My Hate Speech's - Torn Messages

Todays posts From Orwell's dreams

2010-08-19T07:31:00.002-04:00

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-for ever.” - George Orwell

NYPD cop threatens citizen with jail and rape for being “disrespectful” (video)

National Police Misconduct Daily Recap For 08-17-10

Smokers harrassed – with the encouragement of a school, and the co-operation of the police

Don’t cut the grass around your mother’s grave – you might hurt someone

Valedictorian: ‘I was the best slave’ (via Daily Liberty Research)

Never Shut Up. Never Back Down. (via The Altered States of Munley)

The Time to Revolt is Upon Us!

Struggle for Free Speech

More Hope and Change

THAT PESKY FIRST AMENDMENT THING AGAIN!

NeoCon Propaganda About Iran Debunked In Less Than 7-Minutes. -Video. (via Poetic Edda’s Blog. “A Posteriori”)

Playing the Never Again Card, Again

Today's Posts from Orwell's Dreams

2010-08-13T07:14:00.002-04:00

‘No one will rebel. To rebel you need more than misdirected anger; you need courage and a sense of responsibility. Better just pray and trust in god. On your knees is the strongest position! Rebellion affirms the human spirit and feeds the flames of love and hope. The sheeple don’t have it in them any more. The Tazer is a cattle-prod. Everyday police grow more brutal. The herd will cull itself!’ – Aloysius Fozdyke

The herd will cull itself! – Aloysius Fozdyke

Security Goons from XXL Nearly Choke Disabled Shopper to Death as American Public Look on… (via American Everyman)

Fascism Is the New San Francisco Treat (via )

Fallibility of DNA evidence exposed again

National Police Misconduct NewsFeed Daily Recap 08-11-10

The Enumerated Powers Act: A Simple Test

Todays Posts From Orwell's Dreams

2010-08-12T08:26:00.003-04:00

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-for ever.” - George Orwell

How did America even get here: Embarrassed gov’t apologizes for shutting down little girl’s lemonade stand.

Hillary’s Enemies List And State Sponsored Terrorism

Is Europe building Big Brother?

The Media and the Regime: Joined at the Hip

Veterans Denied Liberty And Justice For All?

‘No Drama Obama’ Needs a Strong Second Act

Trampling the Rules of Justice

What collapsing empire looks like (via American Everyman)

Truth In Labeling: It’s “Anti-Empire”… by Philip A. Farruggio (via Dandelion Salad)

Obama Allocates $36M to Help Foreign Workers Keep Americans Unemployed (via )

Anti-Happy Meal Activists Declare ‘Captain America’ a Threat to Kids (via )

Hate Crime – Student Leaves Ham Sandwich on Lunch Table Near Muslims, Suspended (via U.S. Constitutional Free Press)

The Whereoscope – soon to be tracking a child near you

Police Misconduct NewsFeed Recap For Wednesday 08-10-10

“The Omar Khadr travesty,” by Glenn Greenwald

Ron Paul & Lew Rockwell “We Have A Dictatorship When It Comes To Foreign Policy” (via Setting Brush Fires)

Todays Posts At Orwell's Dreams

2010-07-31T14:05:00.003-04:00

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-for ever.” - George Orwell

It’s Really About Controlling Our Lives

Attacks on Freedom

Big Government Claims Ownership Over Our Water

The Revolution Has Begun – Join Us on Facebook

Founding Fathers Never Intended for a Nanny State

Wanna See What Happens When You Videotape a Cop in Sweden?

Thank God for the Whistle-Blowers

The Pentagon Fears You the Most: WikiLeaks: Who’s Hiding What and Why

MSM: Breaking a Promise on Surveillance

BOOK BY AN INNOCENT VICTIM SUGGESTS TORTURE BY U.S. WAS WIDESPREAD

Todays Posts From Orwell's dreams

2010-07-02T06:59:00.002-04:00

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-for ever.” - George Orwell

Todays Posts From Orwell's Dreams

Shaving Heads In France Again – A Response From George Orwell

Pelosi Says Unemployment Checks Stimulate the Economy

Video: Ron Paul – Washington D.C. Out of Touch with The American People

Arizonans Dare to Defy the Feds Again!

Britain to Probe Collaboration with CIA Renditions

Democrats Forced to Cheat to Fund War

Oregon Bans Credit Checks by Employers

Newspaper, Businesses Feud in Tennessee Over Claims of ‘Hate Rhetoric’

Bureaucrats Say “Ladies’ Nights” Violate Human Rights Law

The Freedom Bill Has Finally Arrived For The UK

Some common sense at last

Is Elena Kagan Related to PNAC Founder and Neocon Extremist Donald Kagan?

This July 4th we need to ask if U.S. is still “home of the brave?”

kenny's sideshow: Zionist Racist Rachel Maddow and Rand Paul

2010-05-27T15:55:00.000-04:00

kenny's sideshow: Zionist Racist Rachel Maddow and Rand Paul

GUNS AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS AT THE READY

2010-05-27T15:53:00.000-04:00

GUNS AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS AT THE READY

Victory: Charges Against Student Accused of ‘Disorderly Conduct’ for E-Mail

2010-05-27T15:47:00.001-04:00

CLEMSON, South Carolina, May 26, 2010—Clemson University has withdrawn “disorderly conduct,” “harassment,” and two other charges against a student who e-mailed an administrator using “language and tone” that another administrator found “unacceptable.” After undergraduate William Kirwan was charged with a variety of offenses in violation of his First Amendment rights, he turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

“Public university administrators cannot punish students simply because they disapprove of their ‘language and tone,’” said FIRE Vice President Robert Shibley. “We commend Clemson’s leadership for putting an end to this violation as soon as FIRE brought it to their attention.”

Read The Rest At Orwell's Dreams

Reinventing Memorial Day: Beyond the Mattress Blowout Sale

2010-05-27T15:41:00.001-04:00

Why has Memorial Day, like so many of our national holidays, been reduced to appliance sales, fast food specials, and vacation deals?

With the recent near-collapse of our economy, the ways in which we understand and celebrate national holidays seem particularly challenged. This erosion of meaning is just one of many examples of the growing gap between the promise of America–freedom and opportunity through sacrifice and unity–and how people experience Brand America. Like any brand, America will have to close this gap to thrive in the future.

Remembering Memorial Day is not about believing in war. It’s an opportunity to reconnect the American Experience with its core promise, and reinvigorate the nation’s signs, symbols, myths, and metaphors with authenticity and relevance. The following is the first in a series of thoughts exploring how design thinking might help do this.

Read The Rest AT: Orwell's Dreams

U.S. Committed to Border Defense: For South Korea

2010-05-27T15:39:00.001-04:00

The border between North and South Korea is about 160 Miles long. It is also heavily defended by about 28,600 American troops, walls, guns, searchlights, etc.

“The Mexico – United States border … runs from San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Baja California, in the west to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Brownsville, Texas, in the east, and traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from major urban areas to inhospitable deserts. From the Gulf of Mexico it follows the course of the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) to the border crossing at El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; westward from that binational conurbation it crosses vast tracts of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Desert, the Colorado River Delta, westward to the binational conurbation of San Diego and Tijuana before reaching the Pacific Ocean.

The border’s total length is 3,169 km (1,969 miles), according to figures given by the International Boundary and Water Commission.[1] It is the most frequently crossed international border in the world, with about 250 million people crossings every year. (Source)

North Korea has about 238 United States soldiers per mile along its border, plus the South Korean army.

“Currently, the U.S. Border Patrol employs over 20,200 agents (as of the end of fiscal year 2009), who are specifically responsible for patrolling the 6,000 miles of Mexican and Canadian international land borders and 2,000 miles of coastal waters surrounding the Florida Peninsula and the island of Puerto Rico. Agents are assigned primarily to the Mexico–United States border, where they are assigned to control drug trafficking and illegal immigration. Patrols on horseback have made a comeback since smugglers have been pushed into the more remote mountainous regions, which are hard to cover with modern tracking strategies.” (Source)

For those of you keeping score at home, that is about 2.5 INS Agents (soldiers) per mile. South Korea has 238 American soldiers per mile to defend its borders. We get 2.5 American soldiers per mile to defend ours. But wait, there’s more! Obama has just committed an additional 1200 National Guard troops to border protection. This raises the number to 2.65 soldiers per mile. If only Arizona had the the same lobbyists as South Korea!

Read The Rest At Orwell's Dreams

Violent crime declines as American gun ownership rises

2010-05-27T15:37:00.001-04:00

For the third consecutive year, violent crime has declined in the United States during the same period when gun and ammunition purchases have increased dramatically, something that should not be happening, if one were to believe the gun prohibition lobby. The FBI on Monday released preliminary uniform crime data showing that the four major violent crime categories are all slipping. Overall, 2009 experienced a 7.2 percent drop in murders, an 8.1 percent decrease in robbery, a 4.2 percent decline in aggravated assault and 3.1 percent reduction in forcible rape. Yet, according to data from the FBI’s National Instant Check System and – from all places – the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, gun and ammunition sales are up dramatically. NICS background checks are up this year, and the excise tax apportionments to the states from the sale of firearms and ammunition have climbed from $336,474,545 in Fiscal Year 2009 to a whopping $472,719,710 for FY 2010. Do any kind of math you like, that still translates to more than $136 million in additional excise tax revenues over 2009, which further translates to a lot more guns and ammunition, and hunting/shooting-related gear changing hands at the retail counter.

Read The Rest At Orwell's Dreams

Yet More Reasons (As If We Needed Any) to Abolish the TSA

2010-05-27T15:34:00.001-04:00

What would enrage you enough to “kick a wall, throw a suitcase or make a pithy comment to a screener” at an airport? How about the screener’s electronically denuding and then leering at your wife? What if the gizmo whereby he stripped also her exposed both her and the month-old child she didn’t yet realize she was carrying to carcinogenic rays? Fast-forward a few years: now, as your toddler struggles with a congenital deformity, you learn your wife’s virtual strip-search at the airport may have been responsible. How many walls, suitcases and screeners will escape your wrath then?

Beware: the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), keeper of blacklists to which it secretly adds folks it has never charged with any crime, let alone tried in a court of law, and from which its victims have little recourse, maintains yet another list, this time of “people who make its screeners feel threatened… A TSA report says the database can include names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, home addresses and phone numbers of people involved in airport incidents, including aggressors, victims and witnesses.”

Read The Rest At Orwell's Dreams

National Police Misconduct NewsFeed Daily Recap For 05-26-10

2010-05-27T15:31:00.001-04:00

Here are the 29 police misconduct reports recorded in our National Police Misconduct News Feed yesterday, Wednesday the 26th of May, 2010:

The once-police chief of Jacksonville North Carolina has been sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of 1st degree murder in the 1972 shooting death of a US Marine sergeant. The chief, George Hayden, killed William Miller with two shots to the back of the head with an M-16 after Miller’s then wife lured him into an ambush so that she and Hayden wouldn’t lose custody of Miller’s daughter when they got married just a few months later due to a fraud case Miller was building against Hayden at the time.

The state of New Jersey and two New Jersey transit cops will have to split up paying a $760,000 judgment that was awarded to the woman who was raped by the two officers. The pair were convicted of official misconduct and sentenced to 3 years in prison for talking the woman into following them after she had asked for help and then forcing her to have sex in the weeds under an overpass under threat of arrest.

Read The Rest At: Orwell's Dreams

Amnesty: U.S., Europe shielding Israel over Gaza war crimes - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

2010-05-27T06:35:00.000-04:00

Amnesty: U.S., Europe shielding Israel over Gaza war crimes - Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel News

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/26/94878/judge-orders-yemeni-detainee-released.html

2010-05-27T06:34:00.001-04:00

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/26/94878/judge-orders-yemeni-detainee-released.html

IDF fears battle as extremist settler violence escalates - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

2010-05-27T06:34:00.000-04:00

IDF fears battle as extremist settler violence escalates - Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel News

A Jewish Defector Warns America: Benjamin Freedman Speaks on Zionism | Wake Up From Your Slumber

2010-05-27T06:32:00.000-04:00

A Jewish Defector Warns America: Benjamin Freedman Speaks on Zionism Wake Up From Your Slumber

Canada’s Effort to Criminalize Criticism of Israel

2010-02-13T03:44:00.000-05:00

Israel’s siege of Gaza has made it a “closed zone” – no access, no exit, cut off from the world. By attempting to shut down criticism of Israel’s practices, Canadian supporters of the government of Israel are creating another “closed zone” in Canada – in which criticism, open debate, and freedom of expression will not be allowed.

Read The Rest Here

On the Contrary: Horrors! "Holocaust denial book in Cranbrook Public Library"

2010-02-12T09:27:00.000-05:00

On the Contrary: Horrors! "Holocaust denial book in Cranbrook Public Library"

SNIPPITS and SNAPPITS: DO YOU KNOW WHO THE TERRORISTS ARE?

2010-02-12T09:26:00.000-05:00

SNIPPITS and SNAPPITS: DO YOU KNOW WHO THE TERRORISTS ARE?

US FIRST AMENDMENT UNDER ATTACK

2010-02-12T09:25:00.000-05:00

US FIRST AMENDMENT UNDER ATTACK

The Fading American Dream: The Constitution Circumvented: More Republican business as usual; More Americans asleep at the wheel#links#links#links

2010-02-12T09:18:00.001-05:00

The Fading American Dream: The Constitution Circumvented: More Republican business as usual; More Americans asleep at the wheel#links#links#links

The Fading American Dream: The Constitution Circumvented: Ron Paul was absolutely marginalized during the 2008 run#links#links#links

2010-02-12T09:18:00.000-05:00

The Fading American Dream: The Constitution Circumvented: Ron Paul was absolutely marginalized during the 2008 run#links#links#links

UK recruits army of child spies to report on ‘anti-social neighbours’

2010-02-11T07:47:00.002-05:00

Child spies will be encouraged to report their neighbours as part of the latest drive to cut thuggery and anti-social behaviour on estates.
As part of a campaign launched yesterday, youngsters will look for residents with untidy or litter-strewn surroundings and then try to persuade them to clean up their homes.

Read The rest Here

My Left Breast Put Fancy TSA Scanner to the Test

2010-02-11T07:45:00.002-05:00

A funny thing happened to me at airport security this week: The full-body scanner appeared to detect my fake left breast.

Read The Rest Here

Felony Snowball Tossing Charges Lodged

2010-02-11T07:39:00.003-05:00

FEBRUARY 9–Felony snowball throwing charges have been leveled against two Virginia college students for allegedly pelting a city plow and an undercover police car during Saturday’s blizzard.

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Mall Riots: Why Are Some Americans Becoming Violent Shoppers?

2010-02-11T07:34:00.003-05:00

Americans used to protest in the streets; now some have resorted to fighting each other in shopping malls. What happened?

Read The Rest Here

Facebook Hit With More Privacy Lawsuits

2010-02-11T07:28:00.001-05:00

Facebook has been hit with two new potential class-action lawsuits stemming from recent re visions to its privacy settings.
The cases, filed recently in federal district court in San Jose, Calif. on behalf of nine Facebook users, allege that the new settings are “confusing and materially deceptive” and lessened their privacy.

Read The Rest Here

The Myth of the Good War: America in World War II + Salughter House 5

2010-02-11T07:22:00.003-05:00

60 Years Ago, February 13-14, 1945: Why was Dresden Destroyed
In the night of February 13-14, 1945, the ancient and beautiful capital of Saxony, Dresden, was attacked three times, twice by the RAF and once by the USAAF, the United States Army Air Force, in an operation involving well over 1,000 bombers. The consequences were catastrophic, as the historical city centre was incinerated and between 25,000 and 40,000 people lost their lives

Read The Rest Here

Judge calls MI5 “devious, dishonest and complicit in torture”

2010-02-11T07:17:00.003-05:00

MI5 faced an unprecedented and damaging crisis tonight after one of the country’s most senior judges found that the Security Service had failed to respect human rights, deliberately misled parliament, and had a “culture of suppression” that undermined government assurances about its conduct.

Read The Rest Here

Tell Google Not To Enter Into an Agreement With the NSA!

2010-02-10T04:38:00.003-05:00

The Washington Post reported that Google is negotiating an information-sharing agreement with the National Security Agency (NSA) to help the company defend its networks.

Read The rest Here and Sign Petition

Brainwashing” a new generation of North American citizens

2010-02-10T04:34:00.002-05:00

This is just another example of an overarching movement on behalf of globalist business leaders and politicians to merge the three nations of North America into an EU like federation.” He added, “Integration meetings such as the NAFI Triumvirate are simulations of the exact practices currently being undertaken by the SPP and its offshoot organizations. The NAFI Triumvirate is designed to familiarize ‘future Canadian, American and Mexican leaders’ with the processes involved in such practices.”

Read The rest Here

Macho and excessive armed policing

2010-02-10T04:30:00.002-05:00

Although violent crime is down, the police are increasingly using guns to make bungled, inaccurate and potentially deadly raids.
Victoria Coren asked in the Observer last week why we need a police force that has become “a tooled up army of Schwarzeneggers” if, as Tony Blair claimed at the Iraq inquiry, the invasion of Iraq has made Britain a safer place.

