December 2, 2008 | 11:56 pm

Muslim extremists using YouTube to wage jihad

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Reuters brings us up to speed on the YouTube how-to training Islamic extremists are offering:

Last week, an extremist authored step-by-step instructions on posting video to YouTube, which he described as “one of the most famous and biggest international sites that publish sections of videos from all over the world.”

The posting encourages readers to post scenes of Western forces coming under attack to, it says, “shame the Crusaders by publishing clips of videos showing their losses, which they hid for a long time.”

Islamic extremists have long used the Internet as a tool to communicate with supporters and distribute propaganda but the latest posting specifically coaxes militants toward YouTube and touts it as a user-friendly tool.

“I say that the YouTube site is one of the easiest sites to record and upload the clips,” the posting states, pointing readers to the software they might need to publish on the Internet.

“I ask you, by Allah, as soon as you read this subject, to start recording on YouTube, and to start cutting and uploading and posting clips on the jihadist, Islamic, and general forums,” the posting states.

YouTube, a unit of Google Inc., could not immediately be reached for comment on how it might respond to the types of postings described in the message.

In other news that can’t be helping my Google stock, the blog Mashable published two screengrabs of Google ads on news stories about the Mumbai terror attacks. Both screengrabs an online certificate in terrorism. I’m not making this up.

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December 2, 2008 | 6:54 pm

‘Suck it, Trebek’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Remember when most the sketches on “Saturday Night Live” and not only the political jokes and digital shorts were funny?

No? Oh ... well, it’s been a while. Wil Wheaton reminds us with this Jeopardy classic.

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December 2, 2008 | 5:39 pm

Planned Parenthood offers gift certificates

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Oh my insensitivity:

This year, for the first time, Planned Parenthood of Indiana is offering holiday gift certificates for that certain someone in your life who may want a breast exam, a pap smear or perhaps not want another life in their life.

Calling them an “unusual yet practical gift this holiday season,” the organization is selling gift certificates in $25 denominations, redeemable at any of the group’s 35 statewide locations for their services, including health screenings, birth control and abortion services.

A Planned Parenthood website page notes that a standard women’s health exam costs $58 while abortions in the first trimester can run from $350 to $900.

There’s even an online page to order the certificates if you know someone in Indiana who desires such services.

According to Ms. magazine, an official of the Hoosier Planned Parenthood group explained:

“People are making really tough decisions about putting gas in their car and food on their table, so we know that many women especially put healthcare at their bottom of their list to do.”

I’m speechless. Really. This is the most mindblowing marketing maneuver I have ever heard of.

Your comments are welcomed.

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December 1, 2008 | 9:41 pm

Freedom From Religion sues city over billboard removal

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has responded to a removal of the organization’s billboard promoting a world without religion. Not surprisingly, they’re suing Rancho Cucamonga and the city officials who encouraged the billboard operator to take it down:

“It does appear that the city was engaging in this officious intervention and has violated our free speech and our establishment clause rights,” said foundation co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “They used their intimidation powers against the billboard company, I believe.”

The billboard, which bore a stained-glass motif and the Wisconsin-based group’s name and Web address, went up around Nov. 13 and was taken down a week later, Gaylor said.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeks compensatory and punitive damages from Rancho Cucamonga.

The foundation contemplated suing the billboard firm, General Outdoor Co., which violated a two-month contract. The group, however, said it didn’t want to antagonize billboard companies. The foundation is more focused on state involvement in religion, Gaylor said.

“It’s much more serious for the government to censor than for private entities to censor,” she said.

To be sure, religion is ensconced in Inland Empire public life—not just presidential elections. I’ve mentioned before an article I wrote when I was at The Sun about how local government’s were responding to a court decree that they not open municipal meetings with prays that invoke a specific deity. Praying to God was deemed OK. But Jesus or Allah or Buddha—that’s off limits.

But there is no way to prevent it, and many city officials have no interest in doing so.

