Rahm Emanuel hands are on the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package being sorted out in Congress this week, they belong to Emanuel, the former Illinois House member who is now the White House chief of staff.
But who is Rahm emanuel.Here you go is life,family and career.
Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois to Jewish parents.[4] His father, Benjamin M. Emanuel, a Jerusalem-born pediatrician, was a member of the Irgun.[
BUT WHAT IS IRGUN?
Irgun (Hebrew: ארגון; shorthand for HaIrgun HaTzva'i HaLe'umi BeEretz Yisra'el, הארגון הצבאי הלאומי בארץ ישראל, "National Military Organization in the Land of Israel") was a militantZionist group that operated in Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was established as a militant offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewishparamilitary organization Haganah (Hebrew: "The Defense", ההגנה). For reasons of secrecy, people often referred to the Irgun, during that time, as Haganah Bet (Hebrew: literally "Defense 'B' " or "Second Defense", הגנה ב), or alternatively as Haganah Ha'leumit (ההגנה הלאומית) or Ha'ma'amad (המעמד). In present-day Israel, Irgun is commonly referred to as Etzel (אצ"ל), an acronym of the Hebrew initials.
The Irgun was the armed expression of the nascent ideology of Revisionist Zionism founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky. He expressed this ideology as "every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs and the British; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state".[1]
Irgun was a political predecessor to Israel’s right-wingHerut (or “Freedom”) party, which led to today’s Likud party. Likud has led or been part of most Israeli governments since 1977.
February 12, 2009 at 10:00 am · Filed under journalism
Four former bank chiefs were accused of saying sorry only as a public relations move yesterday, after refusing to admit significant personal errors in the run-up to the near-collapse of RBS and HBOS. Sir Fred Goodwin and Sir Tom McKillop, who ran RBS, alongside Andy Hornby and Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, who ran HBOS, began their appearance before MPs with public apologies for their role in the crisis. However, as they fended off sustained and often blunt questions from all 14 MPs, it was not always clear what they had apologised for, or why they had made the errors to which they had owned up. Lord Stevenson told the Treasury Select Committee that he and Andy Hornby, the former chief executive, were “profoundly sorry” while Sir Tom McKillop, former chairman of RBS, said that he would “echo” the comments.
Sir Fred, previously chief executive of RBS, added: “I apologised in full and I’m happy to do so again.”
However, the four bankers refused to concede significant errors, saying the failure of the money markets was the root of their problems. MPs compared their statements later to the limited apology given by Tony Blair over the Iraq war.
Although Sir Tom conceded that the takeover of ABN Amro by RBS had been the wrong thing to do, he said that the problems had arisen because of the decline in the market rather than internal error.
“We are apologising for what is happening to our business, and the key factor is the collapse of the wholesale money markets,” Lord Stevenson said.
The plethora of apologies brought a sharp intervention from John McFall, the committee chairman, who asked: “What exactly are you apologising for? Are you expressing sympathy because your PR advisers tell you to?”
Throughout the three hour fifteen-minute session, the four denied that their individual decisions directly led to the near-collapse of the two banks, which caused them both to seek state bailouts in October.
At times the four looked uncomfortable, particularly when the questioning got personal, and they were asked whether they got carried away with their own publicity. Yet despite a dogged performance by most members of the committee there were no knockout blows.
Sir Fred and Sir Tom faced accusations of “destroying a great British bank and costing the taxpayer £20 billion” thanks largely to their decision to buy Dutch rival ABN Amro in 2007 at the peak of the market.
The pair admitted the £50 billion takeover was “a bad mistake” and was now virtually worthless.
All four men vigorously defended their actions despite the apologies. Mr Hornby said that while he was “extremely sorry for the turn of events” that led to HBOS’s rescue takeover by Lloyds TSB and the government bail-out, he was “not personally culpable”.
Sir Fred said that it was “just too simple” to blame it all on him.
He denied that RBS had ignored warnings from the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority (FSA), insisting that nobody had expected the scale of the crisis.
