Rachel Figueroa-Levin launched @ElBloombito, the Twitter account that parodies Mayor Bloomberg’s attempts at bilingual hurricane warnings with hilarious posts in Spanglish. Here are our faves: @ElBloombito - Cuidado! Stayo away para los downed linos de power. Que Electrocuto! El BUZZZ! @ElBloombito -Los trainos y el bussos son muy operationo. Go to worko. No excuso! Plant touch this. MC Hammer is headlining a Sept. 22 bash in conjunction with the Toronto branch of JNF -- he will parachute-pants his way to help develop a sports field at the Yafit Park complex in Kibbutz HaHotrim along the northern Carmel coast. Sarah Jessica Parker, decked out like Red Riding Hood for a film opening in Moscow, had a run-in with a big bad wolf -- her local bodyguard, Oleg Donstov, reportedly ripped his shirt open for her to sign his chest, and leaned in and tried to kiss her. As if Donstov wasn’t in enough trouble, his wife was watching on TV (but he hopes roses will do the trick). Poll of the Week: Do Larry David's real-life new flame and fake ex-wife look alike? Plus Birthday haikus forLewis Black and Lea Michele,Natalie Portman’s next role and our picks for celebrities who you always thought were Jewish, but aren’t. Want celebrity Jews? Visit 6nobacon.com In his new column, genealogy enthusiast Hillel Kuttler tells the story of Eliyahu Finkelstein, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor living in Israel who is searching for the descendants of an uncle who immigrated to Philadelphia before World War II and changed his name to Sam Stone. Read more Galeet Dardashti Sings the Sorries Heir to her family’s tradition of Persian and Jewish musicianship, Galeet Dardashti (above) debuts her latest venture, "Monajat," at NEXT@19th Street in Miami on Sept. 3 (read interview, watch video). This new performance piece, inspired by the 13th-century Sufi poem of the same name and her grandfather, the cantor Yona Dardashti, arrives just in time for Selihot and reflections on the Jewish New Year. (Yes, it's already here again.) Ethan Laser Wins Bagel Bowl Ethan Laser was the MVP of the Bagel Bowl, most likely the first match-up between two West Coast Jewish high school 11-player football teams. With two touchdown catches, Laser led the San Diego Jewish Academy Lions to a 25-8 win over the new Jewish kid on the block, the Milken Community High School Wildcats of Los Angeles. “This year our team has come together as a family,” said Laser, a junior and only in his second season of football. He’s 6’ 4, and if that doesn’t make him enough of a target, he flashed around the field in sporting shoes with day glow orange stripes. David Reichenberg Dies a Hero David Reichenberg was a simple sign-maker, a man of faith, and a devoted father of four, say his friends. He died a herowhen he was electrocuted while saving a five-year-old boy and his father, who had been stricken by power lines felled by Hurricane Irene. "He died saving a child," Rabbi Avrohom Braun told JTA. "What could be greater then that?" Jon Scheyer Makes Aliya (and Jump Shots) Jon Scheyer, the guard who helped lead the Duke Blue Devils to the 2010 NCAA Championship, made aliyah this week in preparation for starting his two-year contract with Maccabi Tel Aviv. Scheyer's arrival in Israel to play for Israel’s top team was heralded by Ynet as the arrival of the "Jewish Jordan.” (But let’s not forget that the original "Jewish Jordan," Tamir Goodman, moved to Israel to play for the team in 2002 and New Jersey Nets guard Jordan "my actual name is Jordan" Farmar is joining Scheyer this season.) Larry Derfner, You’re Fired Larry Derfner, a Jerusalem Post reporter, caused a stir for writing a blog post that said, “Whoever the Palestinians were who killed the eight Israelis near Eilat last week, however vile the ideology was, they were justified to attack.” Derfner later apologized, saying he meant that the Israeli occupation provokes Palestinian terrorism, not that it justifies it. But after receiving scathing responses and hundreds of calls to cancel subscriptions, The Jerusalem Post fired Derfner. "Like" our Facebook page to weigh in on this week's list and nominate someone next week! Or send an e-mail to TheFridayFive@jta.org. CALIFORNIA JEWISH CUISINE: What would it mean to eat like a California Jew? “Can’t I celebrate blintzes and kugel as cornerstones of my culture while also recognizing that my Russian and Polish ancestors probably would have loved a fresh mango salsa, if given the chance?” asks Emma Silvers in San Francisco’s j. newsweekly. IMAM FOR SHALIT: The 5 Towns Jewish Times speaks with Imam Abdullah Antepli, one of 11 American Muslims to sign a letter urging Hamas to release Gilad Shalit. ANNE FRANK TREE’S DIASPORA: Last year, the ailing chestnut tree in Amsterdam that Anne Frank once admired from her hiding place was felled by a gust of wind. Now saplings from the tree are expected to be replanted in 11 locations in America by 2013, Seattle’s Jewish Transcript reports. Read our full roundup of Jewish newspapers VERMONT, SAUL BELLOW AND HELPING AFTER IRENE: Following Hurricane Irene, The New York Times ran a story about Vermont residents Mel and Norma Shakun, whose 200-year-old home was severely damaged by flooding. One thing the Times didn't mention: The Shakuns are caretakers of the Jewish cemetery in Brattleboro, Vt. where author Saul Bellow is buried. Learn how you can help the Shakuns, members of the Brattleboro area Jewish community, and other communities impacted by Irene. Read more

