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Mar 2, 2011

Protesters Block Stairs, Halls In NY Capitol

 


Protesters Block Stairs, Halls In NY Capitol

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- More than 100 protesters chanting opposition to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan to cut program funding for the poor while giving tax breaks to the rich blocked central stairs and hallways in the Capitol for an hour Wednesday afternoon.

State police said they arrested 17 people who would be charged with disorderly conduct, arraigned before a judge and released later Wednesday. Handfuls of demonstrators held long banners across the stairways and escalator leading to Empire State Plaza and to three Capitol corridors.

That forced state workers and visitors to struggle past or step over, sometimes with troopers' help, or seek another route.

Dozens of other protesters streamed around the Capitol lobby carrying signs calling for jobs, housing and higher taxes on the rich. One carried an American flag. They chanted, changing phrases every few minutes.

"Show me what democracy looks like; this is what democracy looks like."

"Hey you millionaire; pay your fair share."

"You say Cuomo; we say hell no."

Protest organizer Wanda Hernandez, a board member from the activist group VOCAL New York, said the group opposes cutting social programs and closing hospitals and schools while letting an income tax surcharge on the wealthiest New Yorkers expire after this year.

Gloria Wilson, a demonstrator from Community Voices Heard, said protesters want Cuomo to stand strong and resist special interests.

In Albany, grassroots protest is big business.

The groups flood Albany on legislative session days, boxed lunches in hand, after fully alerting the media. They can operate on tax-deductible donations, government or pork-barrel grants, some gifts from like-minded unions and charitable or political action groups.

On Wednesday, the effort came in three chartered buses, with those who face the real cuts in services and aid led by full-time staffers who know how to play to the TV cameras to maximize the impact of a couple dozen or 100 protesters and steering reporters to heart-wrenching personal profiles for which they prep their clients.

Wednesday's organizers, for example, alerted all reporters of the planned arrests, giving a 15-minute time frame for the spontaneous events.

Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto declined to comment on the protest.

"Today we are taking over the Capitol," Hernandez told the cheering crowd. She said if they couldn't succeed Wednesday they would return.

Jennifer Flynn, an AIDS activist from Brooklyn, held one end of the banner blocking the stairs. She kept talking even as a trooper took her out in handcuffs. "It's unfair for Gov. Cuomo to target the most vulnerable New Yorkers," she said.

Organizer Sean Barry said a half-dozen community groups were involved. He said they and others will be back.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Thank you and remember: 

Peace is patriotic!

Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023

Call anytime: 917-974-6367

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400 Children to be deported from Israel --- ACT NOW!

 


Middle East Children's Alliance

                                                                                                                              DONATE NOW
Dear Friend,

If you watched the Oscars on Sunday night you may remember the award for best short subject documentary, "Strangers No More."

According to the film's website, it's about "an exceptional school where children from forty-eight different countries and diverse backgrounds come together to learn. Many of the students arrive… fleeing poverty, political adversity and even genocide.  Here, no child is a stranger." (emphasis added)

This Sunday, the State of Israel plans to deport 400 children from the Tel Aviv community of migrant workers and refugees featured in this film.

                                                       Unless we ACT NOW.  All of us.

MECA staff are working around the clock to focus public attention on the threat these children face and bring pressure to bear on Israel to STOP THE DEPORTATION AT ONCE.

I'm asking you to make a special contribution now to place print and online ads in the Los Angeles Times and the English edition of the Israeli paper Haaretz calling on Israel to stop the deportation and grant the children and their families full civil and human rights. 

The ads will be signed by writer and activist Alice Walker, Academy Award winner Debra Chasnoff and other high profile MECA supporters. With a gift of $100 or more, received by noon on Thursday, your name will be published, as well.

When the State of Israel was founded in 1948 it forced 750,000 Palestinians from their land and their homes. Today, Israel is destroying homes, neighborhoods and forcibly removing families from East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and the Negev. Now, 400 children could be deported from Tel Aviv.  

An Academy Award won't stop these children frombeing deported but, toghether, we can.

