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Jewish Journal

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April 7, 2015

Book alleges Nazi collaborator betrayed Anne Frank’s family

Leave a Comment / Culture /

A Dutch author published a book alleging that his aunt may have told Nazi authorities where to find Anne Frank and her family.

The allegation appeared in a biography that was published Tuesday about the Dutch resistance activist Elisabeth “Bep” Voskuijl.

The book, coauthored by Voskuijl’s son and the Flemish journalist Jeroen De Bruyn, explores the possibility that one of Elisabeth Voskuijl’s sisters, Nelly, was a Nazi collaborationist who may have revealed the whereabouts of the hideout where her sister was helping the Franks hide.

Elisabeth Voskuijl was a typist who worked for Otto Frank, Anne’s father, and helped the resistance fighter Miep Gies care for the Franks during their two years in hiding.

The information about Nelly Voskuijl came from testimonies by another sister, Diny, and Bertus Hulsman, who was Elisabeth Voskuijl’s fiance during the war.

According to the new book, Nelly Voskuijl served as a Nazi collaborator for four years, until she was 23.

“The painful but evident conclusion is that we can add her to the long list of suspects” in the betrayal of the Franks to the Gestapo, the authors wrote in the Dutch-language book titled “Bep Voskuijl, Silence No More.”

The identity of the person who gave up the Franks has remained a mystery that prompted much speculation after the 1947 publication of Anne Frank’s wartime diary, which she wrote among other works during her two years in hiding in Amsterdam.

An international best-seller, the diary made her one of the world’s best-known Holocaust victims.

Elisabeth Voskuijl died in 1983 at the age of 63 from kidney disease. Though she generally declined to give interviews about her time in the resistance, she remained in contact with Otto Frank – the only member of the family to have survived the Holocaust – after the war. Nelly Voskuijl died in 2001.

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“White Privilege” and the New Rhetoric of Anti-Semitism

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

Today’s presidential announcement by Rand Paul—a polarizing figure because of his father’s track record of anti-Semitism and his own record of Mideast Isolationism (which he is trying to live down)—brought out from the wood work the usual Israel and Jew haters. The Internet teems with it, but there are of course limits about what can be said on network or cable television.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball pushed the edge of the envelope by lauding (Rand) Paul for “having the guts to take on” the “neo-cons and the piggish money behind them right now.” Of course to Matthews, support for Israel is the crux of sin of “neo-cons”guilty  of “running right-wing ads on our network. They’re front groups — they’re hawkish, right-wing front groups.” What about “piggish money”? Matthews tries to immunize himself  from the embarrassing implication of his choice of words by saying that “piggish money is the terms we used in the 1960s for hawks.” Does Matthews know that “Hoggenheimer” was once a favorite stage name for cruelly satirizing Jewish characters? Of course, everybody knows what Matthews really means to do: smear Jews whose politics he doesn’t like without using the word “Jew.”

Then there’s Phoebe Maltz Bovy in a piece in the New Republic entitled, “The Holocaust Doesn’t Discount Jewish White Privilege Today?” (the question mark was added as an afterthought) that berates Taffy Brodesser-Akner, writing in the Tablet, for defending Holocaust survivors and their families against charges that they are guilty of “white privilege.” According to Bovy—who condemns conservative Jews for allegedly using Holocaust guilt to protect Benjamin Netanyahu: “It’s entirely possible for a Jew whose relatives were killed in the Holocaust to benefit from certain aspects of (for lack of a better term) white privilege. That the Nazis wouldn’t have considered you white doesn’t mean that store clerks, taxi drivers, prospective employers, and others in the contemporary United States won’t accord you the unearned advantages white people, Jewish and otherwise, enjoy. That your ancestors were victims of genocide in a different place and at a different time doesn’t mean you can’t be part of the victimizing caste in your own society, any more than having had impoverished forbears means that you can’t have been born into money. (Not, to be clear, that all Jews are!)”

To some degree, this argument is a sociological truism that doesn’t get us very far. Of course, contemporary Jews who never experienced the poverty of Clifford Odets’ characters during the 1930s are in a “privileged” position vis-à-vis African Americans or at least those still enmired in the underclass. But it doesn’t apply very well, at least in terms of my experience, to the Survivor families. Maybe my own experience is atypical (and I admit there are some prominent exceptions), but Holocaust survivors I know arrived in the U.S. with nothing or nearly nothing and without the benefits of extended family networks (their extended families were extinct) or good American connections. Their children, too, grew up in families of modest means before their parents made it, to a lesser or greater degree. Today may be another matter, but their family chronicles are of the “rags to riches” variety rather than that of members of a “victimizing caste.”

