WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2014


NEWS CLIPS FOR THE DAY


Utah mom finds clever way to get rid of "indecent" T-shirts at mall – CBS
AP February 18, 2014

SALT LAKE CITY - A mother upset about "indecent" T-shirts on display at a Utah mall found a quick if not especially convenient way to remove them: She bought every last one.
Judy Cox and her 18-year-old son were shopping Saturday at the University Mall in Orem, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, when she saw the shirts in the window of a PacSun store.
The shirts featured pictures of scantily dressed models in provocative poses.
Cox said she complained about the window display to a store manager and was told the T-shirts couldn't be taken down without approval from the corporate office. She then bought all 19 T-shirts in stock, for a total of $567. She says she plans to return them later, toward the end of the chain store's 60-day return period.
The shirts cost about $28 each on the website for PacSun, which sells beach clothes for teenagers and young adults.
"These shirts clearly cross a boundary that is continually being pushed on our children in images on the Internet, television and when our families shop in the mall," Cox said in an email to The Associated Press.
The story was first reported by The Daily Herald of Provo.
An employee at the Orem store said Tuesday she wasn't authorized to speak about the issue and referred questions to the company's Orange County, Calif., corporate headquarters. PacSun CEO Gary Schoenfeld said in an emailed statement the company takes pride in the clothes and products it sells, which are inspired by music, art, fashion and action sports.
"While customer feedback is important to us, we remain committed to the selection of brands and apparel available in our stores," Schoenfeld said in the statement.
Orem is a city of about 90,000 in ultraconservative Utah County that uses the motto "Family City USA." Most residents belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which frowns on pornography and encourages its youth to dress and act modestly.
City code prohibits anyone from putting "explicit sexual material" on public display. The city defines that as "any material that appeals to a prurient interest in sex and depicts nudity, actual or simulated sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse."
Cox met with Orem city attorney Greg Stephens on Tuesday to discuss whether the images on the T-shirts violated city code.
Stephens said he told Cox that she first needed to file a complaint with police. Stephens said police would review the issue and decide whether it needed to be passed on to the city attorney, a process that could take weeks.
Cox said she wants her actions to make clear that these types of images are not acceptable for public display.
"I hope my efforts will inspire others to speak up within their communities," Cox said in an email. "You don't have to purchase $600 worth of T-shirts, but you can express your concerns to businesses and corporations who promote the display of pornography to children."
Longtime mall manager Rob Kallas said the display is down now because Cox bought all the shirts. He said the PacSun store manager told him she was embarrassed to put up the display but was following instructions from corporate managers.
Kallas said this is the first time he's received complaints about PacSun. But in the past, others have complained about images in the windows of Victoria's Secret. That's led to Orem city attorneys at least once asking the store to remove an image, he said.
Kallas didn't see the T-shirts in question until getting an email from Cox, but he said he agrees that they were inappropriate. Victoria's Secret has images of women in lingerie, but their clientele is different, he said.
"This is a store that caters to junior high and high school age kids," said Kallas, mall manager for 40 years. "Some of the poses were provocative and were inappropriate for a store catering to young people."
PacSun has 600 stores across the United States, the company's website shows.


I am glad to see citizens complaining in these cases when a business promotes sex directly to kids. They will explore on their own without that kind of cynical exploitation, which is surely done for the sake of the “almighty dollar.” There is a true lack of morality shown here, and it – like violent video games – does contribute to the delinquency of young people. I wouldn't have bought 600 t-shirts, I would have just complained to the city authorities to get them to act, which she also did. Congratulations, Ms. Cox!





Police, protesters prepare for more violence in Ukraine – CBS
CBS/AP February 19, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine -- Thick, dark smoke rose above the center of the Ukrainian capital amid the boom of police stun grenades Wednesday, as officers in riot gear sought to push demonstrators away from the city's main square following deadly clashes between police and protesters that left at least 25 people dead and hundreds injured and raised fears of a civil war.