Many thanks,
Barbara Lubin, Founder and Director

P.S. Please don't wait. We need to raise $22,744 in the next 72 hours and, with your help, I believe we can. Make the most generous contribution you can now to help stop this horrifying threat to 400 children.  Thank you.

More Information:

Israel Planning to Deport Star of Oscar Winning Doc "Strangers No More"

Israel Prepares to Deport Hundreds of Children

Draft text of the ad for the Los Angeles Times

 

 

 

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DONATE ONLINE NOW

Middle East Children's Alliance

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Email: meca@mecaforpeace.org
Phone: 510-548-0542
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Web: www.mecaforpeace.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Middle-East-Childrens-Alliance/145021988865527
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MECAForPeace

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Thank you and remember: 

Peace is patriotic!

Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023

Call anytime: 917-974-6367

E-mail me anything:
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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new essay by petras - roots of arab revolts - see attached - [1 Attachment]

 
[Attachment(s) from James Petras included below]

new essay by petras - roots of arab revolts - see attached - please confirm receipt of essay - jpetras

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Attachment(s) from James Petras

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Re: Does Jimmy Carter Deserve To Be Sued?

 

Me thinks maybe yes.


Anyone who enters into a Faustian bargain should expect certain consequences.

Jimmy Carter, a decent man but a naive fool nonetheless, bargained away the rights of the Palestinian people for the price of a few years of relative peace. Relative for it depends on whose peace. How many years? Jimmy Carter may have been thinking about his own presidential term or possibly terms in office.

He devised an extraordinary, incomprehensible scheme of perpetual multi-billion dollar payments to the devil to allow it the freedom for the commission of boundless mischief and evil from the Sinai to the Tigris (and beyond).

In his foolish naivety, he may have thought he was doing the right thing. He is after all, the man who as Governor of Georgia was outraged at the life sentence meted Lieutenant William C. Calley for the My Lai massacre, one of the greatest mass murderers in modern history, and instituted "American Fighting Man's Day", and asked Georgians to drive for a week with their lights on in protest. The moral outrage was not for the crimes, but for the sentence. (Ultimately Calley received what amounted to a full pardon from Nixon, another man of elastic principles and practical morality).

Jimmy Carter frittered away the opportunity to demand from Israel the complete and unconditional withdrawal of all the occupied territories in exchange for peace even if a guarantee for its security had to be given, which they have managed to wrangle to an absolute degree and at tremendous profit without giving away anything.

But the implacable fiend knows not gratitude. For this ungrateful foe does not want to be reminded of what was done for him yesterday. He only want to know what is to be done for him today.

Now that the wisdom of old age and the luxury of not having to compete for votes have shown him the product of his accomplishment, he has tried to make amends with history by publishing a courageous account of what is plain to lesser mortals. At least he has lent it the prestige of his former office and has made it accessible to many who otherwise would have ignored it. It is this account that has brought the present legal action against him. Not that the civil suit has much of a chance of success (has it?!), but it certainly will cost time and money to defend against. The purpose of the lawsuit is to discourage others who may harbor the unprofitable idea of writing about certain  inconvenient facts. 

Hence the "hassle".

Cheers

Manuel Sotil

==========================================================

 

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 12:35 PM, Michael <RePorterNoteBook@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Does Jimmy Carter Deserve To Be Sued? 
THE JEWISH-AMERICAN MINDSET OF MONA CHAREN SAYS:

"He doesn't deserve censorship. But he does deserve the hassle."

More:


+++



Peace.
Michael Santomauro 
@ 917-974-6367 

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


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The American Jewess Project

 

Here's one we're sorry to see go...

http://jwa.org/research/americanjewess

The American Jewess Project

Introduction: The American Jewess

Published between April 1895 and August 1899, The American Jewess was the first English-language publication directed to American Jewish women. Part of the emergence of new public identities for Jewish women, The American Jewess offered an evocative range of features that included demands for synagogue membership for women; health, household and fashion tips; early expressions of American Zionism; short fiction; and reflections on the propriety of women riding bicycles.