Historically—that is going further back—the white privilege argument has been used to argue that American Jews have always enjoyed an unfair advantage over African Americans. I know this because my down Ph.D. thesis, a “deep history” of Black-Jewish relations before 1900, has sometimes been cited to show how “white privilege” benefited successive waves of Jewish immigrants compared to the African Americans, slave and free, who were already here. I don’t use the term “white privilege,” and still prefer to use the straight out term “racism” against African Americans for the accumulation of socio-economic and ethnic privilege that disadvantaged blacks compared to whites including Jews (though there were heated debates up through the 1920s about whether Jews were “really white”). But I don’t want to quibble over terminology.

My problem is not with an application of “the white privilege” argument to Black-Jewish relations, provided it is applied intelligently, with nuance, and with a recognition that, from the Civil War until after World War II, anti-Semitism was more than a literary phenomenon: it was a real force limiting Jewish life chances in the U.S. My real problem is the recent phenomenon of the heavy-handed use of the “white privilege” bludgeon as another way to shame into silence American Jewish defenders of Israel on implicit grounds that they are guilty of “privilege” here at home—and should therefore shut up when Israelis are at risk of another genocide.

“White Privilege” and the New Rhetoric of Anti-Semitism Read More »

Judge tosses woman’s lawsuit alleging forced sex with Dershowitz, Prince Andrew

Leave a Comment / United States /

A federal judge tossed out a woman’s lawsuit claiming that she had forced sex with high-profile men, including Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew.

The woman, referred to as Jane Doe #3 in a lawsuit charging preferential treatment for Jeffrey Epstein in granting the billionaire financier a plea deal for state prostitution charges rather than federal prosecution, alleged that she worked as a sex slave for Epstein from the time she was 15. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to two Florida state solicitation-of-prostitution charges.

Dershowitz, who had helped defend Epstein against the prostitution charges, has vehemently denied the claims and has shown he was not in the places where the acts were said to have taken place.

District Court Judge Kenneth Marra on Tuesday appeared to be sympathetic to Dershowitz’s claims, Politico reported, but did not rely on his denials.

“The factual details regarding with whom and where the Jane Does engaged in sexual activities are immaterial and impertinent to this central claim … especially considering that these details involve non-parties who are not related to the respondent Government. These unnecessary details shall be stricken,” Marra wrote in his decision.

Dershowitz told Politico that the ruling in West Palm Beach, Fla., was a “complete legal vindication.”

The judge also rejected Dershowitz’s request to sanction the lawyers who filed the motion, who he had threatened to have disbarred.

Judge tosses woman’s lawsuit alleging forced sex with Dershowitz, Prince Andrew Read More »

The Duggar family now includes an ‘Israel’

Leave a Comment / Hollywood /

It’s no secret that non-Jews are into Jewish names.

Sarah Palin named her dog Hadassah. Gwyneth Paltrow (that perennially “almost” Jewish actress) and Chris Martin named their son Moses. In recent years, the name Cohen has become a popular first name amongst non-Jews.

So it might not come as a surprise to some that Jill Duggar – one of the 19 kids from “19 Kids and Counting” fame – and her husband Derick Dillard have named their first child Israel David.

“Love this sweet baby Israel!” the Duggar family exclaimed on its official Facebook page.

However, the reason why Dillard is wearing an Israel Defense Forces T-shirt in an Instagram photo with young Israel is less obvious.

The Duggars – all 19 children and two parents – devoutly follow the rules of the Christian Patriarchy, a sect that is seen as controversial even in some right-wing Christian circles. This movement stresses a strict familial hierarchy (with the husband/father on top) and a rigid value system. That means no higher education for women and no dating or watching anything remotely unwholesome on TV.

There isn’t anything overtly Jewish (or Zionist, for that matter) about Derick Dillard, who is currently a tax accountant for Walmart. He went to Oklahoma State University and spent two years in Nepal before marrying Jill, the fourth-oldest Duggar child, in June of last year.

