The high ideals erode under complacency.  Corruption then leads to inequality and fiscal malaise.  Empire manipulates the currency to buy time.  Empire runs out of time.”

The tenet of monotheism according to the bible started with Abraham.  What the Torah describes as a moment of epiphany is revealed by biblical archaeologists to in fact be a long arduous process which took several hundreds of years.  Key here is that a stated ideal can become a practiced ideal with exertion of effort over time.  It is thus to the commandment that we “should have no poor among [us]” that we must redirect our time and efforts.  I have recently come to a conclusion that the reformed Canaanite predecessors of the world’s ‘big 3’ monotheistic religions likely came to long ago; poverty is not the result of a lack of wealth but instead a lack of justice.

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[1]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)
[2]   William G. Dever: “Did God Have a Wife?”
[3]   http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/program.html
[4]   http://books.google.ca/books?id=sIWn6lYS-MQC&pg=PA171
[5]   Smith, Mark “The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel” (pp 6-7)
[6]   McDonald & Sanders, editors of The Canon Debate, 2002, The Notion and Definition of Canon by Eugene Ulrich, pg 4
[7]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_money_changers
[8]   http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bank
[9]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaea_Capta_coinage
[10]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire#Michael_Rostovtzeff.2C_Ludwig_von_Mises.2C_and_Bruce_Bartlett [11]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talley_stick
[12]  http://books.google.ca/books?id=pnszAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA8
[13]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking#History
[14]  http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec10.html
[15]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
[16]  http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/andrew+jackson
[17]  http://www.economics-charts.com/cpi/cpi-1800-2005.ht ml
[18]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve
[19]  http://postworthy.com/Worthy/ex/US_Dollar_Purchasing_Power_Decline/205.aspx[20]  http://mwiner.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/wealthdistribution.gif
[21]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920s_German_inflation
[22] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation
[23]  http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/malcolm_muggeridge.html[24]  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2vGeaqM33g
[25]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Warburg#Legacy
[26]  http://www.federalreserve.gov/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/2002/20021108/default.htm[27]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal
[28]  http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20081124,00.html
[29]  http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-06-obama-economy_N.htm

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Canadian Bill C51 purportedly proposes sweeping changes to the herbal supplement and naturopathic/homeopathic remedies market.  The following excerpted from an anti Bill C51 website, although not independently confirmed, suggests that the bill would (amongst other things):

1) Fasttrack pharmaceutical drug approval and
2) Make over 70% percent of current herbal drugs illegal.

Now, this was taken from an opposing website so all claims must then be taken with a grain of all natural sea salt.  The Government claims that your access to Vitamin C and Echinacea is safe. 

“Under Bill C-51, Canadians will continue to have access to natural health products that are safe, effective and of high quality. The Bill will not limit access to natural health products nor does it call for a change in their regulatory status (from over-the-counter to prescription)” says Health Canada spokesperson Paul Duchesne.

Source :: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080509/C51_protests_080509/20080510?hub=TopStories

From that simple quote we are forced to ask the question, who and how will products be determined to be ’safe, effective and of high quality’?  The contention seems to be over semantics and the definition of exactly which products will and will not be regulated.  Putting semantic issues aside, it looks as though the combatants are missing the more global issue and that is in addressing the manner in which the allopathic (mainstream) and alternative medicine operate.  The issue is probably more complex than first fathomed.  Both paradigms operate under different modi operandorum. 

Big pharma operates under the model of providing drugs and therapies with validated claims.  The drug’s claims and safety are established by clinical drug trials.  The benefits here should be obvious but the weaknesses of this system may not be.  The first failure of the big pharma model is that drug trials can be flawed either intentionally or just by simple lack of scope or experimental design.  Take for example the drug VIOXX which did pass clinical trials and FDA approval which was later associated with heart disease and voluntarily withdrawn by its manufacturer Merck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib#Withdrawal  The second failing of the big pharma model is even more subtle in that  only patentable therapies need apply.  Take for example the research Dr. Evangelos Michelak out of the university of Alberta who has come up with a cancer treatment using the chemical DCA. http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/  This treatment has been conclusively shown to remove or eradicate all manner of cancers in test animals.  It is a hugely promising therapy with suprisingly few side effects.  One would expect this drug to be in human trial by now.  However, since DCA is not patentable, (almost as common as table salt) the drug companies have no interest.  DCA will go to human trial nonetheless, but only after Dr. Evangelos Michelak is able to scrape together enough money from other philanthropic investors.

Now let’s examine the world of home or natural remedies.  You can pick up a bottle of an herbal remedy which can make all manner of claims.  These claims need not be validated and, indeed, the only validation you’ll receive is either from the smiling face of the salesperson at your natural foods store or the recommendation of a friend or naturopatic practitioner.  However, you probably won’t be able to rely on any study and you’ll have to adopt a ‘take it and try it’ approach.  The failings of this system are two fold.  First, hearkening back to the days of the snake oil salesmen, there is the potential for you to waste your time and money on ineffective remedies.  Second, in wasting your time on these remedies, you may delay seeking appropriate medical treatment for a potentially serious condition.  The first failure – the lack of study based findings — is compelling.  The natural health product industry needs to provide better support for their claims and adhere to some standard as for quality of composition. The second failure is not as compelling as people typically resort to natural health products only after the failure or reticence of allopathic medicine.

