By Syed Akbar Ali
Barrack Hussein Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States of America. Many in the world, inside and outside the US, see Obama as the 'Great White Hope' (Great Black Hope sounds strange) to redeem America and also to take it easy on the world (meaning to stop bombing the rest of the world).
Obama is now picking his Cabinet and also his Staff at the Oval Office. The most important Staff position in the Oval Office is of course the White House Chief of Staff. Obama has asked Rahm Emanuel from Chicago to be his Chief of Staff.
Here is some information about the duties of the White House Chief of Staff and also about Rahm Emanuel (pic above).
White House Chief of Staff
The White House Chief of Staff is the highest-ranking member of the Executive Office of the President of the United States and a senior aide to the President. The U.S. President's Chief of Staff is a very powerful position, sometimes dubbed "The Second-Most Powerful Man in Washington
The duties of the White House Chief of Staff vary greatly from one administration to another. However, he/she is responsible for overseeing the actions of the White House staff, managing the President's schedule, and deciding who is allowed to meet with the President. Because of these duties, the Chief of Staff has at various times been dubbed "The Gatekeeper" and "The co-President".
Originally, the duties now performed by the Chief of Staff belonged to the Secretary to the President. In 1946, in response to the rapid growth of the
Rahm Emanuel (born November 29, 1959) has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 2003, representing Illinois's 5th congressional district which covers much of the north side of Chicago and parts of suburban Cook County.
Emanuel was chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2006 elections. Emanuel is noted for his strong style and his fundraising prowess. He is the co-author with current Democratic Leadership Council President Bruce Reed of the 2006 book The Plan: Big Ideas for
Emanuel was born in
His mother, Martha Smulevitz, worked as an X-ray technician; she was the daughter of a local union organizer, and would herself become a civil rights activist; she was also once the owner of a Chicago-area rock and roll club. Emanuel's older brother, Ezekiel, is a noted oncologist and bioethicist, and his brother, Ari, is a high-powered talent agent in Los Angeles and inspired Jeremy Piven's character Ari Gold on the HBO series Entourage. Rahm himself is also the inspiration for the character Josh Lyman on The West Wing. He also has a younger sister named Shoshanna, fourteen years his junior.
When his family lived in
Emanuel was encouraged by his mother to take ballet lessons as a boy and is a graduate of the Evanston School of Ballet. He won a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet but turned it down to attend Sarah Lawrence College, a liberal arts school with a strong dance program. He graduated from college in 1981, and went on to receive a master's degree in Speech and Communication from Northwestern University in 1985. While still a student at Sarah Lawrence, he joined the congressional campaign of David Robinson of
They are "active members of a modern Orthodox congregation, Anshe Shalom, in Chicago".
She is “heavily involved with the Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago.”
They have three children, son Zacharias and daughters Ilana and Leah. The children attend "the Conservative Jewish day school, which Emanuel himself attended as a child".
Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Anshe Sholom B'nai Israel Congregation, is quoted as saying: "It's a very involved Jewish family";
Emanuel has said of his Judaism: "I am proud of my heritage and treasure the values it has taught me."
6 comments:
Dear Dr.Syed,
Thanks for the information.
However i am intrigued as to the real intent of this post!
Are you alerting us to a potentially Zionist-influenced Obama administration?
Regards
SAJ,
Its 'lifted' verbatim from the Wikipedia.
Syed Akbar
I hope you are not seeking any conspiracy here.
As you already know mostly politicians rise through the church/synagogue route, and from there into politics. So its no surprise that politicians have much involvement with religious groups.
And as you would know 5% of the population of America are jews, making them a formidable group, and being clustered in cities its makes their presence and influence felt disproportionately larger.
Apart from that jews are just like all other people, as you too would know to. Some are religious but most are yuppies chasing the good life with little care or no knowledge about religion.
Today a number of jews have converted to Hinduism and some to Buddhism, and some again even to Christianity and other denominations and persuasions. I personally have such friends. They too are seekers. So do not be surprised if in your next visits to the USA you find whites and jews whose names are Subramaniam, Ratnam or Siddharta.
Here is today's Star:
Friday November 7, 2008
Israeli media hails Obama’s choice of chief of staff
JERUSALEM: Israeli media yesterday hailed Barack Obama’s choice of Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff, with one daily calling the Democrat of Israeli descent “our man in the White House.”
Radio stations and newspapers pointed out Emanuel’s Jerusalem-born father was once a member of Irgun, an underground, ultra-nationalist Jewish movement that fought British troops before the 1948 creation of the state of Israel.
Emanuel himself volunteered to serve in the Israeli army and did a two-month stint at a base in northern Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, public radio reported.
Syed Akbar
“It is obvious he will exert influence on the president to be pro-Israeli,” Emanuel’s father, who moved to the United States in the 1960s, told the Maariv daily.
The newspaper headlined the article: “Our man in the White House.”
Democrats say Obama has asked Emanuel, a combative congressman and former Bill Clinton White House aide, to be his chief of staff, a vital post that helps set the tempo of the administration.
Meanwhile, Middle Eastern newspapers yesterday welcomed Obama’s election victory, but warned against hopes of rapid or radical policy change in the region ravaged most by his predecessor.
Newspaper editorials hailed Obama’s historic win as a welcome change for the United States after eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency, but cautioned that Washington’s regional priorities would always be Israel and oil.
Egypt’s official Al-Ahram daily headlined with, “Obama rewrites American history,” describing election night as “an evening to get rid of racism in an American way.”
But Obama’s victory “doesn’t mean that we’re about to witness a radical change in American policy,” an editorial in the independent Al-Badil said, because change “doesn’t depend on the colour of your skin.”
Obama’s presidency would not change the way “Arab affairs” are dealt with, the paper said, as US policy consists of “preserving Israel’s superiority over all its Arab neighbours and (having) oil at an acceptable price.”
Newspapers in Iraq, steeped in chaos and bloodshed since the US-led invasion of 2003, were mostly pessimistic that Obama would herald change despite his campaign promises of a speedy withdrawal of US combat troops.
“We don’t expect the US to change strategy as soon as there is a change in president,” said the Badr daily. — AFP
i think this whole issue is blown out of proportion. Chief of staff is not like Secretary of Defense. I don’t think his “influence” will affect the American foreign policy. In fact, I think his appointment proves that the new administration is tolerant to the Jewish minority in America who've long suffered from discrimination and prejudice. We should give this man a chance.
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