Perhaps the Dillards are just trying to buck the family trend of giving everyone a name that starts with the letter “J.”

The Duggar family now includes an ‘Israel’ Read More »

Banking boldly through Jewish ethics

Leave a Comment / Culture /

Banc of California, one of the fastest-growing banks in the United States, has a rock-solid name that makes it sound like it’s been around for a century or more.

In fact, the brainchild of Chad Brownstein and his business partner, Steven Sugarman, was only formed in 2010, in the midst of the Great Recession. 

“The name Banc of California presented itself as an opportunity. Steve came up with the concept, and it has worked out as being probably the best brand you could have in the region, because everyone says they know Banc of California, whether they knew it or didn’t …” said Brownstein, 42, the company’s co-founder and vice chairman, at the start of an interview with the Journal in his Beverly Hills offices. Sugarman, 39, serves as president and chief executive officer, and joined the interview via conference call.  

In 2008, as the economy spiraled downward, Brownstein was running the Special Situations Funds group at the investment management firm Trust Company of the West (TCW), and Sugarman had recently founded COR Capital, a private investment firm. Both are members of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, and had known each other for years but had not previously worked together. They began discussing the possibility of collaborating on a new venture. At the same time, community banks were beginning to fail across the country. Between 2008 and 2011, more than 400 banks went under, including many in Southern California: California National Bank in Los Angeles, Alliance Bank in Culver City, First Federal Bank of California in Santa Monica and many others. This created a dearth of lending for small businesses in the state.

“The world was imploding,” Brownstein said. “We said, ‘Well, how do we get our heads straight and try to create some value out of everyone being so scared of the market?’ ” 

They decided to try to consolidate some of Southern California’s thrifts and small banks. So in 2010, Sugarman and Brownstein led TCW and a few other investors in a $60 million recapitalization of First PacTrust Bancorp. Sugarman became the CEO in 2012, and in 2013 they re-launched their holdings, which by this time included a few other local community banks, under the banner Banc of California. 

Since 2010, Banc of California’s growth has been staggering. Sugarman has led the team through six acquisitions, pushing their assets from under $1 billion in 2010 to over $6 billion today. They now have 40 full-service branches in Southern California, and more than 100 banking and lending locations across the state. They have about 100,000 account holders, and estimate they will fund more than $7 billion in loans this year, about $5 billion of which will be to homeowners. Banc of California now has nearly 1,500 employees. 

Brownstein admits many analysts question whether Banc of California can sustain such a head-turning growth rate, but he has a clear answer: No. 

“No one can keep growing at the rate we have,” he said. “The bank will continue to be not only opportunistic but, more importantly, focused on operations.” 

From the start, Sugarman said, their goal has been “building California’s bank” — not just in terms of financial assets, but also by taking a leadership role in communities around the state. 

In 2011, Banco Popular, a Puerto Rico-based bank, changed its name in Southern California to Popular Community Bank, part of a larger effort to reach beyond its Latino base. But it continued to struggle, and in early 2014 Banc of California agreed to purchase its network of Southern California branches. However, the California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC) objected, and requested the Office of the Controller of the Currency, the government regulator in charge of this sort of transaction, deny the sale until Banc of California designed a plan to comply with the Community Reinvestment Act, which is intended to encourage banks to serve historically underserved low- and middle-income communities. In particular, the CRC worried Banc of California would not be a fair partner in the minority communities where Banco Popular had its base, and which typically have low levels of trust in financial institutions. 

With the assistance of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who in July 2013 had become an adviser to Sugarman and the bank’s board of directors, Banc of California worked with the CRC to develop a community benefit plan targeting California’s underserved populations. For example, Banc of California agreed to work toward becoming a Top 10 Small Business Administration (SBA) lender to underserved borrowers in its assessment area, and to increase lending and investments to low- and moderate-income communities, with the goal of making these dealings 20 percent or more of total deposits. As a result, the CRC reversed its position, offering an endorsement of the sale. 

“Banc of California’s Community Benefit Plan sets the standard for the industry and is a testament to Banc’s commitment to serve the needs of … diverse neighborhoods,” CRC Executive Director Paulina Gonzalez said in a September 2014 press release. 

The work they accomplished with the CRC is emblematic of a wider ethos of community respect Brownstein and Sugarman view as essential to their business practice. “We are taking extraordinary steps to be a part of the [Southern California] community,” Brownstein said. 