Looking at both paradigms, there is a measure which could marry their strengths and divorce ourselves of their weaknesses.  The summary of bill C51 reads as follows:

This enactment amends the Food and Drugs Act to modernize the regulatory system for foods and therapeutic products, to strengthen the oversight of the benefits and risks of therapeutic products throughout their life cycle, to support effective compliance and enforcement actions and to enable a greater transparency and openness of the regulatory system.

Source :: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=3398126&File=19

If this is indeed the goal of the Federal Government, then wouldn’t their time and efforts be better spent in implementing a system of subsidized and facilitated human trials?  A subsidized and facilitated human trials system would raise the bar for natural health food products to better support their claims.  Since the studies would be subsidized and facilitated we wouldn’t deny ourselves access to any reasonable therapy but as consumers, claims of product effectiveness and quality of composition could be properly backed by more than a friendly smile.  All therapies, herbal and pharmaceutical would be subject to the same level of testing.  This testing would be reasonably affordable for any given company.  This would satisfy the allopathic community’s demands for rigorous proof and testing while at the same time allow the allopathic community to consider previously unprofitable yet promising treatments such as DCA.

There is a petition circulating to stop bill C51.  http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/StopC51  I would be willing to sign it if it could be proved it would make 70% of current natural health care products illegal.  Would I sign a petition to have the Federal Government fund and facilitate human trials of all health care products?  In a heartbeat.

Alberta · ale · alternative medicine · bill c51 · c51 · Canada · cancer · cancer treatment · cancers · cent · China · dca · Dr. Evangelos Michelak · drugs · Evangelos Michelak · fda · fed · federal government · Federal Government fund · food · Health · Health Canada · health care products · health products · heart disease · herbal medicine · homeopathic · http · king · life · Merck · MIT · natural health care products · natural health food products · natural remedies · naturopatic · oil · Paul Duchesne · pharmaceutical · pharmaceutical drug approval · quote · servlet · snake oil salesmen · spokesperson · the fed · therapeutic products · University of Alberta · vioxx · web

AID · ale · blog · car accident · Case · dca · Deborah Shank · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · Health · http · insurance · Keith Olberman · Keith Olbermann · king · lawyer · life · manufacturing money · Post Office · RAM · Red · subrogation · Supreme Court · the fed · then insurance plans · things retail · US Federal Reserve · USD · Walmart · writing

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

With the recent passing of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn I was reminded of a lecture by psychology professor Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto.  This lecture expounded the virtue of taking personal responsibility in dealing with our fears.  Peterson used a children’s book “There No Such Things As A Dragon” and the moral lessons therein to reveal how we all can be crippled by a metaphoric fear dragons and released only by facing them.

Peterson first deals with the common fears we all deal with such as fear of dying and losing those we love.  Then Peterson comes to dealing with fears and adversity imposed upon us by social forces such as tyranny and bureaucracy.  This is where he begins to discuss Solzhenitsyn. 

Solzhenitsyn is a survivor of the former Soviet Gulag where according to Solzhenitsyn’s account, approximately 60 million people died between the years of 1919 and 1959.  Solzhenitsyn started out life on the Russian front.  He was captured by the Germans where he was thrown in a special POW camp because Stalin in his neuroticism refused to sign the Geneva convention.  Conditions were so bad in these camps that other POW’s — who were not much better off themselves – threw packages of food over the fences in pity of the Soviet inmates.

With the end of the war, Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia expecting a hero’s welcome.  Much to his surprise, he and his comrades were thrown into the Gulag out of fears that they may have been contaminated by their exposure to Western culture.  Conditions in the gulag were intolerable.  Many of Solzhenitsyn’s fellow inmates ate a type of clay just to have their stomachs feel fuller.  Solzhenitsyn then asked a remarkable question under the circumstances:

“What did I do to get here?”  This is a remarkeable question because many of us would immediately look to the external conditions that brought about Solzhenitsyn’s plight.  There was the war, the Soviet Empire and any other host of external conditions that could be used to explain his current situation.  Solzhenitsyn instead chose to revisit, over the following 10 years, all the things he had done wrong in his life.  In Peterson’s words “he revisited anything that gave his conscience a pang”.

Out of this introspection, he wrote the Gulag Archipelago – a 3 volume 1900 page book – which he committed to memory as there was no pen and paper available to him in the gulag.  This work circulated for years in the underground before it was eventually published in 1975.  The Gulag Archipelago went on to be the greatest literary attack on the Soviet Empire.  Solzhenitsyn, under completely unreasonable circumstances, chooses to take personal responsibility for his plight.  As a result of this soul searching, he wrote a literary attack which in many real ways bested the former Soviet Empire.  Some may immediately be tempted to say: “well the world doesn’t work like that!”  Peterson retorts: “Do we really know the world works?”  Peterson equates injustice large and small to dragons that we must all face on a personal and societal level. 

In a related work, Peterson quotes Solzhenitsyn saying: “one man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny”.  Peterson further commented: ”I don’t think he meant that as a metaphor–or hyperbole.”

Peterson’s lecture can be found at:
http://www.tvo.org/podcasts/bi/audio/BIJordanPeterson031806.mp3
(The section about Solzhenitsyn begins at time index 44:00)

ale · Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · cent · Chaos · Communism · dca · food · Geneva · gulag · Gulag Archipelago · Harvard · html · http · Jordan Peterson · king · life · MIT · mp3 · personal responsibility · professor · psychology professor · quote · random · Red · Russia · Solzhenitsyn · Soviet Gulag · Stalin · toronto · University of Toronto

TVO (public television in Ontario) recently aired a lecture by Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and an author discussing his latest book Musicophilia.  I’ve always been interested in the understanding music on a neurological basis.  Music seems so universal that I often wonder what is happening on a neurological basis to make it such?  I’ve jotted down a few key points from the lecture.  The lecture audio can be found here.

