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GOPers For Obama Are Against Israel :: Yid With LidRead this article on the community site  The Press is all agog, Republicans for Obama, like organizations like this don't pop up in every presidential election. But Most of Obama's new Republican friends will fit right in with the rest of his crew, people like Robert Malley, Samantha Power, Zbigniew Brzezinski, his new buddies are anti-Israel. I don't understand what it is with this guy, he claims to be a friend of Israel but everyone he attracts is of dubious middle east credentials. This isn't guilt by association...its guilt by mob rule. My friend Ed Lasky picks up the story: Obama's GOP roster share anti-Israel views In any case, he does try to sprinkle a few Republicans about him to burnish his credibility -- which these days needs a lot of burnishing. In any case, there also seems to be a common theme among the Republicans that support Barack Obama: they have anti-Israel views. The New York Sun earlier this year noted that Obama expressed a desire to bring Senators Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar on board should he become President. The Sun editorialized that this was disheartening since these two Senators were known for their problematic attitudes towards the American-Israel relationship. Today, the Obama campaign announced a new group of Republicans who support his candidacy. This morning, former Iowa Republican Congressman Jim Leach, former Rhode Island Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee, and prominent lawyer and former White House intelligence advisor Rita E. Hauser will host a conference call to endorse Senator Barack Obama and announce the formation of Republicans for Obama. Rita Hauser is a fierce critic of Israel; an activist who tours the country promoting anti-Israel views. Again, from the New York Sun:
A professor coming to Columbia University this fall to head up a Middle East studies institute has said that killing armed Israelis is legitimate Palestinian "resistance" to occupation. The money Columbia is using to pay the professor comes in part from Rita Hauser, a high-profile New York philanthropist whose former law firm was a registered agent of the Palestinian Authority. Also contributing was a foundation with close ties to Saudi Arabia. Rashid Khalidi, a professor of history and Near Eastern languages and civilizations and director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago, is set to move to Columbia University this fall, where he will teach as the Edward Said professor of Middle Eastern studies, a new - and supposedly anonymously funded - position at the school. He will also direct the school's Middle East Institute. Professor Khalidi is a close friend of Barack Obama from their days together in Chicago. Their families socialized; as a director of the Woods Foundation, Barack Obama granted money to Khalidi's wife's anti-Israel group. Khalidi was one of the allies of Palestinians who saw a friend in Barack Obama, as the Los Angeles Times wrote in a trailblazing article earlier this year . Obama credited Khalidi with influencing his own views. There is more. Hauser is the Chairwoman of the Advisory Board of the International Crisis Group. This is the Soros-funded group which was praised by Soros at a ceremony during which they gave him a Founders Award for their work on the Palestinian question. The International Crisis Group seems to be a congenial environment for anti-Israel foreign policy experts. These include experts who are close to Barack Obama: Robert Malley, Samantha Power, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Now we can add Rita Hauser. Update -- Patrick Casey reminds us Chafee already quit the GOP: Chafee quit the Republican Party in 2007, as this story in the 9/16/07 Providence Journal tells us: Chafee quietly quits the GOP Pretty cowardly thing to do, especially since it came just a few months after the Republican Party spent millions supporting him in his re-election effort. I've always thought that with his disaffiliation, he essentially admitted that he stole that money from the national GOP. I wonder when he's planning to return it? I guess it's possible that Chafee joined the GOP again, but I can't find it. Even the Watson Institute at Brown (where Chafee teaches) still has a story up applauding Chafee's move.
Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list.Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com • Email to a friend • Related • Why Immigrant Lawyers in Israel Must Watch TV :: JobMob - All Together Now to get jobs and get jobs done in Israel.Read this article on the community site One year after his 3 Job Myths for Immigrant Lawyers in Israel, Yehuda gives more insight to life in the Israeli lawyer's workplace. Daniel Pipes-The West's Islamist Infiltrators :: Yid With LidRead this article on the community site
 Nada Nadim Prouty pleaded guilty to multiple charges. Nada Nadim Prouty, a Lebanese immigrant who worked for both the FBI and CIA, pleaded guilty to charges of: fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship; accessing a federal computer system to unlawfully query information about her relatives and the terrorist organization Hizballah; and engaging in conspiracy to defraud the United States. Waheeda Tehseen, a Pakistani immigrant who filled a sensitive toxicologist position with the Environmental Protection Agency, pleaded guilty to fraud and was deported. WorldNetDaily.com explains that "investigators suspect espionage is probable, as she produced highly sensitive health-hazard documents for toxic compounds and chemical pesticides. Tehseen also was an expert in parasitology as it relates to public water systems." Weiss Rasool, 31, a Fairfax County police sergeant and Afghan immigrant, pleaded guilty for checking police databases without authorization, thereby jeopardizing at least one federal terrorism investigation. Nadire P. Zenelaj, 32, a 911 emergency operator of Albanian origins, was charged with 232 felony counts of computer trespass for illegally searching New York State databases, including at least one person on the FBI's terrorist watch list. Three other cases are less clear. The Transportation Security Administration fired Bassam Khalaf, 21, a Texan of Christian Palestinian origins, as an airport baggage screener because lyrics on his music CD, Terror Alert, applaud the 9/11 attacks. FBI Special Agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz "showed a pattern of pro-Islamist behavior," according to author Paul Sperry, that may have helped acquit Sami Al-Arian of terrorism charges. The Pentagon cleared Hesham Islam, an Egyptian immigrant, former U.S. Navy commander, and special assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, but major questions remain about his biography and his outlook. Other Western countries too – Australia, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom – have been subject to infiltration efforts. (For details, see my weblog entry, "Islamists Penetrate Western Security.") This record prompts one to wonder what catastrophe must occur before government agencies, some of which have banished the words "Islam" and "jihad," seriously confront their internal threat? Westerners are indebted to Muslim agents like Fred Ghussin and "Kamil Pasha" who have been critical to fighting terrorism. That said, I stand by my 2003 statement that "There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism."
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org), director of the Middle East Forum, is the Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University during the spring semester. Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list.Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com • Email to a friend • Related • Highlights of My Washington Trip :: A Mother in IsraelRead this article on the community site The nevertheless entertaining Tisha B'Av edition of Haveil Haveilim can be found over at Simply Jews.We finally arrived in Washington. Usually, by the time I arrive at my sister's house with my small children, the last thing I want to do is get on another plane. But I decided to be brave, and flying the day after arrival was even braver. Below are some highlights.One day we visited museums • Email to a friend • Related • Hamas' Jihadi TV summer vacation programming :: Israel MatzavRead this article on the community site I'm sure that the television networks where you are have special programming for the kiddies during their summer vacation. So does Hamas' Jihadi TV network. Here's a sample.Let's go to the videotape. • Email to a friend • Related • Is Amazon's Kindle The New iPod? :: DeveloperZenRead this article on the community site
Personally, I want one! I just can't wait for Amazon to release a Wifi version that'll work world wide and will save me delivery costs and time when ordering my books. I'm exactly the kind of person the Kindle appeals to - a techie who reads lots of books (mostly tech too) via Amazon. I find it ridiculous comparing Kindle success to the iPod simply because of one people fact: People don't read anymore! Apparently, I'm not the only one holding this opinion:
By the way, the US is ranked 18 in literacy rate… Just a fact worth mentioning… Haaretz whines over JBlog conference :: Israel MatzavRead this article on the community site Haaretz published an article on Tuesday about the upcoming JBloggers conference. As you may recall, yours truly is sitting on one of the panels. Given that during the 2007 weblog awards, Haaretz chose to cover a leftist Jewish blogger in England and none of the Israeli nominees, it shouldn't surprise anyone that their coverage of the upcoming conference complains that there are too many • Email to a friend • Related • Scaling Web Application - Recommended Readings :: DeveloperZenRead this article on the community site Designing for scale is one of the greatest challenges when building when building web applications for the Internet. The huge scale of the Internet and the amount of potentials users requires applications to be able to handle huge amounts of data and traffic. Today's Internet applications has to be design with large scale in mind:
While the need seems obvious, implementing a working solution seems is not trivial, and so we see a lot of new companies that fail to handle the load (Cuil, Twitter, ….) Joining Nuconomy's ranks recently has opened me to the world of web scalability. And so, I've had to do quite a lot of reading the past couple of weeks. I've compiled a list of the best resources I came across:
Got some more interesting scalability resources to share? feel free to leave a comment… Video: Def. Minister Barak says Israel preparing for war with Syria, Hezbullah :: Israel MatzavRead this article on the community site Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday told IDF soldiers participating in a large scale exercise in the Golan Heights that Israel is closely monitoring the strengthening of Hizbullah and the inability of UN Security Resolution 1701 to prevent the flow of advanced weapons systems from Syria to the Shiite terror organization. The defense minister declared that it is no coincidence that Israel is • Email to a friend • Related • Turkey's abandonment of the West :: DocstalkRead this article on the community site Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST Russia's invasion of Georgia should serve as proof that there are some regimes that simply cannot be considered strategic allies of the West. And as the US and NATO try to assess the wreckage of their attempt to forge a post-Soviet alliance with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, another erstwhile ally is showing that it too, cannot be trusted. On Wednesday, Iran's genocidal, nuclear weapons-seeking leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will arrive in Istanbul for a "working visit" with Turkish leaders. This visit represents a diplomatic triumph for Teheran. Since assuming office three years ago, Ahmadinejad has feverishly pursued diplomatic ties with Western-allied states in an effort to weaken the West's will to take action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Turkey is the first NATO member to welcome him to its territory. According to media reports, during his visit Ahmadinejad is scheduled to meet with President Abdullah Gul and with Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan. On the agenda are Iran's nuclear program and Turkish-Iranian financial ties. Turkey favors advancing both. In recent months, the Turkish government has become one of the most outspoken advocates of Iran's nuclear program. At least publicly, Turkish leaders credulously accept Iran's dubious assertions about the peaceful intent of its nuclear program - which it refuses to fully expose to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors. As for financial ties with Iran, Turkey is working feverishly to expand them. From 2002, when Erdogan's and Gul's Islamic fundamentalist AKP party first assumed leadership of the country through 2007, Turkey's trade with Iran expanded from $1.2 billion to $6.7 billion. In July 2007, Turkey signed a $3.5 billion deal to develop one of Iran's oil fields. Over US objections, Turkey is planning to finalize that deal with Ahmadinejad this week. Trade between the two countries is expanding so quickly that most Turkish businessmen will tell you that Iran is their hottest market. TURKEY'S WARM ties with Iran are matched by its embrace of Iranian satellites and proxies like Syria and Hizbullah. Turkey was the first Western-allied state and NATO member to host Syrian President Bashar Assad on a state visit after Assad's regime assassinated former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. In 2006, Turkey sided with Hizbullah in its war against Israel. It even allowed Iran to transfer weapons to Hizbullah through Turkey. Then there is Turkey's open support for Hamas. After Hamas's victory in the January 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Turkey became the third non-Arab state after Iran and Russia to openly embrace Hamas. Hamas's Syrian-based leader Khaled Mashaal paid an official visit to Ankara where he met with then foreign minister Gul and senior AKP party officials a month after his Iranian-sponsored terror group's electoral victory. The Turkish government's support for Hamas is complemented by its support for al Qaida financiers. In the summer of 2006, Erdogan endorsed his top advisor's donations to senior al Qaida financier Yasin al-Qadi after they were exposed in the Turkish media. And since entering office, Erdogan, Gul and their AKP colleagues have repeatedly accused Israel and the US of committing genocide against Muslims in Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq. While both the US and Israel have voiced their displeasure with Turkey's embrace of their enemies, neither country has taken any steps to either discredit Ankara or to distance themselves from the Turkish government. To the contrary, both Israel and the US continue to praise Turkey as a strategic ally. Both insist that under the AKP, Turkey is demonstrating that it is possible to be Islamic fundamentalist and pro-Western. And both are enabling and indeed encouraging Turkey to act as an intermediary between them and their sworn enemies. In Israel's case, Turkey has been mediating the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's negotiations with Syria. And in the US's case, it appears that Turkey has played a mediation role between Washington and Teheran. On July 17, both US National Security Advisor Steven Hadley and Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mouttaki just happened to be visiting Ankara on the same day. Two days later, US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns met with Iran's nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Geneva. In both cases, it is far from clear that either Israel or the US have benefitted from Turkey's increasingly prominent role in their foreign policy. In fact, in both cases, Israel and the US have weakened their position by allowing Turkey to serve as a mediator between them and their adversaries. IN THE case of Syria, as Assad's recent visit to Teheran showed clearly, Israel's