Brownstein credits Banc of California’s approach to community banking to their Jewish upbringings — Brownstein in Denver and Sugarman in Orange County. “Steven and I have brought the concept of tzedakah to Banc of California,” Brownstein said. “The organization is very active in all different charities, all denominations. … Steven and I — being of Jewish heritage — we understand how important community is.”  

Brownstein especially credits his father, Norman, for instilling in him a sense of societal obligation. Norman Brownstein is one of the founders of the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. Throughout his career, he has donated time and money to many organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish. In addition to being a prominent Democratic fundraiser, he is currently vice president of the national board of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. 

Banc of California has provided assistance in the form of money and employee volunteer hours to a long list of local nonprofits and community organizations, including Jewish Vocational Service of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Conservation Corps and Los Angeles Team Mentoring. It focuses efforts largely on Southern California’s at-risk youth, who are often of Latino, African-American or Asian descent.

In mid-2014, Banc of California announced a partnership with USC Athletics to teach financial literacy to kids. What began as a small event, with 100 at-risk children participating in financial literacy classes, reached new heights in November when 7,000 people from across the Southland, including 5,964 at-risk youth, gathered at  USC’s Galen Center for an educational event hosted by Sugarman and Villaraigosa. The event culminated in a speech by former President Bill Clinton. The bank later announced that the event had broken two Guinness World Records: Biggest Ever Financial Literacy Training and Biggest Ever Financial Literacy Training in One Venue.   

In terms of integrating Banc of California into the communities it serves, “We’ve talked it and walked it, and that differentiates us — but it also obligates us. It obligates us to continue to lead,” Brownstein said. “We, as Jews, are very focused on helping the entire community, and we believe that because of our Jewish heritage it is our obligation to do that.”

Banking boldly through Jewish ethics Read More »

Should We Debate Extremists?

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Culture, First Person, Judaism, Living Well, Mitzvahs and More, More Culture, Personal Voice /

Over thirty years ago now, Rabbi Avi Weiss staged a curious affair. He invited Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz to debate Rabbi Meir Kahane at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale for an all-encompassing disputation about the roles of Jews and Israel. It was, and remains, a fascinating display of contrasts: a liberal law professor and a reactionary politician.  In his opening remarks, Dershowitz responded to those who criticized him for debating Kahane:

I am debating Rabbi Meir Kahane because too few blacks debated and responded to Rev. Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. I am debating Rabbi Kahane because virtually no Arabs are willing to debate Yasser Arafat. I think it is imperative that the world understand not only that the vast majority of Jews repudiate Rabbi Kahane’s views, but also why we repudiate those views.

Dershowitz’s words are still so relevant in today’s cultural climate. In addition to explaining one’s core position, debating extremists can, if done with precision, point out the ugliness of violent extremists. And if one has the courage of one’s conviction, they can truly undermine the inherent repugnance of the extreme view. Douglas Murray, founder of the Centre for Social Cohesion in the United Kingdom, writer for the Spectator, and currently Associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society, is a gay, atheist, and neoconservative defender of Western institutions. He accepted a debate, nevertheless, with a radical Muslim group that supported terrorism, subjecting himself to verbal and physical intimidation. Afterward, he stated that free speech is not an easy process, and that many audiences would be hostile. Yet, Murray believes that some audience members may be affected in a positive way: “Even if it is just one member of the audience who is receptive to the anti-totalitarian possibility it is vital to do this. It is the reason why I debate.” In addition, he noted that debate brings out just how violent extremists are:

Yesterday showed why bringing them out in the open and challenging their ideas is necessary. It reminds the government, the press and British citizens of the true nature of these fundamentalist thugs who are not just going to disappear. Not since Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) have we seen intimidation like this on the streets of London. Like the BUF, they will resort to violence the moment their fascist views are challenged.

The failure to debate, or at least debunk, outrageous positions may be perilous. In 2004, Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry was smeared by the “Swift Boat” campaign that attacked Kerry’s experience as a Vietnam War veteran. Although the campaign was funded by an extremist and had absolutely no validity, Kerry’s reluctance to face down the charges (and most likely his underestimating its effect) hurt his campaign, built a minor annoyance into a major problem, and probably contributed to his defeat.

