Gender: Female
Status: Divorced
Age: 58
Sign: Cancer
City: St. Pete Beach
State: Florida
Country: US
Signup Date: 6/25/2006
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Sunday, August 09, 2009
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Category: Life
Gentle reader,
During my preparations for my pilgrimage to Michigan for my 40th HS reunion, I have been growing , expanding and learning much. First of all, since I am only 39, how can I be going to my 40th HS reunion. The answer is very simple; I went to High School in utero!
For over 10 years I have been writing a book, The Legacy.. Those that I have shared chapters from it, tell me it is it is well written. I happen to agree with them.
As I get older, I tend to get schmaltzier. I have always known that the combo of being both a Cancer ( my astrological sign) and being Regina Zahler Abramson's daughter and being a "good Jewish girl" have conspired to make me very much a sentimentalist. So much of my life has been spent in trying to keep contact with my remaining family members; and learning more about my immediate family. My mother was the one who would have the Shabbat dinners and Passover Seders. When my Uncle Lou had his heart attack, he lived with us during his recuperation because he knew my mother would take care of him. And I learned to play a mean game of pinochle!
Since I have lived in FL since 1981 and have not visited Michigan many times over the years, I have lost touch with many, many people. Thank God for Facebook. I have reunited with so many people from my past and it is such a great vehicle for renewing old acquaintances and meeting new ones. Here is a question..why is it so easy to pick up anew with childhood friends? Is it because we knew each other in a kinder/gentler context and there are not the adult "issues" to come between us? In my Kabbalah studies, I read an analogy about close friends. Even though you may not see each other often, when you do speak and/or see each other, you resume your relationship almost seamlessly. This analogy takes it a step farther. It posits that because you are so knowledgeable about each other, know each others tastes, favorite colors, political views, etc, you can have actual conversations in your head without that other person present. Now that I think about it, that is not so unusual; I often ask myself, what would Zoey think about this etc.
Ok, so back to the reunion. I am getting re-acquainted with so many old classmates' some remembered and some not. Here's the thing. I grew up in Northwest Detroit during the 50's and 60's. Part of that infamous Baby Boom generation. As a child, I knew there were lots of us. Our classes were large; my junior high shared the building with my elementary school as they could not build schools fast enough to educate us. I grew up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Northwest Detroit. Everyone was Jewish and those few that were not, might as well have been. It was an incredible time to grow up. ( more about this later)
Back to the subject. I can very much identify with adopted children and their quest to locate their birth families. My parents divorced when I was 2, in 1953 not a very common event. Shared parental custody was not even suggested back then, so I never knew my father for most of my life. Since my maternal grandparents both died young, I was 7 and 8 when they died: at an early age, I had already lost loved ones. Then, in 1968, my mother died at the age of 55. When my brother was killed in 1971, I entered into the first of many depressions..
I began a search; God and everything familiar to me had deserted me. One healthy thing I did during that time was moving to Israel in 1973. One major unhealthy thing I did was return to the US to marry my now former husband. Hey, I was only 24 and was so mixed up, you have to make some allowances for me.
Having a father who had become virtually an inmate at a State Mental Hospital had a major affect on me. Starting at the age of 19 when I suffered my first depression, I knew that just because my father was not part of my life, he had bequeathed me an inheritance other than his dimples. Gee, I wonder why I opted to major in psychology, work in a state mental hospital and later get my MSW and work in mental health?
Fast forward to FL 1988. I had been working as a Case Management Supervisor in a mental health center and had become very knowledgeable about the public, and private, mental health sector. So, I researched on how to contact my father. I got to know his brother and guardian, my Uncle Dave. Dave loved my father a great deal. He remembered the man he was before he became incarcerated. for the crime of having a chemical imbalance. To this day, I do not know who is the family member that initially hospitalized my father. At that time, I was married. My husband and I planned a trip to Michigan and he went with me to Northville State Hospital to see my father. Little did I know that was the last time I would ever see him. I knew, intellectually, that Abe could never be a father to me. Thirty some years of major psychotropics and daily life in a state facility and shrunk my once vibrant father to a childlike entity. I remembered we played cards and I spoke of his granddaughter, Rachel, who is named after my mother and others. I learned that I had a paternal aunt also named Rachel. We discussed my mother and her death; I could not talk about my brother's death. I do not know if he knew that Frankie was dead, but why bring on more pain?
I returned to FL and resumed my life. I had thought about bringing my father to FL to be in a program for mental health clients. For one of the few times in my life, I listened to my Uncle Dave's advice. " Don't do it" he said;" he is your biological father, but you are not responsible for him. He is happier where he is."
So, over the next 2 years, I would write letters to my father. He would send me childlike letters begging for money for cigarettes and dentures and the few "luxuries" he could think of.
Abe died Aug 29, 1990. Rachel, my daughter, asked me why she had never met my father. I explained that I had planned to take her to visit him when she was older; Rachel was only 5 at the time at too young to go to a state mental hospital.
My father was one of 7 children. Dave and another brother Julius, made funeral arrangements. When I flew to Detroit Metro for the funeral, I stayed in Novi with Julius and his wife and met them for the first time that I could remember. The funeral was a rather sad affair, there were only 9 or 10 of us. I purposely wore pink to the funeral; I was weary of wearing black and being sad. I remember visiting my father's body prior to his burial. His big blue eyes were wide open ( why couldn't I have inherited those?) and I stroked his head. And I thought, now I hoped he was at peace. He was 72. Funnily enough, no one in my immediate family ever makes it past the magic age of 72. My mother was 55, my brother 22. my mother's three brothers, were all aged 72 or less when they died.
Fast forward yet again. Every so often, I like to google my name. I like to see what is on the internet about me. I found some articles and other things I had written, and I also found an obituary in the St. Petersburg Times for my father. When my father died, I had placed an obit in the Pinellas County Jewish Press as my own tribute to my father. I knew that my father's family would take care of the obituaries for the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit Jewish Press. However, I was thrown for a loop when I found an obituary in the St. Petersburg Time for Abraham Abramson, father of Heleen Abramson Eichen, granddaughter of Rachel Eichen, brother of Dave, Rachel, Julius and Abramson.