Read The rest Here

Goldstone co-author: The court of world opinion is determined to see the report prevail

2010-02-05T06:29:00.003-05:00

Goldstone co-author: The court of world opinion is determined to see the report prevail
by Philip Weiss

Hanan Chehata of Middle East Monitor goes to Dublin to interview Desmond Travers, the retired Irish colonel who was one of the authors of the Goldstone Report. The money:
The best statement I can make about that is the one that Richard Goldstone made when an American spokesperson for the State Department said it was a very biased, flawed report and he said to them by way of response, “Show us where the bias is and where the flaw is and we’ll do our best to correct it.” That invitation stands. I have subsequently issued the same invitation in a Dutch newspaper and elsewhere; so far, no substantive critique of the report has been received.

Read The Rest Here

Taxi drivers ordered to remove the Cross of St George from their cabs

2010-02-05T06:22:00.003-05:00

Taxi drivers ordered to remove the Cross of St George from their cabs

Over at the Express, a really quite disgraceful story. Apparently, taxi passengers in Southampton had complained foreign drivers could not understand English. So a group of drivers put St George’s Cross stickers in their cars, bearing the slogan “English Speaking Driver”.
Southampton Council has called them racists, and said that they will remove their licences.

Read The rest Here

We Don’t Need A State

2010-02-05T06:15:00.002-05:00

We Don’t Need A State

Many people ask, “But how in the world could a laissez-faire society deal with aggression by foreign nations, since it would have no government to protect it?” Behind this question are two unrealized assumptions: first, that government is some sort of extra-societal entity with resources of its own – resources which can only be tapped for defense by the action of government – and, second, that government does, in fact, defend its citizens.

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Members of Congress Seeking To Gut The First Amendment

2010-02-05T06:10:00.003-05:00

Members of Congress Seeking To Gut The First Amendment

In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, several Democrats on Capitol Hill are advocating a Constitutional Amendment: Democrats in Congress want to amend the U.S. Constitution to say free speech does not extend to corporations in response to the Supreme Court’s decision allowing freer corporate spending in political campaigns.

Read The Rest Here

EU blasts Sweden over failure to store data on people’s phone calls, email…

2010-02-05T06:02:00.003-05:00

EU blasts Sweden over failure to store data on people’s phone calls, email…

by Peter Vinthagen Simpson The European Court of Justice has told Sweden that it must implement a 2006 measure requiring telecom operators to store information about their customers’ phone calls and emails.The European Union directive, known as the Data Retention Directive, was approved by Brussels in March 2006, but Sweden has yet to implement the measure.

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GA Senate Passes Bill Opposing Involuntary Microchips

2010-02-05T05:56:00.004-05:00

A bill that prohibits microchips from being involuntarily implanted in humans overwhelmingly passed the State Senate today.The Senate bill that passed today would outlaw placing microchips under a persons skin without their consent. (photo fromhttp://www.smartplanet.com)The bill would outlaw placing sensors, transmitters or other micro devices under a persons skin without their consent.

Read The rest Here

Maryland Bill Would Ban SWAT Teams for Misdemeanors

2010-01-30T14:00:00.001-05:00

Maryland state Sen. C. Anthony Muse (D-Prince Georges) has filed a bill, SB 30, that would prohibit Maryland police forces from conducting SWAT team raids on homes where the only suspected offense is a misdemeanor. The bill also requires county prosecutors to sign off on SWAT team search warrant applications before they are submitted to judges.

PolitickerMD cartoon about the Berwyn Heights raid

The bill is only the latest fallout from a July 2008 raid by the Prince Georges County Sheriff's Department SWAT team at the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo. The SWAT team was after a marijuana-filled box that had been delivered to that address, but subsequent investigation revealed that the mayor and his family were victimized in a smuggling scheme that used Fedex to ship drugs and knew nothing about the box, which had already been intercepted by police before being left on the family's porch. Mayor Calvo and his mother-in-law were cuffed and detained, and the two family dogs were shot and killed by SWAT team members.Last year, the raid -- and the Prince Georges Sheriff's Department's refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing -- led Sen. Muse to file the first bill in the nation to try to rein in aggressive SWAT teams.
Read The Rest Here

Obama May Censor ’Net In Effort to Shut Down ‘Conspiracy Theorists’

2010-01-30T13:57:00.001-05:00

By Victor Thorn

Big Brother is running scared, and it’s the double-edged sword of technology that pursues him. Most certainly science can be used to control, but just as powerfully it can be utilized to expose. That’s why the moneyed elite have historically been so horrified of allowing information to be freely released to the masses, and why they so desperately try to conceal it.

The great science fiction writer Robert Heinlein once propounded, “Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy—censorship. When any government or any church, for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,’ the end result is tyranny and oppression.”

Read The Rest Here

The Joke Ban

2010-01-30T13:52:00.001-05:00

by Mike Adams

The University of Northern Colorado (UNCO) has decided it's time to prohibit "Bias Motivated Incidents." When you hear about a "bias motivated incident," maybe you're thinking about a cross burning, or something of that nature. But at UNCO the "bias motivated incident" could simply be an "inappropriate joke" that is motivated by some form of bias.

The UNCO policy also says that "Any discriminatory act is a violation of the Housing & Residence Life Student Code of Conduct." Well, what do they mean by "any discriminatory act"? According to the UNCO handbook this includes, but is not limited to, "racism, ageism, sexism, and/or homophobia." And (get ready for this!) included in the definition is "intentionally, recklessly or negligently causing physical, emotional, or mental harm to any person."

In my view, there are at least three fundamental dangers associated with the UNCO speech code.

Read The Rest Here

Why free speech advocates are angry

2010-01-30T13:49:00.001-05:00

by Mark Bauerlein

Sometimes people who don't work in academia wonder why colleges are often the object of debates over free speech. Sure, some observers know that campuses are liberal enclaves, and they regard professors and administrators as easily intimidated by identity politics. But most people remember their college days as pretty much apolitical, and they continue to put the ideological elements in a small box.

That's why it's important to go back to the sources and hold them up to public scrutiny. Take campus speech codes. They have a bad name in public life, but they stand firm in student handbooks and campus policies in black and white. Here is a list of some of them, all taken from the list assembled by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (www.thefire.org). (Some of them may have been altered by now, but the fact that they ever existed is sufficient cause for response.)

Read The Rest Here

ADL exposé movie - "Defamation" on Youtube Now from On the Contrary by Michael Hoffman

2010-01-30T11:58:00.001-05:00

We've found a site that shows the entire film, and with subtitles that are more legible than on YouTube:

http://wideeyecinema.com/?p=7208

***

Courtesy of Michael Santomauro, we are able to direct your attention to Youtube, where the as yet unreleased Israeli documentary expose of the ADL and "antisemitism" paranoia -- "Defamation" by Yoav Shamir -- is now playing in nine separate parts.

If past practice is any guide, this movie will be removed from Youtube quickly, so see it as soon as you can.

If you are pressed for time, I recommend you first view parts 6, 7 and 8, although the entire movie is exceedingly instructive (there are subtitles in some segments and these are almost unreadable; the fault is with Youtube, not the documentary itself).

Having watched this film in its entirety, I am more than ever convinced that organized, contemporary "Jew"-bashing, "Jew"-hate and neo-Nazi and jihadist movements are, in whole or part, covertly managed by Israeli and western intelligence services.

A consistent theme of my writing and lectures over the past few years has been that Judaism and Zionism desperately need "antisemitic" movements and incidents in order to maintain their cachet. This film offers powerful evidence of that fact.

I was heartened by some very decent Judaics who spoke truthfully on camera, in particular a Russian Judaic man in Moscow. The most radically lucid, defiant and intrepid remarks are by Dr. Norman Finkelstein. Furthermore, the filmmaker, Yoav Shamir, is a fair person.

"Defamation," a documentary by Yoav Shamir

Part 1 10:59
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyrLUKxF3ns

Part 2 10:59
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axMJ0FxAQQ8

Part 3 10:59
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiHjx9PIZL4

Part 4 10:08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlglNxYWuXs

Part 5 10:13
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXKNSKkn6vs

Part 6 10:59
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt0WVs4H57k

Part 7 10:48
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGqECA9ZVOA

Part 8 8:08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-uGXf5yRhw

Part 9 6:41
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4CO_68qoLM

***

Michael Hoffman is the foremost Talmud and Kabbalah researcher in the English-speaking world. He is the author of the 1100 page illustrated book, "Judaism Discovered" http://www.revisionisthistory.org/page1/page10/page10.html

Hoffman edits "Revisionist History Newsletter" The latest issue is: "Those Who Say They are Jews and are Not"
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/cgi-bin/store/agora.cgi?p_id=10079

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The Anne Frank Diary Fraud

2010-01-30T11:32:00.002-05:00

by Brian Harring – TBR News.org

When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, she did so prompted by the highest of motives. Yet she, herself, relates the incident that when she first met Abraham Lincoln in 1863, he commented "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!"

Few will deny that the printed word in this instance fanned the flames of passion which brought about one of the bloodiest and saddest wars of American history, with brother sometimes pitted against brother, father against son. Perhaps if there had been less appeal to the emotions the problems might have resolved themselves through peaceful means. However, almost universally read at the time, few people then recognized the potency of one small book or the injustice done the South through its wide acceptance as a fair picture of slavery in the South.

Propaganda, as a weapon of psychological warfare is in even wider use today. Communists were masters of the art. Often they used the direct approach; just as often they employed diversion tactics to focus the eyes and ears of the world in directions other than where the real conflict was being waged. For many years, through propaganda alone, the dead threat of Hitler and Nazism had been constantly held before the public in a diversion maneuver to keep attention from being directed against the live threat of Stalin, Khrushchev and Communism.

Such has been the effect, if not the deliberate intention of many who have promoted its distribution, of a book of popular appeal-The Diary Of Anne Frank. It has been sold to the public as the actual diary of a young Jewish girl who died in a Nazi concentration camp after two years of abuse and horror.

Many Americans have read the book or seen the movie version, and have been deeply moved by the real life drama it claims to present. But have we been misled in the belief that Anne Frank actually wrote this diary? And if so. should an author be permitted to produce a work of fiction and sell it to the world as fact, particularly one of such tremendous emotional appeal?

The Swedish journal Frio Ord published two articles commenting on The Diary of Anne Frank. A condensation of these articles appeared in the April 15, 1959 issue of Economic Council Letter, as follows:

“History has many examples of myths that live a longer and richer life than truth. and may become more effective than truth.

The Western world has for some years hem made aware of a young Jewish girl through the medium of what purports to he her personally written story, "Anne Frank's Diary." Any informed literary inspection of this book has shown it to have been impossible as the work of a teenager.

A noteworthy decision of the New York Supreme Court confirms this point of view, in that the well known American writer, Meyer Levin, has been awarded $50.000 to be paid him by the father of Anne Frank as an honorarium for Levin's work on the "Anne Frank Diary."

Mr. Frank, in Switzerland, had promised to pay to prominent Jewish author, Meyer Levin. not less than $50,000 because he had used the literary creation of author Levin in toto, and represented it to his publisher and the public as his late daughter’s original work.

Inquiry of the County Clerk. New York County. as to the facts of the case referred to in the Swedish press, brought a reply on April 23, 1962, giving the name of a New York firm of lawyers as “attorneys .far the respondent.” Reference was to ”The Dairy of Anne Frank 2203-58.”

A letter to this firm brought a response on May 4, 1962 that “Although we represent Mr. Levin in other matters, we had nothing to do with the Anne Frank case.”

On May 7, 1962, came the following reply from a member of a firm of New York lawyers to whom the original inquiry had been forwarded:

“I was the attorney for Meyer Levin in his action against Otto Frank and others. It is true that a jury awarded Mr. Levin $50,000 in damages, as indicated in your letter. That award was later set aside by the trial justice. Hon. Samuel C. Coleman. on the ground that the damages had not been proved in the manner required by law. The action was subsequently settled between the litigating parties, while an appeal from Judge Coleman’s decision was pending.

I am afraid that the case itself is not officially reported, so far as the trial itself, or even Judge Coleman’s decision, is concerned. Certain procedural matters were reported. both in 141 New York Supplement. Second Series 170. and in 5 Second Series 181. The correct file number in the New York County Clerk‘s office is 2241-1956 and the file is probably a large and full one which must include Judge Coleman’s decision. Unfortunately, our file is in storage and 1 cannot locate a copy of that decision as it appeared in the New York Law Journal early in the year 1960.”

The Diary Of Anne Frank was first published in 1952 and immediately became a bestseller. It has been republished in paperback, 40 printings. It is impossible to estimate how many people have been touched and aroused by the movie production.

Why has the trial involving the father of Anne Frank, bearing directly on the authenticity of this book, never been "officially reported"? In royalties alone, Otto Frank has profited richly from the sale of this book, purporting to depict the tragic life of his daughter. But is it fact, or is it fiction? Is it truth or is it propaganda? Or is it a combination of all of these? And to what degree does it wrongfully appeal to the emotions through a misrepresentation as to its origin?

School publications for years have recommended this book for young people, presenting it as the work of Anne Frank. Advertising in advance of the movie showing has played up the “factual” nature of the drama being presented. Do not writers of such editorials and promoters of such advertising, “fan the flames of hate” they rightly profess to deplore?

Many American Jews were shocked at the handling of the Eichmann case, the distortions contained in the book Exodus and its movie counterpart, but their protests have had little publicity outside of their own organ, Issues, by the American Council for Judaism. Others who have expressed the same convictions have been charged with anti-Semitism. Yet it is to be noted that both Otto Frank and his accuser Meyer Levin, were Jewish, so a similar charge would hardly be applicable in pursuing this subject to an honest conclusion..

File number 2241-1956 in the New York County Clerk’s office should be opened to the public view and its content thoroughly publicized. Misrepresentation, exaggeration, and falsification has too often colored the judgment of good citizens. If Mr. Frank used the work of Meyer Levin to present to the world what we have been led to believe is the literary work of his daughter, wholly or in part, then the truth should be exposed.

To label fiction as fact is never justified nor should it be condoned.

Since actual period documentation does not exist in support of the Holocaust myth, it has always been incumbent on its supporters to create it.

Not only is the “Anne Frank” diary now considered to be a fake, so also is “The Painted Bird” by Jerzy Kosinski. This book, which is a mass of pornographic and sadistic imagery which, had it not been taken so seriously by the Jewish community, would be merely the pathetic manifestation of a self-serving and very sick person.

This was duly exposed as a shabby, though much revered (by the Jewish community) and quoted, fraud. When this was exposed, Kosinski committed suicide. Later, in Kosinski’s footsteps we find the next fiction entitled “Fragments, ” by a Swiss Protestant named Bruno Dosseker who spent the war in Switzerland as a young child. Dosseker posed as a very young Baltic Jewish concentration camp inmate named Binjamin Wilkomerski. This work consists of allegedly fragmented “memories” and is very difficult to read

Dosseker became the poster boy for the Holocaust supporters and was lionized by the international Jewish community, reaping considerable profit and many in-house awards for his wonderful and moving portrayal of German brutality and sexual sadism.

Another book, allegedly by a Hungarian doctor, concerning his deportation from Budapest in 1944 and subsequent journey by “Death Train” to Auschwitz is another fraud. There was never such a doctor in Hungary during the period involved and the alleged route of the train from Budapest to Auschwitz did not exist.

These sort of pathetic refugees from the back wards seem to be drawn to the Holocausters…and they to them. There are now “Holocaust Survivors” as young as thirty which is an interesting anomaly because the last concentration camp was closed in 1945. Perhaps they consider the last frenzied spring sale at Bloomingdale’s department store to be what they survived.

Next we can expect to see a book based on twenty-seven volumes of secret diaries prepared on a modern word processor within the current year by an alleged inhabitant of the Warsaw ghetto, describing the Nazi slaughter of tens of millions of weeping Jews by means that would shame a modern African state.

And, predictably, the publication of these howlers would be greeted with joy on the part of the fund raisers and fanatics, praised in the columns of the New York Times and scripted by Steven Spielberg for a heart-wrenching and guaranteed Oscar-winning film.

Hundreds of thousands of DVD copies will be donated to American schools and the Jewish community will demand that subservient executive and legislative bodies in America create a Day of Atonement as a National Holiday to balance the terrible Christian Christmas and the wickedly Satanic Halloween.

Conservationists must hate these books because so many otherwise beautiful and useful trees are slaughtered for their preparation

Insofar as the Anne Frank diary is concerned, herewith is some background on Anne Frank, her family and her alleged Diary.

The Franks were upper class German Jews, both coming from wealthy families. Otto and his siblings lived on the exclusive Meronstrasse in Frankfurt. Otto attended a private prep school, and also attended the Lessing Gymnasium, the most expensive school in Frankfurt.

Otto attended Heidelberg University. After graduation he left for a long vacation in England.

In 1909, the 20 year old Otto went to New York City where he stayed with his relatives, the Oppenheimers.

In 1925 Anne's parents married and settled in Frankfurt, Germany. Anne was born in 1929. The Frank's family business included banking, management of the springs at Bad Soden and the manufacture of cough drops. Anne's mother, the former Edith Holländer, was the daughter of a manufacturer.

In 1934, Otto and his family moved to Amsterdam where he bought a spice business, Opekta, which manufactures Pectin used in making household jellies.

On May 1940, after the Germans occupied Amsterdam Otto remained in that city while his mother and brother moved to Switzerland. Otto remained in Amsterdam where his firm did business with the German Wehrmacht. From 1939 to 1944, Otto sold Opeka, and Pectin, to the German army. Pectin was a food preservative, and a anti infectant balm for wounds and as a thickener for raising blood volume in blood transfusions. Pectin was used as an emulsifier for petroleum, gelatized gasoline for fire bombing. By supplying the Wehrmacht, Otto Frank became, in the eyes of the Dutch, a Nazi collaborator.

