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- Report from Yemen: The innocent victims of the Obama drone … 0
- ‘Fuck it, I Love Israel’ — Artists 4 Israel bombards … 12
- Daily News and Foxman smear Alice Walker: ‘infected by anti-Semitism,’ … 27
- Slam poet Tahani Salah rips into ADC 2013 audience performing … 0
- Samantha Power’s character reference likens Palestinians to Nazis, deserving defeat 30
- ‘Your cause is our cause,’ Mohammed Assaf tells Palestinian prisoners 15
- New commuter station ad seeks to immunize Israel from racism … 9
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- ‘Girls on Fire’ tell Alicia Keys — Don’t play Apartheid … 197
- Meet the Israeli-linked firm that sold Big Brother machines to … 99
- House committee votes to give Israel another 1/2 billion in … 94
- An Israeli veteran comes forward to decry ‘how shitty we … 93
- Palestinian activist Abir Kopty: Oslo should go, the peace process … 87
- Looking for ‘a new devil,’ Israeli leaders and supporters left … 83
- World Bank, the PA and Israel work together to confiscate … 83
- Peace Now: New starts on settler homes at a seven-year … 70
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- US and Israel are accused of manipulating Hague to acquit … 136
- The kids are back, and it’s not alright 132
- Approaching 60, Norman Finkelstein reflects 116
- Palestinian activist Abir Kopty: Oslo should go, the peace process … 102
- The MSM tries to distinguish between Manning and Snowden. Don’t … 86
- I’ve got Mohammed Assaf fever 72
- Chris Matthews takes populist stance against another Establishment war on … 52
- Latest DC mantra: The two-state solution is dead, long live … 51
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- Backlash grows against surveillance targeting Muslims: Lawsuit and bills take aim at NYPD http://t.co/cx0oNrygtc, 46 mins ago
- Report from Yemen: The innocent victims of the Obama drone wars http://t.co/RItqjlOFcg, 1 hour ago
- ‘Fuck it, I Love Israel’ — Artists 4 Israel bombards Ibiza with hasbara condoms http://t.co/KudmxgouZU, 1 hour ago
- New commuter station ad seeks to immunize Israel from racism charge http://t.co/HtWBJvo4gw, 4 hours ago
- ‘Your cause is our cause,’ Mohammed Assaf tells Palestinian prisoners http://t.co/NL8bYnhOhv, 4 hours ago
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Recent Comments
click link to see last 100 comments- ‘Your cause is our cause,’ Mohammed Assaf tells Palestinian prisoners (15)
- ‘Fuck it, I Love Israel’ — Artists 4 Israel bombards Ibiza with hasbara condoms (12)
- Shmuel: pssst … Israel had gay marriage years ago Pssst … Israel still doesn’t have gay marriage....
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- Ecru: Tacky, loony, narcissistic and ugly all in the same package. What a glorious example of Zionism this nut job...
- Daily News and Foxman smear Alice Walker: ‘infected by anti-Semitism,’ all but ‘a lunatic shouting anti-Semitic canards’ (27)
- Ecru: Your father was a very perceptive man.
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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
RE: "And was their average age 76?"
MY COMMENT: Bless their hearts, whatever the chronological age! Many "younger" folks are too preoccupied (or fear risking damage to their careers) to bother with taking a stand for human rights.
RE: "What is the ground of Jewish resentment of the pre-WW2 West? Presumably in part that the Evian Conference on refugees led to so little..." - MHughes976
SEE: “The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict”, Third Edition, published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East
(EXCERPT) Wasn’t the main goal of Zionism to save Jews from the Holocaust?
“In 1938 a thirty-one nation conference was held in Evian, France, on resettlement of the victims of Nazism. The World Zionist Organization refused to participate, fearing that resettlement of Jews in other states would reduce the number available for Palestine.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”
“It was summed up in the meeting [of the Jewish Agency’s Executive on June 26, 1938] that the Zionist thing to do ‘is belittle the [Evian] Conference as far as possible and to cause it to decide nothing…We are particularly worried that it would move Jewish organizations to collect large sums of money for aid to Jewish refugees, and these collections could interfere with our collection efforts’…Ben-Gurion’s statement at the same meeting: ‘No rationalization can turn the conference from a harmful to a useful one. What can and should be done is to limit the damage as far as possible.’ ” Israeli author Boas Evron, “Jewish State or Israeli Nation?”
“[Ben-Gurion stated,] ‘If I knew that it was possible to save all the children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second—because we face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people.’ In the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, Ben-Gurion commented that ‘the human conscience’ might bring various countries to open their doors to Jewish refugees from Germany. He saw this as a threat and warned: ‘Zionism is in danger.’ ” Israeli historian, Tom Segev, “The Seventh Million.”
“The Zionist movement…interfered with and hindered other organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish, whenever it imagined that their activity, political or humanitarian, was at variance with Zionist aims or in competition with them, even when these might be helpful to Jews, even when it was a question of life and death…Beit Zvi documents the Zionist leadership’s indifference to saving Jews from the Nazi menace except in cases in which the Jews could be brought to Palestine…[e.g.] the readiness of the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, to absorb one hundred thousand refugees and the sabotaging of this idea—as well as others, like proposals to settle the Jews in Alaska and the Philippines—by the Zionist movement… “The obtuseness of the Zionist movement toward the fate of European Jewry did not prevent it, of course, from later hurling accusations against the whole world for its indifference toward the Jewish catastrophe or from pressing material, political, and moral demands on the world because of that indifference.”
Israeli author Boas Evron, “Jewish State or Israeli Nation?”
“The Origin of…” (40 pages) - http://www.cactus48.com/truth.html
RE: "Dershowitz speaks out against the unjust legal system of Italy" - Weiss
MY COMMENT: It looks like Berlusconi will be spending a lot of 'denaro' on criminal defense lawyers. Perhaps Dershowitz is already angling for his share of the lucre. Euros are considerably more desirable than U.S. dollars these days.
SEE: "Mob witness links Berlusconi to Mafia bombings", By Silvia Aloisi, Reuters, 12/04/09
LINK - link to news.yahoo.com
AND: "Thousands at rally hear calls for Berlusconi to quit", The Irish Times, 12/07/09
LINK - link to irishtimes.com
RE: “The dinner was organised by the Australia-Israel Leadership Forum, which aims to strengthen ties between Israel and Australia.”
MY COMMENT: What else would one expect from “white Australia”?
SEE: "Australia apology to Aborigines", BBC News, 02/13/08
The Australian government has made a formal apology for the past wrongs caused by successive governments on the indigenous Aboriginal population.
(excerpt) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised in parliament to all Aborigines for laws and policies that "inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss".
He singled out the "Stolen Generations" of thousands of children forcibly removed from their families...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to news.bbc.co.uk
P.S. "So it goes" - Kurt Vonnegut
RE: "The dinner was organised by the Australia-Israel Leadership Forum, which aims to strengthen ties between Israel and Australia."
RE: What else would one expect from "white Australia"?
SEE: "Australia apologises to abused migrant children", Agence France-Presse, 11/16/09
(excerpt) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Monday made an emotional apology to half-a-million "Forgotten Australians" who faced sexual abuse, violence and forced labour in childcare homes over a period of decades. Hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged children, including some 7,000 sent from Britain, were ripped from their homes to live in poorly monitored state and church institutions where many were abused, ignored or forced into unpaid labour...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to rawstory.com
P.S. "Same as it ever was... Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was... Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was... Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was... Same as it ever was..." - David Byrne, 'Talking Heads'
RE: "Eddie’s two trademarks are his unctuous politenesss to adults and his weasly, sharp-tongued meanness to everybody else." - Citizen
Eddie Haskell: "Wally, if your dumb brother tags along, I'm gonna - oh, good afternoon, Mrs. Cleaver. I was just telling Wallace how pleasant it would be for Theodore to accompany us to the movies."
Eddie Haskell: "Gee, your kitchen always looks so clean. "
June Cleaver: "Why, thank you, Eddie."
Eddie Haskell: "My mother says it looks as though you never do any work in here."
IMDB SOURCE - link to imdb.com
RE: And the evacuated settlers from Gaza have been sitting in sackcloth and ashes screaming “Never Again!” ever since. - potsherd
SEE: "Jordan Valley may be hurdle in peace talks", By Howard Schneider, Washington Post Foreign Service, 11/02/09
(excerpt) ....That is certainly the view from Maskiot, where settlers such as Yosi Chazut are confident they have a permanent home. Chazut, 30, was among the thousands of Israelis removed from settlements in the Gaza Strip when Israel left the area in 2005. The government let him and his wife and three children settle here a year and a half ago with a long-range plan to develop the surrounding hillsides.
During one of Netanyahu's visits to Maskiot, "he said clearly -- the Jordan Valley remains in Israeli hands in every future negotiation," Chazut said...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to washingtonpost.com
RE: "because the local Israeli patrol didn’t operate on Shabbat"
RELATED: "Soldier sent to detention for cooking on Shabbat after cat ate his meal", 12/02/09, ynetnews.com
SYNOPSIS: Kfir brigade soldier about to eat Shabbat meal finds out a cat has 'tasted' their meal. Soldier offers to cook new meal, gets caught, sentenced to 20 days in detention for violating IDF rules
ARTICLE - link to ynetnews.com
RE: Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board – Henry Kissinger
MY COMMENT: I doubt that Kissinger has Israeli citizenship. At a minimum, it appears to me that the above list contains numerous errors. I probably should not have posted it. I would not object to its being removed.
I am fairly certain that Chertoff , (former) Director of Homeland Security was a 'dual national' having Israeli citizenship.
RE: Defense Intelligence Agency Analyst (Former) – Lawrence (Larry) Franklin
MY COMMENT: I do not believe he is either Jewish or an Israeli (although he is sometimes referred to as a 'neocon').