Loot of the day - by Richard... Thursday, September 01, 2011

Loot of the day - by Richard... Thursday, September 01, 2011

So that's alright then ... instead of looting £168,000 a year, plus bonuses and benefits, Ms Baileyonly gets to loot £157,205 – plus bonuses and benefits.

The choice, however is an exceptionally good one. Ms Bailey takes a personal interest in the alleviation of poverty, and now has a track record of success. She has entirely abolished her own ... as long as the bailiffs keep pulling in the money and the magistrates keep jailing the defaulters.

COMMENT: "ENOUGH" THREAD

3Share

Print ready

Europlastics - by Richard...

At least we have a name for the enemy – the "licensed dissidents" within the Tory Party who believe they are eurosceptics. As we have seen in history says Autonomous Mind, from time to time words are hijacked by people with an agenda who change the meanings and understandings associated with them.

The term eurosceptic, he adds, is currently being hijacked in this way by people who wish the UK to remain firmly inside the EU while giving voters the impression they support the majority's wish to leave.

Actually, it is all of that but also more subtle than that. The Tories have a vision of a political Europe which has not changed in over seventy years when it was articulated to the War Cabinet on 20 July 1940 by Duff Cooper, the then information minister.

The bones of this was a "united Europe", a Europe "united by goodwill and in friendship, not by force and in terrors, a Europe based upon some federal system ... a Europe in which armaments will be pooled and trade barriers will be broken down, and in which each nation will be allowed to conduct its own affairs in its own way with the same kind of freedom as each state in the American Union possesses".

If you listen to the rhetoric of the likes of Helmer, Hannan, Redwood and George Eustace – and the outpourings of Open Europe - this is what they are still saying. None of these plastic people have come to terms with the fact that the Europeans had different ideas and have developed the European Union into something that is completely different, something foreign and altogether alien.

The europlastics are locked on a time warp, wishing for something that never was and is never going to be, but is something with which they feel comfortable and secure.

They can also be comfortable within the Tory party because their vision is the mainstream Tory view. There is no a fag-paper between Helmer and his pals, and Cameron. They all share that "vision", and that is what they mean by euroscepticism.

Nevertheless, they are not eurosceptics in any accepted meaning of the word, and AM has it in one, describing them as europlastics: cheap and nasty imitations of the genuine product. They are neither genuine supporters of European integration, nor genuine "outers" who would leave the continentals to their own fate. Instead, they occupy this fantasy no man's land, which exists only in their deluded minds.

