Jewish Russian Telegraph

Why HBO Does Not Let Dmitry Salita Fight?

Why fat cats at HBO do not let this Russian Jewish Kid fight?
Are they afraid that he is going to win?

Or, perhaps, they don't like pictures like this?

ESPN Notebook:

Salita disappointed

Jim Everett/Fightwireimages.com

Dmitri Salita paid his dues in Brooklyn's Starrett Boxing Club. Now, he wants a fight on HBO.

Promoter Lou DiBella told ESPN.com that his June 21 "Boxing After Dark" card (HBO) will take place at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom. The main event features welterweight Andre Berto against Miki Rodriguez in a title eliminator, with a meeting between unbeaten heavyweight prospects Cristobal Arreola (23-0, 21 KOs) and Chazz Witherspoon (23-0, 15 KOs) in the opener. DiBella hoped to match New York ticket sellers Dmitriy Salita (28-0-1, 16 KOs) and Edgar Santana (24-3, 15 KOs) in a third fight on the telecast, but HBO balked at the junior welterweight match. DiBella said both fighters would appear in separate, untelevised bouts, but Salita, an Orthodox Jew with a following in New York, was very disappointed that HBO would not buy him against his city rival. "It's disheartening and I am not getting an opportunity to show myself," he said in an e-mail to ESPN.com. "I gave my life to boxing and have overcome a lot to get to this point. I remember reading about [Bob] Arum trying to pitch [Kelly] Pavlik to HBO and he said, 'There's a perception with boxing network guys and boxing people that if you're a white guy, you can't fight.' I had to overcome that perception my whole life. Add my background to it and I think it increases that stereotype. But I won the nationals, every inner-city tournament for like six years, the Golden Gloves and the Ray Robinson award. I am undefeated as a pro. "I grew up in [Brooklyn's] Starrett Boxing Club with Joe Greene, Luis Collazo, Curtis Stevens, Jaidon Codrington, Monte Barrett, Zab Judah, Travis Simms, now Danny Jacobs is the new blood. We all come from the same gym. I got one of the best boxing educations in the world. I didn't pop up here. I gave my life to boxing and I deserve my opportunity." [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Natan Sharansky: Defending Identity

Financial Times:

The thorny question of who you are
Review by Michael Skapinker

Published: June 15 2008 17:34 | Last updated: June 15 2008 17:34
Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy
By Natan Sharansky with Shira Wolosky Weiss
PublicAffairs $26.95 (£15.99)

When Natan Sharansky was in a Soviet prison his wife, Avital, who had left for Israel, sent him a message saying she had decided to cover her hair. It was a difficult moment. Sharansky had previously told Avital he was uncomfortable about her assuming the garb of a Jewish Orthodox married woman. This time, he decided that if this was her new religious identity he would have to respect it.
Freed after nine years, and permitted to follow Avital to Israel, he stood up for other women covering their hair, opposing France’s ban on headscarves in schools. Muslim girls were expressing their identity and he had learnt during his gulag years how much identity mattered. The prisoners who stood up to the KGB were those with the surest sense of who they were, whether Latvian nationalists, Orthodox Christians or Pentecostals.
Many democracies are deeply confused about identity, making dangerous mistakes over how much citizens owe to the state and how much to their ethnic or religious groups, Sharansky argues in this thought-provoking book.
Like those on the American right, Sharansky directs his greatest ire at the Europeans, whom he accuses of lacking a sense of purpose to match that of their Islamist enemies, both internal and external.
But, unlike the other critics, Sharansky’s allegation is not that Europe simply caves in to Islamist demands. As shown by his support for headscarves, his argument is more complex. Sharansky says that postwar democratic Europe dedicated itself to universal notions of human rights, assuming that colour, religion and culture would cease to matter. Faced with an influx of immigrants, this post-identity Europe struggled to integrate the newcomers. Britain and the Netherlands opted for multiculturalism: all ways of life should be respected. What really happened, he argues, was that both countries, infused with post-colonial guilt, res­pected all but their own. When Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh was murdered and London suffered a murderous attack on its Underground, the establishments struggled to respond.
France adopted a different strategy, insisting all citizens become resolutely French. In state schools, any sign of dif- ference – headscarf, crucifix or skullcap –was to be abandoned at the gate. Shar- ansky is as little taken with the French approach as with the British or Dutch.
The French road leads to hypocrisy, he says. “French Muslims are coerced to act one way while thinking and feeling another.” In any case, identity is vital, giving people ties to their past. Casting it aside is seldom healthy. Arriving in Israel, he criticised the prevailing idea of citizenship there too. Theodor Herzl, modern Zionism’s founder, imagined a country where pioneers would hang on to their old cultures while creating something new. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, had other ideas, insisting Jews ditch their diaspora baggage: Poles, Moroccans, Germans and Iraqis would simply become Israelis.
The arrival of the Soviet Jews challenged this. The newcomers were determined to hang on to their Russian heritage, forming their own political party with Sharansky as chairman. The right way to tackle identity, Sharansky says, is American. In the US, you can become American without forgetting what you were. You can be Irish-American, Italian-American or Jewish-American. A central culture of democracy demands your loyalty, but outside that you can be who you like. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Russian Professor Endorses Blood Libel

JTA:

A professor at a Russian state university reportedly endorsed blood libel against Jews during a lecture.

