The Good Guys Will Win Ha

1.27.2009

Names and Photos of Israeli War Criminals in Gaza

by Kawther Salam

I have decided to publish some names and photos of the Israeli military personnel who participated in the so-called "Operation Cast Lead", the offensive launched by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on the Gaza Strip between 27 December and 18 January 2009. The names of these criminals called my attention since the first day of their criminal attack against the Palestinian civilians in Gaza. I consider each person who took part in this IOF and each one whose name appears in this report as a war criminal who should be requested by an international court of justice, just like all other war criminals who were persecuted before…

My decision is a challenge to the State of Israel, to the Israeli attorney general Mazuz and the military headquarters, who forbade the media from publishing the names of the Israeli officers who lead "Operation Cast Lead" in Gaza, murdering 1310, and wounding over 5600, over 90% of these casualties being civilians, destroying public and the private property in many parts of towns and cities, and completely razing several areas completely to the ground.

Don't get taken alive, Israeli soldiers told

Boy, having that one prisoner really rung their bells. The Palestinians, suffering the loss of over 10,000 prisoners, including many children, are infinitely stronger people than these Israeli cowards. - Ed.

Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza this month were ordered to kill themselves rather than be captured, according to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot. Troops were also told to kill any Israeli soldier they saw being taken by Hamas. “No matter what happens, no one will be kidnapped,” the paper quotes one unnamed company commander as telling his troops before the battle began. “We will not have a Gilad Shalit 2,” he said.

Read more @ Russia Today

Rabbi told Israeli troops 'to show no mercy' in Gaza

JERUSALEM (AFP) — An Israeli human rights group on Monday called for the immediate dismissal of the chief military rabbi, claiming he gave soldiers fighting in Gaza pamphlets urging them to show no mercy.

Read more @ AFP

Livni: Israel should strike Hamas again to halt arms smuggling

Tzipi logic... - Ed.

Excerpt:

"As far as I am concerned, we could hit Hamas with another military blow. The smuggling of weapons into Gaza is the same as firing [rockets] onto Israel, and the world sees that as well," Livni added.

Read more @ Ha'aretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1058556.html

The BBC's pact with Israel

Money and ideology behind BBC’s decision not to broadcast Gaza humanitarian appeal

By a special correspondent

27 January 2009

The BBC’s refusal to broadcast a humanitarian appeal for Gaza on behalf of a group of charities is motivated by a desire to appease US advertisers for its commercial TV channel and website, and by Mark Thompson’s own political proclivities.

Read more @ Redress Information & Analysis

Jewish Lobby gives Obama his marching orders

THE POWERFUL JEWISH LOBBY in Washington is already issuing marching orders to President-elect Barack Obama. One of the most influential voices of the lobby has published an array of “working papers” designed to tell the president how he must maintain the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel, increase pressure on a variety of Arab and Muslim states that are perceived as dangers to Israel, and generally assure that Israel’s interests will always be first and foremost in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, not only in the Middle East but around the globe.

Read more @ SOS

In America, speaking the truth is a career-ending event

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

"The evidence is sitting on the table. There is no avoiding the fact that this was torture.”

These are the words of Manfred Nowak, the UN official appointed by the Commission on Human Rights to examine cases of torture. Nowak has concluded that President Obama is legally obligated to prosecute former President George W. Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

If President Obama’s bankster economic team finishes off what remains of the US economy, Obama, to deflect the public’s attention from his own failures and Americans’ growing hardships, might fulfill his responsibility to prosecute Bush and Rumsfeld. But for now the interesting question is why did the US military succumb to illegal orders?

Read more @ Atheo News

Israel's Lies

Please note the blatant intention, published in Ha'aretz for Pete's sake, to forestall the peace process indefinitely. This is a Conspiracy Fact. Israel has no intention of ever making peace with the Palestinians. For anyone who believes that is some kind of slur on Israel, it's time to get real. - Ed.

by Henry Seigman, London Review of Books, 1/29/09

Excerpt:

The greater lie is that Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was intended as a prelude to further withdrawals and a peace agreement. This is how Sharon’s senior adviser Dov Weisglass, who was also his chief negotiator with the Americans, described the withdrawal from Gaza, in an interview with Ha’aretz in August 2004:

What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements [i.e. the major settlement blocks on the West Bank] would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns . . . The significance [of the agreement with the US] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with [President Bush’s] authority and permission . . . and the ratification of both houses of Congress.

Do the Israelis and Americans think that Palestinians don’t read the Israeli papers, or that when they saw what was happening on the West Bank they couldn’t figure out for themselves what Sharon was up to?

Read more @ The Truth Seeker

A Shameful War: Israel in the Dock

A good summary of the war crimes charges: proportionality, firing into urban areas, white phosphorous, DIME bombs and other unusual weapons, targeting of civilians, humanitarian aid. - Ed.

Raymond Whitaker and Donald Macintyre

Did Israel – or its enemy, Hamas – commit war crimes during 22 days and nights of aerial assault, rocket launches and ground fighting in Gaza? In one sense the question is academic, because Israel will not recognise the conflict as an international one, and has not signed the 1977 Geneva protocol designed to apply to the victims of internal conflicts. But international lawyers say general principles can be drawn from the laws of war, which may have been violated in several ways.

The main issues are these:

We All Wank On

Hi.

Two times you picked me to be your president. And two times I presidented things the best way I know how. I did what we call in Texas “a real good job”. But now I’m retired, and I will leave it to history to decide if I am more like Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill, and then I will wear one of those powdered wigs and be on the million dollar bill. Meantime, I will host these here Golden Winger awards.

1.26.2009

Israeli professor: 'We could destroy all European capitals.'

OK? WTF? At what point does the world do an intervention on the problem child, Israel? - Ed.

Excerpt:

Will Americans ever wake up and realize that their country has been taken over by Zionists and Israeli-Firsters, or will it take mushroom clouds, courtesy of Israel, popping up over America before we come to our senses? [See next entry. - Ed.]

But by then, it will be too late.

Israeli Professor:’We Could Destroy All European Capitals’ By Nadim Ladki

(IAP News) — An Israeli professor and military historian hinted that Israel could avenge the holocaust by annihilating millions of Germans and other Europeans.

Speaking during an interview which was published in Jerusalem Friday, Professor Martin Van Creveld said Israel had the capability of hitting most European capitals with nuclear weapons.

Read more @ Goon Squad

Blackjack II

Via Cryptogon, this slideshow appeared on Telegraph UK (Part 1) a week or so ago. No author given. What is the purpose here? To frighten people? To warn people? Who puts this stuff out there and why? - Ed.

View slideshow.

Israel: Determined to destroy the world

While the world waits patiently. - Ed.

Throughout the world, Israel’s invasion of Gaza was inappropriate and “over the top,” except in America and Israel. The world has typically been at odds with America over Israel. Only one US President has ever “stood up” to Israel, and that was President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he threatened dire consequences to Israel if it did not withdraw from Gaza in 1956.

