Wild Bill's blog

Gush Etzion Residents March Against Hostile Arab Village

2007-01-06T19:49:00.000+02:00

By Hillel Fendel

Some 150 Jews marched towards the hostile Arab village of Tzurif this morning. "If the police and army won't protect us, we'll have to do it ourselves," they said.
In the past week alone, Arabs from Tzurif - famous for the many murderous terrorists who have grown up there - broke into two homes in Bat Ayin Bet, stole two cars, and made off with 15 sheep. "If we don't stop this now," said one marcher, "it could easily reach much worse proportions, including murder."

The police arrested two people, including Nadia Matar, co-head of the Women in Green organization. Many witnesses said that they dragged her roughly over the ground and beat her.

"In addition," said one woman, Datia Yitzchaki of the former Gush Katif neighborhood Kfar Yam, "I can tell you they were specifically looking for her [Nadia]. Yesterday, when police came around to try to get us not to hold this protest, they specifically asked if Nadia would be there. And today, just seconds after they declared the area a 'closed military zone,' they ran after Nadia and dragged her to the car, hitting her all the while."

Michael Pollack of Hevron told Arutz-7, "The police and army claim that they don't have enough manpower to look for stolen cars in these Arab villages - but today we proved that they have plenty of manpower: just to stop us, they brought out ten police jeeps, ten army jeeps and five special Yassam-force jeeps - nearly 100 men in all."

"In addition," Pollack said, "they say that it's dangerous for them to enter these areas, and that they need special permission from their higher-ups - but today, they came out to these areas with no hesitation."

Tzurif is remembered in infamy as the source of many cruel terror attacks, beginning in early 1948 ago with the famous "Lamed Heh" - the 35 Jews who were cruelly butchered while on their way to deliver food and supplies to the Etzion bloc. In addition to the drive-by murder of Yaron and Efrat Ungar in 1996, whose two babies were left for Efrat's parents to raise, Tzurif murderers murdered three women in the Apropos cafe in Tel Aviv in 1997, kidnapped and murdered Sharon Edry in September 1996 - his body was only discovered seven months later - and committed the drive-by murders of IDF Dr. Oz Tivon and Sgt. Yaniv Shimol in Jan. 1996, and of Ze'ev, Uri, and Rachel Munk in July 1996.

The late Tourism Minister and IDF Maj.-Gen. Rehavam Ze'evi said in 1997 that the village of Tzurif deserves to be "wiped off the face of the earth."

"Whenever Arabs carry out hostile actions against Jews," Pollack said, "it's very important that there be a quick response. If we can't depend on the police and the army, then we won't wait and we'll do it ourselves. We don't need a repeat of past patterns."

Many of the marchers were able to evade the police forces who deployed to stop them, and made their way towards Tzurif. However, they stopped well before the actual village itself, in accordance with their previous plan, hanging up signs along the way. The signs said, "This is Jewish Land; no entry for the Arab enemy," and "Scaredy-Cat Army, Go into the Villages."

After arresting Nadia Matar, the police demanded that she sign a paper forbidding her to enter the area again. She refused to do this, however, and the police therefore took her before a judge in Jerusalem. The outcome of this encounter was not yet clear at press time.

Datia Yitzchaki said that MK Aryeh Eldad is aware of and involved in the situation, "and hopefully she will be released before the Sabbath."

Eldad commented bitingly, "The police and army that have not succeeded in stopping hostile Arab acts against the residents of Gush Etzion, have finally proven their strength - by arresting Nadia Matar."

"It's important that people get used to the idea that they can walk freely all over the hills of the Land of Israel," Pollack said. "If this happens, there will be fewer murders and fewer thefts. It's a simple equation: If we don't walk there, the Arabs will... Today, one of the people who came with us was a new immigrant from the U.S. who is now living with his family in Efrat. He told me that he now understands for the first time how important it is to actually get out and walk in these hills, and he plans to do it more often."

Ode to Moderation "A. C." The Cabinet, III (1795), pp. 117-120

2006-12-16T18:27:00.000+02:00

I found this, it was written in 1795 and is still relevant today. If your senator or representative is democrat, send this to him, it may make a difference.

To thee, whose cautious step, and specious air,
    Deceive the world, who simulating good,
Drop'st from thine oily tongue the pitying pray'r,
    T'avert the ills of man, and spare his blood.
'To thee I call, but with no friendly voice,'
    I am no dupe to thine insidious art,
    The vaunted mercy of thy traitor heart,
Nor in thy promises can I rejoice.
For well I know thee hypocrite!—I know
Thou art the fatal source of human woe,
Thine is the shield that bloodiest tyrants bear,
Foul harbinger of death, black herald of despair.

Why groans you hapless, violated land,
    With such continued suff'rance, and long care?
'Tis that, deceiver! there thou giv'st command,
    That mod'rate justice, mod'rate truth are there.
The poor not quite destroy'd, tho' doom'd to toil
    From day to day unceasing, yet must hide
    Their soul's deep anguish from the gaze of pride,
And greet with smiles the plund'rers of the soil.
The sad seditious thoughts that fire the brain
Must be subdued,—'tis treason to complain;
For order, peace, tranquility require,
They suffer all unmoved,—then silently expire.

vengeance wild!
    To the red scene of slaughter and dismay,
Where the bold multitude, no more beguil'd,
    The deathful banners of their rage display.
Ah! let their gen'rous ardors burn for me;
    Their fiercest energies my bosom steel,
    Who learn to vindicate, when taught to feel,
And dare th' extreme of all things to be free:
Better by far at once the conflict end,
The gen'ral foe prevail, or genial friend,
Than that faint hope should languish with the throng,
Who love the right but half, but half detest the wrong.

Mark, how the desolating tempest flies,
    And rends the groaning forest from its base;
Its bursting thunders wreck the pow'rless skies,
    Its lightnings Nature's loveliest scenes deface.
Anon, behold its transient fury sped,
    More fresh the flowers their vivid tints disclose,
    With richer pride the yellow harvest glows,
More soft the air, more sweet the odours spread.
Thus from the storms of intellectual strife,
The moral system wakes to purer life,
The passions harmonize which late were hurl'd,
And reason's fairer beams illume a happier world.

'Tis true, seductive is thy mild discourse,
    With dainty terms of soft benevolence,
And honied phrases fill'd, abjuring force,
    Trusting to time, and to progressive sense.
Thus the wild jargons of submissive peace,
    Of calm endurance, petrify the heart,
    Check the bold tear of manhood ere it start,
And bid the holy animation cease.
By due and slow degrees, by sober zeal,
Profess to rectify the public weal,
Which, by confusing parts, confound the whole,
Disorganize the will, and dislocate the soul.

'Tis thine to boast of long existing laws,
Blast the effect of ill, but not the cause;
'Tis thine to call it mad erroneous rage,
    When indignation's spirit nobly glows,
    When smarting with the sense of bitt'rest woes;
The mass of man the war of nature wage,
'Tis thine with horror then to paint the scene,
As barb'rous tyranny had never been,
Of ruthless anarchy alone complain,
Then if thy victims pause, prepare th' eternal chain.

Ah! wouldst thou ask me why I thus can hate,
    Why thus abhor thee, execrable pow'r?
'Tis, that I deem thy mercy worse than fate,
    'Tis, that thou smilest only to devour.
Did the great Pole[1] thy baleful influence share,
    When rous'd to fury at his country's call;
    Or when he found that country doom'd to fall,
Felt he a moderation of despair?
Meanwhile, thy tranquil Hecate of the North,
Sent her infernal legions mildly forth,
To quell intemp'rate zeal,—the land to save,—
With mod'rate murder sweep whole nations to the grave.

At thy approach, true principle decays,
    Cabals succeed, with reas'nings most abstruse,
Of reg'lar governments the placid praise,
    Of tender words and savage deeds profuse.
Unhappy France! I see thy laurels die,
    I see thy fading glories dimly shine,
    The tyrants triumph with their wrath benign,
The mod'rate wrath of boundless cruelty.
The bold terrific energy is past,
And peace and tyranny return at last,
Thy star of vict'ry rose—when at the sight,
Pale moderation shriek'd, and all again was night.

O ye fall'n patriots! ere I drop the pen,
    One rending sigh shall to your worth be paid,
Ye greatest, noblest, bravest, best of men!
    One grateful tear be offer'd to your shade.
Tho' monarchs execrate, tho' Britons scorn,
    Your deathless name, yet still to freedom true,
    Be't mine, alas! to pay the homage due,
With Sorrow's cypress wreath your shrine adorn.
Scar'd at the light'ning of your lifted spear,
The traitor crouch'd, the despot learnt to fear,
And tho' thro' seas of blood your ark was driv'n
The deluge still was just, the ark belong'd to heaven.

Epigram On the Frequent Defeats of the French Army

2006-12-13T13:16:00.000+02:00

The toast of each Briton in war's dread alarms,
O'er bottle or bowl, is "Success to our Arms;"
Attack'd, put to flight, and soon forc'd from each trench,
"Success to our Legs," is the toast of the French.

This was written in december 1813 in the London Chronicle, CXIV (November 19, 1813), p. 487

Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 Subject: Anne Bayefsky on UNHRC

2006-12-05T22:35:00.000+02:00

Why John Bolton deserves to be US-UN Ambassador,
Anne Bayefsky;
EyeonUN;
November 20, 2006

On November 17, 2006 the UN General Assembly
"reconvened" its "Tenth" Emergency Session to condemn
Israel. The Tenth Session began in 1997 and has now been
reconvened 14 times. No other emergency session of the
General Assembly has occurred on any other subject in these
ten years - not even on Darfur, Sudan with 2.5 million
people displaced and over 400,000 dead. And once again, the
General Assembly adopted another resolution condemning
Israel without mentioning Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran or Syria,
which are openly acting to bring about Israel's
annihilation. Just seven of the UN member states voted
against the resolution - the United States, Australia, the
Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau. The European
Union voted in favor.

In the midst of this display of visceral hatred of
the Jewish state and the Jewish people, inimical to
everything the UN was created to oppose, came a singularly
powerful voice for reason, dignity and honesty - Ambassador
John Bolton. The crowd assembled in the General Assembly
hall was hostile to the man and to the country he
represents. But Ambassador Bolton took the podium and spoke
with no rancor and no double-talk. Here is part of what he
said "This problem of anti-Israel...is endemic to the
culture of the United Nations. It is a decades-old, systemic
problem that transcends the whole panoply of UN
organizations and agencies...The consequences of this
persistent, unconstructive, biased approach are painfully
clear - not one single Palestinian is helped and the United
Nations continues to be discredited by its inability to
confront...the Israel-Palestinian conflict in a serious,
responsible manner."

Nobody clapped - in contrast to the applause which
the same crowd had lavished on Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez when he referred to President Bush this past
September as the devil. John Bolton, however, wasn't looking
for accolades. In a room where the US has one vote among 192
states, he simply spoke truth to power. "We believe that the
United Nations is ill served when its members seek to
transform the organization into a forum that is little more
than a self-serving and polemical attack against Israel or
the United States."

The strength of his conviction and the veracity of
his message reverberated around the room. Ambassador Bolton
used his role to explain what America stands for and what it
does not. This is exactly what makes an ambassador great,
and United States UN Ambassador Bolton one of the greatest.

Subject: Kerry, the idiot...

2006-11-23T09:39:00.000+02:00

This is a letter written by a marine in response to Kerry's insult on
them. Enjoy and repost if you feel the notion:

Yesterday John Kerry said, "You know education, if you make the most
of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to
be smart, you can do well, and if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq"

So I wrote him a letter:

I am a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. I am currently on
my second tour in Iraq, a tour in which I volunteered for. I speak
Arabic and Spanish and I plan to tackle Persian Farsi soon. I have a
Bachelors and an Associates Degree and between deployments I am
pursuing an M.B.A. In college I was a member of several academic honor
societies, including the Golden Key Honor Society. I am not unique
among the enlisted troops. Many of my enlisted colleagues include
lawyers, teachers, mechanics, engineers, musicians and artists just to
name a few. You say that your comments were directed towards the
President and not us. If we were stupid Senator Kerry, we might have
believed you.

I am not a victim of President Bush. I proudly serve him because he is
my Commander and Chief.

If it was you who was President, I would serve you just as faithfully.
I serve America Senator Kerry, and I am also providing a service to
the good people of Iraq. I have not terrorized them in the middle of
the night, raped them or murdered them as you have accused me of
before. I am doing my part to help them rebuild. My role is a simple
one, but important. You see Senator Kerry, like it or not, we came
here and removed a tyrant (who terrorized Iraqis in the middle of the
night, and raped them and murdered them). And we have a responsibility
to see to it that another one doesn't take his place. The people of
Iraq are recovering from an abusive relationship with a terrible
government and it's going to take some time to help them recover from
that. We can't treat this conflict like a microwave dinner and throw a
temper tantrum because we feel like it's taking too long.

Senator Kerry, you don't have to agree with this war. You don't have
to say nice things about those of us who choose to make sacrifices for
the rights of every American rather than sit back and simply feel
entitled to it. But please Senator Kerry, if you're going to call me a
stupid murdering rapist, stick by what you say. Don't tell me that I
misunderstood or that you would never insult a veteran because you're
one, too. Having been there and done that does not give you a free
pass to insult me.

My suggestion for you, Senator Kerry, is to remember that your
speeches are recorded, and broadcast to us simpletons over here. You
may want to write down what you want to say before you say it, maybe
have somebody look at it before you say it and tell you what others
might hear. Remember that we can't read your mind, if there are any
misinterpretations in what you say, it's because you didn't
communicate clearly.

Good luck to you Senator Kerry, if nothing else it's always
entertaining to watch you try and climb out of the holes that you
constantly dig for yourself.

Sincerely,

Somebody who is watching his daughter grow up in photographs so that
you can have the right to say whatever you want about him.

From the Senate comittee on Environment and Public works

2006-11-22T14:17:00.000+02:00

Renowned Scientist Defects From Belief in Global Warming – Caps Year of Vindication for Skeptics

Washington DC - One of the most decorated French geophysicists has converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic. This latest defector from the global warming camp caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics. Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming have continued to accumulate and many believe the new science is shattering the media-promoted scientific “consensus” on climate alarmism.

Claude Allegre, a former government official and an active member of France’s Socialist Party, wrote an editorial on September 21, 2006 in the French newspaper L'Express titled “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (For English Translation, click here: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264835 ) detailing his newfound skepticism about manmade global warming. See: http://www.lexpress.fr/idees/tribunes/dossier/allegre/dossier.asp?ida=451670 Allegre wrote that the “cause of climate change remains unknown” and pointed out that Kilimanjaro is not losing snow due to global warming, but to local land use and precipitation changes. Allegre also pointed out that studies show that Antarctic snowfall rate has been stable over the past 30 years and the continent is actually gaining ice.

“Following the month of August experienced by the northern half of France, the prophets of doom of global warming will have a lot on their plate in order to make our fellow countrymen swallow their certitudes,” Allegre wrote. He also accused proponents of manmade catastrophic global warming of being motivated by money, noting that “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!”

Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity” in which the scientists warned that global warming’s “potential risks are very great.” See: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/sciwarn.html

Allegre has authored more than 100 scientific articles, written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States.

Allegre's conversion to a climate skeptic comes at a time when global warming alarmists have insisted that there is a “consensus” about manmade global warming. Proponents of global warming have ratcheted up the level of rhetoric on climate skeptics recently. An environmental magazine in September called for Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics and CBS News “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley compared skeptics to “Holocaust deniers.” See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568 & http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/22/publiceye/entry1431768.shtml In addition, former Vice President Al Gore has repeatedly referred to skeptics as "global warming deniers."

This increase in rhetorical flourish comes at a time when new climate science research continues to unravel the global warming alarmists’ computer model predictions of future climatic doom and vindicate skeptics.

60 Scientists Debunk Global Warming Fears

Earlier this year, a group of prominent scientists came forward to question the so-called “consensus” that the Earth faces a “climate emergency.” On April 6, 2006, 60 scientists wrote a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asserting that the science is deteriorating from underneath global warming alarmists.

“Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future…Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary,” the 60 scientists wrote. See: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605

“It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas,” the 60 scientists concluded.

In addition, an October 16, 2006 Washington Post article titled “Climate Change is Nothing New” echoed the sentiments of the 60 scientists as it detailed a new study of the earth’s climate history. The Washington Post article by reporter Christopher Lee noted that Indiana University geologist Simon Brassell found climate change occurred during the age of dinosaurs and quoted Brassell questioning the accuracy of computer climate model predictions.

“If there are big, inherent fluctuations in the system, as paleoclimate studies are showing, it could make determining the Earth’s climatic future even harder than it is,” Brassell said. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/15/AR2006101500672.html

Global Cooling on the Horizon?

