http://pjmedia.com/blog/fast-and-furious-prosecutions-coming/ House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa indicated on August 23 that the five Department of Justice officials the committee held responsible for Operation Fast and Furious may face criminal charges. Speaking with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News, Issa discussed allegations that Deputy Assistant ATF Director William McMahon was “double-dipping […]
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
2012.08.28 (Chirkey, Dagestan) – A female suicide bomber takes down a Sufi cleric and six others at his home.
2012.08.28 (Kandahar, Afghanistan) – Four civilians are sent to Allah by Fedayeen suicide truck bombers.
2012.08.27 (Quetta, Pakistan) – Sectarian Jihadis fire on a car carrying Shia civilians, killing three.
2012.08.27 (Musa Qala, Afghanistan) – Fundamentalists interrupt a party and behead two women and fifteen men for dancing to music.
2012.08.26 (Sampang, Indonesia) – ‘Mainstream’ Muslims stop a group of Shia children and teachers, and proceed to hack at least two to death.
2012.08.26 (Pailoch, Afghanistan) – A ‘girl and two boys’ are shot to death by the woman’s brother for committing adultery.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/us-ambassador-condemns-idf-probe-lending-credit-to-isms-rachel-corries-suicide-mission/2012/08/28/
THE IDF WAS CLEARED BUT THIS COLUMN IS A MUST READ FOR A SYNOPSIS OF THE WHOLE CORRIE ‘VICTIM” MYTH….RSK
This Tuesday the verdict is expected in a wrongful death suit against the government of Israel brought by the family of an American girl who died when she acted as a human shield against Israeli military anti-terrorism efforts.
As if there weren’t already enough drama and media attention surrounding the Rachel Corrie trial, it appears that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro this week lent credibility to the plaintiffs’ case against the government of Israel when he reportedly criticized the Israeli investigation into Corrie’s death.
According to several news reports, Ambassador Shapiro told the Corrie family that the U.S. government believes the Israeli investigation was not “thorough, credible and transparent.” That was enough to feed the liberal blogosphere, which touted the US support for the Corries, convicting Israel in their own court hearing.
But is that really the case?
The Israeli investigation, conducted immediately after Corrie’s death, concluded that what happened was a tragic accident brought on largely because Corrie insisted on entering and remaining in a military zone, and ignored repeated and escalating efforts to leave the area. Further, that investigation found that the bulldozer operator could not have seen Corrie when she was struck and killed.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
“Even an unreal economy reported on by an unreal media cheering on an unreal leader can only run for so long until reality punches through the illusion, the curtain falls, the magicians scramble off the stage with rabbits and doves tucked into their pants, and everyone wakes up to realize that the dream is over and we realize that we are entering a world where the stories no longer matter and history is about to begin.”
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away,” Philip K. Dick said, when asked to define what reality is. Dick was a Science Fiction writer and that seems appropriate enough we are living in a Science Fiction world where there is no reality anymore, because the real goes away, but the unreal does not.
Virtual reality, it turned out, was not some complicated gizmo that made you look like a blind skier and allowed you to enter into another world, instead it was an unreal world being comprehensively overlaid on top of our own. The lines between the real and the unreal haven’t blurred because the unreal has gotten so much more sophisticated. The unreal is more fake than ever, but discerning that has become more difficult now that the real has gone away.
As we watch the news covering a story, what we are actually watching is the media making up a story and then telling that story incessantly and embedding it in every nook and cranny of their coverage. This blurring of the lines between the real and the fake is not happening thanks to the magic of technology, but the prosaic methods of complete insincerity.
The fake is being overlaid on the real, like men fighting on top of a board with a movie of a train passing by in the background to give the impression that they are fighting on top of it. Such cheap trickery defines our media environment where reporters barge into events and badger the participants into playing along with their movie. Or they just play the clip of actual events and frame them so that everyone hears their version of what is going on.
There’s Godzilla and we know he’s real because we can see Tokyo in the background. There’s the latest media narrative and we know it’s real, because we can see Tampa in the background as some blow-dried buffoon does breathing exercises before commencing to tell us that the Republican Party, which supports things that would have made Ike and Ron have coronaries, has gone so far to the right that it might as well be a Godzilla of reactionary running dog capitalism.
http://letthemfight.blogspot.com/ In what can only be described as a pitiful attempt to distract Americans from the obvious truth which is being written, and rewritten in American blood multiple times per week, General Allen excused the actions of Afghanistan’s “True Soldiers of Allah”. He very publicly declared that the “stresses” endured by ANA and ANP troops […]
http://pjmedia.com/blog/to-the-left-%e2%80%98conservatism-a-catch-all/?print=1
The term “conservative” is used elastically these days, normally to indicate something that the author using the term dislikes. And while many such writers tend indeed to dislike conservative ideas, the objects of their dislike are rarely conservative in any sense a conservative would recognize.