Committee members questioned the bank bosses over why they failed to spot – or even ignored – the risks of trading in toxic assets and relied heavily on wholesale money markets.
RBS is expected to have racked up losses of as much as £28 billion in 2008, which would be the biggest loss in British corporate history.
Sir Fred said that he did not receive a bonus last year and that he put every previous bonus into shares in the bank, losing £5 million as a result.
His final salary pension pot is safe, however, while many people with pensions invested in shares of banks have seen their retirement funds devastated, MPs said. The committee heard that Sir Fred earned £1.46 million last year and Mr Hornby was paid a salary of nearly £1 million.
The four found themselves having to admit that they possessed no formal banking qualifications between them but defended their suitability to lead banks. MPs said that it had been a central recommendation of theirs in light of the Northern Rock collapse that senior banking staff should hold a banking qualification, but the former titans of the banking sector were left struggling to say how many of their board directors held such qualifications.
One MP was met with silence when he asked: “This committee thinks that a banking qualification is important. Does any one of you think a banking qualification is important?”
After the hearing Mr McFall said: “They did give an apology and it seemed fulsome, but, as the session went on, I think they were drawing back from that and saying ‘Well, look, there were events outside our control’.
“If you ask me my opinion – yes, they were advised to do it [apologise]. Was there a hint of arrogance still there? Absolutely.”
February 8, 2009 at 3:00 pm · Filed under journalism
Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud have had a good three weeks, with no major slips, with brand new faces and with a good press, while Kadima is bleeding and Labor is disintegrating.
The opinion polls are responding in kind: Likud opened a large, decisive lead of six MKs over Kadima. The right-wing bloc, led by Likud, is also firming up in comparison to previous polls, with 64 MKs versus 56 for the center-left. In effect, the right is much stronger than the center left, since its count also includes 11 MKs from the Arab parties: They will not be asked to join the governing coalition and in the current political climate their only use will be as part of a “preventive bloc” in the Knesset.
These numbers are from a Haaretz-Dialog poll of a representative sample of the Israeli public conducted Tuesday under the supervision of Professor Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University’s statistics department. The main question is whether the significant improvement in the Likud’s showing is temporary, the inevitable result of the parade of new players presented by Netanyahu to the media at the rate of one a week – Benny Begin, Dan Meridor, Assaf Hefet and Moshe Ya’alon – or the start of a genuine trend. Only time will tell.
Just three weeks ago, most of the polls predicted a draw between Kadima and Likud, and a near-draw between the blocs. Now Likud is racing forward and is nearing the results of the 2003 election, when Ariel Sharon, who was very popular at the time, scooped up 38 Knesset seats for his party.
But the achievement (in the opinion polls, for now) of Netanyahu is much greater: He is less popular than Sharon was, more controversial than Sharon was, and today’s Likud is the post-2005 split Likud; Sharon’s Likud of 2003 was whole then, and Kadima was just a twinkle in Haim Ramon’s eye.
Once more it must be noted that we are at the start of the campaign. The gloves are still on, Netanyahu has not yet been worked over by Kadima or by Labor. Things could definitely change. But it’s clear that the mood on the Israeli street is plainly in Likud’s favor. Labor isn’t in the game. It’s battling against Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu for the position of fifth-largest party. Potentially, it could lose additional Knesset seats to the new leftist movement coalescing around Meretz to become Israel’s sixth-largest party, and that is likely to spell the end of the Labor Party. In Tuesday’s poll, Meretz gained two seats over the poll carried out three weeks ago, going from five seats to seven, merely for being talked about and without anything significant happening.
This week, former army chief of staff Lieutenant General (res.) Moshe Ya’alon joined Likud. The poll examined his suitability for the post of defense minister compared to Defense Minister Ehud Barak (Labor) and former defense minister Shaul Mofaz (Kadima). Mofaz and Barak are leading by a nose with just a slight edge to Mofaz and Ya’alon in third place. More could have been expected from Ya’alon: After all, this was his week. The spotlight was on him, Barak is unpopular, and it was also a week of Qassams in Sderot, Ashkelon and the Gaza-border communities. That probably did not help Barak’s numbers any.
