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Sep 5, 2010

Israel zealot funding Islamic Center protests

 


Joyce Chernick, major pro-Israel giver, funds group organizing protests against proposed Islamic Center

JTA - A woman who with her husband has contributed large sums to pro-Israel and Jewish groups is the principal funder of the group that has taken the lead in opposing an Islamic center in lower Manhattan. [The couple is believed to have Israeli citizenship.]

Jihad Watch, the group that is organizing a rally against the planned Islamic center timed for the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 2001 attacks -  the center is planned for within three blocks of the site of the attacks - is funded by  Freedom Center, a conservative group based in Los Angeles
[founded by former Trotskyist, now neoconservative David Horowitz].

An investigative report appearing on the online version of Politico on Saturday says that it has confirmed that the "lion's share" of the $920,000 funneled through Freedom Center to Jihad Watch over the last three years originated with Joyce Chernick.

Aubrey and Joyce Chernick, Politico reported, have over the years contributed to, among other groups, the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles; the Anti-Defamation League; the Zionist Organization of America; MEMRI, a group that distributes translations of inflammatory Arabic language material; the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a group that tracks what it depicts as the threat of radical Islam [run by Steve Emerson, a pro-Israel zealot who has been found to distribute false materials];  the American Jewish Congress; CAMERA, a group that tracks what it says is anti-Israel bias in the media; the Central Fund for Israel, a clearinghouse for moneys directed to pro-settler groups; and a number of conservative think tanks.

Aubrey Chernick, additionally, was at one time a trustee of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

 
A number of these groups, including the Investigative Project, the ADL and the ZOA, have positioned themselves as opposed to the Islamic center. Other Jewish groups, led by the Reform movement, have been outspoken in supporting the center.

Jihad Watch, founded by Robert Spencer, has in recent months taken on board Pamela Geller, the New York-based blogger who launched efforts to stop the center's building.

Jihad Watch leads those groups that contend that the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who founded the Cordoba Initiative -- the organization behind the planned center -- is not, as he and a number of Jewish backers claim, a moderate attempting to bridge divides, but is instead a radical.

Rauf has spoken overseas on behalf of the U.S. State Department, under the Obama and Bush administrations, and has described the United States as a nation whose freedoms benefit Muslims.

He also eulogized Daniel Pearl, the Jewish journalist murdered in 2002 by Pakistani Islamists, by saying that such victims demand a response from Muslims that they, too, are Jews.

He has refused to outright condemn Hamas, the [elected] group controlling the Gaza Strip, and has among his associates some prominent Saudi Arabians.

The Islamic center's opponents, led by Jihad Watch, have demanded an accounting of the proposed center's donors, although Rauf has of yet barely raised funds for the center.


--
Alison Weir
Executive Director, If Americans Knew, (202) 631-4060
President, Council for the National Interest,  (202) 863 2951

If Americans Knew
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El Cerrito, CA 94530

Council for the National Interest
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Washington, DC 20024

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little."
- Edmund Burke



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Peace.

Michael Santomauro
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http://www.DebatingTheHolocaust.com

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Dubai Ruler Debuts World's Largest Superyacht

 

Dubai Ruler Debuts World's Largest Superyacht

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Nikola Tesla

 

Pete Best, the original drummer for the Beatles (who was replaced by Ringo in 1962), is forever known as a guy who missed out on fame. In fact, he's become famous for that. In a similar, strange way, the great Nikola Tesla is frequently being remembered as the forgotten man of invention. The Serbo-American genius' greatest work was credited to Edison, stolen by Marconi, or in that "obscure stuff that most of us can't understand so we don't know who did it" category. He made major inroads into X-rays, remote control, radar, robotics, nuclear physics and computers –- and this was back in the 19th and early 20th century. Along the way, he was employed by Edison, but quit because he was being ripped off.