A few years ago, the late Christopher Hitchens spoke [1] of fringe elements in Jerusalem seeking the expulsion of Arabs as “Israeli conservatives” – surely a surprise to Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, and other groupings that comprise the vast bulk of Israeli right-of-center politics.
Reuters thinks [2] Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “conservative,” and the New York Times even headed its report on his election as president with the title “New Conservative President Takes Power in Iran [3].” Actually, Ahmadinejad is a radical among radicals in the Iranian hierarchy, with a penchant for Holocaust denial and harping on erasing Israel from the page of history. But then, the Associated Press regards [4] him as “ultraconservative,” so the Times appears measured by comparison.
Now, David Greenberg at Slate thinks [5] the recently deceased writer Gore Vidal was a “conservative.”
Vidal was neither insecure nor stupid, but if he can be described with a straight face as conservative, then just about anyone else can be as well. If conservatism comprises respect for custom, institutions, religious faith, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and limited government, Vidal was as anti-conservative as one could be. He regarded [6] monotheism as “the great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture.” He despised Ronald Reagan and supported the Democrats across the decades, even once running (unsuccessfully) as a Democrat for congressional office in New York. But that was altogether too mainstream for him. For two years (1970-1972), he chaired the People’s Party, a short-lived grouping that promoted legalizing marijuana and instituting such decidedly unconservative devices as a minimum wage and even a maximum wage.
In 2004, he supported the presidential candidacy of far left Democrat Dennis Kucinich.
Link: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=282825 http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. ALSO PLEASE READ : “LET’S HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT THE REAL ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS”
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/lets-have-a-conversation-about-the-real-illegal-settlements-ruth-king.html
The writer works for Regavim, an independent professional research institute and private planning think tank.
The illegal “building intifada” being waged by the Palestinian Authority on state lands in Area C of Judea and Samaria, (the West Bank), has become the latest battleground for the radical Left in conjunction with foreign-funded Israeli so called human rights NGO’s such as B’tselem and Bimkom.
This unlawful land theft is being carried out with the full support of the EU, foreign aid organizations and the UN.
Under the Oslo Accords, Israel was allocated full administrative and security control over Area C. Allocation of final sovereignty in Area C was to be determined in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap of 2002.
Instead, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad has sought to unilaterally extend the PA’s control over undeveloped state lands within Area C in an attempt to pre-empt the outcome of any such negotiations, or in the more likely scenario, do away with the need for them completely.
Fayyad made his intentions very clear in an interview in the Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat on September 1, 2009: “Many think that zone ‘C’ areas have become disputed territories rather than occupied territories in the public consciousness. We assert that these are Palestinian National Authority territories where the state will be established.”
To achieve this objective, the construction of thousands of illegal Arab structures has gathered pace all over Area C as the PA pursues this policy of encouraging illegal land grabs, illegal outposts and building on state lands.
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=282937 Student’s mouth stapled in ‘anti-Semitic attack’ Michigan State Jewish student attacked at party, knocked unconscious; ADL “horrified by violent assault.” PHOTO: TWITPIC A Jewish student at Michigan State University said he was attacked at an off-campus party in what he is calling a hate crime. Just before the assault, which broke his jaw, Zach […]
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/germany-maintained-contacts-with-palestinians-after-munich-massacre-a-852322-druck.html
Germany’s Secret Contacts to Palestinian Terrorists By Felix Bohr, Gunther Latsch and Klaus Wiegrefe
Eleven Israelis and one German police officer died in the Munich massacre of 1972, when Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage at the Olympics. Now, government documents suggest that Germany maintained secret contacts with the organizers of the attack for years afterward and appeased the Palestinians to prevent further bloodshed on German soil.
In the busy streets of Beirut, the Lebanese capital, hardly anyone noticed the three Buick sedans that came to a stop just before the corner of Rue Verdun. Several couples got out of the cars. They were dressed casually and looked like tourists. Some of the people were in fact wearing blonde wigs and women’s clothing, which wasn’t recognizable from a distance.
In fact, the couples were all men, members of an Israeli special forces unit operating in enemy territory.
At about 1:30 a.m., they entered an apartment building. They rushed up the stairs to the upper floors, pulled Uzi submachine guns and explosives out from under their baggy clothing and received a radio message from their commander ordering them to blow open the doors to several apartments. They immediately opened fire, shooting and killing Abu Youssef, Kamal Nasser and Kamal Adwan, three senior officials with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Youssef’s wife and a female neighbor were also killed.
At the time, Operation Spring of Youth, carried out by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and the Israeli army in the early morning hours of April 10, 1973, was probably the most spectacular counterterrorism operation in the history of the Jewish state. After the attack, the men fled in their Buicks to the Beirut sea front, where they boarded inflatable boats and were taken back out to a waiting speedboat. The episode was vividly portrayed as a high-speed escape in the dead of night in director Steven Spielberg’s film “Munich.”