The Kremlin’s rule is beginning to look much shakier than at any time since Vladimir Putin came to power, after a series of protests in cities across its vast landmass this weekend by Russians disgruntled about the economy. And as the country starts to feel the effects of the global credit crunch, there are also signs of a growing rift between Prime Minister Putin, and his hand-picked successor as President, Dmitry Medvedev.
In Vladivostok, 2,000 protesters took to the streets, with some carrying banners reading “Kremlin, we are against you”, and other people chanting directly for the removal of Mr Putin. The Pacific port city, seven time zones away from Moscow, has become a focal point for dissent after riot police broke up a march last year over car imports and detained 100 people. Saturday’s demonstration, under the watchful eye of the police, passed off peacefully.
Nearly every major city had a street rally, and though most were low key, the unusual scale of dissatisfaction is likely to worry the authorities. The Russian economy has been hit hard by falling oil prices, many oligarchs have seen billions of pounds wiped off the value of their shares, and ordinary Russians are feeling the pinch as factories struggle to stay afloat and companies lay off employees.
In Moscow, a motley band of communists, anarchists and liberals gathered at several points across the city to protest against Kremlin rule. At one spot, a dozen protesters taped over their mouths with white tape, held up white placards with no slogans, and handed blank white flyers to passers-by. Bemused by such a conceptual approach to protest, the police rounded them up and arrested them anyway, and the organiser got five days in prison.
Mr Putin has made several speeches blaming the economic chaos on America, and says he expects things to improve by the end of the year. State-controlled television is playing down the crisis, and most newspapers are also toeing the Kremlin line, but the internet is a worrying medium for those in charge, and offers a forum for dissenters to exchange ideas. Tiger, an acronym for The Society for Proactive Russian Citizens, is an online community of anti-government activists based across Russia’s 11 time zones. Participants use the online forum to discuss how best to oppose the government. Those involved estimate that about 10,000 people have signed up since last autumn.
“We’re waiting for warmer weather because it’s simply difficult to stay outside for long when it’s minus 20,” said Maria Baranova, a 27-year-old resident of Vladivostok active in the Tiger movement. “But in the spring we plan to mount protests every weekend. Before I got involved I never realised how many people are unhappy. I can’t believe that there are so many people living near me who are politically aware and saying smart things.”
While there are signs that the ripple of anger could turn into a tidal wave, few analysts expect street protests to have any chance of bringing down the government. “There will be more unrest, but it will be localised,” says Dmitry Oreshkin, a political analyst in Moscow. “There is not the organisational structure in place for anything more.”
But, says Mr Oreshkin, the business and political elite, who largely accepted the trade-off of political freedoms for the economic prosperity of the past few years, is becoming disillusioned. “Two or three years ago, we could talk about the ‘Putin Consensus’ among the elites. Now that consensus has broken down. The elites are better informed than the rest of the population, have more to lose, and understand just how bad things are.”
February 8, 2009 at 1:24 pm · Filed under journalism
Imagine working your whole life hard and then,suddenly,all your savings disappear.For many of Bernie Madoff investors that`s the reality.
Robert Chew spoke about his reaction to the suicide of a man who lost over $ 1 Billion in Madoff money scam.
Bernie madoff is accused of running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme,and according to the last news,the number of investors reached 13,000 includind popular names such as the actor Jhon malkovich.
In this interview Robert Chew sais that is just the beginning of the scandal,and maybe the victims are now sitting in expensive cars or living in luxurious houses but,in reality,they have two or three month cash available.
At the same time,he added,they are trying to move forward in a positive way.
February 6, 2009 at 6:34 am · Filed under journalism
Everything started with George W. Bush in Baghdad,it carried on with the chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in London and the last victim is the Israel ambassador Benny Dagan.Obviously we are talking about the shoe throwers victims.
