Noah David Simon
The new face of Likud
The Chuck Hagel Bankster Connections
American International Group Inc. wound up getting about $125 billion from the U.S. government in the complex bailout
Apartheid Jordan Accepts Syrian Refugees, Turns Back Syrian Palestinians at Border
Kentucky Fried Brain
renowned socialist & opponent of private health care Gerry Adams flies to USA for operation in top private clinic.
breathing machine is involved
America and Russia Set for a Showdown in Syria
In case you've ever wondered, the Palestinians have their own passports
Obama Gives Hezbollah 200 Armored Personnel Carriers
The new face of Likud
Posted: 08 Jan 2013 03:46 PM PST
Until now, Danny Danon was a marginal character from the extremist back benches. In the next Knesset, he will be at the heart of Israel’s ruling party
(Times Of Israel) One of the most important events in Danny Danon’s life happened in 1969, two years before he was born.
That was the year Joseph Danon, a 29-year-old army reservist, was pursuing a Palestinian guerrilla cell in the Jordan Valley. When battle was joined, one of the Palestinians threw a grenade and Danon was hit by shrapnel. He emerged from a coma after several months, having suffered a serious head wound. He was rendered permanently deaf.
Many of Danny Danon’s childhood memories are of serving as his father’s interpreter at banks and government offices and of going on hikes across the country and then reporting back to their home in Ramat Gan, describing the routes and the landscapes to his father, once an avid hiker himself but now too infirm to come along.
“We would re-enact the hike at home,” Danon said in a recent interview. “Despite his injury, he managed to get across the message of knowing the country and loving the country.”
Danon began reading books about the underground groups that fought the British in pre-state Palestine, and learned the sites of battles from David and Goliath to the Yom Kippur War. That, he says, gave him a strong connection to the geography of Israel. Interpreting for his father, he said, “gave me the confidence to speak and argue and say what I think.”
In 4th grade, he remembered, he once argued with a teacher about the event that still serves as a dividing line in Israeli politics — the sinking of the Irgun weapons ship “Altalena” off the coast of Tel Aviv in 1948 on the orders of David Ben-Gurion, who feared a rightist putsch. Menachem Begin, the Irgun leader and future Likud prime minister, was on board. Ben-Gurion’s commander on the scene was Yitzhak Rabin, the future Labor prime minister.
“She said Begin was to blame,” Danon recalled. “I said Rabin was to blame.”
Danon’s mother was born in pre-state Israel — “a Palestinian from Palestine,” Danon says. His father came from Egypt as part of the mass exodus of Jews from Arab lands; Joseph Danon died of complications linked to his combat injury when Danny was 22.
Anyone paying attention to the stream of hardline rhetoric and legislation emanating from the Israeli right in the last four years will have noticed Danon’s name attached to much of it — attempts to disqualify certain Arab lawmakers, or to make getting an ID card contingent on a loyalty oath, or to hem in leftist groups by outlawing contributions to nonprofits from foreign governments. Last May, he declared at a rally that illegal African migrants — “infiltrators,” in the lingo of the right — had set up an “enemy state” in south Tel Aviv. After the rally, some Israelis attacked Africans who happened to pass by.
Danon is not a joke. He is not crazy. And he is no longer a back-bencher
Danon has mostly been described as a fringe character from Likud’s rabid back benches. Recently, the country’s most popular satire show, Eretz Nehederet — “Wonderful Country” — began mocking him as a lonely and weird teenager with acne scars.
But Danon is not a joke. He is not crazy. And he is no longer a back-bencher. Years of smart maneuvering inside the Likud catapulted Danon to the ninth spot on the joint Likud-Beytenu list for the upcoming election, putting him ahead of veteran politicians like Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and security figures like Moshe Ya’alon, the former army chief of staff. The same primary vote banished Dan Meridor, a prominent moderate, and Benny Begin, a principled hardliner of the old school and Menachem Begin’s son, to unrealistic slots at the bottom of the list and ensured they would no longer be members of Knesset.
Along with Danon, the Likud vote strengthened other candidates who believe in building settlements and in eternal Israeli control over the West Bank, dismissing what that would mean for Israel’s Jewish majority or its democracy, and who have acted to constrain state agencies or civil organizations which might impede their goals.
