Thursday, January 27, 2011

Michael Hoffman on Twitter

After declaring for some time that e-mail, a website and three blogs are sufficient presence on the Internet, I have caved in and joined Twitter, in part inspired by how it is being used by the people of Tunisia, Egypt and China to gain their freedom.

Twitter contact for Michael Hoffman:

@HoffmanMichaelA

If you don’t know how to use Twitter, learn more at http://twitter.com/

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Friday, January 21, 2011

Hoffman’s YouTube video banned in Germany

On January 21 we received the following e-mail from a resident of Germany: 

"On YouTube your video 'Academic Freedom and Holocaust Denial Newspeak' has recently been blocked in Germany (your other three videos are still available for viewing).”

A Talk by Michael Hoffman - View it on YouTube (unless you live in Germany)

Academic Freedom and Holocaust Denial Newspeak
Hoffman analyzes the thoughtless acceptance of the Newspeak "Holocaust denial" phrase as a universal description of dissenters who dare to question Allied and Zionist dogma. He points to the hypocrisy of approved "holocaust denial " by Zionist professors who deny the 1945 Allied holocaust in Dresden, Germany or the Israeli genocide in Gaza — "denials" which are not a subject of academic controversy or media reproach and do not threaten the university employment or credentials of the deniers. 

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Revisionist historian Michael Hoffman's work is supported solely by donations and the sale of his books, newsletters and broadcasts 

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Judaic war veterans fight to keep Crosses out of the U.S. military

Our Fight on Mount Soledad

By Robert Zweiman
Forward (NY Zionist newspaper),  January 20, 2011

When did separation of church and state become a slogan rather than a core element of the American way of life? When did a cross become an ecumenical symbol that is appropriate for military memorials on federal property?

Regrettably, these questions remain unanswered — and our courts have not provided much in the way of clarity. This pattern continues with the federal appeals court ruling earlier this month regarding the cross on San Diego’s Mount Soledad.

The involvement of the Jewish War Veterans (JWV) as a plaintiff in the Mount Soledad case is part of our ongoing fight for the rights of Jewish service members and veterans and on behalf of the values enshrined in the Constitution.

Back in 1986, JWV filed suit to remove or relocate a brightly lit, 65-foot-high memorial cross at Camp H.L. Smith, a Marine Corps base in Hawaii.  In 1988, a federal district court decided in favor of JWV, ruling that the cross violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The federal government did not appeal this definitive decision. Yet in the years that have followed, this decision has been largely sidestepped.

Take, for example, last year’s Supreme Court ruling regarding a cross in California’s Mojave National Preserve. JWV filed an amicus brief in that case, which involved an 8-foot-tall cross honoring American service members who died in World War I. In response to a federal district court ruling that the cross violated the Establishment Clause, Congress had transferred the plot of land to a local veterans’ group. Federal courts, however, rejected this end-run around the ruling. The federal government appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which in a 5-4 decision overruled the lower court’s decision against the land swap without taking a position on the larger constitutional issue. It sent the case back to the lower courts to sort out.

The January 4 ruling in the Mount Soledad case similarly failed to produce a clear-cut outcome.
The battle over the Mount Soledad cross has been raging for two decades. The 29-foot-tall cross was erected in 1954 and sits atop a peak in a public park. It was dedicated on Easter, and the spot had long been used for Easter services. Once the cross started drawing challenges in court during the late 1980s, its defenders began stressing that the cross was actually a memorial for all veterans.

California state courts had held that the cross represented an impermissible blending of religion and state. So the cross’s supporters had the property turned over to the federal government. JWV filed suit, demanding the cross’s removal or relocation.

After losing before a district court, we appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the present arrangement is unconstitutional. But the appeals court added some weasel-wording in referring the case back to the lower court: “This result does not mean that the Memorial could not be modified to pass Constitutional muster nor does it mean that no cross can be part of this veterans’ memorial. We take no position on those issues.”

So, once again, instead of resolving the issue, we end up with a vague and indecisive referral back to the lower courts. This is how the status quo has persisted for so long, with the First Amendment sacrificed to apathy, indecision and — yes — fear.

On the battlefield, we do not serve as members of one religious group or another. We fight, we die, we suffer injuries — and we do so as members of America’s armed forces.

At a military cemetery, each veteran may have a headstone reflecting his or her individual religious preference, and that is as it should be. But veterans, and those who gave their lives for this country, should not have another religion’s symbol foisted upon them. That is not the way to honor them.

This has not been an easy fight for Jewish veterans. The responses we have been getting since the Mount Soledad decision range from those asking why we are making such a fuss to accusations that we are anti-Christian. Even among Jewish veterans, there are those who worry we are disturbing their relationships with other veterans and veterans’ organizations.

