Translate

Aug 26, 2011

Richard Forer: How Israel takes its revenge on boys who throw stones

 




Begin forwarded message:

From: richardforer <rich_forer@yahoo.com>
Date: August 26, 2011 1:39:12 PM EDT
To: rich_forer@yahoo.com
Subject: [Richard Forer] How Israel takes its revenge on boys who throw stones
Reply-To: richardforer <rich_forer@yahoo.com>

Richard Forer has posted a new item, 'How Israel takes its revenge on boys who
throw stones'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/how-israel-takes-its-revenge-on-boys-who-throw-stones-2344037.html

You may view the latest post at
http://www.richardforer.com/2011/08/how-israel-takes-its-revenge-on-boys-who-throw-stones/

You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
richardforer
rich_forer@yahoo.com

__._,_.___
Recent Activity:
MARKETPLACE
A bad score is 598. A bad idea is not checking yours, at freecreditscore.com.
.

__,_._,___

MCS NEWS BLAST! BLOGGING & 9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?

 

Begin forwarded message:

From: Debbie Menon <debbiemenon@gmail.com>
Date: August 26, 2011 3:37:56 AM EDT
To: Debbie Menon <debbiemenon@gmail.com>
Subject: MCS NEWS BLAST! BLOGGING & 9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?


Dear All,

The Intifada - Palestine website has been attacked.  

The website has suddenly crashed this morning.  That there are people who feel so threatened by a website on PALESTINE that they are prepared to sabotage it, only shows how much they fear the TRUTH. Indeed, only those protecting a LIE would need to resort to such cheap, tactics.   

It is not the first time this has happened.  The Intifada-Palestine website has been a target before.   However, we are not likely to lose the information as it has all been backed up, but it will take time to retrieve it and get everything up and running again.  

We apologise to everyone who has come to rely on the information provided by the website and we want to assure you that these attacks only strengthen our resolve to be a voice for Palestine again.

We will let you know when the website is back in operation and we hope that you will continue to visit it as before. 

Thank you for your support.

Elias Farhud
Editor and Administrator


Favorite Websites



Blogging is Not a comfortable or painless activity lately, I tire of repeating myself... I would rather just retire and enjoy, but...

I have been thinking times have changed.  Why?  Not because the situation has changed, it hasn't... but, primarily because we have gained an entirely new readership in the interim...young and old readers today who are now  going to the Internet News and Info Services and reading MCS, VT, I-P, Sabbah Report, and Salem-News and those other websites were not reading them two, three or four years ago.

Hence ... it is necessary to repeat some things not because the language, the literature  or the situation has changed, but because new classes of uneducated and ill-informed readers keep coming in the door. 

Every day we see newcomers, new readers, and we hear from them, and we can see from their questions how little they know and how much they  still have to learn and how enthusiastic they are to help in disseminating the Truth that Corporate and Zionist owned Mainstream Media denies the public. 

I read the comments and find some of them difficult to read, the commentators are so ignorant and naive, as if they had never heard of what has gone on, what is going on...which is precisely why they are so ignorant...they have been corporate and Zionist media dupes and have just tuned in and have never heard what is happening. 

It is a responsibility! A teacher does not abandon her new class! Perhaps it might be worthwhile to review some of that old stuff to see what is not only still current, but useful as back ground filler for that which is currently happening today, for the benefit of the newbies who are just tuning in.

Yeah, I know it is in the archives, but no one reads the archives except us who know what is in them and  we only go back there for references. Newcomers  are not going to read archives looking for new material, they are going to read only the front pages.




My Catbird Seat

9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?

- 25. Aug, 2011 in

In their book, the chairman and vice chairman, Thomas Keen and Lee Hamilton, wrote that the 9/11 Commission was "set up to fail."

Senior counsel John Farmer, Jr., wrote that the US government made "a decision not to tell the truth about what happened," and that the NORAD "tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public." Keen said, "We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth."

by Paul Craig Roberts

In a few days it will be the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.  How well has the US government's official account of the event held up over the decade?

Not very well.  The chairman, vice chairman, and senior legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission wrote books partially disassociating themselves from the commission's report.  They said that the Bush administration put obstacles in their path, that information was withheld from them, that President Bush agreed to testify only if he was chaperoned by Vice President Cheney and neither were put under oath, that Pentagon and FAA officials lied to the commission and that the commission considered referring the false testimony for investigation for obstruction of justice.

In their book, the chairman and vice chairman, Thomas Keen and Lee Hamilton, wrote that the 9/11 Commission was "set up to fail." Senior counsel John Farmer, Jr., wrote that the US government made "a decision not to tell the truth about what happened," and that the NORAD "tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public." Keen said, "We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth."