Ambassador Benny Dagan was addressing students at Stockholm University, where he had been invited to speak on the upcoming elections in Israel, when a young woman in the audience hurled a shoe at him, hitting him in the chest.
According to a statement by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) who had members at the scene, the woman, along with a young man, then shouted “Murderers!” and “Intifada!” while pelting Dagan with books and a notepad.
Police arrested a 35-years-old woman and 25-year-old man immediately after the accident.
After firing 4,600 tear-gas canisters in the past week, the Greek police have nearly exhausted their stock. As they seek emergency supplies from Israel and Germany, still the petrol bombs and stones of the protesters rain down, with clashes again outside parliament yesterday.
Bringing together youths in their early twenties struggling to survive amid mass youth unemployment and schoolchildren swotting for highly competitive university exams that may not ultimately help them in a treacherous jobs market, the events of the past week could be called the first credit-crunch riots. There have been smaller-scale sympathy attacks from Moscow to Copenhagen, and economists say countries with similarly high youth unemployment problems such as Spain and Italy should prepare for unrest.
Ostensibly, the trigger for the Greek violence was the police shooting of a 15-year-old boy, Alexis Grigoropoulos. A forensic report leaked to Greek newspapers indicated he was killed by a direct shot, not a ricochet as the policeman’s lawyer had claimed. The first protesters were on the streets of Athens within 90 minutes of Alexis’s death, the start of the most traumatic week Greece has endured for decades. The destructiveness of the daily protests, which left many stores in Athens’s smartest shopping area in ruins and caused an estimated €2bn (£1.79bn) in damage, has stunned Greece and baffled the world. And there was no let-up yesterday, as angry youths shrugged off torrential rain to pelt police with firebombs and stones, block major roads and occupy a private radio station.
February 4, 2009 at 2:10 pm · Filed under journalism
Sure enough, Bush offered Detroit’s big three $17.4 billion (£12 billion) in loans in December, just to get them through to the end of March, when President Obama is expected to fill ‘em up at taxpayers’ expense. Car-loving Germany has advanced €2 billion (£1.8 billion) to its industry, plus a (decidedly un-green) boost to buyers who scrap their cars early.
Just last week France offered up to €6 billion in assistance for Renault and Peugeot-Citroen. Britain’s industry minister Peter Mandelson prepared loans of £2 billion for what is left of Britain’s car industry last month.In Italy Fiat group bought 35% of the Chrysler group shares but at the same time blackmailed the government threatening 60,000 joblosses if the italian government didn`t help the Turin group with public money.
“A billion here, a billion there, soon we’ll be talking about real money,” in the immortal quote attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1969). History shows that however much taxpayers’ money is thrown at loss-making industries, their ultimate destiny is unchanged. With the US car industry alone having lost $65 billion in the last three years, the question remains, what do governments expect to achieve?
More than a fair share
Like a tantrum-prone child, car manufacture has always got more than its fair share of government attention and largesse. When big brother banking got help with problem mortgages, the screams of the car industry demanding its own sweeties got even louder.
After all this was a great opportunity. Needing “only” tens of billions, to supposedly guarantee hundreds of thousands of jobs looks less profligate that the mighty bill for saving the over-fed banks which dragged us to the edge of the abyss.
We want more
The industry wants more, much more. Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Renault and head of the European industry association ACEA wants €40 billion to avoid the loss of as many as 200,000 jobs across Europe. “The industry faces a crisis that is brutal, global and exceptionally large. We can even talk of the Great Depression of 1929,” he told a Paris summit two weeks ago.
The history of the British car industry, half tragedy, half farce, richly illustrates the theme that government cash barely slows the power of market forces. What were seen as political imperatives at the time was with hindsight economic folly. It merely served to insulate rigidities and inefficiencies, bulwark workforce feelings of entitlement and crowd out capital and skilled labour from nascent industries.
Bad memories are made of this: British Leyland
You only have to say the words “British Leyland” to have it all come flooding back. This Frankenstein’s monster was brought to life in 1968, stitched together from almost 100 different motor companies, the living and the dead.