Lawrence Franklin - link to en.wikipedia.org
Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal - link to en.wikipedia.org
RE: "And what was the proof of the adequacy of the partner? That during the Gaza assault, there had been no unruly protests on the West Bank. Dissent was successfully controlled."
SEE: “British police and intelligence officers sent to tackle UK-funded torturers on West Bank”, By DAVID ROSE, 10/25/09, dailymail.co.uk
(excerpts) The Government is sending British police and intelligence officers to the West Bank to try to stop a wave of brutal torture by Palestinian security forces funded by UK taxpayers.
Their mission is to set up and train a new ‘internal affairs’ department with sweeping powers to investigate abuse and bring torturers to justice…
…Yesterday a senior official from the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA), which runs the West Bank and its security agencies, admitted for the first time that torture, beatings and extra-judicial killings have been rife for the past two years, with hundreds of torture allegations and at least four murders in custody, the most recent in August…
…The next step would be for officers from MI5 and MI6 to train the PA’s Mukhabarat intelligence agency.
‘Obviously police cannot train intelligence officers,’ Ms Arar said. ‘For that you need other intelligence officers. We need all the help we can get.’…
…In the region’s largest city, Nablus, Nasser al-Shaer, a former Manchester academic who was deputy prime minister in the short-lived Hamas Palestinian Authority government elected in 2006, said many of those released from detention in recent months were telling the same story – of torture, including beatings, being suspended from the ceiling and electric shocks…
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to dailymail.co.uk
RE: . "Scratch almost any major tech company...and you will find that Israeli talent and technology play a major role in keeping these multinational companies on the cutting edge. " - Julian
SEE: SEE: “The Israel Lobby Celebrates Espionage in New York”, By Grant Smith, 12/02/09
(excerpt)... In the spring of 1984 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and American Israel Chamber of Commerce were in the midst of a pitched battle against American corporations, industry organizations, and worker’s groups. At stake was an Israel lobby bid to open up the vast US market to unrestricted Israeli exports, the first of a series of so-called "free trade" agreements (more accurately described as intergovernmental managed trade deals). 76 major US interest groups from Monsanto and Dow to the AFL-CIO fought a small group of 23 Israel lobby organizations, most with no obvious economic stakes, that pushed President Reagan to sign America’s first formal bilateral trade deal in the midst of economic calamity in Israel.
Covert lobbying assistance for this minority soon arrived in the hands of Israeli Minister of Economics Dan Halpern. According to a recently released, redacted FBI interview transcript (PDF, restored by the author) Halpern mysteriously obtained a 300-page classified US Trade Representative report prepared by the International Trade Commission and secretly delivered it to AIPAC during a 1984 coordinating meeting. Halpern later refused to divulge to the FBI how he obtained the secret report, stating it "would be impossible within the professional ethics of his diplomatic position" to identify the source. The report contained the most sensitive trade secrets and market data of the American industries fighting hardest against the trade deal. It is still considered so sensitive by the US Trade Representative that it remains classified to this day...
...Besides unleashing an unrelenting Israeli effort to obtain US intellectual property and military secrets, the US-Israel deal is the single worst performing bilateral managed trade pact. It has produced a cumulative $71 billion deficit to the US because it locks US products out of the Israeli market. The US share of trade dropped from 27% in 1985 to 12% last year. The US-Israel deal produces ongoing market access complaints from US industry groups as well as annual intellectual property violation censures by the US Trade Representative...
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to original.antiwar.com
RE: ‘Times’ holds up Israel as ‘model’
SEE: "The Israel Lobby Celebrates Espionage in New York", By Grant Smith, 12/02/09
(excerpt)...The recent sting operation against former NASA scientist Stewart Nozette involved an undercover FBI employee posing as Mossad agent. Meeting in the posh Mayflower hotel in Washington, the agent set up clandestine payments in exchange for highly classified information. Nozette began delivering requested classified national defense information believing it to be destined for Israel while confidentially assuring the FBI agent that he thought he was already spying for Israel. This allegedly occurred under Nozette’s prior "consulting" contract with Israel Aerospace Industries, a major military contractor. Although the US has traditionally ignored, forgiven, or quashed investigations into Israeli espionage, the cost to America’s national security and economy may now have pushed law enforcement agencies toward a tipping point. Ironically, this very week, the Israel lobby is celebrating in New York the biggest clandestine operation ever conducted against US industries and workers.
Israel Aerospace Industries was once called Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), a company launched by the legendary flight engineer and entrepreneur Adolph "Al" Schwimmer. Schwimmer was a key man in the vast underground Haganah smuggling (PDF) effort across the US trafficking in surplus WWII arms, supplies and veteran manpower for war in Palestine. He purchased heavily discounted surplus US military aircraft from the War Assets Administration but violated laws prohibiting their export use in armed conflict by creating a fake Panamanian shell corporation and flying the transport wing to Palestine to battle for the creation of Israel in 1948. None of the key American financial backers of the effort went to jail, though a handful of small operators such as Nathan Liff did eventually appear in criminal court...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to original.antiwar.com
SEE: "Brownback wants to remove the waiver in embassy law"
By Eric Fingerhut · November 3, 2009
(excerpt) Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) is planning to introduce legislation today or tomorrow that would remove the presidential waiver from the law calling for the U.S. Embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jersualem. He announced his sponsorship of the Jersualem Embassy Relocation Act of 2009 on Tuesday afternoon at a Capitol Hill meeting of the Jerusalem Conference.
The legislation would call on the State Department to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and get rid of the waiver in the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Law that every president since then has renewed every six months....
SOURCE - link to blogs.jta.org
RE: "J Street slammed the policy, calling it troubling." - Weiss
ALSO SEE: "EU diplomats' Jerusalem report critical of Israel", By Linda Gradstein, "The Star", Toronto Edition 12/03/09
Leaked draft document condemns Israeli policies, calls on European states to back Palestinian claims
(excerpt) JERUSALEM–Tensions are growing between the European Union and Israel over a draft document that slams Israeli policies in East Jerusalem and calls on EU countries to strengthen Palestinian claims to the city.
A second document, to be discussed in Brussels next week, seeks EU recognition of East Jerusalem as capital of a Palestinian state.
In addition, an Israeli human rights group says Israel is stripping Palestinians of their Jerusalem residency permits at a growing rate...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to thestar.com
Barak: Settlements are part of Israel, 12/02/09, By Tal Rabinovsky, ynetnews.com
http://www.ynetnews.com
News: In meeting with four West Bank council heads, Defense Minister Ehud Barak stresses that 'settlement blocs are inseparable part of Israel in all future negotiations with Palestinians'. Vows council heads can continue to authorize infrastructure construction, small changes
LINK - link to ynetnews.com
RE: “What can we do about it?”
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Robert Greenwald / Brave New Foundation: This War Must End
Sign the petition to tell Congress we cannot afford a war that does not make us safer. - link to action2.bravenewfilms.org
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Friends Committee on National Legislation:
Afghanistan: Say No to More War
By adding your name to this statement, and encouraging others to sign it as well, you'll help us put as many people as possible on record opposing the escalation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Please take the time to sign the petition and let your voice be heard. - link to action.fcnl.org
RE: "What can we do about it?"
MoveOn PETITION:
"Congress must push the Obama administration to outline firm benchmarks and a binding timeline to bring all of our troops home from Afghanistan as soon as possible."
Sign the petition - link to pol.moveon.org
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Just Foreign Policy: Urge Congress to Vote Now Against Afghanistan Troop Increase
Urge your Representative and Senators to support a debate and vote now on the President's plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, using the following link - link to justforeignpolicy.org
RE: "It’s from CNN International. Don’t worry, US audiences weren’t forced to grapple with such thought provoking reporting." - Adam Horowitz
MY COMMENT: I read somewhere recently that newspapers in the U.S. are written so as to be suitable for reading by an eighth grader. Such is the level of education and reading comprehension here in der Heimatland (the Homeland).
RE: “defusing the third rail”? Sure, that’s a great way to describe it. - Mooser
MY COMMENT: De-energizing and/or neutralizing might also work.
RE: America 1st, name your source for that contention. (Corporate boycotts of Israel are already illegal in the US. )
FROM the "Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce":
Antiboycott Compliance (excerpts)
Antiboycott Laws:
During the mid-1970's the United States adopted two laws that seek to counteract the participation of U.S. citizens in other nation's economic boycotts or embargoes. These "antiboycott" laws are the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act (TRA). While these laws share a common purpose, there are distinctions in their administration.
What do the Laws Prohibit?
Conduct that may be penalized under the TRA and/or prohibited under the EAR includes:
Agreements to refuse or actual refusal to do business with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies.
Agreements to discriminate or actual discrimination against other persons based on race, religion, sex, national origin or nationality.
Agreements to furnish or actual furnishing of information about business relationships with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies.
Agreements to furnish or actual furnishing of information about the race, religion, sex, or national origin of another person.
Implementing letters of credit containing prohibited boycott terms or conditions.
The TRA does not "prohibit" conduct, but denies tax benefits ("penalizes") for certain types of boycott-related agreements.
SOURCE - link to bis.doc.gov
RE: "the training of Palestinian forces at a $21m US financed campus and operations camp in Jordan/the Palestinian security forces’ crackdown on protest in the West Bank during and after Gaza"
SEE: "British police and intelligence officers sent to tackle UK-funded torturers on West Bank", By DAVID ROSE, 10/25/09, dailymail.co.uk
(excerpts) The Government is sending British police and intelligence officers to the West Bank to try to stop a wave of brutal torture by Palestinian security forces funded by UK taxpayers.
Their mission is to set up and train a new ‘internal affairs’ department with sweeping powers to investigate abuse and bring torturers to justice...
...Yesterday a senior official from the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA), which runs the West Bank and its security agencies, admitted for the first time that torture, beatings and extra-judicial killings have been rife for the past two years, with hundreds of torture allegations and at least four murders in custody, the most recent in August...