Points:

• Upon visual inspection of a brain, one can tell which individuals were musicians and which weren’t.  This isn’t the case for say a mathematician.
• Even with diseases of the cerebral cortex (Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, etc) musical ability is often retained.
• 10% of musicians and 20% of born blind musicians have absolute (perfect) pitch.  Absolute pitch is the ability to recognize a note as say a G-sharp upon hearing.
• It is theorized that in born blind musicians the visual cortex is reallocated to music and tonal perception.
• Absolute pitch appears to be universal in the early years of life and is pruned away during later years.
• Some people can suffer from musical hallucinations which are loud enough to drown out their ability to hear actual conversations.

absolute pitch · Alzheimer's · author · Case · cent · dca · hallucinations · http · levis · life · logic · mathematician · mp3 · Music · Musicophilia · neurologist and an author · neurology · Oliver Sacks · Ontario · Parkinson's · perfect pitch · pruning · Red · web

The State of The Union – As Seen on TV
Martin C. Winer

But first a word about how this article was written:  This article was the result of a ‘cluster’ or a free-word association.  This is an exercise which is meant to use the ‘right brain’ to spur creativity and generate writing topics.  You can create your own clusters or bubbles here: http://www.bubbl.us/ but it’s best to do them with pen and paper since one tends to self edit when typing.  Each word you see italicized below is from the cluster.  Usually, the idea is to take one theme from the cluster and write about it.  I thought it would be a challenge to include ALL the words and still have the article tell a cohesive story.   Read the article, taking note of the italicized words.  Then see the cluster below.

I have been worried about the state of the world as of late.  Being recently unemployed with no meaningful job on the horizon, I was wondering when I’d be returning to the 9-5 lifestyle.  It’s not that I ravish 9-5, as Dolly Parton’s famous song correctly puts it, 9-5 is all “takin and no giving” but it beats aimlessly strolling on sidewalks waiting for a direction to unfold.  Up until recently I was a member of the over 30 and unmarried class.  Fortune changes quickly and I now find myself suddenly being married with children.  The responsibilities are understandably far different.  Curious as to what direction my life would take over the next months and years, I turned on the familiar glowing oracle fitted in every living room, the television.

While I waited for my big screen TV, a vestige of my former employed self, to come to life, I recalled that a comic had mentioned that Dolly Parton had insured her breasts.  I wondered if the comic was putting us on, as he was apt to do.  Would an insurance company take premiums for such a ridiculous item?  What was the counterparty risk?  Were her breasts in good hands with Allstate (TM)?  The TV came to life with the evening news reporting of another hemorrhage on Wall Street of 213 ethereal points, with AIG requesting more bailout money.  Evidently, indeed, insurance companies would take premiums on just about anything and the only boobs in the interaction were the policy holders who actually thought the policy was worth something.  Bored with the evening news I changed the channel.

Dick Cheney was on “State of the Union” with John King on CNN.  Cheney, a bastion of the old guard was set to be ‘grilled’ by King as to the sins of his administration.  I flipped right past the interview because I knew it could not yield the satisfaction I was seeking.  Waterboarding and assassination squads would be second nature to a man like Cheney who shot his hunting partner in the face.  Waterboarding I imagined was just his technique for cleaning his felled game, human or otherwise.  I wasn’t interested in the past, I was curious to know what my future held.

There was an infomercial on with 90 year old Jack Lalanne sporting his leisure suit and his juicer.  I am a late night TV watcher and infomercials plague the airwaves from dusk ‘til dawn.  Jack Lalanne was born in 1914 and looked to be in better health than myself all thanks to his 1/2 horsepower juicer.  In went an orange, apple, and every other healthy fruit your mother tried to get you to eat as a child.  Out poured a fountain of youth which had purportedly kept Lalanne in such great shape over these many years, yet somehow, it hadn’t managed to save his fashion sense.  The leisure suit was last popular when the juice on everyone’s lips was Juice Newton, “Grease” was the new movie and disco was still in style.  I was intrigued with the notion of extended life and wondered if indeed Lalanne’s juicer could provide it.  Even if it could, what would my life be like, aged 90+ years drinking fruit and vegetables all day?  Would my life be fulfilling?  I changed the channel seeking an answer from the glowing oracle of TV.

The next infomercial was for Extenz tablets; an all natural ‘Male Enhancement’.  Well this held some promise now didn’t it?  At least my latter years could be herbally augmented with extra length and girth.  But just what were these pills I thought to myself?  “An all natural male enhancement?” I wondered to myself.  Didn’t we already have such a thing in Dolly Parton?  What were these herbs and how were they discovered?  Did someone eat a salad with wild herbs one night with shocking results in the bedroom?  How did they then suspect the salad and not anything else?  My mind was awash with questions and I wasn’t much in the thinking mood.  I wanted answers, not questions.  Come on oracle of television, what would my life be like?  The only effort I was willing to exert was in flipping channels.

