Remembering nine men murdered on the Mavi Marmara
1. Farrakhan Dogan - American, 2. Cengiz Okez , 3. Cengiz Sunqur , 4. Vahri Yildiz , 5. Necdet Yildirim , 6. Cetin Topkoogelo , 7. Kovdit Kililar , 8. Ali Heyder Bengi, 9. Ibrahim Bilgen
Mogul with sights on the LA Times, which he sees as nauseatingly pro-Palestinian
This is a long but rewarding, even riveting, read about one of the world's richest men, who happens to be driven by power and ambition in the world of American and Israeli politics and the media. He is a close friend of the Clintons and the Democratic Party's largest private donor. He has also been negotiating to buy 50% of Al-Jazeera (though that is not mentioned in the article).
The Influencer
An entertainment mogul sets his sights on foreign policy.
Haim Saban, a “former cartoon schlepper,” at home in Beverly Park. A major political donor, his greatest concern is to protect Israel. Photograph by Martin Schoeller.
Saban is not given to modest ambitions. Sixty-five years old, with a broad, dynamic countenance and slicked-down wavy black hair, he is known in Los Angeles as the man who brought the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers from Japan to America; the chairman and part owner of Univision, the nation’s leading Spanish-language media company; a staunch supporter of Israel (he has dual citizenship); and one of the largest individual donors to the Democratic Party. “Haim is a force of nature,” his friend Barry Meyer, the chairman and C.E.O. of Warner Bros., said. As a youth in Israel, Saban attended an agricultural boarding school where, he says, immigrants like his parents sent children they could not afford to feed. When he was expelled for being a troublemaker, he began attending a night school, where the principal told him, “You’re not cut out for academic studies; you’re cut out for making money.” The prediction seemed to come true in 2001, when Rupert Murdoch and Saban sold their joint venture, Fox Family Worldwide, to Michael Eisner, the C.E.O. of Disney: Saban made one and a half billion dollars. It was—and still is, he points out—the biggest cash transaction by an individual in the history of Hollywood. In March, Forbes estimated his net worth at $3.3 billion.
Perhaps Saban’s greatest asset over the years has been his remarkable ability to cultivate, charm, and manipulate people. “Being charming and analytical is quite a combination,” said Shimon Peres, the President of Israel, who has been a close friend of Saban’s for more than twenty years. “Charmers from time to time get lost.” But Saban, he continued, “isn’t floating in the air.” As a way of disguising his shrewdness and his mental agility, Saban is often self-deprecating; he describes himself as a “former cartoon schlepper.” English is one of his six languages, and his adversaries are sometimes disarmed by his linguistic stumbles, but he uses words very skillfully.
Although Saban has lived in the United States for nearly thirty years, he remains deeply connected to Israel. He watches Israeli news shows, via satellite, throughout the day, and is a devout fan of the Ha’gashash Ha’chiver (Pale Pathfinder), a popular Israeli comedy troupe that performed for decades. “He knows every sketch of theirs by heart, and he uses their language very often when he speaks Hebrew,” his friend Dan Gillerman, the former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, said. His hundred-year-old mother and his brother live in Israel, and Saban travels there frequently. Through the years, one of his closest advisers has always been an Israeli and, in business meetings with others on his team, the two would occasionally slip into a side conversation in Hebrew.
He remains keenly interested in the world of business, but he is most proud of his role as political power broker. His greatest concern, he says, is to protect Israel, by strengthening the United States-Israel relationship. At a conference last fall in Israel, Saban described his formula. His “three ways to be influential in American politics,” he said, were: make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets. In 2002, he contributed seven million dollars toward the cost of a new building for the Democratic National Committee—one of the largest known donations ever made to an American political party. That year, he also founded the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, in Washington, D.C. He considered buying The New Republic, but decided it wasn’t for him. He also tried to buy Time and Newsweek, but neither was available. He and his private-equity partners acquired Univision in 2007, and he has made repeated bids for the Los Angeles Times.
By far his most important relationship is with Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 2002, Saban donated five million dollars to Bill Clinton’s Presidential library, and he has given more than five million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. In February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a major policy address at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, co-sponsored by the Saban Center. And last November Bill Clinton was a featured speaker at the Saban Forum, an annual conference attended by many high-level Israeli and U.S. government officials, which was held in Jerusalem. Ynon Kreiz, an Israeli who was the chairman and chief executive of a Saban company and Saban’s closest associate for many years, attended the conference, and when I commented that his former boss appeared to be positively smitten with Bill Clinton, Kreiz replied, grinning broadly, “No! No! I remember once Haim was talking to me on the phone, and he said in Hebrew, without changing his tone so Clinton would have no idea he was speaking about him, ‘The President of the United States, wearing his boxers, is coming down the stairs, and I am going to have to stop talking and go have breakfast with him.’ ”
Read more at www.newyorker.com
I wish I had HIS life . . .
Jaime Silva lives in Lisbon, Portugal, but crosses Europe every August, photographing buildings and cities
. . . like St Petersburg
Berlin
and Dresden
Jane Marie Cleveland in Flickr
Specialties: building details and the colour grey, so neglected in a photographic world inclined to pump up the volume on colour!
