A great blue heron swept across the rushing water and came to a landing in a reed-lined pool. My son turned to me. \”Actually,\” he said, \”this river is kind of nice.\”\n\nHe was talking about the Los Angeles River.
Judging from his public statements, Assad seems convinced that the Bush administration will not stop at Iraq, and that after a U.S. victory in Baghdad, he could be next on the regime-change agenda.
Therefore, when Assad vilifies the United States and openly aids the Iraqi war effort, he believes he is fighting for his life. In late March, buoyed by what he saw as initial Iraqi success in resisting the U.S.-led invasion, Assad explained the basis of his thinking in a fierce diatribe against Israel and the United States.
The war in Iraq, he told the Lebanese newspaper, As-Safir, was an Israeli-American conspiracy \”designed to redraw the political map of the Middle East.\” In Assad\’s view, the United States would take Iraq\’s oil, and Israel would become the dominant regional power.
When the Jewish actor-comedian wanted to do something to help brighten the lives of Israeli children wounded in suicide bombings, he contacted his friend Stephen Berman, president and COO of JAKKS Pacific toy company.
The collaborative effort resulted in a donation and shipment of more than 500 toys to hospitals in Tel Aviv, each with a personal note from Sandler included. However, while the celebrity\’s name was probably the most recognizable to the children, it was the lesser-acclaimed Berman whose massive donation made the whole thing possible.
National Public Radio (NPR) has mounted a public relations campaign among Jews and Arabs in an effort to avoid being known as National Protest Radio.
At the same moment that the president of NPR was addressing Jewish newspaper editors in Chicago about coverage of the Middle East, the ombudsman for NPR was talking about the very same thing to an Arab group in Washington.
The speeches on June 7 were part of an outreach effort by the nonprofit radio organization to convince its listeners that its reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is both fair and unbiased.
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