...The next step would be for officers from MI5 and MI6 to train the PA’s Mukhabarat intelligence agency.
‘Obviously police cannot train intelligence officers,’ Ms Arar said. ‘For that you need other intelligence officers. We need all the help we can get.’...
...In the region’s largest city, Nablus, Nasser al-Shaer, a former Manchester academic who was deputy prime minister in the short-lived Hamas Palestinian Authority government elected in 2006, said many of those released from detention in recent months were telling the same story – of torture, including beatings, being suspended from the ceiling and electric shocks...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to dailymail.co.uk
RE: "Argentina – Proof that Israel is no refuge from anti-Semitism" – Greenstein
A MARGINALLY RELATED ARTICE: "Citing Insecurity and Politics, Jews Leave Venezuela in Droves' – Forward.com, 11/16/09
By Jasmina Kelemen (JTA) - (excerpt) Esther Benchimol de Roffe arrived in Venezuela as a young bride, leaving northern Morocco more than 50 years ago to meet her groom in a prosperous foreign land. Her husband built a successful business, and Benchimol raised a family and earned international renown singing the ancient Sephardic hymns she had learned as a child in Alcazarquivir.
“It was a rich country, there were a lot of opportunities,” reminisces Benchimol, now 74. “We had many friends and there was a real sense of brotherhood. There was never any racism against us.”
Her tone changes, however, when she considers the futures of her grandchildren and whether she would advise them to stay in Venezuela.
“I wouldn’t stay here,” Benchimol said. “I’m speaking as a grandmother.”
It’s not anti-Semitism that causes her to fear daily for the safety of her grandchildren but “la inseguridad” – insecurity. It’s the general term Venezuelans use now to describe an unrelenting crime wave that cuts across the country’s economically and ideologically polarized society. The issue consistently tops surveys here as Venezuelans’ biggest concern.
Venezuelan Jews say that as citizens of a state in which many have lost faith in the police and judicial system, they fear random violence far more than anti-Semitic attacks. They consistently cite crime as their main source of anxiety...
ENTIRE ARTICE - link to forward.com
RE: "...a few students from this minority are able to gather enough influence to make sure that a certain event is not open to the public..." - Goucher student
SEE: “The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics”, by David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009 TIKKUN MAGAZINE
(excerpt) …It is an extraordinary fact that no fewer than thirty-three distinct organizations-including AIPAC, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Congress, and the Jewish National Fund-are gathered together today as members or affiliates of the Israel on Campus Coalition. The coalition is an overwhelmingly powerful presence on American college campuses for which there is simply no equivalent on the Palestinian or Arab side. Its self-proclaimed mission is not merely to monitor our colleges and universities. That, after all, is the commitment of Campus Watch, which was started by pro-Israel activists in 2002. It is, rather (and in its own words), to generate “a pro-active, pro-Israel agenda on campus.” There is, accordingly, disproportionate and unbalanced intervention on campuses across the country by a coalition of well-funded organizations, who have no time for — and even less interest in — the niceties of intellectual exchange and academic process. Insinuation, accusation, and defamation have become the weapons of first resort to respond to argument and criticism directed at Israeli policies. As far as these outside pressure groups (and their campus representatives) are concerned, the intellectual and academic price that the scholarly community pays as a result of this kind of intervention amounts to little more than collateral damage…
ENTIRE EXCELLENT ARTICLE – link to tikkun.org
RE: "Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that there is a “river” of anti-Semitism running under American society..."
MY COMMENT: Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but I would characterize it as more of a 'babbling brook'.
"Chinatown" (1974)
[Gittes pretends to seek a nursing home for his father]
Jake Gittes: "Do you accept people of the Jewish persuasion?"
Mr. Palmer: "I'm sorry, we do not."
Jake Gittes: "Don't apologize - neither does Dad."
A RELATED FACEBOOK GROUP -
Name:"Roman Polanski Should Be Granted Clemency (i.e., a commutation)
Category: Common Interest - Beliefs & Causes
Description: This is a group for individuals who believe Roman Polanski should be granted a commutation of his sentence* (executive clemency) by the governor of the great state of California (The Honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger).
* as in the case of "Scooter" Libby (and as opposed to the full pardon given the international fugitive Marc Rich)
Privacy Type - Open: All content is public.
LINK - link to facebook.com
RE: "Kagans. Evil neocon warmongering Kagans." - potsherd
MY COMMENT: Yes, Fred "The Neck" Kagan and his equally evil (but considerably more attractive) twin*!
* figuratively and/or metaphorically speaking
RE: “So Who Were the Advisers for McChrystal’s 60-Day Afghanistan Review?”, By SPENCER ACKERMAN 7/30/09
LINK - link to washingtonindependent.com
RE: "I can’t claim to know as much as the guides whom Obama has sought out. So I defer to them." - Hertzberg
SEE: "So Who Were the Advisers for McChrystal’s 60-Day Afghanistan Review?", By SPENCER ACKERMAN 7/30/09
(excerpt) So we know about Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations. But who else advised Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s 60-day Afghanistan review strategy?
Biddle, who held a conference call this afternoon to discuss his views now that he’s back from the review — more on that in the next post — clarifies that it wasn’t so much that they advised the review. A group of about a dozen civilian experts, mostly from Washington think tanks, were the review. When Defense Secretary Bob Gates asked McChrystal to send him an assessment of the war’s fortunes and the resources necessary to turn it around, the civilian experts were flown to Baghdad to conduct the “overall assessment,” Biddle said. Officers from the USFOR-A headed “subtopic” groups of “particular interest to Gen. McChrystal like civilian-casualty minimization, strategic communication and so forth.” But the band of (mostly) Beltway think-tankers were the review.
So here’s the list of attendees:
Exum
Biddle
Cordesman
Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute
Kimberly Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War
Jeremy Shapiro of Brookings
Terry Kelly of the Rand Corporation
Catherine Dale of the Congressional Research Service
Etienne Dumont Etienne de Durand of Paris’ Institut Francais des Relations Internationales
Whitney Kassel from the Office of the Secretary of Defense
Luis Peral of the European Union’s Institute for Strategic Studies
Air Force Lt. Col Aaron Prupas from U.S. Central Command
Biddle said that there were some “fireworks” between attendees...Notice how very very few of these experts are primarily Afghanistan experts...
RE: "...there are some great comments to Friedman’s piece." - syvanen
Looking at the 'recommends' for the comments, the best/oldest critical comments are in the 600 range and the "best"/oldest favorable comments are a bit below 200. About a 3 to 1 recommend ratio on the unfavorable to favorable comments.
There are also some great comments posted to Greenwald's critique of Friedman's article.
link to salon.com
RE: "Oh I see Greenwald is on the same case, violent language…" - WEIS(S)
PRICELESS: "...all justified by sick power fantasies, lame Mafia dialogue, and cravings more appropriate for a porno film than a civilized foreign policy -- and he's the arbiter of Western reason and sanity." (Greenwald speaking of Tommy Boy's screed)
P.S. Oh, Glennzilla...we're not worthy! We're just not worthy!
RE: "...two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny..." - Friedman
MY COMMENT: Might it be early-onset Alzheimer's?
RE: "Here’s another..." - potsherd
AND ANOTHER: "OpEdNews - Article: The Obama Puppet -- The world's least powerful man", By Paul Craig Roberts, 12/01/09
(excerpts) It didn't take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel's....
...The US invasion of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with American national interests. It had to do with armaments profits and with eliminating an obstacle to Israeli territorial expansion. The cost of the war, aside from the $3 trillion, was over 4,000 dead Americans, over 30,000 wounded and maimed Americans, tens of thousands of broken American marriages and lost careers, one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and a destroyed country.
All of this was done for the profits of the military/security complex and to make paranoid Israel, armed with 200 nuclear weapons, feel “secure.”(my emphasis)....
SOURCE - link to opednews.com
Apology accepted! What's needed is an intervention, but this country's domestic politics prohibit it as to Israel.
FROM THE NYT ARTICLE ON THE "Daily Planet" in Berkeley
“We think that Ms. O’Malley is addicted to anti-Israel expression just as an alcoholic is to drinking,” Jim Sinkinson, who has led the campaign to discourage advertisers, wrote in an e-mail message. He is the publisher of Infocom Group, a media relations company. “If she wants to serve and please the East Bay Jewish community, she would be safer avoiding the subject entirely.” (my emphasis)
MY COMMENT: Who the hell does this Mr Sinkinson think he is? Ahmadinejad? Himmler?
RE: Israel’s “pathology”
ALSO SEE: "World powers demand Iran mothball nuclear site", By Mark Heinrich, REUTERS, 11/26/09
(relevant excerpt) ...The Washington Post reported on Wednesday U.S. officials had persuaded Beijing that big power unity to rein in Iran was now indispensable because Israel saw Iran's nuclear drive as an "existential" threat that could lead to a Middle East war, stopping Iranian oil exports crucial to China's booming economy...
[In other words, delusional, paranoid 'Israel the Psycho' (who refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) sees Iran's nuclear program (legal, allowed and inspected under the non-proliferation treaty as signed by Iran) as an "existential threat" and will quite possibly bomb it; thereby setting off a Middle East war and stopping Iranian oil exports crucial to the economies of the industrialized countries (excepting perhaps Israel who has been allocated a portion of the U.S. Strategic Oil Reserves by the U. S. Congress). So everybody had better do whatever it takes to mollify the delusional, paranoid 'Israel the Psycho'; no matter that other courses of action might make a lot more sense to the more rational nations of the world. This is normally called "enabling"! Remember Chamberlain's "peace in our time"?]