On July 6, 1942 Otto moved the Frank family into the so-called 'Secret Annex'. The annex is a three story, mostly glass townhouse that shares a garden park with fifty other apartments.

While he was allegedly in hiding, Otto Frank still managed his business, going downstairs to his office at night and on weekends. Anne and the others would go to Otto's office and listen to radio broadcasts from England.

The purported diary begins on June 12, 1942, and runs to December 5,1942 . It consists of a book that is six by four by a quarter inches. In addition to this first diary, Anne supplemented it with personal letters. Otto said Anne heard Gerrit Bolkestein in a broadcast say: ~ "Keep a diary, and he would publish after the war", and that's why Anne’s father claimed she rewrote her diaries second time in 1944.

In this second edition, the new writer changed, rearranged and occasionally combined entries of various dates.

When Anne allegedly rewrote the diaries, she used a ball point pen, which did not exist in 1945, and the book took on an extremely high literary standard, and read more like a professional documentary than a child's diary. In Anne's second edition her writing style, and handwriting, suddenly matured.

The actual diary of Anne Frank contained only about 150 notes, according to The New York Times, of October 2 ,1955.

In 1944, German authorities in occupied Holland determined that Otto Frank had been swindling then via his extensive and very lucrative Wehrmacht contracts. The German police then raided his apartment attic, and the eight Jews were sent to Westerbork work camp and forced to perform manual labor .Otto himself was sent to Auschwitz.. Anne, her sister Margot, and her mother, subsequently died of typhus in another camp.

In 1945, after being liberated from German custody, Otto returned to Amsterdam, where he claimed he found Anne's diary cleverly hidden in the Annex's rafters. However, another version has a Dutch friend, Meip Geis finding Anne's diary of fictional events, which she then gave to Otto Frank.

Otto took what he claimed were Anne's letters and notes, edited them into a book, which he then gave to his secretary, Isa Cauvern, to review. Isa Cauvern and her husband Albert Cauvern , a writer, authored the first diary.

Questions were raised by some publishers as to whether Isa and Albert Cauvern, who assisted Otto in typing out the work used the original diaries or whether they took it directly from Mr. Frank's personal transcription.

American author, Meyer Levin wrote the third and final edition

Meyer Levin was an author, and journalist, who lived for many years in France, where he met Otto Frank around 1949.

Born in 1905, Meyer Levin was raised in the section of Chicago notoriously known in the days of gangster warfare as the "Bloody Nineteen Ward." At the age of eighteen he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and during the next four years became an increasingly frequent contributor to the national literary magazine, The Menorah Journal. In 1929 he published THE REPORTER, which was the first of his sixteen novels.

In 1933 Levin became an assistant editor and film critic at the newly-created Esquire Magazine where he remained until 1939.

Perhaps his best-known work is COMPULSION (1956), chronicling the Leopold and Loeb case and hailed by critics as one of the greatest books of the decade. The compelling work was the first "documentary novel" or "non-fiction novel.”

After the enormous success of COMPULSION, Levin embarked on a trilogy of novels dealing with the Holocaust. The first, EVA (1959) was the story of a Jewish girl's experiences throughout the war and her adjustment to life after the concentration camps. This was followed by THE FANATIC (1963), which told the hypnotic story of a Jewish poet dealing with the moral questions that arose from his ordeal at the hands of the Nazis. The last in the triptych, THE STRONGHOLD (1965), is a thriller set in a concentration camp during the last days of the war.

At the outset of World War II Levin made documentary films for the US Office of War Information and later worked in France as a civilian expert in the Psychological Warfare Division. He eventually became a war correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, with the special mission of uncovering the fate of Jewish concentration camp prisoners. Levin took his role very seriously, sometimes entering concentration camps ahead of the tanks of the liberating forces in order to compile lists of the survivors.

After the war Levin went to Palestine and turned his attention again to the motion picture camera. His film MY FATHER'S HOUSE told the story of a child survivor searching for his family in Palestine. He wrote this story as a novel as well and the book was published in 1947.

Levin also joined the Hagana underground and helped smuggle Jews from the interior of Poland to Palestine, then basically an Arab country under the control of the British..

In 1951 Levin came upon a copy of the French edition of the Anne Frank diary He made a number of attempts to have the work published in English, and conceived it as a play and film. When the diary finally found an American publisher, his play was accepted for production but then suddenly barred, ostensibly for being "unstageworthy," and another writer's version was commissioned.

Levin fought for the rights to perform his version of the play, claiming that the real reason the producers refused to stage his work was because they thought it "too Jewish." He saw the suppression of the play as an extension of the Stalinist attack on Jewish culture and, outraged that even Anne Frank could be censored, he took the producers to court and began an agonizing, prolonged struggle that dragged on for years.

Levin eventually won a jury award against the producers for appropriation of ideas, but the bitterness of the trial made him many enemies in the Jewish and literary communities.

Although Levin's version of the play is still banned by the owners of the dramatic rights, underground productions of the work are frequently staged throughout the world.

Meyer Levin died in 1981

Levin rewrote the various post-war treatments of the Anne Frank diary with an eye toward a Broadway production, but Otto decided to cut him out, refusing to honor his contract or pay him for his work. Meyer Levin sued Otto Frank for his writings, and the New York Supreme court awarded Meyer Levin $50,000, for his 'intellectual work'.

In 1980, Otto sued two Germans, Ernst Romer and Edgar Geiss, for distributing literature denouncing the diary as a forgery. The trial produced a study by official German handwriting experts that determined everything in the diary was written by the same person. The person that wrote the diaries had used a ballpoint pen throughout. Unfortunately for Herr Frank, the ballpoint pen was not available until 1951 whereas Anne was known to have died of typhus in 1944.

Because of the lawsuit in a German court, the German state forensic bureau, the Bundes Kriminal Amt [BKA] forensically examined the manuscript, which at that point in time consisted of three hardbound notebooks and 324 loose pages bound in a fourth notebook, with special forensic equipment.

The results of tests, performed at the BKA laboratories, showed that “significant” portions of the work, especially the fourth volume, were written with a ballpoint pen. Since ballpoint pens were not available before 1951, the BKA concluded those sections must have been added subsequently.

In the end, BKA clearly determined that none of the diary handwriting matched known examples of Anne's handwriting. The German magazine, Der Spiegel, published an account of this report alleging that (a) some editing postdated 1951; (b) an earlier expert had held that all the writing in the journal was by the same hand; and thus (c) the entire diary was a postwar fake.

The BKA information, at the urgent request of the Jewish community, was redacted at the time but later inadvertently released to researchers in the United States.

Source: Truthseeker

IS YOUTUBE FINALLY PREPARED TO SHOW THE TRUTH?

2010-01-30T11:27:00.001-05:00

An increase in the activities in Occupied East Jerusalem has apparently sparked enough interest throughout the world for YouTube to agree not to pull the videos off the Web. Could we be seeing an end to their zionist censorship? Let’s hope so…..

The (Sheikh Jarrah) revolution will be YouTubed

By ABE SELIG

Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are playing an increasing role in growing participation of young Israelis in protest rallies.

Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, along with a slew of blogs, are playing an increasing role in the growing participation of young Israelis in protest rallies in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, activists and journalists familiar with the situation there told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Activists and journalists both described a situation in which protesters were relying on the Internet to try and affect change on the ground and raise awareness of the arrests made during demonstrations in the neighborhood.

“It’s all Facebook, e-mails and Twitter,” said Didi Remez, a human rights activist, who has become noticeably involved in the Sheikh Jarrah protests as of late. Remez was arrested during a protest there last Friday.

Below is one example of a recent video not pulled from YouTube… (my comment)

Remez also said that distant audiences, like American Jews, who might be deprived of Sheikh Jarrah coverage due to the mainstream media’s lack of interest, were instead staying abreast of the situation via social networking sites.

“The American media is for some reason refusing to cover this,” he said. “Even though it’s becoming a major issue in Israel. And still, despite that, there’s a lot of awareness [of this issue] among Jewish Americans, the reason being that they are increasingly connected through Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on.”

“They’re getting information on this without The New York Times,” Remez continued. “So, something that hasn’t been covered at all by the [American] mainstream media, is still getting coverage through new media, and I think that’s a statement about the decline of the mainstream media and maybe a larger comment on the shift away from it.”

Others echoed Remez’s comments, but added that another advantage of social media was its ability to counter police statements about Sheikh Jarrah they said the mainstream media often parroted.

“This is an issue that the media hasn’t really been covering, and when they have, they’ve mostly relied on police statements that portrayed the protesters as a handful of extreme leftists or anarchists, which is simply not true,” said Lisa Goldman, a Tel-Aviv based freelance journalist who has used Facebook, Twitter and blogs to follow the Sheikh Jarrah protests.

“What the social media outlets have been able to provide is a direct source of information that isn’t filtered through the mainstream media,” she said, adding that in this vein, the use of new media had been “absolutely crucial.”

Additionally, Goldman added, social media outlets had also served as a tool to awaken the mainstream Left to the goings-on in Sheikh Jarrah, including, but not limited to, the emerging issue of police behavior towards protesters there, which the Jerusalem Magistrate Court has even censured – ruling last week that the arrests of 17 protesters during a rally two weeks ago was illegal.

“The silent Israeli Left is finally waking up,” she said. “And it’s a result of the way some young people are using social media. It’s been very effective in raising awareness among the moderate Left, who are seeing that the police are suppressing free speech.”

Goldman also pointed to the participation in last Friday’s rally of Prof. Moshe Halbertal, who helped draft the IDF code of ethics and who has been active in disputing the United Nation’s Goldstone Report, as an example of figures who would certainly not be considered extreme, but who have joined the Sheikh Jarrah fray.

Hagai El-Ad, the director of the Association for Human Rights in Israel and one of the 17 protesters arrested two weeks ago, added that the use of new media to circumvent the mainstream media, which, he said, was often “reluctant to cover hard issues, or blatantly hostile,” was spreading rapidly.

“However, it’s not just new media [at play in Sheikh Jarrah],” he said. “I think there’s a need to [step back] from the tactics being used there, and zoom in on the core issue, which is the moral outrage of Jerusalemite families being thrown out of their homes and living in tents in the street. That’s the essential injustice here, and I think it’s a fuel of its own.”

Yet El-Ad did concede that the use of new media was a driving force behind the success of the Sheikh Jarrah protest organizers.

“They are a courageous group of young people, who are functioning without any real budget or resources,” he said. “But they are cleverly online, and they’ve been able to translate that into real movement on the ground – it’s not just a Facebook group that people add their names too.”

“Yes, the mobilization happens online,” El-Ad added, “but the end result is the most classic form of civil protest.”

Source

This is ZIonism: Female soldiers break their silence

2010-01-30T11:24:00.000-05:00

Female soldiers break their silence

Six years after first collection of Breaking the Silence testimonies, organization releases booklet of testimonies from female soldiers who served in territories. Stories include systematic humiliation of Palestinians, reckless and cruel violence, theft, killing of innocent people and cover-up. Here are only some of testimonies

"A female combat soldier needs to prove more…a female soldier who beats up others is a serious fighter…when I arrived there was another female there with me, she was there before me…everyone spoke of how impressive she is because she humiliates Arabs without any problem. That was the indicator. You have to see her, the way she humiliates, the way she slaps them, wow, she really slapped that guy."

The Breaking the Silence organization on Friday released a booklet of testimonies by female soldiers recounting various abuse cases involving Palestinians in the West Bank.

Remnants of War

Soldiers say received orders to shoot first, worry later in Gaza war / Reuters

Breaking the Silence activist group presents report of testimonies from Gaza offensive in which soldiers say destruction, civilian casualties were direct result of IDF policy. Army: Testimonies are general, anonymous, and unreliable

Full story

In recent years, females have been increasingly involved in combat and field operations in the IDF and Border Guard. Among other things, these female soldiers engage in daily contact with the Palestinian population – at roadblocks and in Palestinian communities.

According to the latest testimonies, many of these young women have trouble coping with the violent reality they are exposed to and find themselves facing situations that contradict their values. Some of them end up engaging in acts, or turning a blind eye to acts, that will burden them years later. Like their male counterparts, some of these females have a need to speak about what they saw.

"The girls have greater difficulties in telling the story, because they're the minority to begin with" the organization's director Dana Golan says.

'Each soldier would give them a pet'

In the framework of the latest project, Breaking the Silence gathered the testimonies of more than 50 female soldiers who served in various posts in the territories. Ynet presents some of the highlights in this report.

Golan noted that female soldiers were not more sensitive to the Palestinians than their male comrades.

"We discovered that the girls try to be even more violent and brutal than the boys, just to become one of the guys," she said.

Reporter took a picture, 'special patrol' sent to get them (Photo: Reuters)

A female Seam Line Border Guard spoke of the chase after illegal aliens: "In half an hour you can catch 30 people without any effort." Then comes the question of what should be done with those who were caught – including women, children, and elderly. "They would have them stand, and there's the well-known Border Guard song (in Arabic): 'One hummus, one bean, I love the Border Guard' – they would make them sing this. Sing, and jump. Just like they do with recruits… The same thing only much worse. And if one of them would laugh, or if they would decide someone was laughing, they would punch him. Why did you laugh? Smack… It could go on for hours, depending on how bored they are. A shift is eight hours long, the times must be passed somehow."

Most of the female soldiers say that they sensed there was a problem during their service, but did nothing.

Another female soldier's testimony, who served at the Erez checkpoint, indicates how violence was deeply rooted in the daily routine: "There was a procedure in which before you release a Palestinian back into the Strip – you take him inside the tent and beat him."

That was a procedure?

"Yes, together with the commanders."

How long did it last?

"Not very long; within 20 minutes they would be back in the base, but the soldiers would stop at the post to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes while the guys from the command post would beat them up."

This happened with every illegal alien?

"There weren't that many...it's not something you do everyday, but sort of a procedure. I don't know if they strictly enforced it each and every time...it took me a while to realize that if I release an illegal alien on my end, by the time he gets back to Gaza he will go through hell... two or three hours can pass by the time he gets into the Strip. In the case of the kid, it was a whole night. That's insane, since it's a ten minute walk. They would stop them on their way; each soldier would give them a 'pet', including the commanders."

'Child's hand broken on the chair'

A female soldier in Sachlav Military Police unit, stationed in Hebron, recalled a Palestinian child that would systematically provoke the soldiers by hurling stones at them and other such actions. One time he even managed to scare a soldier who fell from his post and broke his leg.

Retaliation came soon after: "I don't know who or how, but I know that two of our soldiers put him in a jeep, and that two weeks later the kid was walking around with casts on both arms and legs…they talked about it in the unit quite a lot – about how they sat him down and put his hand on the chair and simply broke it right there on the chair."

Even small children did not escape arbitrary acts of violence, said a Border Guard female officer serving near the separation fence: "We caught a five-year-old…can't remember what he did…we were taking him back to the territories or something, and the officers just picked him up, slapped him around and put him in the jeep. The kid was crying and the officer next to me said 'don't cry' and started laughing at him. Finally the kid cracked a smile – and suddenly the officer gave him a punch in the stomach. Why? 'Don't laugh in my face' he said."

'Palestinian beaten before being released to Strip' (Photo: AFP)

Was there also abuse of women?

"Yes" the same soldier replied. "Slaps, that kind of thing. Mainly slaps."

From men?

"Also. From whoever. It was mainly the female combat soldiers who beat people. There were two who really liked to beat people up. But also men, they had no problem slapping a woman around. If she screamed, they'd say, 'Shut it,' with another slap. A routine of violence. There were also those who didn't take part, but everyone knew it happened."

Sometimes an entire "production" was necessary to satisfy the violent urges. "There's a sense of violence," a border policewoman in the Jenin area said. "And yes, it's boring, so we'd create some action. We'd get on the radio, and say they threw stones at us, then someone would be arrested, they'd start investigating him… There was a policewoman, she was bored, so okay, she said they threw stones at her. They asked her who threw them. 'I don't know, two in grey shirts, I didn't manage to see them.' They catch two guys with grey shirts… beat them. Is it them? 'No, I don't think so.' Okay, a whole incident, people get beaten up. Nothing happened that day."

An education noncommissioned officer from the Border Guard took her officers for a Sunday of culture – a show in Tel Aviv. When they got back to their base in the Gaza Strip, they were appalled by the dissonance – one moment they're clapping in a theater, the next moment they're acting like beasts.

"Crossing the checkpoint, it's like another world… Palestinians walk with trolleys on the side of the road, with wagons, donkeys… so the Border Guards take a truck with the remains of food and start throwing it at them… cottage cheese, rotten vegetables… it was the most appalling thing I experienced in the territories."

The soldier said she tried to protest, but was silenced by the commanding officers. When she tried to go around them to higher authorities, she found a solution. "Almost immediately I got into an officers' course."

'You don't know which side you're on'

Some of the testimonies document incidents of vandalism of Palestinian property, and even theft. The same female soldier who recounted her time at the Erez checkpoint said, "Many times the soldiers would open the Palestinians' food."

And would they take it as well?

"Yes. They take things all the time at checkpoints in the territories. You'll never see a soldier without musabaha (chickpea past similar to hummus). And that is something they give many times… They are so desperate to pass that they even sort of bribe the soldiers a little…"

A female Border Guard officer spoke of how Palestinian children would arrive at checkpoints with bags of toys for sale – and how the Border Guard would deal with them: "'Okay, throw the bag away. Oh, I need some batteries,', and they would take, they would take whatever they wanted."

What would they take?