Since Eisenhower, all subsequent administrations have been sympathetic and supportive with all that Israel does at the very least. The apex of full approval of Israel was on June 8, 1967 when Israel bombed the USS Liberty killing 34 sailors, There is scant evidence that the Obama administration will be any different in general. This is especially true when the long running disputes between Iran and Israel are factored in.

Charges filed against 15 Israeli officials

Including the 'moderate' Tzipi Livni!! - Ed.

Palestinian and international efforts continue to institute legal proceedings for the prosecution of Israeli officials in the commission of war crimes.

International attorneys have filed war crime charges against 15 Israeli political and military officials including Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak.
Palestinian and international efforts continue to institute legal proceedings for the prosecution of Israeli officials in the commission of war crimes.
Although Israeli forces are involved in thousands of cases, local experts such as the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights believe that the recent major attacks on the Gaza Strip will be successfully prosecuted.

Read more @ Iran Daily

International Law and Israel's War on Gaza

by Frances A. Boyle
Global Research, January 24, 2009

Excerpt:

As a condition for its admission to the United Nations Organization, Israel formally agreed to accept General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) (1947) (partition/Jerusalem trusteeship) and General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) (1948) (Palestinian right of return), inter alia. Nevertheless, the government of Israel has expressly repudiated both Resolution 181 (II) and Resolution 194 (III). Therefore, Israel has violated its conditions for admission to U.N. membership and thus must be suspended on a de facto basis from any participation throughout the entire United Nations System.

Second, any further negotiations with Israel must be conducted on the basis of Resolution 181 (II) and its borders; Resolution 194 (III); subsequent General Assembly resolutions and Security Council resolutions; the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949; the 1907 Hague Regulations; and other relevant principles of public international law.

Third, we must abandon the fiction and the fraud that the United States government is an "honest broker." The United States government has never been an honest broker from well before the very outset of these negotiations in 1991. Rather, the United States has invariably sided with Israel against the Palestinians. We need to establish some type of international framework to sponsor these negotiations where the Palestinian negotiators will not be subjected to the continual bullying, threats, harassment, intimidation and outright lies perpetrated by the United States government.

Fourth, we must move to have the U.N. General Assembly impose economic, diplomatic, and travel sanctions upon Israel pursuant to the terms of the Uniting for Peace Resolution (1950), whose Emergency Special Session on Palestine is now in recess.

Fifth, the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine must sue Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for inflicting acts of genocide against the Palestinian People in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention!

Sixth, An International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) can be established by the UN General Assembly as a "subsidiary organ" under article 22 of the UN Charter. Article 22 of the UN Charter states the UN General Assembly may establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions. The purpose of the ICTI would be to investigate and Prosecute suspected Israeli war criminals for offences against the Palestinian people.

Israeli commanders in crosshairs for war crimes

Israel has taken measures to protect the identity of Gaza war commanders as the case for war crimes in the populated area gains momentum.

Israeli authorities have issued an order banning the publication of the full name and photographs of the field commanders of the Gaza war, the Haaretz reported.

Read more @ Press TV

60 Minutes fluffs Livni, puts settlers in the crosshairs

What is the purpose here? Tzipi Livni is a moderate? Funny. - Ed.

Time Running Out for a Two-State Solution

(CBS) Getting a peace deal in the Middle East is such a priority to President Obama that his first foreign calls on his first day in office were to Arab and Israeli leaders. And on day two, the president made former Senator George Mitchell his special envoy for Middle East peace. Mr. Obama wants to shore up the ceasefire in Gaza, but a lasting peace really depends on the West Bank where Palestinians had hoped to create their state. The problem is, even before Israel invaded Gaza, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians had concluded that peace between them was no longer possible, that history had passed it by. For peace to have a chance, Israel would have to withdraw from the West Bank, which would then become the Palestinian state.

Read more @ CBS News

Netanyahu: Regarding Iran, The Ends Justifies the Means

Excerpt:

"The arming of Iran with nuclear weapons may portend an irreversible process, because these regimes assume a kind of immortality," he says, arguing that the threat of a nuclear Iran poses a much graver danger to the world than the current economic crisis. "[This] will pose an existential threat to Israel directly, but also could give a nuclear umbrella to these terrorist bases."

How to stop that from happening? Mr. Netanyahu mentions that he has met with Barack Obama both in Israel and Washington, and that the question of Iran "loomed large in both conversations." I ask: Did Mr. Obama seem to him appropriately sober-minded about the subject? "Very much so, very much so," Mr. Netanyahu stresses. "He [Mr. Obama] spoke of his plans to engage Iran in order to impress upon them that they have to stop the nuclear program. What I said to him was, what counts is not the method but the goal."

Obama may visit Russia in April

U.S. President Barack Obama may visit Russia as early as April, a source with close ties to the State Department told the newspaper. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might come to Moscow in March, to announce the new administration's decision to cut allocations on the ABM program.
The source said the new U.S. president would go to London on April 2 for a summit of G20 industrial countries on ways to deal with the current financial crisis, where he will meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for the first time.

Read more @ RIA Novosti

Israel admits using WP in Gaza

They lie, they lie, they lie, and then they are forced to admit the truth. We see this pattern over and over again. Bottom line: THEY LIE. - Ed.

After weeks of denying that it used white phosphorus in the heavily populated Gaza Strip, Israel finally admitted yesterday that the weapon was deployed in its offensive.

The army’s use of white phosphorus – which makes a distinctive shellburst of dozens of smoke trails – was reported first by The Times on January 5, when it was strenuously denied by the army. Now, in the face of mounting evidence and international outcry, Israel has been forced to backtrack on that initial denial. “Yes, phosphorus was used but not in any illegal manner,” Yigal Palmor, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told The Times. “Some practices could be illegal but we are going into that. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) is holding an investigation concerning one specific incident.”

Overcome with grief, UNWRA schoolteacher absent

Gaza – Ma’an – When the schools opened in the Gaza Strip Saturday, Mr Al-Batran was not in his classroom. He has not been home in days, and relatives say he has not seen his one-year-old son since the massacre.

Forty-year-old Issa Al-Batran may never go back home. His surviving mother and son have begged him to come back with them, but he prefers to wander the streets with his memories of Gaza before the onslaught.

He was a teacher at the UN school in the Al-Bureij refugee camp; he was a father of six, a husband and a homeowner.

His wife Manal, three daughters and two sons were killed in the room next to Issa. The family was living in the salon, but he had excused himself to pray in the silence of the adjacent room for a few moments. His infant son, Abd Al-Hadi, crawled after him, which is the only reason he is still alive.

Read more @ Ma'an News Agency

Jews struggle to come to grips with Madoff

Filling many tissues... - Ed.

By Martha Graybow

NEW YORK (Reuters) - For American Jews, the Bernard Madoff scandal has not just caused deep financial pain. It also has been deeply personal.

The accused swindler managed money for numerous Jewish charities and wealthy Jews who are reeling from their monetary losses as well as a sense of betrayal that a fellow Jew could have harmed so many people.