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to reuters.com
RE: "a recent article that addresses the mental illness afflicting Israel, the USA regime" - link to truthout.org ( Israel's "Pathology" - by: Ira Chernus, 11/14/09, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
MY COMMENTS: Thanks. I had missed this excellent article by Chernus, although I remember reading at least one of Henry Siegman's commentaries regarding Israel's "pathology" in the U.K. press (LRB, Independent or Guardian).
(Chernus excerpt) ... The Jewish Israeli body politic is diseased, that one man writes, because it has not adjusted to the Jews' reentry into history with a state of their own. Too many Jews are still stuck in the ancient feeling of powerlessness and victimhood.
Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told Israelis that their country is militarily powerful, and neither friendless nor at risk. They should therefore stop thinking and acting like victims. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, says that the whole world is against Israel and that Israelis are at risk of another Holocaust. That message of Jewish weakness and victimhood appeals to enough voters to keep him in power.
Gripped by such unrealistic fears, Israelis refuse Obama's call to stop expanding settlements and start compromising for peace. Israel's resistance to Obama's serious peace effort has been called "nothing less than pathological."...
...But who would write such a fierce attack, calling Israelis sick with "victimhood"? Some anti-Semitic apologist for Israel's enemies? Nope. It's Henry Siegman, who spent sixteen years as executive director of the American Jewish Congress, one of the most powerful and respected mainstream organizations in the US Jewish community. With his vast experience inside the Israeli and American Jewish communities, he knows that the evidence to support his diagnosis is everywhere.
Just look at the front page of any Israeli newspaper on any given day, where a surprising percentage of the stories answer the same central question: Who is threatening / hating / vilifying Israel and the Jews today? Iran, with its supposedly terrifying nuclear threat, continues to make the front page nearly every day. And Israel remains obsessed with its fear of the Goldstone Report - written by an eminent Zionist jurist who has now been magically transformed into an "enemy of Israel" - when the rest of the world has long since forgotten it...
SIOURCE - link to truthout.org
RE: “ADL, YouTube launch partnership to fight video abuse”, By Max Socol, “Jerusalem Post”, 12/15/08
MY COMMENT : I neglected to include the link to the entire article.
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to jpost.com
SEE ALSO: "Anti-Defamation League joins YouTube to fight online hate", By Haaretz Service, 07/31/09
LINK - link to haaretz.com
AND SEE: "Haitham Sabbah – YouTube Partners with MOSSAD – ADL", 12/12/08, Palestine Think Tank
LINK - link to palestinethinktank.com
RE: "They have succeeded in so intimidating the mainstream media (including NPR/PBS) that virtually no criticism of Israel appears in it. - DICKERSON3870
ALSO SEE: " San Francisco Chronicle Fires Reporter For Attending Peace Protest", by Amy Goodman and Henry Norr, 04/24/03
(excerpt)...NORR: ...And then there was another thing last summer I wrote in my technology column. I wrote a column about a $2 billion dollar, state of the art, high-tech factory that Intel owns in Israel. I wrote about the history of the land that that factory is on and about the Palestinian villagers that were there before. It's a complicated story, but it happens that that land was subject to some special legal agreement. There were just two villages but the Israeli government had signed a treaty, an international agreement, protecting the rights and property of the Palestinians who lived there back in 1948 for historical reasons. And then of course, almost immediately after they signed the agreement, they proceeded to do what they did elsewhere in Palestine: chase and terrorize the local residents out of their villages. They eventually converted that area into what they call an economic-development zone.
Many years later, in the 90s, Intel happened to choose it as the site for this state-of-the-art fancy factory. So I wrote about that kind of as a metaphor perhaps, for Israel's so-called first-world high-tech economy and the foundations it sits on. Needless to say I actually I got a tremendous amount of support. I was amazed. Most of the email I got about the column was supportive and appreciative. But the local pro-Israeli Zionist lobby was outraged and the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, which is kind of the cheerleader coordinator for those forces apparently, was outraged and, I found out later because nobody at the Chronicle told me, but apparently they came and demanded an immediate meeting to object to my column...
ENTIRE TRANSCRIPT - link to commondreams.org
RE: "Another California newspaper targeted by Israel lobby because of heretical statements"
MY COMMENT: They have succeeded in so intimidating the mainstream media (including NPR/PBS) that virtually no criticism of Israel appears in it. Consequently, they are now going after the 'alternative' media.
SEE: “ADL, YouTube launch partnership to fight video abuse”, By Max Socol, “Jerusalem Post”, 12/15/08
(excerpts) The Anti-Defamation League announced Sunday its recent expansion into the world of YouTube, the on-line video-sharing site.
The US-based advocacy group has officially partnered with the digital mediapowerhouse in an effort to combat hate speech and other forms of abuse.
As the largest Web-video hub, YouTube relies primarily on its users to hunt down and delete inappropriate content, or to ban abusive members. While the extent of the ADL’s role in that process is not yet known, the organization has already made a place for itself in YouTube’s new “Abuse and Safety Center,” where users are given advice directly from the ADL on how to confront hate speech…
…YouTube’s community guidelines define hate speech as “content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group” – a religious or ethnic minority, for example – without discussing the question of intent.
It is not clear what role, if any, the ADL will have in reshaping YouTube policy in this regard. As of now, the ADL appears merely to be supplementing YouTube’s current abuse-protection measures…
RE: "the routine practice of young Orthodox Jews spitting on Christians in the Old City of Jerusalem" / "Now we don’t have anyone in authority to turn to."
MY COMMENT: Knowledgeable individuals should not be surprised that this goes on in the 'Jewish apartheid state of Israel'.
RE: "How many presidents have to endure these pressures without any backup from the leading U.S. paper being frank about the matter to its readers?"
MY COMMENT: It has gotten so that the 'mainstream media' (including NPR/PBS) does much more harm than good. Consider the damning information oozing out in the U.K. press about all of the Bush/Blair lies leading up to the Iraq invasion (as a consequence of the 'Chilcot Inquiry' having begun its hearings this past week). With the exception of a couple of brief mentions on PBS's "News Hour", it appears that it is virtually being ignored by the U.S. 'mainstream media'. A few AP, AFP or Reuters articles have appeared on 'Yahoo News', but I would be very surprised if they have been printed by many 'mainstream' newspapers. The sooner the U.S. 'mainstream media' dies, the better off we will all be!
FOR ARTICLES ON THE 'Chilcot Inquiry' GO TO -
FACEBOOK GROUP: "George W. Bush Virtual, Alternative Presidential Library"
Category: Common Interest - History
Description: A group for individuals who seek to commemorate the true legacy (as opposed to the fictional, fabricated, "official" legacy) of George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009.
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LINK - link to facebook.com
RE: "From his ‘69 awakening to the ‘wild-animal’ state and lobby– Hilton Obenzinger on Israel"
MY COMMENT: Very interesting. Thanks!
RE: "Speaking of backwards… the comments on that article? Oooh, wow…. so much for the idea of a post-racial America" - Chaos4700
MY COMMENT: No kidding! But then, what do you expect at Politico.
A few choice comments -
It's amateur hour in the White House. The tap dancing fool leaves a much more dangerous place than the one he entered.
Posted By: | November 24, 2009 at 03:41 PM
This President should only lead the Black Panthers, not a country
Posted By: O Stands for ZERO | November 24, 2009 at 03:35 PM
As I said, Nobody take, this Ugly Big Eared African (kenyan) Low Life seriously. King Hussein is the biggest joke.
Posted By: Libs Will Pay | November 24, 2009 at 03:28 PM
RE: "It’s usually BDSM"
MY COMMENT: They don't call me the 'Mad Marquis' for nuttin! (Just kidding, of course)
RE: "Blacklisted at Goucher"
SEE: “The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics”, by David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009 TIKKUN MAGAZINE
(excerpt) …It is an extraordinary fact that no fewer than thirty-three distinct organizations-including AIPAC, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Congress, and the Jewish National Fund-are gathered together today as members or affiliates of the Israel on Campus Coalition. The coalition is an overwhelmingly powerful presence on American college campuses for which there is simply no equivalent on the Palestinian or Arab side. Its self-proclaimed mission is not merely to monitor our colleges and universities. That, after all, is the commitment of Campus Watch, which was started by pro-Israel activists in 2002. It is, rather (and in its own words), to generate “a pro-active, pro-Israel agenda on campus.” There is, accordingly, disproportionate and unbalanced intervention on campuses across the country by a coalition of well-funded organizations, who have no time for — and even less interest in — the niceties of intellectual exchange and academic process. Insinuation, accusation, and defamation have become the weapons of first resort to respond to argument and criticism directed at Israeli policies. As far as these outside pressure groups (and their campus representatives) are concerned, the intellectual and academic price that the scholarly community pays as a result of this kind of intervention amounts to little more than collateral damage…
ENTIRE EXCELLENT ARTICLE – link to tikkun.org
RE: "you get to hang out with four members of the Podhoretz family"
MY COMMENT: Will Norman be wearing the 'Presidential Medal of Freedom' Bush awarded him in 2004?
FROM WIKIPEDIA - Podhoretz has praised former United States President George W. Bush: "George W. Bush (is) a man who knows evil when he sees it [i.e. looks in the mirror - JLD] and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it." He goes on to claim that Bush has been "battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory."[12][16]
RE: "if you go on the Commentary Magazine cruise to Alaska, you get to hang out with four members of the Podhoretz family"
MY COMMENT: OK, but will 'Miss Sarah' be there hawking her book?
RE: "Jeffrey Goldberg gives one of his Goldbloggers, Hershel Ginsburg, the space..."
MY COMMENT: So Jeffrey Goldberg got someone else to do his lying for him. An old, tried-and-true Israeli tactic!