"Toys, batteries, anything… cigarettes. I'm sure they took money as well, but I don't remember that specifically." She also spoke of one incident in which the looting was caught by a television camera, and the affair blew up. "Then, the company commander gathered us and reprimanded us: 'How did you not think they might see you?'" No one was punished: "Really, it was an atmosphere in which we were allowed to hit and humiliate."

Some of the gravest stories come from Hebron. A Sachlav female soldier spoke of one of the company's hobbies: Toy guns. "Those plastic pellets really hurt… we had a bunch of those… you're sitting on guard and 'tak' you fire at a kid, 'tak' – you fire at another kid."

She recounted an incident in which a Palestinian reporter took a picture of one of the soldiers aiming a gun at a boy's head. She said a "special patrol" went into Hebron, and came back with the pictures. The soldier said they either paid the reporter, or threatened her.

And the pictures were circulated in the company?

"No, they were destroyed the same day."

What did the company commander say about it?

"He said it's a good thing they didn't reach the IDF Spokesperson's Unit."

Company commander reprimands, but no one punished (Photo: Reuters)

Some of the testimonies from Hebron deal with the difficult position the soldiers find themselves in, between Palestinians and settlers – who they say are even harder to handle. Some of the female soldiers were shocked with the level of violence the settlers' children used against the Palestinians. "They would throw stones at them, the Jewish kids," a Nahal female soldier said, "and the parents would say anything… you see this every day in Tel Rumeida."

Doesn't it seem strange to you that one child throws a stone at another child?

"Because the one child is Jewish and the other is Palestinians, it's somehow okay… and it was obvious that there would be a mess afterwards. And you also don't really know which side you are on…I have to make a switch in my head and keep hating the Arabs and justify the Jews."

In her frustration, the same female soldier told of how she once spit on a Palestinian in the street: "I don't think he even did anything. But again, it was cool and it was the only thing I could do to… you know, I couldn't take brag that I caught a terrorists… But I could spit on them and degrade them and laugh at them."

Another female Sachlav soldier told the story of the time an eight-year-old settler girl in Hebron decided to bash a stone into the head of a Palestinian adult crossing her passing by her in the street. "Boom! She jumped on him, and gave it to him right here in the head… then she started screaming 'Yuck, yuck, his blood is on me'".

The soldier said the Palestinian then turned in the girl's direction – a move that was interpreted as a threat by one of the soldiers in the area, who added a punch of his own: "And I stood there horrified… an innocent little girl in her Shabbat dress… the Arab covered the wound with his hand and ran." She recalled another incident with the same child: "I remember she had her brother in the stroller, a baby. She was giving him stones and telling him: 'Throw them at the Arab'."

9-year-old shot to death

Other testimonies raise concerns as to the procedures of opening fire in the territories, particularly crowd control weapons. A female Border Guard detailed to protocol she called "dismantling rubber" – the dismantling of rubber bullets from clusters of three to single bullets, and peeling the rubber off of them. She also said that, despite the clear orders to fire in the air or at the demonstrators' feet, it was common procedure to fire at the abdomen.

A female Border Guard officer in Jenin spoke of an incident in which a nine-year-old Palestinian, who tried to climb the fence, failed, and fled – was shot to death: "They fired… when he was already in the territories and posed no danger. The hit was in the abdomen area, they claimed he was on a bicycle and so they were unable to hit him in the legs."

But the soldier was most bewildered by what happened next between the four soldiers present: "They immediately got their stories straight… An investigation was carried out, at first they said it was an unjustified killing… In the end they claimed that he was checking out escape routes for terrorists or something… and they closed the case."

A female intelligence soldier who served near Etzion recounted an incident in which snipers killed a boy suspected of throwing a Molotov cocktail. The soldiers coordinated their stories, and the female soldier was shocked, mainly by the happy atmosphere that surrounding the incident: "It was written in the situation evaluation after the incident that from now on there will be quiet… This is the best kind of deterrence."

'They don't know how to accept the women'

The female soldiers repeatedly mention the particular difficulties they had as women, who had to prove that to were "fighters" in the midst of the goading male soldiers on the one hand, and the Palestinians, who have a hard time handling women in uniform on the other hand. The following story of a female Border Guard officer sums the matter up.

When the interviewer asked her if the Palestinians "suffer even more from the women in the Border Guard", she said: "Yes. Yes. Because they don't know how to accept the women. The moment a girl slaps a man, he is so humiliated, he is so humiliated he doesn't know what to do with himself… I am a strong and well-built girl, and this is even harder for them to handle. So one of their ways of coping is to laugh. They really just started to laugh at me. The commander looks at me and tells me, 'What? Are you going to let that slide? Look how he's laughing at you'.

"And you, as someone who has to salvage your self-respect… I told them to sit down and I told him to come…I told him to come close, I really approached him, as if I was about to kiss him. I told him, 'Come, come, what are you afraid of? Come to me!' And I hit him in the balls. I told him, 'Why aren't you laughing?' He was in shock, and then he realized that… not to laugh. It shouldn't reach such a situation."

You hit him with your knee?

"I hit him in the balls. I took my foot, with my military show, and hit him in the balls. I don't know if you've ever been hit in the balls, but it looks like it hurts. He stopped laughing in my face because it hurt him. We then took him to a police station and I said to myself, 'Wow, I'm really going to get in trouble now.' He could complain about me and I could receive a complaint at the Military police's criminal investigation division.

"He didn’t say a word. I was afraid and I said. I was afraid about myself, not about him. But he didn't say a word. 'What should I say, that a girl hit me?' And he could have said, but thank God, three years later I didn’t get anything and no one knows about it."

What did it feel like that moment?

"Power, strength that I should not have achieved this way. But I didn't brag about it. That's why I did it that way, one on one. I told them to sit on the side, I saw that he wasn't looking. I said to myself that it doesn't make sense that as a girl who gives above and beyond and is worth more than some boys – they should laugh at me like that because I am a girl. Because you think I can't do it…"

Today, when you look at it three years later, would you have done things differently?

"I would change the system. It's seriously defective."

What does that mean?

"The system is deeply flawed. The entire administration, the way things are run, it's not right. I don't know how I would… I don't think I did the right thing in this incident but it was what I had to do. It's inevitable under these circumstances."

You're saying the small soldiers on the ground are not the problem, but the whole situation surrounding them?

"Yes, this entire situation is problematic."

The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson's Office said in response to the publication: "These are anonymous testimonies, without any mention of a time or a place, and their reliability cannot be examined in any way. The IDF is a controlled state organization, which learns and draws lessons, and cooperates with any serious body with the shared goal of exhausting any inquiry when such an examination is inquired.

"The forces in the Central Command are engaged in a daily battle against the terror organizations. The soldiers undergo a professional training which includes a special reference to the contact with the Palestinian population, mental preparation led by professionals, a routine training by their commanders and ongoing control.

"Another aspect in the supervision over the IDF's activity is the investigative-legal aspect. The IDF includes a number of bodies whose job it is to probe incidents in which any activity against the orders is suspected. Appealing to these bodies is the right, but also the duty, of any soldier or commander, who feels that any activity is being done against orders. Female soldiers and commanders receive the same training given to the fighters."

Source: YNET

Israel, Please, No More Bin Laden Tapes, Nobody is Buying It!

2010-01-30T11:19:00.000-05:00

Gordon Duff Salem-News.com

Christmas bombing audio tape is the lamest yet; you were caught, admit it and move on with life.

Courtesy: jackblood.com and Veterans Today

(CINCINNATI) - The new audio tape from “Osama bin Laden” taking responsibility for the idiotic and childish incident in Detroit where a moronic Nigerian armed with a useless “bomb” is simply too much.

Now using audio tapes because, supposedly, nobody in Al Qaeda got a flash drive video for Christmas is even more of a joke. Please, with the hundreds of millions our Saudi allies have given to terrorists, a video camera the size of an Ipod might have been a nice touch. Even funnier was releasing the audio, using algorithm software probably illegally downloaded off the internet, and giving it to Al Jazeera is funnier still.

Pundit Debbie Schussell, former Mark Siljander (VT staff writer) staffer, has bitterly complained about the strong ties between Fox News and Al Jazeera. Fox owner, Rupert Murdoch, is the most powerful “influencer” of the ultra-rightists in Israel. Attempts by the press to present Al Jazeera of today as the “pro-terrorist” media it seemed like many years ago is an epic misrepresentation.

A further abuse, of course, is not only that we are no longer seeing the easily debunked bin Laden doubles whose video tapes were “mysteriously” released by SITE Intelligence, the Rita Katz/Israeli group that seems to find them in trash bins behind delicatessens. The “new” audio tape itself contains statements claiming credit for 9/11 in direct contradiction to the real bin Laden videos, the only ones authenticated.

If you wondered why the FBI doesn’t list Osama bin Laden as a suspect in 9/11, I think you have your answer. If they think the bin Laden “admissions” aren’t credible, I wonder who the FBI is investigating or if they have simply been told to mind their own business.

The terrorist incident itself is the last thing Al Qaeda would ever take responsibility for despite the claims by SITE Intelligence that they found an unnamed and unverified internet site that confirmed this. Who in the name of all that is holy would want to take responsibility for an idiot who was led onto an American bound plane by passing around searches, customs and passport control in an airport run by an Israeli security company but who carried a “bomb” designed by a three-year-old?

Who would be so stupid as to try to pass off this childish tape, when reliable witnesses saw the terrorist being led onto the plane in Amsterdam in a manner that required full cooperation from security personnel, passport control and the airline itself. We don’t even have to go into the fact that the “terrorists” in Yemen that supposedly claimed responsibility were released from Guantanamo under the personal signature of Vice President Cheney in 2007 or that before the incident, the government of Yemen tied these individuals to Israeli controllers through captured computers.

I am only thankful that the duped terrorist, or as Lee Oswald had said, “patsy”, was the moronic son of a long time Mossad business associate in Nigeria. Mr. Mutallab, banker, but mostly head of Nigeria’s defense industry, DICON, managed almost entirely by Israelis, may have much more story to tell other than the one he told CIA Chief of Station on November 19, 2009. Do we want to follow former Homeland Security director Chertoff, not only a Jewish activist but currently representing companies selling body scanners to airports and the mysterious ability for someone on worldwide terrorist watch lists to be escorted onto a US bound airliner without passport or search?

Billions in profits were realized almost instantly after this incident. Companies tied to Chertoff, Israel and India were on the receiving end.

The only reliable information the world has on Osama bin Laden is that he was killed by American troops on December 13, 2001 and buried outside Tora Bora by his following, 30 Mujahideen. At least 6 of these witnesses were alive at last check. Since his death, every “leaked” video or statement has been timed for convenient electoral “terrorist” scares, been childishly unprofessional and has only worked to discredit Islam.

Every effort has been made by the MSM/corporate press to cover the facts behind the Christmas “bombing” and push the blame on everyone but the obvious culprits. That effort was deemed so successful that now a brazen attempt to resurrect long dead Osama bin Laden to take responsibility for trying to set off a bomb with a flame igniter that could only be exploded using a blasting cap, is being made.

Is this an attempt to make Al Qaeda look stupid?

Any group that could make 5 airliners outwit NORAD, the most advanced air defense system in the world, any group that could train terrorist pilots inside the United States itself with nobody catching on, and it gets worse... Sources tell us that FBI Special Agent Stephen Butler may have “accidentally” been cashing checks for and paying rent for two of the 9/11 hijackers. Can people who can get this kind of thing done put a moron on an aircraft at an airport secured by an Israeli company, “extremely closely” related to the same company that managed security at all of the airports used on 9/11?

When Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell and his wife witnessed the famous, “he has no passport, he is a Sudanese refugee, we do this all the time”, incident in Amsterdam, only a phony bin Laden tape could make America forget, or so “they” hope. Imagine our terrorist being taken to meet the security head for the “airline” with his “Indian looking” handler, bomb strapped to his underwear. Think of this exploding moron and his handler and who they would have had to know to get past, not only airline security and the Israeli company guarding the airport but Dutch passport control as well.

Anyone with the power to load the “crotch bomber” on a plane with no passport could have put a nuclear weapon in luggage easier. Nukes are seldom on watch lists or have parents running to the CIA reporting them as “terrorists.” Next time we are being lied to, please, have more respect. Not everyone is a dumb as Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times.

It is one thing claiming that poor, long dead Osama bin Laden runs terrorists in Yemen. It is quite something else proving that he manages an airport in Europe or runs the Dutch government. When US Senators can’t get through airport security without being detained, bin Laden’s ability to get diplomatic VIP treatment for known terrorists makes him more than a threat, it makes him a magician.

We are thankful that nobody was seriously injured and that we can all laugh about this, maybe not all of us. The people of Nigeria don’t think it is funny. Millions of Muslims aren’t seeing the joke either. Air travelers are having their bad moments also. Some, however, have benefitted in a major way, politically, financially and militarily. None of those people, however, are ever openly accused of terrorism.

Source: Salem News

Citizens United Huge Step Forward for Free Speech

2010-01-30T11:03:00.000-05:00

by Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski

On January 21, the U.S. Supreme Court empowered ordinary Americans to speak out on an equal footing with millionaires and the media in U.S. elections. Threatened by people being able to freely speak their minds, the president of the United States deceived the American people when discussing this court decision in the State of the Union.

In Citizens United v. FEC, the Court held that Americans acting together through a corporation or other type of group enjoy the same free speech rights that they enjoy individually. Noting that wealthy individuals can spend unlimited money on election ads for radio and television, the Court held that ordinary individuals could likewise pool their money together to engage in the same type of speech, striking down a federal law that made such corporate action a felony.

Read The Rest Here

UK.gov uses booze to lure London kids into ID scheme

2010-01-30T11:00:00.002-05:00

By John Oates

Young people in London are getting the chance to get their hands on an ID card, the lucky so-and-sos.

The next stage of the Home Office's attempts to get the cards accepted is to target those privacy-..disregarding, Facebook-..obsessed youths in the capital. People aged between 16 and 24 years old who hold a current or recently expired passport can apply for a card from 8 February.

Read The Rest Here

The 2010 Census: Beware the State’s Assault on Privacy!

2010-01-30T10:59:00.000-05:00

by Gary D. Barnett

The time is near for the national headcounters “SWAT” teams to once again begin their decennial assault on privacy. Some of those neighbors you thought to be decent people will now be hounding you incessantly to extract personal and private information that is none of theirs or the state’s business. Don’t be fooled by their claim that they are just doing their constitutional duty, as nothing could be further from the truth.

Read The Rest Here

Court ruling ’surveillance of Americans immune from review

2010-01-30T10:54:00.002-05:00

By Daniel Tencer

A US District Court judge in San Francisco has dismissed a lawsuit brought against the US government by individuals who say their rights were infringed by the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog that participated in the lawsuit, described the judge's ruling as declaring "that mass surveillance of Americans is immune from judicial review."

Read The Rest Here

US judge grants German homeschooling family asylum

2010-01-30T10:47:00.001-05:00

Homeschooling has been illegal in Germany for most of the 20th century. But a decision in the United States granting asylum to a German homeschooling couple has revived an ongoing debate on the freedom of education.

An American judge on Tuesday granted asylum to a German couple who wanted to homeschool their children, bringing international attention to the debate in Germany over the rights of parents to freely educate their children.

The decision came from immigration judge Lawrence O. Burman in Memphis, Tennessee. Judge Burman said the German government violated Uwe and Hannelore Romeike's "basic human rights," according to the Web site of the Home School Legal Defense Association, a Virginia-based pro-..homeschooling organization that represented the couple.

"Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress," Burman was quoted as saying. "This family has a well-founded fear of persecution ... therefore, they are eligible for asylum."

Read The Rest Here

The Holocaust Backfires

2010-01-29T09:37:00.000-05:00

"Ynet reports:" Peres in Berlin, Netanyahu in Auschwitz, Lieberman in Budapest and Edelstein at the UN headquarters in New York all plan to attack the Goldstone report into the Gaza war on International Holocaust Day this Wednesday.

Israel's political echelon will once again try to divert attention from the fact that the Israeli crime is beyond comparison.

Israeli Propaganda Minister Edelstein told Ynet before leaving for New York. "The connection between the Goldstone Report and the international Holocaust memorial day is not an easy thing”. He is indeed correct. The true interpretation of the Goldstone report is that Israelis are the Nazis of our time. “We must learn the lessons from what happened” Says Edelstein, “then too, those who yelled out were told that Hitler is a clown and that all the gloomy predictions of the 1930s were nonsense.”

Someone should advise the Israeli Propaganda man that by now no one regards mass murderer Barak, Nuclear enthusiast Peres, warmonger Livni or ultra racist Lieberman as clowns. We respect them for what they are. Yet, we prefer to see them locked behind bars.

In fact, those world leaders around the world who bowed to Jewish pressure and made the Holocaust into an international memorial day must have been convinced that the Holocaust carries a universal message against oppression and racism. They were actually correct, if the holocaust has any universal and ethical meaning, stopping the ‘Jews only state’ and bringing its criminal political and military leaders to justice is the true interpretation of the lesson of the Holocaust.

Propaganda Minister Edelstein added "on the Holocaust memorial day of all days, which also marks the battle against global anti-Semitism, we must discuss this connection, because today the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces are accused of harvesting organs and murdering children”. The Israelis better internalise that the truth of Israeli brutality is now common knowledge. IDF mass murder of children, elders and women is part of our collective memory. The Israeli institutional involvement in organ harvesting is also well documented and an accepted fact.