Yet as I flipped there were a plethora of Viagra and its new copy Cialis ads.  Was the television intimating that my future would need these?  A Viagra ad promised that at age 50 I could trade in my sedan for a Harley Davidson and with one pill have the vigor of a 20 year old.  A Cialis ad promised 36 hour or daily dosing options to make sure I would be able to respond when the mood was right.  If I was as old as Jack Lalanne, would my wife still be ready for me?  I’d be worried about breaking bones at that age.  Another flip would quell that fear.

Once a month Boniva would rebuild my wife’s bones without the need to remember a weekly pill.  There would be no need to take those chalky calcium pills once a day.  Of course memory at that age will be compromised so the once a month dosing is ideal.  Side effects could include liver and kidney disease but at least you would only have to endure them once a month.  God bless Big Pharma.  I could have a once a day boner and my wife could have healthy bones all month.  I was comforted that the future would be bright.  My comfort was not long lasting, at least not as long lasting as 36 hour Cialis promised to be, when it occurred to me that Big Pharma was suffering from a horrible case of misplaced priorities.  With all of their attention focused on bones and boners, they had dropped the two big balls of cancer and heart disease.  I curiously imagined a big Pharma strategizing kick off meeting with people brainstorming on new drug targets and somehow bones and boners getting to the top of the list over cancer and heart disease.  I only hoped that Jack Lalanne’s fountain of youth Juice could get my wife and I past those two roadblocks.

I calmed myself thinking that my 90th year was well off, I being only 35 now.  Big Pharma had time to readjust their priorities.  I continued my flipping to discover yet another Big Pharma commercial for Requip, a medication for Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS).  My legs were perfectly atrophied into their TV watching position.  I didn’t believe that such a condition could occur.  “My doctor said ‘Requip’” said the announcer as a television doctor mouthed “Requip”.  I imagined that the doctor mouthed “bullsh*t” in response to the patients complaint.  [0u92R90U R ‘ jixz-]0039;ffaS980059-09ATRE MT3.  Oops, I’m ever so sorry about that previous mess, you see my arms tend to spontaneously move uncontrollably every so often…  Oh my, could it be I have Restless Arms Syndrome (RAS)?  Well at least I know that Big Pharma is on the case.  Perhaps if I ingest Requip while standing on my head, the medication will settle in the appropriate appendages?  Parenthetically I wonder if all Requip contains is a bottle of gel caps filled with Brandy?  All it seemed Big Pharma could do for me in my latter years was give calm legs and arms and a rock hard erection.  The Viagra commercial warned that any erection lasting over 4 hours constituted a medical risk and thus I knew my fulfillment from Big Pharma would leave me with 20 remaining hours in the day to fill with what?  What would I do?  I looked to the financial stations to see if I had any prospect of finding a job.

CNBC was heralding the success of the latest Apple Computer quarterly results.  The IPhone and the IPod were unrelenting successes.  The host discussed the failing health of Steve Jobs as a concern for the future of the company and since we now know all that Big Pharma is good for, the concern is justified.  I myself am not a gadget freak.  I often mockingly eye people walking down the street sweaty palmed typing at lunatic speeds on their Palm, Blackberry or blueberry or whatever the latest berry is.  I have no need to be so totally connected, but evidently there is a huge market for these devices.  Just the same I was delighted to see the success of Apple whose Macintosh computer was, in my mind, the superior computer in 1985.  Bill Gates was the smarter CEO, not the better innovator.  Steve Jobs didn’t allow clones of Macintosh’s while Gates allowed clones of the PC.  As a result Apple’s market share fell like Newton’s apple under newly discovered gravity.  With all the discussion of executive compensation these days, I think Steve Jobs deserves the lion’s share of the reward when it comes to innovation.  The IPod is simple to use media device which takes advantage of the recent wave of music piracy and MP3’s that puts the tale of the Maersk Alabama to shame.  Now don’t get me wrong, copyright infringement was not created by Jobs, he only capitalized on it.  The IPhone is the next logical extension of a handheld computing device incorporating maps, navigation and a whole host of other useful features we come to expect from Apple.  The Macintosh, the IMac as it’s now called, is gaining market share in leaps and bounds.  I guessed that I had attained some inspiration from the glowing oracle;  perseverance, like that of Steve Jobs in the face of constant opposition and I too could one day go on to innovate a pile of handheld devices – or something like that.  Of course this special was being aired on CNBC the so called financial news network that managed to complete miss any predictions of the financial collapse which had claimed my job.  I wasn’t about to take any advice from them.  No, the Corruption National Broadcasting System as I had renamed them would have to find another mark. I dismissed them with a flip of the channel.

The Cheney Interview was over on CNN and now Anderson Cooper on A.C. 360 was sporting a pie chart showing the distributions of the American reinvestment Plan.  There were huge allotments for infrastructure building projects.  A clip revealed workers building bridges all over the country.  Wasn’t it another Democratic president who wanted to build a bridge to the 21st century?  Now are we building bridges out of Chapter 11?  There was discussion of incentives to homeowners to renovate and rejuvenate their properties.  I thought of stopping in at Home Depot but immediately balked because the 27 minute hand waving discussion with 17 year old ‘Skippy’ who works there never seems to get me the results I want.  For all the talk of hope and economic plans CNN was pushing out, I knew that the recession was receding faster than Dick Cheney’s hairline.