In August, Khabibullo Abdusamatov, a scientist who heads the space research sector for the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun’s output. See: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060825/53143686.html

Sun’s Contribution to Warming

There have also been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new 2006 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun was responsible for up to 50% of 20th-century warming. See: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL027142.shtml

“Global Warming” Stopped in 1998

Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter has noted that there is indeed a problem with global warming – it stopped in 1998. “According to official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK, the global average temperature did not increase between 1998-2005. “…this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” noted paleoclimate researcher and geologist Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia in an April 2006 article titled “There is a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998.” See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html

“Global?" Warming Misnamed - Southern Hemisphere Not Warming

In addition, new NASA satellite tropospheric temperature data reveals that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years contrary to “global warming theory” and modeling. This new Southern Hemisphere data raises the specter that the use of the word “global” in “global warming” may not be accurate. A more apt moniker for the past 25 years may be “Northern Hemisphere” warming. See: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/09/southern-hemisphere-ignores-global.html

Alaska Cooling

According to data released on July 14, 2006 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the January through June Alaska statewide average temperature was “0.55F (0.30C) cooler than the 1971-2000 average.” See: http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/releases2006/jul06/noaa06-065.html

Oceans Cooling

Another bombshell to hit the global warming alarmists and their speculative climate modeling came in a September article in the Geophysical Research Letters which found that over 20% of the heat gained in the oceans since the mid-1950s was lost in just two years. The former climatologist for the state of Colorado, Roger Pielke, Sr., noted that the sudden cooling of the oceans “certainly indicates that the multi-decadal global climate models have serious issues with their ability to accurately simulate the response of the climate system to human- and natural-climate forcings.“ See: http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/09/

Light Hurricane Season & Early Winter

Despite predictions that 2006 would bring numerous tropical storms, 2006’s surprisingly light hurricane season and the record early start of this year’s winter in many parts of the U.S. have further put a damper on the constant doomsaying of the global warming alarmists and their media allies.

Droughts Less Frequent

Other new studies have debunked many of the dubious claims made by the global warming alarmists. For example, the claim that droughts would be more frequent, severe and wide ranging during global warming, has now being exposed as fallacious. A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters authored by Konstantinos Andreadis and Dennis Lettenmaier finds droughts in the U.S. becoming “shorter, less frequent and cover a small portion of the country over the last century.” http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/where-are-the-droughts

Global Warming Will Not Lead to Next Ice Age

Furthermore, recent research has shown that fears that global warming could lead to the next ice age, as promoted in the 2004 Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” are also unsupportable. A 2005 media hyped study “claimed to have found a 30 percent slowdown in the thermohaline circulation, the results are published in the very prestigious Nature magazine, and the story was carried breathlessly by the media in outlets around the world…Less than a year later, two different research teams present convincing evidence [ in Geophysical Research Letters ] that no slowdown is occurring whatsoever,” according to Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels, editor of the website World Climate Report. See: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/overturning-ocean-hype

‘Hockey Stick’ Broken in 2006

The “Hockey Stick” temperature graph’s claim that the 1990’s was the hottest decade of the last 1000 years was found to be unsupportable by the National Academy of Sciences and many independent experts in 2006. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257697

Study Shows Greenland’s Ice Growing

A 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N44/C1.jsp Also, according to the International Arctic Research Institute, despite all of the media hype, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today.

Polar Bears Not Going Extinct

Despite Time Magazine and the rest of the media’s unfounded hype, polar bears are not facing a crisis, according to biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut. “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,” Taylor wrote on May 1, 2006. See: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146433819696&call_pageid=970599119419

Media Darling James Hansen Hypes Alarmism

As all of this new data debunking climate alarmism mounts, the mainstream media chooses to ignore it and instead focus on the dire predictions of the number-one global warming media darling, NASA’s James Hansen. The increasingly alarmist Hansen is featured frequently in the media to bolster sky-is-falling climate scare reports. His recent claim that the Earth is nearing its hottest point in one million years has been challenged by many scientists. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N39/EDITB.jsp Hansen’s increasingly frightening climate predictions follow his 2003 concession that the use of “extreme scenarios” was an appropriate tactic to drive the public’s attention to the urgency of global warming. See: http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html Hansen also received a $250,000 grant form Teresa Heinz’s Foundation and then subsequently endorsed her husband John Kerry for President and worked closely with Al Gore to promote his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” See: http://www.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speechID=6 & http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/dai_complete.pdf

American People Rejecting Global Warming Alarmism

The global warming alarmists may have significantly overplayed their hand in the climate debate. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll this August found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of any recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe that climate change is due to natural variability has increased over 50% in the last five years.

Senator Inhofe Chastises Media For Unscientific & Unprincipled Climate Reporting

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, commented last week on the media’s unfounded global warming hype and some of the recent scientific research that is shattering the so-called “consensus” that human greenhouse gas emissions have doomed the planet.

“The American people are fed up with media for promoting the idea that former Vice President Al Gore represents the scientific ‘consensus’ that SUV’s and the modern American way of life have somehow created a ‘climate emergency’ that only United Nations bureaucrats and wealthy Hollywood liberals can solve. It is the publicity and grant seeking global warming alarmists and their advocates in the media who have finally realized that the only “emergency” confronting them is their rapidly crumbling credibility, audience and bottom line. The global warming alarmists know their science is speculative at best and their desperation grows each day as it becomes more and more obvious that many of the nations that ratified the woeful Kyoto Protocol are failing to comply,” Senator Inhofe said last week. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264616

“The mainstream media needs to follow the money: The further you get from scientists who conduct these alarmist global warming studies, and the further you get from the financial grants and the institutions that they serve the more the climate alarmism fades and the skepticism grows,” Senator Inhofe explained.

Eco-Doomsayers’ Failed Predictions

In a speech on the Senate floor on September 25, 2006, Senator Inhofe pointed out the abject failure of past predictions of ecological disaster made by environmental alarmists.

“The history of the modern environmental movement is chock-full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future. The more the eco-doomsayers’ predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict,” Senator Inhofe said on September 25th. See: http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759

Related Links:

For a comprehensive review of the media’s embarrassing 100-year history of alternating between promoting fears of a coming ice age and global warming, see Environment & Public Works Chairman James Inhofe’s September 25, 2006 Senate floor speech debunking the media and climate alarmism. Go to: (epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759)

To read and watch Senator Inhofe on CNN discuss global warming go to: (http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264308 )

To Read all of Senator Inhofe’s Speeches on global warming go to: (http://epw.senate.gov/speeches.cfm?party=rep)

“Inhofe Correct On Global Warming,” by David Deming geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (ocpathink.org), and an associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. (http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264537)

Profiling

2006-11-20T10:47:00.000+02:00

This is why we need Profiling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BitlXcKAyBw

O.J. Trials for Terrorists

2006-10-19T12:58:00.000+02:00

By Ann Coulter

The Democrats claim they want to treat terrorism as a criminal law problem, but when we give them an American citizen convicted of aiding terrorists -- as happened this week -- a Democrat judge gives her a slap on the wrist. Or he was going to give her a wrist slap until someone told him that wrist-slapping was banned under the Geneva Conventions, so he let the wrist off with a warning.

Last year, a New York jury found Lynne Stewart guilty of helping her former client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, communicate with his Egyptian-based group of murderous terrorists, appropriately known as "the Islamic Group."

The blind sheik needed to instruct his followers to abandon a truce and resume murdering innocents, but he couldn't get the message through because, by sheer coincidence, he was in prison for conspiring to murder innocents here in America by plotting the first World Trade Center bombing. So Stewart and a "translator" met with her former client in prison and took his messages for transmission to his followers in Egypt.

With the full constitutional protections Democrats want for terrorists in Guantanamo, Stewart was convicted by a New York jury last year.

This week, Judge John Koeltl -- appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994 -- spurned the prosecution's request for a 30-year sentence and gave Stewart 28 months for being a terrorist's mule. Now she'll clog up the criminal justice system with endless appeals for the next several years -- using procedures that liberals also want for Guantanamo detainees.

At Stewart's sentencing, the judge noted that the defendant's actions had not resulted in any deaths. I'll have to remember that in case I'm ever on trial for attempted murder. "Hey, your honor, did I mention that the guy lived? Yeah, the darn gun jammed on me. Go figure, huh?"

In rejecting a 30-year sentence in favor of a 28-month sentence, the judge commended Stewart for her "public service, not only to her clients, but to the nation" for representing members of the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground. In a sane world, that would have justified a longer sentence, not a shorter one.

If only Democrats could turn the entire war on terrorism over to the courts, they could release terrorists and terrorist sympathizers with wild abandon -- and Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton would never have to take a position.

When Americans are allowed to vote, a fireman's vote counts as much as George Soros' vote. But if liberals can just get terrorists into the judicial system, a Clinton-appointed judge can rule on a defense funded by George Soros -- precisely what happened in Stewart's case. Note that even in liberal New York City, average citizens on the jury voted to convict Stewart, despite her Soros-funded defense.

Democrats run apparently sane candidates for office, like James Webb in Virginia and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, who can puff up their chests and pretend they want to pursue terrorists -- while carping about any and all military action in the terrorists' general direction. Instead, let's turn terrorists over to courts full of Clinton and Carter judges! Democratic candidates get to look tough, and the terrorists go scot-free.

It would be frightening enough to treat terrorism as a criminal law problem if it were Republicans saying it. But these are Democrats. Their idea of a major criminal case is Tom DeLay's campaign treasurer accidentally depositing a campaign contribution into a checking account rather than a savings account.

By contrast, terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo for trying to kill Americans must be treated as innocent little lambs. Oh, to be there when Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman is exonerated due to previously unavailable "DNA evidence"!

After President Bush signed a law this week providing for military tribunals for terrorists being held at Guantanamo and prohibiting their torture, Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin said, "We will look back on this day as a stain on our nation's history." (Note to Democrats: It's still too soon to use "stain" as a metaphor for a White House brouhaha.)

Democrats stood outside the White House shouting "Torture is a crime!" and "Bush is the terrorist!" Yep, these are the people who claim they're going to keep us all safe, America. Everybody good with that?

Gen. George Washington tried Major John Andre, Benedict Arnold's British co-conspirator, by military tribunal and ordered Andre hanged within 10 days of his capture. Nazi saboteurs, including an American citizen, captured on U.S. soil during World War II were tried in secret by military commission and promptly executed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Nuremberg trials were a form of military tribunal.

But Democrats think military tribunals aren't good enough for the terrorists plotting to kill Americans today. Liberals are going to make the terrorists love us! What better way to start than with criminal trials in front of judges like John Koeltl?

Israel today in the news

2006-10-15T19:18:00.000+02:00

Dichter Set to Travel to America on Sunday

(IsraelNN.com) Public Security Minister Avi Dichter is set to travel to the United States on Sunday to participate in the International Police Commissioners' Organization convention.

The Boston event will be the senior minister’s first trip to the US since entering his cabinet post.

Neo Nazi Suspects in Cemetery Vandalism Arrested

(IsraelNN.com) Three suspects linked to the neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity were arrested in Tver in connection with the October 3 vandalism of Jewish and Muslim gravestones, according to an October 11 report posted on the Russian Jewish web site Antisemitizmu.net. The vandals defiled 105 Muslim and 68 Jewish gravestones.

They painted racist slogans and swastikas throughout the cemetery. The suspects were detained on October 10 and are facing charges of "desecrating places of burial." (Bigotry Monitor -- UCSJ's weekly newsletter)

MQG: Expedite Katzav Case

(IsraelNN.com) Movement for Quality Government (MQG) officials on Saturday called upon Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to act expeditiously in the case of President Moshe Katsav.

Organization officials are seeking a decision from Mazuz regarding a possible criminal indictment against the president, explaining “a heavy cloud is looming over the presidency,” as a result of the ongoing allegations against him.

MQG officials are also calling on the president to resign pending the outcome of proceedings against him.

Vehicle Discovered with Weapons Inside

Israeli soldiers during the night discovered a vehicle in the Salim area east of Shechem. A search of the vehicle turned up a makeshift gun, a knife, and ammunition. The three occupants of the vehicle were taken into custody.

Suleiman Meets Meshal in Damascus

(IsraelNN.com) Egyptian intelligence chief, General Omar Suleiman met in Damascus with Hamas politburo leader Khaled Meshal, seeking Hamas approval for a plan that would result in the release of prisoners held by Israel in exchange for Hamas’ release of abducted soldier Gilad Shalit.

Egypt continues playing a mediation role in the hope of obtaining Hamas’ agreement. To date, Meshal has vetoed all plans intended of leading to Corporal Shalit’s release.

IDF Cuts Off Beit Hanoun

(IsraelNN.com) IDF soldiers continue operating in northern Gaza in a stepped-up effort to bring a stop to Kassam rocket attacks into Israel. Soldiers isolated northern Gaza from other areas on Saturday night. PA (Palestinian Authority) sources report the Beit Hanoun area, used to launch most Kassam attacks, was cut off from all other areas of Gaza.

Reservists to Testify Before Knesset Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee

(IsraelNN.com) IDF reservists on Sunday will begin testifying before the Knesset Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee regarding the war in Lebanon.

The senior committee is beginning its probe of the government’s handling of the war, which includes hearing first-hand testimony from reservists who served in the war.

Dozens of officers and soldiers have indicated a willingness to give their testimony to the committee.

No Injuries in Saturday Night Rocket Attacks

(IsraelNN.com) No injuries were reported on Saturday night when Kassam rockets landed in Sderot.

The air force retaliated with an aerial assault, knocking out rocket launchers in northern Gaza.

Olmert: Iranian Threat Will Dominate Putin Meeting

(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated that the Iranian threat and recent developments in North Korea will be atop his agenda in his upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The prime minister released his statement to the media on Sunday morning, at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting.

Jerusalem Protest in Support of Ron Arad

(IsraelNN.com) Pilots who were in training with Ron Arad held a protest on Sunday morning in Jerusalem, outside the Prime Minister’s Office. The event was timed to coincide with the weekly cabinet meeting. Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the air force navigator being captured by Amal terrorists after his plane was shot down over Lebanon.

The protestors called on the prime minister and the government to bring Arad home – reminding the government to include him in any future prisoner-exchange agreement.

Also joining the air force personnel was retired Major-General Uzi Dayan, who warned the fate of the three recently-abducted soldiers, Eldad Regev, Ehud Goldwasser and Gilad Shalit may be similar to that of Ron Arad due to the government’s handling of affairs.

Peretz to Call for Voluntary Evacuation of Outposts

(IsraelNN.com) Defense Minister Amir Peretz stated he plans to meet with Yesha leaders regarding the possible voluntary evacuation of unauthorized outposts.

Addressing the outpost question during Sunday morning’s weekly cabinet meeting, Peretz stated that the issue of unauthorized outposts has fallen from the public spotlight due to the war in Lebanon, but the matter remains.

The senior minister hopes that meeting with Yesha leaders will lead to an understanding by which they will agree to voluntarily evacuate the outposts.

Olmert Warns an Iranian Nuclear Weapon Could Fall into Hizbullah Hands

(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told cabinet ministers during Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting that a nuclear weapon in Iranian hands would make its way to Hizbullah.

“Anyone taking the North Korea situation lightly will most likely find a nuclear weapon in Iran, and then al-Qaeda,” warned the prime minister.

Suspected Sabotage to Kedumim Sewage Line

(IsraelNN.com) Police are investigating what appears to be intentional sabotage to the sewage line of the community of Kedumim in Samaria.

Following up on complaints of problems from residents, police now believe that under the guise of being olive farmers, PA (Palestinian Authority) residents intentionally sabotaged the sewage line, creating community-wide problems.

Just last week, the army issued orders to officers stationed in Judea and Samaria not to interfere with the annual olive harvest, and to permit Arab farmers to approach Jewish communities, even to work on the perimeter of the communities to harvest their olive crop.

Livni: Kadima Must Sponsor Government Reform Bill
16:00 Oct 15, '06 / 23 Tishrei 5767

(IsraelNN.com) Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated her Kadima Party should push off Wednesday’s planned preliminary vote on the Yisrael Beitenu Party bill calling for a change in the form of government. Livni stated that Kadima must submit its own reform bill in place of the current bill sponsored by Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Lieberman.

Regarding Yisrael Beitenu’s inclusion in the ruling government coalition, Livni stated any party willing to accept the current coalition guidelines is welcome to join.

IDF Forces Arrest Fatah Terrorist in Shechem

(IsraelNN.com) IDF forces arrested a terrorist suspect in Shechem Sunday evening.

The terrorist was a member of Fatah, headed by Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas.

A pistol which was found in the possession of the terrorist was confiscated.

The suspect was transferred to the security forces for questioning.

Two Wounded North of Jerusalem

(IsraelNN.com) Two men working as security guards were wounded by gunfire in Atarot, north of Jerusalem.

The two were wounded from shrapnel and are listed in light condition.

The victims were transferred by MDA to Hadassa Ein Kerem hospital for treatment.

The police are investigating the circumstances of the incident.

Armed Terrorist Caught in Gush Etzion

(IsraelNN.com) A female terrorist was caught armed with a knife near the community of Bat Ayin in the Gush Etzion region, south of Jerusalem.

The woman confessed under interrogation that she intended to carry out a terrorist attack

The police are continuing their investigation.

Katzav to Open Knesset Session Monday

(IsraelNN.com) President Moshe Katzav has announced that he will attend the opening session of the Knesset Monday but that he will not speak.

Katzav is under increasing pressure to resign after the police recommended his
indictment for sexual harassment, illegal wire tapping, and irregularities in issuing governmental pardons.

Katzav has denied all wrongdoing and insists on his innocence.

Hamas Smuggling Anti-Aircraft Weapons into Gaza

(IsraelNN.com) The head of Military Intelligence's reseach brigade, Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz said Sunday that Hamas is smuggling anti-aircraft weapoms into the Gaza Strip.

Hamas plans to use the weapons against Israeli aircraft in future conflicts.

According to Baidatz the IDF will have to implement new tactics in order to counter the threat.

The threat of Hamas using weapons to bring down Israeli civilian aircraft flying out of Ben-Gurion International airport has been mentioned in the past as well.

Army slogan

2006-10-13T14:57:00.000+02:00

"ARMY STRONG"

Was "...developed by McCann Worldgroup, the communications firm the Army hired last December after struggling through its disappointing recruiting year. The overall five-year contract with McCann Worldgroup is valued at $1 billion (euro790 million), with the first two years guaranteed at $200 million (euro158.7 million) annually.

Geez, why don't they just quote Kipling?