Dick whines that W should have pardoned Scooter

Well, as W once said to somebody else, "Who cares what you think?" - Ed.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — George Bush should have pardoned I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney said after stepping down as vice president this week.

"He was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice, and I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon. Obviously, I disagree with President Bush's decision," Cheney told Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard, a leading conservative Washington magazine.

1.25.2009

More of this, please!!!

The BBC objections are absolutely lame.

Latest report from Christopher Story, 1/25/09

Read the report here.

1.24.2009

Gaza in Ruins

1.23.2009

Indira Singh interview, 7/20/2005

This is not recent, but I post it because this woman really illustrates the kind of courage and tenacity that it takes to be a whistleblower in this country today. She is obviously a person of great integrity and intelligence, with presence of mind and tremendous personal courage in the face of death threats from very powerful people. This is how a patriot behaves. I don't know what has become of her, but all Americans should be very grateful that people like Indira Singh will put their lives on the line -- without the comfort of belonging to some powerful organization or being armed to the teeth to protect themselves, while those with those very advantages often shrink into hidey holes -- but merely armed with the nerve to seek the truth no matter where it leads. - Ed.

July 20th 2005
Inteview with Indira Singh
"Ground Zero 911, Blueprint For Terror, Part Two"

Indira Singh worked on Wall Street from 1975 Until June 28th, 2002 when she was summarily terminated due to her investigation into computer software company, Ptech. In Part One, She described her work as an emergency medical technician at ground zero, and began to describe her professional work for JPMorgan Chase and her first client meeting with software engineer, Ptech.

Bonnie Falkner: So, Indira, how did your meeting with Ptech, how did that go?

Indira Singh: Well, they came a little late, immediately there were some issues with regard to how the day would proceed, for instance they showed up without the agreed upon software in hand. The most important thing about it is that their chief scientist Dr. Hussein Ibraham came. He’s an Egyptian-American and he had a very good reputation in the field, very bright, someone you would like working with, very knowledgeable. But, they had showed up without the software.

Mystery Prison Buses in the Desert

On a recent visit to Tucson, Arizona, where I was invited to give a presentation on monetary reform, I was disturbed by a story of strange goings on in the desert. A little over a year ago, it seems, a new industrial facility sprang up on the edge of town. It was in a remote industrial zone and appeared to be a bus depot. The new enterprise was surrounded by an imposing security fence and bore no outward signs identifying its services. However, it soon became apparent that the compound was in the business of outfitting a fleet of prison buses. Thirty or so secondhand city buses were being reconfigured with prison bars in the windows and a coat of fresh paint bearing the “Wackenhut G4S” logo on the side.

The new Wackenhut operation is shrouded in mystery. It has been running its fleet of empty prison buses night and day, apparently logging miles on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contract. Multiple buses can be seen driving all over town and even on remote desert back roads. Oddly, except for the driver and one escort guard seated in front, these buses are always empty.

Information re: Russel Tice whistleblower allegations of NSA ILLEGAL SPYING ON AMERICANS

from Cryptogon Archives, May 2008:

I’m going to provide a one paragraph summary, just to make sure that the implications of this are clear to everyone:

The U.S. Government has, almost certainly, established a database and tracking system for something like eight million Americans who have been designated as threats to national security. The system is called MAIN CORE and it is being run under the auspices of highly classified Continuity of Government (COG) operations. MAIN CORE uses a variety of intelligence sources as inputs, including your email, web activity, telephone and private financial information. In the event of a major national security crisis, it is alleged that Americans listed in the MAIN CORE database, “Could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.”

OOPSIE! Article Removed

Yesterday the Grand Forks Herald reported that Minot AFB was one of six finalists to be head of the finalists for Global Strike Command, whatever that is, but it doesn't sound good. Barksdale was also on the list, I believe. These COINCIDENTALLY being the places of the "missing nukes" problem. Also, the AF being the branch of the military most infested with religious extremists who heart Israel and hate Muslims. So all in all, not the best news.

Well, apparently, you shouldn't know these things, because today it's gone. Whoosh! Right down the hopper. But I'm sure it's nothing to worry about!!! HA HA HA!!! - Ed.

Empty hole here.

Gaza war widens lead of Israel's conservative Likud Party

"And you wise men don't know how it fee-e-eee-i-ee-ee-ee-eeels, to be thick, as a brick." - Jethro Tull

Polls show Benjamin Netanyahu likely to be next prime minister as Israelis vote on Feb. 10.

Bush tentacles? You mean like an Octopus??

This is perilously close to talking about the actual intelligence war allegedly going on in real time, and led on the dark side by B41, said to be the "head of the Octopus," all of which is of course pooh-poohed as crazy conspiracy shit by people who eat nothing but candy for news. Whereas Alternet being, in my opinion, a site that people accustomed to corporate news would think of as quite meaty; but to me it is still more like a powdered donut. So this piece was a pleasant surprise. Also noted that B41 was caught sneering maliciously at Obama during inauguration ceremonies, which is good news. The Secret Service have their work cut out for them. - Ed.

by Russ Baker

As George W. Bush leaves office and Barack Obama takes over, we are in danger of missing the opportunity for change our new president has promised -- unless we come to grips with what the great historian and Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin called our "hidden history," not just of the past eight years but of the past half-century and more.

Read more @ Alternet

Caroline Kennedy ends senate bid

Caroline Kennedy last night withdrew from consideration to replace Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - just two months after she rocked the New York political landscape by throwing her hat in the ring, The Post has learned.

Read more @ NY Post

Alternative Explanation: Death Threats. Which of course is just a silly conspiracy theory, because nobody in the Kennedy family has ever been assassinated.....oh wait.....

Alarm spread over use of lethal new weapons

By Erin Cunningham

January 22, 2009 -- GAZA CITY, Jan 22 (IPS) - Eighteen-year-old Mona Al-Ashkar says she did not immediately know the first explosion at the United Nations (UN) school in Beit Lahiya had blown her left leg off. There was smoke, then chaos, then the pain and disbelief set in once she realised it was gone - completely severed by the weapon that hit her.

Mona is one of the many patients among the 5,500 injured that have international and Palestinian doctors baffled by the type of weaponry used in the Israeli operation. High-profile human rights organisations like Amnesty International are accusing Israel of war crimes.

Mona's doctors at Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital found no shrapnel in her leg, and it looked as though it had been "sliced right off with a knife."

Read more @ Information Clearing House

The Imminent Undoing of Israel

Lots of history packed tightly. - Ed.

by Susan Safi and Iman Safi

History invariably repeats itself. But in the techno age even history is running at top speed. Socio-economic and cultural changes that generally took centuries to develop and take shape in the past are materializing within decades if not years.

Defiant to the end. Gaza's tunnels back in business as IOF leaves

Excerpt:

Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, was heading to Brussels yesterday after getting the green light from legal advisers to the Israeli government who had been concerned she would face war crimes allegations. She was hoping to clinch a deal committing the European Union to contribute forces, ships and technology to anti-smuggling operations. But EU officials said their efforts would focus on providing humanitarian relief and maintaining the ceasefire. Ehud Barak, moved swiftly from war-making to electioneering yesterday, saying the fighting had given voters – who go to the polls to choose a new parliament on 10 February – a glimpse of the type of leadership they need. “We have similar tests awaiting us: Iran, Syria, Hezbollah. It isn’t over yet. These subjects have not been cleared from the table,” he said.