The American Jewess represented the changing aspirations of America's prosperous and acculturated Jewish women. The magazine's title reflected an emerging belief that this group constituted a new entity in Jewish life: women who did not experience the religious and national aspects of their identity as in conflict with each other. Thoroughly American and thoroughly Jewish, the "American Jewess" felt fully at home in her overlapping worlds of American and Jewish culture. The American Jewess magazine set out to explore the challenges and possibilities inherent in this new identity. At its height, the magazine claimed a circulation of 31,000.

In the first issue of The American Jewess, its editor, Rosa Sonneschein, observed that, "Not what has happened, but what is recorded makes history." By giving voice to the aspirations, hopes, and fears of Americanizing Jewish women at the end of the 19th century, Sonneschein ensured that their experience could become part of early 21st–century understandings of both American history and American Jewish history.

The Magazine

cover of <em>The American Jewess</em>

Published mostly as a monthly, 46 issues of The American Jewess appeared over a period of four and a half years. The only issue missing from this online collection is volume 5, issue 3 (June, 1897) – it appears that this issue existed but is not extant in any known collection of The American Jewess. There does not appear to have been an October 1898 issue, but issues were published in November and December of 1898, and January of 1899. In May 1899, after a hiatus of 3 months, the publishers announced that henceforth the magazine would run as a quarterly. The next and last issue of The American Jewess appeared in August 1899.

A list of the specific volumes and issues that appear in this digital collection, along with the libraries that lent the original copies for reproduction is found below under "Volume List and Sources."

The Editor

Rosa Sonneschein, who created, oversaw, and edited volumes 1-7 of The American Jewess, came to the United States from Hungary in the 1860s. After more than twenty years in St. Louis where her husband was a rabbi, Sonneschein left her husband and moved to Chicago where she was able to attend the Jewish Women's Congress held at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. As she later wrote, "then and there we conceived the impression that the time had come to establish a literary organ for The American Jewess, an organ which shall connect the sisters dwelling throughout ... this blessed country, concentrate the work of scattered charitable institutions, and bring them to the notice of the various communities as an imposing and powerful unit."

Rosa Sonneschein

Sonneschein was the first American Jewish woman to offer a strong and consistent critique of gender inequities in worship and synagogue leadership. She demanded that Jewish women "thirsting for the word of God" be allowed to "drink directly from the fountain of Religion." Her written contributions to The American Jewess are also noteworthy for their relatively early advocacy of Zionism by an American Jew.

Deflected by setbacks in both business and health, Sonneschein yielded control to an unidentified group of publishers in the summer of 1898. However, despite the new publishers' assertion that the magazine would benefit from no longer depending on one individual, and Sonneschein's continued contributions as a correspondent, the publication suffered from the loss of Sonneschein's editorial vision and energy. Trying to attune the magazine to topics of general interest to women, the new publishers were unable to revive the magazine's financial fortunes.

Selection

The digitization of The American Jewess represents an extension of the Jewish Women's Archive's (JWA's) efforts to provide users with online access to primary sources in American Jewish women's history. JWA sought to identify an archival collection or published resource that, when posted online, would have the greatest impact in affording expanded access to a significant primary source in Jewish women's history. In consultation with its Academic Advisory Council, JWA chose The American Jewess as a uniquely promising resource in terms of the benefit that online searchable access would afford to a wide variety of scholars and students in American, Jewish, and women's history.

The 1890s brought forth the first sustained discussion by Jewish women about the roles and possibilities for women in American Jewish communities. Sources for this discussion are limited to a few published volumes of conference proceedings and scattered newspaper discussions. The American Jewess was unique in offering such a rich concentration of different female and male perspectives on these issues in a discussion drawn out over 4 ½ years. Given the general limited access that most students have to nineteenth-century American Jewish primary sources and the very small number of resources that contain any written expression by nineteenth-century American Jewish women, the availability of the full text of The American Jewess will grant unprecedented access to a rich source on nineteenth-century Jewish women to a broad audience. Moreover, users will find that The American Jewess affords insight on a wide range of issues that affected the Jewish and general community of this period, ranging from approaches to fashion, healthcare, and leisure, to broad understandings of cultural and racial evolution.

Previous access to The American Jewess has been limited. No one existing library collection comes close to containing a full run of the magazine; an existing microfilm, created by the American Jewish Periodical Center at the Klau Library in Cincinnati, is available in only a limited number of libraries and falls far below current standards for reproduction.

Planning and Preparation

The Jewish Women's Archive is pleased to offer this digitized searchable version of The American Jewess. Financial support was obtained from donors to a fund initiated by Ellen-Deane Cummins in memory of her mother, Faith Breslaw Cummins, and the Jewish Fund for Cultural Preservation, a project of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.

A survey was conducted of existing collections of The American Jewess in U.S. libraries. Most of the issues were located in the collections of the Klau Library at the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, the Brandeis University Libraries, and the Library of Congress. Each library generously agreed to make their issues available for the purposes of digital reproduction. The Jewish Women's Archive filled in remaining gaps in the run of the magazine by purchasing bound issues of the first six volumes that were being de-accessioned by the Kansas City Public Library.

Because the issues assembled come from a variety of sources where they were preserved in different formats, there is some variation in the issues as they are presented here. Many of the issues held by the Klau Library of HUC-JIR were preserved in their original format, including back and front covers and all of the original advertising pages. Most of the other extant copies, at Klau and elsewhere, were preserved in bound volumes often with advertising content missing or bound at the back of the volume, and some with cover pages removed as well. The issues that were chosen for digital reproduction were the most complete version that was available of each issue.

Although it might have been possible to recreate the order of the original pages in each issue, there was enough variation from issue to issue, that it was thought best to reproduce them digitally as they were initially preserved. Thus, in some cases, the issues appear in their full forms, others are missing ad copy, others are also reproduced without their front and back covers. Volume 1, number 6, which comes from the Library of Congress, reproduces the ad copy contained in all the issues in volume 1.

Digitizing and Delivery

Digital reproductions and preservation-level microfilms of The American Jewess were created by OCLC Preservation Resources, in accordance with specifications developed by the University of Michigan's Digital Library Production Service.

Copies of The American Jewess were sent to Preservation Resources by the Jewish Women's Archive, the Brandeis University Libraries, Klau Library of Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, and the Library of Congress (via interlibrary loan). Pages were scanned using a planetary scanner (Zeutschel 7000 A) with 7500-pixel array. Text pages were captured at 600 dpi and saved as 1 bit, G4 compressed TIFF files. Pages with illustrations or line drawings were captured at 400 dpi 8-bit; pages with color were captured at 400 dpi 24-bit. Both grayscale and color images were saved as uncompressed TIFF files. Bound volumes of The American Jewess owned by the Klau Library were disbound for the purpose of scanning; issues from the Brandeis, JWA, and Library of Congress collections were not disbound. Metadata and quality control was provided by JWA.

Once JWA completed its quality control work with Preservation Resources, digital image files were delivered to the participating libraries on CDRs. In addition, each library was provided with archival quality microfilm of the full The American Jewess collection.

The digitized text was converted and encoded by the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service. Bill Hall, OCR operator, Christie Stephenson, head of Digital Conversion Services, and Christina Powell, Coordinator of Encoded Text Services shepherded the project and processed the content at Michigan. Machine-readable text was produced by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) using Prime Recognition. This text was left uncorrected ("dirty OCR") and minimally encoded with the Making of America (MOA) SGML Document Type Definition (DTD) used at the University of Michigan for MOA texts. This DTD is conformant with the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). Texts were encoded according to the recommendations for Level 1 in the TEI In Libraries Guidelines.

The final digitized searchable text of The American Jewess is being hosted on the University of Michigan's Making of America digital library website.

Volume List and Sources

The magazine appeared in eight volumes of differing composition, as follows:

Vol. 1 (April 1895 — September 1895): 1-6

Vol. 2 (October 1895 — September 1896): 1-12

No Volume 3 was published.

