Quick Takes: <i>News You May Have Missed</i>

Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

By: Aaron Klein

Published: December 9th, 2009

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The Obama administration in recent weeks has stepped up its monitoring of Jewish construction projects in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, this column has learned.

This column reported in Augustthat Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, oversaw the establishment of an enhanced apparatus based in the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that closely monitors Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods, incorporating regular tours of the areas.

Palestinian Authority officials said the consulate stepped up its monitoring efforts in recent weeks, at times collecting information on Jewish construction on a daily basis. Previously, under the Bush administration, the consulate kept a general eye on Jewish Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria construction, receiving much of its information from nongovernmental organizations.

“Mitchell’s apparatus takes things to a whole new level. They are watching very closely,” said an Israeli official.

Jewish leaders in Judea and Samaria said the consulate takes no pains to hide its activities.

“They come out. They tour our communities. They try to interact with our leadership,” said David Ha’ivri, spokesmen for the Shomron Regional Council in Judea and Samaria.

Meridor Talks Of Expanding Freeze

The Obama administration is pressuring Israel to impose a freeze on Jewish construction in Jerusalem in addition to the 10-month freeze already imposed on Judea and Samaria, a top Israeli official told Middle East diplomats in a closed briefing.

Israel’s deputy prime minister, Dan Meridor, told the diplomats, however, that the Obama administration has agreed to respect a previous commitment reached under President Bush that Israel would not need to withdraw from all of eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.

The contents of Meridor’s meeting with the diplomats was leaked to this reporter.

Meridor said the Obama administration largely accepted that any final Palestinian state would not need to include three main settlement blocs – Ariel, Gush Etzion and Maale Adumim. Bush previously issued an official letter in 2004 stating Israel cannot be expected to withdraw from all of Judea and Samaria and that the Jewish state would retain major settlement blocs there.

Meridor told the diplomats the Obama administration is pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expand its 10-month freeze on Jewish construction to eastern Jerusalem.

Global Warming: The Players

Amid an international climate-change scandal involving hacked e-mails that is playing itself out just days before a major UN climate summit of world leaders, it is instructive to profile top White House officials who are drafting President Obama’s climate policy.

Carol Browner’s official title is assistant to the president for energy and climate change. Browner was a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society at Socialist International, a group that Discover the Networks reports is the “umbrella for 170 ‘social democratic, socialist and labor parties’ in 55 countries.” Browner’s group called for “global governance” and asserts rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.

Browner worked in the 1970s for Citizen Action, founded by Steve Max and Heather Booth, both extremists from the Students for a Democratic Society from which extremist Bill Ayers’ Weathermen terrorist group later splintered. Browner also worked for the Center for American Progress, funded by philanthropist George Soros.

Meanwhile, Cass Sunstein, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, believes global climate change is primarily the fault of U.S. environmental behavior and can, therefore, be used as a mechanism to redistribute the country’s wealth.

The Obama czar penned a 2007 University of Chicago Law School paper – obtained and reviewed by this column – in which he debated whether America should pay “justice” to the world by entering into a compensation agreement that would be a net financial loss for the U.S.

Sunstein further argued that a heavy environmental tax on the U.S. is “desirable” to “redistribute” America’s wealth to poorer nations.

In his 2004 book “The Second Bill of Rights” Sunstein openly argues for bringing socialism to the U.S. and even offers some support for communism.

Another top environmental adviser to Obama is the White House’s “science czar,” John Holdren. He has been a longtime climate-change alarmist who has advocated ideas such as enforcing limits to world population growth.

Holdren has endorsed “surrender of sovereignty” to “a comprehensive Planetary Regime” that would control all the world’s resources, direct global redistribution of wealth, oversee the “de-development” of the West, control a World Army and taxation regime, and enforce world population limits.

Holdren collaborated with conspiracy theorist Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb” in which it was proclaimed: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.”

Holdren also predicted 1 billion people will die in “carbon-dioxide-induced famines” in a coming new ice age by 2020.

But Holdren also argued “global warming” might cancel global cooling. In the 1970s textbook “Ecoscience: Population, Resources and Environment,” last revised in 1977, Holdren argued on page 687 that “a man-made warming trend might cancel out a natural cooling trend.”

Movie Character Sues For $115 Million

A “terrorist leader” interviewed in the hit movie “Bruno” has filed a $115 million suit against the movie’s producers and star Sasha Baron Cohen, an amount equal to half of the movie’s gross box office earnings.

This reporter first broke the story in July that Ayman Abu Aita charged that the film mislabels him and that Cohen conducted the interview under the pretext that Cohen was a German producing a film about the Palestinian cause.

Aita slammed Cohen as a “big liar” who “made up stories” when describing to CBS’s David Letterman last summer the way he met Aita at an undisclosed location.

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.com. He appears throughout the week on leading U.S. radio programs and is the author of the book “The Late Great State of Israel.” Follow Klein on Twitter under the name “AaronKleinWND.”

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About the Author: Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m (CHANGE TO 7-9 p.m.). His website is KleinOnline.com

Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

Meridor Talks Of Expanding Freeze

Global Warming: The Players

Movie Character Sues For $115 Million

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