Educator and activist Benjamin Aklom is targeting the Big Apple after recognizing the influence of overseas Jewish communities on Israel.

“We [Ethiopians] in Israel are a very weak political force, and significant changes like we’re demanding can only come through two channels,” Aklom explained. One is “mobilization of Israeli society as a whole.” The other is “recruiting Diaspora Jewry” – much of which has been active for years on behalf of Ethiopian Jews – “to influence the decision makers in Israel.”

To this end, he has posted video clips on YouTube, set up a Facebook page, and recruited Ethiopian friends who moved from Israel to New York as his “point men.” The Facebook page already has several hundred fans, of whom about half are fellow Ethiopians and half are American Jews.

All this activity is meant to culminate in a major demonstration in which activists will block the road leading to the Israeli consulate in New York. He is now awaiting final permits from the New York police, and hopes the demonstration will take place early next month.

“Money Matters: Jewish Business Ethics” looks at modern practices from the perspective of the Jewish Torah and Talmud.

“The recent failures in the financial industry have drastically changed the way we think about business,” Rabbi Mendy Goldstein of Chabad said. “At JLI, we deeply believe that business should be a force for good, and that’s why we’re presenting students with timeless Talmudic insights into real-world ethical dilemmas.”

Money Matters has been developed by the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute and will be taught in 300 locations throughout the world during the next six weeks. It is accredited for nine CLE ethics credits.

Goldstein, who will lead the local program, said the class will be conducted in an interactive format, which will include PowerPoint, a textbook and discussion.

“Everyone gets involved and shares their opinion on the matter,” he said.

Naperville attorney David Fish will be a co-presenter with Goldstein. While Goldstein will present the historical Jewish perspective on issues, Fish will address the legal aspect.

Fish, who specialized in business law and litigation, said that preparing for the program has been educational for him.

The campaign is called “If You See Something, Say Something” and is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security and the Secure Community Network, said Paul Goldenberg, SCN’s national director and former chief of the New Jersey office of bias crimes and community affairs. The rollout will include video education and interactive online training primarily for 120 Jewish communities in the U.S. who have partnered with SCN, he said.

Morocco was expected to distribute at the meeting the new draft resolution that supports the Arab League’s call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to transfer his powers to his deputy to set up a unity government and prepare for elections after a ten-month crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

“The UN Security Council will meet in closed consultations this Friday (at) 3:00 p.m. in New York to discuss steps to take on the situation in Syria,” France’s U.N. mission said on its Twitter page (@FranceONU).

The Security Council could vote as early as next week on the resolution, which diplomats from Britain and France are crafting in consultation with Qatar, Morocco, the United States, Germany and Portugal, envoys said. It replaces a Russian text that Western diplomats say is too weak.

Presented by the JCRC-NY in conjunction with UJA-Federation, the 33^rd annual meeting was an opportunity to express camaraderie and  admiration, discuss relevant social and political action, remember  history and serve as a forum for discussion of passed and pending  legislation and anticipated effects. JCRC-NY Vice  President Mimi Alperin and Board Members Ester Fuchs and Jonathan  Greenspun chaired the event with Alisa Robbins Doctoroff, Chair of the  Board of UJA-Federation of New York. Jeff Weinstein provided  sponsorship.

According to the Time magazine report, which is quoting an Israeli defense  official, a senior IDF commander presented the cabinet of Prime Minister  Benjamin Netanyahu with a gloomy assessment last fall.

“I informed the cabinet we have no ability to hit the Iranian nuclear program  in a meaningful way,” the official quoted the senior commander as saying. “If I  get the order I will do it, but we don’t have the ability to hit in a meaningful  way.”

The defense official told Time, that according to an estimate by the Atomic  Energy Commission, Israel will only be able to push back Iran’s nuclear program  by several months to a year, after taking into account the wide geographic  dispersion of Tehran’s nuclear facilities and the the limits of Israel’s air  force.

Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/150380/#ixzz1kd04MExc

Redistricting, where new legislative lines are drawn once a decade to account for population shifts, is a highly contentious process. Incumbent politicians can see their electoral fortunes rise and fall depending on the constituencies that their new districts encompass.

Individual members received their proposed district maps last night, and we’ve seen at least once unhappy Assemblyman announce his retirement so far.