Edison's feud with Tesla has become folklore. For the record, Edison's electrical system was based on direct current (DC), a steady flow of electricity in one direction; Tesla discovered the far stronger alternating current (AC), which is regularly reversed in direction. It was considerably more economical for long-distance transmission, which was where the future of electricity lay. Nonetheless, Edison scoffed at Tesla's discovery. George Westinghouse, one of Edison's business rivals, was more open-minded, putting Tesla on his considerably more generous payroll.

Ignoring his experts, Edison refused to switch to AC, instead launching a propaganda campaign to reveal the dangers of this "competing" current. This involved publicly killing several stray animals, and -– just to prove the terrible power of AC –- a mad circus elephant, which suffered an agonizing death on film. Edison's lab also promoted AC for the first electric chair execution, to ensure that Westinghouse and Tesla would be known as merchants of hideous death. Edison would ultimately fail in this scheme to discredit his rivals. Years later, he would admit that he had been wrong. Tesla died poor, but is now the patron saint of the underrated.

 

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11 Books Predicting The Collapse Of The Middle Class

 

"Third World America": as Arianna says in her video about the book, it's a tough phrase to swallow when it comes to how we perceive America's powerful economy. But one of the characteristics of a third world country is that there is no middle class, and that's what's happening here. It's been a long time coming and probably began during the Reagan years. The 90s saw a steep decline--when we look at how many kids who went off to college only to return home to live with their parents because they couldn't find jobs, or their work didn't pay well enough for them to live on their own. Then came the precipitous decline of this decade, the credit crisis, the housing bubble, the extreme unemployment.

As usual, there were visionaries who saw this coming and wrote about it. Here are eleven books that predicted the situation we're in now.

Let us know what you think. Is a "Third World America" the new normal, or is there something we can do about it?

1. "Falling From Grace: The Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class" (1989) Katherine S. Newman

Newman finds that the American concept of self-worth and success depends on growth and dominance. Observing that stagnant wages have made continual improvement in the middle class quality of life impossible, Newman warns that the new generation will find it difficult to live with less than their predecessors.


2. "Upward Dreams, Downward Mobility: The Economic Decline of the American Middle Class" (1993) Frederick R. Strobel

While proponents of Reaganomics celebrated what appeared to be a decade of success, economists such as Strobel recorded the increasing pressures on the American middle class. Blaming the Bush and Reagan economic policies for accelerating the crisis, Strobel claims that the trend began after the end of the New Deal.


3. "Boiling Point: Republicans, Democrats and the Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity" (1994) Kevin Phillips
Like many of his contemporaries, Phillips believed that Reagan and Bush policies sacrificed the stability and comfort of the middle class for the free advancement of the wealthy. Phillips extended his thesis by comparing the trend to the historic decline of England and Holland, which "had also fallen from their middle-class zeniths when manufacturing, trade, nationalism and bourgeois spirit gave way to 'financialization' -- the cumulative influence of finance, government debt, unearned income, rentiers, overseas investment, domestic economic polarization and social stratification." While remaining optimistic, Phillips warned about the consequences of this trend.

4. "Silent Depression: The Fate of the American Dream" (1994) Wallace C. Peterson
Economist Peterson argued that that despite the nation's economic expansion, middle class Americans has been living in a depression since 1973. Four fifths of American families suffered from a stagnant income that made maintaining their quality of life increasingly difficult. Peterson proposed increased public spending and revisions to the tax code that would help to level out economic disparity between the middle class and the elite.

5. "Speculative Capital" Nasser Saber (1999)
In "Speculative Capital," Saber explains the role of speculation in driving national and international economic engines. This theory helps to explain the rise of derivatives and the increase in market volatility, which has had a direct impact on the middle class.

6. "The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt" (2001) Teresa A. Sullivan
In this study, Sullivan warns that a significant portion of the American middle class is on the verge of economic collapse. The book inspects the role of layoffs, the overuse of credit cards, and unpredictable medical expenses in creating financial instability for average Americans.