It further brought in Moshe Feiglin at number 22 on the list. Feiglin supports building the Third Temple in Jerusalem, has suggested that Arabs not be allowed to vote in national elections, and once told a reporter, “You can’t teach a monkey to speak and you can’t teach an Arab to be democratic.” Feiglin’s inclusion has accomplished the admirable feat of making Danon appear moderately right-leaning and Netanyahu a staunch liberal.
The Likud primary vote put Danon and his vision at the center of power in the party and within reach of a post in the cabinet. Netanyahu, outmaneuvered, is outnumbered in his own party. Menachem Begin is long dead, and his son is in the political wilderness. Anyone following Israeli politics after this election will have to get used to the fact that today Danny Danon is Likud.
Danon lays a symbolic cornerstone for new Jewish construction in East Jerusalem, November 2009. Settlements, Danon says, ‘are not an obstacle to peace’ (photo credit: Flash90)
Danon, 41, lives in Moshav Mishmeret, in central Israel. His wife is a dietitian and they have three children, the oldest 11 and the youngest 5.
For those who are used to his strident public persona, Danon’s personal demeanor can come as a surprise. He is polite and well-spoken, his answers polished and his words chosen with care. He spurns the informal dress of many Israeli politicians for a suit of a conservative congressional blue. He comes across less as a rabble-rouser than as someone who has correctly gauged the fears, frustrations and dreams of Israel’s right, shares them, and has done a canny job of riding them to power.
Danon began trying his hand at politics at his secular high school, participating in the school’s branch of Techiya, a now-dormant rightist faction. After serving in the army as an education officer with Jewish teenagers coming from abroad for a taste of Israeli military life — a distinctly noncombat position — he became active in the Zionist youth movement Beitar and spent time doing organizational work in Miami, Florida.
In 2006 he ran an upstart campaign for the leadership of Likud’s international arm, World Likud, beating out Netanyahu’s candidate, Yuval Steinitz, who is now the finance minister. He entered the Knesset in 2009, and became associated with a new bloc of young MKs in the party who made a habit of attacking Netanyahu from the right, opposing the few conciliatory moves the prime minister wanted to make toward the Palestinians — such as announcing a partial housing freeze in the West Bank in 2009 to assuage American displeasure and allow talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to go ahead.
Netanyahu made the move in order to salvage Israel’s deteriorating ties with the administration of US President Barack Obama, but Danon saw it as an unacceptable admission that the Jewish presence in the West Bank was illegitimate or temporary. His vocal opposition to his party leader’s policy brought him substantial national attention and bolstered his position among the party’s base.
(photo credit: Moshe Milner/GPO/Flash90)
Danon believes his hardline positions have helped Netanyahu fend off international pressure. Netanyahu in Jerusalem last week
“The settlements are not an obstacle to peace,” Danon said. “After the disengagement from Gaza, the public freed itself of the idea that this is about the settlements, and about land for peace.”
Danon believed he was both expressing a necessary truth and doing Netanyahu a tactical favor — allowing the prime minister to point to the internal political challenge mounted by Danon and others to show Israel’s allies and critics abroad why the freeze was a major concession and why it could not be extended.
“It was important to Netanyahu that my voice be heard, and I know he used it, in the US and Europe, when he talked about his domestic difficulties,” Danon said.
Netanyahu has said he supports the idea of a Palestinian state, though some in his own party doubt his sincerity, as do many outside it. Even if that is Netanyahu’s goal, he no longer has a majority inside Danon’s Likud.
Danon’s platform is virtually indistinguishable from that of the ascendant Jewish Home party, a religious pro-settlement faction that supports annexing nearly two-thirds of the West Bank and leaving Palestinians in enclaves surrounded by Israeli territory. Likud has been bleeding votes to Jewish Home despite an attempt to attack the smaller party as too extreme — an attempt that is doomed to fail, given the current makeup of Likud. Jewish Home appears to many voters from the ideological right as more pure than Netanyahu’s party, which has been tainted by the compromises necessary to govern.
Danon believes Palestinians in the West Bank should be given “autonomy” in their cities and towns, but that their state is actually Jordan and their blocs of territory should be linked politically with the Hashemite Kingdom to the east. The Palestinians of Gaza can look to Egypt. Israel will directly govern most of the territory, have security control of the rest, and continue to build settlements, somehow remaining a Jewish democracy while ruling over more than 2 million Palestinians who are denied equal rights. The Palestinians, and the world, will live with it.