RE: "No, Gilo is not East Jerusalem" - BLANKFORT
SEE: "Intel Inside? Prove It." - By Bernard Avishai, 11/22/09, TPM
(excerpt) ...A week ago Saturday, Intel's facility on Har Ha'Hotzvim--a technology park in a belt of land near (but not at all in) the burgeoning ultraOrthodox neighborhood of Sanhedria--was surrounded and vandalized by acolytes of various Haredi rabbis, most notably, the leader of Eda, Rabbi Yitzhak Tuvia Weiss. Intel met with representatives of the Haredi groups, facilitated by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin--both rightists tied to Haredi voters. The Sabbath shift, so the "compromise" stipulates, will be cut from 120 employees to 20. None of them will be Jews. (By the way, this absurd agreement may have satisfied most, but not Rabbi Weiss. His mobs were back yesterday demanding a complete shut down.)...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com
ALSO SEE:"San Francisco Chronicle Fires Reporter For Attending Peace Protest", by Amy Goodman and Henry Norr, 04/24/03
Former Chronicle columnist Henry Norr talks to Democracy Now!
(excerpt)...NORR: ...And then there was another thing last summer I wrote in my technology column. I wrote a column about a $2 billion dollar, state of the art, high-tech factory that Intel owns in Israel. I wrote about the history of the land that that factory is on and about the Palestinian villagers that were there before. It's a complicated story, but it happens that that land was subject to some special legal agreement. There were just two villages but the Israeli government had signed a treaty, an international agreement, protecting the rights and property of the Palestinians who lived there back in 1948 for historical reasons. And then of course, almost immediately after they signed the agreement, they proceeded to do what they did elsewhere in Palestine: chase and terrorize the local residents out of their villages. They eventually converted that area into what they call an economic-development zone.
Many years later, in the 90s, Intel happened to choose it as the site for this state-of-the-art fancy factory. So I wrote about that kind of as a metaphor perhaps, for Israel's so-called first-world high-tech economy and the foundations it sits on. Needless to say I actually I got a tremendous amount of support. I was amazed. Most of the email I got about the column was supportive and appreciative. But the local pro-Israeli Zionist lobby was outraged and the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, which is kind of the cheerleader coordinator for those forces apparently, was outraged and, I found out later because nobody at the Chronicle told me, but apparently they came and demanded an immediate meeting to object to my column...
ENTIRE TRANSCRIPT - link to commondreams.org
RE: "Free speech advocate Ungar muzzles free speech at Goucher"
SEE: "The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics", by David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009 TIKKUN MAGAZINE
(excerpt) ...It is an extraordinary fact that no fewer than thirty-three distinct organizations-including AIPAC, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Congress, and the Jewish National Fund-are gathered together today as members or affiliates of the Israel on Campus Coalition. The coalition is an overwhelmingly powerful presence on American college campuses for which there is simply no equivalent on the Palestinian or Arab side. Its self-proclaimed mission is not merely to monitor our colleges and universities. That, after all, is the commitment of Campus Watch, which was started by pro-Israel activists in 2002. It is, rather (and in its own words), to generate "a pro-active, pro-Israel agenda on campus." There is, accordingly, disproportionate and unbalanced intervention on campuses across the country by a coalition of well-funded organizations, who have no time for -- and even less interest in -- the niceties of intellectual exchange and academic process. Insinuation, accusation, and defamation have become the weapons of first resort to respond to argument and criticism directed at Israeli policies. As far as these outside pressure groups (and their campus representatives) are concerned, the intellectual and academic price that the scholarly community pays as a result of this kind of intervention amounts to little more than collateral damage...
ENTIRE EXCELLENT ARTICLE - link to tikkun.org
RE: "they come off as pigs, with no humor." - MRW
MY COMMENT: Hey you, butt out! This is exactly the kind of stuff Adelson and Moskowitz love. "You no paya the freight; you no maka the decisions!" (an homage to Earl Butz)
Earl Butz - link to en.wikipedia.org
RE: "Who else should be on that list?"
ALSO SEE:"San Francisco Chronicle Fires Reporter For Attending Peace Protest", by Amy Goodman and Henry Norr, 04/24/03
(excerpt of relevant portion)...NORR: ...And then there was another thing last summer I wrote in my technology column. I wrote a column about a $2 billion dollar, state of the art, high-tech factory that Intel owns in Israel. I wrote about the history of the land that that factory is on and about the Palestinian villagers that were there before. It's a complicated story, but it happens that that land was subject to some special legal agreement. There were just two villages but the Israeli government had signed a treaty, an international agreement, protecting the rights and property of the Palestinians who lived there back in 1948 for historical reasons. And then of course, almost immediately after they signed the agreement, they proceeded to do what they did elsewhere in Palestine: chase and terrorize the local residents out of their villages. They eventually converted that area into what they call an economic-development zone.
Many years later, in the 90s, Intel happened to choose it as the site for this state-of-the-art fancy factory. So I wrote about that kind of as a metaphor perhaps, for Israel's so-called first-world high-tech economy and the foundations it sits on. Needless to say I actually I got a tremendous amount of support. I was amazed. Most of the email I got about the column was supportive and appreciative. But the local pro-Israeli Zionist lobby was outraged and the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, which is kind of the cheerleader coordinator for those forces apparently, was outraged and, I found out later because nobody at the Chronicle told me, but apparently they came and demanded an immediate meeting to object to my column...
ENTIRE "DEMOCRACY NOW!" TRANSCRIPT - link to commondreams.org
RE: "he didn’t want to investigate massacres in Africa, because that would involve having to confront a "giant Negro" with a machete. Racism and brutalized insensitivity... - WEIS(S)
MY COMMENT: Well Philip, Caroline Glick is originally from Chicago, so what did you expect?
A RELATED FACEBOOK GROUP – Richard J. Goldstone: Integrity Personified
Category: Common Interest – Beliefs & Causes
Description: A group for individuals who respect and admire Justice Goldstone.
Privacy Type: Open: All content is public.
192 members and growing
LINK – link to facebook.com
RE: "we have as a leader stephen harper who works hard to be like bush 2" - James
SEE: "Canada's sub-prime mortgage time bomb", BY MURRAY DOBBIN | OCTOBER 22, 2009
(excerpt) What do the mid-recession housing boom and the Harper Conservatives’ rise in the polls have in common? Answer: the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s massive sub-prime mortgage scheme that is keeping up the appearance of an economic recovery.
Reading the newspapers these days you have to wonder whether Canada was on another planet when the global credit crisis hit. House prices have actually increased in some provinces and now there is a shortage of houses for sale in southern Ontario. Credit is flowing everywhere.
Ottawa: The biggest sub-prime lender in the world
But what few Canadians realize is that the housing market has avoided collapse (prices are down 32 per cent in the U.S.) because the Harper Conservatives directed the CMHC to change the mortgage rules to effectively make the Canadian government the biggest sub-prime lender in the world. What’s almost as alarming as this reckless policy is that no one in the financial media is talking about it, even though everyone knows the facts. I was alerted to the scandal by David Lepoidevin, a financial advisor with National Bank Financial, in a warning letter to his clients...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to rabble.ca
ALSO SEE: "Perils of Peru", By Yossi Melman, 11/21/09, HAARETZ
(excerpts) ...Moshe Rothschild did not hide his concern this week. He is under investigation in three countries Peru, Panama and Switzerland on suspicion of corruption, paying bribes and illegal association with the aim of entering into conspiracy and violating the law. If convicted, he faces a possible 15 years in prison. Anxiety about the publication of this article gnawed at him all week. For the former kibbutz member and air force pilot, who became a millionaire thanks to dubious arms deals, avoidance of the media has become almost second nature...
Rothschild knows that the noose around him is tightening. Several of his aides testified against him and provided investigators with incriminating details, including tapes of conversations with him. Some of his former partners are under arrest or considered fugitives, like him. If he sets foot in Peru he will be arrested immediately; if he travels to othe countries in South America or Europe, he is liable to be taken into custody and then be extradited to Peru. As a result, he is afraid to leave Israel: There are very few countries he can enter safely.
Rothschild knows that the noose around him is tightening. Several of his aides testified against him and provided investigators with incriminating details, including tapes of conversations with him. Some of his former partners are under arrest or considered fugitives, like him. If he sets foot in Peru he will be arrested immediately; if he travels to othe countries in South America or Europe, he is liable to be taken into custody and then be extradited to Peru. As a result, he is afraid to leave Israel: There are very few countries he can enter safely.
Though it is unlikely that he will be arrested in Israel, he is concerned that any publicity here will have a devastating effect on his status and business...
...These suspicions surfaced immediately after the fall of Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, in 2000. In the four years that have gone by since then, additional facts have been unearthed by several commissions of inquiry of the Peruvian Congress and by investigations of the Peruvian judicial system. According to the material that has come to light, Rothschild is suspected of trading, brokering and being involved in arms deals in which MiG-29s, Sukhoi 25 fighter-bombers, Mi-17 and Mi-25 helicopters, and Antonov transport planes from Belarus were sold to the Peruvian air force and police. In addition, Rothschild is also said to have been involved in supplying spare parts for planes and advanced wiretapping equipment of Israeli manufacture.
These deals, which took place in the 1990s, were worth more than $500 million, thus probably making Rothschild Israel's biggest private arms dealer since the tycoon Shaul Eisenberg brokered arms transactions between Israel and China...
...This is not the only bribery affair that is rocking Peru. Fujimori, Montesinos and other senior members of their government have been indicted on the basis of evidence in other cases as well. As Aryeh Dayan reported in Haaretz in March 2001, other Israelis as well as Americans and Peruvians of Jewish origin are involved in some of these affairs. They include arms dealer Zvi Sudit, businessman Rony Lerner, lawyer Mordechai Mincher (formerly a legal adviser to the Eisenberg Group), Ilan Weil and James Stone, an American Jew...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to haaretz.com
Israel Signs ATGM Deal With Peru
Middle East Newsline
March 19, 2009
WASHINGTON [MENL] -- Israel has signed a contract to supply anti-tank guided missiles to Peru.
