January 19, 2018

Hey, you talented shutterbugs of the Photography Group...

I just wanted to let you all know about a contest which arrived in my email inbox. Olympus is sponsoring a photo contest, with six categories, and the grand prize of a camera and 1,000,000 ¥ (9K in US dollars)!


How to Enter

Only online entries will be eligible.
Enter from the Categories section.
*Anyone submitting an entry is asked to register a username.

Number of Entries

Each entrant may submit up to 5 photo entries for each category.
Each image must be in JPEG or JPG format, and be 15 megabytes or smaller.

Schedule

Entry: 11:00 Monday, November 27, 2017 to
15:59 Monday, February 26, 2018 -- times are Japan Standard Time (GMT +9)
Winners Announced: June 2018
It is possible that registration and entry processing may slow down drastically during the final hours of the entry period due to a rush of last-minute entries. To avoid missing the deadline due to this possible slowdown, please complete registration and photo entry as early as possible. The Olympus Global Open Photo Contest Operations Team cannot provide assistance to those entrants whose entries did not get processed prior to the deadline due to system slowdown or error.


Eligibility

Anyone who registers to enter can participate.
Go to Enter or My Page to register.

Those who entered past Olympus Global Open Photo Contests must register again.

How to View/Edit Your Entries

You can view photos you entered from My Page.
You can also cancel/replace entries, and edit photo titles/descriptions throughout the entry period from My Page.

Check it out!

https://gopc.olympus-global.com/2017/

January 18, 2018

(Jewish Group) My pictures from concentration camps.

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

Last October, I travelled to Europe. I was there for two weeks and visited several places, including Dachau, Auschwitz, and Birkenau. I have posted those pictures in DU's Photography Group.

I wanted to share.

When I was at Dachau. (Picture heavy)
When I was at Dachau. (Picture heavy) (part 2)
My Journey to Auschwitz (part 1) (10 pics)
My Journey to Auschwitz (part 2) (8 pics)
Birkenau (14 photos)

January 18, 2018

A Modest Immigration Proposal: Ban Jews

(Note: Yes, the title is provocative, click-bait, if you will, but this article is not the title. READ IT!)

Until his dying day, my dad’s Uncle Bern was a communist sympathizer. I remember him as an affable old man with a gracious wife who made a modest living selling antique lace. He probably wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Yet he found much to admire in the most murderous ideology of the 20th century, responsible for tens of millions of deaths from the killing fields of Cambodia to the gulags of Murmansk.

If you’re Jewish in America, chances are there’s at least one Uncle Bern somewhere in your family tree. As the scholar Ruth Wisse noted last year in Tablet magazine, Jewish intellectual life in the 1930s and 40s was largely defined by one’s stance toward one thing: The Party. Historians reckon that Jews accounted for nearly half the Communist Party’s total membership in those years, while many other Jews were close fellow travelers.

---snip---

Crime? In 1908, the New York City police commissioner, Theodore Bingham, caused a public uproar (for which he later apologized) when he claimed that half the city’s criminals were Jews. The truth was closer to the opposite: Jewish crime rates, at about 16 percent, were considerably lower than their roughly 25 percent share of New York’s overall population. The same goes today, when, contrary to much Trumpian propaganda, incarceration rates for immigrants are nearly half what they are for native-born Americans.

---snip--

Assimilation? This week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked, in an interview with Fox News, “What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful?” That seems to be the general way of thinking in this administration.

Now compare that to a 1907 article in McClure’s magazine, titled “The Great Jewish Invasion,” which observed of Russian Jews, “no people have had a more inadequate preparation, educational and economic, for American citizenship.” Henry Adams, the great American patrician, wrote of “furtive Yacoob or Ysaac still reeking of the ghetto, snarling a weird Yiddish.” In 1914, Edward Alsworth Ross, the famous progressive sociologist from the University of Wisconsin, called Jews “moral cripples” whose “tribal spirit intensified by social isolation prompts them to rush to the rescue of the caught rascal of their own race.”

more...

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it...and we are seeing it NOW!

elleng

Also related...I'm watching the "Jews for Dreamers" being arrested at the Capitol (UPDATED)

https://twitter.com/proflevin/status/953668819716734976

ETA: Dozens of Jewish activists arrested at protest urging Congress to protect Dreamers

January 18, 2018

Birkenau (14 photos)

This was the last death camp I visited while in Europe. I did go to the Oskar Schindler Museum, which I highly recommend, but most of my pictures from there were blurry or dark, so I won't subject y'all to them. I am sorry about some of the quality of the photos, I am still learning. What struck me about Birkenau was how large it was. I didn't realize the immense nature of the site. It was actually intimidating in a way the other sites were not. I know, it sounds strange to say, but it was this site which made me the most uneasy.


