Jewish Russian Telegraph

Salita Vs Khan, Early Negotiations initiated

www.boxingscene.com:

By Mark Vester

Undefeated junior welterweight contender Dmitriy Salita is on the verge of the biggest fight of his career. The mandatory challenger to WBA champion Amir Khan, Salita is poised to get a shot at the title. Salita believes that a victory over Khan is a lock. Salita was the mandatory to Andreas Kotelnik. A few weeks ago Kotelnik was decisioned by Khan. Now the WBA has ordered Khan to face Salita.

"I have been the mandatory challenger since January and this fight [Khan vs Kotelnik] was a bypass of me. The WBA ordered for me to start negotiations with Kotelnik and then gave Frank Warren a special license for this fight. I have been skipped before. He has to fight me within 120 days, I was bypassed last time and it will not happen again. The WBA mandatory at this weight is very long over do. Talk about having the fight within the next nine months is false press, possibly something Amir's camp is trying to spread to avoid a fight with me. He has to fight me within 120 days or get stripped," Salita told Totally Jewish.

Salita told TJ that he thought Khan did a very good job in his latest win, but he saw flaws that he plans to expose when they step in the ring.

"I am 100% confident in victory. I've been around the highest level of boxing since a very young age and feel ready for the challenge," Salita said. "I think that tactically Khan fought a near perfect fight," he said. "He used very good ring generalship and boxing skills, and much credit is due to Freddy Roach for designing the game plan. I do [though] see weakness in Amir's game, he is a good boxer but I intend to beat guys at that level to show my class to box with the elite - I am the best Junior Welterweight in the world."

According to Salita, his promoters Square Ring have begun negotiations with Frank Warren, the promoter for Khan. Salita doesn't care about the location. He will fight Khan in the UK if needed.

"I will fight where ever I get my opportunity," Salita said. "It makes no difference. It will be a big fight where ever it is."

posted by: jrtelegrah

Black Cambridge Cop Kelly King Defends Her Comrade

posted by: jrtelegraph

Vasily Grossman on New York Stage

Bloomberg:

Nazi Death Camps, A-Bomb Collide in Russian Drama: John Simon

Review by John Simon

July 23 (Bloomberg) -- The Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg brings us -- courtesy of New York’s Lincoln Center Festival -- “Life and Fate,” an adaptation by its famed director Lev Dodin of Vasily Grossman’s novel of that grandiose title. “Maly” in Russian means “little,” but nothing about this 4-hour traversal is little, even if one might wish it were.

The stage of John Jay College’s smallish Gerald W. Lynch Theater is large enough to house a production that packs a hefty novel into a one-set event, with 27 speaking and 6 nonspeaking roles performed by 24 speaking and 5 mute actors.

The scene is, more or less simultaneously, the apartment of the distinguished Jewish physicist Viktor Shtrum and family, a room at the Moscow Institute of Nuclear Physics, the Russian gulag, a Nazi concentration camp, Russian army headquarters during the siege of Stalingrad, and a couple of other merely suggested locations.

Further thickening matters is the tricky time frame, as the play moves unexpectedly backward and forward, some of it set in the present, some remembered. Viktor’s mother, Anna, an ophthalmologist who perished in a Nazi-created ghetto, wrote her son a long farewell letter. The old lady, speaking that letter in a low monotone voice, weaves her way throughout, halting the action whenever she comes on, still monologizing during what is one of three or four possible endings (I lost count).

Mental Calisthenics

Mental calisthenics are necessary to follow the sundry plot threads, as follows:

Viktor has worked out in his mind the requirements for an atomic bomb, which Stalin needs to hold his own in the future Cold War. But Viktor, his wife Liuda and schoolgirl daughter Nadya, don’t know this and dread the fate that has befallen some of his assistants: Anti-Semitism is rife even at the Institute.

Liuda’s first marriage, to Abarchuk, produced a now fallen soldier son still haunting the proceedings. Liuda’s sister Genia, divorced from Krymov, is conducting an affair with young Colonel Novikov. Abarchuk and Krymov are in the same labor camp, where Genia feels she should follow, even as Liuda keeps bugging the authorities about Abarchuk. He is threatened at the camp by criminal fellow inmate Barchatov.

In the Nazi camp, prisoner Mostovskoy, an old Bolshevik, has a recurring political debate with camp commander Liss of the SS, which will shake up the Russian. Novikov, when not bedding the tormented Genia, flouts Stalin’s orders, delaying a tank attack by 10 minutes to spare some lives; denounced by Commissar Getmanov, he is carted off to some dark destiny.