The even bigger surprise to me was what Dave had written about my father. I knew he had worked at the former Detroit Free Press; however apparently, he had been a managing editor there. Not only was he a writer; he was also a jazz musician. Flash back to a childhood visit from my father when be promised to give me piano lessons. As a child, I only knew the disappointment of those lessons, only as an adult did I understand the reason for that disappointment. And he had been a minor league softball player.
I was flooded by flashes of insight. My Uncle Dave had placed that obituary in the St. Petersburg Times to leave me the memory of a father I could be proud of. Prior to his "incarceration", he was a handsome ( I knew this from pictures I have of him) and a very talented man. Thank you Dave. And, this also explained so many facets of my being that I had no clue to their derivation. I now know why I love jazz, sing and write well and am a wicked softabll player.
So much of our lives, my mother and I did not share the same goals. She was a very simple woman, born in East Europe, never really encouraged and nurtured except by her father. However, her mother, Rose, made sure that my mother's self esteem was knee high to a grasshopper. She loved to read and dance; but was never supported nor nurtured to seek and pursue any ambition other than to escape my grandmother's tyranny and get married and raise a family. In other words, she was raised to be a good Jewish mother. End of story. My mother never understood my ambition, my joy of learning , the role of music and singing ( although my mother loved to dance) and my love of writing. Consequently, we clashed a great deal as she had no clue who I really was. And, more importantly, she was a very unhappy woman.
I also later learned that Abe's mother, Clara, had lived in the Yeshuv ( the Jewish Settlement) in then, Palestine, until 1944 when daily life became to too dangerous. That explains my love for Israel when no one in my mother's family understood my intuitve love for that country. My maternal grandmother came first to Windsor, Ontario and later settled in Detroit. Her daughter, Rose, was one of my mother's good friends. Both families had come origionally from Galicia, then a part of the Austria Hungarian Empire, and now mainly in Russia with a part in Poland. That is how my innocent, Galician born mother, came to marry my father at the age of 35. This was her first time not living at home and her first sexual experience.
Finding that obit in the St Petersburg Times helped me immensely; I now understand where so much of the fibre of my being comes from...Thanks Uncle Dave...May you and all of my loved ones rest in peace.
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Tuesday, June 23, 2009
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Category: Life
Barack,
I suppose I am not
"indeed" a friend of yours. Why do I say this? It appears that every
email I have sent you POST Your Election, goes unanswered. Prior to
your election, when I wrote you via myspace, as you were not yet
available on Whitehouse.gov, I eventually got an answer from one of
your volunteer staffers. Now it would seem, you are too busy with
other agendas to respond to my individual emails. Hm, at least your
predecessor, Mr Bush, would at least grace me with an "auto responder"
for every email that I sent daily prior to the US led invasion of
Iraq...And that most likely landed me on his proverbially "srhit"
list...
And so Mr President, why should I respond to your requests for
money ( I am not after all a lobbyist) I am an MSW, who works as a
Mental Health Therapist, who sincerely believes in the doctrine of
"Tikkun Olam", help make the world a better place. I am very active in
local politics; have oft been approached to run; perhaps my ego is not
big enough. One of the reasons I enjoy local politics is this... I can
call my local County Commissioner and she returns my calls , I care not
that her party affiliation is Republican. When she supports the causes
that are near and dear to my heart, I commend her. When she does not,
I also let her know. the same goes true with my locally elected
senators and congress people. I can call them and they or their staff
will return my calls and generally assist me when they can. I have
worked on many political campaigns, since an eighth grade teacher in
Schulze Elementary School, inspired our class. She inspired us so much
that we, the class, had a fund raiser and gave this teacher a luncheon
with the State Senator and State Rep present to award her with a plaque.
As I understand it, and yes I did hear you speak when you came to
St Petersburg and Tampa, FL during the election, you come from
community organizer roots. Which leads me to wonder, how deep are
those roots? You truly had no knowledge about what Reverend Wright
stood for in all the years you knew him? I find that very hard to
believe as you are a very shrewd and bright man.
As a mental health therapist, who also works as a caterer (
people do have to eat after all and I have been oft told that I am an
excellent cook after having successfully run a Jewish Style Deli for
many years), I am in touch with a great many people. And I listen to
them carefully....Are you also listening to the people.
I do not expect to get a reply from this letter either, but it
helped me to get my feelings out. After all, that is what a good
therapist encourages her clients to do; vent their feelings or they
will become toxic inside.
--
http://www.liveperson.com/heleen-abramson
my on line counseling URL
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" Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us"
Golda Meir
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Thursday, May 14, 2009
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Category: News and Politics
Jewish World Review
May 12, 2009
/ 18 Iyar 5769
Opportunity is knocking at Israel's door
By
Caroline B. Glick
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Like nature, Israel's strategic relations abhor a vacuum. In the wake of the
Obama administration's decision to drastically curtail the US's strategic
alliance with Israel in the interest of American rapprochement with Iran and
Syria, the Netanyahu government has been moving swiftly to fill the void.
On Monday, with Pope Benedict XVI's arrival and with Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu's visit with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at Sharm e-Sheikh,
two potential strategic alliances came into view.
Building effective alliances with the Vatican and Egypt is a delicate
process. Each side wants more from the other than the other can reasonably
provide. But each side also has much to gain even if it doesn't achieve
everything it wants. The art of alliance building is making the new ally
both happy with what it gets and comfortable with not getting everything it
wants. This is the task that presents itself today, as Netanyahu and his
colleagues engage with both the pope and with Mubarak.
The strategic goal that Israel wishes to advance through an alliance with
the Vatican is the strengthening of its international position as the sole
sovereign in Jerusalem. The strategic goal it wishes to advance with Egypt
is the prevention of Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons.
UNDER POPE BENEDICT XVI, the possibility of winning the support of the
Catholic Church for Israel's position that Jerusalem will never again be
partitioned and will remain under perpetual Israeli sovereignty is greater
than it was under his predecessors. Unlike his predecessors, Benedict has
been outspoken in his concern for the plight of Christian minorities in
Islamic countries. During his visit to Amman he made a point of speaking out
for the protection of Iraqi Christians who are under attack from all
quarters. Since he replaced Pope John Paul II, Benedict has made repeated
calls for religious tolerance and freedom in Islamic countries - most
notably in his 2006 speech at Regensberg where he quoted a Byzantine emperor
from the Middle Ages criticizing Islam for seeking to spread its message by
the sword.