It devoured £3.1 billion in taxpayer subsidies (equal to £11 billion now) over two decades without ever showing signs of health. It had 40 different manufacturing plants and dozens of similar marques and models which competed with each other while undercutting economies of scale. No-one even knew which brands made money, according to Michael Edwardes, who was installed to run the behemoth in 1977.
Austin Morris, Triumph, Rover…all gone now, the game is over
Over the years management improved dramatically, but did not alter the fact of life that Britain wasn’t a big enough market to support a national volume carmaker. In March 2008 Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover, the last mortal remains of a UK industry with a lengthy heritage, to India’s Tata Group for £700 million, having bought it for twice as much and invested £7 billion in it. The timing was great for Ford, but not so for Tata, which is now left holding the baby as demand plunges.
The trouble is that the automotive industry has been financially irresponsible for decades. It has long been obvious that producing 20% more vehicles than the market can absorb even during the good years, that it was going to come a cropper when demand really turned down.
With an annual return on sales of 2%, compared with the 7% that is actually needed for long-term health, there was always going to be a problem. Global car output, as estimated by PwC, was 68.9 million in 2007, fell to 66.2 million last year and is destined to drop to 59.3 million in 2009. It won’t nearly be enough to clear the backlog of unsold vehicles.
Plunging sales
In a typical year US car sales would run at 16 million to 17 million, but are now running at around 10 million a year. This matches the lows of recession-hit 1982, when the US population was also tens of millions lower than it is today.
Cars are more reliable that they used to be, and consumers want to hang on to them for longer. That isn’t surprising when we realise that depreciation, which materialises alarmingly on trade-in, is still the biggest cost of motoring.
In the US, the average age of cars at trade in was five years and two months at the end of 2006. Now it is six years and three months. Add in the difficulties of getting credit and no wonder sales are down.
Car Wars: The Emperor strikes back
In Asia things are a little different. Sales are weak too, and many carmakers are loss-making. Japan does not directly subsidise its car industry, but detractors in Detroit claim that the “artificially low” yen adds up to a $4,000 per vehicle subsidy on each one imported into the US.
They don’t mention, but perhaps should, that the very low interest rates which help keep the yen so low are themselves a source of very cheap capital which western carmakers cannot match.
The real issue here, and the main reason that so many governments have stumped up so much cash is a beggar-my-neighbour policy of trade subsidies. “Europe cannot just look on if someone offers subsidies and market forces are dispensed with,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said of American subsidies in a recent radio interview.
“The future of the auto industry cannot, in the long run, rely on a state subsidy,” she added. If only she heeded those words.
Why no fuss about other job losses?
While millions of jobs have been “offshored” in western banking, insurance and (very quietly) in software in the last decade, it is the travails of the car industry that still tugs at the heart and purse strings of politicians.
Günther Oettinger, premier of the German state of Baden Württemburg, readily helped with a state bail-out of debt-ridden auto component-maker Schaeffler, even though it was owned by a billionaire family, the Financial Times reported.
Earlier he had refused the same help to Merckle, a cement and pharmaceutical firm which had got into difficulties because of the banking crisis.
As both Gutierrez and Merkel both acknowledge, subsidising industries postpones needed adjustments, is unsustainable, and leads to me-too demands.
Naked greed?
Sure enough, America’s pornography industry, which has apparently seen a 20% fall in sales in the last year, in January asked for a $5 billion government subsidy.
Morals aside, it has better prospects than Detroit. It has a dominant global market share, a fabulous export record and was a pioneer of many internet payment technologies which are now widely used.
As Joe Francis, chief executive of Girls Gone Wild, told CNN: “It’s not that we are under the impression that the porn industry needs a bailout but we thought that we would get in line with everyone else.”
In the rush to build the next generation of hybrid or electric cars, a sobering fact confronts both automakers and governments seeking to lower their reliance on foreign oil: almost half of the world’s lithium, the mineral needed to power the vehicles, is found here in Bolivia — a country that may not be willing to surrender it so easily.