7. "Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich" (2002) Kevin Phillips
"Laissez-faire is a pretense," historian Kevin Phillips argues in his book, "Wealth and Democracy." Phillips rejects the idea of trickle-down wealth creation held by many conservative economists. He argues that allowing the wealthy to dominate economic policy has harmed both ordinary Americans and the government.

8. "War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back" (2006) Lou Dobbs
According to Lou Dobbs, the economic and academic elite have created policies that harm ordinary Americans. Taking increased class stratification, problems of immigration, and problematic health care system as evidence to the problem, he proposes higher taxes and a bigger government.

9. "The American Dream vs. The Gospel of Wealth" (2007) Norton Garfinkle
Garfinkle writes that America is split into two factions- the wealthy who have already made it and the lower and middle class who continue to dream. Garfinkle warns that the middle class dream of social mobility has been put in danger by the supply-side economic theory of the wealthy.

10. "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class- And What We Can Do About It" (2006) Thom Hartmann, Greg Palast, Mark Crispin Miller
Hartmann argues that since the Reagan administration, the US government has been instituting policies that favor corporations over citizens. He objects to the weakening of measures that protect average Americans, arguing that a strong middle class is crucial to the health of democracy.

11. "Not Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class" (2009) Nan Mooney
Mooney notes that typical middle class careers in education, the arts, and public service pay little yet paradoxically demand a high cost education. Those in the middle class find themselves financially unstable due to mortgage payments, student loans, credit-card debt, insufficient health care, retirement needs, and child care. The author recommends that the government create policies to support the middle class in this difficult position.
 

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Sep 4, 2010

Israel Shamir: Fear Not

 


 

Fear of war is not the best adviser. If they want war, give them war. At home!

Fear Not, by Israel Shamir
shamireaders@yahoogroups.com
Thu, 12 Aug 2010

1. Crying Wolf

So many people have sent and forwarded so many warnings of the forthcoming US-Israeli attack on Iran that it is hard to ignore them. A piece written by a few ex-spooks warning of a new round of war is one of these messages. In our view, spooks, ex or not, are not the most reliable people, and the CIA is not the best reference. However, this item fits with the dire predictions of Fidel Castro. It fits with the recent heating up of the Gaza and Lebanon borders. It fits with the relocation of some American warships and accompanying Israeli U-boats to the shores of Iran. Rumours of Israeli advance forces being placed in Azerbaijan and even Saudi Arabia are used as supportive evidence. The Jewish state certainly wants to break Iran, just as Iraq was broken.

On the other hand, we have heard the cry "wolf" so many times from so many people that now we are perfectly blasé. For quite a few years, hardly a month has gone by without a serious warning of an attack on Iran.

Though these warnings usually are sounded by friends, they do serve the enemy as well. They amount to psychological pressure on Iran. For this reason alone I am ready to bet: there will be no attack on Iran. Israel has never gone to war without its centre-left parties in the government. So as long as Israeli government includes only right and far-right parties, no war is foreseeable. It would be like driving without insurance. (Ehud Barak's Labour Party is too weak to count. If Tsipi Livni should join the government – run for cover. But not until then.)

I am amazed by the strong nerves of President Ahmadinejad: a weaker person on his place might flinch and pre-empt the imminent attack. He does not – apparently he thinks that the jaw-jaw is not likely to become war-war. This is also the view of the well-informed Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram: The current escalation of US and Israeli sabre-rattling against Iran is probably no more than that, writes Amani Maged

Many observers have correctly remarked that an attack on Iran is likely to become a full-fledged disaster for all parties involved, or even lead to nuclear world war. One does not feel that either Obama or Netanyahu has the guts to step recklessly into the abyss.

In Israel there is a hidden fear that should Israel attack Iran, the US president will not rush in to save it and defend it. Obama certainly did not promise he would; and he has no knee-jerk instinct to defend Tel Aviv come what may.