After his words sparked murderous violence throughout the Islamic world,
Benedict expressed his regret for the hurt his statement caused. But he
never retracted it. Moreover, during his visit to the King Hussein Mosque in
Amman on Saturday, Benedict indirectly reasserted his 2006 message. When he
said, "It is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for
political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at
times even violence in society," Benedict was reinforcing - if cryptically -
his basic criticism of Islam.
The pope's obvious recognition of the danger jihadist Islam constitutes for
Christians puts the Vatican, under his leadership, in a position where it
could be more interested than it was in the past in working with Israel to
secure the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem by supporting Israeli control
of the city.
The pope made this possibility even more apparent in his homily at Mount
Nevo. Standing on the mountain where Moses gazed at the Land of Israel,
Benedict spoke of "the inseparable bond between the Church and the Jewish
people." As he put it, "From the beginning, the Church in these lands has
commemorated in her liturgy the great figures of the patriarchs and
prophets, as a sign of her profound appreciation of the unity of the two
Testaments. May our encounter today inspire in us a renewed love for the
canon of sacred Scripture and a desire to overcome all obstacles to the
reconciliation of Christians and Jews in mutual respect and cooperation in
the service of that peace to which the word of God calls us!"
In saying this, the pope made clear that he views the preservation of Jewish
holy sites in Jerusalem as essential for Christian heritage. The Islamic
Wakf, which would control the city's holy sites in the event of its
partition, has already gone to great lengths to systematically destroy the
ruins of the Temple Mount and the Jewish and Christian heritage of the holy
basin through archeological theft, illegal building and digging.
ISRAEL'S ABILITY to embrace the Vatican as an ally and so advance an
alliance with the Church regarding Jerusalem is constrained from its
perspective by the legacy of the Church's behavior during the Holocaust.
Politically, this constraint is manifested in the Vatican's stated desire to
canonize Pope Pius XII.
Quite simply, no government in Jerusalem has the moral right to ignore
weighty allegations that Pope Pius XII collaborated with the Nazis during
the Holocaust. It is because of this moral imperative to remain vigilant in
seeking justice for our murdered brethren that successive governments have
strained relations with the Vatican by objecting to Pius XII's canonization.
What the government can do is encourage Holocaust historians and Yad Vashem
to engage their Catholic counterparts in a joint study - through conferences
and research - of the allegations against Pius XII. Such discussions have
taken place between Vatican scholars and Yad Vashem over the years, most
recently in March. Israel should offer to institutionalize them.
Specifically worthy of a joint study are the revelations made in January
2007 by Lt.-Gen. Ion Pacepa, the former head of the Romanian KGB, that the
allegations against Pius XII were the brainchild of the KGB. In an article
published in National Review, Pacepa, who when he defected to the US in
1978 became the highest ranking Soviet-bloc defector, claimed that in the
late 1950s the KGB began perceiving the Catholic Church as the primary
threat to its control over Eastern Bloc countries. Consequently, in 1960 the
KGB decided to wage a campaign to destroy its moral authority. Since Pius
had died two years earlier, the decision was made to castigate him as a Nazi
collaborator. Already dead, he was in no position to defend himself.
Pacepa alleged that the 1964 play The Deputy, which opened the floodgates
of criticism against Pius, was written by the KGB and that its presumed
author, Rolf Hochhuth, was a communist fellow traveler. He claimed that the
basis for the play was documents that Romanian KGB agents disguised as
Catholic priests had purloined from the Vatican archives. Those documents,
he alleged, were then doctored at KGB headquarters in Moscow.
Former CIA director James Woolsey has vouched for Pacepa's personal
credibility. Pacepa's memoir Red Horizons formed the basis for the
indictment and conviction of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was
executed in 1989.
At the same time, it is impossible to fully accept Pacepa's assertions in
light of the Vatican's refusal to open its wartime archives.
If Israeli scholars are willing to engage Catholic counterparts in an open
exchange of information on Pius XII's wartime record that allows for new
verifiable information to be fairly assessed, whatever the eventual results
of the research, Israel would be able to clear some of the acrid air that
makes it difficult to gain Vatican cooperation on pressing concerns like
strengthening its diplomatic standing on the issue of Jerusalem. And again,
this is in the Church's own strategic interest since it wishes to preserve
and ensure free access to Christian and Jewish holy sites there.
THEN THERE IS EGYPT. In his videotaped address to the AIPAC conference last
week Netanyahu made the case for a strategic alliance with Egypt when he
said, "For the first time in my lifetime… Arabs and Jews see a common
danger… There is a great challenge afoot. But that challenge also presents
great opportunities. The common danger is echoed by Arab leaders throughout
the Middle East; it is echoed by Israel repeatedly… And if I had to sum it
up in one sentence, it is this: Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear
weapons."
Since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2006, Egypt has demonstrated repeatedly
that it supports Israel in its fight against Iran and its proxies. Both
Egypt and Saudi Arabia supported Israel in the war against Iran's Hizbullah
proxy in Lebanon in 2006. They supported it in its war against Iran's Hamas
proxy in Gaza in Operation Cast Lead this past December and January.
Egypt helped Israel by keeping its border with Gaza closed and by allowing
the IAF to overfly Egyptian airspace en route to attacking Iranian weapons
convoys in Sudan destined for Gaza. Moreover, with Egypt's rejection last
week of the Obama administration's attempt to link action against Iran's
nuclear weapons installations to Israeli concessions to the Palestinians,
Mubarak and his associates in Cairo have made clear that they will support
Israeli military action against Iran's nuclear installations.
On the other hand, as the self-proclaimed leader of the Arab world, Egypt is
a main sponsor of the Palestinian war against Israel and a leader in the
campaign to delegitimize Israel internationally. The Mubarak regime may risk
its own domestic stability it if is perceived as supporting Israel since the
overwhelming majority of Egyptians are hateful toward Israel and Jews.
Furthermore, today Egypt has Jordan to consider.