Indeed, sometimes it might seem easier to avoid trouble. Just like you can try to avoid accusations of dual loyalty by keeping quiet about your Jewish identity. And you can choose to passively accept proselytizing in our military academies. But ducking this issue would be an abrogation of our duties, not only to Jewish veterans and service members, but also to our Constitution.

Robert Zweiman is a past national commander of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America and a current member of its national executive committee.

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Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Judaic or not Judaic? A Jared Lee Loughner genealogy

by Michael Hoffman

Lois Totman was the mother of Jared Lee Loughner’s mother, Amy Totman Loughner.

Lois Totman was the daughter of Anton and Jessie Bleifuss.

According to census records, Anton Bleifuss was born in Bremen, Germany. Bleifuss may be a Judaic name. (The journalist Joel Bleifuss is Judaic.)


Therefore, Anton Bleifuss, Jared Lee Loughner's great-grandfather, may have been Judaic.

The Zionists are desperate not to have Loughner labeled as being of Judaic descent: 

Reporter Ron Kampeas asked researcher Nate Bloom about this, in a column for the Jewish Telegraph Agency (Jan. 12, 2011). Bloom states flat out: "Loughner’s family was in no way Jewish, nor was his mother...”

There you have it. The “expert” Nate Bloom has declared the belief we must all accept — but...

A bit down in his paragraph, Bloom concedes that even though Loughner’s mother is "in no way Jewish," lo and behold, she is a little (but not too much):

“ — but she might have mentioned her Jewish grandfather, beloved enough to live on in her brother's name, with pride or interest.

"Under those circumstances Loughner, who sought ‘chaos' according to Tierney, might have sought to provoke his mother and his uncle by pretending to admire (or actually admiring) Adolph (sic) Hitler. He might have told Tierney that his mother was Jewish as a shorthand, or might have seen her as Jewish...Or he might have explained the lineage, and Tierney might understandably have conflated it as 'mother Jewish.” (End quote; emphasis supplied).

Loughner’s Jewish mother? Not so much
By Ron Kampeas | Jewish Telegraph Agency | January 12, 2011

I noted the other day that an acquaintance of Jared Lee Loughner, the accused gunman in Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Tucson, believed his mother was Jewish.

Bryce Tierney told Mother Jones that Loughner listed Mein Kampf as a favorite book in part to provoke his Jewish mother.

Nate Bloom, the noted Jewish roots columnist and researcher, has done the legwork -- and pretty much buries this notion.

I'll hand it over to him:

It is appalling how one comment---a friend of Jared Loughner telling a Mother Jones’ reporter that Jared Loughner’s mother is “Jewish”---goes viral in an instant.  In hours, "this fact" was all over on anti-Semitic sites.  And, of course, there are the “commentators” who love to ‘blame the victim’ via some pop psychology theory that Jared acted out of “Jewish self-hatred.”

I figured that this was the moment to try and get “truth” dressed, and into the public arena a lot faster than usual.  In other words, to use the tools of the internet to determine the veracity of what this friend told Mother Jones.

I cover Jews in popular culture for Jewish newspapers and I know how often famous people are mis-identified as Jewish or mis-identified as not Jewish. I also know that a lot of people are not outright lying about claiming someone is Jewish---they just get it wrong.

So, with my friend Michael, we ran down everything we could from public records on Jared Loughner’s mother’s family background.  It took a lot of “search terms” and databases to find what we did.

Here’s what we found:

Jared Lee Loughner’s mother is Amy Totman Loughner;

Amy Loughner---Known Parentage from Public Records:

Her [Amy’s] parents were Lois May Totman and Laurence Edward Totman.
----Lois M. Totman died in 1999 and Laurence E. Totman died in 2005. Both were registered nurses. Laurence worked at a VA facility in Tucson. We both found this info via google news archives, social security death index.

From 1930 census records:
Laurence E. Totman was born in Illinois in 1925.
His (Laurence’s) parents were Laurence A. Totman and his wife, Mary.
Laurence Totman pere (the elder) was born in Kansas to a Pennsylvania father and an Illinois mother. Mary was from Illinois, as were both of her parents.
A sister-in-law named Myrtle M. Brennan is listed as living with them also.

1920/1910 census records---Totman Family:
In 1920, Lawrence Totman, (Jared’s) great-grandfather, is living with his aunt, Rosa Clarke, who was born in illinois to two Irish-born parents.
Rosa is his mother's sister. On the 1910 census, his (Laurence, the elder) maternal grandparents are listed as Irish-born.
Father, Orvie Totman was born in Ohio to Ohio-born parents.