Looking beyond political debate, scientists also have been frustrated by the persistence of skepticism toward the theory of Evolution (approximately 42 percent today). To some, such as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Natural History Museum, scientists should not debate “belief systems” precisely because they are “not science.” He believes that bringing religion into science class is “undermining what science is and how it works.”

Bill Nye, known to millions as “the Science Guy,” takes a differing approach, and acknowledges a place for religion. In 2014, Nye debated evolution with Kevin Ham, the President and CEO of Answers in Genesis, the organization that operates the Creation Museum in  Kentucky, which shows dinosaurs and humans cohabiting the Earth no longer than 6,000 years ago. To Nye, debate represents a continuing process:

A person hears the arguments or is exposed to the arguments. He or she is not going to change his or her mind immediately. It takes several times through, so I hope this will plant a seed—that it will be a start of people discovering the fundamental idea in all of life science.

To Nye, the denial of evolution is the denial of the scientific method. This repudiation will effect humanity’s “ability to generate energy, to build cars, to fight diseases, to regulate traffic.”

Though difficult, in considering whether to debate extremists, one should consider what can be gained versus what harmful effects might be generated by giving publicity to charismatic fanatics whose spinning of half-truths might be difficult to immediately refute. In those cases, one study has indicated that a debunking strategy might work better.

Engaging with someone of a completely different ideology does not need to be viewed as validating their views. In fact, Jewish law suggests the opposite: “shtika k’hodaah” (silence is like consent). It is not engaging but disengaging that is viewed as validating. If not for persuading others, we are to speak up at least to not appear as agreeing with false contentions and harmful propositions. There is a lot at stake in the marketplace of ideas. One must cultivate the complex sagacity to determine when to ignore faulty marginal ideas and when to openly confront them. It is not an obvious matter with universal principles.

Today, each of us can find ourselves in narrow places of conformity and agreement. Sometimes we must step out of our comfort zone to learn about those who view things differently from us. Even further, there are specific times, we may choose to debate fundamentalists and extremists. It is not an easy decision and one must ensure one’s safety, physical and emotional, in the process. In the famous Biblical story of the Exodus, Moses could have merely waged war and led a slave uprising. But rather, he approached Pharoah and engaged him in the pursuit of justice. He looked evil in the face without flinching or backing down from his own holy convictions. Thus, we have to trust the ability of truth and moral values to triumph over violent extremism if we are to suffuse holiness into our everyday lives.

 

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Executive Director of the Valley Beit Midrash, the Founder & President of Uri L’Tzedek, the Founder and CEO of The Shamayim V’Aretz Institute and the author of seven books on Jewish ethics.  Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America.”

Should We Debate Extremists? Read More »

Some Passover reflections

Leave a Comment / Opinion /
I love Passover. It's one of my very favorite Jewish holidays. For more than 3 score years I have enjoyed the richness of the rituals, the exotic and tasty food, and the story about a struggle for freedom, some would say a never-ending struggle, and I won't argue the point.
 
The ceremonial Haggadah, the book that is the guide through each step of the Seder, is spiritually uplifting, and I have learned something new every year. This year my attention was caught by the dictate to “lean to the left” while dining. While there are both religious and medical reasons this makes sense, I fear that most of my co-religionists in America have taken that directive to heart in their political views, and in their overt disdain for those who hold contrary views.
 
The Jews' role as history's favorite victim needs no recitation here. It is understandable, and I concede even commendable, that Jews seek to protect the underdog. But a measure of political correctness, and political incivility, has crept in and taken over much of our discourse.
 
Like African-Americans, Jews in this country have essentially traded their civic birthright – the right to vote. Like Esau of old who got a mess of potage in return, we have gotten stale political ideas, shrill rhetoric, and a lockstep mentality with the Democratic Party.
 
I like to joke that I grew up thinking that Franklin Roosevelt was my grandfather. His picture was displayed prominently in the center of the family photos on the mantelpiece in our home. While that kind of loyalty was understandable to a generation of immigrants, or immigrants once-removed, during a world wide Depression and a World War, it is not a healthy legacy.
 
Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Today's Democratic Party is a spend-more, affirmative action (for select minorities), weak on defense party, and articulates vocal, disdainful hostility toward ideas which do not conform to these set-in-stone beliefs.
 