Volley Ball

We must decode a lot more, though plagued by surtitles that rush, lag, or fail to show up. The chief decor element is a diagonal, nearly stage-wide wire net, sometimes acting as an imprisoning fence, sometimes for interludes of volley ball, which is periodically played to suggest how sweet life could be.

The mostly good performances suffer from Dodin’s evident uninformedness about less being more, so we are clobbered with overexplicitness and profuse repetition. Voyeurs will savor the beauty of Elena Solomonova (Liuda) and Elizaveta Boyarskaya (Genia), both revealing, during sex scenes, much more than their faces.

I firmly believe in a law governing the dramatization of novels: If it is worth doing, it can’t be done; if it can be, it wasn’t worth it. I am still puzzling out which of the alternatives applies here. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

A Russian Reign of Terror?

RealClearPolitics:

July 28, 2009

By Cathy Young

The abduction and murder of human rights activist Natalia Estemirova in the conflict-ridden Northern Caucasus has been the latest crime to shake Russia's embattled liberal community - and raise the question of whether today's Russia lives not just under an authoritarian regime, but a reign of terror against dissenters. While there are different theories as to the real perpetrators of this vile crime, none are particularly flattering to the Kremlin.

On July 15, 50-year-old Estemirova, a teacher, journalist, and single mother of a 15-year-old daughter, was abducted outside her home in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. Later that day, she was found shot to death in neighboring Ingushetia, another turmoil-ridden Russian province of the Northern Caucasus.

Estemirova's death echoes the fatal shooting of journalist Anna Politkovskaya in her Moscow apartment building in 2006 and the brazen murder of human rights attorney Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova on a busy Moscow street in broad daylight last January.

Many critics of Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime (and its incarnation under the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev) believe that the Kremlin is ordering and directing these murders to silence critics. Yet, if that is the case, the terror is extremely selective: Other equally or more outspoken critics of the regime have been often harassed, persecuted and censored, but not physically harmed.

Many point out that the Estemirova, Politkovskaya and Markelov murders all have a "Chechen connection": all three were relentless critics of human rights abuses in Chechnya and of its president, Ramzan Kadyrov. In the last several years, after a separatist rebellion and a brutal war, the Kremlin has "pacified" Chechnya by making rebel-turned-loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the region, a de facto dictator. While Kadyrov has put an end to the random slaughter of Chechens by Russian troops, he himself is known for brutal killings and torture of political opponents. Several of his rivals have been assassinated outside Chechnya, in places ranging from Moscow to Dubai. Estemirova (who, unlike Politkovskaya, was not known for strong criticism of the Kremlin) had challenged Kadyrov, and he is known to have threatened her. Oleg Orlov, chairman of Memorial, the human rights group for which Estemirova worked - and which has suspended its activities in Chechnya for the time being - has openly named Kadyrov as the chief culprit.

If Kadyrov is, in fact, killing his critics, this does not necessarily mean that he is doing so with the Kremlin's active blessing: while Kadyrov is ostensibly in his post at Moscow's pleasure, it is very likely that he could not be removed without unleashing a new war. At the very least, however, it means that the Russian government has made a deal with the devil and is condoning assassinations to hold up that deal. [Read the rest]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Obama's Misleading Medicine

Washington Times:

By Robert J. Samuelson
Monday, July 27, 2009

The most misused word in the health care debate is "reform." Everyone wants "reform," but what constitutes "reform" is another matter. If you listen to President Obama, his "reform" will satisfy almost everyone. It will insure the uninsured, control runaway health spending, subdue future budget deficits, preserve choice for patients and improve quality of care. These claims are self-serving exaggerations and political fantasies. They have destroyed what should be a serious national discussion of health care.

The health-care conundrum involves a contradiction that the administration steadfastly obscures: In the short run -- meaning four to eight years -- government cannot both insure the uninsured and rein in health spending. Here's why. The notion that the uninsured get little or no care is a myth: They now receive about 50 to 70 percent as much health care as the insured. If they become insured, they would use more health care, possibly as much as today's insured. That would increase both government and private health spending, depending on how the insurance is provided.

Until health-care costs are better controlled, expanding insurance coverage will be expensive. The president talks endlessly about the need to limit spending and eliminate waste. These are worthy goals. But changing the way medical care is delivered and paid for would take years and involve disruptive and unpopular measures. Patient co-payments might increase; networks of doctors and hospitals might displace individual practices; the tax exclusion for employer-paid health insurance might be curbed. Obama downplays the obstacles. His "reform" isn't likely to compel needed changes, partly because it's not clear what will work.