"Back To the Army Again"

I'm 'ere in a ticky ulster an' a broken billycock 'at,
A-layin' on the sergeant I don't know a gun from a bat;
My shirt's doin' duty for jacket, my sock's stickin' out o' my boots,
An' I'm learnin' the damned old goose-step along o' the new recruits!

Back to Army again, sergeant,
Back to the Army again.
Don't look so 'ard, for I 'aven't no card,
I'm back to the Army again!

I done my six years' service. 'Er Majesty sez: "Good day --
You'll please to come when you're rung for, an' 'ere's your 'ole back-pay:
An' fourpence a day for baccy -- an' bloomin' gen'rous, too;
An' now you can make your fortune -- the same as your orf'cers do."

Back to the Army again, sergeant,
Back to the Army again.
'Ow did I learn to do right-about-turn?
I'm back to the Army again!

A man o' four-an'-twenty that 'asn't learned of a trade --
Beside "Reserve" agin' him -- 'e'd better be never made.
I tried my luck for a quarter, an' that was enough for me,
An' I thought of 'Er Majesty's barricks, an' I thought I'd go an' see.

Back to the Army again, sergeant,
Back to the Army again.
'Tisn't my fault if I dress when I 'alt --
I'm back to the Army again!

The sergeant arst no questions, but 'e winked the other eye,
'E sez to me, " 'Shun!" an' I shunted, the same as in days gone by;
For 'e saw the set o' my shoulders, an' I couldn't 'elp 'oldin' straight
When me an' the other rookies come under the barrik-gate.

Back to the Army again, sergeant,
Back to the Army again.
'Oo would ha' thought I could carry an' port?
I'm back to the Army again!

I took my bath, an' I wallered -- for, Gawd, I needed it so!
I smelt the smell o' the barricks, I 'eard the bugles go.
I 'eard the feet on the gravel -- the feet o' the men what drill --
An' I sez to my flutterin' 'eart-strings, I sez to 'em, "Peace, be still!"

Back to the Army again, sergeant,
Back to the Army again.
'Oo said I knew when the troopship was due?
I'm back to the Army again!

I carried my slops to the tailor; I sez to 'im, "None o' your lip!
You tight 'em over the shoulders, an' loose 'em over the 'ip,
For the set o' the tunic's 'orrid." An' 'e sez to me, "Strike me dead,
But I thought you was used to the business!" an' so 'e done what I said.

Back to the Army again, sergeant,
Back to the Army again.
Rather too free with my fancies? Wot -- me?
I'm back to the Army again!

Next week I'll 'ave 'em fitted; I'll buy me a swagger-cane;
They'll let me free o' the barricks to walk on the Hoe again,
In the name o' William Parsons, that used to be Edward Clay,
An' -- any pore beggar that wants it can draw my fourpence a day!

Back to the Army again, sergeant,
Back to the Army again.
Out o' the cold an' the rain, sergeant,
Out o' the cold an' the rain.

"Bridge-Guard in the Karroo"

". . . and will supply details to guard the Blood River Bridge."
District Orders-Lines of Communication, South African War.

Sudden the desert changes,
The raw glare softens and clings,
Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges
Stand up like the thrones of Kings --

Ramparts of slaughter and peril --
Blazing, amazing, aglow --
'Twixt the sky-line's belting beryl
And the wine-dark flats below.

Royal the pageant closes,
Lit by the last of the sun --
Opal and ash-of-roses,
Cinnamon, umber, and dun.

The twilight swallows the thicket,
The starlight reveals the ridge.
The whistle shrills to the picket --
We are changing guard on the bridge.

(Few, forgotten and lonely,
Where the empty metals shine --
No, not combatants-only
Details guarding the line.)

We slip through the broken panel
Of fence by the ganger's shed;
We drop to the waterless channel
And the lean track overhead;

We stumble on refuse of rations,
The beef and the biscuit-tins;
We take our appointed stations,
And the endless night begins.

We hear the Hottentot herders
As the sheep click past to the fold --
And the click of the restless girders
As the steel contracts in the cold --

Voices of jackals calling
And, loud in the hush between,
A morsel of dry earth falling
From the flanks of the scarred ravine.

And the solemn firmament marches,
And the hosts of heaven rise
Framed through the iron arches --
Banded and barred by the ties,

Till we feel the far track humming,
And we see her headlight plain,
And we gather and wait her coming --
The wonderful north-bound train.

(Few, forgotten and lonely,
Where the white car-windows shine --
No, not combatants-only
Details guarding the line.)

Quick, ere the gift escape us!
Out of the darkness we reach
For a handful of week-old papers
And a mouthful of human speech.

And the monstrous heaven rejoices,
And the earth allows again,
Meetings, greetings, and voices
Of women talking with men.

So we return to our places,
As out on the bridge she rolls;
And the darkness covers our faces,
And the darkness re-enters our souls.

More than a little lonely
Where the lessening tail-lights shine.
No - not combatants - only
Details guarding the line!

Arithmetic on the Frontier
A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe --
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villanous saltpetre!"
And after -- ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station --
A canter down some dark defile --
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail --
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares -- shoot straight who can --
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troopships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.

Have you ever read old British recruiting poems? No? They're very good. Much better than 'An army of One' or 'Army Strong.'

From Israel

2006-10-13T14:32:00.000+02:00

3 Dead, 7 Injured in IAF Strike in Gaza

(IsraelNN.com) An Air Force missile strike on the house of a Hamas commander in Gaza City left three dead and at least seven injured Thursday night, according to media sources.

The Hamas commander, Sharaf Farwana, survived the attack which killed his 25-year-old brother and an 8-year-old girl.

The IDF confirmed the strike.

Threats Against from PRC

The Popular Resistance Committees terror group warned Israel Thursday night against carrying out military operations in Gaza, warning that hostage corporal Gilad Shalit would never be reached by the IDF.

Abu Mujahed said no military operation, no matter how large-scale, would reach the Hamas captive "even if the IDF wiped out everyone living in the Gaza Strip," as quoted by the Jerusalem Post news service.

Sderot Mayor: Another War on the Way

Eli Moyal, the Mayor of Sderot said during a demonstration in Jerusalem thursday night that there will be another war soon(Yeah, Duh).

He told thousands of demonstrators in front of the Prime Minister's residence that he was afraid he would soon be “standing here once again with hundreds of bereaved families.” The demonstration was organized to pressure the government to establish an independent inquiry into the recent war in Lebanon and not to free terrorist prisoners in exchange for the soldiers whose abduction sparked the war.

Sderot was plunged into darkness on Thursday night after a Kassam rocket hit a power line in the city during an attack launched from northern Gaza. A woman and her daughter were sent to Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon to be treated for trauma following the attack.

Residents accuse the national government of indifference, failing to implement the necessary steps to halt the attacks from northern Gaza.

Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal was attending the rally at the PM's residence when the attack occurred. Moyal in his statements told the prime minister “we are not crybabies,” insisting Sderot residents are tough, but the government is compelled to do whatever necessary to bring a halt to the attacks.

Terrorists Fire at IDF Force in N. Gaza

(IsraelNN.com) Terrorists opened fire at an IDF force operating in northern Gaza. IDF soldiers are involved in ongoing efforts to bring a halt to the firing of Kassam rockets into southern pre-1967 Green Line Israel.

There are no reports of injuries to Israeli soldiers as a result of the shooting attack.

18 Arrested in Counter-Terror Operations

(IsraelNN.com) IDF soldiers involved in counter-terrorism operations throughout Judea and Samaria during the night arrested 18 suspects. Arrests were made in Ramallah and the Bet Lechem area. Suspects in custody include Hamas and Fatah Tanzim terrorists. There are no reports of injuries to IDF soldiers.

Armed Gunmen Hit in Gaza

(IsraelNN.com) IDF soldiers taking part in the southern Gaza counter-terror offensive, Operation Rain Man, fired at armed gunmen in the Khan Yunis area. Members of the force report hitting the terrorists.

Simchon Calling for Efforts to Bring UTJ into Coalition

(IsraelNN.com) Minister of Agriculture Shalom Simchon (Labor) is calling for talks to bring United Torah Judaism into the coalition government. Simchon is calling on his Labor colleagues to work towards bringing UTJ into the coalition as an alternative to Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beitenu Party. Speaking to Galei Tzahal (Army Radio), Simchon stated that if Labor objects to Lieberman, the party must offer the prime minister an alternative choice.

Hundreds of Arabs Throw Rocks at Soldiers

(IsraelNN.com) Hundreds of PA (Palestinian Authority) residents who are not permitted to enter pre-1967 Israel on Friday morning pelted soldiers with rocks at the Atarot Checkpoint in the northern capital. No injuries were reported.

15 Injured in Gaza

Reports from Gaza indicate 15 terrorists have been injured in rival fighting, a shootout between Hamas and Fatah terrorists. The two terror organizations continue fighting as they struggle for dominance on the PA streets.

PA: 3 Hamas terrorists killed in IAF air-to-surface missile attack in Beit Lahiya

(IsraelNN.com) PA (Palestinian Authority) sources are reporting three Hamas terrorists were killed on Friday morning in an Israel Air Force air-to-surface missile attack in the Beit Lahiya area of northern Gaza.

Military officials report the terrorists targeted were responsible for multiple Kassam rocket attacks on Thursday.

Tibi Demands PA Residents be Permitted into Jerusalem

(IsraelNN.com) Arab lawmaker MK Dr. Ahmed Tibi on Friday condemned Israel’s closure policy which prevents PA (Palestinian Authority) residents from entering pre-1967 Green Line Israel, making it impossible for them to attend Temple Mount Ramadan prayers.

Tibi stated the Israeli policy violates basic Freedom of Religion rights, stating thousands of worshipers are subjected to collective punishment, a violation of international law.

Gal-On Accuses Peretz of Ignoring the Law

(IsraelNN.com) MK (Meretz-Yahad) Zahava Gal-On on Friday accused Defense Minister Amir Peretz of ignoring the law, referring to his obligation to remove unauthorized outposts in Judea and Samaria.

Gal-On stated that Peretz is acting to advance his political interests rather than adhering to the law.

Today(From wikipedia)

2006-10-13T14:31:00.000+02:00

1282 - Nichiren Daishonin, founder of the Nichiren School of Buddhism, dies. His ashes are interred at Taisekiji Temple.
1307 - Hundreds of Knights Templar in France are simultaneously arrested by agents of Phillip the Fair, to be later tortured into "admitting" heresy.
1582 - Due to the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
1775 - The United States Continental Congress orders the establishment of the Continental Navy (later renamed the United States Navy).
1792 - In Washington, DC, the cornerstone of the United States Executive Mansion (known as the White House since 1818) is laid.
1812 - War of 1812: Battle of Queenston Heights - As part of the Niagara campaign in Ontario, Canada, United States forces under General Stephen Van Rensselaer are repulsed from invading Canada by British and native troops led by Sir Isaac Brock.
1843 - In New York City, Henry Jones and 11 others found B'nai B'rith (the oldest Jewish service organization in the world).
1845 - A majority of voters in the Republic of Texas approve a proposed constitution, that if accepted by the U.S. Congress, will make Texas a U.S. state.
1870 - The Kappa Kappa Gamma Fraternity is founded at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, by six pioneering women.
1890 - The Delta Chi Fraternity is founded by 11 law students at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
1917 - The "Miracle of the Sun" is witnessed by an estimated 70,000 persons in the Cova da Iria in Fatima, Portugal.
1918 - Mehmed Talat Pasha and the Young Turk (C.U.P.) ministry resign and sign an armistice, ending Ottoman participation in World War I
1923 - Ankara replaces Istanbul as the capital of Turkey.
1943 - World War II: The new government of Italy sides with the Allies and declares war on Germany.
1944 - World War II: Riga, the capital of Latvia is taken over by the Red Army
1946 - France adopts the constitution of the Fourth Republic.
1958 - Burial of Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII on the 41st anniversary of the "Miracle of the Sun".
1960 - 1960 World Series: Baseballer Bill Mazeroski becomes the first person to end a World Series with a home run.
1962 - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opens on Broadway.
1972 - An Aeroflot Ilyushin Il-62 crashed outside Moscow killing 176.
1972- Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashes in the Andes mountains, in between the borders of Argentina and Chile. By December 23, 1972 all 16 survivors were rescued.
1973 - The British progressive rock band Family perform their last concert at Leicester Polytechnic in Leicester, England, prior to their disbandment.
1976 - A Bolivian Boeing 707 cargo jet crashes in Santa Cruz, Bolivia killing 100 (97, mostly children, killed on the ground)
1976 - The first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle was obtained by Dr. F.A. Murphy, now at U.C. Davis, who was then working at the C.D.C..
1977 - Four Palestinians hijack Lufthansa Flight 181 to Somalia and demand release of 11 members of the Red Army Faction.
1983 - Ameritech Mobile Communications (now Cingular) launched the first US cellular network in Chicago.
1999 - The United States Senate rejects ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
2003 - The Public Library of Science commences publication of an open-access scientific journal, PLoS Biology.

Today in the News

2006-10-11T08:32:00.000+02:00

North Korea Now 9th Nuclear Power, Says Russia

(IsraelNN.com) North Korea has become the ninth nuclear power in the wake of its underground test of a nuclear device this week, said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Tuesday.

Ivanov added that the test constituted “a colossal blow to the non-proliferation regime.” The Russian official made his comments at a news conference in Moscow after the North Korean event, and said “North Korean de facto has become the ninth nuclear power.”

Gunfight in Gaza, No Injuries

PA Arabs in northern Gaza opened fire on IDF soldiers Tuesday evening, the soldiers returned fire. No injuries were reported in the attack; however, the vehicle the soldiers were riding in sustained damage.

Indian Probe Into Israeli Arms Deal

(IsraelNN.com) Police in India said Tuesday they were investigating charges that former Defense Minister George Fernandes and retired navy Chief Admiral Sushil Kumar overruled objections by a state-run defense agency to buy missiles from Israel.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said the two former Indian defense officials were pressured by others involved in the deal. The bribery case involves a multi-million dollar deal that was cut in the year 2000.

Firebomb Attack Without Injuries

An Israeli motorist was attacked with firebombs on the Hizme-Anatot Road on Jerusalem’s northern border. No injuries were reported.

19 Arrests in Counter-Terror Operations

(IsraelNN.com) IDF soldiers involved in counter-terror operations throughout Judea and Samaria during the night arrested 19 suspects.

Arrests were made in the Jenin, Kalkilya, Hevron and Ramallah districts. Suspects in custody include Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Fatah Tanzim terrorists. There were no reports of injuries among IDF soldiers.

Terrorist Killed While Placing a Bomb

IDF soldiers caught a terrorist placing a bomb in the al-Iyan area near Shechem; they fired at him, killing him.

Today(From wikipedia)

2006-10-11T08:28:00.000+02:00

1582 - Due to the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
1614 - Adriaen Block and 12 Amsterdam merchants petition the States General for exclusive trading rights in the New Netherland colony.
1776 - American Revolution: Battle of Valcour Island - On Lake Champlain 15 American gunboats are defeated but give Patriot forces enough time to prepare defenses of New York City.
1809 - Along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances at an inn called Grinder's Stand.
1811 - Inventor John Stevens' boat, the Juliana, begins operation as the first steam-powered ferry (service between New York, New York, and Hoboken, New Jersey).
1850 - The University of Sydney is established in Sydney, Australia, with a staff of three professors and 24 students as the nation's oldest university.
1862 - American Civil War: In the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart and his men loot Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, during a raid into the north.
1864 - Campina Grande , Brazil was established as a city.
1865 - Paul Bogle led hundreds of black men and women in a march in Jamaica, starting the Morant Bay rebellion.
1890 - In Washington, DC, the Daughters of the American Revolution is founded.
1899 - Second Boer War begins: In South Africa, a war between the United Kingdom and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State erupts.
1906 - San Francisco public school board sparks United States diplomatic crisis with Japan by ordering Japanese students to be taught in racially segregated schools.
1910 - Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane. He flew for four minutes in a plane built by the Wright Brothers at Kinloch aviation field, St. Louis, Missouri.
1929 - JC Penney opens store #1252 in Milford, Delaware, making it a nationwide company with stores in all 48 U.S. states.
1930 - Collingwood Football Club in Melbourne, Australia, won the premiership (football competition) for the fourth consecutive year.
1939 - Franklin D. Roosevelt receives letter from Einstein about atom bomb.
1942 - World War II: Battle of Cape Esperance - On the northwest coast of Guadalcanal, United States Navy ships intercept and defeat a Japanese fleet on their way to reinforce troops on the island.
1944 - Tuvinian People's Republic or formerly Tannu Tuva was annexed by the U.S.S.R
1950 - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission issues the first license to broadcast television in color, to CBS (RCA will successfully dispute and block the license from taking effect, however).
1954 - First Indochina War: The Viet Minh take control of North Vietnam.
1958 - Pioneer program: NASA launches the lunar probe Pioneer 1 (the probe falls back to Earth and burns up).
1962 - Second Vatican Council: Pope John XXIII convenes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years.
1967 - Afghan Prime Minister Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal resigns for health reasons
1968 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham aboard.
1975 - Saturday Night Live debuts with George Carlin as the guest host.
1982 - The Mary Rose, a Tudor gunship which sunk on July 18th 1545, is raised from the sea bed in the Solent Channel, near to Portsmouth.
1984 - Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.
1986 - Cold War: U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavík, Iceland, in an effort to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe.
1987 - March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights attracts an estimated 200,000 people to protest the Bowers v. Hardwick decision and the U.S. government's handling of the AIDS epidemic; first public display of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.
1998 - A Congo Airlines Boeing 727 is shot down by rebels in Kindu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing 40
1999 - The Lord of the Rings movies begin principal photography.
2000 - The 100th Space Shuttle mission (STS-92) is flown.
2001 - The Polaroid Corporation files for federal bankruptcy protection.
2002 - A bomb attack in a shopping mall in Vantaa, Finland kills seven.