Minister Edelstein is wrong when he argues that "After World War II and the establishment of the State of Israel, anti-Semitism is not directed at Jews but at Israel and the Israelis. The Goldstone Report, the publications in Sweden about organ harvesting and similar reports, are simply a type of anti-Semitism." Edelstein is wrong because all the accusations against Israel are well grounded. Furthermore, the opposition to Israel, its Jewish lobbies and Jewish power in general is politically orientated rather than racially motivated.

In the wake of the ‘International Holocaust Memorial Day’ I will say it loudly and openly. To oppose the Jewish state and Jewish nationalism is the true meaning of the memory of the Holocaust. To say NO to Israel is to say NO to racism. This is what ethics and universalism are all about.

Source: Gilad Atzmon

Australia Bans Small Breasts

2010-01-29T08:25:00.001-05:00

by Glenn Church in AustraliaAustralian internet laws, already some of the world’s strictest, are becoming even more defined.

Australia has a Classification Board that regulates what can go on the internet, films and books, and who can see it.

Read The rest Here

Israeli Terrorism

2010-01-29T07:57:00.001-05:00

The horrendous massacre of thousands of innocent victims, on Sept. 11 Sept. in New York and Washington, brought a great deal of attention to the subject of terrorism, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaida.

There has also been some insinuation, by the media and politicians, towards Arabs and Muslims, with reference to the Middle East and the Palestine conflict.

But nowhere is there any mention of Israeli terrorism in relation to this conflict.

Terrorism is defined in a variety of ways. An interesting definition is put forward by the noted intellectual Noam Chomsky, who wrote: “There is another defining property of ‘terrorism’ in contemporary newspeak: it refers to violent acts by Them, not Us.”

Another definition is when the men, women and children who are killed are Palestinians and the gunmen or pilots who murder them are Israelis. This form of terrorism is not terrorism, we are told, but mere retaliation, self-defence or what they may call ‘civilized terrorism.’

The late professor Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor, and then chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, wrote: “There is nothing new in the fact that Israel is a terrorist state, which, almost from its inception, has used its intelligence service (the Mossad) to assassinate people on foreign soil with any violence or terror it considers necessary for its ends.”

Read The Rest here

How the march of officialdom is destroying cherished ways of life

2010-01-29T07:53:00.001-05:00

A man in Ayr is facing a criminal trial after he was "caught" blowing his nose behind the wheel of his car.

Michael Mancini was given a £60 fixed penalty notice after a policeman decided he was "not in control of his vehicle" when he wiped his nose with a tissue. Mancini maintains that he was in stationary traffic and had put his handbrake on. He refused to pay the fine, and will now face a trial later this year.

This isn't a one-off, by any means (indeed, the policeman who gave Mancini his ticket was PC Stuart Gray – who recently issued a £50 fixed penalty to a man who accidentally dropped a £10 note in the street). It's symptomatic of life in this country today, which is fast becoming so illiberal that it's almost as if normal life is unlawful.

Read The Rest Here

None Of Your Business

2010-01-29T06:04:00.001-05:00

by Rep. Ron Paul,
You may not have heard of the American Community Survey, but you will. The national census, which historically is taken every ten years, has expanded to quench the federal bureaucracy’s ever-growing thirst to govern every aspect of American life. The new survey, unlike the traditional census, is taken each and every year at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. And it’s not brief. It contains 24 pages of intrusive questions concerning matters that simply are none of the government’s business, including your job, your income, your physical and emotional heath, your family status, your dwelling, and your intimate personal habits.

The questions are both ludicrous and insulting. The survey asks, for instance, how many bathrooms you have in your house, how many miles you drive to work, how many days you were sick last year, and whether you have trouble getting up stairs. It goes on and on, mixing inane questions with highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. One can only imagine the countless malevolent ways our federal bureaucrats could use this information. At the very least the survey will be used to dole out pork, which is reason enough to oppose it.

Read The rest here

‘To Make Lies Sound Truthful’

2010-01-29T05:58:00.003-05:00

Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

~ George Orwell

Whenever I drive east of Los Angeles toward Palm Springs, I encounter the untold hundreds of gigantic propellers whose stated purpose is to transform wind into electrical power. I wonder about the efficiency of these devices: does the enormous cost of constructing and maintaining them generate a sufficient amount of electricity to make them a profitable investment? Or, as I often suspect, do these towers serve a more secular religious purpose; a modern ziggurat expressing a commitment to a new sacred orthodoxy? Having grown up in farm country, I am aware of the beneficial use farmers have made of windmills to pump water. On the other hand, if the output from these modern wind machines exceeds their costs, why do they not appear across the country, wherever strong winds prevail? Whenever I hear people preach of the importance of some costly technological program they want the state to undertake, my economic understanding always asks the question: if this is such a worthwhile and productive project, why have profit-seeking entrepreneurs not already entered the field?

Read The rest here

ACLU Sues Justice Department over Torture Report

2010-01-29T05:54:00.000-05:00

The ACLU filed suit Friday in a bid to force the Justice Department to release its internal report on torture.

by Zachary Roth

The long-awaited report from the department's Office of Professional Ethics considers whether DOJ lawyers like John Yoo broke ethics rules in writing the memos that approved torture.

Read The rest Here

ISRAEL: WHEN THE WORLD IS TALKING GOLDSTONE, WE TALK HOLOCAUST

2010-01-29T05:49:00.002-05:00

Israel has once again displayed an arrogance that not even a Jewish mother could love. Basically, ‘nothing that happens today really matters….. we suffered in the past and that’s what counts’.
Cashing in on the Holocaust was always a big business….. but there are limits. Israel seems to disagree as can be seen in the following…..
Wednesday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and an Israeli public relations drive like this hasn’t been seen for ages. The timing of the unusual effort – never have so many ministers deployed across the globe – is not coincidental: When the world is talking Goldstone, we talk Holocaust, as if out to blur the impression. When the world talks occupation, we’ll talk Iran as if we wanted them to forget.
A thousand speeches against anti-Semitism will not extinguish the flames ignited by Operation Cast Lead, flames that threaten not only Israel but the entire Jewish world. As long as Gaza is under blockade and Israel sinks into its institutionalized xenophobia, Holocaust speeches will remain hollow. As long as evil is rampant here at home, neither the world nor we will be able to accept our preaching to others, even if they deserve it.
The above is taken from Gideon Levy’s report in todays HaAretz….
Holocaust remembrance is a boon for Israeli propaganda

Source: Desert Peace

99% of Auschwitz Eyewitness Testimony Cannot Be Substantiated”

2010-01-29T05:33:00.003-05:00

"99% der Auschwitz-Augenzeugenberichte sind kriminologisch nicht zu beweisen"
“99% of Auschwitz Eyewitness Testimony Cannot Be Substantiated”

By the Authors of the National Journal
10 January 2010

Translated by J M Damon
The Original is Posted at

****************

“99% of Auschwitz Testimony Is Forensically Unsubstantiated”

The Jewish Auschwitz expert Robert Jan van Pelt wants to demolish the physical remains of Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
The pressure from the Islamic world to duplicate the Rudolf Expert Report and adopt its findings is growing from day to day, and van Pelt wants to hinder official state investigations at all costs.
In an interview with the Canadian newspaper The STAR on 27 December 2009, he urges that all the remains of ruined buildings at Auschwitz-Birkenau be completely demolished and removed.
In his opinion, only the buildings of the Stammlager (original camp) should be preserved.
(In his book AUSCHWITZ 1270 BIS HEUTE (Auschwitz 1270 Until Today) he admits that no gassings took place in the Stammlager.)

Van Pelt wants to put an end to forensic investigations of “Holocaust” at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
He advocates clearing the site even though the ceilings and ruins of the crematories (alleged homicidal gas chambers) are still present and available for investigation.
If homicidal gassings had taken place there, these ruins would exhibit high residues of Prussian Blue (insoluble compounds of Ferro cyanide).
These residues are traces of the deadly poison gas cyanic acid (marketed under the name “Cyclon B”), which was the principal insecticide before the discovery of DDT.
Such residues are simply not present in the alleged “homicidal gas chambers” morgue and crematoria, although they are bountiful in the walls and ceilings of the fumigation chambers where the Germans used Cyclon B to delouse blankets and clothing of inmates and staff.

The most sensational part of the STAR interview is van Pelt’s admission that none of the testimony of Auschwitz witnesses can be scientifically proven or forensically substantiated.
Countless “Holocaust” researchers over many years have been thrown in prison for making this very statement.
In 2009, the inquisitorial German courts sentenced lifetime dissident Horst Mahler, 73, to 13 years’ imprisonment for insisting that there is no empirical evidence to support “Holocaust Industry” claims of mass gassings or attempted genocide of the Jews.

Following are the most important passages from van Pelt’s interview in the STAR.
In the words of the Jewish Auschwitz expert Robert Jan van Pelt, “We have no material or forensic evidence to support eyewitness reports of gassings...
Ninety-nine per cent of what we know we do not actually have the physical evidence to prove [then how do ‘we know’ it!?]...
It has become part of our inherited knowledge.
I don't think that the Holocaust is an exceptional case in that sense.
We in the future – remembering the Holocaust – will operate in the same way that we remember most things from the past
We will know about it from literature and eyewitness testimony...
We are very successful in remembering the past in that manner.
To put the holocaust in some separate category and to demand that it be there – to demand that we have more material evidence – is actually us [sic] somehow giving in to the Holocaust deniers by providing some sort of special evidence.
It has become part of our inherited knowledge.
(The Canadian STAR 27 December 2009.)

According to van Pelt, the “greatest mass murder in world history” should remain un-investigated!
He thinks we should rely exclusively on testimony of mass gassings by former inmates!
Dear reader, everyone should familiarize himself with these “eyewitnesses.”
Jürgen Graf’s book "AUSCHWITZ: TÄTERGESTÄNDNISSE UND AUGENZEUGEN DES HOLOCAUST" (Auschwitz: Confessions and Eyewitness Accounts of Holocaust) gives us some really eye-opening facts concerning the veracity of this “testimony.”
The witnesses would have us believe that what every normal and ingenuous person would consider lurid and fantastic is nevertheless factual.

In the course of the “Auschwitz Trials” (Record 50/Ks 2/63) in Frankfurt, which dragged on for years, neither exhumed bodies nor forensic investigations of the alleged homicidal gas chambers were presented as evidence, even though the so-called “Court” visited Auschwitz on several occasions to visually inspect the scene of the alleged crimes and interview witnesses.
Having dispensed with forensic evidence, the “Court” complained in its verdict about the lack of such evidence:
“An additional difficulty lay in the fact that the eyewitnesses – understandably – were seldom able to give exact descriptions of the time and place of specific events...”

This “Court” was almost completely lacking in all the evidence and methods of gathering information that are available in normal murder trials to form an accurate picture of events at the time of the alleged murders.
Try to imagine murder trials in which there are no bodies of victims, no autopsy reports, no expert opinions as to cause of death, no time of death, etc.!
There was no forensic evidence pertaining to perpetrators or weapons employed in the monstrous alleged crimes, and the Defense was very seldom allowed to question the witnesses.
(See Auschwitz-Urteil 50/Ks 2/63, page 109)

Think about it, dear reader.
Isn’t this incredible?
In its verdict the alleged Court admitted that van Pelt’s much-vaunted eyewitness testimony was inexact and could not be substantiated.
The following sentence is found on page 109 of the verdict:
“The witnesses, understandably, were seldom able to give exact information as to time and place of specific events...
Examination and validation of testimony was seldom possible.”

Thus the authenticity of the “Auschwitz Holocaust” was “proven” with generalized, imprecise witness testimony and a total lack of forensic evidence.
Anyone who points to the Diploma Chemist Rudolf’s EXPERT REPORT and demands free and open discussions goes to jail for many years, even for life.
And yet, the RUDOLF REPORT stands irrefuted, irrefutable.
In 1993, more than 300 professors of Inorganic Chemistry in the Federal Republic were unable to find a single mistake in Rudolf’s report.
The Swiss forensic expert Professor of Chemistry Dr. Henri Ramuz attested to Rudolf’s scientific competence, and the Director of the Jewish Anne-Frank Association, Hans Westra, admitted on the Belgian TV program PANORAMA on 27 April 1995: “The scientific analyses in the RUDOLF EXPERT REPORT are perfect.”

****************

Here's freedom to him who would speak,
Here's freedom to him who would write;
For there's none ever feared that the truth should be heard,
Save him whom the truth would indict!
ROBERT BURNS (1759–96)

Source:Adelaide Institute

Norman Finkelstein debates the "Holocaust" with Israeli Auschwitz rep

2010-01-29T05:29:00.001-05:00

Nullification: It’s Official.

2010-01-29T05:22:00.003-05:00

While speaking to a large crowd of over a thousand people on the campus of Arizona State University last December, Congressman Ron Paul mentioned one thing that might come about as the result of the federal government habitually ignoring the Constitution: Nullification.
About five minutes into the video segment which you’ll find below, he said, “There’s not much attention paid to the Constitution in Washington. There’s not much attention paid to it by our executive branch of government. And we don’t get much protection from our courts. So one thing that might finally happen from this if the people finally feel so frustrated that they can’t get the results out of Washington — They’re going to start thinking about options. They might start thinking about nullification and a few things like that.”
As someone who attended that rally and was doing my best to represent my state’s chapter of The Tenth Amendment Center, I know I cheered very loudly and was very pleased when the rest of the crowd applauded enthusiastically.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with the concept of state nullification, it was the idea expressed by then sitting vice president, Thomas Jefferson, when he authored what came to be called the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. The resolutions made the case that the federal government is a creature of the states and that states have the authority to judge the constitutionality of the federal government’s laws and decrees. He also argued that states should refuse to enforce laws which they deemed unconstitutional.
James Madison wrote a similar resolution for Virginia that same year, in which he asserted that whenever the federal government exceeds its constitutional limits and begins to oppress the citizens of a state, that state’s legislature is duty bound to interpose its power to prevent the federal government from victimizing its people. Very similar to Jefferson’s concept of nullification, Madison’s doctrine of interposition differed in some small but important ways.
These two documents together came to be known as The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (or Resolves), of 1798. Both were written in response to the dreaded Alien and Sedition Acts, and the phrase, “Principles of ‘98″ became shorthand for nullification and / or interposition. Over time, “The Principles of ‘98″ would be invoked by many other states, many times for a variety of issues.
Getting back to Ron Paul’s speech in December at ASU, Congressman Paul qualified his prediction about the revival of nullification by saying the following:
“But my suspicion is that there will never be official nullification or secession, but if the [federal] government continues to fail, and they can’t deliver anything..checks bounce..that we will be forced to take care of ourselves. And we will be forced to almost ignore everything they do.”
Less than a week after the speech I attended at ASU, Congressman Paul was interviewed by Mike Church on his radio show. When Mike asked him what his thoughts were on nullification, Ron Paul responded by saying:
“I think it’s a great idea. It was never really successful in our history. But I think it’s going to grow in importance. And I think it’s going to grow because the government, the federal government will be seen as inept and ineffective. And I think it’ll almost be de facto in the sense that the states will eventually just ignore some of the mandates.”
Here I would like to pause for a moment and point out that I am not usually in the business of disagreeing with Congressman Ron Paul. I would hardly need one hand to count the number of times that I have actually disagreed with him on any issue of real substance. I am a great admirer and supporter of Congressman Paul, who is undoubtedly very supportive of the idea of state nullification, even if he has doubted its efficacy in the past. However, in spite of all this, I would like to make two observations.
First, nullification has, in fact, been somewhat successful in the past and more recently as well. Second, as President Obama loves to say, “Let me be clear”: “Official” nullification has ALREADY HAPPENED.
Before I explain why “official” nullification has already happened, let me briefly give some examples of what nullification is NOT.
Nullification is not secession or insurrection, but neither is it unconditional or unlimited submission. Nullification is not something that requires any decision, statement or action from any branch of the federal government. Nullification is not the result of obtaining a favorable court ruling. Nullification is not the petitioning of the federal government to start doing or to stop doing anything. Nullification doesn’t depend on any federal law being repealed. Nullification does not require permission from any person or institution outside of one’s own state.
So just what IS “official” nullification you might be asking?
Nullification begins with a decision made in your state legislature to resist a federal law deemed to be unconstitutional. It usually involves a bill, which is passed by both houses and is signed by your governor. In some cases, it might be approved by the voters of your state directly, in a referendum. It may change your state’s statutory law or it might even amend your state constitution. It is a refusal on the part of your state government to cooperate with, or enforce any federal law it deems to be unconstitutional.
Nullification carries with it the force of state law. It cannot be legally repealed by Congress without amending the US Constitution. It cannot be lawfully abolished by an executive order. It cannot be overruled by the Supreme Court. It is the people of a state asserting their constitutional rights by acting as a political society in their highest sovereign capacity. It is the moderate, middle way that wisely avoids harsh remedies like secession on the one hand and slavish, unlimited submission on the other. It is the constitutional remedy for unconstitutional federal laws.
With the exception of a Constitutional amendment, the federal government cannot oppose (except perhaps rhetorically), a state’s decision to nullify an unconstitutional federal law without resorting to extra-legal measures. But such measures would more than likely backfire, since most Americans still affirm that might does not make right.
There is no question as to whether or when “official” nullification will happen: It has ALREADY HAPPENED. In fact, not only has it happened recently, it has been a success! Perhaps this is why the federal government hopes you will never hear about it. According to the Tenth Amendment Center:
“25 states over the past 2 years have passed resolutions and binding laws denouncing and refusing to implement the Bush-era law [REAL ID Act]..While the law is still on the books in D.C., its implementation has been “delayed” numerous times in response to this massive state resistance, and in practice, is virtually null and void.”
But that’s not all; another example of “official” nullification has occurred in the form of an unlikely states’ rights ally: Medical marijuana.
There was a time when the federal government took the Constitution seriously enough that Congress did what is required in order to enact a nationwide ban on a substance. Even though the experiment would eventually be seen by most Americans as a mistake and a failure, the 18th Amendment was passed and the era known as “Prohibition” began. Four years later, it was repealed.
When it came to marijuana prohibition, however, the feds had another trick up their sleeve. All three branches of the federal government would agree on a very novel, liberal interpretation of the “commerce clause” which would allow them to regulate virtually any substance, including marijuana, even though there’s supposedly no “legal” commerce in the plant. Since that time, the federal government has managed to claim, with a straight face, as it were, that a plant grown in your back yard, never sold, and never leaving your property, is somehow able to be completely banned by the federal government under the interstate “commerce clause.” The only problem with their claim is that the states just aren’t buying it.
Fourteen states have actively refused to comply with federal laws on marijuana, and it looks as if six more are about to join the effort. In a recent blog post, Mark Kreslins observes:
“..medical marijuana now poses a real threat to the enforcement power of the Federal Government. With state after state defying Washington DC over this issue..Washington DC has a choice to make; enforce their laws based on a very liberal interpretation of the Commerce Clause by sending thousands of DEA agents into all fifty states…or…look the other way. Thus far, they’ve chosen to look the other way for if they create the appearance of a Federal takeover of police powers in the States, they will fully expose their extra-constitutional behavior and provoke a direct confrontation with the States who will use the 10th Amendment (hopefully) to defend their prerogatives.”
Whatever your view may be regarding marijunana use, medical or otherwise, one thing is apparent: “Official” nullification has happened, and it works! Washington will have to get used to it.
What remains to be seen, however, is whether in addition to “officially” nullifying unconstitutional federal laws, state governments will be willing to use their power to “officially” interpose themselves between agents of the federal government and the people of their state. In the unlikely event that one or more branches of the federal government decides to take extra-legal measures to punish residents of a state for exercising their constitutional rights in defiance of unconstitutional federal laws, will that state’s government have the courage to hamper or even neutralize such extra-legal measures?
There are a whole host of peaceful actions that a state government can adopt if that day comes or appears to be just over the horizon. These measures range from county sheriffs requiring that federal agents receive written permission from the sheriff before acting in their county, to setting up a Federal Tax escrow account, which could potentially de-fund unconstitutional federal activities by requiring that all federal taxes come first to the state’s Department of Revenue.
Besides state interposition, the other thing Washington would have to consider, is whether enough of their agents would actually obey orders to punish people for exercising their constitutional rights. There is a significant chance that enough of them would either publicly or privately decide in advance to ignore such orders. As the probability of this increases, it becomes more likely that Washington will not risk overplaying its hand. The reality is that Washington just doesn’t have the manpower to enforce all their unconstitutional laws if enough states choose to defy them.
Of course, it all depends on the people of the several states: ordinary people like you and I. Although I’ve discovered that there are more elected representatives at the state level who are committed to acting in a courageous and principled manner than I ever dared hope, most of their peers lack such a brave commitment. Most of them will stick their head in the sand or sit on the fence until they determine which way the wind is blowing. And so it’s our opinion, not the opinion of the American people in aggregate, but our opinion as citizens of our respective states, that will influence the decision of our state representatives to either stand tall or to kneel down and knuckle under.
But do you even know the men and women who represent you? I’m not talking about those who represent you in Washington, but rather in Phoenix, Salem, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Denver, Austin, Oklahoma City, Tallahassee, Atlanta, Nashville, Richmond, Harrisburg, Indianapolis, Columbus and Springfield.
If you don’t know them, and you care about our republic, you should make it your highest priority to get to know them and establish rapport with them as soon as possible.
For any of you who really want to preserve our union, and at the same time retain your rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, I can’t say it any better than 2008 presidential nominee of the Constitution Party, Chuck Baldwin:
“..it is absolutely obligatory that freedom-minded Americans refocus their attention to electing State legislators, governors, judges and sheriffs who will fearlessly defend their God-given liberties..as plainly and emphatically as I know how to say it, I am telling you: ONLY THE STATES CAN DEFEND OUR LIBERTY NOW! ..this reality means we will have to completely readjust our thinking and priorities.”