Violence resumes in Kiev
Opposition reports three protestors dead as Ukrainian protests heat up again

After several hours of relative calm, confrontation flared up again Wednesday afternoon, with hundreds of police amassing on the edges of Independence Square, known as the Maidan, throwing stun grenades and using water cannons in a bid to disperse protesters. Thousands of activists armed with fire bombs and rocks held their ground, defending the square which has been a bastion and symbol for the demonstrators.

CBS News correspondent Holly Williams reports from Kiev that overnight there were accusations that live ammunition was fired, though both sides denied it.
On Wednesday, both sides were clearly expecting more violence, Williams reports. At Independence Square Wednesday morning, CBS News saw protesters digging up the sidewalks. Protesters used those stones overnight, hurling them at the police.
Protesters were also preparing Molotov cocktails with production lines of people putting together the homemade bombs, Williams reports.

Ukraine crisis: White House "appalled" by violence
The U.S. and European Union countries are now actively considering tougher economic sanctions against Ukraine.
In Washington, President Obama has assigned the Ukraine problem to Vice President Joe Biden, CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett reported from Toluca, Mexico, where the president will travel Wednesday for a summit.

Biden has called Ukrainian President Vicktor Yanukovich three times since Jan. 23, with the same message each time -- government forces must pull back and de-escalate tensions that have led to violence.

Violence in Kiev underscores deep divides in Ukraine
The violence Tuesday was the worst in nearly three months of anti-government protests that have paralyzed Ukraine's capital in a struggle over the identity of a nation divided in loyalties between Russia and the West, and the worst in the country's post-Soviet history. It prompted the European Union to threaten sanctions against Ukrainian officials responsible for the violence and triggered angry rebukes from Moscow, which accused the West of triggering the clashes by backing the opposition.

The protests began in late November after Yanukovych turned away from a long-anticipated deal with the EU in exchange for a $15 billion bailout from Russia. The political maneuvering continued ever since, with both Moscow and the West eager to gain influence over this former Soviet republic.
The Kremlin said it put the next disbursement of its bailout on hold amid uncertainty over Ukraine's future and what it described as a "coup attempt."
Yanukovych on Wednesday blamed the protesters for the violence and said the opposition leaders "crossed a line when they called people to arms."
The European Union appears poised to impose sanctions as it called an extraordinary meeting of the 28-nation bloc's foreign ministers for Thursday.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called for "targeted measures against those responsible for violence and use of excessive force can be agreed ... as a matter of urgency."
Sanctions would at first typically include banning leading officials from traveling to the 28-nation bloc and freezing their assets there.
"It is the political leadership of the country that has a responsibility to ensure the necessary protection of fundamental rights and freedoms," said Barroso, who heads the EU's executive arm. "It was with shock and utter dismay that we have been watching developments over the last 24 hours in Ukraine," he added.
The latest bout of street violence began Tuesday when protesters attacked police lines and set fires outside parliament, accusing Yanukovych of ignoring their demands to enact constitutional reforms that would limit the president's power - a key opposition demand. Parliament, dominated by his supporters, was stalling on taking up a constitutional reform to limit presidential powers.
Police responded by attacking the protest camp. Armed with water cannons, stun grenades and rubber bullets, police dismantled some barricades and took part of the Maidan. But the protesters held their ground through the night, encircling the camp with new burning barricades of tires, furniture and debris.
On Wednesday morning, the center of Kiev was cordoned off by police, the subway was shut down and most shops on Kiev's main street were closed. But hundreds of Ukrainians still flocked to the opposition camp, some wearing balaclavas and armed with bats, others in everyday clothes and with makeup on, carrying food to protesters.
A group of young men and women poured petrol into plastic bottles, preparing fire bombs, while a volunteer walked past them distributing ham sandwiches from a tray. Another group of activists was busy crushing the pavement into pieces and into bags to fortify barricades.
"The revolution turned into a war with the authorities," said Vasyl Oleksenko, 57, a retired geologist from central Ukraine, who said he fled the night's violence fearing for his life, but returned to the square in the morning, feeling ashamed. "We must fight this bloody, criminal leadership.  We must fight for our country, our Ukraine."
Yanukovych was defiant on Wednesday.
"I again call on the leaders of the opposition ... to draw a boundary between themselves and radical forces which are provoking bloodshed and clashes with the security services," the president said in a statement. "If they don't want to leave (the square) - they should acknowledge that they are supporting radicals. Then the conversation with them will already be of a different kind." He also called a day of mourning for the dead on Thursday.
Yanukovych's tone left few with hope of compromise. He still enjoys strong support in the mostly Russian-speaking eastern and southern regions, where many want strong ties with Russia.
The Health Ministry said 25 people died in the clashes, some from gunshot wounds, and Kiev hospitals were struggling to treat hundreds of injured. Activists also set up a makeshift medical unit inside a landmark Orthodox Church not far from the camp, where volunteer medics were taking care of the wounded.
Meanwhile, in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where most residents yearn for stronger ties with the EU and have little sympathy for Yanukovych, protesters seized several government buildings, including the governor's office, police stations, prosecutors and security agency offices and the tax agency headquarters. They also broke into an Interior Ministry unit and set it on fire. The building was still smoldering Wednesday morning and some protesters were driving around town in police cars they had seized during the night.
Tensions continued mounting. The government imposed restrictions for transport moving toward Kiev, apparently to prevent more opposition activists from coming from the Western part of the country, and at least one train from Lviv was held outside Kiev. Several highways into Kiev were also blocked by police.
Acting Defense Minister Pavlo Lebedev told the ITAR-Tass news agency that he has dispatched a paratrooper brigade to Kiev to help protect arsenals. He refused to say if the unit could be used against protesters, the agency said.
Tensions soared after Russia said Monday that it was ready to resume providing the loans that Yanukovych's government needs to keep Ukraine's ailing economy afloat. This raised fears among the opposition that Yanukovych had made a deal with Moscow to stand firm against the protesters and would choose a Russian-leaning loyalist to be his new prime minister.
President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that Putin had a phone conversation with Yanukovych overnight. Peskov said that Putin hasn't given Yanukovych any advice how to settle the crisis, adding that it's up to the Ukrainian government.
Peskov also added that the next disbursement of a Russian bailout has remained on hold, saying the priority now is to settle the crisis, which he described as a "coup attempt."
The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement, blaming the West for the failure to condemn the opposition for the latest bout of violence.
EU leaders took the opposite stance, with Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt putting the blame on Yanukovych in an unusually tough statement.
"Today, President Yanukovich has blood on his hands," Bildt said.