The only thing we can give them is that their delusions are genuinely held, but never in a million years does that make them eurosceptics. They are genuine europlastics.

COMMENT THREAD

3Share

Print ready

Dark deeds and darker days - by Richard...

Anyone who says they completely understands the UK energy market is probably either lying or misinformed (or both). The great unknown, of course, is the effect of the loss of about 22GW of capacity, through the phase-out of the large combustion plants and obsolete nukes.

But, if the expectations are of an energy meltdown, it would appear that we can get some idea of what might happen from Germany, which is ahead of the game in shutting down a goodly proportion of its power industry.

As reported by the WSJ, this is the "accelerated exit from nuclear energy" and, according to the country's energy-network regulator, it has considerably increased the risk of power blackouts.

The Federal Network Agency, known as the Bundesnetzagentur, said bringing forward the country's planned gradual exit from all nuclear power to the end of 2022 -which includes the immediate and permanent closure of eight reactors - requires using all available power-production reserves to help balance power demand and supply to stabilise grids.

Bundesnetzagentur president Matthias Kurth and the country's power-transmission grid operators have warned the shutdown of nearly half of Germany's 17 reactors - or around 8.4 GW of generation capacity - could result in large-scale blackouts. Grid stability could be at risk especially in winter months, when demand is particularly high, Kurth says.

And if that is the result of 8.4GW dropping out of the system, we might have a torrid time with 22GW. And, as German experience indicates, the effects will not be uniform.

Southern Germany, which had relied heavily on nuclear power and where industrial energy demand is higher than in the north, is particularly prone to grid instability and blackouts. Not only is capacity going to need adjusting, but the grid is going to require considerable development to avoid network failures.

Despite this, Kurth remains optimistic that the situation is manageable, on the basis that several thermal-power plants can be operated as reserve capacity to bridge supply bottlenecks. This means coal, gas and oil-fired generation capacity – i.e., fossil fuels.

But what is of very great interest to us is that, without the nuclear capacity, the Germans are looking to allow some coal-fired power plants in western and central Germany to operate longer than previously planned. Now that may well bump up against the EU's Large Combustion Plant Directive, which is set to knock out better than 11GW from the British estate.

If the Germans are going to take on this directive, then there may be some hope that we can do likewise, which may relieve some of the pressure while we wait for our own nukes to be built. However, there is also much reliance on renewables, with all the system instability that that brings, which probably makes the German estimations rather optimistic. Even with plant extensions, power cuts seem almost inevitable.

But a darkened Germany, in the grip of prolonged power cuts will not be a happy place. As a result, the recent spate of car burning may be the least of their problems. And then it will be our turn.

Daily Briefing

Thursday, September 1, 2011

FEATURED STORY In Slovakia, being strategic about preserving Jewish heritage Lacking the resources to care for all of its old synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, Slovakia's small Jewish community has identified 24 flagship sites to preserve as part of a Slovak Jewish Heritage Route. Read more » BREAKING NEWS Vandals defaced the monument in Jedwabne that commemorates the hundreds of Jews burned alive in a barn there by their Polish neighbors in July 1941. The president of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires was granted a two-month leave of absence after the center's parties failed to form a coalition to name a successor. Two antiwar protesters were sentenced to 30 days in federal prison for throwing a pie in the face of U.S. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan. Israel arrested a top Hamas leader in the West Bank that it had released from jail several weeks ago. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra will perform at the prestigious BBC Proms in London in the face of calls for a boycott of its performance. Some 300 Ethiopian students and parents protested against their segregation in a Petach Tikvah elementary school, as nearly 2 million Israeli children began the school year. A councilwoman in Santa Ana, Calif., should resign after she made a "half-hearted" apology to a Jewish businessman that she had compared to Hitler, the Anti-Defamation League said. U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann became the latest presidential hopeful to meet with Orthodox Jewish leaders to discuss Jewish and Israel issues. Florida Marlins' third baseman Greg Dobbs visited a New York hospital to see the boy he injured with his foul ball.