Today, in Israeli news

2006-10-10T10:20:00.000+02:00

Terrorists Detected & Fired Upon in N. Gaza

(IsraelNN.com) Four terrorists detected while placing a bomb in northern Gaza on Monday night were fired upon by soldiers. The force reports the four were hit by the gunfire.

IDF Turns Over Minefield Maps to UN

(IsraelNN.com) IDF officials presented UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon with maps of minefields pertaining to mines placed between 1978 and 2000.

According to the Lebanese media report, the move was done in the framework of the UN-brokered ceasefire of this summer's war between Israel and Lebanese terrorists Hizbullah, Security Council Resolution 1701.

No Injuries in Samaria Shooting Attack

(IsraelNN.com) An Israeli motorist escaped injuries in a Monday night shooting attack in Samaria, between the communities of Eli and Rechalim.

Elsewhere in Samaria, motorists were targeted in firebomb and rock attacks near Ramallah. There were no injuries.

Islamic Jihad Terrorist in Custody

(IsraelNN.com) A wanted Islamic Jihad terrorist was apprehended by IDF soldiers on Monday night in Nur el-Shams, east of Tulkarem. He was turned over to security authorities for interrogation.

9 Arrested in Counter-Terror Operations

(IsraelNN.com) Nine PA (Palestinian Authority) residents and terrorists were taken into custody during the night in IDF counter-terror operations throughout Judea and Samaria. No injuries were reported among IDF soldiers.

Today. . .

2006-10-10T10:16:00.000+02:00

In 680 - Battle of Karbala: Shia Imam Husayn bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was decapitated by forces under Caliph Yazid I. This is commemorated by Shi'a Muslims as Aashurah.
In 732 - Battle of Tours: Near Poitiers, France, leader of the Franks, Charles Martel and his men, defeat a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslims from spreading into Western Europe. The governor of Cordoba, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, is killed during the battle.
In 1471 - Battle of Brunkeberg in Stockholm: Sten Sture the Elder, the Regent of Sweden, with help of farmers and miners, repels an attack by Christian I, King of Denmark.
In 1575 - Battle of Dormans: Catholic forces under Duke Henry of Guise defeated the Protestants, capturing Philippe de Mornay among others.
In 1582 - Due to the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
In 1631 - A Saxon army takes over Prague.
In 1780 - The Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000-30,000 in the Caribbean.
In 1845 - In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later renamed the United States Naval Academy) opens with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors.
In 1860 - The original cornerstone of the University of the South was laid in Sewanee, Tennessee.
In 1868 - Carlos Céspedes issued the Grito de Yara from his plantation, La Demajagua, proclaiming Cuba's independence.
In 1877 - Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer is given a funeral with full military honors.
In 1908 - Baseball Writers Association forms.
In 1910 - Tau Epsilon Phi Fraternity is established at Columbia University.
In 1911 - Wuchang Uprising which led to the demise of Qing Dynasty, the last Imperial court in China, and the founding of the Republic of China.
In 1911 - The KCR East Rail commenced service between Kowloon and Canton.
In 1913 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson triggered the explosion of the Gamboa Dike thus ending construction on the Panama Canal.
In 1920 - The Carinthian Plebiscite determined that the larger part of Carinthia became part of Austria.
In 1933 - A United Airlines Boeing 247 is destroyed by sabotage while en route from Cleveland, Ohio to Chicago, the first such proven case in the history of commercial aviation.
In 1935 - A tornado destroyed the 160 metre tall wooden radio tower in Langenberg. As a result of this catastrophe, few wooden towers were constructed after this date.
In 1938 - The Blue Water Bridge opens, connecting Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario
In 1938 - World War II: The Munich Agreement cedes the Sudetenland to Germany.
In1944 - Holocaust: 800 Gypsy children are systematically murdered at Auschwitz death camp.
In 1954 - The Communist Party of Honduras is founded.
In 1957 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologizes to the finance minister of Ghana, Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, after he was refused service in a Dover, Delaware restaurant.
In 1963 - France cedes control of the Bizerte naval base to Tunisia.
In 1964 - The 1964 Summer Olympics open in Tokyo, Japan
In 1966 - Simon and Garfunkel release the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.
In 1967 - The Outer Space Treaty, signed on January 27 by more than sixty nations, enters into force.
In 1970 - Fiji becomes independent.
In 1970 - In Montreal, Quebec, a national crisis hits Canada when Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte becomes the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.
In 1971 - Sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, the London Bridge reopens in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
In 1973 - Vice President of the United States Spiro Agnew resigns after being charged with federal income tax evasion.
In 1978 - US President Jimmy Carter signs a bill into law that authorizes the minting of the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
In 1979 - The Pac-Man arcade game is released to the Japanese market by Namco.
In 1985 - United States Navy F-14 fighter jets intercept an Egyptian plane carrying the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijackers and force it to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily where they are arrested.
In 1986 - An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter Scale strikes San Salvador, El Salvador, killing an estimated 1,500 people.
In 1987 - Fiji becomes a republic.
In 1995 - South African President Nelson Mandela attends Genadendal.
In 1997 - The NHL's Carolina Hurricanes win their first-ever regular season game by defeating the New Jersey Devils 2-1 in Greensboro, North Carolina.
In 1997 - An Austral Airlines DC-9-32 crashes and explodes near Nuevo Berlin, Uruguay, killing 74.

Today in history

2006-10-08T17:20:00.000+02:00

314 - Roman Emperor Licinius is defeated by his colleague Constantine I at the Battle of Cibalae, and loses his European territories.
451 - At Chalcedon, a city of Bithynia in Asia Minor, the first session of the Council of Chalcedon begins (ends on November 1).
1480 - Great standing on the Ugra river
1582 - Due to the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
1600 - San Marino adopts its written constitution.
1862 - American Civil War: Battle of Perryville - Union forces under General Don Carlos Buell halt the Confederate invasion of Kentucky by defeating troops led by General Braxton Bragg at Perryville, Kentucky.
1871 - Four major fires break out on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Peshtigo, Wisconsin, Holland, Michigan, and Manistee, Michigan. The Great Chicago Fire is the most famous of these, having left nearly 100,000 people homeless, although the Peshtigo Fire killed as many as 2,500 people making it the deadliest fire in United States history.
1888 - Melville Fuller is sworn in as the 8th Chief Justice of the United States.
1895 - Queen Min of Joseon, the last empress of Korea, is assassinated.
1912 - First Balkan War begins: Montenegro declares war against Turkey.
1918 - World War I - In the Argonne Forest in France, United States Corporal Alvin C. York almost single-handedly kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132.
1927 - In Game 4 of the 1927 Stanley Cup, Boston Bruins defenseman Billy Coutu starts a brawl, punching referee Jerry LaFlamme. As a result, Coutu becomes the first player to be suspended for life from the NHL.
1927 - Murderers' Row: the New York Yankees sweep the Pittsburgh Pirates to win the 1927 World Series in four games.
1928 - Joseph Szigeti debuted Alfredo Casella's Violin Concerto.
1932 - The Indian Air Force is established.
1939 - World War II: Germany annexes Western Poland.
1941 - World War II: In their invasion of the Soviet Union, Germany reaches the Sea of Azov with the capture of Mariupol.
1944 - The radio show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet debuts
1952 - A three-train disaster in London kills 112 people.
1956 - New York Yankees baseball pitcher Don Larsen pitches the first (and only) perfect game in World Series history in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series.
1957 - Baseball: Walter O'Malley announces that the Dodgers are going to move from Brooklyn, New York to Los Angeles, California
1962 - Spiegel scandal: Der Spiegel publishes the article "Bedingt abwehrbereit" ("Conditionally prepared for defense") about a NATO manoeuver called "Fallex 62", which uncovered the sorry state of the Bundeswehr (Germany's army) facing the communist threat from the east at the time. The magazine was soon accused of treason.
1967 - Guerrilla leader Che Guevara and his men are captured in Bolivia.
1968 - Vietnam War: Operation Sealords - United States and South Vietnamese forces launch a new operation in the Mekong Delta.
1970 - Vietnam War: In Paris, a Communist delegation rejects US President Richard Nixon's October 7 peace proposal as "a maneuver to deceive world opinion."
1978 - Australia's Ken Warby sets the current world water speed record of 317.60mph at Blowering Dam, Australia.
1982 - Poland bans Solidarity.
1990 - Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: In Jerusalem, Israeli police kill 17 Palestinians and wound over 100 near the Dome of the Rock mosque on the Temple Mount
1991 - The Croatian Parliament cuts all remaining ties with Yugoslavia
1998 - Oslo Airport Gardermoen, Norway opens.
1999 - New Coligny Calendar, NCC, The beginning of a new era of the Colignay Calendar, the oldest material Celtic calendar.
2001 - A twin engine Cessna and Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) jetliner collide in heavy fog during takeoff from Milan, Italy killing 118.
2001 - U.S. President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security, which will be headed by Tom Ridge.
2003 - Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark's engagement to Australian lawyer Mary Donaldson is announced
2004 - Martha Stewart goes to jail.
2004 - Schapelle Corby is arrested for drug smuggling in Bali.
2005 - The Kashmir earthquake hits parts of northern South Asia at 03:50 UTC.

An Interesting thing

2006-10-04T08:54:00.000+02:00

Army takes delivery of Cannon firing platform for FCS Manned Ground Vehicles Printer-friendly version E-mail this article E-mail Alerts RSS Feed WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Sept. 29, 2006) – The Army today took delivery of the firing platform for a new cannon artillery system that will reduce battlefield risk to Soldiers, while meeting an essential Army modernization requirement.
The firing platform was unveiled at BAE Systems’ Land and Armaments division in Minneapolis and will be transferred this month to Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona for field testing. The firing platform is part of the Army’s new Future Combat Systems Non-Line-of-Sight-Cannon artillery system.

“The Army’s future force is fast becoming a reality today,” said Maj. Gen. Charles Cartwright, Future Combat Systems program manager. “This latest piece of hardware is tangible proof that FCS technologies are maturing on schedule, in accordance with Army plans and expectations. The true beneficiaries of these new capabilities will be our Soldiers.”

Future Combat Systems is the Army’s primary modernization program, and is the Army’s first major modernization in almost four decades. Future Combat Systems will provide Soldiers with near real-time situational awareness by using an advanced electronic network to integrate 18 new manned and unmanned air and ground systems. Future Combat Systems will increase the ability of Soldiers to handle the variety of missions they face every day, provide greater protection, and increase combat capabilities throughout the operational force.

Soldiers are already testing and fielding components of Future Combat Systems right now in Iraq and Afghanistan; and next year, Soldiers of the Evaluation Brigade Combat Team will begin testing FCS technologies and tactics at Fort Bliss, Texas. The plan calls for 15 Brigade Combat Teams with the full suite of Future Combat Systems; and all other Brigade Combat Teams having some Future Combat Systems capabilities.

The Non-Line-of-Sight-Cannon will give the Army a key capability that it currently lacks: a cannon artillery system that is fully automated, highly mobile, and capable of launching multiple rounds precisely on target simultaneously. Moreover, unlike the Army’s current artillery systems, the Non-Line-of-Sight-Cannon will be fully integrated into an advanced electronic network shared by Soldiers on the battlefield. This will make the Non-Line-of-Sight-Cannon much more responsive to Soldier mission requirements.

The Non-Line-of-Sight-Cannon also will help to minimize Soldier risk; because it will be much more mobile and deployable than the Army’s current-day artillery systems, which employ 1960s-era design technology. Reducing risk is a huge dividend of Future Combat Systems technology overall. Providing Soldiers with near real time situational awareness before they encounter potentially risky or deadly situations will save Soldiers lives. An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle will identify for Soldiers if there’s a sniper in the next alleyway or cavern. An Unmanned Ground Vehicle will help to dispose of an IED or roadside bomb.

The firing platform unveiled today will lead to delivery of early Non-Line-of-Sight-Cannon prototypes in 2008. The early prototype Non-Line-of-Sight-Cannon is the first of eight Future Combat Systems Manned Ground Vehicles.

The Future Combat Systems Manned Ground Vehicles will have 75-80 percent commonality stemming from a common chassis and other common components. These common components include a lightweight band track and a hybrid-electric propulsion system, which maximizes power and fuel efficiency. The Manned Ground Vehicles will be at least as survivable as current Army vehicles and, in most likely operational scenarios, considerably more survivable and capable than anything now in the Army’s inventory.

The Army already has fired more than 2,000 rounds from the Non-Line-of-Sight-Cannon System Demonstrator at Yuma. The firing platform unveiled today includes a cannon assembly that is 1,200 pounds lighter than the M777 cannon used on the Non-Line-of-Sight-Cannon Concept Technology Demonstrator.

“Technological advances are enabling our Army to achieve greater capabilities with less mass and weight,” Cartwright said. “Future Combat Systems is about making our Army more agile and more strategically deployable, while increasing lethality, survivability and tactical mobility. The Non-Line-of-Sight-Cannon is an integral part of our Army modernization efforts.”

MK Taha Questioned by Police Following Unauthorized Travel to Syria

2006-09-21T15:38:00.000+03:00

(IsraelNN.com) MK (National Democratic Assembly) Wasil Taha was questioned by police in connection to his recent unauthorized visit to Syria, a hostile nation that does not maintain diplomatic ties with Israel.

Upon making his way to the police facility, Taha told reporters that Israel is wasting a resource and would do better capitalizing on the connection he and other Arab MKs enjoy with Syria.

American Jewry Protests Global Jihad Outside UN

2006-09-21T15:29:00.000+03:00

by Ezra HaLevi

A large number of protestors gathered opposite the United Nations building in New York City Wednesday afternoon to protest Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and demand the release of Israel's captives.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, US Ambassador John Bolton, New York State Governor George Pataki, Holocaust survivor and author Eli Wiesel and human rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz, among others, addressed the crowd, which stretched down the streets and avenues surrounding the plaza opposite the United Nations.

Also attending the rally and issue emotional pleas for the release of their captive family members were Carmit Goldwasser, wife of IDF soldier Ehud Goldwasser, and Benny Regev, brother of Eldad Regev – both being held by Hizbullah.

"People are coming from as far away as California," Conference of Presidents Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein told Arutz-7 an hour before the rally began. "The plaza is already filled with Jews, Christians, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics – an unbelievable rainbow of the American people."

Hoenlein doubted that any of the rally's speakers would issue calls for an attack on Iran in order to prevent the Islamic republic from attaining nuclear capability, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised the UN it would continue to pursue, Tuesday.

"The purpose of the rally is to show solidarity with Israel and to demand the release of the MIAs," Hoenlein said. "Leaders of the world meeting across the street will have a hard time not hearing our message and Ahmadinejad will know that his threats to wipe out Israel are unacceptable. The US is obligated to let him into the country, but we are obligated to let him know what we think."

More than 140 buses were on their way to the rally, organizers said, adding that many more people were flying in from across the country for the event.

The rally enjoys one of the widest array of organization support in decades. Jewish organizations from Meretz to Americans For a Safe Israel have lent their support and the Council of Torah Sages of the Hareidi-religious Agudah movement have made the decision to support the protest as well, calling upon members of the movement to attend.

In honor of the upcoming Rosh HaShana holiday marking the Jewish new year, hundreds of shofrot, ram's horns, were blown in unison during the protest.

The shofar has traditionally been blown both at times of trouble, to encourage the Jewish people to mend their ways, and during wartime, to rally the troops, demoralize the enemies of Israel and to signal Divine assistance for the Jewish nation.

news Briefs

2006-09-20T09:19:00.000+03:00

(IsraelNN.com) Following a coup led by the military in Bangkok, Army Chief of Staff Sonthi Boonyaratglin appeared on Thai TV to explain his actions.

As a result, Israel Foreign Ministry officials are advising citizens to remain indoors and avoid the streets as much as possible.

(IsraelNN.com) The United Nations has approved sending 360 troops from Malaysia to Lebanon, to join the international stabilization force responsible for enforcing the ceasefire.

Malaysian officials’ report they offered to send 1,000 troops, but to date, the UN has decided on 360.

(IsraelNN.com) During joint southern command and air force operations in Gaza during the night, the air force bombed a building in the Dahaniyeh area of Gaza used to host the entrance to a weapons smuggling tunnel.

Military officials add the operation was launched following accurate intelligence information, first warning the residents of the building to evacuate ahead of the attack.

(IsraelNN.com) IDF soldiers involved in counter-terror operations during the night arrested three terrorists. Arrests were made in Jenin and Hevron.

Suspects in custody include Islamic Jihad terrorists. Soldiers were attacked with an explosive device while operating in Jenin. No injuries were reported.

(IsraelNN.com) Following a meeting between Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, State Prosecutor Eran Shendar and other legal officials, Mazuz has instructed Israel Police investigators to complete all the investigations against the president.

Sources close to the case are signaling that police have amassed sufficient evidence in a number of the investigations to file criminal charges of varying degrees of sexual assault on a number of women by the president.

It now appears that Mr. Katsav will be compelled to step down, with criminal indictments against him appearing increasingly likely.

TIME: U.S. May be Preparing For War Against Iran

2006-09-18T10:37:00.000+03:00

(IsraelNN.com) The United States might be preparing for war against Iran, according to the current issue of TIME magazine. It reported that the American Navy recently ordered a submarine and minesweepers to prepare to deploy, and it is likely the intention was to prepare to blockade the Persian Gulf where Iranian oil tankers must pass.