Demographics of Ukraine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Religions
Main article: Religion in Ukraine
Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchy 39.8%, Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) 29.4%, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church 14.1%, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church 2.8%, Roman Catholic 1.7%, Protestant 2.4%, Islam 0.6%, Jewish 0.2%, other 2% (2008 est.)[17]
Languages
Main article: Languages of Ukraine

Most commons native languages in urban and rural councils according to 2001 census (blue - Ukrainian, red - Russian, green - Romanian and Moldovan, teal - crimean tatar, orange - Hungarian, purple - Bulgarian, yellow - gagauz, cyan - polish, light orange - Albanian)

Most commons native languages in raion and biggest cities according to 2001 census (orange - Ukrainian, blue - Russian, dark green - Romanian, purple - Hungarian, light green - Moldovan, pink - Bulgarian)
Ukrainian 67%, Russian 30%, Crimean Tatar, Bulgarian-, Romanian Moldovan-, Polish-, Hungarian-, Rusyn-speaking minorities and small remnants of a Yiddish speaking group among the local Jews. The below table gives the total population of various ethnic groups in Ukraine and the primary language, according to the 2000 census.[7]


History of Ukraine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The territory of Ukraine has been inhabited for at least forty four thousand years.[1] It is where the horse was first domesticated[2] and a candidate site of the origins of the Proto-Indo-European language family.[3][4]

A chaotic period of warfare ensued after the Russian Revolution, with internationally recognized establishment of an independent Ukrainian People's Republic. Independent Ukraine emerged from its own civil war. The Ukrainian–Soviet War followed, which resulted in the Soviet Army establishing control in late 1919[7]Soviet victory. The conquerors created the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which on 30 December 1922 became one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union. The Soviet government was hostile to Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture; there were mass repressions of Ukrainian poets, historians and linguists. Then there was a genocide of Ukrainians: millions of people starved to death in 1932 and 1933 in the Holodomor. After the 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, the Ukrainian SSR's territory was enlarged westward. During World War II the Ukrainian Insurgent Army tried to reestablish Ukrainian independence and fought against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. But in 1941 Ukraine was occupied by Nazi Germany, being liberated in 1944. In 1945, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founding members of the United Nations.[8] In 1954, it expanded to the south with the transfer of the Crimea.
Ukraine became independent again when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. This dissolution started a period of transition to a market economy, in which Ukraine suffered an eight-year recession.[9] Since then, however, the economy has experienced a high increase in GDP growth. Ukraine was caught up in the worldwide economic crisis in 2008 and the economy plunged. GDP fell 20% from spring 2008 to spring 2009, then leveled off as analysts compared the magnitude of the downturn to the worst years of economic depression during the early 1990s.[10]

Yanukovych rule[edit]
During Yanukovych's term he has been accused of tightening of press restrictions and a renewed effort in the parliament to limit freedom of assembly. When young, Yanukovych was sentenced to 3 years because of theft, looting and vandalism and later had his sentenced doubled.[45][46][47][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56] One frequently-cited example of Yankukovych's alleged attempts to centralize power is the August 2011 arrest of Yulia Tymoshenko.[57][58] Other high-profile political opponents also came under criminal investigation since.[59][60][61][62] On 11 October 2011, a Ukrainian court sentenced Tymoshenko to seven years in prison after she was found guilty of abuse of office when brokering the 2009 gas deal with Russia.[63] The conviction is seen as "justice being applied selectively under political motivation" by the European Union and other international organizations.[64]
In November 2013, President Yanukovych rejected a landmark association and trade deal with the EU in favour of closer ties with Russia. This move sparked protests on the streets of Kiev, and protesters setting up camps in Independence Square. Battles between protesters and police resulted in about 30 deaths in February 2014.[65]


I was hoping to find some clearcut and simpler origin to the fighting in the Ukraine, but the history of the 1990s includes four changes of rulers. The latest, Yanukovych, seems to be clamping down on basic citizens rights and rejecting ties with the West in favor of Russia, which are understandably very unpopular moves. Judging by languages spoken, with Ukrainian being 67%, whereas Russian is only 30%, the representation of the populace would seem to be unbalanced as long as Russian remains the seat of greatest power. It is characteristic of Russia, however, to be unwilling to relinquish power until they are forced to.

For the present, I just hope this fighting stops, and as an American I would prefer that the Western influences gain over the generally more oppressive Russians. I admire much about Russia and am glad that the US has a more cooperative relationship with them than we had during the Cold War. They are educationally and technically an advanced nation, and I would like for relations with them to be friendly. The same is true for China. It is the lesser powers such as North Korea and parts of the Islamic culture that are more like natural enemies to us. Of course, there is an underlying power struggle between the US, China and Russia that continues despite our peace agreements, and the smaller powers are too often pawns in that conflict. At present, the Ukraine is one of those pawns. My sympathy is with the downtrodden populace, now suffering under Yanukovych. I met a Ukrainian woman once when she came to work with our data entry crew in Washington, DC, and she was open, friendly and beautiful. I judge them by her.



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Sit More, And You're More Likely To Be Disabled After Age 60 – NPR
by Linda Poon
February 19, 2014
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The more you sit, the less physically active you are, which can lead to all sorts of health problems, including an early death.
But too much sitting increasingly looks like a health risk all its own. Researchers at Northwestern University say that for people 60 and older, each additional hour a day spent sitting increases the risk of becoming physically disabled by about 50 percent — no matter how much exercise they get.
Today, over 56 million Americans have some kind of disability, according to the latest Census data. Nearly half of people 65 and older have a disability, which can include difficulty doing basic self-care tasks and difficulty leaving the home alone.
"It threatens people's independence, and it also accounts for a large chunk of health care dollars," says Dorothy Dunlop, a public health and medicine researcher who led the study. Every $1 in $4 spent on medical care is related to disability problems, she says.
This study uses data from the 2003-2005 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, which recorded the health, socioeconomic status and access to medical care of 2,286 adults aged 60 and older. Also noted was how much difficulty they had with basic tasks like getting in and out of bed, eating and getting dressed.
Nearly 4 percent of the people said they had a lot of difficulty with at least one of those activities of daily living.
Participants also wore accelerometers around their waist for seven days to record how much time they spent sitting and how much time they spent doing moderate to vigorous activities like speed walking. The survey showed that on average, people spent nine of their 14 waking hours sitting, with almost two-thirds of the sample spending at least nine hours sitting.
People who spent more time sitting were more likely to become disabled when compared to people with similar health and exercise habits who sat less. Each daily hour spent sitting increased the odds of problems with activities of daily living by 46 percent. Doing more exercise didn't erase that risk.
So if sitting for 12 hours per day gives you a 6 percent risk of having a disability, an extra hour each day may up your likelihood by 3 percent, Dunlop told Shots.
The increase in risk from sitting was even greater among subgroups. For two women at the same age and with the same profile, the odds would increase by 60 percent for each extra hour a day of sitting.
The results were published Wednesday in the Journal of Physical Activity & Health.

Dunlop calls the result a "smoking gun" but says it is not yet definitive. "This is only one slice in time and it doesn't allow us to say that being sedentary causes these poor health outcomes," she says. "But it is very strongly associated."
Even so, what sitting does do to your muscles and blood circulation isn't pretty, whether you're 60 or years younger.
"When a person sits for an extended period of time, your muscles burn less fat and your blood tends to flow more sluggishly," Dunlop says. "And on top of that, when you slump in your chair, then your back and your stomach muscle goes unused."
The key to maintaining your muscles' ability to do these basic, low-intensity task is keeping them working, says Marc Hamilton, an inactivity physiologist at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La. who was not involved in the study.
"It takes a long duration of using your muscles throughout the whole day," Hamilton says. So exercising for 30 minutes a day doesn't necessarily offset the hours of sitting.
If you want to maintain mobility through life, Hamilton says, get your muscles focused on just that.
"Get non-fatiguing activity in as much as possible," he says.
That can be as simple as walking around the office, or parking your car at the far end of the parking lot or even just standing up while talking on the phone, Dunlop tells Shots.
And self-monitoring devices like pedometers and FitBit wristlets, both of which give you feedback about your activity, can be extra helpful in keeping you motivated to move.


I sit or lie down too much. In the morning I sit doing this blog and then in the afternoon I read. I'm trying to incorporate walking at frequent intervals both morning and afternoon to save my joints, not to mention blood flow and burning of fat. I have already developed a persistent pain that may be caused by an arthritic hip, or maybe by a pulled tendon in the thigh. I am planning to go to an Orthopedist if the problem doesn't go away. I'm not “disabled,” but I can see that happening if I don't change my level of exercise. This article is a red flag for the future.




­ Nun Who Broke Into Nuclear Complex Gets 35-Month Jail Term – NPR
by Mark Memmott
February 19, 2014
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"An 84-year-old Catholic nun was sentenced Tuesday to nearly three years in prison for breaking into a nuclear weapons complex and defacing a bunker holding bomb-grade uranium, a demonstration that exposed serious security flaws at the Tennessee plant," The Associated Press writes from Knoxville, Tenn.
The punishment was less than Sister Megan Rice reportedly wanted. According to The Tennessean, she pleaded with the judge not to go easy:
"Please have no leniency on me," Rice told the judge. "To remain in prison for the rest of my life would be the greatest honor you could give me."
Sentencing guidelines called for a prison term of about six years. The AP reports that while U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar "said he was concerned the demonstrators showed no remorse and [that he] wanted their punishment to be a deterrent for other activists .... he was also openly skeptical about whether the protesters caused any real harm."

Two other people convicted along with her received longer sentences. "Activists Michael Walli, 64, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 58," the Tennessean adds, were each sentenced to five years and two months in prison. Their prison terms are longer than Rice's because of their previous acts of civil disobedience. The three were also ordered to collectively pay nearly $53,000 in restitution for the damage they caused to U.S. government property.
The AP reminds us that:
"On July 28, 2012, the three activists cut through three fences before reaching a $548 million storage bunker" at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. "They hung banners, strung crime-scene tape and hammered off a small chunk of the fortress-like Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, or HEUMF, inside the most secure part of complex. After the break-in, the complex had to be shut down, security forces were re-trained and contractors were replaced."
The activists wanted to call attention to the money the U.S. government spends on weapons and the military, which they argue is far more than necessary. While in the facility, the AP writes, "they painted messages such as, 'The fruit of justice is peace,' and splashed baby bottles of human blood on the bunker wall. 'The reason for the baby bottles was to represent that the blood of children is spilled by these weapons,' Boertje-Obed, a house painter from Duluth, Minn., said at trial."
Matt Shafer Powell of NPR member station WUOT previously reported for All Things Considered that the facility is "often described as the Fort Knox of nuclear weapons material. So no one was more surprised to find out that an 82-year-old nun could break into the complex than the woman who did it."
"We had no idea how much was electrocuted," Rice told WUOT. "The sensor, we didn't know exactly which was, we suspected which was but we kept moving. No dogs came out. We had heard dogs earlier on."
As Matt added on Tuesday, "in a 2013 interview with WUOT News, Rice was nonchalant about the idea that she could die in prison. 'It's six of one and half-dozen of the other, whether we go to jail, whether we stay out,' she said. 'Either way is fine.' "


I hope this nun has as easy a time in jail as Martha Stewart did. I agree with the judge who said that they didn't really do much harm, and this nun is too old to be going to jail. I hope the women who share the prison with her will be protective and friendly, as they were to Stewart. This story is somewhat humorous, basically, as it was a lightweight issue to begin with – like the movie of the three old geezers who decided to rob banks, Going In Style, with Art Carney, George Burns and Lee Strasberg. May she have time to review her life and seek peace.