Svetlana Shestakovaya, an assistant professor of sociology at Tyumen State University in western Siberia, said during a lecture linked to a state-sponsored educational program that she believed Jews ritually murder Christian children and used their blood to make bread for Passover, according to a report by the Slavic Law Center.
The lecture came as part of a training course for a government-sponsored program called the "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture" that has been implemented in several of Russia's regions. According to the law center, Shestakovaya said the Jews perform "a Jewish Eucharist that uses a small quantity of blood of [Christian] Orthodox people whom they martyred." Leading figures in the Russian Jewish community have spoken out against compulsory Orthodox education in Russia, where the church has taken on a prominent role in Russian national identity. Shestakovaya also lashed out at Islam for being motivated by an "occult, evil spirit," Protestantism for being a collection of "pseudo-Christian sects" and Catholicism as a "heresy," the center reported. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Russians Hold 14,000 Books of The Ginzburg Collection

Haaretz:

State renews efforts to bring disputed Jewish manuscript collection from Russia
By Anshel Pfeffer

The State of Israel plans to renew its efforts to retrieve the world's second-largest collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts from Russia.

Various parties have been trying to bring the impressive Ginzburg collection to Israel for years. Now, they are hoping that renewed Russian-Israeli cooperation, primarily Israel's expected transfer of the Sergei building in Jerusalem to Russia, will enable the collection to be brought to Israel.

The noble Russian-Jewish Ginzburg family acquired its collection over three generations, beginning in the 1840s. The collection includes 14,000 books, 45 incunabula (books published in the 14th century at the start of the printing era), more than 2,000 Hebrew manuscripts and 1,000 Arabic manuscripts. It is considered the second largest collection of antique Jewish literature in the world, after the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Baron David Ginzburg, the last of the collectors, died in 1910. After his death, Zionist activists, including Eliezer Ben Yehuda, began trying to bring the collection to the land of Israel. In May 1917, the National Library in Jerusalem signed a contract with parties in Russia to buy the collection for half a million rubles. The acquisition was funded by donations from Russian Zionists, and when the money was delivered, the books and manuscripts were packed into crates to be delivered. But the shipment was delayed by World War I, and when the Bolshevik Revolution broke out, the Soviet authorities seized the books and sent them to the Lenin Library in Moscow.

Over the years, prominent Jews, including Albert Einstein, Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann, and Foreign Ministry officials, tried to bring the Ginzburg collection to Israel, but their efforts were rejected. Now the heads of the Jewish National and University Library (Israel's official national library, which is located in Jerusalem), including director general Shmuel Har Noy and board chairman David Blumberg, are trying to put the matter on the public agenda.
The issue is being revisited mainly because of the advanced talks on the Sergei building, which was built circa 1890 adjacent to the Russian Compound. It was named for Prince Sergei, heir to Czar Nicholas II, who was executed by the Bolshevik revolutionaries. The building served as a hostel for Russian pilgrims to the holy land, and currently houses the offices of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and the Agriculture Ministry.
The Russian government is demanding ownership of the building, and the negotiations are nearing completion, to the Russians' satisfaction. Meanwhile, Har Noy and Blumberg have demanded of Foreign Ministry Director General Aaron Abramovich that the same principle apply to the Ginzburg collection - that the ministry demand the Ginzburg collection in exchange for the Sergei building. The ministry does not believe Russia will accede to this demand, but intends to try to retrieve the collection in any case.
In the 1990s, the Russians photographed a large part of the manuscripts and books in the collection and allowed scholars to study them, apparently in order to quiet the issue. The Lenin Library even built a splendid building in Moscow to preserve the collection.
"If the state is returning property to the Russian government, there is no reason that something we have proof that Russian Zionists purchased should not be returned to the state," said Har Noy.
The Foreign Ministry responded, "The ministry received the request concerning Baron Ginzburg's book collection, and the issue is under examination. In the coming days, Foreign Ministry officials will be meeting with representatives of the National Library in order to receive the data and documents on the matter."
The Ginzburg collection includes a translation of Dionysius Cato's "Moral Distichs," Yehuda ben Moshe Albotini's 1519 commentary on the Rambam's Mishneh Torah, a 1671 essay written by well-known kabbalist Shmuel ben Hiam Vital in Damascus, and one of the first six books printed in Hebrew, "Answers to Questions" by the Rashba, which was printed in Rome.
The National Library heads wish to make the collection a major exhibition at the new National Library building slated for construction in Jerusalem. [link]