Evaluations of proposals reflect this reality. The Congressional Budget Office judges that the legislation in the House would, through expanded Medicaid and subsidies for private insurance, reduce the uninsured from 46 million in 2007 to 17 million in 2019. But the cost would be $1 trillion over a decade; of that, $239 billion would add to the budget deficit. Worse, the costs would rise faster than the sources of financing, including a tax on the wealthy. In 2019, the projection's last year, the deficit would be $65 billion. Assuming that the deficit rises 4 percent a year, the cumulative shortfall in the second decade would total about $800 billion.

But Obama sees all blue sky. "Here's what reform will mean for you," he said at a recent rally. "It will mean lower costs and more choices and coverage you can count on. Health insurance reform will save you and your family money," he said. (Note: Except for subsidies, it's doubtful families will experience savings anytime soon.) And later: "We'll also change incentives so that our doctors and our nurses can finally start providing patients with the best care and not just the most expensive care. And if we do that, then reform . . . will lower our deficits in the long run."

Contrast Obama's reassuring rhetoric with this exchange at a congressional hearing between Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Douglas Elmendorf, head of the CBO.

Conrad: "From what you have seen from the product of the committees that have reported, do you see a successful effort being mounted to bend the long-term cost curve?"

Elmendorf: "No, Mr. Chairman. In the legislation that has been reported, we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs. . . . The (cost) curve is being raised."

Judged objectively, "reform" may do exactly the opposite of what Obama says. But because the president is so well-spoken, he has the ability to make misleading statements sound reasonable or sophisticated. Still, they're misleading. [Read more]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Washington Times EXCLUSIVE: Pro-Israel Lobby Probe Linked To anti-Semitism

The Washington Times:

Thursday, July 30, 2009
Bill Gertz (Contact)
EXCLUSIVE:

A long-running FBI espionage probe of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington appears to have been motivated in part by anti-Semitism, says a former Pentagon official who revealed this week he had cooperated for 10 weeks with federal agents conducting the probe.
Larry Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst who pleaded guilty in 2005 to revealing classified information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), made the charge in an interview with The Washington Times, his first conversation with an American newspaper since his arrest five years ago.
Franklin said in that interview that he became disturbed by several apparently anti-Semitic remarks by his FBI handlers. His cooperation with the agency, which involved taping his conversations with officials of AIPAC and the Israeli Embassy, was first reported by the Times on Wednesday.
"One agent said to me, 'How can an Irish Catholic from the Bronx get mixed up with all these ...,' and I finished the sentence for him: 'Jews?' And I proceeded to tell him that Christ and all the Apostles and even his mom were Jewish," Franklin said in the interview.
"So it was that sort of thing. And just sarcastic turns of the phrase from time to time. You know, I felt dirty sometimes," he said. [Read the rest]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Dmitry Salita: “Khan’s belt belongs to me!”

USA Boxing News:

Jerry Glick reporting: For Dmitriy Salita the time has definitely arrived for his turn. First the unbeaten Salita, 30-0-1 (16 KOs), expected to face Gavin Rees for Rees’ WBA Jr. Welterweight belt but Rees fought and lost to his mandatory, Andreas Kotelnik. Okay, Salita just shifted his aim towards the new champion, Kotelnik. Now the mandatory challenger Salita was once again asked to sit it out while Kotelnik took on Amir Khan. What happened? Khan took the title away from Kotelnik.

“Amir Khan has a belt that belongs to me,” said Salita. “Amir Khan fought a very good tactical fight, and Amir is a good fighter, and Freddy Roach devised a very good plan for him.”

For Salita it matters not who he faces for the title, as long as he gets his big chance. The only difference is what he needs to do to win.

“I see things in Khan’s style that I can take advantage of,” said Dmitriy. “But, obviously I am not going to talk about it.”

“He’s a young guy,” added Salita, “but I’m a young guy too and my style is a lot different than Kotelnik’s. I promise that it’s going to be a great show, and I look forward to this and I’ve been dreaming about this since I started boxing.”
He admits that Kotelnik was a good fighter but adds, “Who ducked me,” when he thinks of the ex-champ.
If you think Salita sounds bitter, you think right. He almost can’t contain himself. He isn’t old as fighters go, yet, but he isn’t that young either. He is the WBA mandatory and he is fully expecting Khan to live up to his obligation and defend the title against him. There has been some talk that Khan wants to fight a come-backing Erik Morales.
“Amir has to step up to the plate and fight me,” demands Salita. “I look forward to the opportunity. I want to bring the title to Brooklyn, New York.”
Salita told this reporter that his promoter, Square Ring, has jumped on the new situation and is in touch with Khan’s people, Frank Warren, over in England.
“There has been discussion between the two groups about putting the fight together,” said Salita, and that is something that he is holding on to with every fiber in his body. Salita wants his shot more than anything. “I think it will happen in late October,” added Salita. “Amir said that he wants to fight in America.”
Salita is very happy with the way the British press has handled this situation, and the news of a possible Salita-Khan fight.
According to Salita the deal with Khan needs to be sealed within 30 days. There hasn’t been a mandatory defense since Kotelnik won the belt from Rees on March 22, 2008.
“I was supposed to fight Gavin Rees,” recalled Salita. “Andreas Kotelnik was his mandatory challenger and they pressed for the fight so that was enforced. All things being equal and the rules are the rules and I just gave an exemption so there is no possibility for Khan to fight the old over the weight, Erik Morales. There is no possibility.”
Next to Salita’s name in the WBA ratings is “OC”; Official Challenger. Based on that, as an observer of the great sport of boxing, it appears that Salita should be next in line. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

No More Obama For Morton Klein

Yes to a meeting with Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, no to Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America.
Does Obama have a problem with people of certain ethnicity? Not really. Provided, of course, that they are committed leftists like himself. For everybody else, the bets are off. Don't mess with Chicago.

Newsmax:

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:00 PM

By: Ronald Kessler

Ever since President Barack Obama took office, Jewish leaders have been asking for a meeting with him. The White House, apparently thinking Jewish support for Obama was in the pocket, put them off. But a major Jewish leader says that after Newsmax.com reported on deep concerns in the Jewish community about Obama’s Middle East initiatives and statements, the White House responded quickly by asking 14 top Jewish leaders to meet with the president on July 13.

Yet that important Jewish leader, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, says he was barred from attending the meeting because of criticism he aimed at Obama. [Read the whole article]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Anti-Semitism: German Officer Spat at Chabad Family

CrownHeights.info:

By Yael Levy for YNet News

 
Michael and Dvora Sitbon fly with their four children from France to Israel with layover in Germany, where they say border officer humiliated them, made hand motions pretending to shoot them.
The Sitbon family will not forget their most recent flight to Israel for quite some time. Paris residents Michael and Dvora Sitbon flew with their four children from France to the Holy Land. During their layover in Germany, they claim they were subjected to degrading and racist treatment by one of the German border officers.
Once the border officer saw 26-year-old Dvora's Israeli passport, he spat on it and made a gesture with his hands as if he were trying to shoot her, the Sitbon couple told French-Jewish radio station Radio Shalom.
“We were shocked. It is very painful. My wife is the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. She lives and breaths this issue and was shocked by the incident,” said Michael, 28. “We flew by way of Germany because it was the least expensive, but my wife never wants to go back there.”

According to the couple, who have been living in France for the past three years, they arrived in the German airport on Thursday night from France with only a few minutes to catch their connecting flight to Israel. A border officer detained them at passport control. “When he saw that my wife's passport is from Israel, he spat on it and didn't let us pass, saying that she has overstayed her visit in France,” said Michael.

'We'll never again fly through Germany'

“We stood there with four children, the oldest of which is four and the youngest is a month and a few days. Because of this, we preferred not to respond to the provocation so that no trouble would be made for us in investigation.

”Afterwards, he decided that he would let us pass, but wanted to make sure that each child matched the passports given him. So he asked me in German to pick them up. When I did so, he cursed me and my wife and made all kinds of sounds as if he was spraying us with bullets,“ recounted Michael.

”There were very few people on the connection flight to Israel, so only one person saw the incident. He is our witness,“ explained Michael. ”I encountered anti-Semitism in the past. There is no lack of it in France. But I will not keep quiet about something like this. We will put this officer on trial, even if I need to stand before him. I can't forget his face. He had a haircut like Hitler,“ said Michael.

On Friday morning following the event, the family landed in Tel Aviv. Michael reported the incident to Radio Shalom at the beginning of the next week, as well as to the German Embassy in Israel.

”It is difficult to recount what happened to us. My wife doesn't ever again want to fly through Germany in her life," said Michael. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

Yoram Ettinger: Respond to Obama's Pressure, Build Jerusalem

Yoram Ettinger:

          A Jerusalem Response to Obama

Yoram Ettinger, Ynet, July 21, 2009

Twenty five towns in the United States, from Massachusetts to Oregon, bear the name of Jerusalem – Salem.  This is a reflection of the unique bonds that exist between the USA – since the 17th century Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers – and the Jewish capital, land, history and religion.

The US Congress – the most authentic representative of the American People – has passed a series of bills and resolutions, reaffirming the role of Jerusalem, as the indivisible capital of the Jewish State and the appropriate site for the US embassy in Israel. US constituents and their representatives on Capitol Hill are aware that 3,000 years before President Obama entered the White House, and 2,770 years before the US gained its independence, King David entered the City of Jerusalem – the Heart of the Jewish People.  However, notwithstanding his speech at the 2009 AIPAC Conference, Obama wishes to repartition Jerusalem, to prohibit free Jewish construction and entice Arab construction there.  Obama does not recognize pre-1967 Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State.

In 1949, at the end of the War of Independence, the US Administration, Europe and the UN exerted brutal pressure on Prime Minister Ben Gurion to refrain from declaring Jerusalem as the capital, to accept the internationalization of the city and to abstain from establishing facts on the ground.  They also leaned on Israel to "end the occupation of the Negev" and absorb and compensate the 1948 Arab refugees.  Ben Gurion's response was immediate and appropriate.  He declared Jerusalem the capital of the Jewish State, relocated government departments and agencies to Jerusalem, expanded construction all the way to the ceasefire lines, directed a massive number of Olim (immigrants) to Jerusalem and upgraded the transportation infrastructure to the city. Ben Gurion's determination and defiance clarified to the US that neither Jerusalem nor the Negev was subject to negotiation. It accorded Jerusalem the space required for security and development for the next generation.

In 1967, the US Administration and the international community threatened Prime Minister Eshkol that the reunification of Jerusalem, and any construction beyond the 1949 ceasefire line, would undermine severely Israel's global standing.  Eshkol replied firmly by annexing the Old City, the eastern suburbs and substantial land reserves and built the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood (beyond the ceasefire lines).

In 1970-1972, Prime Minister Golda Meir defied the (Secretary of State) Rogers Plan, which called for Israel's retreat to the pre-1967 lines and for the transfer of the Old City to the auspices of the three religions. She laid the groundwork for a series of satellite neighborhoods around Jerusalem (beyond the "Green Line"): Neve' Ya'akov, Gilo, Ramot Alon and French Hill.  These neighborhoods provided Jerusalem with the land required for development until today.

In 2009, President Obama is exerting psychological pressure on Israel to repartition Jerusalem, which would rob the city from essential land reserves. This land constitutes the prerequisite for the dramatic enhancement of Jerusalem's transportation, residential and industrial infrastructures, which are critical for the transformation of Jerusalem from a city of net Jewish emigration to a city of net Jewish immigration.

An appropriate fast-track-response to Obama – which aims at attracting entrepreneurs, job-creation, affordable housing, as well as providing Jerusalem with the developmental space for future generations should include:

*Upgrading "Begin Road" to a "Jerusalem Loop"

*Expanding freeways (to Jerusalem) 1 & 443

*Building freeway 45 to the coastal plain

*Fast railroad to Jerusalem

*Completion of light rail system in Jerusalem

*Construction of an international airport

*Traditional and high-tech industrial zones

*Residential construction zones

*Fast roads connecting new zones

Such dramatic enhancement of infrastructure requires an equally dramatic expansion of Jerusalem's city limit: eastward to the Dead Sea, Herodion and Mt. Ba'al Hazor, westward to Modi'in and Kirayt Sefer and southward to Beitar Ilit and Gush Etzion.

The battle over Jerusalem necessitates that the Jewish State join forces with the US public and its representatives in the House and Senate. This is the time to resurrect the 1999 initiative – which was co-sponsored by 84 Senators – to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem. This is the time to encourage Israel's friends on the Hill, and especially the Chairmen of the Congressional and Senatorial campaign committees, to revisit bills and resolutions, which highlighted Jerusalem's indivisibility as the capital of Israel.

Jerusalem's growth requires – as it did during Ben Gurion's, Eshkol's and Golda's terms – a defiance of the US Administration. On the other hand, succumbing to Obama's pressure would exacerbate Jewish emigration from Jerusalem, subjecting the Jewish capital to its worst security and demographic threats since 1967.

posted by: jrtelegraph