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'Crypto-Jews' In The Southwest Find Faith In A Shrouded Legacy – NPR
by Wyatt Orme
February 19, 2014
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Code Switch has been writing about some overlooked cultural interactions that have helped shape what Jewish identity is today, and we continue the series with this post about the murky and fascinating history of crypto-Jews in the Southwest.
There were the grandfathers who refused to eat pork and wore hats at Saturday church services, the grandmothers who lit candles on Friday nights. The sheep and cattle ranchers who slit the throats of their animals, drained the blood, removed the sciatic nerve and salted the meat. These kinds of stories aren't uncommon in the American Southwest.
At a bedside altar facing the room's East wall, Sonya Loya's maternal grandmother, a staunch Catholic, would pray three times daily with a shawl over her head. Living in Alpine, Texas, a small town isolated in the high desert, she taught her family to routinely check their hens' eggs for spots of blood. Her last request before she died was that she be buried with her feet facing the East.
"There's something about it, deep within our souls," Loya says.
It wasn't until Loya was an adult that she learned of a possible Jewish legacy in the region — a narrative that the media would magnify and scholars would dispute. She matched her family surnames with names of medieval Sephardic Jews on an online database. Suddenly, her grandmother's unquestioned traditions dramatically changed in meaning. Had she been a Jew all along?
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A Religion In Hiding
Spain, 1391: Anti-Semitic riots broke out across the Iberian Peninsula. Thousands of Jews were murdered; thousands more converted to Christianity, mostly by force. But even the converts were still targets. In the 15th century King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella feared that these Jews who converted to Christianity, conversos or Cristianos nuevos, continued to secretly adhere to Judaism. To root out and punish the crypto-Jews (crypto as in concealed, hidden) they established the Spanish Inquisition, whose first tribunals were established in 1480 in Seville.
In 1492, the practicing Jews who remained were officially expelled from Spain. Jews and crypto-Jews alike immigrated to Portugal and the Spanish colonies for new opportunity and more religious freedom. But the Inquisition spread to Portugal, then to the empire's farthest reaches: first Peru, then Mexico City.
Those who claim to be descendants of crypto-Jews — and the academics who support them — believe that converso populations sought refuge in what is now the border region between Texas and the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon.
When Sonya Loya learned about this legacy of crypto-Judaism, she was running a glass shop in the small mountain town of Ruidoso, N.M. She'd been raised Catholic, like her grandmother, but never felt much sense of belonging. When she was 18, her priest told her not to come back.
But something else was in order for her. "I had the courage to keep asking questions until I had my answers," she remembers.
Years later, a friend invited her to a gathering of Messianic Jews near Santa Fe, and it was there she witnessed her first Sabbath service. Seeing other Hispanics wearing yarmulkes and reading Hebrew stirred her curiosity unlike anything had before.
"I walked away from that weekend with a few tools in my hand to continue my journey," she says.
A woman at the gathering explained the history of the crypto-Jews to Loya and encouraged her to look into her genealogy. After learning online her ancestors may have been Sephardic Jews, some of whom were persecuted by the Inquisition, she began teaching herself Hebrew and studying Torah.
Legitimacy Of The Legacy
She wasn't aware of it at the time, but the "crypto-Jewish" identity in the Southwest has been the subject of heated controversy. In 1981, New Mexico's newly appointed state historian, Stanley Hordes, began work in Santa Fe and immediately began receiving visitors in search of family records, believing themselves to be the descendants of conversos.
He began tracing through the state's archives and Inquisition records. He discovered genealogical links between families in the Southwest with vestigial Jewish traditions and victims of the Inquisition in Mexico, Portugal and Spain.
"The biggest challenge in completing a study of this kind was determining the history of a group of people who for centuries tried desperately to cover their tracks ..." Hordes writes in the introduction to his book, To the End of the Earth.
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His findings became popular in the Southwest, but many remained skeptical. Folklorist and Case Western Reserve University lecturer Judith Neulander has concluded that the "folk evidence" of a crypto-Jewish survival in the Southwest — six-pointed stars on tombstones, supposedly kosher practices — is inadequate.
Many of those traditions, she said, could as easily have come from a separatist sect of Seventh-day Adventists in the area, whose practices were notably more Hebraic than other forms of Protestantism. The crypto-Jewish identity, she argued, could instead be an origin myth Hispanics in New Mexico appropriated in lieu of one previously debunked — that they were the descendants of conquistadors.
"People will reconstruct the past in the way of the greatest social benefit to their communities," Neulander says.
Forward To Israel
Loya began selling Jewish items in her store in Ruidoso and turned a section of the space into the Bat Tziyon [daughter of Zion] Hebrew Learning Center, which hosted weekly Torah-study classes and Shabbat dinners. While many community members became involved, others were vehemently opposed and tried to get it banned. She says a Christian radio station ran several programs about her, accusing her of brainwashing Christians and blasting her Judaism.
"Some pastors run the other way when they see me," Loya says.
But against doubts and opposition, she completed her conversion to Judaism in 2005 and has since filled out her papers to emigrate to Israel. At the age of 54, she hopes to study to become a rabbi.
"Sometimes I wake up and I think, 'Why am I doing this?' " she says. "And then I remember — it's for all the thousands and thousands of the others who are trying to make it back."

Editor's note: The government of Spain recently announced its intention to offer citizenship to descendants of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled in 1492.
As part of our series, we also wrote about Persian identity and Latin-Jewish cooking and music. Share your ideas on Jewish cross-cultural interactions with us: Send your thoughts to Emily Siner or tweet at Code Switch.


The story of the Jews never seems to stop. They have held to their traditions and faith throughout these thousands of years, too often against horrible persecution.

There is another group that is comparable, the Romani people or Gypsies, who originated in India and, like the Jews, cling to their heritage wherever they go. The difference is that the Jewish people have tended to prosper financially and become a part of the arts and philanthropic activities, and the gypsies have kept more to their own society, perhaps not trusting the people and government of their host countries.

I could also include the “Pennsylvania Dutch,” who also are very conservative about their religion and customs, and hold themselves back from blending with society as a whole. They are all interesting and colorful, finding a place in the US with its religious freedom while maintaining their own characteristics and to some degree their languages. I'm glad to live in a country where individuality is protected by the law, and for the most part, by the culture. It's like taking an anthropology course and comparing cultures. It's great fun.