Most of the questions from the 9/11 families were not answered. Important witnesses were not called. The commission only heard from those who supported the government's account. The commission was a controlled political operation, not an investigation of events and evidence. Its membership consisted of former politicians. No knowledgeable experts were appointed to the commission.

One member of the 9/11 Commission, former Senator Max Cleland, responded to the constraints placed on the commission by the White House:  "If this decision stands, I, as a member of the commission, cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims, and say the commission had full access. This investigation is now compromised."  Cleland resigned rather than have his integrity compromised.

To be clear, neither Cleland nor members of the commission suggested that 9/11 was an inside job to advance a war agenda.  Nevertheless, neither Congress nor the media wondered, at least not out loud, why President Bush was unwilling to appear before the commission under oath or without Cheney, why Pentagon and FAA officials lied to the commission or, if the officials did not lie, why the commission believed they lied, or why the White House resisted for so long any kind of commission being formed, even one under its control.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEvA8BCoBw&feature=player_embedded


One would think that if a handful of Arabs managed to outwit not merely the CIA and FBI but all 16 US intelligence agencies, all intelligence agencies of our allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times on one morning, air traffic control, etc., the President, Congress, and the media would be demanding to know how such an improbable event could occur.  Instead, the White House put up a wall of resistance to finding out, and Congress and the media showed little interest.

During the decade that has passed, numerous 9/11 Truth organizations have formed. There are Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Remember Building 7.org, and a New York group which includes 9/11 families. These groups call for a real investigation.
David Ray Griffen has written 10 carefully researched books documenting problems in the government's account. Scientists have pointed out that the government has no explanation for the molten steel.  NIST has been forced to admit that WTC 7 was in free  fall for part of its descent, and a scientific team led by a professor of nano-chemistry at the University of Copenhagen has reported finding nano-thermite in the dust from the buildings.

Larry Silverstein, who had the lease on the World Trade Center buildings, said in a PBS broadcast that the decision was made "to pull" Building 7 late in the afternoon of 9/11.  Chief fire marshals have said that no forensic investigation was made of the buildings' destruction and that the absence of investigation was a violation of law.

Some efforts have been made to explain away some of the evidence that is contrary to the official account, but most of the contrary evidence is simply ignored. The fact remains that the skepticism of a large number of knowledgeable experts has had no effect on the government's position other than a member of the Obama administration suggesting that the government infiltrate the 9/11 truth organizations in order to discredit them.

The practice has been to brand experts not convinced by the government's case "conspiracy theorists."  But of course the government's own theory is a conspiracy theory, an even less likely one once a person realizes its full implication of intelligence and operational failures.  The implied failures are extraordinarily large; yet,no one was ever held accountable.

Moreover, what do 1,500 architects and engineers have to gain from being ridiculed as conspiracy theorists?  They certainly will never receive another government contract, and many surely lost business as a result of their "anti-American" stance. Their competitors must have made hay out of their "unpatriotic doubts."  Indeed, my reward for reporting on how matters stand a decade after the event will be mail telling me that as I hate America so much I should move to Cuba.

Scientists have even less incentive to express any doubts, which probably explains why there are not 1,500 Physicists for 9/11 Truth.  Few physicists have careers independent of government grants or contracts.  It was a high school physics teacher who forced NIST to abandon its account of Building 7's demise.  Physicist Stephen Jones, who first reported finding evidence of explosives, had his tenure bought out by BYU, which no doubt found itself under government pressure.

We can explain away contrary evidence as coincidences and mistakes and conclude that only the government got it all correct, the same government that got everything else wrong.
In fact, the government has not explained anything.  The NIST report is merely a simulation of what might have caused the towers to fail if NIST's assumptions programed into the computer model are correct.  But NIST supplies no evidence that its assumptions are correct.
Building 7 was not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report, and many Americans are still unaware that three buildings came down on 9/11.

Let me be clear about my point.  I am not saying that some black op group in the neoconservative Bush administration blew up the buildings in order to advance the neoconservative agenda of war in the Middle East.  If there is evidence of a coverup, it could be the government covering up its incompetence and not its complicity in the event. Even if there were definite proof of government complicity, it is uncertain that Americans could accept it.  Architects, engineers, and scientists live in a fact-based community, but for most people facts are no match for emotions.

My point is how uninquisitive the executive branch including the security agencies, Congress, the media, and much of the population are about the defining event of our time.
There is no doubt that 9/11 is the determinant event. It has led to a decade of ever expanding wars, to the shredding of the Constitution, and to a police state.  On August 22 Justin Raimondo reported that he and his website, Antiwar.com, are being monitored by the FBI's Electronic Communication Analysis Unit to determine if Antiwar.com is "a threat to National Security" working "on behalf of a foreign power."