Read more @ ThereAreNoSunglasses

Israel, scared of Iran, chastized by Hezbollah, that leaves the Palestinians

Scathing in its perception of Israel. - Ed.

The London Review of Books has one of its multi-commentator sections on Gaza. The one that stood out to me was from the Israeli playwright, Yitzhak Laor:

We’ve been here before. It’s a ritual. Every two or three years, our military mounts another bloody expedition. The enemy is always smaller, weaker; our military is always larger, technologically more sophisticated, prepared for full-scale war against a full-scale army. But Iran is too scary, and even the relatively small Hizbullah gave us a hard time. That leaves the Palestinians.

Someone take away Thomas Friedman's Computer Before He Types Another Sentence

Have some chocolate for breakfast. This is funny. - Ed.

by Matt Taibbi

When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing.

Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America's ability to fall for absolutely anything -- just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts -- along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-'stached resident of a positively obscene 11,400-square-foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism.

Israelis are living high on US expense account

This is interesting. A thoughtful, reality-based editorial analysis gets printed in The Age, and the next thing you know, the paper delivers a grovelling apology for the "hurt" and "distress" it caused to the Jewish population. Never happen again....anti-semitic...dealt with internally...blah blah blah. Nice. - Ed.

There’s a memorable scene in the Stephen Spielberg film ‘Munich’. After the 1972 Munich Olympic Games killings of Israeli athletes, prime minister Golda Meir tells confidants she wants to show the plotters that killing Jews "is expensive". She then organises for the assassination of each of the plotters.

Today, it is Israel itself that has become expensive. Most directly, it is very expensive to the US, which subsidises and arms it.

Read more @ The Truth Seeker

Israel fails again to provoke Hezbollah and war between the US and Iran

It is becoming apparent that the frenzied Israeli attack on the people of the Gaza Strip was designed specifically to inflame Hezbollah and provoke them into a war with Israel; a war that would quickly escalate to involve Iran and the US for the purpose of ultimately bringing about regime change in Iran. Furthermore, this was all supposed to happen before Bush left office when it was hoped that war with Iran would be unavoidable by the time Obama took office.

Read more @ Damian Lataan's site

Israel wanted a humanitarian crisis

The scale of Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip, and the almost daily reports of war crimes over the last three weeks, has drawn criticism from even longstanding friends and sympathisers. Despite the Israeli government's long-planned and comprehensive PR campaign, hundreds of dead children is a hard sell. As a former Israeli government press adviser put it, in a wonderful bit of unintentional irony, "When you have a Palestinian kid facing an Israeli tank, how do you explain that the tank is actually David and the kid is Goliath?"

Read more @ The Guardian UK

What kind of 'soldiers' shoot children with white flags

Israel accused of executing parents in front of children in Gaza

And of course, they also execute the children in front of the parents. - Ed.

One nine-year-old boy said his father had been shot dead in front of him despite surrendering to Israeli soldiers with his hands in the air.

Another youngster described witnessing the deaths of his mother, three brothers and uncle after the house they were in was shelled.

He said his mother and one of his siblings had been killed instantly, while the others bled to death over a period of days.

1.22.2009

Romans 13 and Christ's "Clergy Response Teams"

by Brother Gregory Williams
January 21, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

Pastors across the country have been called on by the Department of Homeland Security to join “Clergy Response Teams” in order to placate and control the people of America in the event of local or national emergencies. Jeff Ferrell, a reporter for KSLA in Shreveport, claimed that “For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13.” This idea was affirmed in the report by Dr. Durell Turberville who was quoted as saying, "because the government is established by the Lord, you know. And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's stated in the scripture."

Tice: NSA spied on e v e r y b o d y, targeted journalists

Also wondering if Sy Hersh got his phone calls from all the people who said they would call him on January 21st to blow whistles, and let's hope he's typing away right now. - Ed.

Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA's warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists.

Read more @ Raw Story

Limbaugh: Afraid of Bush documents leading to war crimes trials. Which would be wrong, see?

LIMBAUGH: What I’m afraid of is that what Obama did with this executive order is actually make it easier for the media to go get Bush documents. Because you know Pelosi and some of the guys over in congress are talking about war crimes trials and charges and so forth. […][AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!]

What I’m afraid of is what Obama’s done here is made the gathering of the information for this kind of stuff– This is not American. This is not America. This is not what America does. We don’t– This is Banana Republic kind of stuff.
Read more @ Think Progress

Solidarity with Gaza: Just the Beginning

The latest Israeli assault on the tiny Strip represents the failure of the siege to weaken Hamas and the Gazan people's resolve. It should come as a wake-up call to the world that placing 1.5 million people in a cage and denying them basic necessities, including food, medical supplies and fuel only takes that fuel from their hands and adds it to the fire, notes Hammam Farah.

Read more @ Middle East Online

Israel: No end to Gaza crisis with Schalit in chains

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni says the crisis in Gaza will not be resolved unless captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit is released.

Livni made the remarks on Thursday after a three-hour meeting with her European counterparts in Brussels, Belgium, the Jerusalem Post reported.

"As long as Gilad Schalit remains in the hands of Hamas, it will be impossible to solve the crisis in the Gaza Strip", she said.

Read more @ Press TV

Zionism is an Incurable Disease of the Mind

By Zaid Nabulsi

I lost my gloves one day in a coffee shop in Geneva, and I tell you, it’s difficult to ride without them when it’s really cold. So as I was paying for a new pair with a credit card, the salesman, whom I knew was from Israel, tried to start some small talk by asking me what my family name means. I told him that it relates to the city of Nablus where my family is originally from.

Suddenly, the most bewildered look was plastered on his face. “Where is Nablus?” he asked, “I’ve never heard of it.” Then, after realizing that I knew he was bullshitting me, he pretended to remember, “Ah, Shkheim you mean?”With my insistence not to learn these ugly names that the deranged Zionists have dug up from oblivion to erase our identity, that name certainly didn’t ring a bell. But now it was my turn. Although I knew where he was from, I asked “And you’re… from?” As he smiled while reminding me, I replicated the same look on his face moments ago. “Israel? Where is that?” Then after a brief pause, “Ah, the land of Canaan you mean. Palestine”.

Read more @ Atheo News

Outcry over weapons used in Gaza

Jan 19, 2009

Medics working in the Gaza Strip have condemned Israel's use of suspected "new weapons" that inflict horrific injuries they say most surgeons will not have seen before.

Dr Jan Brommundt, a German doctor working for Medecins du Monde in the south Gazan city of Khan Younis, described the injuries he had seen as "absolutely gruesome".

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Brommundt said surgeons had reported many cases where casualties had lost both legs rather than one, prompting suspicions that the Israelis were using some form of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (Dime).