"From the State Department to the White House to the highest reaches of the military command, there is a growing sense that a showdown with Iran--over its suspected quest for nuclear weapons, its threats against Israel and its bid for dominance of the world's richest oil region--may be impossible to avoid.," according to the magazine report.

It noted that American worries over Iran increased dramatically following the Iranian-backed Hizbullah terrorist war against Israel this summer.

Any American attack on Iran would be from the air and not from the ground, TIME said. American strategists estimate that Iran's first reaction would be to attack Israel.

LOL

2006-09-18T10:35:00.000+03:00

(IsraelNN.com) Lebanese Cabinet ministers have criticized German Chancellor Angela Markel for stating that German troops in the UNIFIL force will help protect Israel. Energy and Water Minister Mohamed Fneish said her statement violates the United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolution. Information Minister Ghazi Aridi stated that UNIFIL does not have a mandate to protect Israel.

Lebanese Cabinet members also have taken issue with the United Nations for wanting to land weapons for UNIFIL at the Beirut airport without previous approval, according to the Lebanon Daily Star. Aridi said the landings are not within the framework of the U.N. resolution.

Sorry for the late post, I figured I'm gonna do something while it's still today

2006-09-18T00:06:00.000+03:00

1176 - The Battle of Myriokephalon is fought.
1394 - King Charles VI of France orders all Jews expelled from France.
1462 - The Battle of Świecino (or Battle of Żarnowiec) is fought during Thirteen Years' War.
1577 - Peace of Bergerac signed between Henry III of France and the Huguenots.
1630 - The city of Boston, Massachusetts, is founded.
1776 - The Presidio of San Francisco is founded in New Spain.
1778 - Treaty of Fort Pitt signed, the first formal treaty between the United States and a Native American tribe (the Lenape or Delaware).
1787 - The United States Constitution is signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1809 - Peace between Sweden and Russia in the Finnish War. The territory to become Finland is ceded to Russia by the Treaty of Fredrikshamn.
1859 - Joshua A. Norton declares himself Emperor Norton I of the United States.
1862 - American Civil War: George McClellan halts the northward drive of Robert E. Lee's Confederate army in the single-day Battle of Antietam, the single bloodiest day of the war, and in American history. Over 23,000 Casualties in under twelve hours of combat marks this as a day as a prime example supreme savagery and brutality in warfare.
1894 - Battle of Yalu River, the largest naval engagement of the First Sino-Japanese War.
1900 - Philippine-American War: Filipinos under Juan Cailles defeat Americans under Colonel Benjamin F. Cheatham at Mabitac.
1908 - The Wright Flyer flown by Orville Wright, with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as passenger, crashes; killing Selfridge. He becomes the first airplane fatality.
1914 - Andrew Fisher becomes Prime Minister of Australia for the third time.
1916 - World War I: Manfred von Richthofen ("The Red Baron"), a flying ace of the German Luftstreitkräfte, won his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France.
1920 - National Football League is organized in Canton, Ohio, United States.
1924 - The Border Defence Corps was established in the Second Polish Republic for the defence of the eastern border against armed Soviet raids and local bandits.
1928 - The Okeechobee Hurricane strikes southeastern Florida, killing upwards of 2,500 people. It is the third deadliest natural disaster in US history, behind the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
1939 - The Soviet Union joined Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland during the Polish Defensive War of 1939.
1943 - Russian city of Bryansk liberated from Nazis.
1944 - Allied Airborne troops parachute into Holland as the "Market" half of Operation Market Garden.
1947 - James V. Forrestal was sworn in as the first Secretary of Defense of United States.
1948 - Lehi (also know as the Stern gang) assassinates Count Folke Bernadotte, who was appointed by the UN to mediate between the Arabs and Jews.
1949 - The Canadian steamship SS Noronic burns in Toronto Harbor with the loss of over 118 lives.
1951 - Robert A. Lovett was sworn in as the 4th Secretary of Defense of United States.
1956 - Television was first broadcast in Australia.
1961 - The Minnesota Vikings play their first NFL game, defeating the Chicago Bears 37-13, with Fran Tarkenton throwing 4 touchdowns and running for 1 touchdown.
1967 - Jim Morrison and The Doors defy CBS censors on The Ed Sullivan Show. Morrison sang the lyrics, "Girl, we couldn't get much higher" from the song, Light My Fire when asked not to.
1970 - Fighting breaks out along the Syrio-Jordanian border between Jordanian troops and the fedayeen.
1972 - The first episode of M*A*S*H premieres on CBS.
1976 - The first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, was unveiled by NASA. In keeping with its namesake, the cast of Star Trek came to see Enterprise's unveiling.
1978 - The Camp David Accords were signed by Israel and Egypt.
1983 - Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America.
1984 - Brian Mulroney is sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada.
1984 - Baseball: Reggie Jackson becomes the 13th member of the 500 home run club with a home run at Anaheim Stadium in Anaheim, California.
1988 - Opening ceremony of the Games of the XXIV Olympiad in Seoul, South Korea.
1988 - Reliever Jeff Reardon of the Minnesota Twins picks up his 40th save of the season by pitching the ninth inning of a 3-1 win over the Chicago White Sox, becoming the first pitcher to save 40 games in both the American League and the National League. Reardon had previously saved 41 games while pitching with the Montreal Expos in 1985.
1991 - North Korea, South Korea, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia join the United Nations.
1991 - The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) is released to the Internet.
2001 - The Late Show with David Letterman is the first TV talk show to return to the airwaves six days after terrorists attack the United States in New York City and Washington D.C.
2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average opens for the first time after the September 11 attacks. The stocks plummet throughout the trading session and posts its biggest point drop in its history closing down 684.81 points to 8920.70.
2004 - Tamil is declared first classical language in India.
2006 - The WB Television Network goes off-the-air after eleven and a half years. The CW Television Network launches the following day.

Today, in Israeli news

2006-09-15T14:16:00.001+03:00

A motorist was lightly injured in a rock-throwing attack near Hirbat a-Dir in the Bethlehem district a short time ago.

Two Nes Tziona residents in their 50s sustained light injuries when their light plane crashed near Merkaz Sapir in the Aravah. Police report the accident is under investigation. Civil Air Administration authorities have been notified.

Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja expressed support for the now-forming PA (Palestinian Authority) coalition government between Hamas and Fatah.
The senior Finnish official stated that the establishment of such a government “creates a new reality and we must capitalize on the opportunity.”
Finland holds the rotating presidency of the European Union (EU).

Labor Party leader Defense Minister Amir Peretz met on Friday with party ministers to discuss Labor’s future in the coalition.
This week, the cabinet voted in favor of the 2007 state budget. All the Labor ministers raised their hands in favor of the budget with the exception of Peretz, who opted to abstain.
Following the move, Peretz came under fire from his colleagues, who disapproved of his actions.

47 victims of the war in Lebanon remain hospitalized, officials reported on Thursday night. Among the wounded are 2 victims listed in serious condition, 13 moderate and 12 light.
Victims are recuperating in a number of hospitals, including Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Sheba Medical Center and Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikvah and Nahariya Hospital.

Todat, in Israeli news

2006-09-15T14:16:00.000+03:00

Not quite my normal fair, but I found this and wanted to share it

2006-09-15T14:14:00.000+03:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6755839917595577635

Second Lebanon War IDF Commander Udi Adam Resigns

2006-09-13T11:34:00.000+03:00

by Yechiel Spira and Ezra HaLevi

Two top IDF generals are resigning. Northern District Commander Udi Adam handed in his resignation Wednesday and Central District Commander Yair Naveh sent his Monday.

Maj.-Gen. Adam is quoted telling his close colleagues that “my conscience in clear,” regarding the war in Lebanon, and his decision is prompted by strained relations with the military’s senior command, including Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz.

During the war, Halutz announced that he had total confidence in Adam and his professional abilities, but nevertheless, decided to appoint Deputy Chief of Staff Moshe Kaplinsky to ‘oversee’ operations in the Northern Command - specifically IDF troops operating in Lebanon.

At the time, all analysts were in agreement, that the move, while not unprecedented, was a ‘slap in the face’ to the senior commander, who has been in the IDF some 30 years. Adam told reporters during the war that while he “has a lot to say, much to get off his chest,” circumstances did not permit that he comment on the events.

Adam recently told associates that he welcomes any inquiry into the war, confident that “the truth will come out,” adding the public will learn what really occurred. Adam seems to welcome an inquiry, stating the deficiencies will be seen by all and the true events will be known.

Strained relations were reported on day one of the war, 12 July, when Adam refused Halutz’s directive to remove Galilee Forces Chief Brigadier-General Gal Hirsch, threatening to quit if Hirsch was dismissed from his post. The situation between the two only deteriorated since.

Some speculate that Adam was being set up by the Chief of Staff and Defense Minister Amir Peretz to take the blame for the confusing orders and equivocation at the war's beginning.

During recent weeks, Adam has held intimate talks with his closest allies, expressing his most inner feelings and thoughts. He has also been making a point to distance himself from the media and it remains to be seen exactly how much the senior commander plans to reveal to the press in the future, as a civilian.

Yair Naveh to Resign
Adam's resignation comes just two days after a letter was delivered to the Chief of Staff regarding the resignation of Cental District Commander Yair Naveh. Rumors have circulated as to the reason’s for Naveh’s resignation, but until now no official explanation has been offered.

During his career as IDF commander of the central region, Naveh oversaw the destruction of four communities in Samaria, as part of Ariel Sharon’s Disengagement Plan.

Naveh, an outwardly religious kippa-wearing Jew, also commanded troops at the hilltop community of Amona, during which hundreds of protestors, including minors, were hospitalized. In addition, the administrative detention orders handed out in Judea and Samaria, jailing Jewish activists without trial, have all been issued by Naveh.

Analysts predict that following his retirement at the year's end, Naveh will have something to say regarding the war in Lebanon, disappointed that the General Staff reportedly failed to consult with him during the war.

An Interesting Statistic

2006-09-13T11:31:00.000+03:00

Consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq
theatre of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths.

That gives a firearms death rate of 60 per 100,000.

The firearms death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 for
the same period.

That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the
U.S.Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the
nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: The U.S. should immediately pull out of Washington.

Today(From wikipedia)

2006-09-13T11:29:00.000+03:00

509 BC - The temple of Jupiter on Rome's Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September.
122 - The building of Hadrian's Wall begins.
533 - General Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeats Gelimer and the Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimium, near Carthage, North Africa.
604 - Pope Sabinian is consecrated.
1440 - Gilles de Rais is taken into custody upon an accusation brought against him by the Bishop of Nantes.
1503 - Michelangelo begins work on his David.
1609 - Henry Hudson reaches the river that will later be named after him - the Hudson River.
1743 - Great Britain, Austria and Savoy-Sardinia sign the Treaty of Worms (1743).
1759 - Battle of the Plains of Abraham: British defeat French near Quebec City in the Seven Years' War, known in the United States as the French and Indian War
1788 - The United States Constitutional Convention sets the date for the country's first presidential election, and New York City becomes the temporary capital of the U.S.
1791 - King Louis XVI of France accepts the new constitution
1813 - The British fail to capture Baltimore, Maryland. Turning point in the War of 1812.
1847 - Mexican-American War: Six teenage military cadets known as Niños Héroes die defending Chapultepec Castle in the Battle of Chapultepec. American General Winfield Scott captures Mexico City in the Mexican-American War.
1862 - Union soldiers find Robert E. Lee's battle plans in a field outside Frederick, Maryland. It is the prelude to the Battle of Antietam.
1882 - The important Battle of Tall al Kabir is fought in the Anglo-Egyptian War.
1898 - Hannibal Williston Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film
1899 - Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident.
1900 - Filipino resistance fighters defeat a larger American column in the Battle of Pulang Lupa, during the Philippine-American War.
1906 - First fixed-wing aircraft flight in Europe
1914 - During World War I, South African troops open hostilities in German south-west Africa (Namibia) with an assault on the Ramansdrift police station.
1922 - The temperature (in the shade) at Al 'Aziziyah, Libya reaches a world record 136.4 °F (58 °C).
1923 - Military coup in Spain - Miguel Primo de Rivera takes over, setting up a dictatorship.
1935 - Rockslide near Whirlpool Rapids Bridge ends the Great Gorge and International Railway.
1939 - Canada enters World War II.
1940 - German bombs damage Buckingham Palace.
1940 - Italy invades Egypt.
1943 - Chiang Kai-shek elected president of the Republic of China.
1948 - Margaret Chase Smith is elected senator, and becomes the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
1953 - Nikita Khrushchev appointed secretary-general of the Soviet Union.
1956 - The dike around the Dutch polder East Flevoland is closed.
1965 - Baseball: Willie Mays becomes the fifth member of the 500 home run club with a home run at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas.
1968 - Albania leaves the Warsaw Pact.
1971 - State police and National Guardsmen storm New York's Attica Prison to end a prison revolt. 42 people die in the assault.
1979 - South Africa grants independence to the "homeland" of Venda (not recognized outside South Africa).
1985 - Nintendo releases its smash-hit Super Mario Bros.
1987 - Goiânia accident: A radioactive object is stolen from an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, Brazil, contaminating many people in the following weeks and leading some to die from radiation poisoning.
1988 - Hurricane Gilbert is the strongest recorded hurricane in the Western Hemisphere (based on barometric pressure).
1989 - Largest anti-Apartheid march in South Africa, led by Desmond Tutu.
1993 - Public unveiling of the Oslo Accords, an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement initiated by Norway.
1994 - Ulysses probe passes the Sun's south pole.
1996 - Tupac Shakur dies six days after being shot in Las Vegas.
1999 - Bomb explodes in Moscow, Russia. At least 119 people are killed.
2001 - Civilian aircraft traffic in the U.S., which had been grounded following the September 11, 2001 attacks, is allowed to resume.
2001 - World Wrestling Entertainment's SmackDown!, broadcasting live from Houston, Texas, becomes the first major sports event to take place following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

MoveOn.org: a bunch of the most brilliant stupid people I have ever heard of

2006-09-11T18:01:00.000+03:00

I was randomly googling when I came across this classic piece of brilliance: 150,000 American Men and Women, stuck in Iraq, in British pants

https://political.moveon.org/donate/thanksgiving.html

Brilliant.

Fitting, I thought

2006-09-11T11:03:00.000+03:00

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good,
When the English began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy-willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the English began to hate.

Their voices were even and low,
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show,
When the English began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd,
It was not taught by the State.
No man spoke it aloud,
When the English began to hate.

It was not suddenly bred,
It will not swiftly abate,
Through the chill years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the English began to hate.

What's At Stake

2006-09-11T09:40:00.000+03:00

It is hard to believe, let alone understand, but five years after September 11, there are still too many people who just don't get it.

Israel and the West are under assault. Our values, our beliefs, our entire way of life are at stake. Everything we hold dear – faith, family, country – must be defended.

These aren't just some melodramatic words or a bit of empty posturing – they are cold, hard facts. And as difficult as they may be for many of us to accept, accept them we must, because the alternative is extinction.

Today, and for many days to come, I'm afraid, you'll see plenty of opinion pieces and newspaper articles pointing the finger of blame not at the bad guys who perpetrate the violence, but at those who seek to defend themselves and the rest of us from harm.

I suppose I could write more, but I feel it wouldn't be appropriate to say any more than,

To all you people in the twin towers? Victims of terrorism and murder,

Rest in Peace.

Today in history

2006-09-08T11:19:00.000+03:00

70 - Titus, General of Rome, sacks Jerusalem. See also: Destruction of Jerusalem.
1331 - Stefan Dusan declares himself king of Serbia
1380 - Battle of Kulikovo - Russian forces defeat a mixed army of Tatars and Mongols, stopping their advance.
1514 - Battle of Orsha - In one of the biggest battles of the century, Belarussians and Poles defeat the Russian army.
1565 - Pedro Menéndez de Avilés settles St. Augustine, Florida.
1565 - The Knights of Malta lift the Turkish siege of Malta (the Siege of Malta started on May 18).
1636 - A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes the first college in what would become the United States, today known as Harvard University.
1664 - The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was surrendered to the British who renamed it New York in 1669.
1755 - French and Indian War: Battle of Lake George
1796 - Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Bassano - French forces defeat Austrian troops at Bassano.
1810 - The Tonquin sets sail from New York Harbor with 33 employees of John Jacob Astor's newly created Pacific Fur Company on board. After a six-month journey around the tip of South America, the ship arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River and Astor's men established fur-trading town of Astoria, Oregon.
1831 - William IV was crowned King of Great Britain.
1863 - American Civil War: Second Battle of Sabine Pass - On the Texas-Louisiana border at the mouth of the Sabine River, a small Confederate force thwarts a Union invasion of Texas.
1888 - In England the first six Football League matches ever are played.
1900 - Galveston Hurricane of 1900: a powerful hurricane hits Galveston, Texas killing about 8,000 people.
1921 - 16-year-old Margaret Gorman won the Atlantic City Pageant's Golden Mermaid trophy; pageant officials later dubbed her the first Miss America.
1923 - Honda Point Disaster: Nine US Navy destroyers run aground off the California coast. Seven are lost.
1926 - Germany was admitted to the League of Nations.
1930 - 3M begins marketing Scotch transparent tape.
1934 - Off the New Jersey coast, a fire aboard the passenger liner SS Morro Castle kills 135 people.
1935 - US Senator from Louisiana, Huey Long, nicknamed "Kingfish", is fatally shot in the Louisiana capitol building.
1941 - World War II: Siege of Leningrad begins. German forces begin a siege against the Soviet Union's second-largest city, Leningrad. Stalin orders the Volga Deutsche deported to Siberia.
1943 - World War II: The O.B.S. (German General Headquarters for the Mediterranean zone) in Frascati was bombing by USAAF.
1943 - World War II: United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower publicly announces the Allied armistice with Italy.
1943 - World War II: Julius Fucik is executed by Nazis.
1944 - World War II: London is hit by a V2 rocket for the first time.
1944 - World War II: Menton is liberated from Germany.
1945 - Cold War: United States troops arrive to partition the southern part of Korea in response to Soviet troops occupying the northern part of the peninsula a month earlier.
1951 - Treaty of San Francisco: In San Francisco, California, 48 nations sign a peace treaty with Japan in formal recognition of the end of the Pacific War.
1954 - The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) is established.
1960 - In Huntsville, Alabama, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA had already activated the facility on July 1).
1962 - Newly independent, Algeria, by referendum, adopts a Constitution.
1966 - "The Man Trap", the first episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek airs.
1971 - In Washington, DC, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is inaugurated, with the opening feature being the premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass.
1974 - Watergate Scandal: US President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office.
1974 - Evel Knievel's attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon at Twin Falls, Idaho, fails after a parachute prematurely deploys on his "sky cycle."
1975 - Gays in the military: US Air Force Tech Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, appears in his Air Force uniform on the cover of Time magazine with the headline (printed in all uppercase) "I Am A Homosexual." He is later given a general discharge.
1991 - Republic of Macedonia becomes independent.
1994 - A Boeing 737 operating USAir Flight 427 carrying 132 people on board, crashes on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport. There are no survivors.
1998 - At Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri, Mark McGwire breaks Roger Maris' 1961 record of 61 home runs hit in a single season.
1999 - US Attorney General Janet Reno names former US Senator John Danforth to head an independent investigation of the 1993 fire at the Branch Davidian church near Waco, Texas in response to revelations in the film Waco: The Rules of Engagement contradicting the official government account.
2000 - The Republic of Albania officially joins the World Trade Organization, as Albania.
2001 - Durban, South Africa hosts the World Conference against Racism.

