Wall Street bonuses cashed in for sex, food and art
RT | December 9, 2010
If the impressionist artist were to illustrate something of today’s New York City, it just might be moneybags.
Amid the lackluster American economic climate, Christies Auction House is seeing sunny days, with more than 600-million dollars worth of impressionist and modern art sold this year.
“Since 2008, we have seen an increasing return of confidence to the art market,” said Conor Jordan, of Christies New York.
New York has once again, become one of the Christies premier selling sites.Just as Wall Street’s wealthy and powerful, are back to indulging.
Pampering at the La Prairie Spa at the Ritz Carlton, involves wearing decadent hors d’ oeuvres. A 90-minute skin caviar facial costs more than $300 and 3.4 ounces of La Prairie’s Skin Caviar Luxe Cream sells for $710.
“This time of year, a lot of our business comes from corporate gift certificates,” said Spa Manager, Sandra Sadowski.
As corporate America is banking record breaking profits this year, it may be no coincidence that business at Wempe Jewelers has spiked. The $158,000 dollar price tag of some luxury watches exceeds the average annual income of three US households combined.
“We’re expecting a very busy time. The busiest time of the year,” said Raik Kraise, Wempe manager.
Busyness boosted perhaps by big bonuses coming mainly from one street, Wall Street, a symbol of the finance industry, the financial collapse and record breaking compensation that will reportedly reach $144 billion dollars this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, 2010 bonuses will be up 4 percent from last year’s record haul.
If anyone would know about business, it would be those who work at Rick’s Cabaret. At the New York Gentlemen’s Club, happiness bares lots of skin and beauty, but it doesn’t come free.
“For an evening, six, seven eight thousand dollars, 10-thousand dollars, it’s hard not to have a good time when you’re surrounded by nearly naked women,” said Rick’s Cabaret Communications Manager, Allan Priaulx.
Female entertainers working at Rick’s said they are continuing to benefit from a boom in business following Wall Street’s rebound.
“These guys are getting much-deserved bonuses.They want to celebrate the bonuses and party and have a great time,” said Randi Newton, an entertainer at Rick’s Cabaret.
From sex cravings, to food cravings, some of Wall Street’s cats have gotten fat by forking up $175 for a 10-ounce Kobe beef hamburger.
“We still sell a handful of them every month. A good handful,” Heather Tierney, co-owner of Wall Street Burger Shoppe said.
On Main Street where more than 15-million Americans are officially unemployed, the US Poverty Population reached nearly 44 million, a 50-year high.
Ironically, that figure marks New York City’s most expensive residential sale this year. A seven-floor, 5th Avenue mansion was purchased for $44 million dollars. This, as more than two million homes have been swallowed up by foreclosure in 2010.
In this so-called rebounding US economy, purveyors of all things luxury are, in fact, resurging. All while the majority of Americans are left wondering when life will finally begin looking as pretty as the painting.
Mike Norman, the chief economist at John Thomas Financial explained there is an expanding gap between the rich and poor in America.
“The resources of the government have been directed almost completely towards one sector of the economy, that’s been the financial, that’s been the huge beneficiary when most working people, and by far, the rest of the economy has been left to flounder,” Norman commented. “It’s very disturbing.”
He said the US now ranks near the bottom of global income inequality lists, and it is a direct result of US government policies.
The failed policies transcend American party politics, he argued, both Republicans and Democrats continue to support the financial sector at the expense of all others. … Full article and video report
Israel’s Racist Rabbis: ‘Hate the Gentile’
By Jonathan Cook – Palestine Chronicle – December 9, 2010
Jews must not rent homes to ‘gentiles’. That was the religious decree issued this week by at least 50 of Israel’s leading rabbis, many of them employed by the state as municipal religious leaders. Jews should first warn, then “ostracise” fellow Jews who fail to heed the directive, the rabbis declared.
The decree is the latest in a wave of racist pronouncements from some of Israel’s most influential rabbis.
In October, Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed, delivered a ruling, signed by 17 other rabbis in the city, telling Jewish residents not to sell or rent property to members of the country’s Palestinian Arab minority, who make up a fifth of the population.
His followers turned words into deeds by attacking Arab students in the city and threatening to burn down the homes of Jewish landlords renting to the students.
Similar edicts have recently been backed by dozens of rabbis in Tel Aviv and nearby Bnei Brak, a suburb of 150,000 mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews. They have threatened to “expose” any Jews who rent to “foreigners” — in this case, a reference to migrant workers and African refugees who are crowded into neglected neighbourhoods in the centre of the country.
After many weeks of silence on these declarations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was finally forced to issue a condemnation yesterday, describing the rabbis’ call as undemocratic and contradicting the bible, which, he said, called for Jews to “love the stranger”.
Nonetheless, racism in Israel is increasingly enjoying high-level sanction among the most influential sectors of the religious establishment.
The latest ruling was signed by Shlomo Aviner, a spiritual leader of Israel’s national-religious camp; Yosef Elyashiv, a senior ultra-Orthodox rabbi; and Avigdor Neventzal, rabbi of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Its sentiments have also been echoed by Ovadia Yosef, a former chief rabbi of Israel and the spiritual leader of Shas, an important political and religious party in Mr Netanyahu’s government. “Selling to [non-Jews], even for a lot of money, is not allowed. We won’t let them take control of us here,” Mr Yosef said recently.
Two months ago, Mr Yosef explained the logic behind his views and those of like-minded rabbis.
“Goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us.” Explaining why God allowed non-Jews long lives, he added: “Imagine that your donkey would die, you’d lose your income. [The donkey] is your servant. … That’s why he [the gentile] gets a long life, to work well for the Jew.”
Mr Yosef’s remarks against “gentiles” were greeted with respectful silence by Israeli officials and most of the media. It was left to the United States government and the New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to issue rebukes. Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s head, accused the rabbi of advancing “hateful and divisive ideas”.
The rabbis’ use of theology to support racial discrimination is being applied to more than just housing.
This summer, Yosef Elitzur and Yitzhak Shapira, who head an influential seminary in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, published The King’s Torah, a 230-page guide to how Jews should treat non-Jews.
The two rabbis concluded that Jews were obligated to kill anyone who posed a danger, immediate or potential, to the Jewish people, and implied that all Palestinians were to be considered a threat. On these grounds, the pair justified killing Palestinian civilians and even their babies.
Last month Mr Shapira also backed the use of Palestinians as human shields, a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and a practice that Israel’s supreme court has outlawed.
The King’s Torah, far from being condemned by moderate rabbis, has been greeted with a general silence and enthusiastic support from a number of notable religious leaders.
Arik Ascherman, head of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, said the growing extremism of the the Orthodox religious establishment in Israel reflected the increasingly right-wing atmosphere in Israel that made the expression of ultra-nationalist views permissible.
In the current climate, he said, moderate rabbis were reluctant to speak out against their colleagues. Many of these rabbis belong to the Conservative or Reform streams of Judaism, which are not officially recognised in Israel.
“The religious sanction being given to the political right by these rabbis is dangerous. It makes their opinions seem more acceptable,” he said.
That is being reflected in public surveys, in which many Israeli Jews express support for anti-Arab views. A poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute published last week showed that 46 per cent of the country’s Jews did not want to live near Arab citizens, and 39 per cent felt the same about foreign workers.
Even more, 53 per cent, wanted Arab citizens to be encouraged to leave Israel and half believed Arabs should not have equal rights with Jews. Among the religious public, racist sentiments were more popular.
Israeli prosecutors, meanwhile, have turned a blind eye to the refusal of several prominent endorsers of The King’s Torah to obey a summons calling them for investigation. “Our holy Torah is not a subject for investigation or trial by flesh and blood,” the rabbis said.
In all, the rabbinical establishment is growing increasingly bold in promoting its vision of a Jewish state run according to holy law, according to Zvi Barel, a commentator with the daily newspaper Haaretz.
“They and their supporters are transforming zealous fundamentalism and the shameful The King’s Torah into the mainstream,” Mr Barel wrote recently.
The general trend towards extremism has not happened by chance, said Sefi Rachelevsky, a prominent Israeli writer critical of the Orthodox rabbinate. Israel’s public coffers pay the salaries of some of the most extremist rabbis, and the education system regularly falls under the political control of religious parties like Shas.
Mr Shapira, who advocates killing non-Jewish babies, receives large sums from the education ministry for his yeshiva — a seminary where he spreads his message of hate. Religious students also receive extra subsidies unavailable to normal students to encourage their attendance at such yeshivas.
The rabbis exert their influence on the youngest and most impressionable too. When the new school year started in September, 52 per cent of Jewish children in first grade attended a strictly religious school.
Pupils in some of the most religious schools, Mr Rachlevsky pointed out, are taught that Jews sit above nature, which comprises four categories: “inanimate”, “vegetable”, “animal” and “speakers” — or non-Jews, who are considered no more than talking animals.
– Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.jkcook.net. (A version of this article originally appeared in The National – www.thenational.ae – published in Abu Dhabi.)
Israel to demolish electric infrastructure near Hebron
Ma’an – 09/12/2010
HEBRON — Israeli authorities delivered demolition orders Thursday for electric transformers and powerlines in a Palestinian community south of Hebron, a local official said.
Local Popular Committee chairman Azmi Ash-Sheiyukhi said Israeli officials handed the orders to Muhammad Al-Adrah, the head of the village council of Rifaya and Ad-Deirat.
The orders call for the demolition and removal of a transformer and power lines that provide electricity to 800 people in the two remote villages near Yatta.
He said Israeli officials had previously authorized the construction of electric infrastructure to provide power to 400 Rifaya residents, while residents of Ad-Deirat had paid out of pocket for the construction of the transformer.
He also said residents planned to mount a legal challenge to the demolition orders, which he called “illegitimate and illegal.”
Indian envoy ‘frisked’ at US airport
Press TV – December 9, 2010
Indian Ambassador to the United States Meera Shankar
India is to file a diplomatic complaint with the US after its ambassador to Washington was singled out and frisked at a US airport.
The incident took place on December 4 at the Jackson-Evers International Airport when the Indian envoy to the United States, Meera Shankar, was about to board a flight to Baltimore after attending an event at Mississippi State University.
The Indian Embassy in Washington has strongly protested the incident.
Shankar was pulled out of the security line and frisked at the airport. She was subjected to a hands-on search despite staff being told about her diplomatic status, Press Trust of India news agency quoted an Indian Embassy official as saying.
“This is unacceptable to India and we are going to take it up with the US government and I hope things could be resolved so that such unpleasant incidents do not recur,” India’s Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna told reporters in New Delhi.
The incident has also embarrassed the university officials who invited Shankar to give a speech for an international studies program.
“It was a wonderful program, maybe the best we’ve had, (but) this stupid incident ruined the whole thing. She said, ‘I will never come back here,'” said Janos Radvanyi, chair of Mississippi State University’s international studies department.
“We are sending her a letter of apology.”
A US Transportation Security Administration spokesman said, “Diplomats are not exempt from the searches and that Shankar was screened in accordance with TSA’s security policies and procedures.”
Shankar suffered a similar experience in September when she was patted by a security officer at a Chicago airport, AFP reported.
US immigration authorities in the O’Hare Airport in Chicago questioned the visiting Indian Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel in September after his name and birth date matched with that of another Praful Patel, who is on the United States watch list.
See also:
Sari-clad India ambassador gets pat-down at Miss. airport
AP | December 8, 2010
… The Clarion-Ledger newspaper of Jackson quoted witnesses as saying Shankar was told she was singled out for additional screening because of her dress. She had on a sari, which drapes across the body and is worn by many Indians… Full article
Israel appears only in 77 Wikileaks docs
Press TV – December 8, 2010
A study of the U.S. State Department cables so far released by the WikiLeaks showed that there are merely 77 documents which mention Israel and only a handful have material pertaining to Tel Aviv.
On its website WikiLeaks says it has so far released “almost 20,000” of the “251,287 leaked United States embassy cables.”
The release, however, raised questions as it does not contain any incriminating or embarrassing document against Israel.
“No classified Israeli material was exposed by WikiLeaks,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in November, suggesting that Tel Aviv viewed the release as a positive.
An Israeli-born investigative journalist has found evidence that WikiLeaks “struck a deal with Israel,” based on which the website’s founder Julian Assange would withhold cables incriminating Israel in exchange for money.
Lia Abramovitch — an Israeli investigative Journalist born to holocaust-survivor parents — who writes for Syriatruth website, cites former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg as her source.
Domscheit-Berg says Assange had received money from semi-official Israeli sources and promised them, in a “secret, video-recorded agreement.”
That explains why there’s only one document that touches the issue of Israel’s nuclear weapons, albeit indirectly.
Cable 08PARIS245, which is a review of a meeting between acting U.S. Undersecretary of State John Rood and his British and French counterparts Mariot Leslie, Philippe Carre, reiterates the U.S., Britain and France’s support for Israel’s nuclear ambiguity approach.
“Furthermore, it is not in their interest to remove the ambiguity of Israel’s nuclear status which was stabilizing to the region. Carre agreed and said that there was no benefit to weakening the Israeli pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons in the Middle East,” reads the cable.
Highlights
Former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg said he and other WikiLeaks dissidents are planning to launch their own whistleblowers’ platform to fulfill WikiLeaks’ original aim of “limitless file sharing.” Die Tageszeitung
Mr. Domscheit-Berg, who is about to publish a book about his days ‘Inside WikiLeaks’, accuses Assange of acting as a “king” against the will of others in the organization by “making deals” with media organizations that are meant to create an explosive effect, which others in WikiLeaks either know little or nothing about. Der Spiegel
“For us it is always about uncovering corruption and abuse of power, wherever it happens — on the smaller and larger scale — around the world. Recently, however, we have only focused on the major topics and applied practically all of our resources to them.” Der Spiegel
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been denied bail by a judge after surrendering to British authorities over a Swedish arrest warrant Thursday. Assange vowed in court to fight extradition to Sweden, where authorities are hoping to question him over a sexual molestation case. CBS
Assange was arrested at 9:30 a.m local time Tuesday and appeared before Westminster Magistrate’s Court. He surrendered Tuesday under an agreement reached between his own lawyers and the police. CBS
Facts
WikiLeaks was founded by Julian Assange in 2006 with the motto of “keep governments open.” It describes its objectives as bringing “important news and information to the public.”
The site claims it has released more than 1.2 million documents so far and is preparing to release more than two million other documents.
WikiLeaks most important release is arguably a video showing US troops aboard a helicopter opening fire on unarmed Iraqi civilians – including Reuters cameramen.
In May 2010, WikiLeaks said they had video footage of a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan by the U.S. military which they were preparing to release.
In a 2009 Computer World interview, Assange claimed to be in possession of “5GB from Bank of America” documents to be released in 2011.
In December 2010, Assange’s lawyer, Mark Stephens, told The Andrew Marr Show on the BBC, that WikiLeaks had information that it considers to be a “thermo-nuclear device” which it would release if the organization needs to defend itself.
Featured Video
‘Never vaccinated’ vs ‘Ever vaccinated’ mortality rate illusion
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Psychiatric drugs kill 500k+ Western adults annually, few positive benefits – leading scientist
RT | May 13, 2015
Psychiatric drugs lead to the deaths of over 500,000 people aged 65 and over annually in the West, a Danish scientist says. He warns the benefits of these drugs are “minimal,” and have been vastly overstated.
Research director at Denmark’s Nordic Cochrane Centre, Professor Peter Gøtzsche, says the use of most antidepressants and dementia drugs could be halted without inflicting harm on patients. The Danish scientist’s views were published in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday.
His scathing analysis will likely prove controversial among traditional medics. However, concern is mounting among doctors and scientists worldwide that psychiatric medication is doing more harm than good. In particular, they say antipsychotic drugs have been over-prescribed to many dementia patients in a bid to calm agitated behavior.
Gøtzsche warns psychiatric drugs kill patients year in year out, and hold few positive benefits. He says in excess of half a million citizens across the Western world aged 65 and over die annually as a result of taking these drugs.
“Their benefits would need to be colossal to justify this, but they are minimal,” he writes.
“Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm.”
Gøtzsche, who is also a clinical trials expert, says drug trials funded by big pharmaceutical companies tend to produce biased results because many patients took other medication prior to the tests.
He says patients cease taking the old drugs and then experience a phase of withdrawal prior to taking the trial pharmaceuticals, which appear highly beneficial at first.
The Danish professor also warns fatalities from suicides in clinical trials are significantly under-reported. … continue
Blog Roll
Recent Comments
michael on Serbs Aware of UK’s… roberthstiver on Putin and Xi Standing Firm on… roberthstiver on Putin and Xi Standing Firm on… Thomas Lee Simpson on Why hypersonic weapons change… Bill Francis on Why I don’t believe there ever… spy on this on I am the “US-based Kremlin int… Balthasar Gerards on Why I don’t believe there ever… Thomas Lee Simpson on Biden fails to dismiss censors… 5 dancing shlomos on Is Dr. Malone Invested in Huma… Pip on Mom files lawsuit after being… jbthring on Setting the record straight on… rediscover911com on Why I don’t believe there ever…
Aletho News- Ron Unz: JFK Assassination, Iranian Channel Four TV (IRIB) March 24, 2023
- Mexican President Says Trump Arrest is About Keeping Him Off the Ballot March 23, 2023
- Russian governor’s son flees house arrest in Italy March 23, 2023
- Turkiye ‘reviewing options’ for Syria withdrawal: Report March 23, 2023
- Iraq war is epitomy of media duplicity March 23, 2023
- US to build new military bases near South China Sea March 23, 2023
- Why hypersonic weapons change everything March 23, 2023
- Serbs Aware of UK’s ‘Gift’ for Ukraine: NATO Poisoned Serbia’s Soil for Billions of Years to Come March 23, 2023
- Putin and Xi Standing Firm on the Right Side of History March 23, 2023
- Western Sanctions Targeting Russians Failed, PM Mishustin Says March 23, 2023
- Russia’s economy recovers while dozens of US banks face collapse March 23, 2023
- ‘Never vaccinated’ vs ‘Ever vaccinated’ mortality rate illusion: Survivor bias and how to overcome it March 23, 2023
- Indiana’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles is caught collecting and selling personal data March 23, 2023
- I am the “US-based Kremlin intermediary” that tried to help Tucker Carlson book an interview with Putin March 23, 2023
- Mom files lawsuit after being reported to law enforcement for questioning “polysexual” school poster March 22, 2023
- Biden fails to dismiss censorship collusion lawsuit March 22, 2023
- Is Dr. Malone Invested in Humanity or Transhumanism? March 22, 2023
- Why I don’t believe there ever was a Covid virus March 22, 2023
- If Americans Knew
- Bezalel Smotrich calls a lie “the biblical truth” March 22, 2023
- Joel Osteen’s startling interview with Bibi Netanyahu March 20, 2023
- Thursday-Friday: Israeli forces kill 5 Palestinians March 18, 2023
- Brownstone Institute
- How They Convinced Trump to Lock Down March 23, 2023
- The Lab Leak and the Counter Measures: What Really Happened March 23, 2023
- The Latest in the War on Science March 23, 2023
- The Covid Disaster was Foreshadowed with Love Canal March 23, 2023
- The Real Trauma of Love Canal March 22, 2023
- The Narrative in Retreat March 22, 2023
- Richie Allen
- Bordeaux Town Hall Burnt Down By Pension Reform Protesters March 24, 2023
- Scottish Schools Tell Kids There Are THREE Biological Sexes March 24, 2023
- Greta Thunberg To Sue Sweden For Climate Change Inaction March 23, 2023
- USA Today Names BLOKE In WOMEN Of The Year List March 23, 2023
- Not A Lot Of People Know That
- Prominent physicist warns that wind power “fails on every count” March 23, 2023
- Rural Homes Will Be Forced To Install Unaffordable Heat Pumps March 23, 2023
- Met Office & Their Opinion Poll March 22, 2023
- Climate change isn’t ‘particularly dangerous’: Richard Lindzen March 21, 2023
- No Tricks Zone
- Consent Factory
- The Censorship Industrial Complex March 10, 2023
Aletho News 