Read more @ Uruknet

Can Zionists be protected non-combatants?

Far too much time is being wasted in arguments over the rocket attacks on Sderot and other Israeli cities.

The operative language in in the international treaties and conventions with a few rare exceptions uses the phrase protected noncombatants because civilians providing support to a military organization are in most cases legitimate targets. (Usually medical support is exempted, but I can think of cases where it would not be.)

Nuremberg Law already deals with the case of removal of a native population and replacement with civilian colonists (as happened in Palestine starting in 1947 and continues to this day).

Read more @ EAAZI

Wanted: Ehud Barak

For War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

In June 2007, the suspect imposed a siege on 1.5 million residents of Gaza. The siege, which is ongoing in 2009, is collective punishment according to International Law. The year and a half long siege caused severe food and fuel shortages, intermittent drinking water and electricity supply, disruption to sewage treatment plants and shortages of medicine and essential medical equipment, affecting the lives of 1.5 million people - a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Rome Statute.

Read more @ Wanted.org

Great idea!!! Check out all the other criminals wanted posters at the bottom. We need a site like this for our American criminals, too.

Un special rapporteur on torture call on US to prosecute Bush and Rumsfeld

Don't forget Dick!! - Ed.

In remarks that aired on German television last night, Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, urged the U.S. to pursue former President George W. Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld on charges that they authorized torture and other harsh interrogation techniques:

“Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation” to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld. […] He noted Washington had ratified the UN convention on torture which required “all means, particularly penal law” to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it.

“We have all these documents that are now publicly available that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld,” against detainees at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Nowak said.

Hill of Shame where Gaza bombing is spectator sport

Excuses, excuses. Hamas, Hamas. What would the Israelis do without Hamas? How would they justify all this indiscriminate killing? - Ed.

Excerpt:

Rafi Twitto was watching the offensive yesterday with his wife, Iris. From his belt hung a photograph of his son, Osher, nine, who had a leg blown off by a Qassam rocket 11 months ago. “I'm glad Hamas is being destroyed but sad that women and children are suffering,” he said. “But when they grow up they'll also probably be terrorists. They are taught very early to hate Israelis and how to hold weapons.” Iris agreed. “If I could have, I'd have gone in with our soldiers.”

David Kunin, 26, an ultra-Orthodox Jew with long black beard and coat, had come to the hill to take pictures. He said that a rocket shattered the windows of his home in Ashdod last week. “Of course I'm happy,” he replied when asked how he felt as he watched the bombardment.

“It would be better if innocent civilians weren't hurt, but the ones who co-operate with Hamas - that's their problem.”

After IOF kills her family, wounded girl spends 2 days in abandoned home

Saturday January 18, 2009

Amira, is a Palestinian child who fled her home after the army shelled it and took shelter in a nearby home bleeding and scared for two days without food and without anyone who can take care of her wounds.

She was hiding in this empty home, as its owners had to leave it due to the Israeli shelling. She wrapped herself with some sheets and laid on a bed in the ground floor while crying and listening to the sounds of bombs, tanks and fighter-jets.

When she was found two days later, she was nearly dead after losing so much blood. The 15-year old Amira saw her father and two brothers getting killed by the shell that struck their home before she ran out seeking shelter.

Read more @ Uruknet

Gaza: "I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls."

Grieving Palestinian father says children were killed after family obeyed order from troops to leave Gaza home

A Palestinian father has claimed that he saw two of his young daughters shot dead and another critically injured by an Israeli soldier who emerged from a stationary tank and opened fire as the family obeyed an order from the Israeli forces to leave their home. Khaled Abed Rabbo said Amal, aged two and Suad, seven, were killed by fire from the soldier's semi-automatic rifle. His third daughter, Samer, four, has been evacuated to intensive care in a Belgian hospital after suffering critical spinal injuries which he said were inflicted in the attack early in Israel's ground offensive.

Read more @ The Independent UK

Did the US Navy get revenge for the USS Liberty attack?

Revelations from U.S. intelligence sources claim cover-up of Liberty attack masks another naval incident cover-up

January 19-20, 2009

SOURCE: WayneMadsenReport.com

SPECIAL REPORT. Did the U.S. Navy have its revenge for the Israeli attack on the Liberty?

Two incidents in the eastern Mediterranean only a little over six months apart involving Israeli and U.S. military forces may lie at the heart of two major cover-ups. According to U.S. intelligence sources, the willful Israeli attack on the National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence collection ship, the USS Liberty, on June 8, 1967, during the Israeli-Arab “Six Day War,” was followed by the U.S. Navy sinking tje Israeli submarine, the INS Dakar, in January 1968.

Israel's Ministry of "Truth" gets eight month head start

Posted at Friday, January 02, 2009 - 03:22 AM, by: Jim Scott
During WWII, Britain's Ministry of Information so effectively spread pro-Soviet propaganda that throughout Britain Stalin came to be seen as a benevolent ally. The MoI was the model for George Orwell's Ministry of Truth in the novel Nineteen Eight-Four.

Special spin body gets media on message, says Israel
Rachel Shabi in Tel Aviv Guardian UK January 2, 2009

Israel believes its has won broad international support in the media for its actions in Gaza thanks to its PR strategy, which through a new body has for months been concerned with formulating plans and role-playing to ensure that government officials deliver a clear, unified message to the world's press. The body, known as the National Information Directorate, was set up eight months ago following recommendations from an Israeli inquiry into the 2006 Lebanon war. Its role is to deal with hasbara - meaning, in Hebrew, "explanation", and referring variously to information, spin, and propaganda. The directorate's chief, Yarden Vatikai, said: "The hasbara apparatus needed a body that would co-ordinate its agencies, coordinate the messages and become a platform for co-operation between all the agencies that deal with communication relations and public diplomacy."

The directorate acts across ministries and decides key messages on a daily basis. Of its core messages for the media, there has been the advice that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements with Israel; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Hamas is a terror organisation targeting Israeli civilians. "In general, we think we are succeeding in getting the message across," said Vatikai. Israeli officials have also enjoyed a clear edge with coverage. An Israeli foreign ministry assessment of eight hours of coverage across international broadcast media reported that Israeli representatives got 58 minutes of airtime while the Palestinians got only 19 minutes. ...

Read more @ Salt Spring News
h/t Greg Bacon

Israeli Psyops: Spread war to Iran, hit airwaves during inauguration

A propaganda battle designed to promote the plan to spread war throughout the greater Middle East is now under way and will soon hit the airwaves in the United States. The plan will be presented as a television advertising campaign to promote Israel as the victim of terrorism backed by the government of Iran. The advertising campaign is due to air on television during the inauguration period of President-elect Barack Obama.

The organization responsible for this soon to be aired propaganda is "The Israel Project". "The Israel Project" touts themselves as an international non-profit organization that "provides journalists and leaders accurate information about the Middle East". For some reason they make a point of declaring to the public that they are "not related to any government or government agency".