The Obama administration has clearly enlisted King Abdullah II to act as its
proxy in the Arab world for coercing Egypt and the Gulf states to deny
support for Israel on Iran for as long as it maintains its refusal to give
more of its land to the Palestinians. Given Jordan's new role, Egypt and the
Gulf states have been put in an even more awkward situation vis-�-vis Israel
and Iran.
To contend with this situation, the Netanyahu government would do well to
hew very closely to the line that Netanyahu set out in his address to AIPAC.
There he made clear that there will be no chance of peace with the
Palestinians as long as Iran and its proxies remain ascendant.
Netanyahu would also do well to recall that the reason that Egypt and Saudi
Arabia ended up accepting Hizbullah control over Lebanon and Hamas control
over Gaza is because under the Olmert government, Israel failed to defeat
them. Had Israel routed Hizbullah in 2006 and Hamas this past December and
January, Egypt may have adopted a different position relating to the
Palestinians.
So too, like Israel, today Egypt views preventing Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons and weakening its Hizbullah and Hamas proxies as a paramount
national interest. If, with Egyptian assistance Israel is able to
successfully prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the regional
dynamic relating to the Palestinians - who support Iran - as well as the
political standing of the Obama administration - which is enabling Iran to
acquire nuclear weapons - may change. So Israel's best practice regarding
Egypt is to buy time on the Palestinian issue while successfully preventing
Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Building alliances is difficult business. And recognizing their limitations
as well as their potential requires courage and patience. But today the
opportunity to build new relationships is clear. Israel's great challenge
going forward then is to seize the moment.
Every weekday
JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the
media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's
free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at
the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy
managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
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Current mood:  aroused
Category: News and Politics
Jewish World Review
May 11, 2009
/ 17 Iyar 5769
Missing the ‘piece process’
By
Jonathan Rosenblum
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I never thought that I would long for the days when talk of preserving the
"peace process" was all the rage. Though the "peace process" was always a
good deal more about process — negotiations, signed agreements, more
negotiations — at least the name implied that peace was the ultimate
desideratum. Today, the creation of a Palestinian state has become the
be-all-and-end-all of America's Middle East strategy, and Israeli Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is called upon to express his acquiescence
daily.
But a Palestinian state is not the ultimate goal nor should it be. At best,
in a world far different than that in which we happen to live, it would be a
means to Israel finally being able to live in safe and secure borders.
Today, it would assuredly be the opposite.
The exclusive emphasis on the "the two-state solution" is misbegotten for
many reasons. The most basic is that there is absolutely no reason to
believe that the Palestinians want a state, unlike the Jews in 1948, who
were prepared to accept anything, no matter how truncated, in order to have
a state. Robert B. Kaplan, who makes clear that he has little sympathy for
the current Israeli government, nevertheless writes in the April 21 Atlantic
that there is no evidence that the Palestinians really want a state. They
have far more power without a state, for without a state, they can lob
missiles at Israel without ever taking responsibility. Hamas's absolute
control over the Gaza Strip — i.e., its quasi-state status — made it easier,
not more difficult, for Israel to launch Operation Cast Lead.
The behavior of Arafat at Camp David makes clear that he preferred the role
of revolutionary leader, true to his cause to the last, to the messy
responsibility of trying to build a functioning society. The diversion of
massive international aide to the pockets of top Fatah officials and for the
maintenance of multiple militias, rather than using that aide to improve the
lot of the average Palestinian, is another indication that the Palestinian
leadership, such as it is, is not really interested in a state.
The focus on what Israel must do sends the wrong message on a number of
counts. It totally fails to acknowledge what Israel has already done,
including the withdrawals from Lebanon, Gaza, and let us not forget much of
the West Bank, and how little it received in return. Lebanon and Gaza became
Iranian proxy quasi-states, and the West Bank too became a launching pad for
suicide bombers. Only when the IDF took back control of the West Bank did
the terrorism abate. Nor have those withdrawals improved Israel's
international standing, which was always one of their principal
justifications. Rather by rendering Israel more vulnerable to missile and
terror attacks, they virtually guaranteed an eventual Israeli response sure
to be condemned by all and sundry as "disproportionate."
The focus on Israel's acceptance of the "two-state solution" further takes
the spotlight off of what the Palestinians have never done — to wit move one
iota from any of their traditional positions since the handshake on the
White House lawn. In recent weeks, leading Fatah (yes, Fatah not Hamas)
figures have reiterated that Fatah never has and never will recognize Israel
as a Jewish state. And Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to
acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state at Annapolis. I wonder how far Prime
Minister Netanyahu would get if he agreed to a Palestinian state on
condition that all Jews now living in that state can stay where they are.
By placing the onus on Israel for moving forward, the mantra about "the
two-state solution" conveys to the Palestinians precisely the wrong message:
That they must do nothing. More than 15 years after Oslo, the Palestinian
media and textbooks are still infected with a culture of martyrdom and
pervasive hatred of Israel and Jews. How can a generation raised on such
propaganda be a generation to make peace? And how can anyone think that
peace will be easily attained? Instead of telling the Palestinians that they
will have to clean up their act, President Obama engages in false
equivalencies about "hatred" on both sides that have no relationship to
reality, and suggest that all that is needed is a bit more kumbaya feeling.
The message the Palestinians are hearing is: Just sit tight and we [the
Americans] will get you your state, without you doing anything. The
obsession with Israel's acceptance of the "two-state solution" is based on
the assumption that the eventual outcome is known in advance, and it might
as well be sooner than later. That is what the President means when he says
that at some point the parties have to stop talking because we can't wait
forever.
And when Obama praises the Saudi plan as a brave initiative, with which he
may have a few cavils, he not only raises panic in Israel about the easy
assumption that the eventual solution is already well-known but about the
content of that solution. The Saudi plan calls for a complete Israeli
withdrawal to the '49 armistice lines — and with that the uprooting of
hundreds of thousands of families and the destruction of everything built in
Jerusalem since '67 — and the return of millions of Palestinian refugees.
And only then will the Arab states begin negotiations over normalization.
Outside of the editorial pages of *Ha'aretz, *it would be hard to find a
minyan of Israelis willing to sign off on anything remotely resembling that
plan. (And if you will ask me, what then did President Peres mean when he
praised the Saudi plan at the AIPAC convention, I will be struck dumb.)