Israelis are notorious for their "kiss and tell" indiscretion ("larutz lesaper lehevre", in Hebrew). A confidante of Netanyahu, Ari Shavit, has told us that "the Israeli leader applied hidden pressure to the American leader," which made him fall on his knees and beg for mercy. The name of the "hidden pressure" is a Jewish billionaire from Chicago Lester Crown, who "made Obama" and supposedly retains full control over his creature, or alternatively, another Jewish Chicagoan Marty Nesbitt. However, even if the US President was forced by his Jewish benefactors to do a volte-face, he certainly bore a grudge for this humiliating turn.

The worst-case scenario as seen from Israel unrolls as follows: Netanyahu mistakes the vague remarks of Obama for an iron-clad promise and launches an attack. Then Obama sits tight while Israel bleeds under the Iranian response. Israelis remember that this was the US tactic for dealing with Saddam Hussein: this best friend of America and recipient of US military aid was led to believe that Washington would permit the takeover of Kuwait.

The most likely interpretation for the sabre-rattling is that Israelis plan yet another invasion of Lebanon, while hoping that Iran will be scared into immobility by the threat of an all-out war. Like all previous invasions of Lebanon, that would be a great crime and a huge mistake, but hardly an apocalyptic event.

Indeed for all appearances it is a re-run of 2006, when the predictions of American attack on Iran were also running high, but eventually Bush has got cold feet and the Israeli army was roundly defeated in the mountain valleys of South Lebanon.

If It Comes

However, if this optimistic prognosis goes the way of some weather broadcasts, and instead of a sunny day with rainy spells we get a full blown storm, the whole fabric of the Middle East will unravel. This juggernaut would be unstoppable. After Iran, Syria would fall. After Syria, Saudi Arabia. It will be the classic domino game: Iran rejoiced when Iraq fell. Saudis wish Iran to fall. Israel wants all of them to fall. This is inscribed in their Clean Break paper and its source, Oded Yinon's paper, which they follow religiously.

If Saudis have too poor of a memory, let us remind them: A few months after 9/11, Rand Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec briefed Richard Perle's Defence Policy Board, calling upon the US to break up Saudi Arabia. Its oil fields should be targeted and its financial assets seized, advised this neocon. Back then, I wrote in an essay appropriately called Take your Money and Run:

"The riches of the Arabian Peninsula hoodwink the Jews, being tantalisingly within the reach of IDF Merkaba tanks. They have too many good reasons to undo Saudi Arabia.

- Saudis have too much money, too much oil and too few friends.

- Elimination of all Saudi financial assets will invigorate the flabby Dow Jones average and strengthen the weakened dollar.

- This prosperous and well-armed country must be reduced before Israel takes its most important step, the seizure and destruction of the beautiful Umayyad Mosques in Jerusalem."

With the destruction of Iran, the countdown for the takeover of Saudi Arabia would begin. In words of a neocon: "Everyone wants to take out Tehran. But real mensch wants to take out ar-Riyadh". Provided that no attack on Iran is possible without Saudi connivance, the "irony of history" will be complete. The enemies of Israel will be taken out one after another, each with help of the next, still unsuspecting victim.

Give them war

However small the chances for all-out war, we should not sit by, wail and wait for the enemy to act. But fear of war is not the best adviser. If they want war, give them war. Attack the chief warmonger, and we know who that is. Name him `the Lobby' with Mearsheimer, or the `Zionist Power Configuration' with Petras, or `Masters of Discourse' or whatever. They are calling the shots, let them foot the bill. "This is not a case of the Tail wagging the Dog," quipped Anatole Lieven, "but of the Tail wagging the unfortunate Dog around the room and banging its head against the ceiling".

What is the secret of its success? It is alchemy, of sorts. Not in vain did the Jews stand at the cradle of alchemy. However, the alchemists of old tried to transmute base metals into gold. The modern alchemists of the Lobby transmute the real gold of your labour into Fools Gold and pay others with it. Instead of bubbling retorts and overflowing alembics, they use shares, bonds, loans, mortgages, derivatives and other instruments by which Goldman-Sachs and Madoff and hundreds of other banksters rob you of your livelihood. This alchemy is nothing more than counterfeiting.

