Re: Amerika (ni)je (vise) Amerika ?
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In 2001, two U.S. Congressmen, Tom Lantos and Edolphus Towns were "snookered" into defending an Argentine yoga school against alleged "anti-Semitic" elements (about "50 percent of those involved were of the Jewish faith"). Towns introduced a formal resolution condemning "discrimination against youga enthusiasts by the Argentine government. In the resolution he linked bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires six years ago to a long pattern of Argentine anti-Semitism." As Insight on the News notes, however,
"The Congressmen may have been snookered by those accusations of anti-Semitism.
Their lofty resolution failed to mention some of the other 'practices' of the Escuela
de Yoga. According to reports, the learning center, run by a certain Juan
Percowicz, teaches lessons that are 'sui generis,' in that thye involve practices
that most people would call 'sexual freedom.' There have even been some
allegations of child exploitation, which local police were compelled to
investigate. Since its founding in the 1980s, the school has been raided
by the police more than 300 times. Other charges brought against it include
assault and petty larceny." [NICHOLS/SPUN, 12-7-01]
From Israel, in 1998, 19-year old model Linor Abargil was named "Miss World." Seven weeks earlier she had been raped at knife-point by an Israeli travel agent, Shlomo Nour. [USA TODAY, 1-20-99] "The 51st year of the Jewish state," noted the Jewish Advocate, "seems to be shaping up as the Year of the Sexual Assault. Or perhaps, more properly, the year when sexual assault is coming out of the closet. Coming out with a vengeance. In the first six months of 1998, rape was up 22% over the previous year ... Teen rape, child rape, homo-sexual rape, rape in the military, intra-family rape, we run the gamut." [MOTRO, H., p. 10] In 1999, an "expanding" sexual harassment scandal broke out in the Israeli Ministry for Religious Affairs, centering on the division's comptroller, Yehiya Paruz. [SINAI, 1999] That same year, the Los Angeles Times noted that "Long a taboo topic, or dismissed as something women simply had to put up with, sexual harassment in the [Israeli] military is now openly discussed in Israel, thanks to high-profile cases, new rules and a handful of crusading activists. More and more women are coming forward to denounce abuse." [WILKINSON, T., 12-1-99, p. A1]
In 2000, the head of the Defense Ministry's publishing unit, Amnon Tzabari, was charged with sexual harassment for "performing lewd acts on four female workers in his office." This followed disciplinary actions against "long-time ministry spokesman" Dan Weinrich and, in a separate case, the head of the Defense Ministry's media section, Shachar Halevi. "The situation became so bad," noted the Jerusalem Post, "that ministry Director-General Arno Yam gathered all senior officials and warned he was going to uproot the phenomenon." [O'SULLIVAN, A., 9-8-2000] In 2001, a parliamentary aide to Israeli MK (member of Knessset/Parliament) Ayoub Kara publicly accused him or raping her. Ayoub is Prime Minister Sharon's "liason to Israeli Arabs." [JERUSALEM POST, 2-28-01] In 2000, Israel's Transport Minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, "who deputizes for [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak in his absence, suspended himself pending an investigation into accustions that he sexually assaulted a female civil servant." [REEVES, P., 3-8-00] In 2001, the director general of the Israel Journalists' Union, Tuvya Sa'ar, was "arrested on suspicion of having intercourse with a minor and coercing her for sexual favors ... In one instance ... he is suspected of promising the girl an appearance on the TV channel for children because of his connections there." Sa'ar is the former director of Israel TV. [ARBELI, A., 8-15-01] Along these general themes, see also historical Jewish pre-eminence in the international prostition trade, and Jewish dominance of the pornography business (in the Mass Media chapter]