Amy Loughner’s Mother’s Line:

See obit, below, from Arlington (Illinois) Daily Record, June 24, 1999---Obituary of Helen Medernach of Virgil, Illinois. Helen was the sister of Lois M. Totman (the mother of Amy Totman Loughner). Helen was the great aunt of Jared Loughner.

As you can see, Helen’s funeral (mass) was held at a Catholic church. Helen (and Lois) were the children of Anton Bleifuss and Jessie Bleifuss (nee Anderson).  Lois M. Totman died just days after her sister, Helen.

According to the census records, Anton Bleifuss was born in Bremen, Germany, to German parents. Jessie Anderson Bleifuss was born in Illinois to a father born in Denmark and a mother born in Illinois.
Conclusion---It is exceedingly unlikely that Amy Loughner has any Jewish ancestry. The only “line” not traced his Amy’s father’s mother’s family. The other three lines (Amy’s father’s father, Amy’s mother’s father, and Amy’s mother mother)---show, to all but the most obtuse, that these were/are not Jewish families. Moreover, it is quite clear that Amy’s mother, Lois Bleifuss Trotman, came from a Catholic family.

At OpEd News, Rob Kall interviews Rabbi Stephanie Aaron of Giffords' shul, Congregation Chaverim, she dispenses with any notion that the Loughner's were in any way associated with the community:
 "We had a meeting of the Tucson Board of Rabbis. We all looked at our rosters from many years back. No one has ever heard of the family -- him, his parents, any of them. I can say with absolute certainty that we do not know him in pretty much the entire affiliated community.”

I would add this: Bleifuss may be a Jewish name. (The noted investigative journalist, Joel Bleifuss, is Jewish.) Anton Bleifuss, Jared Lee Loughner's great-grandfather, might then have been Jewish -- but not so committed that he didn't defer to his wife when it came to raising the children as Roman Catholics.
As I noted in my earlier posting, Jared Loughner is not the most reliable of reporters, and Tierney's recollection was added as an aside. Mix into this the fact that Amy Loughner's brother is Anton Totman -- apparently named for his mother's father.

Loughner's family was in no way Jewish, nor was his mother -- but she might have mentioned her Jewish grandfather, beloved enough to live on in her brother's name, with pride or interest. Under those circumstances Loughner, who sought "chaos" according to Tierney, might have sought to provoke his mother and his uncle by pretending to admire (or actually admiring) Adolph Hitler. He might have told Tierney that his mother was Jewish as a shorthand, or might have seen her as Jewish -- like I said, not the most reliable reporter. Or he might have explained the lineage, and Tierney might understandably have conflated it as "mother Jewish.”

It sets up a fascinating contrast: Gabrielle Giffords, who plunges into public service when she is 30, just the same age she delves into her father's Judaism and chooses to embrace it; and Jared Loughner, who learns of a distant Jewish connection deep in his family's past -- and reviles it as he retreats into madness.
An obituary for Loughman's great aunt, Helen Medernach, is after the jump.

Date: June 24, 1999
Section: Business
Edition: Cook
Page: 10
Column: Obituaries

Helen Medernach of Virgil

A funeral Mass for Helen Medernach, 77, will be held at 10:30 a.m. Friday, at S.S. Peter & Paul Church. Fr. Aloysius Neumann will officiate.

Born Sept. 21, 1921, in Sycamore, the daughter of Anton and Jessie (nee Anderson) Bleifuss, she passed away peacefully Sunday, June 20, 1999, at Bethany Care Center in Sycamore, where she had made her home since May. Interment will be in S.S. Peter and Paul Cemetery, Virgil.

Helen grew up in Sycamore and graduated from Sycamore High School, class of 1939. She went on to take business courses which shortly landed her a job at Anaconda Wire Company in Sycamore. She went to California with her sister, Lois, and was employed in a business office for a few years before returning to work in Chicago. The last 20 years of her working career were spent in the business office at the Duplex Company in Sycamore.

She was united in marriage to William H. `Willie' Medernach on May 16, 1959.
They made their home in Sycamore for a short time before moving to Virgil where they lived across the street from the church for many years.

Survivors include her sisters, Virginia Stran of DeKalb, Irene Luty of Covina, Calif., Lois (Lawrence) Totman of Tucson, Ariz. and Dorothy (`Trig') Troeger of Sycamore; several nieces and nephews; and a family of dear friends. In addition, she leaves the quiet, simple legacy of one who cared. Her many thoughtful words of thanks, encouragement and friendship were patiently penned into countless cards that found their way into the hearts of many friends and neighbors through the years.
She was preceded in death by her parents; her husband in 1997; and brothers, Albert, Lyle, Leslie and Donald Bleifuss.
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