Are there exceptions to this generalization? Of course. But writ large, what you see is what you get. And what we've gotten so far is failure after failure, on the world scene and here at home. Maybe we're like the frog in the proverbial pot: we don't see the danger as the heat is gradually turned up, until it's too late and we succumb. I fear that American Jews, despite educational and professional success unmatched elsewhere throughout our history, are suffocating on stale nostrums and closed minds.
 
One case comes immediately to mind: Senator Ted Cruz. Yes, I've heard it all, “He's Joe McCarthy with a Harvard degree. He's a moron, an idiot.”
 
Is he? Alan Dershowitz, who has some street cred in our community, who disagrees with Cruz on most issues, had class enough to point out that Cruz was one of the most brilliant students he ever knew.
 
This isn't about Ted Cruz. It's about us. It's about a mind-set that reflexively belittles the person and dismisses his ideas without an open-minded analysis. Disagree with Cruz on the merits, I'm all for it. Turn him into an unthinking cliché and you lose me. 
 
I admit that I like the middle of the road. Not a good policy when driving, but it's a political philosophy that has served us well, and it mandates the willingness to examine all points of view. Right now the Jewish community (and again, I admit to generalizing) is up in arms about the law recently passéd in Indiana. Me too. I think it went too far.
 
But there is a voice to be heard and considered that says that while it is wrong and should be illegal and in some cases is unconstitutional to discriminate, there is also federal law, recently upheld by the Supreme Court, which seeks to consider legitimately held religious beliefs on the part of those who choose not to participate in certain activities.
 
My hope is that the vibrant Jewish American community will engage on subjects like this in the true tradition of our ancestors. We all have our biases. Some are hidden, even to ourselves. I know that I have contempt for self-hating Jews, and as I re-read what I have written I profoundly hope I have not drifted into that realm.

 
Arnold Haiman is a retired Naval officer and former Deputy General Counsel for USAID. He is currently an adjunct professor at George Washington University.

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Widespread power outages hit White House, Washington area

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, United States /

A power outage hit the White House and much of the Washington area on Tuesday, snarling trains, emptying museums and cutting electricity to government buildings and the U.S. Capitol.

The Justice Department and State Department were also affected, along with the University of Maryland. Power company Pepco Holdings Inc said the outage stemmed from a dip in voltage because of transmission line trouble.

Power was briefly knocked out to the White House, delaying the daily press briefing.

The “power outage (is) affecting many parts of the city, and it affected the White House complex. We were on a backup generator and now we are back on normal power,” a White House spokesman said.

The State Department's daily briefing also was suspended after power was lost. An official at the Department of Homeland Security said in an email, “At this time, there is no indication that this outage is the result of any malicious activity.”

The U.S. Capitol complex operated using a backup generator before power was restored. Power also went out as media tycoon Oprah Winfrey was speaking at a U.S. Postal Service ceremony marking the issuance of a stamp honoring poet Maya Angelou.

Some subway stations in the United States' second-busiest transit system were running on backup power, according to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

The Smithsonian Institution said four museums, including the National Air and Space Museum, had been evacuated.

Pepco said its crews were repairing transmission equipment in Charles County, Maryland, south of Washington. The company's website showed about 1,400 customers without power, with most clustered in the District of Columbia.

The Washington Post quoted a District of Columbia homeland security official as saying an explosion at a plant operated by the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative had caused a power surge that cut electricity to much of the capital area.

The power company did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Its website said about 1,700 customers, most of them southeast of Washington, were without power.

Wallace Loh, president of the University of Maryland, tweeted that power had been cut to the campus and Pepco was working to restore it.

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Blatter hopes to persuade Palestine FA to drop Israel complaint

Leave a Comment / Culture, Is Featured?, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, Sports /

FIFA president Sepp Blatter says he will attempt to persuade the Palestine Football Association to withdraw a bid to get Israel suspended from world football's governing body.

Blatter said he would meet with the association's president Jibril Rajoub in Cairo on Tuesday in an effort to convince him not to place a resolution on a possible Israeli suspension on the agenda for the FIFA Congress in Zurich next month.

“I will try to convince him that such a situation should not occur at FIFA,” Blatter told reporters after attending Tuesday's Confederation of African Football (CAF) Congress.

“A suspension of any member affects badly the whole organisation,” he added.

Palestine accuses Israel of continuing to hamper its football activities, frustrated at restrictions they say Israel imposes on the movement of their athletes between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The Palestinian Football Association also cited curbs Israel places on the import into Palestinian territories of sports equipment and on visits by foreign teams and individuals.