2006-09-08T10:50:00.000+03:00

The mother of IDF hostage Ehud Goldwasser told reporters Thursday after meeting with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that “From now on, [I] will be less moderate than I used to be towards the government. I will not slander and I will not criticize, but I will act by using any means and any way, in front of anyone... I’m giving the prime minister some credit because he is handling the entire nation and not only my personal incident, but he should not forget that this incident is a symbol of what happened in this country if the boys were not returned home. What happened to my son is a symbol of the failures that occurred in the past,”

The families of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the IDF soldiers being held captive by Hizbullah, met with the prime minister to discuss their sons’ situation. The news that Israel had agreed to lift the air and sea blockade against Lebanon hit both families very hard and they expressed their anger to the prime minister that the agreement had been made despite earlier declarations that the return of the soldiers was a prerequisite of negotiations.

A large fire originating in an area housing old tires near the Port of Beirut spread in the area, hitting a United Nations storage facility used by UN troops in the area.

Firefighters were summoned but they were unable to control the blaze for some time. As a result, much of the supplies intended for area residents were destroyed. No injuries were reported.

IDF soldiers involved in counter-terror operations throughout Judea and Samaria during the night arrested 9 suspects: Arrests were made in Jenin, Ramallah, Jericho and the Bethlehem region. Suspects in custody include terrorists from Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Fatah Tanzim and Al-Aksa Martyrs’ Brigade's Rashid Zakarana who was shot in the chest during an exchange of gunfire with IDF troops.

IDF Soldiers were subjected to shooting attacks in Ramallah and Shechem and to a bomb attack In Kalkilya. No injuries were reported.

Galilee region police working with GSS (General Security Service/ Shin Bet) agents raided an office of the Friends of the Prisoner organization, located in Majd al-Krum.

Authorities explain the organization works in tandem with Hamas, using its charitable status to funnel monies to the terror organization, primarily to terrorists imprisoned in Israel.

Police explain the organization has been declared illegal, prompting the raid.

Members of the Knesset Labor faction will convene on Friday to discuss the 2007 state budget.

Party officials have aired many objections to the budget, warning Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson that Labor will not vote in favor of a budget that cuts funds for senior citizens and other monthly payments. Party leader Defense Minister Amir Peretz has also stated there will be no tolerance regarding any attempt to reduce the monthly minimum wage.

In a semi-related incident Knesset House Committee Chairwoman Ruchama Avraham (Kadima) is checking if Israeli law demands that President Moshe Katsav suspend himself from office for the duration of the police investigation against him: The president has been questioned by police on four occasions, and wil face a fifth round of interrogation next week on the charges brought by three former employees.

Oh- and as a matter of total disinterest; this is my 400th post

Today. . .

2006-09-07T09:53:00.000+03:00

1251 BC - A solar eclipse on this date might mark the birth of legendary Heracles at Thebes, Greece.
70 - A Roman army under General Titus occupies and plunders Jerusalem.
1191 - Third Crusade: Battle of Arsuf - Richard I of England defeats Saladin at Arsuf.
1539 - Guru Angad Dev ji becomes the second Guru of the Sikh.
1776 - World's first submarine attack: the American submersible craft Turtle attempts to attach a time bomb to the hull of British Admiral Richard Howe's flagship Eagle in New York Harbor.
1812 - Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Borodino - Napoleon defeats the Russian army of Alexander I near the village of Borodino.
1818 - Carl III of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Norway, in Trondheim.
1821 - The Republic of Gran Colombia (a federation covering much of presentday Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador) was established, with Simón Bolívar as the founding President and Francisco de Paula Santander as vice president.
1822 - Brazil declares its independence from Portugal.
1860 - Steamship Lady Elgin sinks on Lake Michigan, with the loss of around 400 lives.
1864 - American Civil War: Atlanta, Georgia, is evacuated on orders of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.
1876 - In Northfield, Minnesota, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang attempt to rob the town's bank but are surrounded by an angry mob and are nearly killed.
1901 - The Boxer Rebellion in China officially ends with the signing of the Boxer Protocol.
1906 - Alberto Santos-Dumont flies his 14-bis aircraft at Bagatelle, France for the 1st time successfully.
1907 - Cunard Line's RMS Lusitania sets sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City.
1909 - Eugene Lefebvre(1878-1909), while test piloting a new French-built Wright biplane, crashes at Juvisy France when his controls jam. Lefebvre dies, becoming the first 'pilot' in the world to lose his life in a powered-heavier-than-air-craft.
1911 - French poet Guillaume Apollinaire is arrested and put in jail on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum.
1915 - Former cartoonist Johnny Gruelle is given a patent for his Raggedy Ann doll.
1927 - The University of Minas Gerais is founded in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, by Governor Antônio Carlos.
1927 - The first fully electronic television system is achieved by Philo Taylor Farnsworth.
1936 - The last surviving member of the thylacine species, Benjamin, dies alone in her cage at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.
1940 - World War II: The Blitz - Nazi Germany begins to rain bombs on London. This will be the first of 57 consecutive nights of bombing.
1940 - Treaty of Craiova: Romania loses Southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria.
1943 - A fire at the Gulf Hotel in Houston, Texas, kills 55 people.
1950 - Coal mine collapses in New Cumnock, Scotland - 13 miners dead. 116 rescued.
1953 - Nikita Khrushchev becomes head of the Soviet Central Committee.
1965 - Vietnam War: In a follow-up to August's Operation Starlight, United States Marines and South Vietnamese forces initiate Operation Pirahna on the Batangan Peninsula.
1969 - Monty Python's Flying Circus records first episode.
1970 - Fighting between Arabic guerillas and government forces in Amman, Jordan.
1977 - The Torrijos-Carter Treaties between Panama and the United States on the status of the Panama Canal are signed. The US agrees to transfer control of the canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century.
1978 - While walking across Waterloo Bridge in London, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is assassinated by Bulgarian secret police agent Francesco Giullino by means of a ricin pellet fired from in a specially-designed umbrella.
1986 - Desmond Tutu becomes the first black to lead the Anglican Church in South Africa.
1988 - Abdul Ahad Mohmand, the first Afghan in space, returns aboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz TM-5 after 9 days on the Mir space station
1999 - A major earthquake close to Athens, Greece, results to the collapse of few buildings in the area. About 150 people are killed.
2004 - The Serbian government backs a decision by Minister of Education and Sport Ljiljana Čolić to require the teaching of both creationism and evolution in schools.
2005 - Apple Computer introduced the iPod nano, a revolutionary full-featured iPod that holds 1,000 songs yet is thinner than a standard #2 pencil and less than half the size of competitive players.
2005 - First presidential election was held in Egypt

IDF Quits 5 Villages in Southern Lebanon

2006-09-06T11:44:00.000+03:00

by Hana Levi Julian

IDF troops quit five villages in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, according to a statement by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

Israeli soldiers left the villages of Beit Lif, al-Kawza, Dibel, Ein Ibeil and Mhaibeb. All are located near the town of Bint Jbeil, a Hizbullah terrorist stronghold in southeast Lebanon where 15 IDF soldiers were killed and 60 were injured in some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.

“The UNIFIL Ghanaian Battalion established seven new checkpoints and carried out intensive patrolling in the area, confirming that IDF were no longer present there,” said the statement.

An IDF spokesman also confirmed the move and added that more withdrawals were planned for the near future.

Some 250 Lebanese army regulars arrived to beef up the UNIFIL troops shortly after the IDF quit the area, according to the Lebanese National News Agency. Lebanese soldiers also moved into Ainata and Aitaroun, two other villages in the area where heavy fighting took place.

It is not clear how many Israeli forces remain in southern Lebanon. UNIFIL spokesman Alexander Ivanko also would not say how much Lebanese territory remains under Israeli control.

Today(From wikipedia)

2006-09-06T11:18:00.000+03:00

Today Japan's Princess Kiko has given birth to the first male heir born into the Japanese Imperial Family for more than 40 years. The as-yet-unnamed child is 3rd in line for the Chrysanthemum Throne.

1522 - The Victoria, one of the surviving ships of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, returns to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the world.
1620 - The Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower to settle in North America.
1628 - Puritans settle Salem, which will later become part of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1757 - Birth of Marquis de Lafayette, French soldier and statesman who would take leading roles in the American and French revolutions
1861 - American Civil War: Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant bloodlessly capture Paducah, Kentucky, which gives the Union control of the mouth of the Tennessee River.
1863 - American Civil War: Confederates evacuate Battery Wagner and Morris Island in South Carolina.
1870 - Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally after 1807.
1885 - Eastern Rumelia declares its union with Bulgaria. The Unification of Bulgaria is accomplished.
1901 - Anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
1915 - The prototype tank is tested for the British Army for the first time.
1930 - Fascist, nationalist and conservative groups overthrow democratic government in Argentina.
1937 - Spanish Civil War: The start of the Battle of El Mazuco.
1939 - World War II: The Battle of Barking Creek.
1939 - World War II: South Africa declares war on Germany.
1940 - King Carol II of Romania abdicates and is succeeded by his son Michael
1941 - Holocaust: The requirement to wear the Star of David with the word Jew inscribed, is extended to all Jews over the age of 6 in German-occupied areas.
1944 - World War II: The city of Ypres, Belgium is liberated by allied forces.
1949 - Allied military authorities relinquish control of former Nazi Germany assets back to German control.
1955 - Istanbul Pogrom: Istanbul's Greek minority is the target of a government-sponsored pogrom.
1965 - War of 1965: India attacks Pakistan and announces that its forces will capture Lahore in an hour.
1966 - In Cape Town, South Africa, the architect of Apartheid, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, is stabbed to death during a parliamentary meeting.
1968 - Swaziland becomes independent.
1970 - Jimi Hendrix plays what turns out to be his last ever performance, at the badly controlled and rained out Love and Peace Festival, on the Isle Of Fehmarn, Germany.
1970 - Four passenger jets bound from Europe to New York are simultaneously hijacked by Palestinian terrorist members of PFLP. Two are taken to Dawson's Field in Jordan.
1976 - Cold War: Soviet air force pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko lands a MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido in Japan and requests political asylum in the United States.
1983 - The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Flight KAL-007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace.
1986 - In Istanbul, two Arab terrorists from Abu Nidal's terror organization kill 22 and wound six inside the Neve Shalom synagogue during Shabbat services.
1991 - The Soviet Union recognizes the independence of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
1991 - The name Saint Petersburg is restored to Russia's second largest city, which had been renamed Leningrad in 1924.
1995 - With the jury absent, Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman invokes his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the murder trial of O. J. Simpson.
1997 - The funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, at Westminster Abbey draws large crowds.

Gunman fires on Jordan tourists

2006-09-05T12:33:00.000+03:00

A gunman has opened fire on a group of foreign tourists in the Jordanian capital Amman, killing a British man.

The shooting happened at the Roman amphitheatre, a popular attraction.

Five other tourists were injured - two British women as well as tourists from New Zealand, the Netherlands and Australia. The gunman was arrested.

Militants have carried out a series of attacks in Jordan. Sixty people were killed in three suicide bomb attacks on hotels in November 2005.

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Amman says this attack right in the busiest part of the city centre is yet more evidence that Jordan is not immune to the turbulence sweeping the Middle East.

'Individual act'

Interior Minister Eid al-Fayez said the gunman was now being questioned.

"We as a government and people... regret the incident and hope it is a one-off which will not affect our tourism or security situation," Mr Fayez said.

A government spokesman Nasser Judeh said it appeared the attack was an "individual act" and that the gunmen had "no links with domestic or foreign" terrorist groups, the Associated Press reported.

The man has been named as Nabil Ahmed Issa Jaourah, 38, who officials say comes from a village just outside Zarqa, a centre for Islamic militants, from where the killed al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, hailed.

'Bleeding all over'

The attack took place at 1230 local time (0930 GMT).

Eyewitnesses said the attacker, said to be a Jordanian, approached the tourists shouting "God is great" in Arabic before firing at least 12 shots at the small group of tourists.

When his ammunition ran out, the gunman fled into the crowds before being arrested, eyewitnesses said.

Briton Karen Sparke, who survived the attack, told the BBC that when she heard the gunfire she initially thought a firecracker had been let off.

She then turned around and saw a man pointing a gun at the group.

"I don't remember much about it," she said. "Just that I was shot and as I looked my other friends were on the floor laying down, and then I went up the steps a bit further and stood round the corner and then realised that I was bleeding all over."

As well as the tourists, a member of the local tourist police was injured.

'Callous'

UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said she was "extremely saddened" by news of the attack.

"My sympathies are with the victims and their families. Acts of violence such as this are as senseless as they are callous," she said.

The BBC's Jon Leyne says local people joined in the struggle to overpower the gunman.

The area surrounding the Roman amphitheatre has been sealed off and anti-terrorist police are patrolling the site.

British tourists visiting Jordan are warned by the UK Foreign Office of a "high threat of terrorism", with Westerners being a particular target.

Jordan's tourist trade has been badly hit by reaction to the conflict in Lebanon, although tour operators say it remains popular with more adventurous travellers.

The amphitheatre, cut into a steep hill in the centre of Amman, is the Jordanian capital's top tourist attraction.

Today

2006-09-04T12:22:00.000+03:00

Today is Labar Day, Labour Day in Canada.

Today in 1894 - In New York City, 12,000 tailors strike against sweatshop working conditions.
Today in 1923 - In Lakehurst, New Jersey, the first U.S. airship, the USS Shenandoah, takes to the sky for the first time.
Today in 1940 - World War II: The USS Greer becomes the first United States ship fired upon by a German submarine in the war, even though the United States is a neutral power. Tension heightens between the two nations as a result.
Today in 1944 - World War II: The British 11th Armoured Division liberate the Belgian city of Antwerp.
Today in 1945 - World War II: Japanese forces surrender on Wake Island after hearing word of their nation's surrender.
Today in 1948 - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates for health reasons.
Today in 1967 - Vietnam War: Operation Swift begins: U.S. Marines launch a search-and-destroy mission in Quang Nam and Quang Tin Provinces. The ensuing four-day battle in Que Son Valley kills 114 Americans and 376 North Vietnamese.
Today in 1971 - A Boeing 727 carrying Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 crashes into the side of a mountain near Juneau, Alaska, killing all 111 people on board.
Today in 1972 - Mark Spitz wins his seventh swimming gold medal at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, becoming the first Olympian to win seven gold medals. Spitz swam in only seven events and set world records in each one.
Today in 1972 - Israeli Athletes taken hostage by Palestinian Black September (group) at 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich massacre.
Today in 2001, Hank The Angry Drunken Dwarf died(If you don't know, look it up).
Today, Steve Irwin died, killed by a stingwray off the coast of Australia.

Why I am proud to be a Jew

2006-09-04T12:18:00.000+03:00

Sorry about the lapse, as always, things are hectic here.

From my mailbox:

Why I am proud to be a Jew

With war raging in the Middle East, with global terror reaching new
heights, with global anti-Semitism on the rise, I thought it
might be a good time to reflect on why I'm proud, more than ever, to
be a Jew.

I'm proud to be a Jew because Jews don't kidnap.

I'm proud to be a Jew because Jewish education does not
consist of teaching martyrdom and hatred.

I'm proud to be a Jew because my religious leaders and
religious services
don't whip me into a frenzy to kill others.

I'm proud to be a Jew because in the middle of a war, Jews
still demonstrate
and protest to protect the rights of the Arab-Israeli minority to voice
their opposition to the war.

I'm proud to be a Jew because even when Israel is wrongly and falsely
accused of killing innocent civilians, Jewish leaders
apologize immediately for any loss of life - instead of celebrating
these deaths
by passing out candy and shooting celebratory gunshots into the air.