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December 1, 2008 | 9:00 pm

Was the Mumbai Chabad targeted in terror attacks?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Rabbi Holtzberg with son Moshe

I’ve yet to hear any official report and statement claiming that the Chabad house in Mumbai was specifically targeted because it was a beacon of Jewish life in a country with all of 10,000 Jews. But the motive behind why the terrorists attacks that building, among many frequented by Westerners, is no mystery:

“A young family, doing work for Klal Yisroel—and they were killed because they were Jewish. There wasn’t any other reason,” an L.A. Jewish woman told me yesterday at the Chabad memorial service.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmer concurred yesterday, saying the attacks unquestionably targeted the Jewish center:

In a statement released after the attacks, Olmert also said that symbols of Israeli and Jews motivate murder worldwide. “The hatred of Jews, the State of Israel and Jewish symbols are still a factor that spurs and encourages such murderous acts.”

Olmert said the images from the Mumbai Chabad House, including pictures of the murdered victims wrapped in prayer shawls “are shocking and take us back to events that we pray never recur.”

Footage of Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, speaking at the Chabad memorial is after the jump:

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December 1, 2008 | 4:44 pm

JewTube: Chabad remembers Rabbi Holtzberg and his rebbetzin

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Chabad put this calls to action on YouTube. The video’s message of how to honor Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, murdered by terrorists last week, emphasizes what was said at the Westwood memorial yesterday.

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December 1, 2008 | 3:30 pm

Pastor apologizes for charging $122k on church credit cards and not paying taxes

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Let’s just say I would have been a wee-bit surprised if my pastor offered remarks like the pastor of First AME Church in Los Angeles did yesterday. Imagine sitting in the pews for this whopper:

Pastor John J. Hunter, 51, used church credit cards to pay for at least $122,000 in personal expenses, including family vacations, clothes, jewelry, bikes and auto supplies, The Times reported Sunday. He and church finance officials said he had signed an agreement to repay the money and instituted stricter accounting policies, such as spending guidelines and more frequent audits, to guard against future problems.

Hunter also told The Times that he is working with federal tax officials to repay back taxes, penalties and interest amassed over 17 years, which have resulted in federal tax liens of more than $309,000 against himself and his wife, Denise Brown Hunter. He explained that he had legally opted out of the Social Security system several years ago, as ministers are allowed to do, but that the IRS had no record of it and assessed the taxes.

On Sunday, before more than 6,000 congregants at three services, Hunter acknowledged that he had made mistakes and that it was “disconcerting and embarrassing” to see private church matters aired publicly. But he assured his flock that he had done nothing criminal and was working to resolve the problems, and that the church remained financially strong.

“I stand not as a perfect servant but one who tries to be a faithful servant,” Hunter said, drawing scattered applause and murmurs of approval from congregants at the 10 a.m. service. “Our church is in sound financial condition. We are solid, perhaps more so than we have ever been. Our future is bright.”

I’d hope it’s bright. Hunter isn’t operating some podunk church. First AME is the oldest, largest and most prominent African-American congregation, and it was led for 27 years by the Rev.—as in: revered legend—Cecil “Chip” Murray until he retired and joined the faculty of USC. Hunter took over in 2004.

It sounds like his followers don’t feel like they’ve been led astray. But mind you this is not the first time a church—any church—has been distracted by financial, um, “irregularities,” and such circumstances can’t help but drive some members to other congregations.

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December 1, 2008 | 2:55 pm

What the Koran says about unibrows

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Here’s something light to start your Monday, assuming you start your week at 11 a.m. PST.

“Is it permissible for a man to remove hair from the chest, back, and between the eyebrows?”

IslamOnline.net offers this answer, via Holy Weblog!:

“There is no evidence from the Qur’an or the Sunnah that forbids cutting short the hair from the chest and back; but the removal of hair from these parts may be considered a form of imitating women, something forbidden according to the hadith: ‘May Allah’s curse be inflicted on women imitating men and vice versa.’ As for women, it is permissible for them to remove hair from these parts because it causes them harm.

“As for removing the hair from between the eyebrows, it is lawful, because it is not part of the eyebrows. But as for plucking the eyebrows, it is forbidden and not permissible in Islam, according to the Hadith: ‘May Allah’s curse be inflicted upon women who pluck their eyebrows, and women hired to do this.