Remember that this generous plan is being propounded by the Saudis, whose
representatives refuse to so much as exchange hellos with any Israeli and
heatedly deny any suggestion that they might have done so. Doesn't that
level of hatred for Jews and Israel sort of make the focus on how
forthcoming Prime Minister Netanyahu is or isn't seem a bit ridiculous?
Everything coming out of Washington today betrays an incredible naivete
about how intractable the issues are between Israel and the Palestinians and
how far away any viable peace is. The administration acts as if nothing
happened in the last sixty years and the only problem until now was the lack
of involvement of people with their depth of understanding. Yet a moment's
attention would suggest that, if anything, peace is further away than ever.
For one thing, there are two Palestinian entities rather than one, and the
more "moderate" one — the one that acknowledges the existence of Israel, if
not its right to exist as a Jewish state — is the weaker of the two. The
only thing that is propping up the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank
and protecting it from a Hamas takeover at present is Israel's continued
presence there. And then there is the not insubstantial matter of Israelis
experience from previous experiments along the lines they are being asked to
proceed — i.e., missiles falling all around
The American linkage of action against Iran with progress on the
Palestinian-Israeli front again betrays the same dangerous naivete, and puts
things backwards as well. The time frame for serious action — economic or
military against Iran — is months, a year at most. Can anyone possibly
imagine that major steps will be made towards a Palestinian-Israeli
agreement in that time?
Moreover, why should such progress be a condition of action vis-a-vis Iran?
The Sunni regimes are scared witless by Iran, which threatens their regimes
both internally and externally in a way that Israel does not. If it is in
their interests to do so, and if they believe that America intends to act
forcefully against Iran (and not just leave them at Iran's mercies), they
will be part of any coalition. But if either of those conditions are not
met, they will not. Israel is irrelevant. Similarly, the United States
either acknowledges that Iran poses a significant threat to a wide variety
of American strategic interests, which have absolutely nothing to do with
Israel, or it does not. But any Israel leader who acts against his better
judgment on the Palestinian front in the hope that the United States will
then act to prevent Iran from going nuclear is building castles in the sand,
given the current resolve shown by Washington vis-a-vis Iran.
No decent lawyer would allow a client to sign an agreement, no matter how
attractive, without a due diligence as to both the reliability of the other
party and its capability of performing according to the terms of the
contract. Yet President Obama (Harvard Law) and Secretary of State Clinton
(Yale Law) are pushing Israel towards an agreement where the unreliability
of the other side is well-established by virtue of two decades of broken
promises about ending incitement and stopping terror and its ability to
perform is beyond doubtful, given the likelihood of a Hamas takeover of the
West Bank as soon as Israel withdraws. Hopefully Israel has better lawyers.
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Thursday, April 30, 2009
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Current mood:  calm
Category: News and Politics
I so respect and admire Caroline Glick. She always tells it like it is..
Jewish World Review
April 28, 2009
/ 4 Iyar 5769,
Israel's Arab neighbors grasp what the Obama administration won't
By
Caroline B. Glick
NOT Photoshop-ped. Taken at Palestinian Authority, Ramallah, July 23, 2008
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It is a strange situation when
Egypt and Jordan feel it necessary to defend Israel against American
criticism. But this is the situation in which we find ourselves today.
Last Friday, US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton told the House of Representatives Appropriations
Committee that Arab support for Israel's bid to prevent Iran from
acquiring nuclear weapons is contingent on its agreeing to support the
rapid establishment of a Palestinian state. In her words, "For Israel
to get the kind of strong support it's looking for vis-a-vis Iran, it
can't stay on the sidelines with respect to the Palestinians and the
peace efforts." As far as Clinton is concerned, the two, "go
hand-in-hand."
But just around the time that
Clinton was making this statement, Jordan's King Abdullah II was
telling The Washington Post that he is satisfied with the Netanyahu
government's position on the Palestinians. In his words, Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu has "sent a message that he's committed to peace
with the Arabs. All the words I heard were the right words."
As for Egypt, in spite of the
media's hysteria that Egypt won't deal with the Netanyahu government
and the Obama administration's warning that Israel can only expect
Egypt to support its position that Iran must be denied nuclear weapons
if it gives Jerusalem to the PLO, last week's visit by Egypt's
intelligence chief Omar Suleiman clearly demonstrated that Egypt wishes
to work with the government on a whole host of issues. Coming as it did
on the heels of Egypt's revelation that Iranian-controlled Hizbullah
agents were arrested for planning strategic attacks against it,
Suleiman's visit was a clear sign that Egypt is as keen as Israel to
neutralize Iranian power in the region by preventing it from acquiring
nuclear weapons.
And Egypt and Jordan are not
alone in supporting Israel's commitment to preventing Iran from
becoming a nuclear power. American and other Western sources who have
visited the Persian Gulf in recent months report that leaders of the
Gulf states from Bahrain - which Iran refers to as its 14th province -
to Saudi Arabia to Kuwait and, of course, to Iraq - are praying for
Israel to strike Iran's nuclear facilities and only complain that it
has waited so long to attack them.
As one American who recently met
with Persian Gulf leaders explained last week, "As far as the Gulf
leaders are concerned, Israel cannot attack Iran fast enough. They
understand what the stakes are."
UNFORTUNATELY, THE nature of
those stakes has clearly eluded the Obama administration. As the Arabs
line up behind Israel, the Obama administration is operating under the
delusion that the Iranians will be convinced to give up their nuclear
program if Israel destroys its communities in Judea and Samaria.
According to reports published
last week in Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz, President Barack Obama's
in-house post-Zionist, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, told
an American Jewish leader that for Israel to receive the
administration's support for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons, it must not only say that it supports establishing a
Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza, it must begin
expelling its citizens from their homes and communities in Judea and
Samaria to prove its good faith.
With just months separating Iran
from either joining the nuclear club or from being barred entry to the
clubhouse, the Obama administration's apparent obsession with Judea and
Samaria tells us that unlike Israel and the Arab world, its Middle East
policies are based on a willful denial of reality.
The cold hard facts are that the
Middle East will be a very different place if Iran becomes a nuclear
power. Today American policy-makers and other opponents of using
military force to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons compare
the current situation to what the region could look like in the
aftermath of an Israeli campaign against Iran's nuclear installations.