Francis A. Boyle, an internationally known professor and attorney of international law, has reported that when he refused a joint FBI-CIA request to violate the attorney/client privilege and become an informant on his Arab-American clients, he was placed on the US government's terrorist watch list.


Boyle has been critical of the US government's approach to the Muslim world, but Raimondo has never raised, nor permitted any contributor to raise, any suspicion about US government complicity in 9/11.  Raimondo merely opposes war, and that is enough for the FBI to conclude that he needs watching as a possible threat to national security.

The US government's account of 9/11 is the foundation of the open-ended wars that are exhausting America's resources and destroying its reputation, and it is the foundation of the domestic police state that ultimately will shut down all opposition to the wars. Americans  are bound to the story of the 9/11 Muslim terrorist attack, because it is what justifies the slaughter of civilian populations in several Muslim countries, and it justifies a domestic police state as the only means of securing safety from terrorists, who already have morphed into "domestic extremists" such as environmentalists, animal rights groups, and antiwar activists.

Today Americans are unsafe, not because of terrorists and domestic extremists, but because they have lost their civil liberties and have no protection from unaccountable government power. One would think that how this came about would be worthy of public debate and congressional hearings.
Source: ICH

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
was appointed by President Reagan Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and confirmed by the US Senate. He was Associate Editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, and he served on the personal staffs of Representative Jack Kemp and Senator Orrin Hatch. He was staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, staff associate of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, and Chief Economist, Republican Staff, House Budget Committee. He wrote the Kemp-Roth tax rate reduction bill, and was a leader in the supply-side revolution. He was professor of economics in six universities, and is the author of numerous books and scholarly contributions. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions. He has had careers in scholarship and academia, public service, and journalism.. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com



Veterans Today / World

Attorney for Families Alleges Wiretapping, Computer Hacking by Murdoch/Fox

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

Lawyers representing the families of the 9/11 dead have requested a criminal investigation, here in the US, against News Corp, Fox News and its affiliates including the New York Daily News and Wall Street Journal. 

Their charge?  That these publications, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, wiretapped families of 9/11 victims, tapped their home computers, violated their basic human rights in order to secure stories of "human interest."

Aug 25 2011,

Read More »




Barraud painting 'his master's voice'

Will 'Nipper' Cameron obey Tel Aviv's trumpet or vote for Palestinian freedom? »


The famous little white dog listened intently to his master's voice from the gramophone trumpet…

 

by Stuart Littlewood

 

Britain and NATO were keen as mustard to establish a no-fly zone over Libya to "protect civilians" but too cowardly to do the same for the Palestinians, who are constantly on the receiving end of Israel's vicious air strikes and armed incursions. Muslims and Christians alike have been slaughtered or maimed in their thousands and had their homes, farms and water resources stolen while waiting 63 years for the international community to deliver them from Israel's brutal occupation.


Aug 25 2011  / Read More »



Murky Anti-Semitism (Zionist Style) »


MISUSE OF ANTI-SEMITISM

Unfortunately, we are not dealing with situations that are ruled by common sense

 

by Dr. Lawrence Davidson

 

What we are facing here is the issue of ideologues bred to a specific perceptual paradigm and their insistence that others conform to it.

Part I – Stretching the Definition of Anti-Semitism

Can criticism of Israel, particularly a) criticism of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people and b) criticism of the state ideology of Zionism that justifies that treatment, be labeled anti-Semitic? This is not a hypothetical query. An affirmative answer to this question is being advocated by influential Zionist lobbies in the United States. The question is of particular importance on the nation's college and university campuses. In places like the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and also at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Zionist students are now threatening to sue these institutions for failing to prevent an "atmosphere of anti-Semitic bigotry" allegedly created by the presence of pro-Palestinian student groups and faculty.

Aug 24 2011 / 43 Comments / Read More »





The holocaust, Israel's most powerful PsyOps weapon

Take a look at the current offerings of the widely viewed and popular "History Channel" on TV, with its distorted image of American History

 

By Earlaiman for Veterans Today

 

A Message From An Old Soldier

Incredible?  Take careful note of the way in which History Channel and their producers present them, which  merely makes them all the more incredible.

Henry Makow says, "Israel's most potent psychological weapon is the holocaust."  "The Zionist battle cry is "Never again!"2

Indeed, they have created an entire "holocaust Industry" around the entire story which with proper exaggeration, embellishment, and psychological application has long ago approached the quality of major mythical proportions on the order of the David and Goliath tale.