Previously in interesting Islamic edicts:

A Saudi cleric says it’s cool to kill infidel operators of cable television;

Mickey Mouse makes another Saudi cleric’s hit-list;

Then there was the breast-feeding fatwa, not to mention to prophet’s pee blessing;

And before that a list of the “World’s Stupidest Fatwas.”

These instructions from clerics must do for Muslim moderates what the unwarranted condemnations of the James Dobsons and Pat Robertsons do for a moderate evangelical Christian like me: drive them bonkers. The more people who don’t represent our values dominate the conversation of what it means to hold our values, the less likely it is that the media will really understand and properly portray our values.

You’re probably wondering now how many times I’m going to say values. Three more: Values, values, values.

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December 1, 2008 | 3:24 am

EstherK does G-dcast

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Parshat Vayetze from g-dcast on Vimeo.

I guess Esther Kustanowitz, who I think has written for every Jewish publication from Jewish Week to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” got bored with the written word. Today she lent her voice to G-dcast’s animated Torah portion and narrates the story of Jacob getting hitched (twice) and says, “As Jacob found out: Sometimes you have to leave home to find home.”

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December 1, 2008 | 12:57 am

Chabad reached terrorist when they phoned Rabbi Holtzberg

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I spent this morning at a memorial service in Westwood for Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, who ran the Chabad in Mumbai and were killed in the terrorist attacks there last week. It was amazing to see more than 1,000 people, including some of Los Angeles’ top officials paying tribute to two Jews they’d never met before.

I spoke with a Chabad rabbi who went to school with Gavriel back in New York and with a scholar who had celebrated Shabbat at the Mumbai Chabad house the Friday before the attacks, but most the people there were simply grabbed by the power of the Holtzbergs’ story, by the personal mission that caused the young couple to relocate after marrying in 2003 to a foreign land—to, as one speaker said, “the spread of good and the destruction of evil.”

Despite the circumstances, the mood at the memorial was upbeat. And I was surprised to hear so many times the exhortation that Jewish men put on tefillin to honor Gavriel’s legacy and that they create a kosher house for Rivkah. I’m still amazed with how Rabbi Holtzberg and his rebbetzin have come to serve as the public faces of this tragedy. From everything I’ve heard about the couple, I think they’d be a bit embarrassed by all the attention. But so many Jews, and non-Jews too, felt like the attacks were an attack on them personally; when one suffers, we all suffer.

“All of the Jewish people are connected. They are part of us,” Marilyn Greenberg, 71 and of no relation, told me at the service. “A young family, doing work for Klal Yisroel—and they were killed because they were Jewish. There wasn’t any other reason.”

Young Holtzberg with the Rebbe

I have yet to find a clear report that the Jewish center was specifically targeted. But a man who had visited told me it was located down an alley, well off the street, and wouldn’t be the kind of boarding house you would just stumble upon while looking for hostages. And it’s not hard to imagine religious extremists including a small community of Jews in such a diabolical plot. I hear that’s been happening for centuries.

I’ll be writing more about this for this week’s Jewish Journal. The latest detail to emerge is this:

Chabad Rabbi Levi Shem Tov said he tried to phone Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg at the Chabad House in Mumbai during the terrorist attack that ended his life and that of his wife and four others Jews in the building. A terrorist, who indentified himself as Imram, answered the phone, and Rabbi Shem Tov heard Rivka Holtzberg screaming in English, “Please help immediately.”

The terrorist originally ended the first phone conversation, saying that he spoke only the Urdu language. Rabbi Shem Tov found an Urdu speaker and called again. The terrorist said the rabbi was alive and well and would be freed if demands were met.

Rabbi Shem Tov related that he told the terrorist he would contact the Indian government to give them what they wanted, but when the rabbi asked to speak with Rabbi Holtzberg, the terrorist replied, “You have already asked for too much.”

After another two or three phone calls, “Imram” said the phone was dying and he hung up.

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