Industry sources said Peru has signed a contract worth tens of millions of dollars with Israel's state-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Under the contract, Rafael would supply hundreds of Spike advanced ATGMs for the Peruvian Army.
A report in Chile's El Mercurio said Peru has signed a $48 million
contract for 244 dual-mode Spike missiles. El Mercurio said the Spike missiles would be fired by Peru's fleet of Leopard-2A4 main battle tanks.
SOURCE - link to menewsline.com
RE: "Peruvian President Alan García, who thanked AJC for its support of the Peru Trade Promotion Agreement"
SEE: "US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre", 6/11/09,
by Tom Loudon, truthout.org
(excerpt) During the last week, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, confrontations between nonviolent indigenous protesters and police have left up to 100 people dead. The vast majority of the casualties are civilians, who have been conducting peaceful demonstrations in defense of the Amazon rain forest.
For almost two months, as many as 30,000 indigenous people have been blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal of presidential decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru FTA. According to the indigenous leaders, several of these decrees directly threaten indigenous territories and rights. After having attempted several times to negotiate with the government the repeal of the most egregious of the decrees, and faced with a permanent influx of extraction equipment into the region, the people decided it was imperative to "put their bodies in front of the machines" in order to prevent this equipment from entering their territory...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to truthout.org
RE: “Is there any other so-called lobby that has its own state department?”
MY COMMENT: The American Jewish Congress (AJC) is working against the interests of indigenous people everywhere!
SEE: Praising U.S.- Peru Trade Promotion Agreement
AJC applauded the U.S. House of Representatives for adopting the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement, and urged passage of similar agreements pending with Colombia and Panama. AJC supports free trade as a tool to generate sustained development in the region and as a contributor to long-term political and strategic cooperation between the U.S. and its allies.
NEWS RELEASE - link to ajc.org
RE: "Is there any other so-called lobby that has its own state department?"
SEE: AJC Delegation Meets Peru President in Lima
After visiting Argentina, an AJC leadership delegation continued to Lima. The group met with Peruvian President Alan García, who thanked AJC for its support of the Peru Trade Promotion Agreement and spoke movingly of his admiration for Israel and the Jewish people. The AJC delegation also met with the U.S. and Israeli ambassadors and Peruvian Jewish community leaders from the Asociacíon Judía del Perú, an AJC international partner.
PRESS RELEASE - link to ajc.org
Can we climb this mountain
I don't know
Higher now than ever before
I know we can make it if we take it slow
Let's take it easy
Easy now
Watch it go
We're burning down the highway skyline
On the back of a hurricane
That started turning
When you were young
When you were young...
"When You Were Young" Lyrics (excerpted)
Artist(Band): The Killers
'OFFICIAL" MUSIC VIDEO - link to youtube.com
LIVE (Glastonbury 2007) - link to youtube.com
A 'DIFFERENT TAKE' (by The Noisettes) - link to youtube.com
RE: "Anytime I explain a joke, I always include a new joke* in the explanation of the older joke. Just for the ‘living hell’ of it!"
FURTHER ELABORATION: I also do this out of deference to entropy and perhaps enthalpy. I fear what might happen to our Universe if I do not make a new joke whilst explaining an older one. Perhaps a horrific implosion? The 'Big Bust'? I certainly don't want to be remembered for something like that.
P.S. Before anyone "bites", I am well aware that 'Marilyn Manson' is not the dude's "real" (given/Christian) name. So it couldn't have made him 'the way he is'; could it have? See, that's part (and parcel) of the 'running gag'. Anytime I explain a joke, I always include a new joke* in the explanation of the older joke. Just for the 'living hell' of it!
* Q - Excepting this time? A - "Whatever You Desire"
HINT: Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush.
FROM WIKIPEDIA: Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson (born January 5, 1969 as Brian Hugh Warner), is an American musician and artist known for his controversial stage persona and image as the lead singer of the eponymous band. His stage name was formed from the names of actress Marilyn Monroe and convicted murderer[1] Charles Manson.[2][3] ... Marilyn Manson was born as Brian Hugh Warner in Canton, Ohio, the only child of Barb Wyer and Hugh Jack Warner. His father was a Roman Catholic and his mother was an Episcopalian. According to his autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, Manson is of German and Polish descent on his father's side. He was raised [and/or razed - JLD] in his mother's religion.[5] Warner attended Heritage Christian School from first grade to tenth grade. He later transferred to Cardinal Gibbons High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida...
I certainly did not mean to imply that Phil Weiss is destined to become a homicidal maniac with a penchant for wearing freaky toupees just because he spells his name correctly (etymology-wise) instead of being a "variant"!
RE: "Phillip is called a ‘variant’. In fact, it started from immigrants misspelling the name."
CONSIDER: Dickson, Dixon, Dickinson, Dickerson, etc.
FROM WIKIPEDIA: Philip
Philip is a given name, derived from the Greek Philippos (Φίλιππος), meaning "lover of horses" or "friend of horses". From φίλος (philos) "lover" and ίππος (hippos) "horse".[1][2][3][4] While the literal translation, in Ancient Greece, the ownership of horses was available only to those rich enough to afford them. Since beauty, wealth, and nobility were all synonymous, "lover of horses" can also be translated as "noble". Philip has alternative spellings: Phillip, Philippe, Philipp, Felip, Felipe, Filip, Filippo, Filippu, Filipe, Filype, Phillep, Pilib, Fülöp, Fulup, and has the diminutive Phil...
P.S. It's intended as a 'running gag'. Making fun of the notion that individuals' names can have a tremendous impact upon their lives. But then, there's Marilyn Manson!
I wish I had an alliterative name.
My grandfather sometimes used the "diminutive" Jno. What the hell was that about?
FROM WIKIPEDIA: Running gag
A running gag is a literary device which often takes the form of an amusing joke or a comical reference and appears repeatedly throughout a work of literature or other form of storytelling.
Running gags can begin with an instance of unintentional humor that is repeated in variations as the joke grows familiar and audiences anticipate reappearances of the gag. The humor in a running gag may derive entirely from how often it is repeated, the (in)appropriateness of the situation in which the gag occurs, or setting up the audience to expect an occurrence of the joke and then substituting something else (bait and switch). Running gags are found mostly in sitcoms, but also appear in other places, such as video games, films, books, and comic strips.
A running gag can be verbal or visual and may "convey social values by echoing belligerent speakers with a barrage of caricatured threats."[1] (e.g. - A character may present others with a proposition that is so ridiculous or outrageous it is likely to be self-mocking to the point where the original request has little or no chance of actually being carried out and results in a humorous effect.[1])
SOURCE - link to en.wikipedia.org
RE: "Here is my fantasy." - Phil(l)ip
PHIL(L): Are you certain this is just a fantasy and not one of your trademark dreams? "Enquiring minds want to know."
P.S. Do you realize that Philip "Phil" Spector (of 'Wall of Sound' fame) spells his first name with just one 'L'. That might be worth thinking about, Phil.
SEE: "ADL, YouTube launch partnership to fight video abuse", By Max Socol, "Jerusalem Post", 12/15/08
(excerpts) The Anti-Defamation League announced Sunday its recent expansion into the world of YouTube, the on-line video-sharing site.
The US-based advocacy group has officially partnered with the digital mediapowerhouse in an effort to combat hate speech and other forms of abuse.
As the largest Web-video hub, YouTube relies primarily on its users to hunt down and delete inappropriate content, or to ban abusive members. While the extent of the ADL's role in that process is not yet known, the organization has already made a place for itself in YouTube's new "Abuse and Safety Center," where users are given advice directly from the ADL on how to confront hate speech...
...YouTube's community guidelines define hate speech as "content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group" - a religious or ethnic minority, for example - without discussing the question of intent.
It is not clear what role, if any, the ADL will have in reshaping YouTube policy in this regard. As of now, the ADL appears merely to be supplementing YouTube's current abuse-protection measures...
RE: “If you’d ever wondered why [Bill] Kristol has tried to put this know-nothing whack-job in the White House, you know now.” – Sullivan
SEE ALSO: "Noble lies and perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the neocons, and Iraq", By Danny Postel, 10/15/03, opendemocracy.net
(excerpt)
The dialectic of fear and tyranny
Danny Postel: In the Straussian scheme of things, there are the wise few and the vulgar many. But there is also a third group – the gentlemen. Would you explain how they figure?
Shadia Drury: There are indeed three types of men: the wise, the gentlemen, and the vulgar. The wise are the lovers of the harsh, unadulterated truth. They are capable of looking into the abyss without fear and trembling. They recognise neither God nor moral imperatives. They are devoted above all else to their own pursuit of the “higher” pleasures, which amount to consorting with their “puppies” or young initiates. The second type, the gentlemen, are lovers of honour and glory. They are the most ingratiating towards the conventions of their society – that is, the illusions of the cave. They are true believers in God, honour, and moral imperatives. They are ready and willing to embark on acts of great courage and self-sacrifice at a moment’s notice. The third type, the vulgar many, are lovers of wealth and pleasure. They are selfish, slothful, and indolent. They can be inspired to rise above their brutish existence only by fear of impending death or catastrophe. Like Plato, Strauss believed that the supreme political ideal is the rule of the wise. But the rule of the wise is unattainable in the real world. Now, according to the conventional wisdom, Plato realised this, and settled for the rule of law. But Strauss did not endorse this solution entirely. Nor did he think that it was Plato’s real solution – Strauss pointed to the “nocturnal council” in Plato’s Laws to illustrate his point. The real Platonic solution as understood by Strauss is the covert rule of the wise (see Strauss’s – The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws). This covert rule is facilitated by the overwhelming stupidity of the gentlemen. The more gullible and unperceptive they are, the easier it is for the wise to control and manipulate them. Supposedly, Xenophon makes that clear to us. For Strauss, the rule of the wise is not about classic conservative values like order, stability, justice, or respect for authority. The rule of the wise is intended as an antidote to modernity. Modernity is the age in which the vulgar many have triumphed. It is the age in which they have come closest to having exactly what their hearts desire – wealth, pleasure, and endless entertainment. But in getting just what they desire, they have unwittingly been reduced to beasts. Nowhere is this state of affairs more advanced than in America...