Blatter said he had been mandated to intervene in the dispute by FIFA's executive committee and two years ago established a task force which included himself, the Israeli and Palestinian soccer chiefs and the heads of the European and Asian soccer confederations to examine the Palestinian complaints and to try to resolve them.

Last year he persuaded Rajoub to drop a similar plan for the FIFA Congress in Sao Paulo, ahead of the World Cup in Brazil.

Last month, however, Rajoub said he had lost patience, and called on FIFA to show Israel “the red card.”

Israel cites security concerns for restrictions it imposes in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited self rule, and along the border with the Hamas Islamist-run Gaza Strip.

It says it has eased travel for Palestinian athletes between the two territories, which requires passage via Israel.

In December, Rajoub called on FIFA to sanction Israel after Israeli troops entered the offices of the Palestine Football Association.

An army spokesman said at the time soldiers were seeking a wanted individual and were not targeting the premises because of its links to soccer.

The Palestinian draft resolution calls for Israel's suspension because its actions “inhibit our ability to develop the game”.

It also complains about racist behaviour towards Arab players by some Israeli fans.

The Palestinian Football Association said Israel was violating international law by including five clubs from Jewish settlements in the West Bank in their domestic league.

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99 Problems for POTUS, but a Nuke Aint One

Leave a Comment / Culture /

DJ POTUS (aka President Obama) seamlessly juxtaposes melodically progressive nuclear non-proliferation mantras like “Reset” with authoritarian breakout beats from renowned soprano MC Kim Jung-un, not to mention that world class Mix Master, Tehran’s own Ali ‘Special K’ Khameini.

Yes, POTUS’s ‘Hello I Love You’ Nowruz serenade fell on deaf ears. But, it wasn’t buried by Special K’s “Straight out of Compton” response. Rather, the two seemingly incompatible musical stylings blended effortlessly to create yet another verse for that intoxicatingly whimsical ditty known as ‘International House Party: Mixed in the USA’.

For years now, Special K has been opening for DJ POTUS on the latter’s ‘Cure American Power’ tour, playing to sold out audiences across the Middle East.

In the next few days, the former Choom Gang chieftain is set to officially pass the baton to Special K. All of POTUS’s software, flash drives, cables, controllers and headphones will be handed over to Khameini during an all-night, UN sanctioned, rave.

When the night is over, Club Tehran will have been recognized as the region’s first and only 18-and-over, 5 stage, Muslim mega-club, complete with its own nuclear powered sound system.

Once DJ POTUS has exited left, Special K promises to blow the roof off Club Tehran and hit the region “like a prophet ascending to the heavens.”

Iran’s Supreme Being is already working on a new track, inspired by Nena’s ’99 Luftballoons’.

The media coverage of DJ POTUS has been so overwhelmingly positive that that the talented but predictable DJ Pax Americana suddenly seems old and irrelevant by comparison.

Despite growing stories of bad behavior by Special K and his Munificent Mullahs backing band, the audacity of hope screaming from DJ POTUS’s foreign policy forays continues to captivate the media elite.

Apparently, bleeding hearts and utopian minds find Obama’s progressive tracks as infectious as Disco Biscuits electronica-jam fusion sounds.

Though his days as the Middle East’s super fly MC are coming to a close, DJ POTUS has one more surefire Dubstyle hit to share: ‘Palestinian Statehood 2015′, or “PS15” as it is referred to by European hipster diplomats.

‘PS15′ is set to drop on the Jewish homeland with the heat, integrity, fervor, and sincerity of Milli Vanilli’s ‘Girl You Know It’s True’.

Unfortunately for Obama, Israelis have just awarded PM Benjamin “Baby Face” Netanyahu with an MTV Lifetime Achievement Award. As Netanyahu was accepting his prize, DJ POTUS rushed the stage, grabbed the microphone and told the audience to “respect peace” and that Special K should have won.

The Israeli PM’s closing MTV Awards performance, a mash-up of Jay-Z’s ’99 Problems’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Positively 4th Street’, did not help turn POTUS’s frown upside down.

Only time will tell if Ali ‘Special K’ Khameini can handle the turn tables of regional supremacy as effectively as DJ ‘Pax Americana’.

DJ POTUS is betting the entire Middle East on it.

 

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