The entrance to Birkenau from the outside.


The more iconic view from inside the camp.


Ruins of the barracks.




An actual transport car used to bring victims to the camp. It usually "held" 80-100 people!


Entrance to the main field of the barracks.




Memorial plate. There were 29 (?) of these in various languages.




Recreation of the inside of a typical barrack.




View from the guard tower of the main entrance.


Another view from the guard tower of the main entrance.


Actual train cars outside of the concentration camp used for transport. (Photo touched up)

January 18, 2018

My Journey to Auschwitz (part 2) (8 pics)

One of many guard towers. They sometimes shot prisoners for sport.


The "Killing Wall". This was where captives, after being stripped naked, were lined up and shot. This was mainly Poles and Catholics who met their end this way.


The primary crematorium.




The "overflow" crematorium


The barracks

January 18, 2018

My Journey to Auschwitz (part 1) (10 pics)

While in Poland, we went to Auschwitz and Birkenau (I will have a separate thread for those). We drove to Oświęcim, Poland from Krakow, about an hour drive. Along the way, I saw some beautiful countryside, but about 30 minutes outside of Oświęcim, I started to see the railroad tracks along the route. That was very disturbing, especially as a gay Jew. These aren't some of the best pictures, but they, IMO, convey something powerful.


The infamous Gate. The slogan, "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work Will Make You Free&quot , was on the entrances of all three concentration camps I toured.






Memorial urn of the Ashes of Millions


A picture of a picture, but I couldn't stop looking at that boy looking at me.


A replica model of the bodies in the crematorium awaiting burning


Tallitot (prayer shawls) of Jewish victims


The luggage they were instructed to carry to be "relocated".


Children's shoes


A little girl's shoe

January 18, 2018

When I was at Dachau. (Picture heavy) (part 2)

The first crematorium, which had to be closed when the body count became too high.


The more efficient, 2nd, crematorium


The "Killing Wall" where prisoners were brought to be shot in the head by firing squads.






The memorial to the Jews


Inside the Jewish Memorial looking up through the opening in the ceiling


Memorial to the Christian victims


Memorial to the Russian Orthodox victims


Remember!

January 18, 2018

When I was at Dachau. (Picture heavy)

This past October, I went to Europe for two weeks. My first trip abroad (OK, I went to The Bahamas when I was 21, but...). I went to Iceland, Munich, Dachau, Vienna, Krakow, Auschwitz, Berlin, and Dublin, Ireland. Here are some pictures I took while at Dachau.


Intro marker to the site


2nd crematorium


Primary guard tower


International Monument designed by Nandor Glid


Memorial of victims (sadly, pink triangles weren't used because gay men weren't seen as victims worth mentioning when this was created.)


Memorial "grave marker" for the thousands of victims


The dormitories

January 18, 2018

(Jewish Group) Please pop in this thread and give it a kick...

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

I'm watching the "Jews for Dreamers" being arrested at the Capitol (UPDATED)


Let it serve as a reminder for those who seem to forget we exist and add to the common good of the country and only see us in negative terms.

January 16, 2018

(Jewish Group) Puerto Rico's Largest Newspaper Runs Column Blaming Jews for Hurricane Maria Aftermat

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

The largest newspaper in Puerto Rico has apologized for running an opinion column that said Jewish people control the U.S. Congress and want to punish storm-ravaged Puerto Rico for its debt because they care so much about money.

In the Spanish op-ed last week from El Nuevo Dia, whose title translates to "What Does ‘The Jew’ Want with the Colony?,” columnist Wilda Rodriguez justified her assertion that Jews run the government by pointing to an alleged Israeli article published in Hebrew 20 years ago that recognized Jewish power in Washington. “For Israelis,” she wrote, “recognizing Jewish power over the United States is no offense. It is the victory of their diaspora.”

She said the "Jewish itinerary is so loaded with wars and profits that they rarely think about Puerto."

"When it does come to mind, they think: What the hell are we still doing there? How do we get out of this trap?" she said.

---snip---

On Monday, Rodriguez took to Facebook to further defend her views. She claimed she worked on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, where there were “an overwhelming number of Jewish surnames.”

more...


Oh wow! She has worked with Jews. Maybe we should introduce her to Roy Moore's wife!