Israelis are truly tough negotiators -- first they give to Russians a building in Jerusalem. After that they HOPE to negotiate release of the books. Some dealers! Same stupidity and cowardice as with political negotiations. Same results.  We are not impressed.

posted by: jrtelegraph

Google's Sergey Brin Goes to Space

Times Online:

(Ben Margot/AP)Sergey Brin: wants to become a space explorer
James Bone in New York

Google co-founder Sergey Brin is to boldly go where not many people have gone before.
The Russian-born co-creator of the internet search engine has made a $5 million (£2.5 million) down-payment to book a seat aboard a specially-built Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station in 2011.
The trip, organised by Virginia-based Space Adventures, will be the first private flight to the orbiting space station.
“I am a big believer in the exploration and commercial development of the space frontier, and am looking forward to the possibility of going into space,” Mr Brin said.
“Space Adventures helped open the space frontier to private citizens and thus pave the way for the personal spaceflight industry,” he said.
The flight will carry Mr Brin and a second “space tourist” as well as a Russian pilot.
Space Adventures has already blasted five tourists into space since investment manager Dennis Tito became the world’s first privately funded space flight participant in 2001.
A sixth is due to lift off in October - at a cost of $35 million for the seat.
Previous “space tourists” have all piggy-backed on scheduled Soyuz flights.
But Eric Anderson, Space Adventures CEO, said the company now plans to build its own Soyuz rocket for annual private missions carrying two passengers each.
He announced the creation of an Orbital Mission Explorers Circle of would-be passengers who would each contribute $5 million to help finance the project.
He said there were only five more spaces for “CEOs, executives, investors and entrepreneurs” who wanted to be founder members of the Explorers Circle.
The company says the fact that the 2011 flight is private will mean the passengers can take more cargo, even enabling them to conduct their own experiments in space.
Russian officials insisted the Soyuz flight would not affect the running of the space station. “This private mission, flying two Space Adventures clients at once, will not interfere with the implementation of the ISS program or the obligations of the Russian space agency; on the contrary it shall add flexibility to our ISS transportation capabilities,” said Alexey Krasnov of Russia’s Federal Space Agency.
Mr Brin, 34, the son of Soviet mathematicians, moved to America as a child and dropped out of the PhD programme at Stanford University to set up Google with fellow student Larry Page.
He is now worth an estimated $18.7 billion, putting him in 32nd place on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s super-rich. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Teaching A Lesson To Arcady Gaydamak

Arcady Gaydamak raged on TV about Israel being a police state. In order to teach him a lesson, and to prove the opposite Israeli police started investigation of his words. In a very subtle, nuanced, and highly sophisticated fashion they darkly hinted that Gaydamak's lack of manners originated in his Soviet background. This obnoxious Russian will know that he now lives in a true democratic society!

Haaretz:

Gaydamak TV attack on police brass may spur criminal probe

_{By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent}

Police may open a criminal investigation against Arcadi Gaydamak for allegedly threatening and insulting a public official, following statements broadcast Saturday on Channel Two, in which the billionaire attacked police Major-General Yohanan Danino, head of the investigative and intelligence branch.

Gaydamak has been under mounting police and media scrutiny amid allegations of money laundering. He recently launched an effort to sponsor a new Knesset faction, but the probes have prompted lawmakers to stymie the bid.

Police said in a statement issued Monday that Gaydamak's "desperate attempt to threaten law enforcement agents in order to extricate himself from criminal prosecution was doomed to failure from the start."

In an allusion to Gaydamak's background as an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, the statement continued, "We can only deplore Gaydamak's aggressive and threatening style - reminiscent of regimes to whom democracy is foreign - which undermines the legitimacy of Israel's law enforcement authorities."

During the Saturday television broadcast, Gaydamak railed against his investigators, including Danino, saying that as a result of the probe, he had been forced to postpone his grandson's circumcision for three weeks.

At the end of his angry remarks, Gaydamak pointed his finger threateningly at the camera and said "Danino, look at me."

According to Gaydamak, "There's only one time in life that there's a circumcision of a grandson, and they (the police) forced us to delay it for three weeks. For this I will never forgive them."

Material on the case has been sent to the State Prosecutor's Office, which has begun an investigation into the incident. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph