The Libyan government said that there was a "massacre" going on in the city, with the local Isis affiliate pushing to expand the areas it controls.
The majority of Sirte fell into Isis's hands at the end of May, but a fierce battle for the eastern district known as "neighbourhood three" has been raging with local gunmen since Tuesday.
According to the Associated Press, Isis shelled the area, killed a senior cleric and hung the bodies of other prisoners over bridges.
Some 22 Sirte residents who joined the local militia were murdered by Isis while they lay wounded in hospital, the national LANA news agency reported. It said the jihadists also set the hospital itself on fire.
Libya Dawn fighters fire an artillery cannon at IS militants near Sirte March 19, 2015.In a statement issued late on Saturday, the government said it could no longer fight the Isis advance alone and called for support from the international community.
It said: "The Libyan government, unable to ward off these terrorist groups because of the arms embargo, and out of its historic responsibility toward its people, calls on brotherly Arab countries ... to launch airstrikes against specific targets of (Isis) locations in Sirte in coordination with our concerned bodies."
Speaking to the AFP News Agency, Libya's ambassador to France, Chibani Abu Hamoud, said up to 200 people had died in the battle for "neighbourhood three" so far.
"A real massacre is taking place, and we call on the international community to intervene," he said.
READ MORE:SAIF GADDAFI ON TRIAL FOR WAR CRIMES
SAIF AL-ISLAM, MISSES COURT DATE FOR TRIAL
MUAMMAR GADDAFI'S SOLDIERS ARE BACK IN LIBYA
The Arab League said it will hold an emergency meeting about the rise of Isis in Libya on Tuesday.
Libya's internationally recognized government appealed to Arab countries to carry out airstrikes against the local Islamic State affiliate which is expanding its hold on the coastal city of Sirte.
ReplyDeleteThe statement late Saturday came after the IS affiliate seized control of a new neighborhood in Sirte. The militants shelled the area, killed a senior cleric and hung the bodies of prisoners over bridges.
"The Libyan government, unable to ward off these terrorist groups because of the arms embargo, and out of its historic responsibility toward its people, calls on brotherly Arab countries ... to launch airstrikes against specific targets of (IS) locations in Sirte in coordination with our concerned bodies," the statement said.
The government also condemned the failure of the international community to take action against the group's rise in Libya.
The Arab League said it will hold an emergency meeting on Libya on Tuesday.
Egypt has joined Libya's government in calls for international intervention there against IS. Egypt has carried out airstrikes inside Libya, including in February after Islamic State militants killed 21 Egyptian hostages there.
The IS affiliate posted pictures on social media showing booty it seized from the neighborhood in Sirte, including vehicles and ammunition.
Fighting began earlier this week after a rival Islamist group, backed by a local tribe, refused to pledge allegiance to IS and called for a revolt.
Residents fled as IS militants took over the area. Awad Salem, whose family remains in the city, said IS fighters seized homes, refusing to allow residents to return until they search them for weapons.
Libya has slid into chaos since the 2011 overthrow and killing of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. It is now divided between an elected parliament and government in the east, and an Islamist militia-backed government based in Tripoli.
By Reuters | Benghazi, Libya
ReplyDeleteSunday, 16 August 2015
ISIS has executed and displayed the bodies of four members of a rival group which had staged a revolt against the militants in the central Libyan city of Sirte, residents said.
ISIS has crushed in the past few days a revolt by a Salafist Muslim group and armed residents trying to break its grip on the city, located some 500 km to the east of Tripoli. As many as 70 people have been killed, according to residents.
As a warning to others, ISIS killed four fighters from the rival side and hung their corpses on metal gibbets for public display, four residents told Reuters. Pictures on social media, whose authenticity could not be verified, showed two bodies hanging from a gibbet.
ISIS militants, who have gained a foothold in Libya by exploiting chaos and a security vacuum, also destroyed houses in Sirte belonging to rival fighters, residents said.
The fighting typifies the chaos in Libya, where two rival governments and parliaments, together with an assortment of Islamists, tribesmen and armed groups, are battling for control of cities and regions, four years after the fall of strongman leader Muammar Qaddafi.
THE FRUIT OF THE NEOCON DREAM
ReplyDeleteBy FRANCES D'EMILIO
MIKE CORDER
The Associated Press
ROME — At least 40 migrants died Saturday in the hold of an overcrowded smuggling boat in the Mediterranean Sea north of Libya, apparently killed by fuel fumes, before some 320 others aboard were saved by the Italian navy, the rescue ship’s commander said.
Migrants by the tens of thousands are braving the perilous journey across the Mediterranean this year, hoping to reach Europe and be granted asylum. They are fleeing war, persecution and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Cmdr. Massimo Tozzi, speaking from the navy ship Cigala Fulgosi while the rescue was still ongoing, told RaiNews24 said the cause of death “appears to be from inhaling exhaust fumes.”
When rescuers stepped aboard the boat, the bodies of migrants were “lying in water, fuel, human excrement” in the hold, Tozzi said.
CLINTON CHUCKLEMENT
ReplyDeleteSecretary of State Hillary Clinton shared a laugh with a television news reporter moments after hearing deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had been killed.
"We came, we saw, he died," she joked when told of news reports of Qaddafi's death by an aide in between formal interviews.
Clinton was in Tripoli earlier this week for talks with leaders of Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC).
The reporter asked if Qaddafi's death had anything to do with her surprise visit to show support for the Libyan people.
"No," she replied, before rolling her eyes and saying "I'm sure it did" with a chuckle.
Clinton is unfit to be president unless and of course you believe George W. Bush was.
ReplyDeleteWhen Meet The Press’s Chuck Todd brought up the media’s favorite lazy comparison between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the Democratic candidate explained why he is nothing like Trump.
ReplyDeleteSanders said, “Here’s the difference. I am not a billionaire. My family doesn’t have a whole lot of people. We are raising our campaign contributions from 350,000 people who are contributing on average Chuck, $31.20 apiece. That’s our response to out to working class people, to go out to the middle-class people and gain support. I think that’s a little bit different approach than Donald Trump’s.”
The comparison to Donald Trump is an insult to what Bernie Sanders is accomplishing. The media loves Donald Trump because he understands how to produce entertaining television. Trump is running a made for TV campaign.
Trump isn’t drawing tens of thousands of people to his events, and the people who are supporting Trump have little in common with those who are supporting Sanders.
Sen. Sanders is a public servant with decades of experience in fighting for ordinary Americans. Sanders proposes real legislation and policy. Donald Trump has done none of these things. Republicans are flocking to Donald Trump because he has perfected the Fox News style of hype and empty bluster.
Bernie Sanders isn’t succeeding because of publicity and hype. Sanders is drawing the big crowds because of his authenticity and message. Chuck Todd was clever in that he tried to compare the two campaigns based on the kinds of supporters that they are drawing, but there really is no comparison.
Donald Trump is a television creation born out of a combination of reality TV and Fox News. Bernie Sanders is a real deal candidate who has been building his grassroots support outside of the media spotlight for years.
Trump’s success is the culmination of years of Republican purges of intellect from their party, whereas the success of Sanders is a clear indication of the leftward movement of the Democrats.
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Delete.
Sanders is a sideshow. Doesn't matter what policies he offers up. Doesn't matter what the American people think about him. He won't be nominated. It's not the American people doing the nominating, it's the Democrats. And the Democrats like Hillary. And that should tell you something about the Democrats.
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Sounds just as BAD as Israel and the "ARAB room" LOL
ReplyDeleteLOL
LOL
LOL
These are your adopted peeps deuce...
LOL
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ReplyDeleteEPA Causes Environmental Disaster? Move Along Folks. Nothing to See Here.
This latest idiocy from the Obama regime began when the Environmental Pollution Agency bulldozed into a long-sealed mine. Three million gallons of toxic waste cascaded into the Animas River. It looked like a torrent of Orange Julius, only poisonous.
What were they thinking, you ask? They were thinking: Never let a crisis go to waste. The EPA can now justify its bloated budget and workforce. More jobs for more Beverly Scotts. Can someone say Superfund?
Compare the coverage of the Animas River 2015 to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico five years ago.
The BP oil spill, caused by Big Oil, was an “ecological catastrophe.” The Gold King Mine spill, caused by Big Government, is a mere “accident.”
Obama hasn’t gone on national television this time to say that his daughter interrupted him while he was shaving to ask, “Daddy, did you save the razorback sucker?”
Obama visited the Gulf Coast, but refuses to journey to New Mexico, even though a lot of the “folks” affected are Native Americans in the Navajo Nation.
The governor of New Mexico, a Republican named Susana Martinez, summed up the double standard this week.
“Imagine,” she said, “what would happen if a private company caused this waste spill.”
Think 24/7 news coverage, not to mention sputtering outrage at evil Republican enablers. Think candlelight vigils on the Cambridge Common, grannies in sensible shoes holding up signs: “Bush lied, the razorback sucker died.” The only reason New Mexico got any TV coverage this week was because the networks were desperate to divert attention from the latest scandals of their idol Hillary Clinton.
ABC News’ two male anchors, George Stephanopoulos and David Muir, reportedly had a hissy fit this week over who was going to get to leave the studio to cover the month’s biggest news story. Were they vying to travel to New Mexico?
Of course not. The Clintons’ parrot and the new empty suit from Channel 5 both wanted to go to Havana, the better to swoon over the Communist dictatorship there.
The Animas River? C’mon, didn’t you see the press release from the EPA? The river is already “restoring itself.” Amazing. This from the same “scientists” who claimed it would take decades for fishing in the Gulf to return to its pre-BP levels. And that’s the ocean.
This is a regime that always paints the bleakest picture imaginable, at least if it can blame Americans, Christians or the private sector. The worst economic crisis ever! No Plan B for Iran! Ban coal — it’s our final chance to save the planet! It’s settled science! It’s settled law! At least if we say it is.
And if you scoff at any of their primitive superstitions, the “reality-based community” will gladly burn you at the stake as a modern-day heretic.
We can only hope Obama’s EPA doesn’t next try to save the polar bear the way they’ve saved the razorback sucker.
Donald Trump not only wants to build a wall across the US-Mexico border, he wants to find a way to make Mexico pay for the construction of the wall. It's part and parcel of Trump's bombastic nationalism shtick. But it raises an obvious question: If stopping people from moving here is so important, why quibble about the money? And that, in turn, raises the single most neglected point about the economics of immigration: Even the studies by the most immigration-skeptical economists show that immigration raises the incomes of native-born Americans on average.
ReplyDeleteDon't take my word for it. Ask George Borjas, who tends to be far and away the leading economist in the immigration-skeptical camp. He says the current level of immigrant workers in the United States raises US GDP by about $1.6 trillion relative to where it would be in a zero-immigration universe.
But he cautions (emphasis added):
Of the $1.6 trillion increase in GDP, 97.8 percent goes to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and benefits; the remainder constitutes the "immigration surplus" — the benefit accruing to the native-born population, including both workers, owners of firms, and other users of the services provided by immigrants.
Wow — 97.8 percent! That sure sounds like a high number.
But the key thing about it is that 97.8 percent is less than 100 percent. Which is to say that immigrants — unlike, say, thieves — are not imposing any net costs on the native-born. In fact, while drastically raising their own income they are slightly raising everyone else's income. And that's according to an economist who thinks high levels of immigration are bad public policy. Other studies by more immigration-friendly economists see considerably larger gains to the native-born. But the whole argument is about how big the net economic benefits to the native-born are, not whether they exist.
Under the circumstances, Trump is correct. In strictly economic terms it doesn't make sense to be expending resources on trying to keep Latin Americans from moving to the United States. Immigration isn't costly, it's beneficial.
DeleteOf course, this makes the rest of his punitive anti-immigrant plan seem very costly in economic terms. But people have lots of concerns about . . . . . .
Vox
So, we have a sligt gain in GDP with more immigration - My question is, "who gains from that increased GDP?"
DeleteMy guess is it's Not the "working person."
Maybe, the CEO of Walmart, or GM.
Maybe, the CEO of "GM" wasn't a very good example, isasmuch as increased demand for chevies would be a plus for the American citizens working on the assembly lines.
DeleteThis morning, Joan McCarter reported on the CBO's just-released National Health Insurance Survey, which stated that the national uninsured rate has plummeted to just 9.2%, or around 29 million people (out of 320 million total).
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome news for many reasons. However, it's even better than you think; here's why:
As I noted when CDC released the fully-year 2014 NHIS back in June (which covered the full calendar year 2014):
The Centers for Disease Control has released their big National Health Insurance Survey, which confirms what every other study, survey and poll has: The Affordable Care Act did indeed caused the uninsured rate to plummet last year. On the one hand, this isn't exactly surprising news to anyone other than former U.S. Senator/NH Governor Judd Gregg and current U.S. Representative Gary Palmer, but whatever.
On the other hand, this particular survey carries more weight in some ways than the previous ones from Gallup, the Urban Institute, the RAND Corporation or the Commonwealth Fund, since a) it's the official government survey and b) the survey pool is massive.
The full 2014 annual survey was based on over 111,000 people. Today's report, which covers the first quarter of 2015, had a smaller pool size, but still an impressive one:
The data for this report are derived from the Family Core component of the 2010–2015 NHIS, which collects information on all family members in each household. Data analyses for the January–March 2015 NHIS were based on 26,121 persons in the Family Core.
There's a whole mess of data/statistics over time in the report, broken out every which way (by type of coverage, age bracket, etc), but the major notes of interest for me are:
--The overall uninsured rate, including everyone was down to just 9.2% of the total population, or around 29 million people.
Unlike Gallup and most other national surveys, the NHIS includes children under 18. This explains most of the discrepancy with, for instance, Gallup's 11.4% uninsured estimate as of the end of June; children have always had lower uninsured rates than the rest of the population to begin with, so when you include them in the total it definitely lowers the overall number.
Even so, this is a huge deal. My own number-crunching when the Gallup survey was released estimated that including children would drop the overall uninsured rate down to around 10.3%, or 33 million.
The NHIS results, however, have it even lower....9.2%, or around 29 million people.
Here's the even better news:
This only runs through the end of March.
Obviously there are gonna be some differeneces in methodology, wording of the question and so on between NHIS and Gallup (along with the Urban Institute, RAND and so on), so this discrepancy isn't as big of a deal as it might seem. Even so, we can remove one of the major variables by going back to Gallup's first quarter survey and comparing. As of March 2015, Gallup had the uninsured rate among adults over 18 at 11.9%.
DeleteThe implications of this are pretty significant:
--For Q1 2015, Gallup = 11.9% for those over 18, NHIS = 9.2% for everyone.
--For Q2 2015, Gallup = 11.4% for those over 18, NHIS = ???
A simple ratio comparison suggests that when the Q2 2015 NHIS report is released, it could have the total uninsured rate down to around 8.8% nationally, or just 27.8 million people or so.
So, what would account for a further reduction in the uninsured (of up to 1.2 million people) since the first quarter of the year? Well:
--First, remember that about 214,000 additional people enrolled in ACA exchange policies after the NHIS study concluded, thanks to the special tax season enrollment period. Assume about 190K of these folks had their policies kick in on April 1 or May 1, afte rthe end of the study.
--Pennsylvania's ACA-expanded Medicaid program didn't start until the beginning of January, but it took a few months to actually ramp up due to some confusion over a different version of the program enacted by the prior Governor. While 439,000 people had signed up as of the end of July, only about 200K of them started during the NHIS period, so the additional 239K were added after that.
--Similarly, Indiana's ACA-expanded Medicaid program didn't start until the beginning of February, and is up to about 290K now. Figure around 200K of those didn't start coverage until after March.
That's around 630,000 more people who started their ACA-enabled coverage after 3/31/15. Given the nature of these three subgroups, the vast majority of them were almost certainly previously uninsured. That's 0.2% out of 320 million people, easily accounting for knocking the uninsured rate down to 9.0%.
When you also throw in the improving economy/job market, it's easy to see how the uninsured rate could have dropped by even more than that thanks to increased employer-sponsored insurance.
Some other points to note:
--Remember that about 3.7 million people can't get insured under any circumstances due to being caught in the Medicaid Gap, thanks to Republican governors/legislatures
--Also remember that another 6.5 million people or so are undocumented immigrants and therefore can't legally enroll in either Medicaid or ACA exchange coverage.
Last month I estimated that these two subgroups made up around 31% of the total. However, assuming the NHIS numbers are more accurate than Gallup (and assuming both the 3.7M and 6.5M figures are accurate), it might actually be more like 36%, leaving just 17 - 19 million people who could still conceivably be left to get covered under ACA provisions.
Last month I estimated that these two subgroups made up around 31% of the total. However, assuming the NHIS numbers are more accurate than Gallup (and assuming both the 3.7M and 6.5M figures are accurate), it might actually be more like 36%, leaving just 17 - 19 million people who could still conceivably be left to get covered under ACA provisions.
DeleteBy an amazing coincidence, the IRS recently reported that about 7.5 million tax returns included a "shared responsibility" fee...aka the individual mandate tax for not having insurance coverage, out of a total of around 150 million federal returns. WIth 320 million people in the country total, that's roughly 2.1 people per tax return...or around 16 million uninsured people who paid the mandate fee, meaning they don't fall into the Medicaid Gap and aren't undocumented immigrants. The IRS also reported that around 15 million of those 150 million returns hadn't shown up yet, of which around 12 million had filed extensions and aren't due until October. If you assume around 1 million of those late filers also have to pay the fee, that's around 2 million more uninsured taxpayers who aren't in the Medicaid Gap...or around 18 million total.
Again, there's a lot of rounding off & estimating here, but overall it looks pretty solid to me.
Anyway, Jonathan Cohn of the Huffington Post and Peter Sullivan of The Hill have both written up good summaries of the findings; or you can check out the report itself for more.
Brainwrap
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DeleteIn trying to sell Obamacare, the number of uninsured was given as 49 million. A year or two later, before Obamacare actually started signing up people, the number being thrown around by everybody suddenly dropped to 33 million. Now, after a couple years of Obamacare we are told the number is down to 29 million; however, if you take the right numbers, from the right sources, and make the right assumptions and add them all together, you can get that figure down to 17 million.
Ain't numbers grand?
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So, the US proxy in Egypt hs been asked to assist the Libyans, militarily
ReplyDeleteAnd there are those that do not see the current state of affairs as a benefit to US.
They seem to think that only US troops are worthy of bleeding out in the sandbox.
The Arab League will have to take a position on the Islamic State.
The 'moderate Islamoids', led by the US Army War College alumni, the General/President of Egypt, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, are going to asked to commit some of those 1,400 General Dynamics M1 Abrams main battle tanks, along with some air strikes, to the continuing fight against the Islamic State.
Better the Egyptian Army than the US.
Debka File
DeleteIn its first arms sale to an Arab country, Israel has sold Jordan 12 advanced unmanned aerial vehicles of the Heron TP and Skylark types. They are urgently needed by the Jordanian Royal Air Force to beef up the counter-terrorism campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Trump: Deport the Dreamers.
ReplyDeleteUndocumented Immigrants have to go - and, take their American Citizen children with them.
IOW, deport all American Citizens whose parents were not citizens.
DeleteYeah, the Supreme Court will have a few things to say about that (well, actually, they'll just let the lower court opinion stand - the lower court decision that asked "are you out of your fucking, unconstitutional mind?!?!?"
Been playing Polo, Rat?
ReplyDeletePaul Krugman: Republicans Against Retirement
ReplyDeleteWhy do Republicans want to get rid of Social Security?:
Republicans Against Retirement, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Something strange is happening in the Republican primary — something strange, that is, besides the Trump phenomenon. For some reason, just about all the leading candidates other than The Donald have taken a deeply unpopular position, a known political loser, on a major domestic policy issue. And it’s interesting to ask why.
The issue in question is the future of Social Security... The retirement program is, of course, both extremely popular and a long-term target of conservatives, who want to kill it precisely because its popularity helps legitimize government action in general. ...
What’s puzzling about the renewed Republican assault on Social Security is that it looks like bad politics as well as bad policy. Americans love Social Security, so why aren’t the candidates at least pretending to share that sentiment?
The answer, I’d suggest, is that it’s all about the big money.
Wealthy individuals have long played a disproportionate role in politics, but we’ve never seen anything like what’s happening now: domination of campaign finance, especially on the Republican side, by a tiny group of immensely wealthy donors. Indeed, more than half the funds raised by Republican candidates through June came from just 130 families.
And while most Americans love Social Security, the wealthy don’t. ... By a very wide margin, ordinary Americans want to see Social Security expanded. But by an even wider margin, Americans in the top 1 percent want to see it cut. And guess whose preferences are prevailing among Republican candidates.
You often see political analyses pointing out, rightly, that voting in actual primaries is preceded by an “invisible primary” in which candidates compete for the support of crucial elites. But who are these elites? In the past, it might have been members of the political establishment and other opinion leaders. But what the new attack on Social Security tells us is that the rules have changed. Nowadays, at least on the Republican side, the invisible primary has been reduced to a stark competition for the affections and, of course, the money of a few dozen plutocrats.