Another ethical in-house controversy in the Jewish organizational community -- in this case, involving environmental morality -- arose in Houston when Charles Hurwitz, a UJA-Federation official, was noted for his role as a majority stockholder in Maxxam, the company that owns Pacific Lumber which environmentalists were fighting for its plans to cut down some of the last remaining old growth Redwood trees on private land in California. As Benjamin Stein notes, "Charles Hurwitz's catastrophic takeover of Pacific Lumber.... resulted in some of the worst environmental atrocities of all time against first-growth redwood trees." [STEIN, B., p. 114]
Hurwitz's Maxxam rules over 110 subsidiaries, including Kaiser Aluminum, McCullough Oil, and Simplicity Patterns. By 1999, Hurwitz had spent $20 million defending himself against two Federal agencies, government lawsuits that charged that "Texas billionaire Charles Hurwitz bought Kaiser Aluminum with money made while illegally driving a savings and loan into bankruptcy." Hurwitz had purchased United Savings of Texas in 1984, "raided it for cash," and then let it fail in "reckless disregard for the law." The failure cost U.S. taxpayers $1.6 billion. [STEELE, K. D., 10-31-99, p. A1]
In 1999, environmentalists created an activist alliance against Maxxam with a steelworker union which had begun a strike against Kaiser. "I don't think there's a corporation anywhere else in the U.S. that's at the epicenter of so many social issues as Maxxam," said steelworker union official David Foster. [BORRESON, S., 1-3-2000]
Then there is David Koch. Koch heads Koch Industries,
"a conglommerate with major oil and gas holdings, [which] is the second-largest
privately-held company in the United States. It is also the recipient of the largest civil
fine ever imposed on a corporation for violating federal environmental laws. During
the 1990s, the company's leaky pipelines were responsible for more than 300 oil spills
in five states ... Last fall, Koch Industries and four employees were indicted on 97
counts of violating federal clean air and hazardous waste laws. Government
prosecutors accuse the company of intentionally releasing fumes from benzene
-- a suspected carcinogen -- into the atmosphere and then lying about it to state
regulators in Texas. If convicted, the company could be fined up to $352 million." [MOTHER JONES, 5-3-01]
Samuel Heyman owns 98% of the giant manufacturing firm GAF. As Mother Jones magazine noted about the company:
"Last year, if the Asbestos Compensation Act had passed Congress, Heyman would
have profited handsomely from his anonymity. The bill -- drafted by a Harvard law
professor hired by GAF -- would have denied or delayed compensation to thousands
of victims of asebestos-related diseases, cost tax-payers as much as $150 million
a year, and provided 'unwarranted benefits to asbestos companies,' according
to the U. S. Justice Department. As a former manufacturer of asbestos-laden
building products, GAF found itself in a crushing legal avalanche.' [MOTHER
JONES, 5-3-01]
Likewise, in the pantheon of prominent Jewish organization leaders, there was the case of (the Jewish) Moment magazine's "donor of the month," Bernie Marcus, for his donation of $15 million to the Atlanta UJA fundraising campaign. Marcus, the CEO of Home Depot, only weeks earlier lost an Oakland jury verdict of $1.6 million in damages against his company for "sexual discrimination and retaliation." A class action lawsuit for $65 million also was settled against Home Depot for sex discrimination. [ARON, M.] "A trustee-for-life of the Atlanta Jewish Federation," notes Mother Jones magazine,
"Marcus says he has integrated Judaic principles into what he likes to call the
'Home Depot family.' For him, helping people understand Judaism is a matter
of marketing. 'I think a lot of it has to do with selling,' he says, 'You've got
to sell the beauties of Judaism." [MOTHER JONES, 5-3-01]
In March 1998, the head of the World Jewish Congress, Edgar Bronfman, also president and CEO of the family-controlled Seagram and Universal Studios, was awarded a conspicuously dubious honor (the Seagram fortune was built to power by the Bronfmans during prohibition, with considerable collusion with Detroit's criminal Jewish Purple Gang who smuggled alcohol over to Windsor). "A bipartisan political group," noted the Financial Times of London,
"launched a new campaign aimed at embarrassing one of the leading
lights of the entertainment business. The first ever "Silver Sewer' award,
in recognition of its 'outrageous contribution to the degradation and
coarsening of our culture and its unswerving dedication to the pursuit
of profit above principle' [was awarded in abstentia to Bronfman]."