They have erected defences around their Holocaust Weapons Industry to protect this "weapon."  In many parts of Europe and North America it is an imprisonable offense to criticize or deny the "facts" of the holocaust as stated by Zionist "holocaust" Industrial "scholars."


Aug 24 2011 / 68 Comments / Read More »




Israeli Video Games in Gaza »


"Minimal Collateral Damage"

 

Islam was the second two-year-old to be killed by Israeli drone strikes in two days.

by Alison Weir

 

He looks at the camera with bright eyes and the beginning of a smile, wearing a miniature dark blue zipper sweatshirt, the cuffs folded up a bit to make it fit.

I can imagine his mother dressing him that morning, making sure he would be warm enough. I wonder if she's the one who took the picture. Someone has written on the photo "kisses."

It's not a formal picture. He's outside on a sunny day. It looks like he was probably moving when the picture was snapped; his arms seem to be swinging a little. As with most almost two-year-olds, I suspect it was hard to get him to stay still long enough for a photo.

It's a happy picture, the kind that makes you smile; perhaps it reminds you of funny, energetic little children you know or remember.

2 year old Islam's Death from an Israeli drone strike

Until you see the next picture. It was taken on his second birthday. His name was Islam Quraiqe'.

Death from a drone strike is not pretty. The small body is charred, ripped apart; internal organs are pouring out.

He had been riding with his father and uncle on a motorcycle in Gaza when the missile hit them. His 29-year-old father, a member of the Palestinian resistance, and 32-year-old uncle physician were also killed. Five bystanders, including a woman, were injured.

The missile was fired remotely by an Israeli sitting in front of a video screen and operating one of the many drones that periodically fly over Gaza and shoot Palestinians like fish in a fishbowl. The operators are usually female, the preferred group for this kind of desk job.

The drones, which look like small, pilotless jets, are equipped with precision-guided missiles.

Those operating them receive real-time video feeds from sensors located on the drone: a color nose camera, a TV lens, an infrared camera for low light and night, and a synthetic radar for looking through smoke, clouds or haze. The cameras produce full motion video as well as still frame radar images.

Aug 23 2011 / 27 Comments / Read More »


 


palestinian mother and son

Palestine: Arduous Odyssey of Statehood »

By Dr. Ismail Salami and Kourosh Ziabari

The plight of the Palestinian people is no closed book to anyone in the world; a subjugated nation which has been unjustifiably subjected to discrimination and violence for the past 6 decades.

Even the close allies of Israel and those who support the continued occupation of Palestine admit in their privacy that the actions and policies of the Israeli regime are beyond the pale and run counter to the very principles of humanity and morality.


Aug 25 2011 / 2 Comments / Read More »





__._,_.___
Recent Activity:
MARKETPLACE
A bad score is 579. A good idea is checking yours at freecreditscore.com.
.

__,_._,___

Israel at the crossroads - Halacha or Zionism




Begin forwarded message:

From: "David Turner, LCSW" <dt.lcsw@gmail.com>
Date: August 25, 2011 11:41:40 PM EDT
To: "David Turner, LCSW" <vapto@globalweb.net>
Subject: 110825 - IL- Israel at the crossroads - Halacha or Zionism

While many of my recent writings have focused on the Christian roots of antisemitism and the Holocaust, my real subject is the future survival of the Jewish people, Zionism. And while I believe that our survival depends upon understanding of the place of Judaism within Christian theology, and how that theology impacted on our experience of persecution in the Diaspora, I also fear that Israel, the Diaspora's creation as refuge for our threatened, is compromised by Israeli politics. This article addresses one such concern.

Text Box:

Antisemitism and Jewish Survival

 

 


Israel at the crossroads: Halacha or Zionism?

 

"…in a few decades most of the Jews in Israel will be religious… So to really join the Israeli society will entail real conversion."

Coalition chairman Ze'ev Elkin (Likud)

 

 

Before statehood orthodoxy worldwide, including within Eretz Israel, was generally opposed to Zionism and the creation of a secular homeland and refuge for Diaspora Jewry.  Faced with the 1948 fait accompli Israel's orthodox minority redirected their challenge to the secular character of the Zionist state. To even begin to understand why Diaspora Jewry are offended by what coalition chairman Elkin derisively refers to as the "so-called conversion bill;" to understand why the Diaspora might feel it a "slap in the face" for Israel to even consider such legislation, it is necessary to recognize just how far Israel has, over the decades, drifted away from its Zionist roots.