SOURCE - link to opendemocracy.net
RE: “If you’d ever wondered why [Bill] Kristol has tried to put this know-nothing whack-job in the White House, you know now.” – Sullivan
MY COMMENT: As I have said before, turning this country over to "whack-job" Christian theocrats like Palin and Hagee is the neoconservatives' fondest wet dream. They and their zombie-like followers believe we must do whatever the Likudnik Israelis want or else God will smite us with a vengeance!
RE: "If you’d ever wondered why [Bill] Kristol has tried to put this know-nothing whack-job in the White House, you know now." - Sullivan
ALSO SEE: "(An excerpt from) The Truth about Leo Strauss", By Catherine and Michael Zuckert
...These "truths" are so harsh, says Papert, that "the philosopher/superman is that rare man who can face" them. In order "to shape society" in the interest of those "philosophers themselves . . . the superman/philosopher . . . provides the herd with the religious, moral, and other beliefs they require, but which the supermen themselves know to be lies . . . they do not do this out of benevolence, of course." Their public face is all "exoteric" doctrine; they attempt to rule indirectly through "gentlemen" whom they indoctrinate with their false but salutary myths...
...The Straussian philosophers seek to rule indirectly, via their influence on the gentlemen, that is, ordinary leaders like George W. Bush or Donald Rumsfeld, who can be manipulated to manipulate the masses...
SOURCE - link to press.uchicago.edu
I am overjoyed to report that I have just finished putting the very latest LED lighting system on my tree. "She sho is purdy!" Seriously though, I will not try to explain 'what all' this LED lighting system is capable of, but when you turn it to the 'Adoration Of The Magi' setting, the tree truly becomes a "religious experience". It makes me feel so incredibly close to both God and the iddy, biddy, baby Jesus*.
* FROM "Oh Holy Night" ("Cantique de Noël"), New Orleans Soul Gospel by Irma Thomas
P.S. If anyone knows where I can obtain the 'iddy, biddy, baby Jesus' version of Irma Thomas' "Oh Holy Night" ("Cantique de Noël"), I would be ever so greatful! I have the regular version, but I want the version with the "iddy, biddy, baby Jesus" refrain. Please, I'm beseeching you!
UPDATE: The artificial snow is now dry. If I do say so myself, I am an expert at flocking! I suppose my extraordinary talent for flocking just naturally comes along with my super-abundance of PWE (Protestant/Puritan Work Ethic).
Whew! Flocking Christmas trees is hard work. Thank God I'm blessed with an abundance of "Protestant Work Ethic" (PWE). Now, let's see, what was that question?
RE: "More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead." Does she know something that we don’t?
MY COMMENT: Good question, but just now I'm very busy 'flocking' my Christmas tree with artificial snow. When I am finished flocking my tree, I'll give your provocative question the thought it deserves.
RE: "These people need to feel pain, and there is no one associated with this blog who can deliver it."
MY COMMENT: I can assure you that most of my 'subjects' would say you seriously underestimate me. They don't call me "The Mad Marquis" for nuttin!
RE: "came from all over the country"
Much of it came from California. Courtesy of bingo magnate Irving Moskowitz (as I recall). Percy's most grievous offense: crossing AIPAC by supporting the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia.
AWACS - link to en.wikipedia.org
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to ynetnews.com
RE: "large foreign investors are pulling out of Israel."
SEE: "Intel places barbed wire fence ahead of haredi protest", By Ronen Medzini, 11/12/09
(ecxcerpts) The Shabbat wars continue in Jerusalem- Following Intel's announcement it will begin activity at the Har Hotzvim plant on weekends, and the ultra Orthodox rabbis' call to protest the move in a mass rally on Saturday, the electronic chip manufacturer played it safe, erecting Thursday a barbed wire fence on top of the existing iron fence surrounding its complex...
...However, outrage is at its peak among the haredim. A source close to MK Uri Maklev (United Torah Judaism), who initiated the protests, told Ynet: "today it's Intel, and tomorrow it will be the Malha mall. It has to stop here; it can't go on another step...
"After what happened in Jerusalem, can't Intel see the responsibility lies on their shoulders? If Intel is first, other factories will come and do the same. This cannot come at the expense of the Shabbat. Shabbat is above all," said the source.
Earlier on Thursday, MK Maklev met with Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and Intel's CEO in an attempt to reach an agreement, but to no avail. Maklev's aides claim that Intel's CEO suggested reducing the number of employees working on Shabbat and hire non-Jews, but they told her this solution was not acceptable...
...In contrast, Jerusalem councilman attorney Shlomo Melik (United Torah Judaism) said that "Intel is the one who started the conflict, following a secular attitude of 'there's an opportunity' after the parking lot battle.
"According to the Jewish religious laws we are obliged to protest, otherwise we will lose track of our purpose. The haredim do not interfere with what each person does in his own home, all we want is a public display of Judaism, because there is no other Judaism.
"Just like one must observe (the Shabbat) on public transport and in malls, the same goes for parking lots. I hope the protest helps, and the Intel international realized it has gained nothing," said Melik.
RE: "...and the Jewish kings"
SEE - A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the "REALM"
(excerpt) A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, commonly referred to as the "Clean Break" report, was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then-Prime Minister of Israel.[1] The report explained a new approach to solving Israel's security problems in the Middle East with an emphasis on "Western values". It has since been criticized for advocating an aggressive new policy.
WIKIPEDIA - link to en.wikipedia.org
FROM merriam-webster.com/dictionary -
Main Entry: realm
Pronunciation: \ˈrelm\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English realme, from Anglo-French, alteration of Old French reiame, from Latin regimen control — more at regimen
Date: 13th century
1 : kingdom 2
Let me try that again. "That's a wrap." I seem to be having a problem with apostrophes (and a lot of other things).
RE: Followed by the line: Gulden’s – The Family Mustard – Since 1909. /Cut.
MY COMMENT: Bravo! I like it. "Thats a wrap."
RE: ‘No mother, you take the Gulden’s’
MY COMMENT: I think this would make a great ad campaign. It would "beat the pants off" that Grey Poupon ad!
RE: "a memorial for the victims of the September 11 bombings is now a public monument in Jerusalem"
MY COMMENT: Call me a cynic, but perhaps it was the "vehicle" for a very successful fundraiser accumulating ten times or more the cost of the memorial mostly from gullible Americans. I wonder what the excess funds will be used for.
RE: Zionists who declare that if the nastybad Arabs would only stop terror, they would be granted the keys to the kingdom...So where is the key to the kingdom? Where are the opened borders?
MY COMMENT: That's why there is a new requirement that they accept Israel as a Jewish state... And, of course, there will always be new requirements (preconditions)!
RE: "Who ordered this?" - MRW
FROM WAYNE MADSEN: "More Obama change. Feds seize Shi'a mosques. Action taken by US Attorney for Manhattan Preet Bharara, who is the son of a Hindu and a Sikh from Pakistan. Why is their sectarian nonsense being imported here?"
RE: "… Israel should strike out on a new course and work toward the integration of Judea and Samaria, including its Palestinian population, into Israeli society." - Caroline Glick
CAROLINE FROM CHICAGO: You go, gurl!!! You and Elliott Abrams are 'da bomb(s)'!
Caroline Glick
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born Chicago, Illinois
Education Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Master of Arts in Public Policy from Columbia
Caroline Glick is an American-Israeli journalist and is the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.[1] She is also the Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs of the Washington, DC-based Center for Security Policy.[2]
She immigrated to Israel in 1991 and joined the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).[3]
She is the Senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy and is one of several co-authors of the Center’s latest book, War Footing. She has been a senior researcher at the IDF’s Operational Theory Research Institute (which as Israel’s Defense establishment’s most prestigious think tank is roughly equivalent to the US’s Rand Corporation). She has also worked as an adjunct lecturer in tactical warfare at the IDF’s Command and Staff College.
In 2003, Glick was named "The Most Prominent Woman in Israel" by the Israeli newspaper Maariv.
She was the 2005 recipient of the Zionist Organization of America’s Ben Hecht award for Outstanding Journalism (previous recipients have included A. M. Rosenthal, Sidney Zion and Daniel Pipes).
She also received Israel Media Watch’s 2006 award for critical journalism.
On May 31, 2009 she received the Guardian of Zion Award from the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar Ilan University.
RE: Balfour Declaration
ALSO SEE: Sykes–Picot Agreement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(excerpts) The Sykes-Picot(-Sazonov) Agreement[1] of 1916 was a secret agreement between the governments of the UK and France, with the assent of Imperial Russia, defining their respective spheres of influence and control in west Asia after the expected downfall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It was largely a trade agreement with a large area set aside for indirect control through an Arab state or a confederation of Arab states. The agreement was concluded on 16 May 1916.[2] It did not contemplate the assignment of any League of Nations mandates, since the League and its mandates were developed during the post-war period. The terms were negotiated by the French diplomat François Georges-Picot and Briton Sir Mark Sykes...