Rembrant - Raising of Lazarus

Then they aired a clip of the master of hope: President Obama.  “America has been great and shall rise to be great again” he prophesized.  I thought this had a familiar tone.  I quickly switched to the Catholic Television Service and the pastor proudly boomed “and the phoenix shall rise out of the ashes just as Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.”  The pastor went on to solicit donations for a new building project.  This also had familiar overtones and I flipped back quickly to CNN.  “It will take considerable investment from us all but we shall rebuild and come back stronger” proudly acclaimed Obama.  It then occurred to me that Obama was more than just a President, he was our primary minister.  He then intimated at his plan to remove toxic assets from the books of the banks without providing the necessary details I was looking for; undoubtedly he would turn water into wine.  The rhetoric of hope was overflowing my ears and I needed a counter position to ground myself again.  Luckily there was the FOX network who was lambasting Obama as the bane of humanity whose short stint in office had already thrown the economy into apocalypse from which only a miracle could now save us.

Putin and other former Soviet interviewees were quoted as saying that the end of capitalism has finally come.  A commentator remarked: “the American dream of picket fences has been replaced by picket lines” as the video showed protesting auto workers.  Am auto worker protested: “The companies are trying to divide and conquer us, taking advantage of this downturn to cut our benefits and pay.  I say enough taxing the middle class!”  Cheers and hurrahs followed.  My brain was like a pair of Levi’s jeans iconically being pulled by these two polarized stations in opposite directions, at the risk of ripping.  There had to be some truth on the glowing oracle of television.  PBS I thought to myself quickly.  That will save me.

Jim Lehrer

(Ed. Note: Actually it’s IOWA that is ok with Gay Rights, not Oklahoma.  In my cluster, I confused the two, but I went with it because the challenge was to write an article using all the clustered words.  I was only off by a 10 hour drive anyways.    )

Public Broadcasting, publicly funded and publicly ignored in favour of watching MTV to hear if Britney Spears of Lindsay Lohan were wearing underwear today.  Today Jim Lehrer was discussing the state of Gay Rights.  Evidently in Ahnold’s (sic) California the rights of gays have been ‘terminated’.   Ironically, Oklahoma seems “Ok” with gay marriage.  Is that what the song “Oklahoma, OK” is about from the musical Oklahoma?  The world seemed upside down.  Had I inverted myself such that Requip went to my arms and forgot about it?  Oklahoma was a place where I expected politicians to spout the bible about ‘being Fruitful and multiplying’ and how homosexuality was unnatural.  In liberal California, I expect them to say anything goes, from Gay Rights to cloning dolly the sheep.  After all doesn’t Hotel California by the Eagles promise “Plenty of room at the Hotel California / Any time of year, you can find it here”?  I couldn’t make sense of my world.  I was about as comfortable as a man swimming in itchy wool trunks.  I needed to flip the channel quickly.

Kim Kardashian

Chicks Who Love Guns

Up next was a documentary “American Justice” revisiting the O.J. Simpson trial.  It brought back names like Mezza Luna, Nicole Brown, Robert Kardashian, Kim Kardashian… whoops my mind wandered.  Robert Kardashian had helped set a murderer free but brought us Kim Kardashian.  Now they say justice should be blind, but have you seen Kim Kardashian?  He was off the hook in my books but the rest of the characters who let O.J. go were open to attack in my imagination.  I recast the events of that fateful night as a Quentin Tarantino movie.  I’d have my justice, if only in my imagination.  Nicole Brown would now be Jackie Brown.  She would seductively seduce O.J. by dancing for him like Salma Hayek in Tarantino’s “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn”.  She’d then immediately turn into a vampire and eat him alive.  Next, Travolta and Samuel Jackson from Pulp Fiction would show up and after quoting Ezekiel 25:17 would lace into the O.J. lawyers.  Finally the women from “Chicks who love Guns” as seen in Jackie Brown, armed with the AK-47 and they would deal with every “mother [t]ucker” in the jury room.  Returning from my daydream I realized that 10 years had passed and there was no justice to be spoken of.  The only thing I had learned from the episode was that justice is a function of wealth and that O.J. stood for Orenthall James, not Orange Juice.  I’m not admitting I was that stupid however, I’m about to write another article: “If I was that stupid, here’s how I’d admit it.”

I knew how the O.J. saga ended so I flipped again to see what else was on the glowing oracle.  John Sebastian crooned “Welcome Back, to the same old place where you started from…”  It was a rerun of Welcome Back Kotter.  Truly, I was basically back where I had started from, only an hour of flipping elapsed.  I knew nothing more of the future than when I started.  Sure I knew that my bones and boners would be safe, boobs could be insured, and that if I worked very hard, I might find a job.  But I was looking for important answers to important questions like, what would justice be like in the future?  What would the economy be like?  I was sure that Kotter’s Vinni Barbarino wasn’t going to be able to answer my questions.  With that, I turned off the glowing oracle for the night.

‘Apple’ cluster which generated the article.

This is the free word association (or cluster, or bubble) which generated the article.  Again, each italicized above came from the cluster below.