Read more @ SOTT

Change.org asks if we should reevaluate aid to Israel, 717 people respond

Re-evaluate aid to Israel

Reevaluate whether the level of and the basis for the aid we provide Israel is appropriate given our tough economic circumstance. Presently I fail to see the benefits to our country that would justify the extraordinarily high per-capita level of aid.

Read what your fellow citizens say @ Change.org

Mohammed Jawad and Obama's efforts to suspend military commissions

by Glenn Greenwald

This is a very good and important step -- not only because of its substance, but also because it was something Obama did almost immediately, even before his first full day in office:

In one of its first actions, the Obama administration instructed military prosecutors late Tuesday to seek a 120-day suspension of legal proceedings involving detainees at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- a clear break with the approach of the outgoing Bush administration. .

. .

Obama halts new or pending bush legislation

Acting only hours after his inauguration, President Barack Obama has ordered a freeze on new or proposed regulations at all government agencies and departments. In a memo issued by new White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the president tells agency and department heads that :

"...no proposed or final regulation should be sent to the Office of Federal Register for publication unless and until it has been reviewed and approved by a department or agency head appointed or designated by the President after noon on January 20, 2009, or in the case of the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense."

Read more @ Federal Eye

Crowd sings "sha na na na" to bush, reporters hear "la la la la"

Watch video. (1 minute)

1.21.2009

Outstanding Video from Kenny's Sideshow

A letter to Barack Obama from a Palestinian citizen

By Nizar Mansour

Translated By Namir Shabibi

19 January 2009

Edited by Louis Standish

UK - Alquds Alarabi - Original Article (Arabic)

I followed your electoral campaign and the debates between you and the other candidates for the presidency with a passion, and I was convinced that you would win.

An American friend of mine asked me whether it would be better if you or John McCain won. My response was that if she was asking who is better for the United States, then I believe that your win would, to which she responded “Why?” I responded with the following reasons:

Read more @ Watching America

Roberts botched the Oath of Office

Illuminati creep. Oh ooopsie. Oh, not important. Oh ha ha ha. - Ed.

Barack Obama handled the situation with graceful aplomb. From my live-blogging:

The Chief Justice in fact screwed up the oath. The Constitution requires:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Read more @ Pimpin Turtle

Japanization Rules: Economic Collapse Averted

Umm....r u sure? - Ed.

by Al Martin

(1-19-09) Consensus builds in Washington that Japanization of the world's economy is the only way to prevent global economic collapse and preserve the new "modified" capitalism.

For the first time, officials of the incoming Obama-Biden Regime, as well as senior members of Congress in both parties are using the word Japanization in financial media.

Now you see people in Washington using the term, including former under-secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, who will be the new chairman of the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors. Summers is widely respected in both parties, and he's the new go-to guy in Washington for the new Obama-Biden economic policy.

Why is there a new consensus now? Because it's either that - or we allow global economic collapse to occur.

Read more @ Conspiracy Planet

Is COG still in effect? One question among many...

Now that we have a new administration, it is the right time to find out whether the United States is still in a national state of emergency as declared on 9/11 and whether the unconstitutional continuity of government plans are still in effect.

Someone please submit freedom of information act requests to find out.

George Washington's Blog

Kissinger's NWO Plan for Obama

Henry Kissinger has revealed what Obama is going to try to do to bring about bring about a New World Order.

Kissinger writes (Henry Kissinger: The world must forge a new order or retreat to chaos - 20 January 2009):

1. "The alternative to a new international order is chaos."

In other words, join the New World Order or you will suffer from false flag operations and the undermining of your economies.

2. "The extraordinary impact of the President-elect on the imagination of humanity is an important element in shaping a new world order."

In other words: we Zionists and fascists have chosen Obama as our puppet.

Read more @ aangirfan

Michael Hoffman's "Judaism discovered from its own texts"

by Henry Makow, PhD

"Judaism Discovered," Michael Hoffman's monumental new work on Judaism is subtitled, "A Study of the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and Deceit."

But, what does Hoffman really think of Judaism?

We are in a crisis. It's time we listened to plainspoken pariahs like Michael Hoffman. Anti-Semitism is on the rise and Hoffman's book explains why this is not irrational "hate." It's more important for Jews than anyone to learn that they are associated with a "religion" they don't really understand.

Read more @ The Truth Seeker

Growing outrage at the killing in Gaza

LOOK at all the people who signed this!! - Ed.

The massacres in Gaza are the latest phase of a war that Israel has been waging against the people of Palestine for more than 60 years. The goal of this war has never changed: to use overwhelming military power to eradicate the Palestinians as a political force, one capable of resisting Israel's ongoing appropriation of their land and resources. Israel's war against the Palestinians has turned Gaza and the West Bank into a pair of gigantic political prisons. There is nothing symmetrical about this war in terms of principles, tactics or consequences. Israel is responsible for launching and intensifying it, and for ending the most recent lull in hostilities.

Israel must lose. It is not enough to call for another ceasefire, or more humanitarian assistance. It is not enough to urge the renewal of dialogue and to acknowledge the concerns and suffering of both sides. If we believe in the principle of democratic self-determination, if we affirm the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are obliged to take sides... against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank.

We must do what we can to stop Israel from winning its war. Israel must accept that its security depends on justice and peaceful coexistence with its neighbours, and not upon the criminal use of force.

We believe Israel should immediately and unconditionally end its assault on Gaza, end the occupation of the West Bank, and abandon all claims to possess or control territory beyond its 1967 borders. We call on the British government and the British people to take all feasible steps to oblige Israel to comply with these demands, starting with a programme of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Read more @ Guaradian UK

Jews must face "dark side" of Judaism

by Henry Makow Ph.D.

Stephen Bloom has a love of fairness and justice typical of many liberal American Jews. A journalism professor, he saw the opening of a Kosher meat packer by Hasidic Jews in Postville Iowa in 1987 as an opportunity to study the Jewish-gentile dynamic in microcosm. He discovered more about Judaism and the causes of anti-Semitism than perhaps he wanted to know.

His conclusion from "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America" published in 2000:

"Initially I had gone to Postville to learn from the Hasidim [orthodox Jews], to share with them a sense of identity and belonging. Instead, what the Postville Hasidim ultimately offered me was a glimpse of the dark side of my own faith, a look at Jewish extremists whose behavior not only made the Postville locals wince, but made me wince, too.

I didn't want to partake in Hasidim's vision that called on Jews to unite against the goyim and assimilation. The world, even in Iowa, was too bountiful to base my likes and dislikes solely on religion. The word Hasid ...literally means 'the pious one,' but the Postville Hasidim..were anything but pious. You couldn't become casual friends with them...They required total submission to their schema of right and wrong, Jew vs. Christian -- or you were the enemy." (291)

In other words, if you're a Jew but don't buy their insanity, then you're no better than the goyim.

Read more @ SaveTheMales

Tents in desert reveal Israeli plan to transfer Gazans to Egypt

Tuesday January 20, 2009

After flattening many parts of Gaza with aerial bombardment and ground artillery, Israel may be planning to transfer the now homeless refugees to Egypt, where hundreds of tents have been set up near Rafah. One local blogger said that a soldier told him there are many more tents being prepared, as well.