The final lines are still in doubt. The plan will need to weather a possible barrage of lawsuits and the potential veto pen of Governor Andrew Cuomo. Governor Cuomo has repeatedly said he’d veto lines drawn in a non-independent manner, a line today’s plan would certainly appear to cross. But Mr. Cuomo has also warned that such a veto could create “chaos,” and few profess to know whether he’ll ultimately sign or veto the map.

Provincial governor Mohammad Hossein Jahanbakhsh says both the pilot and the co-pilot were killed in Thursday’s crash.

The Fars report says the fighter plane crashed due to technical failure and that authorities have recovered the wreckage outside Bushehr, a port city with the same name as the province. Bushehr is known as the location of Iran’s first nuclear power plant.

Iran purchased many U.S.-made planes, including F-14s before the 1979 Islamic Revolution and during the rule of the late pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Newt Gingrich better hope voters who lapped up his delicious hits on the “elite media” and liberals don’t read the Drudge Report this morning.

Or the National Review. Or the American Spectator. Or Ann Coulter.

If they do, Gingrich comes off looking like a dangerous, anti-Reagan, Clintonian fraud.

It’s as if the conservative media over the past 24 hours decided Gingrich is for real, and they need to come clean about the man they really know before it’s too late. This is just a sampling of what’s hitting Newt:

• The overnight Drudge Report banner: “Insider: Gingrich repeatedly Insulted Reagan.” The headline linked to a devastating takedown by Elliott Abrams in the National Review, who wrote, among other things, that Gingrich had a long record of criticizing and undermining Reagan’s most transformative policies.

• Drudge also linked prominently to the American Spectator’s R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s similarly harsh takedown of Gingrich over character: “William Jefferson Gingrich.” In it, Tyrrell writes: “Newt and Bill are 1960s generation narcissists, and they share the same problems: waywardness and deviancy. Newt, like Bill, has a proclivity for girl hopping… His public record is already besmeared with tawdry divorces, and there are private encounters with the fair sex that doubtless will come out.”

Drudge runs hundreds of links to stories of all stripes about candidates, but has been seen by Republicans as favorable to Romney in the past.

• Bob Dole issued a scathing statement Thursday that the Romney campaign provided to the National Review in which he said “it is now time” to rally to stop Gingrich, blamed the former Speaker for losing House Republican seats in 1996, and warned that it could happen again, at all levels of government.

“I have not been critical of Newt Gingrich but it is now time to take a stand before it is too late,” Dole said. “If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state, and federal offices. Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway.”

Dole added, “In my run for the presidency in 1996 the Democrats greeted me with a number of negative TV ads and in every one of them Newt was in the ad. He was very unpopular and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year.”

• Conservatives are circulating a piece written by the editors of the National Review: “The Hour of Newt.” The editors, who have been extremely critical of Gingrich for weeks, waved conservatives off the Gingrich bandwagon. “Gingrich backers say that he is inspiring. What he mostly seems to inspire is opposition.”

• Ann Coulter, the conservative columnist writing on her self-titled website, warns: “Re-elect Obama, Vote Newt!” She, too, gets Drudge promotion, with a column punctuated with this punch: “Hotheaded arrogance is neither conservative nor attractive to voters.”

]]> http://gestetnerupdates.com/2012/01/26/conservatives-drop-bomb-on-newt/feed/ 0 http://gestetnerupdates.com/2012/01/26/russian-speaking-jews-launch-group-in-iran-fight/ http://gestetnerupdates.com/2012/01/26/russian-speaking-jews-launch-group-in-iran-fight/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:13:11 +0000 Yossi Gestetner http://gestetnerupdates.com/?p=7232 Read more »

Shays, 66, chose the Old  State House in Hartford, an 18th-century landmark just a few blocks from  where he served in the General  Assembly, for a belated campaign kickoff event that drew a mix of Republican  leaders and former aides.

A casualty of the 2008 election who represented the 4th Congressional  District for 21 years before losing his home city of Bridgeport, Shays touted  himself as an independent-minded public servant who is willing to put his  principles ahead of his party to balance the federal budget, create a national  energy policy and build consensus in a town known for  partisan gridlock.