9 to 5 · 9/11 · AID · aig · AK-47 · ale · allstate · America · american justic · Announcer · apple · arnold schwarzenegger · auto workers · bailout · bank · bankruptcy · bible · bill gates · blog · boniva · bubble · california · cancer · capitalism · Case · cent · chapter 11 · chicks who love guns · cialis · cluster · dca · dick cheney · dolly parton · eagles · Economy · Executive · extenze · Ezekiel 25:17 · free word association · gay rights · God · grease · head · Health · heart disease · home depot · homosexuality · hotel california · http · ibm · ILS · insurance · Internet · iphone · ipod · jack lalanne · Jackie Brown · jim lehrer · John Sebastian · John Travolta · juice newton · kim kardashian · king · lawyer · lazarus · levis · life · logic · maersk · maersk alabama · marriage · Martin C. Winer · MIT · mp3 · Music · nature · O. J. Simpson · obama · OJ · oklahoma · palm blackberry · piracy · pirates · President · Pulp Fiction · quentin tarantino · quote · Red · requip · rls · Robert Kardashian · Rome · Salma Hayek · sex · steve jobs · Tarantino · viagra · video · Vinni Barbarino · waterboarding · wealth · Welcome Back Kotter · writing

I attended the 3rd lecture on the Jewish Roots of Tin Pan Alley by Jordan Klapman. My notes on the previous lecture can be found here : http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/jewish-contributions-to-tin-pan-alley

The lecture series will continue with another 3 lectures in December of ‘08.

This lecture centered around the success of “Bei Mir Bist Du Shein” (To Me You’re Beautiful) written by Jacob Jacobs (lyricist) and Shalom Secunda (composer). This overtly Jewish (Klezmer) tune was made famous by the Greek (Lutheran) Andrews Sisters. The number was brought to the Andrews Sisters by Sammy Cahn after he heard a performance of it at the Apollo Theater in Harlem sung in the original Yiddish by African American performers Johnnie and George.

The song brought the Andrews Sisters instant stardom with this, their first record. The song was recorded by many other notable artists of the day including Acker Bilk, The Barry Sisters, Buddy Clark, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland (who received coaching in cantorial style from none other than Sam Goldwyn of movie fame), Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller (who had previously passed on the tune), and Teddy Wilson.

There were many other attempts to bring overtly Jewish music into mainstream America. Klapman’s lecture featured many audio examples of such attempts. Regrettably, none of them met with the fame of Bei Mir Bist Du Shein. However, many spin offs of the success of Bei Mir Bist Du Shein resulted.

Within weeks of the meteoric success of Bei Mir Bist Du Shein, radio executives at WHN in New York created a radio review of this new Jewish-Swing fusion called “Yiddish Melodies in Swing”. The show featured the vocals of the Barry Sisters, the “Swingtet” led by Pianist/Composer Sam Medoff, and the clarinet of Dave Tarras. The show had and extended run broadcasting every Sunday for two decades outliving the Golden Age of radio and most of its original audience.

The mainstream born Jewish: Throughout the course of Klapman’s lecture there was a pervasive pattern of mentioning a performers name followed by the Jewish name they were born with. “The Barry Sisters, born Bagelman”, “Sammy Cahn born Samuel Cohen” and on it went throughout the night. It was as if the seeds born of European pedigree needed to shed the husks of their origins before they could sow roots in Western soil. As it was with the performers names’ of the day, so too it was with the music. While Bei Mir Bist Du Shein was a single exemplar of the success of an overtly Jewish tune, allusions to Klezmer in the form of derived motifs and riffs permeated mainstream music coming out of Tin Pan Alley.

In perhaps the finest example of one such fusion taken to the nth degree we have the example of the Wedding Samba recorded by Edmundo Ros selling 3 million copies in 1949. This tune was born of the a earlier English recording of the Wedding Samba in 1940. However, the story continues, this 1940 song was born, in turn, of the Yiddish Theatre song of that same year “Der Nayer Sher” (The New Scissor Dance) composed by Abraham Ellstein.

In a demonstration of the universality of music, Hitler upon hearing the Germanic titled “Bei Mir Bist Du Shein” thought the song was “Wunderbar” until he was told that the song was written by Jews from Brooklyn. This wouldn’t be the first time that Hitlers musical tastes clashed with his politics. He was a tremendous fan of Franz Lehar who had a Jewish wife. He was also a great fan of Emmerich Kálmán of operetta fame who fled the Nazis leaving Europe for America. Music can not only circumvent politics but it can also supersede the original impetus of its composers.

Take for example, “My Little Cousin” recorded by Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee in 1942 which tells the story of boy meets girl. The Yiddish song upon which it was based, “Di Grine Kuzine” (My Green Cousin), tells the story of the culture shock of the new Jewish immigrants to American and ends with “Let this Columbus’s land burn!” As Klapman puts it “recycling is not a modern invention.”

———————————————————————————

• The lecture series will continue (tentatively) on December 3, 10, and 17 2008 with details to follow. Jordan Klapman performs with his ensemble at Jazz venues throughout the city including the Free Times Cafe.
• Jordan Klapman’s Klezmer group has a new CD out with details to follow at www.jordanklapman.com
• Jordan Klapman will appear in a free concert:
  Sunday, April 27th 2008
  The Jordan Klapman Trio
  Scarborough Civic Center
  Scarborough, Ontario Canada
  2:00pm – 4:00pm
• Klapman’s website and upcoming events can be found here:
  http://www.jordanklapman.com/
  http://www.jordanklapman.com/gigs/frameset.htm 