attempt to use negotiations with Syria to pry Damascus away from its strategic alliance with Teheran has failed. To date, the only thing its decision to hold indirect negotiations with Syria in Turkey has done is end Syria's isolation from the West. As for Iran, the Bush administration's decision to allow Turkey to mediate between it and the ayatollahs has arguably emboldened Turkey to move forward with its Iranian oil deal. Beyond that, Turkey's success in convincing the Americans to actively pursue diplomacy with the Iranians paved the way for the US's humiliation in Geneva last month. During that meeting, Jalili made no attempt to reach an agreement with the US and its partners. And by joining the Europeans and the Russians in directly engaging Iran, the US facilitated Russia's announcement last week that it sees no reason to impose additional UN Security Council sanctions against Iran for its failure to agree to temporarily suspend its uranium enrichment activities. Like Russia under Putin, Turkey under Erdogan's leadership has masked its rapid transformation from a flawed but pro-Western democracy under its previous governments into an anti-Western - and in Turkey's case Islamist - regime by paying lip service to the West even as it has taken steps to purge its power structure of pro-Western voices. Just as Putin's popular government has taken brutal action against his political, intellectual and financial foes, so too, Erdogan's popularly elected Islamic fundamentalist regime has worked steadily to discredit, criminalize and intimidate its pro-Western rivals. SINCE TAKING office in 2002, the AKP under Erdogan has taken control over Turkey's bureaucracy. It has weakened women's rights. It has launched brutal campaigns against its foes in the media, taking over opposition television stations and arresting and intimidating anti-Islamic editors and reporters. It has taken over the Turkish secret police and regular police forces. It has stacked the Turkish courts with its loyalists. It has enabled the opening of radical Islamic madrassas. It has penetrated the military and demoralized and intimidated the senior officer corps. It has ignored court judgments against it. Through the police, it has launched a massive wire tapping campaign against its political opponents and has leaked embarrassing transcripts of these tapped phone calls to its loyalist press to humiliate and intimidate its rivals. It has used wiretaps of opposition journalists in police interrogations of their editors. The only remaining secular check on Erdogan's government is Turkey's Constitutional Court. Last week, the court narrowly rejected the court's chief prosecutor's lawsuit calling for the outlawing of the AKP party on the grounds that it is seeking to overthrow Turkey's secular constitutional order. In their ruling, ten out of eleven judges did agree that the AKP is seeking to weaken Turkey's secular identity and ruled that it be denied government funding. In an apparent bid to both distract the public from the court case and to further delegitimize its opponents, the government claims that it uncovered a conspiracy by senior opposition officials, including leading journalists, businessmen and generals, called the Ergenekon plot to overthrow the government. It alleges that most of the terror attacks carried out by Islamic terrorists over the past several years were actually carried out by members of this secularist cabal. Last month the police arrested two retired generals, a prominent industrialist and a respected journalist along with 17 others in its prosecution of the Ergenekon plot. In all of this, of course, Erdogan and his associates are mirroring Putin's actions in Russia since he assumed office in 2000. Like Putin, the AKP replaced a deeply corrupt, unpopular pro-Western government. While Putin has built his popularity on xenophobia and hatred of the West, Erdogan and the AKP have built their popularity on a rejection of secular Turkish nationalism in favor of pan-Islamism and hatred of the US and Israel. And as they have moved their countries away from the West, both Putin and Erdogan have managed to maintain good relations with Washington by going through the motions of supporting its war against terror even as they have both embraced terrorists and their state sponsors. THE LESSON moving forward from all of is not that Israel and the US should turn their backs on Turkey. In an international environment that is increasingly hostile to liberal democracies, there is no reason to cut off ties with hostile regimes just because they are hostile. But at the same time, neither the US nor Israel should delude themselves by thinking that Turkey remains their strategic ally. It is not. And there are consequences to this fact. For the US, beyond ending immediately Turkey's role as an intermediary with Iran, it would make sense to float the notion of removing Turkey from NATO due to its expanding ties with Iran. Just the suggestion of such a move would no doubt have a profound effect on the Turks. Certainly, the US should be reaching out to regime opponents and calling for Erdogan and his associates to end their attempts to repress the anti-Islamic media and secular politicians, businessmen and military commanders. If the US is concerned about inflaming Turkish sentiment against it through such moves it should consider that since Erdogan took power, and as the US has bent over backwards to be nice to him, anti-US sentiment in Turkey has risen steeply. According to a recent Pew international opinion poll, today the Turks are the most anti-American society in the world. For its part, Israel should reassess its willingness to sell sensitive military equipment to Turkey given its close ties to Israel's enemies. It should certainly stop its Turkish-mediated talks with Syria and reject Turkish offers to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians. Like Russia, Turkey's anti-Western regime is promoting itself to the West by pretending not to be anti-Western. And as was the case with Russia up until it decided to invade defenseless Georgia over the weekend, the US and its allies have been willing to endanger their strategic interests to believe this lie. It can only be hoped that the West will abandon this policy before it inadvertently paves the way for a new Iranian-allied axis of evil populated by the likes of Russia, Turkey and Pakistan. All of these governments owe much of their power to the West's willingness to believe that their anti-Western regimes could be trusted as strategic allies until it was too late. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1218446173678&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull • Email to a friend • Related • The Chinese Milli Vanilli :: Life in IsraelRead this article on the community site I don't get it. What did they need to do this for? • Email to a friend • Related • OLMERT'S RAP SHEET :: DocstalkRead this article on the community site Emanuel A. Winston, Middle East Analyst & Commentator Once again, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his pro-Arab bloc of Kadima adds to his ever-increasing rap sheet of offenses against the Jewish People and the Jewish Nation. (Note! A "rap sheet" is the accumulated record which police keep on file about criminals and their crimes.) As before, it is reported that he has ordered the release of 150 convicted and jailed Muslim Arab Terrorists in order to elevate the prestige of Mahmoud Abbas, the current president of the "Palestinian" Authority. Following that, a later report is that he has approved the transfer of $20 million dollars to the Hamas authorities who took over the Gaza Strip after Sharon and Olmert uprooted 10,000 Jewish men, women and children from Gush Katif/Gaza and it became a Global Terrorist firing base - as predicted by this writer and many others. The $20 million Olmert is gifting to the Hamas is so they will have cash in local banks to pay Hamas workers (read: Terrorists). The propagandists within Olmert's Kadima Arab bloc are saying that Abbas needs these "gestures" to be respected by his own "Palestinians" and, presumably to keep his seat. Twisted logic, to be sure, but, it fits the profile of Olmert and his current mentor C. Rice. Never have the Arab Muslim Terrorists had a better friend than Olmert and his collaborators. It has long been known that released Terrorists have returned to their grisly task of killing and maiming Jews. Why have the Israeli people allowed themselves to become experimental guinea pigs - as happened before - under Hitler, with Eichmann and Mengele. Why have not the Israeli Supreme Court, the Shabak, the Mossad, the Police made Olmert to share the pain and the same fate he has inflicted on the Jewish people? Why has Olmert been allowed to live...in luxury and virtually untouched by the Terrorism his actions nurture? Do we Jews have some sort of obligation to commit national suicide because a Nero was voted into power? Let us make a new contract with Olmert and his Leftist thugs to the effect that, if even one Jew is murdered by one of Olmert's released Terrorists, that Olmert will accept summary execution or will himself commit "Sepaku" (in Japanese: ritual suicide) for his offence. I suspect that IF Olmert's Cabinet and his greedy supporters in the Knesset were faced with such a requirement, they would scurry from their offices like roaches when the light is turned on. There is little doubt that Olmert and his pro-Arab bloc are thieves and without morals. They are plotting every trick to stay in office to do the bidding of the "lame-duck" administration of President Bush and Secretary Rice in re-partitioning the Jewish homeland. Releasing savage Terrorists to prey upon the Israeli people is only one fragment of their betrayal and treason against the people and the nation. Clearly, the government should be made to fall, immediately, rather than go along with Olmert's extended time-table to keep his position, with Kadima in power, from September to next February or March. Not one of his collaborators should ever again be allowed any position in government. Here I include: Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Tzippi Livni - along with Shas and such other political parties who have made a Faustian bargain with the devil for the money they received. Can you imagine if Olmert and his present gang of miscreants were in power when the Entebbe hostage take-over occurred? Surely, Olmert would have begged the Palestinians and Idi Amin to have mercy. Surely, he would have offered bribe money. Surely he would have offered to release Terrorist prisoners. Surely he would have pleaded with the U.S. State Department to intercede with their Arab friends. I wonder how many of the Entebbe hostages would now be dead under the totally inept and corrupt guidance of Ehud Olmert and his sniveling Cabinet. Those times of heroic and strategically brilliant warriors have faded away under the current doctrine of appeasement and failure of foreign policy by the Leftist political parties and the Leftist Media. Under Olmert and his crowd of Peres-ites, they have surrendered the proud Jewish nation's sovereignty and security - as well as our Holy Jewish Places, Land and Lives. Thanks Dr.Salem • Email to a friend • Related • Israel Gains An Apple Store (Plus Is An iPhone On The Way?) :: IsraGoodRead this article on the community site (Hat Tip: Israelity, Image: iPod Touch from iDigital)After gaining the right to distribute "all things Mac" inside of Israel, it looks as iDigital will have its own store to seel Apple products in the real world (instead of only being able to sell them online).(Jerusalem Post) Israel is set to get its own Apple Store around the beginning of September, according to an Apple rep I spoke to |
Amazon's shares jumped by more than 9% following Citigroup analysts Mark Mahaney predicting its Kindle to become the "iPod of books": [Message Clipped