They warn that Hizbullah and Hamas may launch massive retaliatory
missile attacks against Israel, Egypt, Jordan and other states, and
that US military personnel and installations in the region will likely
be similarly attacked by Iranian and Syrian proxies.
Indeed, proponents and opponents
of an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations alike warn
that Iran's deployment of terror proxies from Beirut to Bolivia, from
Managua to Marseilles, and from Gaza to Giza means that things could
get very ugly worldwide in the aftermath of an Israeli attack.
But all of that ugliness, all of
that instability and death will look like a walk in the park compared
to how the region - and indeed how the world - will look if Iran
becomes a nuclear power. This is something that the Arabs understand.
And this is why they support and pray for an Israeli strike against
Iran's nuclear installations.
IF IRAN acquires nuclear
weapons, the Obama administration can throw its hopes for Middle East
peace out the window. Today, even without nuclear weapons, Iran is the
major force behind the continued Palestinian war against Israel. Iran
exerts complete control over Hamas and Islamic Jihad and partial
control over Fatah.
In and of itself, Iran's current
control over Palestinian terror groups suffices to expose the Obama
administration's plan to force Israel to destroy its communities in
Judea and Samaria as misguided in the extreme. With Iran calling the
shots for the Palestinians, it is clear that any land Israel vacates
will fall under Iranian control. That is, every concession the US
forces Israel to make will redound directly to Iran's benefit. This is
why Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's claim that it will be
impossible to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians without first
neutralizing Iran rings so true.
If Iran acquires nuclear
weapons, the situation will become even more destructive. A
nuclear-armed Iran means that any chance of marginalizing these
Iranian-controlled forces in Palestinian society will disappear. For
Israel, the best case scenario in the age of a nuclear-armed mullocracy
would involve continuous war with Iranian proxies - sort of expanded
versions of the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead - in which
it has little option for victory because the terror armies would fight
under Iran's nuclear umbrella.
Regionally, a nuclear-armed Iran
would in short order compel both Egypt and Jordan to abrogate their
peace treaties with Israel. The exposure of the Iranian sabotage ring
in Egypt last week makes clear that Iran seeks to either overthrow or
dominate the Arab world with its nuclear arsenal. If Iran becomes a
nuclear power, roundups of Iranian agents like the one in Egypt will be
inconceivable. Iranian agents will be given free reign both regionally
and worldwide.
For Israel, the abrogation of
its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan would raise the danger of
regional war to an all-time high. Goaded by Iran, and operating with
Iran's US- and Turkish-armed Lebanese proxy and Teheran's Syrian slave,
Egypt and Jordan may well be made to decide that the time has come to
invade Israel again.
These scenarios, of course, are
likely because they compare favorably to the worst case scenarios in
which a nuclear-armed Iran decides to simply detonate its nuclear bombs
over Israel, either in the form of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP)
attack or in the form of a direct nuclear strike. An EMP attack would
not immediately kill anyone, but would destroy the country's
electricity grid and permanently paralyze its military and civilian
infrastructures, rendering the population defenseless not merely from
its neighbors, but from disease and starvation. If successful, a direct
nuclear strike would likely kill between 50,000 and several million
Israelis, depending on how many warheads reached their targets.
GLOBALLY OF COURSE, a
nuclear-armed Iran would be well positioned to take over the world's
oil markets. With Saudi Arabia's main oil installations located in the
predominantly Shi'ite eastern provinces, it would be able to credibly
threaten to destroy Saudi oil installations and so assert control over
them. With Iran's strategic alliance with Venezuela, once it controls
Saudi oil fields, it hard to see how it would not become the undisputed
ruler of the oil economy.
Certainly Europe would put up no
resistance. Today, with much of Europe already within range of Iran's
ballistic missiles, with Iranian-controlled terror cells fanned out
throughout the continent and with Europe dependent on Persian Gulf oil,
there is little doubt of the direction its foreign policy would take in
the event that Iran becomes a nuclear power. Obviously any thought of
economic sanctions would disappear as European energy giants lined up
to develop Iranian gas fields, and European banks clamored to finance
the projects.
Finally, there is America. With
Israel either barely surviving or destroyed, with the Arab world and
Europe bowing before the mullahs, with much of Central and South
America fully integrated into the Iranian axis, America would arguably
find itself at greater risk of economic destruction and catastrophic
attack than at any time in its history since the War of 1812. An EMP
attack that could potentially send the US back to the pre-industrial
age would become a real possibility. An Iranian controlled oil economy,
financed by euros, would threaten to displace the dollar and the US
economy as the backbone of the global economy. The US's military
options - particularly given Obama's stated intention to all but end US
missile defense programs and scrap much of its already aging nuclear
arsenal - would be more apparent than real.
Yet what Clinton's statements
before Congress, Emmanuel's statements to that American Jewish leader
and Obama's unremitting pandering to Teheran and its Syrian and Turkish
allies all make clear is that none of these reasonable scenarios has
made a dent in the administration's thinking. As far as the Obama White
House is concerned, Iran will be talked out of its plans for regional
and global domination the minute that Israel agrees to give its land to
the Palestinians. The fact that no evidence exists that could possibly
support this assertion is irrelevant.
On Sunday, Washington Post
columnist Jim Hoagland claimed that Obama will not publish his
administration's policy on Iran until after he meets with Netanyahu at
the White House on May 18. It will be during that meeting, Hoagland
wrote, that Obama will seek to convince Netanyahu that there is no
reason to attack Iran.
The fact that Obama could even
raise such an argument, when by Israel's calculations Iran will either
become a nuclear power or be denied nuclear weapons within the next 180
days, shows that his arguments are based on a denial of the danger a
nuclear Iran poses to Israel and to global security as a whole.
It is true that you can't help
but get a funny feeling when you see the Arabs defending Israel from
American criticism. But with the Obama administration's Middle East
policy firmly grounded in La La Land, what choice do they have? They
understand that today all that stands between them and enslavement to
the mullahs is the Israel Air Force and Binyamin Netanyahu's courage.