‘New Basis of Trust’
Operation Spring of Youth was part of a revenge campaign the Israelis waged against the backers of the Munich massacre of Sept. 5-6, 1972. Black September, a terrorist group with ties to the PLO, had killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches in an attack during the Munich Olympics. After the Lebanon operation, the government in Tel Aviv gave the returning Israeli elite troops a hero’s welcome.
Walter Nowak, 48, the then German ambassador to Lebanon, condemned the Israeli action, saying that the dead Palestinians were among the most “rational and responsible” members of the PLO. A day after the retaliatory strike, the outraged diplomat wrote a letter to government authorities in Bonn, the then-German capital, saying that it was “not to be ruled out” that the Israelis had killed Abu Youssef and the others to hinder the peace process in the Middle East. “Those who don’t want to negotiate are bothered by those they might be expected to face in negotiations,” he wrote.
Nowak’s idiosyncratic assessment stemmed from the mission the ambassador was pursuing at the time. Nowak had met with Abu Youssef, one of the founders of Black September, about a week before his death. In the two-hour conversation, he offered Abu Youssef and other backers of the Munich attack the prospect of creating “a new basis of trust” between them and the German government. There was even talk of a secret meeting in Cairo between then Foreign Minister Walter Scheel, a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), and Abu Youssef.
The Munich attack had occurred only six months earlier. Despite the still-vivid images of masked terrorists on the balconies of the Olympic Village and a burned-out helicopter on the tarmac at the NATO airbase at Fürstenfeldbruck, there was already active but secret diplomatic communication between Germans and Palestinians. West German representatives were talking to men like Abu Youssef, Ali Salameh and Amin al-Hindi, all of them masterminds of the Munich murders. Even the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), which is obligated to prosecute criminals, was involved in meetings, according to documents in the Political Archives of the German Foreign Ministry and the Federal Archive in the western city of Koblenz, which SPIEGEL has now analyzed.
The motives were plain. Bonn knew that the Palestinians craved international recognition. Any contact with West German representatives, even in secret, upgraded the PLO’s status as an institution. In return, the government of then Chancellor Willy Brandt and Vice-Chancellor Walter Scheel hoped to protect Germany from further attacks. But the price they had to pay in return appears to have been high.
Spirit of Appeasement
In the coming weeks, during events to mark the 40th anniversary of the attack, the question will once again be raised as to why the German courts never tried any of the perpetrators or backers of the Munich massacre. The documents that are now available suggest one answer in particular: West Germany didn’t want to call them to account.
In the first few weeks after the attack, German government offices in Bonn were imbued with a spirit of appeasement. From the Israeli perspective, it felt like a bitter irony of history that it involved Munich — a city that became a symbol of the Western powers’ appeasement of Hitler after the Munich Agreement permitting Nazi Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland was signed there in 1938.
Although the Munich attack involved multiple murders, the language in the files oddly downplays what happened there. Then-Chancellor Brandt is quoted as saying that the Olympic massacre was a “crazy incident,” while Paul Frank, a state secretary in the Foreign Ministry, refers to it simply as the “events in Munich.” Diplomats and senior Interior Ministry officials upgraded the status of Black September by calling it a “resistance group” — as if its acts of terror had been directed against Hitler and not Israeli civilians.
At the Foreign Ministry, in particular, some officials were apparently very sympathetic to the Palestinians. Walter Nowak, the German ambassador to Lebanon, once told Abu Youssef that the Germans were a people “with a substantial number of refugees,” because of the fact that ethnic Germans had been expelled from parts of Central and Eastern Europe after World War II. (Nowak himself was born in Silesia, which is now part of Poland, back when it belonged to Germany.) This, he added, made them more understanding of the Palestinian situation than other nations.
A number of comments even create the impression that it wasn’t only Black September but also the Israelis who had committed murder in West Germany. According to speaking notes for Foreign Minister Scheel dated October 1972, the parties in the Middle East conflict had a tendency to take their disputes to noninvolved countries. It was up to Bonn to defend itself against such actions “by both sides of the conflict” (emphasis in the original).
‘The Munich Chapter Was Closed’
At the time, there were widespread fears of further attacks. The intelligence services regularly reported on plans to hijack German airliners. In most cases, they warned that hijackings could be used to secure the release of the three Olympic killers who had survived the firefight with the police in Fürstenfeldbruck.
And then, on Oct. 29, the warnings became reality. A group of PLO terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa flight en route to Frankfurt. The Bavarian state government immediately released the three prisoners, who were flown to Libya via Zagreb.
Paul Frank, the senior Foreign Ministry official, told the Libyan ambassador with relief that, from Germany’s standpoint, “the Munich chapter was closed” as a result of the release. The German government chose not to request the extradition of the three terrorists from Libya. In a memo to the Chancellery, Frank wrote: “We should be pleased that the whole thing has calmed down sufficiently.”
Home The media is not “completely” monolithic in what it strongly believes, but it “almost” is. The difference between “almost” and “completely” is FOX NEWS or it was. But FOX now seems to be melding into that ideological middle where history is ignored and relativism is a value. “Fair and Balanced” is fast becoming more […]