When the world accuses Israel of massacre in Jenin - when the world
accuses Israel of bombing civilians on a Gaza beach - when the
world accuses Israel of shooting a child cowering against a wall -
when the
world accuses Israel of bombing a Lebanese apartment
building killing 56 civilians - when all of these accusations turn out
to be totally false - to be
vicious anti -Semitic lies - and when all along I knew in
my heart that these stories justcould not be true - and I'm later
proven to be right - then I'm
proud to be a Jew.

I'm proud to be a Jew because the Israeli Army is so, so good, that when
it takes more than four weeks to wipe out a sophisticated enemy who has
prepared six years for this war, the world criticizes the IDF
for not getting the
job done quickly.

I'm proud to be a Jew when my army, the Israeli army, drops
leaflets and makes calls to Lebanese citizens
on their cell phones to warn them to evacuate before
bombing begins.

I'm proud to be a Jew when the democracies of the world talk
about fighting
the war on terror, but only Israel is left alone to bear the burden of
eradicating Hezbollah, the proxy army of Iran and Syria.

I'm proud to be a Jew when entire Israeli towns in the north-Nahariya,
Kiryat Shimona, Safed, are reduced to ghost towns due to the
constant shelling, and yet not one looter has appeared to empty out
the property of others.

When Israel must defend its very right to exist, when it must
fight a well
armed enemy representing the Islamic fascists, as President Bush has
called them, when Israel must conduct this war on terror with
its hands tied
behind its back so as not to take an innocent life lest the
media have something true to report,
that it must fight this war of survival under the cloud of
"disproportionality", as if thousands of Katusha rockets falling on
its
citizenry is somehow "proportionate"- when Israel
simultaneously pushes back these threats both in the North and in
the South under the added pressure of a biased media,
then I'm proud to be a Jew.

I'm proud to be a Jew when the Edinburgh Scottish film festival tells an
Israeli director to stay home although his film is being
screened and the
director says "No, I'm coming."

I'm proud to be a Jew because Mel Gibson is not a Jew.

I'm proud to be a Jew when the UN's Human Rights Commission consists of
countries like Syria, Libya and Iran and Israel is not asked to join.

I'm proud to be a Jew when magician David Blaine announces his trip to
Israel next week to entertain the children living in bomb
shelters and tells
the press he's doing it to encourage other performers to stand
up for Israel
and its right to defend itself.

I'm proud to be a Jew when a Russian/Israeli businessman single-handedly
creates not one but two tent cities on the beach to house
Israelis fleeing the
North and provides shelter, bedding, food and drink, showers
and bathrooms - all done
without red tape in a matter of 24 hours - to house over 6,000
Israeli's, one of whom described it as a "poor man's Club Med."

I am proud to be a Jew when Israelis on the left and on the right
support the government's decision to fight - when 97% of the
country is united in its own defense -
when Israeli's from Jerusalem give shelter to families
from Haifa - when food from the Negev is donated to feed soldiers at
the front -
when the IDF deploys soldiers on special assignments to
deliver diapers to shelters and to entertain and calm the frightened
children.

I'm proud to be a Jew when the three weeks preceding Tisha B'Av reminds
us of the terrible things we have endured as a people and as a
nation - and
yet immediately thereafter, Hashem offers us consolation, redemption and
hope - plus the promise that we shall defeat our enemies, that
we shall endure, that Am Yisrael Chai.

And I am proud to be a Jew because when we proclaim that God is on our
side, we have the book to prove it.

Katyusha Barrage, Battles in Lebanon - Twelve Killed

2006-08-04T01:01:00.000+03:00

by Hillel Fendel

Twelve Israelis were killed Thursday in the war with Hizbullah: four soldiers in the ground battles, and eight civilians in the terrorists' stepped-up Katyusha rocket attacks.

The news of the three separate incidents was broken all at once at approximately 4:30 PM. The army first released for publication that two soldiers had been killed in battles with Hizbullah in southern Lebanon in the course of the day. Later, it was announced that a third soldier died of his wounds at Rambam Hospital. Early hints of the news had been provided earlier with reports of "very heavy battles" in southern Lebanon. The death of the fourth soldier was announced shortly before midnight.

The families have been informed, but the identities of the fallen soldiers have not yet been released for publication, pending notification of all close relatives.

The news was released just as a wave of Katyusha rockets hit the city of Acco (Acre), north of Haifa, 20 kilometers south of the Lebanese border along the Mediterranean coast. It was first reported that one person had been seriously injured, then that he and a fellow passenger in his car were killed, and then that the number of dead had risen to three and then four. Two other people were reported injured by the fatal blast.

Minutes later, it was learned that three other people had been killed in a similar Katyusha strike in the Israeli-Arab neighborhood of Tarshiha, near Maalot, some 20 kilometers to the northeast. The three dead in Ma'alot Tarshiha were Shnati Shnati, Amir Naim and Muhammed Faor, all of them age 18.

Two of the victims in the Acco attack, father and daughter Shimon and Mazal Zribi, were reportedly in a shelter when they heard a Katyusha fall; they went out to see what happened, and were killed by a follow-up rocket. Also killed was 41-year-old Albert Ben Abu. The IDF Homefront Command continues to remind citizens to remain in their shelters when the sirens sound, and to remain there for at least 15 minutes.

The barrage of close to 100 Katyushas followed a relatively quiet morning and early afternoon, in which a total of 30 rockets had been fired. The most recent wave hit various towns in northern Israel, with sirens sounding in Haifa, Kiryat Shmonah, Nahariya, Shlomi and as far south as Afula. Ten people were lightly wounded when a rocket hit a building in the Druze village of Merar, while no one was hurt in a direct hit on four buildings in Kiryat Shmonah, nor in similar hits in Tzfat. One person was lightly wounded by shrapnel in Tiberias, and several people were treated for shock in several different locations.

The number of dead in the war with Hizbullah now stands at 68, including 28 civilians and 40 soldiers. Among the civilians killed by the Moslem-fired Katyushas were at least 8 Arabs.

Lebanese Reject Ceasefire Talks, Arab MKs Cause Knesset Storm

2006-07-31T22:45:00.001+03:00

by Hillel Fendel

Lebanon has rejected Secretary Rice's statements of this morning referring to a long-term peace arrangement she said could be reached "this week."

Lebanese Foreign Minister Faouzi Salouah said, "We will not accept any proposal before an immediate and absolute ceasefire. Rice is merely giving Olmert extra time."

Meanwhile, a stormy Knesset session on the Lebanese war was taking place late this morning and early this afternoon, with three Arab MKs being thrown out of the Knesset plenum.

Lebanon Rejects Rice
Lebanon's stance against Israel was expressed particularly stridently this morning by Lebanese President Emil Lahoud. "The first clause in our army's orders is, 'Israel is the enemy,'" he told Al-Jazeera. Lahoud praised Hizbullah, saying, "Hizbullah's victory will be all of Lebanon's victory," and said that Rice "wants to force a multi-national force upon us and wants to coerce Hizbullah to disarm. This would be the worst thing that could happen, because now we are winning." The Lebanese President said that if Israel invades Lebanon, the Lebanese Army will fight back.

A Hizbullah MP (Parliament Member) Fedallah also said that his organization would not conduct any negotiations before a ceasefire is implemented.

After firing a record-breaking 150 Katyushas at Israel yesterday, including about 90 at Kiryat Shmonah, Hizbullah had fired only four Katyusha rockets into Israel by 5 PM opn Monday. Hizbullah denies, however, having agreed to stop firing Katyushas. The terrorists fired an anti-tank missile at Israeli forces this afternoon, lightly wounding three soldiers.

Israel's self-imposed aerial ceasefire - decided upon solely by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - went into effect at 2 AM this morning, shortly after the Israel Air Force bombed targets in eastern Lebanon. The IDF denied Hizbullah claims that the offensive occurred at 7 AM. Seven soldiers were wounded in yesterday's fighting, including two in "moderate" condition, and at least eight Hizbullah terrorists were killed.

Knesset Ruckus
The Knesset held a special session on the war today, turning into a scene of parliamentary bedlam during Defense Minister Amir Peretz's speech. Three Arab MKs were thrown out of the plenum by Speaker Dalia Itzik, beginning with Ibrahim Tzartzour, who called Peretz a "child murderer."

Peretz said that Israel cannot agree to an immediate ceasefire, "because then we will find ourselves back in the same position a few months from now." He said that the worst thing is that the Lebanese government "abandoned its civilian population in the south of the country to the hands of [Hizbullah leader] Nasrallah, who turned the population into a defensive shield for his terrorists."

Peretz tried to defend Israel's morality in light of the accidental bombing of the Kafr Kana building yesterday: "I spoke to a soldier who said he saw a terrorist with an RPG in one hand and holding a little girl in the other, and he said that he didn't shoot. I asked him why, and he said he was afraid he might hit the girl. That's the IDF ethic! I am proud of that soldier and his decision."

No MK was heard interrupting at that time, but Trade Minister Eli Yeshai (Shas) later told Arutz-7, "There is no army that is more ethical than the IDF, period. But at the same time, no one should endanger himself just because some crazy terrorist wants to use a girl as a human shield."

Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu then spoke and blessed Defense Minister Peretz "on your important work." Netanyahu then saluted the army "in the name of all the MKs" - but then was forced to correct himself and say "in the name of almost all the MKs" when Arab MKs interrupted him with sharp words against the IDF.
Netanyahu said that Hizbullah represents a "strategic threat" which must be met with "a strategic victory." He called upon the government not to give up, not to stop in the middle of attaining its goals, and not to cede its objective of dismantling Hizbullah.

Referring to the IAF bombing of Kana that killed 54 Lebanese adults and children, Netanyahu said,
"I was interviewed yesterday by a British station and they asked me what I thought about Israeli pilots bombing children. I said, 'If you�re asking, I'll tell you: This is as just a war as any that has ever been fought - but I can recall another just war, World War II, when Britain's Royal Air Force went to bomb the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, but the bombers missed and hit a children's hospital nearby, killing 83 Danish children inside. This is a tragedy of war, but it happens. Unlike the other side, which rejoices when our children are killed, we are truly sorry when it happens, and we really and truly try to reduce casualties on the other side."

Arab MK Zehalke then yelled out, "You really believe those lies?!" at which point Speaker Dalia Itzik lost her cool and called out, "MK Zehalke, once, twice, three times, get out!" Knesset ushers then forced Zehalke out of the Knesset plenum.

MK Yitzchak Levy (National Union/National Religious Party) said, "What happened in Kana pains us, but it must be made clear: the responsibility lies totally with Hizbullah."

Lebanese Reject Ceasefire Talks, Arab MKs Cause Knesset Storm

2006-07-31T22:45:00.000+03:00

by Hillel Fendel

Lebanon has rejected Secretary Rice's statements of this morning referring to a long-term peace arrangement she said could be reached "this week."

Lebanese Foreign Minister Faouzi Salouah said, "We will not accept any proposal before an immediate and absolute ceasefire. Rice is merely giving Olmert extra time."

Meanwhile, a stormy Knesset session on the Lebanese war was taking place late this morning and early this afternoon, with three Arab MKs being thrown out of the Knesset plenum.

Lebanon Rejects Rice
Lebanon's stance against Israel was expressed particularly stridently this morning by Lebanese President Emil Lahoud. "The first clause in our army's orders is, 'Israel is the enemy,'" he told Al-Jazeera. Lahoud praised Hizbullah, saying, "Hizbullah's victory will be all of Lebanon's victory," and said that Rice "wants to force a multi-national force upon us and wants to coerce Hizbullah to disarm. This would be the worst thing that could happen, because now we are winning." The Lebanese President said that if Israel invades Lebanon, the Lebanese Army will fight back.

A Hizbullah MP (Parliament Member) Fedallah also said that his organization would not conduct any negotiations before a ceasefire is implemented.

After firing a record-breaking 150 Katyushas at Israel yesterday, including about 90 at Kiryat Shmonah, Hizbullah had fired only four Katyusha rockets into Israel by 5 PM opn Monday. Hizbullah denies, however, having agreed to stop firing Katyushas. The terrorists fired an anti-tank missile at Israeli forces this afternoon, lightly wounding three soldiers.

Israel's self-imposed aerial ceasefire - decided upon solely by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - went into effect at 2 AM this morning, shortly after the Israel Air Force bombed targets in eastern Lebanon. The IDF denied Hizbullah claims that the offensive occurred at 7 AM. Seven soldiers were wounded in yesterday's fighting, including two in "moderate" condition, and at least eight Hizbullah terrorists were killed.

Knesset Ruckus
The Knesset held a special session on the war today, turning into a scene of parliamentary bedlam during Defense Minister Amir Peretz's speech. Three Arab MKs were thrown out of the plenum by Speaker Dalia Itzik, beginning with Ibrahim Tzartzour, who called Peretz a "child murderer."

Peretz said that Israel cannot agree to an immediate ceasefire, "because then we will find ourselves back in the same position a few months from now." He said that the worst thing is that the Lebanese government "abandoned its civilian population in the south of the country to the hands of [Hizbullah leader] Nasrallah, who turned the population into a defensive shield for his terrorists."

Peretz tried to defend Israel's morality in light of the accidental bombing of the Kafr Kana building yesterday: "I spoke to a soldier who said he saw a terrorist with an RPG in one hand and holding a little girl in the other, and he said that he didn't shoot. I asked him why, and he said he was afraid he might hit the girl. That's the IDF ethic! I am proud of that soldier and his decision."

No MK was heard interrupting at that time, but Trade Minister Eli Yeshai (Shas) later told Arutz-7, "There is no army that is more ethical than the IDF, period. But at the same time, no one should endanger himself just because some crazy terrorist wants to use a girl as a human shield."

Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu then spoke and blessed Defense Minister Peretz "on your important work." Netanyahu then saluted the army "in the name of all the MKs" - but then was forced to correct himself and say "in the name of almost all the MKs" when Arab MKs interrupted him with sharp words against the IDF.
Netanyahu said that Hizbullah represents a "strategic threat" which must be met with "a strategic victory." He called upon the government not to give up, not to stop in the middle of attaining its goals, and not to cede its objective of dismantling Hizbullah.

Referring to the IAF bombing of Kana that killed 54 Lebanese adults and children, Netanyahu said,
"I was interviewed yesterday by a British station and they asked me what I thought about Israeli pilots bombing children. I said, 'If you’re asking, I'll tell you: This is as just a war as any that has ever been fought - but I can recall another just war, World War II, when Britain's Royal Air Force went to bomb the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, but the bombers missed and hit a children's hospital nearby, killing 83 Danish children inside. This is a tragedy of war, but it happens. Unlike the other side, which rejoices when our children are killed, we are truly sorry when it happens, and we really and truly try to reduce casualties on the other side."

Arab MK Zehalke then yelled out, "You really believe those lies?!" at which point Speaker Dalia Itzik lost her cool and called out, "MK Zehalke, once, twice, three times, get out!" Knesset ushers then forced Zehalke out of the Knesset plenum.

MK Yitzchak Levy (National Union/National Religious Party) said, "What happened in Kana pains us, but it must be made clear: the responsibility lies totally with Hizbullah."

Sorry!

2006-07-31T22:39:00.000+03:00

Sorry for the Hiatus- Computer trouble. I hope this helps make up for it:

http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2006/07/yallah_ya_nasra.php

News Brief

2006-07-24T09:25:00.000+03:00

The IDF has arrested 20 Arab terrorists operating in Judea and Samaria. Five terrorists were arrested in the Jenin area, from the Islamic Jihad and Tanzim faction affiliated with Fatah, the party of PA chief Mahmoud Abbas.

Fire others were arrested near Bethlehem and a Tanzim terrorists was caught near Ramallah. Another eight were arrested near Hevron, including Hamas and Tanzim terrorists. Nine IDF soldiers were lightly wounded in a clash with Hezbollah terrorists near the south Lebanese town of Bint J’bel.

Two Kassam rockets fired from Gaza exploded in the city of Sderot. One rocket landed near a school in the Rabin neighborhood of the city. A second rocket fell in a field near the entrance to the city.

No injuries were reported.

Both the United States and Germany have said they will not place their soldiers in a multi-national peace keeping force proposed for southern Lebanon. The Bush administration said it might support such a force but would not actively participate.

German Chancellor Angela Markel said in a radio interview Sunday her country wants to support a government in Lebanon that disarms the Hizbullah terrorist organization but that placing soldiers in a multi-national force "is not on the agenda" at this time.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz Sunday said he was open to having NATO patrol the area, but the American and German statements apparently will sidetrack the idea.

Thousands of Soldiers to Join Counter-Terror Offensive

2006-07-23T09:48:00.000+03:00

by Yechiel Spira

Thousands of IDF soldiers have been called to active reserve duty, thereby freeing up compulsory service soldiers for redeployment to the north.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz has authorized the continuation of the ground forces incursion into southern Lebanon, as elite units continue to operate on the ground, near Israel’s northern border, seeking to push Hizbullah back while destroying the terror organizations infrastructure.

FIVE EGOZ SOLDIERS KILLED IN FIGHTING
In heavy fighting in the Maroun a-Ras area near Moshav Avivim last Thursday (20 July), five IDF soldiers fell in the line of duty. It was originally reported that four soldiers were killed but early Sunday morning; the IDF Spokesperson’s Office confirmed the body of a fifth member of the elite Sayeret Egoz was located, officially raising the death toll to five. Also operating in southern Lebanon are paratroopers, tanks and other specialized forces.

Some 5,000 reservists were activated with tzav-8 emergency call-up orders on Friday. The reservists will be deployed in areas throughout Judea and Samaria, freeing younger compulsory duty soldiers to join the effort against Hizbullah in the north.

HIZBULLAH IS A FORMIDABLE ENEMY
The battle will be a difficult one since Hizbullah has had six years to prepare, since then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The area is mined and there are bombs powerful enough to destroy the underbellies of Israel’s tanks, as was seen ten days ago when the crew of a Merkavah-3 tank was burned alive when a 200kg (120 lbs) bomb was detonated near Israel’s northern border.