 

In the sub-heading to its article discussing the conversion "impasse" JPost writes, "Insiders to unity talks between Orthodox MKs, non-Orthodox movements and Jewish Agency say they are not bearing any real fruit." Except to these "unity" talks one of the parties, Israel's Orthodoxy as represented by Shas and United Torah Judaism, chose not to participate.

 

In fact Binyamin Netanyahu had promised passage of the bill during coalition negotiations with the religious parties. And except for the unfortunate timing of the vote, "[a period] of particular tension between Netanyahu and the administration of US President Barack Obama, and voices from the North American Jewish communities subtly insinuated that their support and efforts for Israel on Capitol Hill would be made more difficult if such a bill… became law," it is very likely that the "conversion bill," only a stalking horse for "Who is a Jew," would today be law of the land. 

 

Elkin's remarks were made before an audience of Orthodox rabbis and, as chairman of the governing coalition, his comments must be taken to represent official government policy. I discussed in some detail the process by which Israeli politics have drifted towards Halacha as state law in an earlier submission. Although Ben-Gurion was the first to open coalition politics to Orthodox influence, the process speeded up considerably with the 1977 election victory of Menachem Begin. "It was public knowledge that Begin had promised the Orthodox leadership in Israel that, if elected, he would endeavor to change the Law of Return to insert the controversial phrase, 'conversion in accordance with Halacha' in the definition of Jewish identity." In the end both Begin and Netanyahu both were forced to step back from their commitment because of American Jewish opinion, and Halacha has so far remained distinct from state law.

 

Israel's drift from Zionism is perhaps not surprising since the term "Zionism" itself has all but lost its original meaning in Israel and the Diaspora. Conceived as a response to the relatively "tame" threat of 19th century pogroms, Pinsker and Herzl could not imagine the radical solution to the West's Jewish Problem that would be attempted merely four decades in the future. Yet today, six decades following that event, the Holocaust's implications for future Jewish survival are all but overlooked. According to conventional wisdom from Israel to California Zionism culminated in the creation of the State of Israel. Today's Zionist shell has, with rare exceptions, become a domesticated Diaspora "pride" focused on Israel; and for Israelis the designation for Israeli nationalism.

 

But is 19th century Zionism's radical vision of the risks facing Jewish survival no longer applicable? Is the purpose of building a Jewish homeland to serve as refuge for our Diaspora fulfilled? That certainly appears the case according to the machinations of Israeli politics!

 

In 2009 the Jewish Agency released results of a survey stating that, "Anti-Semitic incidents in western Europe peaked to a level not seen since the close of World War II." And perhaps not surprising there has also been a resurgence of right-wing political parties with an antisemitic agenda. While evidence that another Holocaust is imminent is not present, neither is there the comfort of knowing that the antisemitism that inspired the Holocaust has itself vanished. In fact all evidence indicates that not only were the pioneers of Zionism correct in their analysis of the dangers to our Diaspora, but the threat continues…  and will continue so long as Jews choose to live in the Diaspora.

 

Israel's political institutions and leadership have lost contact with the state's Zionist mission, its Zionist roots. The Diaspora created the state not as a home for its current residents, but for the entire Jewish people regardless of degree of adherence to Halacha. In 1970 Ben-Gurion commented that the new "Grandchild" amendment to The Law of Return is Israel's response to Hitler, that the Law and its Amendment "are the heart of what defines Israel."

 

If our Diaspora believes that the present state of relative calm and acceptance it finds itself in represents its eternal future, well that is just the human condition. German Jewry also believed that their fatherland was "exceptional." Was not German Jewry the most assimilated, intermarried and accepted Jewish community at that time? How many foresaw what awaited their community and every Jew within reach of Germany's inspired dream?

 

Which brings us back to the "conversion law" and its significance as an issue of Zionism: Israeli secular parties are voluntary hostage to Orthodoxy for coalition creation. And the reason is clearly that it is politically cheaper to buy religious support on the backs of our Diaspora than to compromise ideological "principles" with secular parties ideologically hardly distinguishable from themselves. And so "Jewish identity according to Halacha" becomes an internal matter for the state without regard to its impact on our nation beyond.

 

Which is the real message delivered by the coalition chairman before his audience of orthodox rabbis: the government lost this round in the debate over Who is a Jew. But not to worry, "[victory] will come, but in the next generation… [because] in a few decades most of the Jews in Israel will be religious… So [for future "Jewish" immigrants] to really join the Israeli society will entail real conversion."

 

 

Other writings on this topic:

 

1. The abandonment of the Diaspora: Israel and 'Who is a Jew'

2. Conversion, Kulturkampf and the future of Israel

3. The Jewish Problem and the Diaspora

4. Is Israel still Zionist?