Vol. 4 (October 1896 — March 1897): 1-6

Vol. 5 (April 1897 — September 1897): 1-6. 
Note: No copy of volume 5, issue 3 (June 1897) has been located.

Vol. 6 (October 1897 — February 1898): 1-6

Vol. 7 (April 1898 — August 1898): 1-4 
Note: July-August 1898 was published as a double issue.

Vol. 8 (September 1898): 5 
Note: Apparently because of misnumbering, this issue is identified as volume 8, number 5; Volume 8 thus included only one issue.

Vol. 9 (November 1898 — August 1890): 1-5 
Note: There was no October 1898 issue. Issues were published monthly from November 1898 to January 1899, then two quarterly issues, May 1899 and August 1899, were published.

The institutions supplying copies for digitization were:

Brandeis University Libraries:
Vol. 9:1
Vol. 9:3

Jewish Women's Archive:
Vol. 2:2, 2:9, 2:11-12
Vol. 5:1-2, 5:4-6
Note: Issue 2:12 is a combination of Jewish Women's Archive and Klau Library material.

Klau Library, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion:
Vol. 1:1-5
Vol. 2:1, 2:3-8, 2:10, 2:12 
Vol. 4:1-4, 4:6
Vol. 6:1, 6:4-6
Vol. 7:2, 7:4
Vol. 8 :5
Vol. 9:2, 9:4-5
Note: Issue 2:12 is a combination of Jewish Women's Archive and Klau Library material.

Library of Congress:
Vol. 1:6
Vol. 4:5
Vol. 6:2-3
Vol. 7:1, 7:3

Search the The American Jewess.

Riding the Wheel of Health

"Riding the Wheel of Health: The American Jewess's Progressive Perspective on Women's Bicyclingis a paper by Rachel Salston, based in large part on her research using The American Jewess. The Jewish Women's Archive is interested in other papers written based on research using JWA resources. If you have written such a paper, please contact us for information about including your paper on our website.

Follow The American Jewess on Twitter

Read snippets from The American Jewess with links to pages of the magazine on Twitter. Check it all out at Twitter logo www.twitter.com/americanjewess.







--


Thank you and remember: 

Peace is patriotic!

Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023

Call anytime: 917-974-6367

E-mail me anything:
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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Re: Egypt-Israel "peace treaty" brought more war than peace

 

But they miss the point.


The "peace" treaty had nothing to do with peace.
It had all to do with securing Israel's back while it engaged in the ethnic cleansing of its nabe.
Imagine poor Israel having to do their dirty work (we said cleansing) while having to constantly look behind its back. Just not doable.
And, of course, a gentleman such as fits the description of Mubarak could not be expected to render such services pro bono.
Had things not turned out the way they did this last month of February 2011, I have no reason to doubt that Mubarak would have qualified for a Noble Peace Prize, joining the exalted company of Messrs Obama, Peres, Rabin, Kissinger and other peace lovers and movers.
His honoraries for such important services are not known with any degree of exactitude, at least not at this moment, but they are estimated to be in the range of 1 billion to 70 billion US Dollars.
Even the lower part of that range in devalued dollars, still buys lots of toys.

Cheers

Manuel Sotil


On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 12:46 PM, Michael <RePorterNoteBook@gmail.com> wrote:
 

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11816.shtml

Peace.
Michael Santomauro
@ 917-974-6367

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


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Study finds the strongest proof to date that the Jewish camp experience produces positive results in terms of Jewish identity

 

The Jewish Week
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
A new study finds the strongest proof to date that the Jewish camp experience produces positive results in terms of Jewish identity, connection to Israel and adult engagement. Associate Editor Julie Wiener reports.


Excerpt:

When your child grows up, do you want him or her to feel an emotional attachment to Israel, go to synagogue and donate regularly to Jewish causes?



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Thank you and remember: 

Peace is patriotic!

Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023

Call anytime: 917-974-6367

E-mail me anything:
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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Recent Activity:
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