Source: 1oth Amendment Center

"Our Troops" Shoot Father, With His Kids in the Car, Which They Deemed Threatening (a Toyota Corolla)

2010-01-29T05:13:00.003-05:00

Oh, so very proud
Hooray.
Yah, right; the expression some of us know to mean the opposite, definitely not right.
Although I only read an excerpt of an article on this story posted at uruknet.info, the excerpt appearing with the link for the article in the home or main index page of the website, I didn't read the whole piece. Just the title and excerpt were enough to tell me that yet another tragic killing occurred and for no valid reason whatsoever. After all, no one can credibly argue that a Toyota Corolla with a man and children in it is threatening, at all.
I suppose it's because the soldiers who committed this tragic killing are just too psychologically stressed due to being in this zone of a totally criminal war, perhaps really suffering from PTSD. If that's the case, then I can't personally consider them as responsible for this tragic incident. Otherwise, they should be charged with murder and made to stand Nurember style trials alongside the war makers and the leading continuers, which means the responsible or guilty people of the White House, but also plenty of other guilty people or elite, military and corporate; none of whom can credibly be treated as committing their criminal leadership due to suffering from PTSD. They suffer from a severe socio-psychological problem, like psychopathia, and another condition called cowardice, but these certainly are not bases for treating these people as not being responsible for their criminal leadership.
The troops commit the actual killings, but the real murderers, and plunderers, occupy the highest offices of the USA's political body and military, and, of course, their masters in Corporate America. They're so evil it's difficult to even think of referring to them as people.

by Mike Corbeil

Source: After downing Street

Israeli companies considered as USA when bidding for Fed, state projects

2010-01-29T05:04:00.002-05:00

A curious op-ed "The Tel Aviv Cluster" by the reliably neoconnish David Brooks appeared in the New York Times on January 12th. Brooks enthused over the prowess of Israel’s high tech businesses, attributing their success in large part to Jewish exceptionalism and genius, which must have provided the ultimate feel good moment for Brooks, who is himself Jewish. That Israel has a booming technology sector is undeniably true, but Brooks failed to mention other contributing factors such as the $101 billion dollars in US economic and military aid over the course of more than four decades, which does not include the additional $30 billion recently approved by President Barack Obama. American assistance has financed and fueled Israel’s business growth while the open access and even "preferential treatment" afforded to Israeli exporters through the Israel Free Trade Implementation Act of 1985 has provided Israelis with the enormous US market to sell their products and services. By act of Congress, Israeli businesses can even bid on most American Federal and State government contracts just as if they were US companies.
Brooks was characteristically undisturbed by the fact that American taxpayer subsidized development of Israeli enterprises combined with the free access to the US economy and government contracts eliminates jobs and damages competing companies on this side of the Atlantic. And there is another aspect of Israel’s growing high tech sector that he understandably chose to ignore because it is extremely sleazy. That is the significant advantage that Israel has gained by systematically stealing American technology with both military and civilian applications. The US developed technology is then reverse engineered and used by the Israelis to support their own exports with considerably reduced research and development costs, giving them a huge advantage against American companies. Sometimes, when the technology is military in nature and winds up in the hands of a US adversary, the consequences can be serious. Israel has sold advanced weapons systems to China that are believed to incorporate technology developed by American companies, including the Python-3 air-to-air missile and the Delilah cruise missile. There is evidence that Israel has also stolen Patriot missile avionics to incorporate into its own Arrow system and that it used US technology obtained in its Lavi fighter development program, which was funded by the US taxpayer to the tune of $1.5 billion, to help the Chinese develop their own J-10 fighter.
The reality of Israeli spying is indisputable. Israel always features prominently in the annual FBI report called "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage." The 2005 report states, "Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel’s sizable armaments industry." It adds that Israel recruits spies, uses electronic methods, and carries out computer intrusion to gain the information. The 2005 report concluded that the thefts eroded US military advantage, enabling foreign powers to obtain expensive technologies that had taken years to develop.
A 1996 Defense Investigative Service report noted that Israel has great success stealing technology by exploiting the numerous co-production projects that it has with the Pentagon. "Placing Israeli nationals in key industries …is a technique utilized with great success." A General Accounting Office (GAO) examination of espionage directed against American defense and security industries described how Israeli citizens residing in the US had stolen sensitive technology to manufacture artillery gun tubes, obtained classified plans for a reconnaissance system, and passed sensitive aerospace designs to unauthorized users. An Israeli company was caught monitoring a Department of Defense telecommunications system to obtain classified information, while other Israeli entities targeted avionics, missile telemetry, aircraft communications, software systems, and advanced materials and coatings used in missile re-entry. The GAO concluded that Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally." In June 2006, a Pentagon administrative judge overruled an appeal by an Israeli who had been denied a security clearance, stating, "The Israeli government is actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United States. An Israeli citizen working in the US who has access to proprietary information is likely to be a target of such espionage." More recently, FBI counter intelligence officer John Cole has reported how many cases of Israeli espionage are dropped under orders from the Justice Department. He provides a "conservative estimate" of 125 worthwhile investigations into Israeli espionage involving both American citizens and Israelis that were stopped due to political pressure from above.
Two recent stories that have been reported in the Israeli media but are strangely absent from the news on this side of the Atlantic demonstrate exactly what is going on and what is at stake. The first story confirms that Israeli efforts to obtain US technology are ongoing. Stewart David Nozette, a US government scientist who was arrested on October 19, 2009 in an FBI sting operation after offering to spy for Israel has been waiting in jail to go to trial on espionage charges. New documents in the case were presented in the Federal court in Washington last week. The documents confirm that Nozette was a paid consultant for Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) and it is believed that he passed to them classified material in return for an estimated $225,000 in consulting fees. Examination of his computer by the FBI revealed that he was planning a "penetration of NASA" the US space agency and that he was also trying to crack into other scientists’ computers to obtain additional classified material. Other documents demonstrate that he was cooperating with two Israeli scientists who were administrators with IAI, Yossi Weiss and Yossi Fishman. Nozette made several trips to Israel without reporting them, which he was required to do because of his high security clearance. The FBI reportedly also has incriminating letters and other documents that were obtained from the computer.
The second story relates to the pending sale of twenty-five F-35 fighter planes to Israel. The F-35 is one of the most advanced fighter planes in the world. The $130 million planes would be purchased with US military assistance money, which means they would effectively be a gift from the US taxpayer. But Israel is balking at the sale reportedly because it wants to install some of its own local content in the aircraft. The Pentagon has already made some concessions but is disinclined to grant approval for all the changes because to do so would require giving the Israelis full access to the plane’s advanced avionics and computer systems. Israel also wants to independently maintain the aircraft, which would also require access to all systems. It would be nice to think that the Pentagon wants to keep the maintenance in American hands to preserve jobs, but the Defense Department has never cared about US workers before when the issue is Israel, and the real reason for the standoff is that Lockheed-Martin and the Pentagon both know that Israel will steal whatever it can if it gains access. It would then use the technology to market its own products at a price below that of US defense contractors. The result would be a triple whammy for Uncle Sam: the expensive planes are given to Israel free, the technology is then stolen, and future sales vanish as our Israeli friends market their knock down versions of weapons systems reliant on the stolen technology.
So to David Brooks I would say that there is most definitely an economic surge taking place in high tech Israel, but it is less a miracle than the fruit of a long series of thefts and manipulations fueled by American tax money and the connivance of a Congress that is always willing to do favors for the country that it appears to love beyond all others. I’m sure most Americans would wish the Israelis well and would applaud the prosperity that derives from their own industry and inventiveness but it is also time to put the brakes on business as usual and to take the Israeli hand out of our pocket. I’m sure Brooks’ job is pretty secure and well paid, but many Americans are out of work and suffering, so let’s take some steps to protect our economy from the information thieves from Tel Aviv and keep our money and jobs over here.

Source: AntiWar.Com

NURSE PULLS PLUG ON TAX COLLECTORS OVER MBA TUITION

2010-01-21T03:25:00.002-05:00

By Pat Shannan
A Bryantown, Md., nurse accomplished two rare tax court feats in her battle with the Internal Revenue Service recently. She not only won against the agency’s high-priced legal team without using an attorney herself, but she also got a ruling that could help tens of thousands of students deduct the cost of a masters degree on their future taxes.

The odyssey of Lori Singleton-Clarke, 47, began in 2006, when she filed her 2005 return. It showed just over $50,000 in income, several smaller deductions, and one large one—for $14,787 of expenses for an MBA from the University of Phoenix, an online school.

Ms. Singleton-Clarke deducted the tuition because her tax preparer told her that met the law’s narrow definitions. When the IRS audited the return in late 2006, she conceded all the IRS’s challenges to her deductions but one. She dug in her heels on the tuition deduction because, after looking at a complex diagram in IRS Publication 970, she believed she qualified for it.

Ms. Singleton-Clarke drew on skills she developed as a nurse responsible for dealing with doctors who may have infringed hospital rules. That was why she studied for her MBA: she says, “I didn’t want to feel outmatched by surgeons who didn’t want to talk to me.”

The U.S. Tax Court handed Ms. Singleton-Clarke her victory last month, saying that the business school deduction had been proper. The ruling is certain to make the expense of a post-college degree more attractive for many other professionals in the future.

After getting word of the court decision by mail, “I nearly yelled the roof off the house,” Ms. Singleton- Clarke says. “I still can hardly believe it.” She says she didn’t have a lawyer for the simple reason that she couldn’t afford one.

Decisions in small cases aren’t allowed to be cited as precedent.

“But everyone uses them,” says Melissa Labant, a tax expert with the American Institute of CPAs. “This case definitely provides a road map others can use, especially MBA students.”

Few taxpayers go toe-to-toe with the IRS as Ms. Singleton-Clarke did, arguing her case without a lawyer. For good reason: In 2009, individuals won only about 10 percent of about 300 such cases, according to data from Tax Analysts, a group that fights for tax-system transparency and since 1972 has won a series of freedom-of-information cases against the IRS.

Some of the losers, such as several dozen tax protesters, were tilting at tax windmills. Others were simply on the wrong side of the law, including a horse enthusiast who wanted to deduct his hobby losses, an unsuccessful comedian who tried to classify his expenses as business losses, and an attorney who claimed over $100,000 in medical deductions for his visits to prostitutes.

Of the few who did prevail against the IRS, nearly half came to court on a single issue: requests for “innocent spouse” treatment that decouples a spouse from a partner who does not pay his taxes. This provision has been used mostly to protect wives. One of the spouses granted relief last year was formerly married to an investment banker who didn’t pay his taxes after his bonus didn’t come through.

Source: American Free press

An International Crime Called Gaza

2009-12-30T02:19:00.002-05:00

By DR. ELIAS AKLEH

A fully pre-meditated international crime of genocide has been taking place during the last 62 years in the heart of the Arab World. The victims are the Palestinian people especially those in the Gaza Strip. The assassin is the worst ever terrorist group deceptively called the Israeli Defense Forces under the leadership of the theocratically most racist "god’s chosen" deceitfully self-proclaimed "democratic Jewish-only" Israel. Israel had been created, financed, armed, and politically protected by, mainly, British and American rapture-vision-obsessed Talmudist power elites consisting of profit-seeking financiers and military-industrial complex.

In December 2008 this Israeli Terrorist Forces added another war crime to its long list of war crimes against the Palestinians since 1948. One more time the international political community had become an accomplice to one more Israeli war crime either by being a passive silent witness or by becoming an active participant and protector of Israeli war criminals. One more international war crime had been perpetrated against the Palestinians. It is an international crime since multi political regimes; Israeli, American, European and even Arab governments, had joined in this crime that is STILL GOING ON up to this very minute.

Read The Rest Here

Tactics of desperation: using false accusations of “anti-Semitism” as a weapon to silence criticism of Israel’s behaviour

2009-12-29T15:10:00.002-05:00

Ulli Diemer argues that as world public opinion turns against Israel, its racist apartheid regime and its occupation, the Zionist state and its lobbies have turned to attempts to outlaw criticism of Israel by labelling it as “anti-Semitism” – attempts that need to be exposed and challenged as a serious threat to basic freedoms.

”At the same time as it attempts to crush internal resistance, the Israeli state, aided by its supporters in the United States and Canada, has launched extremely aggressive and well-financed propaganda campaigns abroad whose goal is to counteract the decline in support for Israel.

“A telling characteristic of these campaigns is that they by and large do not focus on attempting to justify Israel’s behaviour...

“Instead, the focus has shifted to attempting to shut down criticism of Israel by targeting the most outspoken critics with crude smear tactics and outright censorship.”

For more than 60 years, Israel has engaged in an unceasing campaign to dispossess Palestinians of their land and their rights. Its ability to do this has depended on three factors in particular:

overwhelming military superiority;

keeping public opinion, especially in North America and Europe, on its side; and

making ordinary working-class Israeli Jews believe that it is in their interest to support Israel’s Zionist elite rather than making common cause with ordinary Palestinians.