Read more @ Uruknet

Who calls the shots in America?

“Peace for all children,” said Obama. But does he include Palestinian children? Will he continue to stand with Israel, the country that has laid waste a land and murdered or maimed hundreds?

Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were pretty close, politically and personally. They led the fight against fascism in the early 1940s, and although they had their disagreements they got on well. They were both blunt in their views, but there was no doubt who was the more powerful: Roosevelt called the shots, although Churchill had a lot of influence on him. But it would have been unthinkable for Churchill to behave in the way that the present (though not for long) prime minister of Israel did on January 8 with the (now mercifully departed) president of the United States.

Read more @ Pakistan Daily Times

Documenting War Crimes, Next Step: The Hague

A senior Hamas member has announced that the movement has documented irrefutable proof of Israeli war crimes inside the Gaza Strip.

"We will use that [proof] to build a case against the Israeli political and military leaders as a criminal crime," Osama Hamdan, Hamas' chief representative and senior leader in Lebanon told Press TV on Tuesday.

Speaking from Beirut, Hamdan said a meeting of European and Arab lawyers will take place next week in which the means of convicting Israel for war crimes at The Hague will be discussed.

Read more @ Uprooted Palestinians

Zaid Hamid (English) on Mumbai Operations and Mossad Connection

The entire Indian propaganda and lies have been exposed in this pdf document. Read and know for yourself things you never knew before. The entire Mumbai drama, its background, its motives and the players involved, with proof from their own sources, media and speeches. Circulate this far and wide and get it published wherever you can. This must be flooded on the web and passed to all contacts. Let the world see their lies exposed. May Allah (sw) Protect Pakistan.

Read more, see videos @ ThereAreNoSunglasses

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land

1.20.2009

Israel fears wave of war crimes lawsuits over Gaza offensive

Israel is preparing for a wave of lawsuits by pro-Palestinian organizations overseas against Israelis involved in the Gaza fighting, claiming they were responsible for war crimes due to the harsh results stemming from the IDF's actions against Palestinian civilians and their property.

Senior Israeli ministers have expressed serious fears during the past few days about the possibility that Israel will be pressed to agree to an international investigation of the losses among non-combatants during Operation Cast Lead; or alternately, that Israelis will be faced with personal suits, such as happened to Israeli officers who were accused of war crimes in Britain for their actions during the second intifada.

"When the scale of the damage in Gaza becomes clear, I will no longer take a vacation in Amsterdam, only at the international court in The Hague," said one minister. It was not clear whether he was trying to make a joke or not.

Read more @ Haaretz

New RFID technology allows tracking without your knowledge

By invitation, I recently visited a remote facility in northern Virginia to see a demonstration of NOX – a new Intelligent Perimeter Defense system deployed by the FBI that uses covert Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to track people and assets without their knowledge.

That’s right, using RFID to track people without their knowledge. This system is exactly what the privacy advocates have long feared: Big Brother tracking us with spy chips. As Orwellian as this sounds, the undisputed fact is that this system catches thieves and does so at a fraction of the cost of traditional security solutions.

UK preparing to send warships and nucleus of international force to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza

The internationalization of Gaza begins. Check everything at ThereAreNoSunglasses. Chamberlain always keeps his finger on the pulse. - Ed.

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown also appeared to suggest that Britain might put people on the ground to help secure the crossings into Gaza.

“Germany, France and Great Britain have just sent a letter to Israel and Egypt to say they will do everything we can to prevent arms trafficking which is at the root of some of the problems,” Mr Brown said. “I believe that will help get a solution to this crisis.”

Black Death kills AQ operatives in Algeria

Ho-kay. That's pretty cool how the plague resurrects itself right in the middle of an AQ camp, huh? - Ed.

The disease, which struck Europe in the Middle Ages killing more than 25 million people, has swept through a training camp for insurgents in Algeria.

The arrival of the plague was discovered when security forces found the body of a dead terrorist by a roadside, the Sun reports.

The victim belonged to the large al-Qaeda network AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb).

A security source told the paper: "This is the deadliest weapon yet in the war against terror. Most of the terrorists do not have the basic medical supplies needed to treat the disease.

"It spreads It spreads quickly and kills within hours. This will be really worrying al-Qaeda."

Israeli students call Barak 'murderer'

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has cancelled his visit to a university in Tel Aviv after being called a 'murderer' by the students.

Barak canceled his visit to Tel Aviv University's Law Department, after a graffiti sprayed on the walls of the building called him a 'murderer', Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported Monday.

Read more @ Press TV

Gazans do not blame Hamas

RAMALLAH, Jan 19 (IPS) - Humanitarian aid is being rushed into Gaza as Israel and Egypt open their borders temporarily to allow convoys of aid to pass through.

While Israeli drones circle the skies above, Hamas security men are back on the streets attempting to restore some semblance of law and order. Policemen are directing traffic. Several looters have been arrested.

Read more @ IPS

How nice of us: US covers Israeli health care

Israeli woman blogs about her awesome health care. - Ed.

Excerpt:

It is like when I broke my collarbone before I was signed up with insurance and a medical provider –they sent me to the hospital and I paid nothing except for 10 sheks (about 4 U.S. dollars) for all the x-rays and everything else. They were like, ok when your bone has healed enough to comfortably to go the post office and sign up with Maccabi in a few weeks, it’ll all be taken care of. We’ve noted in your file that since you will be signing up with Maccabi you get the Maccabi rate now, and the 10 sheks is all you owe.

Read more @ EAAZI

Bullets in the brain, shrapnel in the spine

Doctors at a hospital near Gaza are almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children needing treatment for bullet wounds to their heads.

On just one day last week staff at the El-Arish hospital in Sinai were called to perform sophisticated CAT brain scans on a nine-year-old, two 10-year-olds and a 14-year-old - each of whom had a bullet still lodged in their brain, after coming under fire during the Israeli ground assault on Gaza.

Read more @ SOTT

Amid dust and death, the Samouni family's story

Helmi Samouni knelt yesterday on the floor of the bedroom he once shared with his wife and their five-month old son, scraping his fingers through a thick layer of ash and broken glass looking for mementoes of their life together. "I found a ring. I might find more," he said.

His wife Maha and their child Muhammad were killed in the second week of Israel's 22-day war in Gaza when they were shelled by Israeli forces as they took shelter nearby along with dozens of relatives. In total 48 people from one family are now known to have died that Monday morning, 5 January, in Zeitoun, on the southern outskirts of Gaza City.

And then they came for me

Very powerful. Sri Lankan journalist predicts his own assassination, writes his obit. - Ed.

No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

Read more @ Cryptogon

Bernie Madoff, the Mafia, and Naked Short Selling

Bernard L. Madoff was once the chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange. He was one of the most important market makers on Wall Street. And he managed what was, by some estimates, the largest hedge fund on the planet.

Yes, Bernard Madoff was an impressive man. That much was clear even before we learned that his $50 billion Ponzi scheme may have been orchestrated in cahoots with the most powerful, sophisticated, and indiscriminately murderous organized crime syndicate the world has ever known.