[BAKER, G., 3-21-98, p. 2]
Of particular note to the judges was the Bronfman ownership and promotion of the decadent The Jerry Springer [who is Jewish] Show on television and Marilyn Manson, "perhaps the most shocking of the 'shock rock' groups." William Bennett, a former cabinet member in the Reagan and Bush White Houses, decried Seagrams as "the leading perpetrators of cultural rot" in America. [BAKER, G., 3-21-98, p. 2] Seagrams is noteworthy for many dubious honors, including the fact that in 1997 it "started airing TV commercials for its Crown Royal Whiskey in scattered markets across the United States. The commercials broke a voluntary ban on television advertising that the liquor companies had imposed on themselves in 1948." [FINANCIAL TIMES, 4-7-97] [More about the Bronfmans and Springer later]
In 2001, Irv Rubin, head of the Jewish Defense League, and an associate, Earl Krugel, were arrested by the FBI for plotting to bomb the Los Angeles King Fahd Mosque and the office of Arab-American Congressmen Darrell Issa. [DEUTSCH, L., 12-12-01]
In 1997, the United Jewish Appeal went out of its way to shame the Jewish community by awarding its "Humanitarian of the Year" award to (non-Jewish) media mogul Rupert Murdoch at a fund-raising dinner that raised $2.3 million for the organization. Mother Jones magazine wondered about the surreal moral reasoning behind the award: "The media baron is better known to labor and human rights groups for his union-busting and for catering to the Chinese government (in 1994 he yanked the BBC off his Asian satellite network because officials in Beijing were angered by its reporting on Chinese human rights violations)." [MJ, 9/10-97, p. 18]
"By what criteria has the UJA chosen the worldwide robber baron for this years' award over, say, Radovan Karadzic [accused of war crimes in Bosnia], or perhaps Larry Flynt [the pornographer]?" wondered Eric Alterman in the Nation, "... Murdoch was chosen, the UJA says, for his 'longtime support of the security of the state of Israel, his friendship for the Jewish people, and his support of UJA.'" [ALTERMAN, p. 6-7] The Australian-born Murdoch had earlier been honored in 1982 as the "Communications Man of the Year" by the American Jewish Congress. He was presented that award by AJC president Howard Squadron, who was also Murdoch's American lawyer, his guide to visit right-wing politician Ariel Sharon in Israel, and an opinion page writer for Murdoch's New York Post. [GOLDSTEIN, T, p. 69; KIERNAN, T., 1986, p. 262] "The Jewish national cause is one that is extremely important to me, to my family, and to my company," Murdoch told the UJA audience, "... We're also in Israel [Murdoch has investments there] because of my faith in the integrity and worthiness of the Zionist undertaking. I have been accused of being pro-Israel, pro-Zionist, pro-Jewish -- charges to which I plead guilty." [LEON, M., 7-4-97, p. 16]
Matti Golan, a former Israeli government official, calls the massive American Jewish organizational ring to raise money for itself and Israel the "Money Machine." American Jews, notes Golan, have
"created a ruthless, well-oiled machine whose only aim is to collect
money and ... will do anything to do so. Every year [American Jewish
leaders get] a higher quota to meet and ... stop at nothing to meet it.
If you can't meet your quota, you're out. The only gauge of success,
the one bottom line, is how many dollars you've brought in."
[GOLAN, p. 65]
In 1999, Jewish billionaire Henry Samueli was presented an award by a prominent Jewish American organization. As the Los Angeles Times noted this honor,
"The Orange County chapter of the American Jewish Committee will
present him with its National Human Relations Award ... He's happy
to be honored, Samueli said, but he was surprised to find out that a
donation to the Committee was part of the package." [CONWAY, A.,
4-13-99, p. E1]
Even Alan Dershowitz concedes that "Jewish organizations sometimes honor the wealthy without inquiry into the sources of their wealth. We sometimes do not make the effort to see what is plainly before our eyes. We are blinded by the facade of money ... " [DERSHOWITZ, Chutzpah, p. 307]
This worldview, so common in the Jewish community, was heralded as an emulative value for Americans at-large in 1995 by a Jewish professor at the University of Chicago, Daniel Fischel, who espoused it -- not surprisingly -- in his book, Payback: The Conspiracy to Destroy Michael Milken and His Financial Revolution, published prominently by HarperCollins. Fischel's introductory paragraph to begin his defense of Milken's vast corruption machine deserves to be quoted in full, as sum of both his book and a widespread moral vacuousness so much at stake here:
"Why have the 1980s been so uniformly condemned as the 'decade of
greed?' For that matter, what does this disparaging characteristic even
mean? The decade's many critics who pontificate against evils of greed
have seen no need to define the term. Dictionary definitions of greed --
'inordinate desire for wealth' or 'wanting more than one's proper share' --
provide no help but merely restate the question. What is 'inordinate
desire for wealth, or the dividing line between one's 'proper' or
'improper' share? With no answers to these questions, how can we
possibly know when an individual, let alone a whole country, is guilty of
'greed?' And even if we could somehow identify 'greedy' behavior, why
should we care?" [FISCHEL, p. 1]
ceo tekst na: http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/22wallst.htm
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