Every weekday
JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the
media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's
free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at
the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy
managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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Friday, March 06, 2009
|
Current mood:  angry
Category: News and Politics
This article by
Caroline Glick proposes some frightening prospects for the Middle
east. Iran with a nuclear weapon in 2 years? The US just standing by
and watching? It seems as though Israel is the only one that is being
vigilant in this arean. Not allowing Israel to build settlements in
her Capitol City, Jerusalem? Frightening prospects indeed.
peace to the Middle East
By
Caroline B. Glick .. http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | .. Compare and contrast the following three events: At the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors meeting on
Wednesday, George Schulte, the US ambassador to the IAEA pointed an
accusatory finger at Syria. Syria, Schulte said, has not come clean on its
nuclear program. That program of course, was exposed in September 2007 when
Israel reportedly destroyed Syria's North Korean built, Iranian financed al
Kibar nuclear reactor.
In its report to its board of governors, the IAEA stated that in analyzing
soil samples from the bombed installation, its inspectors discovered traces
of uranium. The nuclear watchdog agency also noted that the Syrians have
blocked UN nuclear inspectors from the site and from three other suspected
nuclear sites. Reacting to the IAEA report, Schulte said that it, "contributes to the
growing evidence of clandestine nuclear activities in Syria." He added, "We
must understand why such [uranium] material - material not previously
declared to the IAEA - existed in Syria and this can only happen if Syria
provides the cooperation requested." On Tuesday, at a press conference in Jerusalem with outgoing Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni, visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
announced that the Obama administration is sending two senior envoys to
Syria. Their job, as she put it, is to begin "preliminary conversations," on
how to jumpstart US-Syrian bilateral ties. Clinton's statement made good headlines, but she was light on details. On
Wednesday, hours after Schulte accused Syria of covering up its illicit
nuclear program, US Senator John Kerry helpfully filled in the blanks about
the nature of the Obama administration's overtures to nuclear-proliferating
Damascus. In an address before the left-leaning Saban Center for Middle East
Policy at the Brookings Institute in Washington, the Chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, who just returned from a visit to Syria, Israel
and the Palestinian Authority said that the purpose of US overtures to Syria
is to appease Syrian President Bashar Assad. If in the past, both American and Israeli policymakers interested in
engaging Syria have made ending Syria's alliance with Iran a central goal of
their proposed engagement, Kerry dismissed such an aim as unrealistic. In
his words, "We should have no illusions that Syria will immediately end its
ties with Iran."
Indeed, as far as Kerry is concerned, Syria's role in these talks is not to
actually give the US anything of value. Rather, Syria's role is to take
things of value from the US - and of course from Israel.
Kerry proposed that in exchange for Syrian acceptance the US's offer of
friendship and Assad's willingness to negotiate an Israeli surrender of the
Golan Heights, the US should consider "loosening certain sanctions" against
Syria. Doing so, he claimed will also be good for the US economy because it
will open new opportunities for US businesses.
On the surface, the disparate statements by Schulte, Clinton and Kerry
present us with a puzzle. In Geneva, Schulte noted that Syria is a nuclear
proliferating rogue state that has refused to cooperate with UN nuclear
inspectors. And in Jerusalem and Washington, Clinton and Kerry ignored
Syria's dangerous actions, and advocated a policy of appeasement. At the same IAEA Board of Governors meeting this week, the agency reported
that Iran has produced more than a thousand kilograms of low enriched
uranium - enough to build a bomb after further enrichment. That enrichment
can be completed by year's end with Iran's 5,600 centrifuges. Moreover,
between the Russian-built, soon to be opened nuclear reactor in Bushehr and
Iran' illicit heavy water reactor in Arak, Iran will have the capacity to
build plutonium-based bombs within two years.
Commenting on the IAEA's report on Iran, US Admiral Michael Mullen, the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledged that Iran has enough
uranium for a bomb. Seemingly contradicting Mullen, Defense Secretary Robert
Gates claimed that there is no reason to worry about all that uranium
because Iran won't have a bomb for some time given that the uranium it
possesses is not sufficiently enriched to make a bomb. For his part, US President Barack Obama is receiving guidance on contending
with Iran from former Congressman Lee Hamilton, who co-authored the
Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report published in December 2006. That
report called for the US to coordinate the withdrawal of its forces from
Iraq with Iran and Syria - the principal sponsors of both the Shiite and
Sunni insurgencies in the country. It recommended that the US purchase
Syria's good will by pressuring Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to
Damascus and Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Hamas. It recommended that the
US win Iran's trust by accepting it as a nuclear power and pledging not to
overthrow the regime. In an interview last month with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius,
Hamilton reiterated those recommendations. He claimed that the starting
point for US-Iran discussions is for the US to "state our respect for the
Iranian people, renounce regime change as an instrument of US policy, seek
opportunities for a range of dialogue across a range of issues, and
acknowledge Iran's security concerns and its right to civilian nuclear
power." Hamilton assured Ignatius that these recommendations have been adopted by
the White House. All of the above show that there is no contradiction between what the Obama
administration understands about Iran and Syria and the policy it has
adopted towards them. Specifically, as Schulte's and Mullen's statements
make clear, the administration is aware of the dangers that both Iran and
Syria constitute to global security. And as Clinton, Kerry, Gates and
Hamilton all make clear, the administration's policy for dealing with those
dangers is to change the subject and hope the American public won't notice
or mind.
To this end, the administration is now asserting that Iran and Syria - the
two most active agents of regional instability - share the US's interest in
a stable, democratic Iraq. And owing to their sudden devotion to stability,
Obama's surrogates tell us the Syrians and Iranians will support the new
anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian Iraqi democracy and even protect it after the
US withdraws its forces from the country.
Then too, as both Kerry and Clinton made clear, the administration plans to
ignore Syria's support for Iraqi, Palestinian and Lebanese terrorism, its
nuclear proliferation activities and its massive ballistic missile arsenal
as well as its strategic alliance with Iran. Rather than confront Syria
about its bad behavior, the administration favors a policy based on making
believe that in his heart of hearts, Assad is a liberal democrat who aspires
to peace, and hope, and change. But the core of the administration's campaign to ignore Iran's nuclear
program - as well as Syria's - is its unrelenting quest for the big payoff:
Palestinian statehood. This week Iran staged yet another "Destroy Israel" conference in Teheran,
replete with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's trademark Holocaust denial, Supreme
Leader Ali Khamenei's ritual castigation of the Jewish state as a "cancerous
tumor," and the US as a treacherous enemy, and Ali Larijani's threat to
attack Israel's suspected nuclear sites. The conference enjoyed a newfound
sense of international legitimacy taking place as it did just after
burka-clad Annette Benning's goodwill Hollywood celebrity visit to the
mullocracy.