Bernie Madoff, Israeli Money Laundering

Wayne Madsen has proposed that Bernie Madoff laundered embezzled money through Israel. (See January 12, 2009 -- Is Madoff the tip of a money laundering ... or Is Madoff the tip of a money laundering pyramid in Israel?)

Madsen mentions that longtime Madoff associate and booster Ezra Merkin recently acquired Bank Leumi, the National Bank of Israel.

While a bank is useful in a money-laundering scheme and Israel's general lack of financial transparency is really helpful, you really need businesses, whose profits are not so easily tied to its costs and whose revenue sources are cash or hard to trace.

Read more @ EAAZI

Flashback: Madoff talks trading, 5/29/00

NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Bernie Madoff is chairman of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, which he founded in 1960. It is one of the largest market maker companies on Wall Street. It serves other securities companies, accepting buy and sell orders from brokerage houses and executing the trades.

Madoff Investment Securities profits from the spread, the difference between the bid price and the ask price on a stock. The company trades Nasdaq stocks and also makes a "third market" trading New York Stock Exchange stocks off the trading floor.

Read more @ CNNMoney

1.19.2009

Lead Rains of Gaza

A war is coming – I was forewarned some weeks ago by a most unlikely expert on the subject, an old fisherman called “Charlie”. We sat at a small café by the Sea of Galilee and looked at the dry mud where the sweet waters of the lake used to rollick, at its waterline, which has now receded like Charlie’s hairline; we gazed at the old signs forbidding swimming that now stick out hundreds of yards away from the lake. Drought is always a harbinger of war, said Charlie (whose real name is Ghassan but he prefers this movie-inspired nickname). The last drought was in the year 2000, and the Intifada broke out; he continued. The worst drought in a century has now brought the lake to its lowest level since Christ walked on it, as if the land is trying to get rid of human pestilence by starving it off, while men pour out their blood to pacify its angry spirits.

Read more @ The Truth Seeker

US Jewish Peace Lobby Isolated on Gaza

by Daniel Luban

The three-week-old war in Gaza – halted Saturday by an Israeli cease-fire – has had a polarizing effect on the U.S. Jewish community, resulting in a deeper and at times acrimonious split between dovish groups that are skeptical of the Israeli military campaign and centrist and hawkish groups that have been broadly supportive of it.

Everything you wanted to know about how Zionists control US policy

by Malooga

I was recently asked to answer the following question: In the original post there is mention of Israel controlling US policy. How exactly does that work?

The short answer is this: A highly influential and extremely well bankrolled collection of groups directs energy simultaneously in a number of directions: Political, media, academic, inter-faith, and other areas, in order to create consent for Israel's policies and to sway politicians to support those policies. The rest of this article examines this process in greater detail, primarily through the words of academics who have studied it for years.

Israel to 'lock down' West Bank

JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said it will lock down the occupied West Bank on Friday as Hamas called for a day of "wrath" against the deadly offensive on Gaza.

The West Bank will be closed off for 48 hours from midnight Thursday (2200 GMT), the army said in a statement.

Read more @ Times of India

The end of hypocrisy: Crime's gleeful abandon in Gaza

More and more, comment on Israel's savage attack on the people of Gaza seems superfluous. The facts -- even the modicum of facts that can be gleaned through the deadly wall of Israeli censorship and the perverse and sinister distortions of the American media -- speak loudly, with horrifying clarity, for themselves. We are witnessing monstrous crimes, committed with cold deliberation: a bloodthirsty spectacle of unbridled terrorism, openly celebrated by the political and media elites of Israel and America.

Read more @ Empire Burlesque

The facts about Hamas and the War on Gaza

This article is an edited extract of the views of Finkelstein given at DemocracyNow.org.
The record is fairly clear. You can find it on the Israeli website, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Israel broke the ceasefire by going into the Gaza and killing six or seven Palestinian militants. At that point and now I'm quoting the official Israeli website Hamas retaliated or, in retaliation for the Israeli attack, then launched the missiles.

Read more @ SOS

Where are the weapons?

Any answers or reflections gratefuly received.

Has any News outlet pointed out that a key element suppose to be present in this Gaza massacre is actualy missing. i.e. those massive shipments of armaments supposedly smuggled into Gaza by Iran and through the Rafah tunnels? This supposed 'arms smuggling' is a major casus beli given by Israel and the US and indeed stopping Hamas receiving such shipments is apparently the main aim of their present efforts.

Yet Hamas clearly have no anti aircraft missiles at all, and indeed, apparently no effective wire guided anti tank weapons either such as those Hezbollah used so effectively.
The rockets sent into Israel are homemade and use hand mixed propellants from easily available sources.

If Iran has been supplying Hamas with effective weaponry then where are the weapons?

Source

List of Israel's Child Victims in Gaza

At least 300 children are among the more than 1,000 Palestinians who have died since Israel began to bombard the Gaza Strip on December 27.

Al Jazeera has obtained the names of 210 of the young victims, 44 of which were under five years old.

By Date, Name, Gender and Age:

27/12/2008
Ibtihal Kechko Girl 10
Ahmed Riad Mohammed Al-Sinwar Boy 3
Ahmed Al-Homs Boy 18
Ahmed Rasmi Abu Jazar Boy 16
Ahmed Sameeh Al-Halabi Boy 18
Tamer Hassan Al-Akhrass Boy 5
Hassan Ali Al-Akhrass Boy 3
Haneen Wael Mohammed Daban Girl 15
Khaled Sami Al-Astal Boy 15
alaat Mokhless Bassal Boy 18
Aaed Imad Kheera Boy 14
Abdullah Al-Rayess Boy 17
Odai Hakeem Al-Mansi Boy 4
Allam Nehrou Idriss Boy 18
Ali Marwan Abu Rabih Boy 18
Anan Saber Atiyah Boy 13
Camelia Al-Bardini Girl 10
Lama Talal Hamdan Girl 10
Mohammed Jaber Howeij Boy 17
Nimr Mustafa Amoom Boy 10

Read more @ SOTT

NATO member countries apparently not toeing US line

Jan 17, 2009

In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate

According to France Press, Bentis Cradock, Commander of NATO has said that European countries would hardly adhere to Obama's request to maintain military presence in Afghanistan. He asserted that the European countries were themselves grappling with huge economic crisis and not able to undertake an extra burden of military expenditure in Afghanistan. According to B. Cradock, Canada and Holland, who are second in terms of military presence in Afghanistan, would merely maintain to have their forces in Afghanistan for another one years.

Read more @ Uruknet

Bank of American: 'large group' of workers on NYC plane

Mmm hmm. - Ed.

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Bank of America Corp. (BAC) confirmed that a "large group" of employees were on a plane that crashed into the Hudson River Thursday afternoon.

According to a spokeswoman with the Transportation Security Administration, US Airways flight 1549 took off from Laguardia Airport at 2:49 p.m. carrying about 148 passengers and five crew members. The plane was bound for Charlotte.

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