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AFL-CIO's Trumka: Keep VW Union Vote In Perspective --NPR
by Don Gonyea
February 19, 2014
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When workers at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga narrowly rejected the United Auto Workers in a recent vote on whether to unionize, it was a stinging setback for a labor movement looking for a big organizing victory in a Southern state.
So while the agenda at the AFL-CIO's winter meetings in Houston this week includes the push to increase the minimum wage, pressing for a new immigration law that includes path to citizenship, and looking ahead to the 2014 and 2016 elections, much of the discussion in hallways and in media briefings is about the failure to organize at Volkswagen.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that loss — by a very narrow margin — should be kept in perspective.
"Not many years ago this kind of union election in Chattanooga would have been unthinkable," Trumka said.
He places the blame on an aggressive stop-the-union effort by Republican elected officials in Tennessee, who said that bringing in the UAW would mean a loss of tax incentives the state gives to VW and increased difficulty in recruiting other businesses.
"You had a governor, you had the head of the legislature, you had a U.S. senator saying to workers that if you exercise your right, we're gonna take away your job. That was the threat," Trumka said.
The South has always been difficult terrain for the labor movement. Right-to-work laws are the norm, making it harder to organize and collect dues. But D. Taylor, president of the union called UNITE-HERE, which represents hotel, food service and textile workers, says there are workers all across the South who should be receptive to a union.
"We have to have a continued presence and an aggressive presence in the South in order to make sure those workers have better wages and more job security than currently exists," Taylor said.
Regarding current organizing efforts by his union in the region, Taylor said there are many.
"We are, we are doing campaigns, but based on what we just saw in Tennessee we try to keep a low profile so we don't have the governor and U.S. senators condemn that we're gonna make it the worse place in the world to do business. So we're organizing in the South," he added.
To counter the bad news from Chattanooga, union leaders also point to government data showing several Southern states — including Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee — with an increase in the percentage of workers who are union members. The overall gains are small — but the AFL-CIO says it's a sign of progress and opportunity.
Rose Ann DeMoro heads the nurses union, National Nurses United, which she points out has made some sizable gains.
"Seven thousand nurses in the past three years in the South... I think 4,500 in Florida, 2,500 in Texas. We have a massive organizing campaign in Orlando right now. There's other campaigns going on right now in Texas and other places throughout the South," DeMoro said.
At the AFL-CIO meetings, the talk of organizing in places like the South merges with what the labor movement says is its top issue: income inequality and the fact that the wages of average Americans aren't keeping up.
"If that's the debate then the American people will win. Look, a lot of people are talking about it. From the pope to the President and everybody in between," Trumka said.
He hopes that topic gains traction in the 2014 and 2016 campaign seasons.


The public in southern states tends to distrust group activity to achieve power. In the 1970's in North Carolina many ordinary people – not university professors – thought that “the hippies” were basically communists and accused them of being “unwashed.” The term “communist” was used for any liberal thought. Their tendency to march in Civil Rights causes just accentuated that. It wasn't considered good citizenship. My brother-in-law once said that hippies were “outlaws.” There were many Southerners who believed firmly in people “staying in their place.” “I know my place” was sometimes said proudly.

Unions are adamantly against “staying in your place.” They are exercising the power of group pressure to keep businesses from laying off workers or reducing their wages. Through their efforts many blue collar jobs have become more prosperous, so that those workers can afford to own a home or help their kids go to college. One of the reasons that the South has been slow to unionize is that the economic base used to be mainly agrarian. There are more factories now, but in the early part of the 1900's the South was behind the North in that way. Those factories that did open fought unionization fiercely, and the workers themselves often didn't support unions. I can remember the unions being linked to organized crime at one point, so that also made them unpopular.

All in all, however, unions have made a great difference in wages and other workplace issues over the history of labor relations. That was one of the most interesting courses I took in college, which showed the conditions from child labor to “sweat shops.” I'm glad to see the AFL CIO making efforts in the South in spite of their recent failure. While I wouldn't like to see the criminal elements infiltrating unions again, I think that a healthy union shows a healthy workplace. Manufacturing businesses are all-powerful without a union, and that sets our culture backward in history. I hate to see that happening.