Gregoire and friends in abandoned places
Now if Amplify is doing what it promises to do you will see below these few words a do-up of pix of intriguing rooms long since abandoned by all but the dedicated urbex photographer. And below that will be a key with links to each item. And you will see it whether you're in Amplify, Posterous or Tumblr, with a note to Twitter and Facebook as well. Plus, I will see it in Delicious. All sounds marvellous, doesn't it, but Amplify has not delivered on its promises in recent days. Let's see.
Tableau features work of Flickr's JREJ (Gregoire Cachemaille, who lives in Berlin), Mobileohm (Paris) and friends.
Click here to see it large or even at 1225px See key below for individual pix on their Flickr pages
1. Red Room, 2. Theatre, Krampnitz, 3. New Sky Building, 4. Square Room,
5. [ Potters living room ], 6. Welcome to my Nightmare, 7. Der Sessel am Fenster, 8. The Watcher,9. [ abandoned children's home .02 ], 10. executive, 11. nature at work, 12. in my bed, 13. united color of communism, 14. unarmed, 15. royal,
16. Working class luxus suite
Ordinary Americans tracked by Mossad - in America
Talk about "makes you think"! Americans had better wake up to who's running the show, but I fear they won't. This is a truly sinister situation.
Did you know that attending a meeting to organize a bake sale for new band uniforms can put you on a terrorist watch list? You don't have to join a peace group or protest oil drilling to be considered dangerous. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania hired ITRR, the Instititute of Terrorism Research and Response, a Jerusalem based company owned by the Mossad and tied directly to the Israeli Ministry of Defense to track "dissidents" and "activists." In the process, they managed to find the most dangerous terrorist organization of all, the governor's own non-profit organization, one supporting school funding initiatives. From ITTR's website:
"All of the information ITRR's staff creates is sent to its monitoring center in Jerusalem, where it is analyzed"
Governments, states, cities and even rural towns, believing they are participating in a Homeland Security initiative, have contracted with this and other organizations under foreign control, read "Israeli," tracking organizations as diverse as the Tea Party and the Sierra Club. Reports submitted by ITTR showed them spying on nearly every organization they could find, no matter how innocent, patriotic or public minded. Organizations tied to Jewish causes, however, managed, somehow, to slip under the radar.
Read more at sabbah.biz
Israelis determined to silence all dissent, especially from Palestinians
Harsh, unjust, outrageous treatment of a protester who they admit is not violent - but more of the world is watching now and that is what Israel really needs to worry about. Once its ludicrous justifications no longer stick, Jews will be looking at another tragedy in a long history of tragedies - this one brought upon them by no-one but themselves (or at least by their fascist leaders).
Military Prosecution Demands More Than Two Years Imprisonment for Bil’in’s Abdallah Abu Rahmah
The sentencing phase in the trial of Abdallah Abu Rahmah, the coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, began yesterday at the Ofer Military Court. Abu Rahmah was convicted of organizing illegal marches and of incitement last month, but cleared of the violence charges he was indicted for – stone-throwing and a vindictive arms-possession charge for collecting used tear-gas projectiles and displaying them.
The prosecution demanded Abu Rahmah will be sent to prison for a period exceeding two years, saying that as an organizer, a harsh sentence is required to serve as a deterrence not only for Abu Rahmah himself, but to others who may follow in his footsteps as well. This statement by the prosecution affirms the political motivation behind the indictment, and the concern raised by EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, that “the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahma is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a non violent manner.”
Read more at palsolidarity.org
In case "peace" doesn't quite work out
Business as usual between the world's biggest war-mongers who also pretend to be interested in peace.
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Photo by: Associated PressGov't officially approves deal to buy F-35 fighter jets
09/16/2010 19:36Deal worth $3b. will bring 20 of the American made stealth planes to Israel; PMO: The purchase will significantly strengthen Israel's military.
A fifth-generation stealth jet, the F-35 is said to be capable of evading all radars and anti-aircraft missile systems.
Truly gruesome stories
. . . with photos, here - of 11 abandoned hospitals and asylums in the US. One of them - Greystone - was the final home of Woody Guthrie, who developed Huntingdon's disease in later life.
At least one is still inhabited - by squatters.
It wasn’t until Charlie Lord, a young conscientious objector to WWII and a Quaker, was sent as punishment to work as an orderly at Byberry that the outside world was given a glimpse of what life was like there. Lord was appalled at the conditions he saw; most patients were naked and huddled together in barren concrete rooms, defecating on the floor, with no mental stimulation or humane treatment of any sort. Unable to convince reporters of what he saw, Lord snuck a Agfa camera into the hospital and took three roles of 36 exposure film, capturing some unbelievable scenes. One of the first people who saw the images was Eleanor Roosevelt, who vowed to end the horrors at Byberry. Lord’s photos were published in the May 1946 edition of Life magazine and single handedly helped bring about reform to mental health institutions across the country.
Read more at www.nileguide.com
High camp on the streets of New York
The stubbled dude (Seth) combines forces on this blog, Advanced Style, with an older woman (bottom pic) who wears shorts over leggings and yet comments on personal style. Which shows she has a great sense of humour! As does the blog. Not sure about the people they photograph though - they appear to take themselves VERY seriously.
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See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/ajbe