“The madness in Washington cannot continue,” Shays said. “Washington is  broken, the Senate isn’t working. Nothing is getting done.”

Star Ledger Reports: Betty Lou DeCroce was elected tonight to serve the 26th district in the New Jersey Assembly.

DeCroce, the widow of former minority leader Alex DeCroce, must now resign her post at the state Department of Community Affairs.

She ran for her late husband’s seat against Larry Casha, a former Kinnelon councilman.

AP Via the Blaze: A government watchdog says U.S. taxpayers are still owed $132.9 billion that companies haven’t repaid from the financial bailout, and some of that will never be recovered.

The bailout launched at the height of the financial crisis in September 2008 will continue to exist for years, says a report issued Thursday by Christy Romero, the acting special inspector general for the $700 billion bailout. Some bailout programs, such as the effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure by reducing mortgage payments, will last as late as 2017, costing the government an additional $51 billion or so.

The gyrating stock market has slowed the Treasury Department’s efforts to sell off its stakes in 458 bailed-out companies, the report says. They include insurer American International Group Inc., General Motors Co. and Ally Financial Inc.

If Treasury plans to sell its stock in the three companies at or above the price where taxpayers would break even on their investment — $28.73 a share for AIG, $53.98 for GM — it may take a long time for the market to rebound to that level, the report says. AIG’s shares closed Wednesday at $25.31, while GM ended at $24.92. Ally isn’t publicly traded.

More than 500 Jewish Republicans have signed up to hear Newt Gingrich Friday in Delray Beach, Fla., as they seek to make up their minds ahead of Tuesday’s Florida Republican presidential primary.

“This is our coming out,” said Sid Dinerstein, chairman of the West Palm Beach Republican Party. “We’ve never had 500 of us in the same place. We are getting noisy and don’t care so much anymore that the liberals won’t be our friends unless we sell out our grandchildren and Israel.”

Dinerstein declined to say whom he is supporting in Tuesday’s election, except to say: “So long as the next president is not Ron Paul or Barack Obama, Israel will be the winner.”

He said Ron Paul is in the state to take part in televised debates but little else because he has little chance of winning. Florida is the only state in the nation in which the winner walks off with all of the state’s 50 delegates; the other states award delegates proportionately based on their primary vote.

The report by the institute founded by nuclear expert David Albright offered a more temperate view of Iran’s nuclear program than some of the heated rhetoric that has surfaced since the United States and its allies stepped up sanctions on Tehran.

“Iran is unlikely to decide to dash toward making nuclear weapons as long as its uranium enrichment capability remains as limited as it is today,” the report said.

Politico: Egyptian authorities are barring several U.S. citizens — including Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s son — from leaving the country after Egyptian government forcesraided the offices of Washington-backed groups monitoring recent parliamentary elections there.

Sam LaHood is director of the Egyptian program for the International Republican Institute, a nongovernmental organization with close ties to GOP congressional leadership. He attempted to board an airplane in Cairo on Saturday to leave the country but was told he was on a “no-fly list” and was refused permission to depart.

These Americans now find themselves caught in a power struggle between the United States and Egyptian governments over the country’s future direction. Direct intervention by President Barack Obama and other top administration officials has failed to resolve the NGO dispute, although U.S. officials are hopeful it can be defused soon.

The no-fly order for Americans is a new wrinkle — and ups the ante politically.

Here are some numbers:

The equity indexes on Wall Street (Dow, NASDAQ, S&P 500) are up approximately twenty percent since March 23, 2010, the day Health Care Reform was signed. However, the stock price from United Health Group is up more than fifty percent since the signing almost two year ago, while shares of Humana are up more than eighty percent since then, and shares of Aetna and Cigna are up approximately 25% in the same time.

More striking about all these numbers is that in the 22 months leading up to ObamaCare signing, the three main indexes and the above stocks were are all down with similar percentage points. This indicates that the strong turn around in health care stocks versus the overall equity markets is likely related to benefits that Health Care companies have due to ObamaCare.

Well-Point is the only one of the top five health care firms whose stock gained less than the three main equity indexes since the health care signing. However, if you invested money in Well-Point the day GM came back to the market in mid-November 2010, you would be looking at a 25% Well Point gain, while you would be down by 25% if you bought share in the “successfully” bailed out GM.