Does he believe the plan is realistic?
“Nothing is realistic,” Danon said.
That rather apt take on where the prospects of peace stand has a lot to do with Danon’s own rise within the Israeli right and with why the right will win this election.
“In terms of dealing with Arab nations, many Israelis today have gone back to the warrior mentality of David Ben-Gurion,” Danon wrote in a book he published last year, “Israel: The Will to Prevail.” “We’re sick of hollow accords and grand ceremonies done for the camera’s sake.”
Politicians of the right have taken to citing Ben-Gurion as their model for ignoring international opinion, quoting his oft-repeated line, ‘The question is not what the goyim say, but what the Jews do’
Ben-Gurion, he wrote, “was willing to pay a price for the security of Israel in international opprobrium, and so it is with a new generation of Israeli leaders. We also understand the necessity of shaping our fate by our own hands. If we have to pay a price with the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States, so be it.”
Politicians of the right, both from Likud and Jewish Home, have taken to citing Ben-Gurion as their model for ignoring international opinion, quoting his oft-repeated line, “The question is not what the goyim say, but what the Jews do.” That quote is featured in a Jewish Home video, for example, explaining why annexing most of the West Bank would be a good idea.
Ben-Gurion detested Likud’s ideological forebears and would almost certainly have detested their descendants. He was keenly aware of international opinion, and ensured Israel was always allied with a greater power. Some remember that he famously declared that when faced with the choice between the entire land of Israel and a Jewish state, “we chose a Jewish state.” That adage does not appear popular among candidates from Likud or Jewish Home.
While Netanyahu has been circumspect in public about his presumed affinity for the Republican party, Danon has been openly critical of the current US administration, writing in his book of the “growing irrelevance” of American influence under Obama and suggesting that “confidence in the US as a stabilizing force is eroding.”
“The Obama administration support for the Palestinian position and their engagement of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt call the strength of its support for Israel into question,” he writes. Danon is proud of his contacts with influential figures in the US; he mentioned TV host Glenn Beck and one-time Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee.
But at the same time, he says ties with the US administration are “very good,” pointing, as do other politicians of the right, to security cooperation over the last four years — the point being that Israel can continue its current policies without causing undue harm to the country’s most important strategic relationship. His own plans for the permanent disenfranchisement of the Palestinians notwithstanding, Danon says he believes “Obama and Netanyahu will work together this time.”
In any case, he said, peace is off the table in the near future.
“In the short term there are two options: One is what’s happening now in Judea and Samaria, where the conflict is being managed,” he said. “The other is what’s happening in Gaza, which is chaos. I choose the one in Judea and Samaria, which is not ideal, but at least we’re in control.”
“Our area is so dynamic and dangerous that you can’t afford to make mistakes,” he said. “If I told you three years ago that Hosni Mubarak would be in a cage in Cairo, or that Assad was going to fall, you would have said I was crazy.”
In January 2013, it would be hard to find many Israelis, on the left or right, who would disagree. The electorate is currently split over whether a peace agreement and a withdrawal from the West Bank would theoretically be desirable, not about whether those things are practically possible now. Almost everyone knows they are not. After years of rocket fire from Gaza, and with the old Mideast disintegrating around Israel and morphing into something that will probably be markedly more dangerous, it is not only ideological rightists who look at a city like Jerusalem, for example, with its heterogeneous and combustible population, imagine an Israeli withdrawal, and see the specter of Aleppo.
The left has failed to present voters with a clear or credible alternative. The right has: control the West Bank forever. That vision now dominates the right and is set to dominate the next Knesset.
For guidance, Danon says, he looks to Vladimir Jabotinsky, the ideologue of Revisionist Zionism, who said Jews must build an “iron wall” of military force that would ensure their safety in Israel.
“We’re not there yet,” Danon said. “Today there are forces in the area who still think they can get rid of us with force. When we create a real iron wall, it will be possible to think about peace agreements.”
_________
This is the fifth in a series of profiles of political players leading up to Israel’s national election on January 22, 2013. Previous installments featured the renegade rabbi Haim Amsalem ;retired general Elazar Stern; Ayelet Shaked, a secular candidate in the religious party Jewish Home; and Omer Barlev, a former commando and hi-tech entrepreneur.