...Many of the relevant documents in the National Archives were later declassified and published. Among them were various assurances of Arab independence provided by Secretary of War, Lord Kitchener, the Viceroy of India, and others in the War Cabinet. The minutes of a Cabinet Eastern Committee meeting, chaired by Lord Curzon, held on 5 December 1918 to discuss the various Palestine undertakings makes it clear that Palestine had not been excluded from the agreement with Hussein. General Jan Smuts, Lord Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, General Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and representatives of the Foreign Office, the India Office, the Admiralty, the Wax Office, and the Treasury were present. T. E. Lawrence also attended. According to the minutes Lord Curzon explained:
"The Palestine position is this. If we deal with our commitments, there is first the general pledge to Hussein in October 1915, under which Palestine was included in the areas as to which Great Britain pledged itself that they should be Arab and independent in the future . . . Great Britain and France - Italy subsequently agreeing - committed themselves to an international administration of Palestine in consultation with Russia, who was an ally at that time . . . A new feature was brought into the case in November 1917, when Mr Balfour, with the authority of the War Cabinet, issued his famous declaration to the Zionists that Palestine 'should be the national home of the Jewish people, but that nothing should be done - and this, of course, was a most important proviso - to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. Those, as far as I know, are the only actual engagements into which we entered with regard to Palestine."[17]...
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to en.wikipedia.org
FROM YNET, 03.30.05:
Israel honors 9 Egyptian spies
After 50 years, President Katsav presents three surviving members with certificates of appreciation at Jerusalem ceremony
By Reuters
JERUSALEM - After half a century of reticence and recrimination, Israel on Wednesday honored nine Egyptian Jews recruited as agents-provocateur in what became one of the worst intelligence bungles in the country's history.
Israel was at war with Egypt when it hatched a plan in 1954 to ruin its rapprochement with the United States and Britain by firebombing sites frequented by foreigners in Cairo and Alexandria.
But Israeli hopes the attacks, which caused no casualties, would be blamed on local insurgents collapsed when the young Zionist bombers were caught and confessed at public trials. Two were hanged. The rest served jail terms and emigrated to Israel.
Embarrassed before the West, Israel long denied involvement. It kept mum even after its 1979 peace deal
with Egypt, fearing memories of the debacle could sour ties.
"Although it is still a sensitive situation, we decided now to express our respect for these heroes," President Moshe Katsav said after presenting the three surviving members of the bomber ring with certificates of appreciation at a Jerusalem ceremony....
SOURCE - link to ynetnews.com
RE: "The ease with which the Haaretz article handles this subject suggests that’s it’s a long way on the timeline of denial..."
FROM WIKIPEDIA: ...In 2005, Israeli President Moshe Katzav honored the nine Egyptian Jewish agents who were involved.[2]
2. ^ a b "After half a century of reticence and recrimination, Israel ... honored ... agents-provocateur. Reuters, 30th March 2005. Accessed 2nd July 2007. - link to ynetnews.com
RE: "the trial of an 86-year old Hungarian survivor"
MY COMMENT: Thanks. Very interesting..."curiouser and curiouser"
MY COMMENT - This particular issue (1 vs 2 states) might well be moot.
FROM JUAN COLE 11/05/09 - "I think the whole thing is over with. I can't see a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank as it is now configured, and I can't imagine the Netanyahu government halting settlements."
SOURCE - link to juancole.com
ALSO SEE - John V. Whitbeck: "Moment of Truth", CounterPunch, 11/06/09
(excerpt) ...The Palestinian leadership, with or without Mahmoud Abbas, should now announce its willingness to resume negotiations with Israel but only on the express and irrevocable understanding that, if a definitive peace agreement on a "two-state basis" has not been reached and signed by the end of 2010, the Palestinian people will have no choice but to seek justice and freedom through democracy -- through full rights of citizenship in a single state in all of Israel/Palestine, free of any discrimination based on race or religion and with equal rights for all who live there, as in any true democracy.
The Arab League should then publicly state that the very generous Arab Peace Initiative, which, since March 2002, has offered Israel permanent peace and normal diplomatic and economic relations in return for Israel's compliance with international law, will expire and be "off the table" if a definitive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement has not been signed by the end of 2010.
At this point -- but not before -- serious and meaningful negotiations can begin. It may already be too late to achieve a decent two-state solution (as opposed to an indecent, less-than-a-Bantustan one), but a decent two-state solution would never have a better chance of being achieved. If it is, indeed, too late, then Israelis, Palestinians and the world will know and can thereafter focus their minds and efforts constructively on the only other decent alternative....
ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to counterpunch.org
RE: "That opening photograph, by contrast, is tremendous"
CAPTION: "...in a cemetery in Beit Lehia that was destroyed by tanks..."
SUGGESTED CAPTION: "...in a cemetery in Beit Lehia, Gaza that was destroyed by Israeli tanks..."
"TANKS" DON'T DESTROY CEMETERIES...ISRAELIS DESTROY CEMETERIES
Title: "If It Were Up To Me" lyrics
Artist: Cheryl Wheeler
Maybe it's the movies, maybe it's the books
Maybe it's the bullets, maybe it's the real crooks
Maybe it's the drugs, maybe it's the parents
Maybe it's the colors everybody's wearin
Maybe it's the President, maybe it's the last one
Maybe it's the one before that, what he done
Maybe it's the high schools, maybe it's the teachers
Maybe it's the tattooed children in the bleachers
Maybe it's the Bible, maybe it's the lack
Maybe it's the music, maybe it's the crack
Maybe it's the hairdos, maybe it's the TV
Maybe it's the cigarettes, maybe it's the family
Maybe it's the fast food, maybe it's the news
Maybe it's divorce, maybe it's abuse
Maybe it's the lawyers, maybe it's the prisons
Maybe it's the Senators, maybe it's the system
Maybe it's the fathers, maybe it's the sons
Maybe it's the sisters, maybe it's the moms
Maybe it's the radio, maybe it's road rage
Maybe El Nino, or UV rays
Maybe it's the army, maybe it's the liquor
Maybe it's the papers, maybe the militia
Maybe it's the athletes, maybe it's the ads
Maybe it's the sports fans, maybe it's a fad
Maybe it's the magazines, maybe it's the internet
Maybe it's the lottery, maybe it's the immigrants
Maybe it's taxes, big business
Maybe it's the KKK and the skinheads
Maybe it's the communists, maybe it's the Catholics
Maybe it's the hippies, maybe it's the addicts
Maybe it's the art, maybe it's the sex
Maybe it's the homeless, maybe it's the banks
Maybe it's the clearcut, maybe it's the ozone
Maybe it's the chemicals, maybe it's the car phones
Maybe it's the fertilizer, maybe it's the nose rings
Maybe it's the end, but I know one thing.
If it were up to me, I'd take away the guns.
SOURCE - link to lyrics007.com
ALSO FROM THE REUTERS ARTICLE: Washington felt it was time to see what Netanyahu envisioned when he offered to negotiate immediately, the official said, adding: "We'd like to see what he brings to the table."
It does not surprise me that the N.Y. Mets support the 'Jewish, apartheid state of Israel'.
GET USED TO IT ABE & BIBI: “Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..."Jewish, apartheid state of Israel”..........................[ad nauseam] and then 'hell freezes over'
RE: a sanctimonious Mort Zuckerman
MY COMMENT: Although I often agree with MortIMER Zuckerman on other issues, he is truly shameless in his defense of the "Jewish, apartheid state of Israel"!
RE: "Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman of ADL called on Goldstone to repudiate his report"
MY COMMENT: Abe Foxman and the ADL only "have 'ayes' for Israel". They are perfectly willing to 'throw Jews to the lions' if they (or their major donors) think it will benefit the "Jewish, apartheid state of Israel".
What is Congress afraid of?
From: CODEPINK Action (codepink@mail.democracyinaction.org)
Sent: Mon 11/02/09 4:52 PM
To: DICKERSON3870
Last week in a political move of the most cynical kind, Representatives Berman (D-CA) and Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), leadership of the U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee, introduced H Res 867, a bill that reads as though it were drafted by AIPAC, which it might well have been. H Res 867 is calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the "Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict" in multilateral fora.
Call your Members of Congress TODAY at 202-224-3121 and tell them to vote NO on this flawed legislation. If they have already co-sponsored the bill (check here) and tell them to withdraw their support. You can also email your Representative directly here - link to salsa.democracyinaction.org
Support Human Rights in Gaza: Oppose HR 867
From: American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights (info@aaper.org)
Sent: Mon 11/02/09 1:46 PM
To: DICKERSON3870
Let Your Member of Congress Know That You Support Justice and Accountability for Crimes Committed During Israel's Attack on Gaza.
TO SEND E-MAIL - link to aaper.org
Congress is set to kill Goldstone Report
From: Cecilie Surasky, Jewish Voice for Peace (info@jewishvoiceforpeace.org)
Sent: Mon 11/02/09 2:48 PM
To: DICKERSON3870
I'm asking you to tell your representative to vote NO on H. Res 867 when it comes up for a vote tomorrow. Why? The resolution, which is riddled with errors and outright fabrications (see below), calls on President Obama to bury the Goldstone Report, which was commissioned by the United Nations to examine violations of international law during the Gaza conflict. This report offers the only pathway to accountability, and the campaign to demonize it and its authors is part of a larger effort to shred international law so that war crimes against civilians can be committed with impunity.
We urge you to to contact your representative today to tell them to vote NO on H. Res 867.
TO SEND E-MAIL - link to salsa.democracyinaction.org
[FastForGaza] Tell Congress to vote NO on H. Res. 867
From: fastforgaza.net on behalf of Rabbi Brian Walt
Sent: Tue 11/03/09 9:02 AM
URGENT! TO ALL PARTICIPANTS TAANIT TZEDEK - JEWISH FAST FOR GAZA
Act now to avert Congressional Resolution 0pposing the Goldstone Report
As you may have heard the U.S. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow on a bill opposing the Goldstone Report. We urge you to join in efforts by B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization that recently became a co-sponsor of Jewish Fast for Gaza, to avert this action. Below you will find the letter from B'tselem that includes a link to a letter from Judge Goldstone to the members of Congress pointing out the many errors in the resolution. Please write or call your member of congress today.
If you have not already done so, please send an e-mail to your Representative urging him or her to vote "No" on this resolution. -
link to org2.democracyinaction.org