Deal with them, and you will save yourselves. As a bonus, you'll save the world, too. It is them, not the Iranians or Iraqis, you Americans should fight. The great American, Eugene Debs has said: "If you are given weapons, do not use them against far-away strangers. Turn them against your true enemy at home. Expropriate the expropriators, rob the robbers."

Alchemical Wedding

Problem is, the Lobby leads both the Left and the Right towards the one goal – his goal. Miraculously the Alchemist weds the most reactionary forces to the most enlightened liberals in a mock-alchemical marriage. The real thing is a mystical union of King and Queen, of intellect and soul. The Lobby's version is a Fools wedding.

Their King is the Lobby's new ally: the Tea-Party mob of pseudo-right Republicans with an admixture of European fascists like Geert Wilders. These men and women, united by their hatred of Obama, have recently sworn obedience to Israel and supported an attack on Iran.

Instead of the feminine soulful element, the wonderful alchemists of the Lobby liberally add gay and feminist activists to the mainstream pseudo-left media. Not the Queen, but a Drag Queen.

The feminist element in the Lobby-blessed union is anything but soulful. Remember, the attack on Afghanistan was preceded by a verbal barrage from the feminist Left, as I wrote at the time. It is repeated now. Here are three most recent headlines on Iran from the Guardian, the best paper of the moderate Left:

- Iranian facing stoning speaks: 'It's because I'm a woman';

- When adultery means death,

- Iran set to execute 18-year-old on false charge of sodomy.

It is a replay of the treatment they gave to the Soviet communism. When Reagan wished to bomb Moscow, the pseudo-leftists had condemned the Soviets for their lack of democracy and treatment of dissidents. What a wonderful division of labour: the false Right calls to kill the gooks, the false Left justifies the killing.

Why this obsession with gay activists and adulterers? This is not due to compassion. They are chosen and protected because, by the brazenness of their actions, they mock the sanctity of marriage in general, and ultimately that of archetypical sacred marriage, of the union of Heaven and Earth in order to undermine the sacral fabric of the world and to render it defenceless.

In the name of profanity they go to fight the pious puritans of Persia and the warrior monks of Lebanon. The Masters could overlook Iranian nuclear reactors, it is their belief in God they can't tolerate.

*********************************************************************



Peace.
Michael Santomauro @ 917-974-6367 

What sort of Truth is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?

Let's End Thought Crimes in the Twenty-first Century. -- to separate historical fact from propaganda…peace is patriotic

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Blair's and his Bloody Memoir- Lauren Booth & Gilad Atzmon

 


Gilad Atzmon: Bloody Memoir

Tony Blair, a man who launched a criminal war with no end, declared once again today that "Radical Islam is the world's greatest threat"

He made the remark in a BBC interview marking the publication of his memoirs.

Mr Blair said radical Islamists believed that whatever was done in the name of their cause was justified - including the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

I can't make up my mind whether Blair's remark is amusing or tragic for not a single  Islamic leader has ever used "chemical, biological or nuclear weapons". If anything it is Britain and the USA who deployed weaponry that contained depleted uranium. A recent  study reveals that the Cancer rate in Fallujah, Iraq is worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Click to read more ...




       

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From Alan Hart: Submission as attached [1 Attachment]

 
[Attachment(s) from ReporterNotebook included below]

From: Alan Hart <alan_hart_esq@btinternet.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 5:16 PM
Subject: Submission as attached


Dear friends and allies, old (and new?),
 
I've only just mastered the putting together of group e-mails. To those who have already received this my latest post, I apologize. To those who are receiving me directly for the first time - if you wish to be crossed off my list, please tell me.
 
In common cause

Alan
 
-------------------------------------------
Subscribe to my blog: http://www.alanhart.net/subscribe
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/alanauthor



--

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

http://www.DebatingTheHolocaust.com

Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

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