The genocidal pageantry in Teheran, elicited no significant response from
Clinton and Kerry. They had bigger fish to fry. While the administration and
its supporters seem to believe that the US has no right to make demands on
Iran and Syria which, they assert, are both just advancing their national
interests, for them Israel is a completely different story. As Clinton and
Kerry demonstrated this week, the administration and its supporters will not
stop making demands on Israel. Kerry justified Syria's continued alliance with Iran by saying that Syria
should be expected to "play both sides of the fence [with the US and Iran]
as other nations do when they believe it is in their interests." But Israel has no right to similarly take what action it deems necessary to
secure its interests. In Kerry's view, the time has come for the US to show
that it is serious about Palestinian statehood and the way to do that is to
force Israel to block all Jewish building in Judea and Samaria. In his words, "On the Israeli side, nothing will do more to make clear our
seriousness about turning the page than demonstrating - with actions rather
than words - that we are serious about Israel freezing settlement activity
in the West Bank." He also called for the US to compel Israel to open its borders with Gaza.
And he said that from his perspective, it is unacceptable for the incoming
Netanyahu government not to embrace establishing a Palestinian state as its
most urgent goal.
Clinton joined Kerry his efforts to compel the Jewish state to ignore its
national interests in the cause of the higher goal of Palestinian statehood.
Like him, she attacked Israel for not handing control over its borders with
Gaza to Hamas. And like Kerry, she stated repeatedly that her greatest goal
is to establish a Palestinian state. Clinton's unique contribution to that great "pro-peace" endeavor this week
was her outspoken criticism on Wednesday of the Jerusalem municipality's
decision to enforce the city's building and planning ordinances equally
towards both Jews and Arabs. That policy was made clear this week when city
inspectors destroyed illegal buildings in both Jewish and Arab
neighborhoods.
Since as far as Clinton is concerned, Israel will one day be required to
throw all the Jews out of East, South and North Jerusalem to make room
forwhat she believes is the "inevitable" Palestinian state, Israel has
no right
to treat Arabs and Jews equally in its soon-to-be-inevitably divided capital
city. Arabs should be allowed to break the law at will. When Israel insists
on enforcing its laws without prejudice, Clinton condemns it for being
anti-peace. Kerry argues that by forcing Israel to give its land to the Palestinians the
US will be promoting regional stability by doing the bidding of anti-Iranian
Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But even if putting the screws to
Israel makes Cairo and Riyadh happy, their happiness will have no impact
whatsoever on Iran's nuclear weapons programs or on Syria's proliferation
activities. That is, Israeli land giveaways will have no impact on regional
stability. And that's precisely the point. The Obama administration has no intention of
preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power or Syria from maintaining its
alliance with the mullahs. The White House seeks far more modest ends. Through its policies towards Israel on the one hand and Iran and Syria on
the other, the Obama administration demonstrates that it has already
accepted a nuclear Iran. Its chief concern today is to avoid being blamed
when the mushroom clouds appear in the sky. And it may well achieve that
aim. After all, how could the administration be blamed for a nuclear Iran
when it has wholly devoted its efforts to advancing the righteous cause of
peace?
Every weekday
JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the
media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's
free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at
the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy
managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here. .. ..
Since as far as Clinton is concerned, Israel will one day be required to
throw all the Jews out of East, South and North Jerusalem to make room
forwhat she believes is the "inevitable" Palestinian state, Israel has
no right
to treat Arabs and Jews equally in its soon-to-be-inevitably divided capital
city. Arabs should be allowed to break the law at will. When Israel insists
on enforcing its laws without prejudice, Clinton condemns it for being
anti-peace.
Kerry argues that by forcing Israel to give its land to the Palestinians the
US will be promoting regional stability by doing the bidding of anti-Iranian
Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But even if putting the screws to
Israel makes Cairo and Riyadh happy, their happiness will have no impact
whatsoever on Iran's nuclear weapons programs or on Syria's proliferation
activities. That is, Israeli land giveaways will have no impact on regional
stability.
And that's precisely the point. The Obama administration has no intention of
preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power or Syria from maintaining its
alliance with the mullahs. The White House seeks far more modest ends.
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Wednesday, July 23, 2008
|
Current mood: angry
Category: Life
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Monday, June 23, 2008
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Current mood:  chipper
Category: Sports
Come Bowling with Samm in St. Petersburg. Monday - June 23, 2008 We'll meet at Sunrise Lanes at 6393 9th St. North in St. Petersburg at 7:00.
Free shoe rental for the first five who join in. Enjoy a mix of bowling and politics. Meet campaign volunteers and bring a friend. See you at Sunrise Lanes on June 23. NETWORK, a 1976 Classic at the Beach Theater. Sunday - June 29, 2008 Are you "mad as hell and can't take it anymore?" Come join other Simpson campaign supporters at the Beach Theater in St. Petersburg beach to view the classic, academy award winning film from 1976. Movie begins at 8:00 P.m. Fast forward to 2008, and Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay seems timeless. Tickets are $10 and they will go to benefit the Samm Simpson for Congress Campaign. Come join us for a night of cinema history and discussions on how we can channel our discontent into solutions as we take back this country! Come Bowling with Samm in Largo! Monday - July 07, 2008 We'll meet at 7:00 Pm at Liberty Lanes, 11401 Starkey Road in Largo. We'll talk politics, campaign strategy and volunteer opportunities, visit the snack bar and - if you're game, hit the lanes. You're responsible for your own shoe rental, and the Samm campaign will pay for a couple of hours of lane time. Come join us at Largo Lanes for a night of friendly competition. See you Monday, June 16. We'll be there from 7 - 11 P.M. .. --> --> What You Can Do! Sign up for email updates! .. District 10 Important Links .. language="javascript" src="http://ffs.capwiz.com/DHTML/CAjsform.js">..> | | |