Find Matti Friedman on Twitter and Facebook.
The Chuck Hagel Bankster Connections
Posted: 08 Jan 2013 02:27 PM PST
The Chuck Hagel Bankster Connections.HT: EconomicPolicyJournal.(many faces in many places)The nomination of Chuck Hagel has prompted an email response from Alan P. at PEU Report. He writes to EPJ:
Pentagon nominee Chuck Hagel has his own PEU ties. I've yet to see the media report them.
Alan, also, provided a link to his post, Chuck Hagel PEU, which details how Hagel has been keeping himself busy with his bankster ties.
In his post, Alan notes that Hagel sits on the advisory board of Corsair Capital. a private equity underwriter (PEU) focused on the financial services industry. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Chevron Corporation and Zurich’s Holding Company of America; and the Advisory Board of Deutsche Bank America, and is a Senior Advisor to Gallup.
Most noteworthy, Hagel is a director of Wolfensohn and Company. The company is founded by global operator James Wolfensohn. After Paul Volcker left the Federal Reserve to cash in, he chose to go with Wolfensohn's predecessor firm as a senior partner. Wolfensohn sold the predecessor firm when he became president of the World Bank.
In 2005, upon leaving as president of the World Bank, he founded Wolfensohn and Company, LLC, where Hagel is a director. The firm is privately held firm that invests, and provides strategic consulting advice to governments and large corporations doing business, in emerging market economies.
Since 2006, Wolfensohn has also been the chairman of the International Advisory Board of Citigroup.
In 2009, he became a member of the International Advisory Council of the Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation.
Bottom line, Hagel is operating at the core of crony corporate America and the expanding empire, if he is that close to Wolfensohn.
Neoconservatives and and gay rights groups are up in arms about some of Hagel's comments in the past about Israel and gays, but Hagel is a major insider. The empire will continue to expand under him, if he becomes Defense Secretary. For the real insiders, the Israel controversy and the gay comments are surface skirmishes, what the Hagel nomination is really about is a major league bankster heading the DOD, and in the end that means its about huge crony $$$$.Read the full story here.
That Chevron board essentially means oil money that is loyal to Saudi interests. Actually that is surprising since Hagel appears to be lenient with Shia interests like Iran and Hezbollah and their allies in Asia like Russia and China.
American International Group Inc. wound up getting about $125 billion from the U.S. government in the complex bailout
Posted: 08 Jan 2013 11:31 AM PST
The people who were investors would of done better to of gone bankrupt and sold the toxic assets for what they were worth
(Mark Lennihan / AP Photo)(WASHINGTON)AIG is said to consider suing U.S. for bailout that saved company. At the same time American International Group Inc. has been running high-profile ads thanking America for the bailout that saved the company, the insurance giant reportedly is considering joining a shareholder suit against the U.S. government for the rescue.
The AIG board will meet Wednesday and could decide to join a $25-billion suit led by former chief executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the New York Times reported.
The suit by Greenberg's Starr International Co. alleges that the 2008 bailout of AIG by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Bank of New York in which the government received an 80% ownership stake in the company violated the rights of shareholders. The ownership stake later climbed to 92%.
The suit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington alleges that the bailout cost shareholders billions of dollars and violated the 5th Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property for public use "without just compensation."
A similar suit against the New York Fed was thrown out by a New York federal judge in November. But Judge Thomas Wheeler of the Court of Federal Claims had ruled in September that Greenberg's case against the U.S. government could go forward.
A September court filing said the AIG board expected to make a decision by the end of January.
An AIG spokesman declined to comment Tuesday. A Treasury Department spokesman also would not comment.
But U.S. officials would not be pleased if AIG joined the suit. The company received the single largest bailout of the financial crisis, leaving the government on the hook for more than $182 billion.
AIG ended up taking about $125 billion in the complex, multi-step bailout. In the process, the company became the poster child for reckless risk-taking on Wall Street and the focal point for anger by the public and lawmakers over the unprecedented government intervention to save the financial system.
In December, the government sold the last of its stake in AIG. The bailout formally ended with the taxpayers earning a $22.7 billion profit, though critics noted there were additional, incalculable costs, such as a loss of public confidence in the financial system and a precedent for rescuing too-big-to-fail financial firms.