Abraham Ellstein · Africa · Alberta · America · Andrews Sisters · Apollo Theater · artist · Barry Sisters · Bei Mir Bist Du Shein · Benny Goodman · Canada · cent · Columbus · Coming · composer · Dave Tarras · dca · Der Nayer Sher · Edmundo Ros · Ella Fitzgerald · Europe · Executive · Franz Lehar · Free Times Cafe · George · Glenn Miller · gold · Hitler · http · ILS · Jacob Jacobs · jazz · Jewish Melodies in Swing · Jews · Johnnie · Johnnie and George · Jordan Klapman · Jordan Klapman Trio Scarborough Civic Center Scarborough · Judy Garland · Klezmer · Lionel Hampton · lyricist · Music · New York · oil · Ontario · Peggy Lee · pianist · Pianist /Composer · radio · RAM · Red · Sam Goldwyn · Sam Medoff · Sammy Cahn · Samuel Cohen · Shalom Secunda · Teddy Wilson · The Jordan Klapman Trio Scarborough Civic Center · tin pan alley · web · Wedding Samba · Wilson · www.jordanklapman.com · Yiddish

—————————————————————————–

This preview rated ‘A’ for anyone not familiar with Star Trek:
A teaser from a good Star Trek movie: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Khan (Ricardo Montalban)

Khan (Ricardo Montalban) blames Kirk for the death of his wife and the hardships suffered by his crew.  The planet that Kirk had long ago planted the Khan colony on had suffered a major catastrophe, yet no one from came to check up on them.  A Starfleet expedition chances upon Khan who commandeers their ship bent on revenge.

Khan tries repeatedly to kill Kirk but only manages to maroon him.  Khan suddenly realizes that marooning Admiral Kirk serves his purpose better:

Khan: I’ve done far worse than kill you, Admiral. I’ve hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her; marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet… buried alive! Buried alive…!
(Kirk shakes violently)
Kirk: KHAAANNNN!
[echo]
Kirk: KHAAANNNN!

Khan!

—————————————————————————–

… and now for our feature … a review of J. J. Abrams’ “Star Trek”.

"Felicity": Keri Russell

Prior to the release of Star Trek XI, my only exposure to J. J. Abrams was when I flipped past his series “Felicity” in search of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” reruns.  Now I admit that there were moments when I tuned in to Felicity, specifically when it looked like Keri Russell was about to get naked.  But every time it looked like things were about to get interesting, Felicity went into a long soliloquy ruminating about the morality of it all leaving me with a case of ‘Clothes-off-is Interruptus’.  The rest of the show consisted of contrived plot twists all designed to elicit pouty and extended reaction shots.  In fact the one hour Felicity, stripped of the reaction shots would run around a minute and a half.  Is it any wonder that I desperately flipped channels seeking the scientifically shielded warp speed plot progressions of Star Trek?

When I heard that J. J. Abrams was set to produce and direct the latest installation in my beloved show, all I could think was “uh oh”.  I approached the movie with great trepidation and it only took a few moments into the film to realize that my fears were justified.  The antagonist of the film Nero is a Romulan who watched his entire race destroyed by a supernova.  The Romulans shall hereinafter be referred to as the ‘stock bad guys’ because they bear almost no resemblance to the Romulans of Star Trek lore.  If anything Nero looks more like Vin Diesel than any other character.  Nero decides to take revenge on Spock and the Federation who failed to save his race from extinction.  By analogy, this would be like assaulting a competent doctor whose best efforts had failed to save a loved one suffering from heart failure.  It just doesn’t make sense; there is no motive for Nero to go after Spock and the Federation other than J. J. Abrams’ motive to write a movie.

Vin Diesel XXX

Nero Diesel Star Trex XI

The movie was wrecked for me right there.  The rest of the movie was filled to the brim with other such contrivances.  There was a giant drill which drilled into the planet before planting a device which created a black hole.  Why couldn’t they just create a black hole on the surface of the planet?  Because Abrams needed it to take longer so he could write in more reaction shots.  The black hole was created with mysterious (and convenient) ‘red matter’.  The red matter interacted with the green matter of the given planet producing brown matter which then collapsed into a black hole.  So we have black holes and brown matter.  This single sentence is perhaps the best summary of the entire plot.

Take for example the sword fight with Kirk and Sulu versus the stock bad guys on the deck of this great planetary drill.  This single sequence drearily occupied at least ten minutes of the running time.  What happened to their phasers?  They fell out of reach.  How did they fall out of reach?  Abrams had them written out of reach to foster the sword fight.  What happened to the explosive charges they had brought with them to destroy the drilling platform?  Abrams killed the chief engineer who carried them to make things more interesting.  Why didn’t they all have an explosive charge each?  Abrams wanted a sword fight.  Starting to get the picture?

The Drill that launched a 1000 reaction shots

So Abrams got his sword fight and Kirk and Sulu won.  They then destroyed the drilling platform which existed only for the purpose of the sword fight.  They were too late though and the planet Vulcan was destroyed anyways.  Why didn’t the few surviving Vulcans seek revenge against Kirk and Sulu for failing to save them?  Because that would have ruined Abrams’ movie.  Why did a surviving group of Romulans blame Spock for failing to save their planet despite his best efforts?  Because Abrams needed them to.