Israel’s military dominance is unchallenged, thanks to unconditional support and limitless supplies of advanced military technology and equipment provided by the United States and its allies (including Canada). However, military dominance has not been able to achieve Israel’s ultimate goal: forcing Palestinians to stop resisting and to acquiesce in their dispossession and oppression. Israel’s relentless onslaught has been met by equally determined Palestinian resistance which, despite the odds, steadfastly refuses to accept the injustice of occupation.

This Palestinian resistance has called into being an ever-growing international network of support and solidarity. In dozens of countries and hundreds of communities around the world, organizations and movements have emerged to demand that Israel be made to adhere to international law and to basic principles of justice.

Israel and its supporters see these international campaigns as a huge threat. Israel has escaped the sanctions that have been applied to other states which commit human rights abuses and violate international law only because the United States automatically vetoes all attempts to hold Israel accountable. Israel is also crucially dependent on huge annual inflows of foreign aid, to the point where it is conceivable that the state would collapse if the flows of outside cash which prop it up were to be withdrawn.

Anything that undermines public support in the US, Canada and Europe, therefore, threatens the external backing on which the Israeli state depends for its very existence. It is true that the governments which turn a blind eye to Israel’s violations of international law mostly ignore popular opinion in their own countries as well, but this could change if support for Israel were to become a serious political liability. In this regard, what is particularly worrisome from Israel’s point of view is the fact that support for Israel among Jews in the United States and Canada, especially among younger Jews, has declined dramatically. If Jews stop supporting Israel, then all foreign support is in jeopardy.

Threats to Israel’s international legitimacy bring with them an even greater internal danger: the danger that Israeli Jews will themselves start seeing the Zionist formula – in essence, a militarized apartheid state holding down the Palestinian population by force – as a dead end.

If working-class Israeli Jews were to see their interests as being different from those of the ruling elite – if they come round to the view that their long-term interests will be better served if they join Palestinians in working for a democratic secular state with equal rights for Palestinians and Jews – Israel’s ruling class would find itself in the same untenable position that the white elite in apartheid South Africa faced in the early 1990s. Already, Israel’s rulers are debating what to do about the “demographic threat” they are facing: Israeli Jews are leaving the country in increasing numbers to move to other countries, while the Palestinian population continues to increase.

The Palestinian resistance, and the growing international support which it has attracted, have had a substantial effect in changing the way Israel is perceived. Increasingly, international public opinion is no longer willing to turn a blind eye to ethnic cleansing, house demolitions, systematic humiliations, imprisonment, torture, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians, children as well as adults.

Faced with the erosion of its credibility and support, the Israeli state has lashed out by using ever-increasing repression against the non-violent Palestinian resistance. One of the centres of this resistance is the village of Bil’in, which has been fighting the expansion of an illegal Israeli settlement on its land with weekly non-violent protests for more than five years now, protests which have turned Bil’in into an international symbol of non-violent resistance. The Israeli state has been using ever more extreme tactics of harassment and brutality to attempt to crush the village and put an end to the protests, which it correctly believes are causing substantial harm to Israel’s international image. Similar tactics of harassment and imprisonment are being used against other Palestinians who resist, as well as against Jewish Israelis and international solidarity activists who support the Palestinian cause.

At the same time as it attempts to crush internal resistance, the Israeli state, aided by its supporters in the United States and Canada, has launched extremely aggressive and well-financed propaganda campaigns abroad whose goal is to counteract the decline in support for Israel.

A telling characteristic of these campaigns is that they by and large do not focus on attempting to justify Israel’s behaviour. One has to assume that the architects of the propaganda efforts realize that it is no longer possible to explain war crimes and human rights abuses in a way that the international public will accept.

Instead, the focus has shifted to attempting to shut down criticism of Israel by targeting the most outspoken critics with crude smear tactics and outright censorship.

On a growing number of campuses, for example, this has involved harassment and firing of outspoken professors (e.g. Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel), as well as attempts to ban events such as “Israeli apartheid week”.

In Canada, we are now seeing an attempt to silence criticism of Israel by labelling all such criticism as “anti-Semitism” and therefore as hate speech. This tactic has a triple purpose: to suppress public awareness of what Israel is doing; to discredit critics by smearing them as “anti-Semitic”, and to keep Jews onside by frightening them with the spectre of anti-Semitism.

In Canada, the Harper government, fanatically pro-Israel, is fully involved in this effort. It has cut funding to groups which have supported Palestinians in their quest for justice, and it has set up a Parliamentary body charged with coming up with the legal rationale for making it illegal to criticize Israel.

If the Harper government is successful in getting its way, statements such as the following, all of them expressions of generally accepted principles of human rights and international law, will henceforth be classified as anti-Semitic hate speech in Canada:

A state must be the state of all its citizens”.

Saying this will be classified as “anti-Semitic” because it implies that the Israeli state has a duty to serve and represent all of its citizens equally, Palestinians as well as Jews.

”Everyone born in a state, and everyone who has been a permanent resident for a specified and reasonable period of time, is entitled to citizenship”.

Saying this will be classified as “anti-Semitic” because it would mean that Palestinians under the rule of the Israeli state have the right to be citizens of Israel.

”All citizens of a state must be equal under the law, equally entitled to the rights, privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. A state may not favour, or discriminate against, citizens, on the grounds of religion, ethnicity, or race”.

Saying this will be classified as “anti-Semitic” because it implies that Israel has to dismantle its discriminatory, apartheid-style system of laws.

”Every state must accept its internationally recognized borders and must renounce all claims on territory outside of its borders”.

Saying this will be classified as “anti-Semitic” because it would mean that Israel would have to stop seizing land beyond its borders.

”All states must abide by international law, including the Geneva conventions, laws against collective punishment, laws against torture, etc.”

Saying this will be classified as “anti-Semitic” because it implies that Israel has to stop engaging in ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, and other violations of international law.

“Refugees have a right to return to the lands from which they were expelled by an invading army or occupying power.”

Saying this will be classified as “anti-Semitic” because it means that the Palestinian refugees expelled from their homeland by Israel must be allowed to exercise their right of return as guaranteed by international law.

”Sanctions should be applied to those who violate international law.”

Saying this will be classified as “anti-Semitic” because it implies that Israel should face sanctions for engaging in collective punishment and ethnic cleansing, for practising torture, for committing war crimes, for defying UN resolutions and World Court rulings, and for other illegal acts.

The attempt to outlaw criticism of Israel by labelling it as “anti-Semitism” is a serious threat which needs to be exposed and challenged. At the same time, it should also be recognized as a tactic of desperation, a tactic that has become necessary because of the ever-growing opposition to the crimes of the Israeli state.

The resort to increasingly blatant open repression is a symptom of loss of control. In the past such tactics would not have been necessary because any criticism of Israel was confined to the outer fringes of public debate. Now it has become mainstream, and those who support an ethnically defined, apartheid-style Israeli state are feeling increasingly threatened. Those of us who support a democratic secular state should feel encouraged, even though the struggle is far from won.

Obamacare sparking 10th Amendment rebellion, action in seven states

2009-12-25T07:07:00.002-05:00

By: Mark Tapscott

Looks like the steadily growing list of constitutional, ethical and political outrages that constitute the Harry Reid version of Obamacare is sparking a rebellion in the states, as AP reports South Carolina's attorney general plans to investigate the vote-buying that surrounded the proposal in the Senate majority leader's office.

According to AP, South Carolina's Henry McMaster is being joined by the attorneys general of Michigan and Washington state in a suit to determine the constitutionality of the Obamacare proposal. Their initiative was prompted by a request from South Carolina's two senators, Lindsay Graham and Jim DeMint, both Republicans.

Attorneys-general in at least four other states are also considering joining McMasters, according to AP. A move by a group of states to challenge the constitutionality of Obamacare could reinvigorate the efficacy of the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states or the people all rights not specifically granted to the federal government.

Graham has been all over cable news today visibly angry about the vote-buying by Reid that secured the votes of Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as well as possibly other senators as yet unknown.

DeMint has also been active, especially on the issue of the Reid amendment's provision seeking to bar future congresses from changing even a single word of Section 3403 on the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB).

The IMAB will become the federal health care ground zero under Obamacare if it becomes law. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a link to DeMint's floor speech on the issue and additional information, analyses, and links.

Nelson's deal with Reid has attracted the most attention because it exempts Nebraska from paying its share of Medicaid expenses in perpetuity. Medicaid expenditures are among the most expensive federal mandates on state governments, and the Obamacare bill will significantly increase costs for all other states that don't somehow wangle a similar deal.

It also raises a constitutional issue, which McMasters explained in a statement issued earlier today:

"The Nelson provision is unusual in that there is not cut off date or phase out. Many provisions in federal law have a sunset date -- say 2, 5, 10, or even 20 years-- but this provision will continue in perpetuity. Quite obviously, this issue raises very serious concerns about equity, tax fairness as well as the constitutionality of having federal tax levies and mandates that treat one state differently from all the others.

"If the Nelson provision is not unprecedented, I feel comfortable in saying it is an exceptionally rare occurrence. States generally are treated in a similar manner. In this case, Nebraska will be treated in a widely divergent manner than any other state.

"Beginning today, I have instructed my attorneys to begin looking into the constitutionality of this provision and exploring the options that may be available to South Carolina and other states to defend taxpayers should this provision ultimately become law."

My colleague David Freddoso wonders what might happen if the governors of states bordering Nebraska - Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Iowa, and Missouri - announce that they are no longer funding their Medicaid programs and encourage those needing Medicaid services to visit the Cornhusker state.

Source: The Washington Examiner

US campaign for academic boycott gaining strength

2009-12-25T06:52:00.002-05:00

The following press release was issued by the United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) on 23 December 2009:

27 December 2009 marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of "Operation Cast Lead," Israel's 22-day assault on the captive population of Gaza, which killed 1,400 people, one third of them children, and injured more than 5,300. During this war on an impoverished, mostly refugee population, Israel targeted civilians, using internationally-proscribed white phosphorous bombs, deprived them of power, water and other essentials, and sought to destroy the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society, including hospitals, administrative buildings and UN facilities. It targeted with peculiar consistency educational institutions of all kinds: the Islamic University of Gaza, the Ministry of Education, the American International School, at least ten UNRWA schools, one of which was sheltering internally displaced Palestinian civilians with nowhere to flee, and tens of other schools and educational facilities.

While world leaders have tragically failed to come to Gaza's help, civilians everywhere are rallying to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people, with anniversary vigils taking place this week in New York, Washington DC, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, and many more cities and towns in the US and world-wide.

The United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was formed in the immediate aftermath of Operation Cast Lead, bringing together educators of conscience who were unable to stand by and watch in silence Israel's indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip and its educational institutions. Today, over 500 US-based academics, authors, artists, musicians, poets and other arts professionals have endorsed our call. Our academic endorsers include postcolonial critics and transnational feminists Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Indigenous scholars J. Kehaulani Kauanui and Andrea Smith, philosopher Judith Butler, Black studies scholars Cedric Robinson, Fred Moten, evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, and intellectual historian Joseph Massad.

"Cultural workers" who have endorsed our call include well known author Barbara Ehrenreich, The Electronic Intifada cofounder Ali Abunimah, poets Adrienne Rich and Lisa Suhair Majjaj, International Solidarity Movement cofounder and documentary filmmaker Adam Shapiro, Jordan Flaherty of Left Turn Magazine, and Adrienne Maree Brown of the Ruckus Society.

Among the 34 organizations supporting our mission are and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Green Party, Code Pink, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Artists Against Apartheid and Teachers Against the Occupation.
The Advisory Board of the United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) has grown to include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Hamid Dabashi, Lawrence Davidson, Bill Fletcher Jr., Glen Ford, Mark Gonzales, Marilyn Hacker, Edward Herman, Annemarie Jacir, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Robin Kelley, Ilan Pappe, James Petras, Vijay Prashad, Andrenne Rich, Michel Shehadeh and Lisa Taraki.

Israeli academics listed among the organization's International Endorsers have also joined us, including Emmanuel Farjoun, Hebrew University; Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv University; Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University; Kobi Snitz, Technion; and Ilan Pappe now at Exeter.

The USACBI Mission Statement calls for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions in support of an appeal by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Individual Israelis are not targeted by the boycott.

Specifically, supporters are asked to:

(1) Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions that do not vocally oppose Israeli state policies against Palestine;

(2) Advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions;

(3) Promote divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions;

(4) Work toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by pressing for resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural associations and organizations;

(5) Support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.

This boycott, modeled upon the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that put an end to South African apartheid, is to continue until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Source: The Electronic Intifada

FBI Considered "It's A Wonderful Life" Communist Propaganda

2009-12-25T06:44:00.002-05:00

FBI Considered "It's A Wonderful Life" Communist Propaganda

by Will Chen

I love It's a Wonderful Life because it teaches us that family, friendship, and virtue are the true definitions of wealth.

In 1947, however, the FBI considered this anti-consumerist message as subversive Communist propaganda (read original FBI memo).

According to Professor John Noakes of Franklin and Marshall College, the FBI thought Life smeared American values such as wealth and free enterprise while glorifying anti-American values such as the triumph of the common man.

The FBI specifically detested the way Mr. Potter was portrayed:

The casting of Lionel Barrymore as a "scrooge-type" resulted in the loathsome Mr. Potter becoming the most hated person in the film. According to the official FBI report, "this was a common trick used by the communists."

"What's interesting in the FBI critique is that the Baileys were also bankers," said Noakes. " and what is really going on is a struggle between the big-city banker (Potter) and the small banker (the Baileys). Capra was clearly on side of small capitalism and the FBI was on the side of big capitalism.

The FBI misinterpreted this classic struggle as communist propaganda. I would argue that 'It's a Wonderful Life' is a poignant movie about the transition in the U.S. between small and big capitalism, with Jimmy Stewart personifying the last hope for a small town. It's a lot like the battle between Home Depot and the mom and pop hardware store." Source: Franklin and Marshall College and Delilah Boyd

Link to the story and the original FBI memo:

http://www.wisebread.com/fbi-conside...opaganda#memo1

Israel Hijacks West Bank Christmas

2009-12-25T06:37:00.001-05:00

The Israeli occupation forces are hijacking the spirit of Christmas in the occupied West Bank, restricting tourists' movement and portraying Bethlehem as unsafe war zone.

"When tourists see the wall, they think they are going into a war zone," Adnan Suboh, who owns a souvenir shop in Bethlehem market, told the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, December 23, referring to the Israeli separation wall.

Tourists trying to enter Bethlehem to visit the Nativity church, built on the site where Jesus is said to have been born, are faced with crippling Israeli restrictions.

This includes the Israeli separation wall, a 700km-long mix of electronic fences, concrete walls, trenches, and closed military roads, as well as a series of checkpoints manned by armed soldiers.

Palestinian traders and hoteliers say this is preventing them from benefiting from the expected record number of 1.4 million visitors during the Christmas season.

Bethlehem’s top hotels expect only 30 percent occupancy during Christmas after Israel convinced many tourists that it is unsafe to stay in West Bank.

Despite being so close, few tourists ever wander West Bank markets and souvenir stalls.

"They are afraid and want to leave as soon as possible because they have been convinced they have reason to fear."

Christmas is the main festival on the Christian calendar. Its celebrations reach its peak at 12:00 PM on December 24 of every year.

Thousands of Christian pilgrims flock to Bethlehem every year to celebrate Christmas at the historical Nativity Church.

Anti-Peace

Palestinian Tourism Minister Khouloud Daibes also criticized the Israeli restrictive tactics in Bethlehem.

"They want to reduce Bethlehem visits to just a few hours," she told the Telegraph.

"Through tourism, we can create jobs and create hope.

"Sadly, on a political level, Israel is not mentally ready to share either the responsibility or the benefits."

Daibes said the West Bank receives just five percent of total religious tourism revenues.

"The problem is they are not ready to deal with us as equal partners."

The minister warned that the Israeli measures have negative impact on peace prospects.

"We see tourism as a major aspect of development for not only the Palestinian economy but also the Israeli economy," she said.

"It could even lead to a positive environment for peace.

Salon, Huffington Post and Daily Kos hotbeds of anti-Semitism!

2009-12-25T06:28:00.002-05:00

Or so claims what Alternet’s Josh Holland calls a “ridiculous” new study by the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs. Holland writes:

Given how ubiquitous unsubstantiated charges of anti-Semitism have become in the debate over the Middle East conflict, I’m tempted to ignore the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs’ recent “report” supposedly exposing the liberal blogosphere as a teaming hotbed of raw Jew-hatred.

It’s easy to dismiss. It may dress itself as some sort of empirical research project, but the “study” is transparently devoid of any informational value, intellectually bankrupt and clearly the product of working backwards from a conclusion arrived at on ideological grounds.

But I won’t ignore it, because the strategic decision to pin one’s political opponents with charges of anti-Semitism only dilutes the power of that word. Then, like the boy who cried wolf, when real anti-Semitism rears its decidedly ugly head the word loses its all-important power to shame. I’m Jewish, and I don’t fear sharp-elbowed criticism of Israeli policy on websites, so it’s not in my interest to allow it to be conflated with true anti-Semitism, which is absolutely no joke.

Most of what passes for anti-Semitism in this new “report” is nothing new to readers of Muzzlewatch, and you should read Holland’s full piece where he does a fantastic job of dissecting the terrible methodology of this blatantly propagandistic report. But this is the part of Holland’s analysis I find most heart-breakingly sad and true:

It’s a slanderous report, and just to bring home the point of how dangerous it is to minimize real anti-Semitism by bitching about mean commenters on websites: I’m on various list-servs with progressives who write about Israel and Palestine — most of them Jewish — and when the report was issued our reaction was: ‘what do you have to do to get on this list — why weren’t we included?’