AIG has been touting the end of the bailout with print, TV and online ads titled "Thank You America." The ads, which have aired in recent weeks during college football bowl games and National Football League playoff games, note the company "repaid every dollar America lent us."
Apartheid Jordan Accepts Syrian Refugees, Turns Back Syrian Palestinians at Border
Posted: 08 Jan 2013 11:14 AM PST
(
(Can you say Apartheid State?) As the civil war intensifies in Syria, more refugees are trying to escape the conflict. Some have crossed into Turkey. Others have gone to Lebanon. But the biggest refugee camp for Syrian refugees is in the neighboring Kingdom of Jordan. But not all refugees are allowed in.
FRIED KOOLAID:
80% of PalArab "refugees" have citizenship!)
Speaking in an immaculately clean tent over coffee and endless cigarettes, a 23-year-old construction worker who would only give his name as Mohamed said he left the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, where many Palestinians live, about two months ago. The place was getting violent and food was hard to find, he said.The young man said his mother is Syrian, but his father is Palestinian. Mohamed said the Jordanians are turning people back at the border if they have ID cards that say they’re Palestinian. Lucky for him, he has a Syrian ID.
Mohamed’s uncle, he said, is a Palestinian from Damascus who has been turned away at the Jordan border five times.
With his four-year-old son in his lap, Daloul said he’s happy to be in Jordan, away from the fighting in Syria. But he says it’s also frustrating. Daloul is registered as a Palestinian refugee, even though he was born in Syria. So are his kids. But his wife is registered as Syrian. Now, she’s staying with relatives elsewhere in Jordan, while Daloul and the children live in this single room. They are not allowed to leave the camp for any length of time, he said. And his wife cannot move in with them permanently. “It’s a difficult situation,” he said.
Daloul is 55 years old. He was born in Syria. His kids were born in Syria. If he goes back, his grandchildren will be born in Syria. But he’s not considered Syrian by the Syrian government, even though his wife is, and since his children have their father’s status, they’re also considered Palestinian.
The Arabs don't like Palestinians
Kentucky Fried Brain
Posted: 08 Jan 2013 08:26 AM PST
I threw it down onto my tray immediately. It looked like a brain.
renowned socialist & opponent of private health care Gerry Adams flies to USA for operation in top private clinic.
Posted: 07 Jan 2013 11:25 PM PST
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has been accused of being "incredibly hypocritical" for choosing private medical care in the US, despite criticising private healthcare in the Republic and Northern Ireland.
breathing machine is involved
Posted: 07 Jan 2013 11:07 PM PST
(Simply) The history of this part of the world shows that close associates are often the initiators of coups and army, swearing loyalty to the current government, forgets the oath. In addition to the multibillion dollar arms contracts, Russia has also invested in the oil industry in Venezuela. Russia plans to set up a consortium to develop oil fields in the country, the project involving all major Russian oil and gas companies. The project is estimated at $ 20 billion. The sources cited by Stratfor reported that the candidate favored by Chinese, Russians and Brazilians is Nicolas Maduro, while Cubans tilt more toward Chávez’s brother Adam, mainly because they don’t believe Maduro will guarantee the oil subsidies they have enjoyed so far.
America and Russia Set for a Showdown in Syria
Posted: 07 Jan 2013 11:12 PM PST
Syria has a large Russian emigre population, particularly of women who married Syrian men. But Russia can afford to lose Syria.
In case you've ever wondered, the Palestinians have their own passports
Posted: 07 Jan 2013 10:13 PM PST
scrapping the old "Palestinian Authority" logo is as far as Abbas is willing to go in provoking Israel. He is not rushing to change passports and ID cards Palestinians need to pass through Israeli crossings.
Obama Gives Hezbollah 200 Armored Personnel Carriers
Posted: 07 Jan 2013 10:01 PM PST
The United States has provided more than $140 million in equipment and assistance to the Lebanese armed forces in the past six months, including six Huey 2 helicopters, a 42-metre coastal security craft, more than 1,000 guns – including grenade launchers – and 38 million rounds of ammunition.
The United States has given 200 armored vehicles to Lebanon, the Lebanese army said… The M113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) arrived by ship to Beirut on Sunday, the army said in a statement. A Lebanese security source said the army now had 1,200 APCs.