What this means, in turn, is that the eventual Republican nominee — assuming that it’s not Mr. Trump —will be committed not just to a renewed attack on Social Security but to a broader plutocratic agenda. Whatever the rhetoric, the GOP is on track to nominate someone who has won over the big money by promising government by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent.
DeleteEconomist's view
Rat is still retired, surfing down in Mexico, or perhaps just people watching on the beach...
ReplyDelete... while, for myself, there is not much time for chatting about the same old same, not when there are ponies to ride and a screen play to polish.
California ... the streets are not paved with gold, but the dust is in the air.
:)
DeleteBe careful, the ponies are safe, compared to the movies. :)
The polo season in Cali has another month or so to run, through September anyway ...
DeleteThere is quite a market for horses that can stop and turn, and are not afraid to mark another horse running on the line of the ball.
The grass play in Indio starts in October, which is another real interesting equestrian sub-culture.
The group responsible for monitoring adherence to the global ban on chemical weapons said Monday that it had contacted Iraq over reports of the possible use of such munitions there. A statement by the group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague, came a few days after United States officials said Islamic State militants appeared to have used such munitions, possibly mustard gas, on Kurdish fighters in Iraq.
ReplyDelete...
Syria joined in 2013 after having promised to destroy its chemical stockpile, although the monitoring organization said this year that chlorine bombs had been used in the Syrian conflict. On Aug. 7, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution authorizing an inquiry into who was responsible for the chlorine attacks.
According to Donald Trump, neither Ted Cruz, or Marco Rubio, are U.S. citizens.
ReplyDeleteForget the Presidency, they gotta go "home."
(RNS) Rebuffing a campaign among Jewish organizations to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, 340 rabbis sent a letter to Congress Monday (Aug. 17) supporting the agreement and rejecting the notion that most American Jews oppose it.
ReplyDelete“Most especially, we are deeply concerned with the impression that the leadership of the American Jewish community is united in opposition to the agreement,” the letter states. “We, along with many other Jewish leaders, fully support this historic nuclear accord.”
The Jewish community around the world, concentrated in the U.S. and Israel, has paid close attention to the nuclear deal, which was negotiated by the U.S., Iran, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia China and the European Union. It aims to hamper Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon and would lift sanctions on the theocratic regime.
Many American Jews, citing Iran’s leaders’ repeated denunciations of the U.S. and threats to destroy Israel, have concluded that no deal with Iran is a good deal. Several national Jewish organizations, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — as well as many evangelical Christians — are lobbying Congress to vote it down.
The rabbis who sent the letter Monday argue that, while they have reason to distrust Iran’s leaders, the deal is the best available strategy to confront the specter of a nuclear Iran. And they want to challenge assumptions that Jews who oppose the deal represent American Jews as a whole.
“A wide array of views about the nuclear deal exist among American Jews,” said Rabbi Rachel Mikva of Chicago, who signed the letter.
She and others point to a recent poll from the L.A. Jewish Journal, which showed that Jewish Americans support the Iran deal by a larger margin than Americans in general, with 49 percent of American Jews approving of it, and 31 percent disapproving. The poll, of 501 American Jews, had a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percentage points.
The signatories to the letter include many rabbis in the more liberal Reform movement — the largest stream of Judaism — but also at least 50 rabbis from the more traditional Conservative movement, and at least one Orthodox rabbi, according to organizers of the effort.
“There is no denying that there are differences of opinion within the mainstream Jewish community,” said Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy of the Orthodox Union, which represents most of the 10 percent of American Jews who call themselves Orthodox.
While the Orthodox Union does not claim to speak for all of American Jews, and while the deal should not be judged on a poll, there is no question that the Orthodox are overwhelmingly opposed to the agreement, he said. “We are planning to bring hundreds of rabbis to Washington in early September to lobby Congress and make this point.”
The Reform Jewish movement plans to release a statement on the deal this week.
Huffington Post
those rabbis that signed a letter?
Deleterepresent less than 6% of all rabbis in america
How could this possibly be true? We have had it on faith from the Lobby spokesman that this is impossible.
ReplyDeleteWhat about The Christians?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/upshot/where-the-christian-right-is-strong.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1
Deuce, I'm having a problem with your link.
Delete