When you have progressive Jewish writers looking at charges of anti-Semitism as a badge of courage, it’s time to re-think your tactics.

And what other tactics do those geniuses over at the (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Institute for Global Jewish Affairs have to offer us?

In “How to Fight the Campus Battle against Old and New Anti-Semites:
Motifs, Strategies, and Methods”, author Manfred Gerstenfeld seems to have absolutely no idea that Israel is consistently in violation of international law. He therefore consistently conflates authentic anti-Jewish hatred with virtually all criticism of Israel, making the following suggestion for embracing campus-based tactics that require a “low investment of human and financial resources and a potential high return in terms of damage to the enemy”:

The methods to be used in the battle against anti-Semitism on campus should include counterattack, ridicule, exposure, “name and shame,” monitoring, documentation, mobilizing lawyers for arguing, as well as legal actions. Crucial battles against anti-Semitism are often fought with one hand behind the back. This facilitates free anti-Semitic lunches for the attackers.

Of course, those tactics are already in use everywhere on campuses, just ask Daniel Pipes. Are they likely to help those of us who sincerely want to fight anti-Semitism, seeing it as linked to all forms of bigotry? Guess.

Source: Jewish Voice for Peace's Muzzle Watch

“If everything is anti-Semitism, then there is no anti-Semitism at all.”

2009-12-25T06:25:00.000-05:00

The (Israeli) Alternative Information Center’s Michael Warschawski has this to say on the use, and the empyting of all meaning, of the charge of anti-Semitism:

An Outrageous and Pathetic Weapon Against BDS: Stop Instrumentalizing Anti-Semitism!

Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney .

Every time the State of Israel is confronted with substantial international criticism for its political behavior and its violations of basic international standards, it counter-attacks by using the infamous tool of accusations of anti-Semitism. One remembers the campaign on anti-Semitism launched by Ariel Sharon and his friends throughout the world, Jews and non-Jews, after the murder of Muhammad al-Dura in Gaza in September 2000, in order to create a diversion (in the very words of Roger Cukierman, then chairman of the French Jewish umbrella organization—CRIF) and to transform the victim into a victimizer and the victimizer into a victim: for more than two years, western media “exposed” the anti-Semitism of the critics of Israel instead of denouncing the massacres committed by the Israeli military in Gaza and the West Bank.Sixty five years after the end of WWII, the ashes of the victims of Nazi genocide have not yet disappeared from the sky of Poland, and the accusation of anti-Semitism remains connected to one of the bloodiest crimes of the twentieth century; as French journalist, Daniel Mermet, one of the targets of this campaign, pointed at, “no accusation can be worse, and even after you are proved not guilty of charge, the bad smell of such an accusation will be with you forever.”

The massacre in Gaza, a year ago, provoked a world-wide outrage, bigger even than in 2000-2002. The U.N. was forced to appoint an inquiry commission, and its report—the Goldstone report—is devastating for Israel. Moreover, for the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, an international campaign calling for sanctions against Israel for its innumerous violations of international law, has been successful in drawing huge public attention and initiating a great number of mobilizations and initiatives around the world.

For the Israeli government and its friends, the time has come to take from the shelf the rusty old weapon of anti-Semitism accusations, a message that was heard loud and clear by the Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney. At the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism, held in Jerusalem on 16 December, the Minister stated: “We have articulated and implemented a zero tolerance approach to anti-Semitism.” So far so good, but he continued: “We have defunded organizations, most recently like Kairos, who are taking a leadership role in the boycott (against Israel).”

Accusing Kairos, an umbrella organization that includes most of the Christian churches in Canada, of anti-Semitism is ridiculous and pathetic. Ridiculous, because the record of Kairos is crystal clear on that issue of BDS and it its position is not the one that Minister Kenney accuses it of, and pathetic, because it is a re-heated dish that will not work a second time.

Already in 2004, there were signs indicating that the instrumentalization of anti-Semitism by Israeli propaganda machine was losing its efficiency and even becoming counter-productive; no doubt that, five years later, only a few people will accept to be blackmailed by such an outrageous false-accusation.

Worse, however, is that this old/new maneuver by “friends” of Israel like Kenney, is a symptom of the banalization of anti-Semitism. If everything is anti-Semitism, then there is no anti-Semitism at all. But, unfortunately, anti-Semitism has not disappeared from our world, and manipulating it for goals that have nothing to do with it, is playing right into the hands of the real anti-Semites.

To Jason Kenney, one must say very clearly “stay out of our struggle against anti-Semitism, and do not try to manipulate it for causes totally foreign to the anti-racist values which are motivating it. It is too important and too serious to be instrumentalized by your political agenda.”

We are proud of the success of the international BDS campaign. Minister Kenney may disagree with it, but hands off of any accusation of anti-Semitism concerning our campaign. Anti-Semitism is a dangerous threat to the public health of our societies and so are accusations that are manipulated for a political agenda that has nothing to do with it.
Source: Jewish Voice For Peace's Muzzle Watch

Every parent a suspect

2009-12-20T11:40:00.002-05:00

..
..The criteria have changed slightly, but the Vetting and Barring Scheme still creates an atmosphere of suspicion and fear"Soft intelligence" is the phrase used by the head of the Independent Standards Authority (ISA), Sir Roger Singleton, in explanation of the sort of information his quango will seek to vet 9 million people who have contact with children. It's a pity this ghoul of bureaucratic suspicion doesn't use the more easily understood words of "rumour" and "unfounded and malicious gossip" because that is what soft intelligence is. It will not be proven by a court or any kind of formal hearing but will linger like a bad smell around the names of many innocent people, who of course will not be able to challenge the decisions of the ISA.

Read The rest Here

AUSTRALIAN GOV’T PROPOSES TO CENSOR THE NET

2009-12-20T11:30:00.000-05:00

IF YOU ARE NOT GETTING ANGRY YET,

YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

Asher Moses

Sydney Morning Herald
December 15, 2009
..
.. INTERNET CENSORSHIP PLAN GETS THE GREEN LIGHT..
..
..
Australia's Federal Government has announced it will proceed with controversial plans to censor the internet after Government-..commissioned trials found filtering a blacklist of banned sites was accurate and would not slow down the internet.

But critics, including the online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam, said the trial results were not surprising and the policy was still fundamentally flawed.

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, said today he would introduce legislation just before next year's elections to force ISPs to block a blacklist of "refused classification".. (RC) websites for all Australian internet users.

The blacklist... would be compiled using a public complaints mechanism, Government censors and URLs provided by international agencies...He (Conroy) said about 15 western countries had encouraged or enforced internet filtering, and there was no reason why Australians should not have similar protection...
***
..At what point does internet filtering become censorship?

Read The rest Here

Bread and Circuses, an Old Idea in a New Era

2009-12-20T10:38:00.002-05:00

By Timothy V. Gatto

The way words are used, the way people, places and things are described, will make a difference regardless of the subject matter. Today I was reading USA Today (Friday Dec 18, 2009), specifically a letter titled “Independents Unite!” about the possible creation of a third party. In the letter the writer (Alan Mohr) wrote that we should drive the extremists from both political parties from office. I agree whole-heartedly with him, but in the next paragraph he writes;

“Another solution would be to have a new national third party, one that would appeal to independents and the moderates of the two major parties. Such a bloc could control Congress and be a positive influence and do what is best for America.”

I mentioned this particular letter because of the word extremists and moderates. Just what is considered an extremist? The extreme left is constantly mentioned when referring to the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Yet, I have not really read anything that actually describes what is so extreme in their views. Does supporting a single-payer health care system brand one as extreme? Does supporting a withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan make one an extremist? Does favoring cutting the American military budget that currently accounts for over 42% of the entire world military spending count as extreme? Just what makes the left of the Democratic Party so extreme?

What about the right of the Republican Party? Do hard core beliefs about immigration make the far-right extreme? Does supporting the endless wars against “terrorism” make these people extreme? Much more has been written about the extreme right than the extreme left, probably because of the change of government from Republican to Democrat. Still, much of what is written about the extreme right and the extreme left, describes a minority of the two parties.

The other part of the letter, the part about the moderates, disturbs me. Just what is a moderate? From what I have come to understand, a moderate is someone that disagrees very little with the leadership of the two political parties. If you put Republican moderates against Democratic moderates, I doubt that you could tell them apart. Then why does the writer of this letter support a new party of moderates? Wouldn’t this leave the two major parties at the hands of extremists? Maybe a better idea would to have new parties for the so-called “extremists”? In fact wouldn’t it be better just to have more strong political parties than to have only two powerful ones?

I believe that while I agree with the writer that we should have another party or two, people in America have deluded themselves into believing that the Democrats and Republicans represent any type of real choice for the people of this country. I have written time and time again that the two parties are controlled by the corporate interests that not only control the Federal government, but also the major media outlets that provide the information most Americans rely on to make their political decisions.

The two political parties operate without regard for the wishes of the electorate. They are confident that whatever party is in control, the same basic strategies, political and military, that they plan behind closed doors will happen regardless of public opinion. If there is opposition to the policies of the government, the media will eventually bring the people along.

Except for the extremists, people such as me and others like me that don’t get their news from the MSM. We are the people that the media and government need to marginalize. This country would be a far different place if people started to look for their news from different sources than the major networks. Great Britain may be another “security state” like the U.S., but their media has remained independent of government interference to a greater degree than ours. We have free and independent media, but these sources are found mostly on the internet. Television, because of corporate sponsorship, is a very meager outlet for true, independent news. This may be why many politicians belittle the internet as a source for news.

This nation is in dire straits. The letter that Alan Mohr wrote was close to identifying the problem, but he missed the mark. When the government controls the sources of information to the people, than they control the people, but we are not at that point yet. There are many sources of information, national and international and they can be found using a computer. The problem is that Americans don’t feel that they need to have alternatives to network news. This is the crux of the problem. Many of us are making decisions about our political future and evaluating our elected officials without the facts we need to make informed decisions. We hear more about celebrities than we do about what is really happening on the planet. This is not by choice, it is by design. The Romans Empire controlled their people with bread and circuses. That example has not been lost on modern leaders. Don’t believe the myth of “American Exceptionalism”; we are just as gullible as any other civilization. We live in a “security state” of huge proportions. We are led to believe we are in a constant state of siege, hence the need to constantly mention the threat of terrorism. We can change the way things are. It’s as simple as expanding our sources of information and of re-learning to “question authority”.

Source: Dandelion Salad

ISRAEL ADMITS ORGAN THEFT FROM PALESTINIANS

2009-12-20T10:15:00.002-05:00

Murderers and Criminals, that's what they are.
All the ad nauseum claims of "Anti-Semitism" over the Organ Trade dealings that were reported in Swedish newspapers; and lets not forget those grubby Rabbis in New Jersey and their illegal organ trading either. All of the "Israeli Outrage" when in fact, it was true all along and validation of this, by an Israeli Doctor no less. And proof has been sitting in the hands of a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley since 2000.

Organ theft is a crime, just like the theft of anything else, albeit a morbid crime dealing with the most sacred thing, a humans body. However it is a crime and this is why claims of "Anti-Semitism" don't work on this issue, because the issue is a crime. however, this crime appears to be an international crime where Israel is concerned and as such should be investigated by the international community like any other widespread crime against humans perpetuated by an aggressive country. There are laws governing this and just as Israel ignores laws governing Geneva Convention, International Law, War Crimes and the like they also believe laws pertaining to organ theft don't apply to them either. Today's revelation:

link The chief Israeli pathologist and director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir, professor Yehuda Hiss, has admitted harvesting organs from the bodies of dead Palestinians without the consent of their families.

Read The Rest Here

Do You Remember What Angered Us – WMD Lies

2009-12-12T14:03:00.003-05:00

Just in case you have forgotten why we all started to fight and wake up, and wake our friends and family up. This video is what angered me. While some of these people may never be charged, don’t ever let them forget that we believe they should be. If you ever get the opportunity to protest, sign a petition, or scream in their faces, you have every right to. – Orwell’s Dreams

For the VIDEO and Artickle with other Video Links Click Here

2 US Jewish groups condemn settler attack on mosque

2009-12-12T12:56:00.002-05:00

Yesterday the Orthodox Union condemned an attack by Jewish colonists on a mosque near Nablus in the West Bank, and said it is "beyond the pale." Yesterday, the ADL also condemned the vandalism.

That Jewish extremists may have used such despicable methods to express political opposition is beyond the pale. We join with Israel’s political, military and religious leadership in condemning this disgraceful assault.

A good start. Don’t expect ADL to change its focus, though.

Source: Mondoweiss

Elie Wiesel's Indifference Promotes Genocide

2009-12-12T12:48:00.004-05:00

Hedy Epstein, Holocaust survivor, along with a Palestinian woman, Sandra Mansour, and a peace activist, called on Elie Wiesel to come with them to Gaza on Dec. 1. "I heard you," Wiesel says curtly, and turns his head. This after a lot of bromides he issued about questioning and human equality, during his appearance at St. Louis University two weeks ago. Thanks to Anna Baltzer, Witness in Palestine.

Hedy Epstein, a Holocaust survivor; J’Ann Allen, the wife of a retired military officer and Sandra Mansour, a Palestinian refugee, issued a public invitation to Elie Wiesel to go to Gaza with them.

This invitation was issued as he spoke before a standing-room crowd of around 2,800 people on Tuesday, December 1st, at St. Louis University.

Here is the complete text of Sandra's account: http://www.ctsastl.org/gaza/mansour.pdf

Source: Mondoweiss

I Shot the Sheriff?

2009-12-12T12:32:00.003-05:00

After reading my first article on State Sovereignty by Sheriff Mack, letting it sink in slowly, and then, listening to his most recent podcast on TAC, I thought it time to speak up on the importance of the county sheriff from a concerned citizen’s point of view, as well as a strategic point of view.

There is no doubt this nation is at a “cross roads.” There is no doubt the states’ legislatures are speaking up against the federal government. There is no doubt the citizens are demanding the federal government’s respect of its Constitutional limitation on powers. So, what does the county sheriff have to do with any of this?

We, the people of our various states, have elected our sheriffs to preserve and protect our Constitutional rights. Classically, we see this role as being executing by protecting us from thieves and robbers and by exercising appropriate restraint to insure they do not violate our rights by conducting improper searches and seizures against us. A good sheriff does both of the above.

A great sheriff, however, goes beyond the two aforementioned roles. A great sheriff will stand on the side of the people who elect him or her, and do that which is necessary to preserve their rights.

Now, let me explain the reason for the catchy title of this brief article. If (or when) the people have a face-off with the federal government, and many ordinary citizens gather to demand their rights, what happens when words do not matter? On which side of the line would you want your sheriff standing? With the people, or against the people? I think we can all agree we want the sheriffs’ guns pointed away from us and not at us.

Clearly, the sheriff has an important decision to make when such events occur. One of the unfortunate things that has occurred over the decades is that the federal government has, in so many cases, been viewed, and accepted, as always on the right side. In so many cases, when federal law enforcement officials enter into matters of local jurisdiction, if our local officials are not “rubber-stamping” their actions, that is because they are busy rolling out the red carpets.

Sheriff Mack appears to be making a valiant effort to correct this misguided reception of federal influence. We, the people, elect our sheriffs. We do not elect federal law enforcement officials. We provide substantial tax dollars to our sheriffs, for the hiring of deputies and for properly equipping them to deal with out-of-control situations where ordinary citizens cannot.

Our sheriffs have quite an infrastructure in place. They are not our state representatives. They are the “guns” behind our state representatives. It is good to support action through our legislatures, and by all means, this should continue. But think about how important it is to have law enforcement, with its infrastructure in place, on our side. When words stop mattering, we just might find our sheriffs to be invaluable.

I urge citizens to promote our Constitutional causes by educating and offering assistance in any way we can. Our rights are not just about words and legislators. We must convince our sheriffs (if they are not already convinced) that they need to be on the side of the people. Our sheriffs need to hear from us. And, as usual, if we find complacent or uncommitted sheriffs, we need to vote them out.

We need to work with Sheriff Mack or at least parallel to him. Good job, Sheriff Mack!

Source: 10th AMendment Center

London Police Continue War Against Photography

2009-12-12T05:56:00.000-05:00

The promise to ease up on photographers in the United Kingdom has turned out to be just another government LIE. Police in London are continuing their war against photography as evidenced by this video.

According to the photographer who was a working journalist:

It had taken less than two minutes from the first click of my camera. My subject was the Gherkin, an iconic London landmark photographed hundreds of times a day and, as it turned out, the ideal venue to test claims from a growing number of photographers claiming they cannot take a picture in public without being harassed under anti-terrorist laws. [...]

By the time they looked at my images, threatening me with arrest for obstruction if I didn’t show them, the officers had stopped a second photographer.
Read The Rest At Orwell's Dreams

Terror police to monitor nurseries for Islamic radicalisation

2009-12-12T05:52:00.005-05:00

by Alex Ralph and Sean O’Neill

Nursery-age children should be monitored for signs of brainwashing by Islamist extremists, according to a leaked police memo obtained by The Times.

In an e-mail to community groups, an officer in the West Midlands counter-terrorism unit wrote: “I do hope that you will tell me about persons, of whatever age, you think may have been radicalised or be vulnerable to radicalisation … Evidence suggests that radicalisation can take place from the age of 4.”

The police unit confirmed that counter-terrorist officers specially trained in identifying children and young people vulnerable to radicalisation had visited nursery schools.

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