Japanese and European companies are busily trying to strike deals to tap the resource, but a nationalist sentiment about the lithium is building quickly in the government of President Evo Morales, an ardent critic of the United States who has already nationalized Bolivia’s oil and natural gas industries.
For now, the government talks of closely controlling the lithium and keeping foreigners at bay. Adding to the pressure, indigenous groups here in the remote salt desert where the mineral lies are pushing for a share in the eventual bounty.
“We know that Bolivia can become the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” said Francisco Quisbert, 64, the leader of Frutcas, a group of salt gatherers and quinoa farmers on the edge of Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. “We are poor, but we are not stupid peasants. The lithium may be Bolivia’s, but it is also our property.”
The new Constitution that Mr. Morales managed to get handily passed by voters last month bolstered such claims. One provision could give Indians control over the natural resources in their territory, strengthening their ability to win concessions from the authorities and private companies, or even block mining projects.
None of this is dampening efforts by foreigners, including the Japanese conglomerates Mitsubishi and Sumitomo and a group led by a French industrialist, Vincent Bolloré. In recent months all three have sent representatives to La Paz, the capital, to meet with Mr. Morales’s government about gaining access to the lithium, a critical component for the batteries that power cars and other electronics.
“There are salt lakes in Chile and Argentina, and a promising lithium deposit in Tibet, but the prize is clearly in Bolivia,” Oji Baba, an executive in Mitsubishi’s Base Metals Unit, said in La Paz. “If we want to be a force in the next wave of automobiles and the batteries that power them, then we must be here.”
Mitsubishi is not alone in planning to produce cars using lithium-ion batteries. Ailing automakers in the United States are pinning their hopes on lithium. One of them is General Motors, which next year plans to roll out its Volt, a car using a lithium-ion battery along with a gas engine.Nissan, Ford and BMW, among other carmakers, have similar projects.
Demand for lithium, long used in small amounts in mood-stabilizing drugs and thermonuclear weapons, has climbed as makers of batteries for BlackBerrys and other electronic devices use the mineral. But the automotive industry holds the biggest untapped potential for lithium, analysts say. Since it weighs less than nickel, which is also used in batteries, it would allow electric cars to store more energy and be driven longer distances.
With governments, including the Obama administration, seeking to increase fuel efficiency and reduce their dependence on imported oil, private companies are focusing their attention on this desolate corner of the Andes, where Quechua-speaking Indians subsist on the remains of an ancient inland sea by bartering the salt they carry out on llama caravans.
The United States Geological Survey says 5.4 million tons of lithium could potentially be extracted in Bolivia, compared with 3 million in Chile, 1.1 million in China and just 410,000 in the United States. Independent geologists estimate that Bolivia might have even more lithium at Uyuni and its other salt deserts, though high altitudes and the quality of the reserves could make access to the mineral difficult.
While estimates vary widely, some geologists say electric-car manufacturers could draw on Bolivia’s lithium reserves for decades to come.
But amid such potential, foreigners seeking to tap Bolivia’s lithium reserves must navigate the policies of Mr. Morales, 49, who has clashed repeatedly with American, European and even South American investors.
Mr. Morales shocked neighboring Brazil, with whom he is on friendly terms, by nationalizing that country’s natural gas projects here in 2006 and seeking a sharp rise in prices. He carried out his latest nationalization before the vote on the Constitution, sending soldiers to occupy the operations of the British oil giant BP.
At the La Paz headquarters of Comibol, the state agency that oversees mining projects, Mr. Morales’s vision of combining socialism with advocacy for Bolivia’s Indians is prominently on display. Copies of Cambio, a new state-controlled daily newspaper, are available in the lobby, while posters of Che Guevara, the leftist icon killed in Bolivia in 1967, appear at the entrance to Comibol’s offices.
“The previous imperialist model of exploitation of our natural resources will never be repeated in Bolivia,” said Saúl Villegas, head of a division in Comibol that oversees lithium extraction. “Maybe there could be the possibility of foreigners accepted as minority partners, or better yet, as our clients.”