The movie was so chock full of similar cheesy contrivances and plot holes that I could swear Abrams was Swiss.  Take this slice of the Swiss cheese plot for example:  Abrams again has Kirk brandish his sword this time wielding it on a scantily clad Starfleet cadet.  Abrams fails in trying to play up on the Kirk-lothario theme of Star Trek.  Kirk of classic Trek was a man of many women because his heart only had room for his first love, his ship.  While it’s true that the Kirk’s bed welcomed the United Colours of the constellation Benetton, classic Trek did it all with style.  Abrams’ Kirk was nothing more than a man-whore frat boy on a teen series (say Felicity) as follows:

Like, okay.  So there they were in the dorm room with nudity on the horizon and in walks Uhura, her roommate.  Like, oh my God!  So like Kirk totally jumps under the bed while Uhura starts to like undress.  Like thank God the dorm monitor had been binge drinking Romulan ale or it would have been all their asses!  Uhura is down to her undies and bra before she catches wind of Kirk in the room.  She is like sooo embarrassed but she plays it cool and pouts proudly as Kirk like hops out of the room.  Is it like any wonder Uhura went on to be Communications Officer.  That girl is like built.  She could raise any admiral in Starfleet, totally!

I was furious: Abrams had turned Star Trek into Felicity Trek, The Next Reaction Shot.  Sure this ‘new’ star trek (sic) was set in an alternate timeline leaving the original timeline intact, but I was offended by its very existence.  I couldn’t figure out why I was so angry, given that Abram’s hadn’t killed Star Trek.  But it occurred to me that Abrams had done far worse than killing Star Trek:  He’d hurt it.  I feared that in spin offs he’d go on hurting it.  Abrams was set to leave Star Trek as he’d left so many other shows, marooned for all eternity in the center of dead plot lines, buried alive.  Buried alive.  My fists shook and I stared at the ceiling of the movie theater and screamed: “Abrams!”.

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Some may say that the debate between Capitalism and Socialism has long been concluded with the fall of the Former Soviet Union. While it is true that large scale Communism will likely never be tried again, the debate continues in smaller forums. Michael Moore’s recent film ‘Sicko’ reignites this debate as it pertains to healthcare.

In so doing, the global pros and cons of either system need to be considered when applied to healthcare. The nutshell ‘con’ of Socialism is that it fails to motivate people and deliver supplies and resources efficiently. In turn, the nutshell ‘con’ of Capitalism is that it can be very cold and tunnel visioned, in that it is only profit seeking, which may go against the true desires of its citizens.

When we apply Capitalism or Socialism to healthcare we see the inherent strengths and weaknesses of either system manifest themselves. Specifically, we find Capitalism style healthcare too cold and non-inclusive. However, Socialized healthcare again has problems of motivation of healthcare providers and delivery of cutting edge technologies and services in a timely manner. We’ll work a few examples to flesh this out.

Suppose you are in your doctor’s office and, heaven forbid, you are given the most feared diagnosis in medicine: Cancer. You may or may not want to live in a country with Socialized medicine. This author lives in Canada which is far from the masterpiece of healthcare that Moore seems to paint in his film. I may remind Moore that another man’s grass is always greener and another man’s bill of health is always cleaner.

Canada has a long history of socialized institutions from gas, phone service, electric utilities, etc. to healthcare. But long gone are the halcyon days of government institutions. In recent years there has been a spate of privatization with private health clinics and tiered systems for healthcare already on the table. Having said all that, Canada still maintains a socialized healthcare system, at least for the moment.

Returning to our dreaded Cancer diagnosis, the word on the street in Canada is that our doctors are often not aggressive enough in treating Cancer. Many hugely expensive, yet promising, courses of treatments are avoided due to long wait times or simple unavailability. It is a common practice of Canadians to drive into Buffalo for example for a faster MRI. Having said all that, suppose you are low on funds and are recommended a course of chemotherapy. In this case, ignoring the wait times, you’d want to live in Canada where this is covered. Make no mistake about it, socialized medicine is something that I’m quite proud of as a Canadian, however, it is necessary to make sure we don’t exalt it as a panacea when in fact, it is not. In the final estimation it suffers from the same inherent problems of Socialism, lack of motivation and problems with resource delivery.

Turning our attention to Capitalism as it pertains to healthcare, we again will use Cancer as an example and this time we’ll examine the Pharmaceutical industry. Imagine for a second that I told you there was a new substance which, in mice, was able to shrink lung, breast and brain cancers. This substance was able to target Cancer cells specifically eliminating most, if not all, of the side effects of conventional cancer treatments. You’d think the pharmaceutical companies would be beating a path to the researcher’s door but they’re not. The reason? The compound the researcher works with is about as common as table salt. DCA (Dichloroacetic acid) is a common laboratory compound already available from any chemical supplier. Most importantly, it’s not patentable. As a result, drug companies have no way of recouping any money they pour into its research in human trials. As a result the researcher (Dr. Evangelos Michelakis out of the University of Alberta) is left to ‘pass the hat’ to try to collect the necessary funds to conduct the human trials. Here we see the tunnel vision of Capitalist style healthcare, overly focused on profit, while failing to accomplish the task it was assigned: providing health care.

Thus we see that neither Capitalism nor Socialism make the perfect pill for solving the problem of healthcare. What then do we turn to? We need only parse out ‘healthcare’ into its two parts, health and care. The key to the problem is in the caring. We can try for as long as we want, and as hard as we want to apply different methodologies, but in the end they will all fail if we try to remove ‘care’ from healthcare. In a socialized healthcare system, we still need doctors who care and are motivated and we need politicians to care enough to manage to keep up with the frenetic pace of healthcare developments. In a Capitalist style healthcare system, we need the system to care enough to occasionally ignore profits and look at the more global picture to avoid having the system tunnel visioned and not inclusive. In any case, the key metric for any healthcare system should be measured in units of caring.

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