It is also known that Russian-built Kornet missiles were sold to Syria. The laser-guided missiles manufactured in the 1990s are equipped with a thermal sight. They pose a threat to even the most advanced tank.

A SABBATH OF HEAVY ROCKET ATTACKS
The Sabbath brought another heavy day of rocket attacks, with over 160 rockets striking northern cities between 10:00am-7:00pm. Property damage was extensive, and dozens of people were injured, including two who were listed in serious condition on Saturday night.

Thousands of Israelis have fled their homes in Haifa and other cities, explaining the relatively low number of people killed and wounded in rocket attacks. Israel Police beginning Sunday will be increasing the number of personnel deployed in northern cities, primarily to prevent looting and break-ins.

Magen David Adom emergency medical service officials reported on Saturday night that since the start of the current Hizbullah warfare, on 12 July, 28 Israeli civilians and security personnel have been killed and 674 wounded in rocket attacks.

14 victims were seriously wounded, 31 moderate, 204 light and the remainder treated for varying levels of anxiety and hysteria

GROUND FORCES DEPLOYMENT A MUST
Military experts agree that while the air forces continues to dismantle the Hizbullah infrastructure from the air, ground forces must be brought into the picture if the terror organization is to be brought to it knees. Last week’s emergency call-up of thousands of soldiers signals this stage may be beginning, with members of the General Staff warning fighting will be difficult against Hizbullah but there is no alternative.

Having carried out some 3,000 sorties and striking over 1,800 targets, the air force continues to strike at Hizbullah in all areas of Lebanon, in many cases successfully wiping out longer-range rockets and launchers on the ground, eliminating potential strikes by the terror organization against the Greater Tel Aviv area.

HIZBULLAH CONTINUES USING CIVILIANS AS SHIELDS
IDF Chief of Staff Lt-General Dan Halutz last week stated Operation Change of Direction was moving ahead, warning the process will take some time. The military commander stated once again that Hizbullah continues to base itself in civilian population areas, making Israel’s job increasingly more difficult as the IDF takes measures to avoid collateral damage to civilians. Halutz added that the terror organization frequently places Katyusha rockets and launchers inside mosques, another technique aimed at enlisting the support of the international community against Israel.

US REMAINS FIRMLY BEHIND ISRAEL
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected in Israel to begin steps towards a ceasefire, but media reports are signaling US President George W. Bush is not planning to pressure Jerusalem to halt the operation at present. Rice will focus on Lebanon following the Israeli offensive, traveling from Israel to Rome where she will meet with United Nations officials and representatives of Arab states to discuss the rehabilitation of Lebanon.

President Bush in his remarks blames Iran and Syria for standing in the way of a ceasefire, stating it is they who threaten the stability of the entire Middle East. American lawmakers have come out in support of Israel’s operation, seeing the destruction of Hizbullah as a major step in combating global Islamic terror.

ISRAEL SEEKS TO MINIMIZE CIVILIAN CAUSALITIES
For the past days, Israel has used taped telephone messages, leaflets and radio broadcasts to persuade southern Lebanese area residents to head north before the fighting increases, signaling Jerusalem’s plan to cleanse southern Lebanon of Hizbullah. Israeli officials are indicating heavier air force bombardments are to be expected since Hizbullah’s arsenal is well placed within civilian communities, which will be targeted as Israel seeks to eliminate thousands of rockets on the ground.

While analysts and military experts agree Hizbullah will not be totally eliminated, the direct threat along Israel’s border can be removed and the terror organization can be weakened enough to permit the Government of Lebanon to deploy its forces along Israel’s border in compliance with United Nations Resolution 1559.

The news in brief

2006-07-23T09:38:00.000+03:00

In Lebanon, Israel Air Force fighter planes during the night struck terrorist targets, including a building used by Hizbullah in Sidon. IAF officials reported dozens of targets were hit during the night as the IDF steps-up its offensive.

Meanwhile, in the Center. . .

Terrorists during the night opened fire at an IDF force operating in the Ramallah area. There were no reports of injuries.

According to an unconfirmed but reliable report, a shooting incident may have occurred involving an IDF reservist, in the Arab village of Kafr Harris.

IDF soldiers involved in counter-terror operations in Judea and Samaria during the night arrested two Hamas terrorists in the Bethlehem region. There were no reports of injuries to IDF forces.

In the South:

At least one Kassam rocket fired from northern Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled Gaza landed near Gavim Junction in the western Negev earlier on Sunday morning. There were no reports of injuries.

The news in brief

2006-07-22T21:06:00.000+03:00

It's been pretty quiet in Israel today:

Six rockets landed in Tzfat; more in Nahariya, five homes were damaged. Miraculously, there were no injuries in either city;

A female motorist was lightly injured in a rock-throwing attack near the Arab village of Azzun in Samaria last night(Incidentally, Azzun is right by where I live);

Thousands took part in an anti-Israel rally in Beirut’s Great Mosque on Friday, condemning Israel’s ongoing military action in Lebanon: Carrying signs and pictures in support of Hizbullah, the participants in the anti-Israel event called on Arab leaders to “punish Israel”.

Liberals: Born to Run

2006-07-20T13:49:00.000+03:00

by Ann Coulter
Posted Jul 19, 2006

I knew the events in the Middle East were big when the New York Times devoted nearly as much space to them as it did to a New York court ruling last week rejecting gay marriage.

Some have argued that Israel's response is disproportionate, which is actually correct: It wasn't nearly strong enough. I know this because there are parts of South Lebanon still standing.

Most Americans have been glued to their TV sets, transfixed by Israel's show of power, wondering, "Gee, why can't we do that?"

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says that "what's going on in the Middle East today" wouldn't be happening if the Democrats were in power. Yes, if the Democrats were running things, our cities would be ash heaps and the state of Israel would have been wiped off the map by now.

But according to Dean, the Democrats would have the "moral authority that Bill Clinton had" -- no wait! keep reading -- "when he brought together the Israelis and Palestinians." Clinton really brokered a Peace in Our Time with that deal -- "our time" being a reference to that five-minute span during which he announced it. Yasser Arafat immediately backed out on all his promises and launched the second intifada.

The fact that Israel is able to launch an attack on Hezbollah today without instantly inciting a multination conflagration in the Middle East is proof of what Bush has accomplished. He has begun to create a moderate block of Arab leaders who are apparently not interested in becoming the next Saddam Hussein.

There's been no stock market crash, showing that the markets have confidence that Israel will deal appropriately with the problem and that it won't expand into World War III.

But liberals can never abandon the idea that we must soothe savage beasts with appeasement -- whether they're dealing with murderers like Willie Horton or Islamic terrorists. Then the beast eats you.

There are only two choices with savages: Fight or run. Democrats always want to run, but they dress it up in meaningless catchphrases like "diplomacy," "detente," "engagement," "multilateral engagement," "multilateral diplomacy," "containment" and "going to the U.N."

I guess they figure, "Hey, appeasement worked pretty well with ... uh ... wait, I know this one ... ummm ... tip of my tongue ..."

Democrats like to talk tough, but you can never trap them into fighting. There is always an obscure objection to be raised in this particular instance -- but in some future war they would be intrepid! One simply can't imagine what that war would be.

Democrats have never found a fight they couldn't run from.

On NBC's "Meet the Press" last month, Sen. Joe Biden was asked whether he would support military action against Iran if the Iranians were to go "full-speed-ahead with their program to build a nuclear bomb."

No, of course not. There is, Biden said, "no imminent threat at this point."

According to the Democrats, we can't attack Iran until we have signed affidavits establishing that it has nuclear weapons, but we also can't attack North Korea because it may already have nuclear weapons. The pattern that seems to be emerging is: "Don't ever attack anyone, ever, for any reason. Ever."

The Democrats are in a snit about North Korea having nukes, with Howard Dean saying Democrats are tougher on defense than the Republicans because since Bush has been president, North Korea has "quadrupled their nuclear weapons stash."

It wasn't that difficult. Clinton gave the North Koreans $4 billion to construct nuclear reactors in return for the savages promising not to use the reactors to build bombs. But oddly, despite this masterful triumph of "diplomacy," the savages did not respond with good behavior. Instead, they immediately set to work feverishly building nuclear weapons.

But that's another threat the Democrats do not think is yet ripe for action.

On "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Sen. Biden lightly dismissed the North Koreans, saying their "government's like an eighth-grader with a small bomb looking for attention" and that we "don't even have the intelligence community saying they're certain they have a nuclear weapon."

Is that the test? We need to have absolute certainty that the North Koreans have a nuclear weapon capable of hitting California with Kim Jong Il making a solemn promise to bomb the U.S. (and really giving us his word this time, no funny business) before we -- we what? If they have a nuclear weapon, what do we do then? Is a worldwide thermonuclear war the one war Democrats would finally be willing to fight?

Democrats won't acknowledge the existence of "an imminent threat" anyplace in the world until a nuclear missile is 12 minutes from New York. And then we'll never have the satisfaction of saying "I told you so" because we'll all be dead.

News briefs from Israel

2006-07-19T18:43:00.000+03:00

It has now been released for publication that two IDF soldiers were killed in the fierce exchanges of gunfire between Israeli forces and Hizbullah terrorists on the Lebanese border.

The battle raged for several hours today near Avivim, 12 kilometers north of Tzfat, along the Israeli-Lebanese border. Several Hizbullah terrorists, who have hidden out there since the beginning of the fighting a week ago, are reported to have been killed. Overlooking Avivim was a Hizbullah stronghold of Marun A-Ras, which used to be a civilian village.

Hizbullah attackers fired eight Katyusha rockets at communities in the Western Galilee a short time ago. Two of the rockets slammed into a chicken coop on one of the region's many agricultural communities.

The police department reports that the number of fatalities in Nazareth as a result of this afternoon's Katyusha attacks on the city has risen to three. Two children, ages eight and ten years old, were killed immediately in the Hizbullah assault. Twelve people suffered light injuries.

Another barrage of Katyusha rockets was unleashed against communities in the western Galilee by Hizbullah terrorists today

There were no injuries or damage

Israeli air force planes bombed a Hizbullah bunker in Beirut this afternoon. The bunker is located in the Dahiya neighborhood of the city, a Shi'ite area known to be housing the headquarters and offices of Hizbullah. Two routes used by Hizbullah terrorists for transport of men and material to the south were also hit.

IAF planes also attacked a vehicle into which Hizbullah terrorists retreated after launching several rockets at Israeli territory.

Shortly before 5:00pm, a Kassam rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza landed adjacent to a Jewish community in the Western Negev.

No injuries or damage was reported in the attack.

Hizbullah terrorists fired a series of Katyusha barrages at targets in Israel over the last half-hour. The areas hit were Tiberias, Kiryat Shemona, Yesod Hamaalah, Nazareth and Upper Nazareth, Tel Hai, and Afula.

In Nazareth, police report that there were several injuries. In the area of Kiryat Shemona, 12 rockets fell, with two others striking the area of Yesod Hamaalah. Cases of shock were reported by local emergency services.

According to Israeli intelligence agencies, the Lebanese Hizbullah organization is helping to direct and fund some planned Islamic Jihad and Fatah terrorist attacks inside Israeli cities, in the hope of opening a third front in the current Arab assault on the Jewish State. Security services have many warnings of efforts by the two Palestinian Authority-based groups to carry out terrorist attacks in Jewish population centers at this time.

The Islamic Jihad, like Hizbullah, is known to be supported by Iran; while Fatah is headed by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen).

Just this afternoon, a bomber was pursued and captured in the populous Sharon region, north of Tel Aviv. More than 200 wanted terrorists were captured when IDF forces demolished PA offices in Shechem and overnight, IDF forces captured five wanted terrorists in Judea and Samaria.

70 Katyushas in Under an Hour; Only One Moderately Hurt

2006-07-18T17:12:00.000+03:00

by Hillel Fendel

As the Katyushas fired at Israel pass the 1,000 mark - hundreds of other projectiles have also been fired - the IDF continues to bombard southern Lebanese villages from where the rockets are fired.

The IDF had earlier warned and requested the civilian population of several southern Lebanese villages, including Bint Jabel, A-Tiri, Bazuriya and others, to leave those areas for their own safety. Israel Air Force craft attacked some 50 targets in Lebanon over the night, including terrorist structures in Beirut and weapons storehouses.

In the course of the night, the IDF thwarted two attempts by terrorist cells to infiltrate northern Israel near Moshav Avivim. Israeli forces saw the figures, shot at them, and reported at least four hits. In May 1970, Palestinian terrorists who crossed the border from Lebanon near Avivim ambushed a school bus with a barrage of gunfire, murdering12 children and 3 adults, and leaving several others crippled.

Foreign Minister Tzippy Livny met this morning (Tuesday) with a United Nations delegation in Jerusalem on conditions for a ceasefire. Livny will present Israel's long-held positions: the release of the three kidnapped soldiers (one in Gaza and two in Lebanon); the deployment of the Lebanese Army in the south of the country instead of Hizbullah, in accordance with UN Resolution 1559 of the year 2004; and a cessation of all Katyusha fire.

Livny told reporters afterwards that a diplomatic initiative is beginning, alongside the ongoing military campaign. "A ceasefire for its own sake is not an objective," Livny said, "for what will we have accomplished if the threat is renewed at a later date?"

We will act to return our soldiers home," the Foreign Minister noted, "and we must also make sure that Hizbullah leaves southern Lebanon and is replaced by the Lebanese Army. We must make sure that Hizbullah is disarmed and that Iran and Syrian do not rearm Hizbullah. These are Israel's objectives, and we will work to implement them with the cooperation of the international community."

UN Middle East envoy Terje Larsen said that Israel is considering "proposals we brought to them from Lebanon, and we will continue with the dialogue between the two governments."

Among the Israeli communities and cities targeted in Monday night's Katyusha bombardment - the strongest one to date - were Kiryat Shmonah, Tzfat, Rosh Hanikra, Moshav Ben-Ami, Hatzor, and even Afula in the Jezreel Valley. Many people were reported treated for shock, and one person was listed as moderately wounded. All electricity outages caused by the rockets were fixed by the morning.

The UN delegation has proposed a compromise, whereby both sides would cease hostilities, the two abducted soldiers would be transferred to the Lebanese government, and Gilad Shalit would be given over to the custody of PA Chairman Abu Mazen. No mention was made of disarming Hizbullah.

Hizbullah has rejected the proposal, however. While its arch-terrorist leader Sheikh Nasrallah remains trapped under the ruins of a building for the fourth day, a spokesman for the group, Hussein Haj Hassan, said the ideas were rejected because they include Israeli demands. Israel must cease its fire unconditionally, Hassan said.

Nasrallah appeared on Lebanese television screens on Sunday in a pre-recorded speech, warning Israel of "more surprises."

5 Terrorists captured in Shechem; One Soldier Killed

2006-07-17T17:28:00.002+03:00

The IDF�s elite Haruv unit entered the Hamas-controlled town of Shechem Monday morning and apprehended 5 wanted terrorists. One Israeli soldier, 20-year-old Oshri Damarie of Netanya, was killed during the operation.

Six other soldiers were wounded in the incident when Arab terrorists hurled an explosive device at the patrol; the Al-Aksa Martyrs� Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

Among the injured soldiers was the son of O.C. Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh, who was moderately wounded. In sum, one soldier was wounded severely, two moderately, and an officer and two other soldiers were wounded lightly. They were treated at Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba, Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikvah and Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer.

5 Terrorists captured in Shechem; One Soldier Killed

2006-07-17T17:28:00.001+03:00

The IDF’s elite Haruv unit entered the Hamas-controlled town of Shechem Monday morning and apprehended 5 wanted terrorists. One Israeli soldier, 20-year-old Oshri Damarie of Netanya, was killed during the operation.

Six other soldiers were wounded in the incident when Arab terrorists hurled an explosive device at the patrol; the Al-Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

Among the injured soldiers was the son of O.C. Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh, who was moderately wounded. In sum, one soldier was wounded severely, two moderately, and an officer and two other soldiers were wounded lightly. They were treated at Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba, Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikvah and Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer.

Northern Towns Under Attack, Building Collapses in Haifa

2006-07-17T17:28:00.000+03:00

by Hana Levi Julian and Ezra HaLevi

Hizbullah terrorists fired long-range rockets at Israeli communities Sunday night and Monday, striking Haifa once more and causing a 3-story building to collapse, injuring one person seriously.

A volley of Katyushas fell on the city of Haifa at 2:15 PM Monday. A three-story building suffered a direct hit, collapsing as a result. Two people were injured moderately and one seriously. They were evacuated to Haifa's Rambam and B'nei Zion hospitals.

Rescue workers searched for additional people under the rubble and determined that most residents had not been home at the time of impact.

Channel 2 television was broadcasting live from the city as the warning sirens sounded. When the sound of impact was heard, the cameraman showed the exact site of impact before the anchor pulled the live feed in compliance with orders from the IDF Home Front Command (see below).

Two volleys of rockets struck northern towns earlier Monday, around 9 AM and again at 1:30 PM. Katyushas hit Kiryat Shmona, Tzfat, Carmiel, Ramot, Givat Yoav, Acco, Tiberias, Talal, Julis, Abu Snan and Kafr Yassif. Thirteen IDF soldiers were hospitalized in Nahariya due to smoke inhalation from a missile's impact. Nine civilians suffered light injuries - five of them shock.

In Acco, a rocket hit a building, collapsing three floors of - but the sleeping couple there escaped unscathed.

Another large building was struck in Tzfat, though the residents were not at home.

The southern Golan Heights were also struck for the first time since the beginning of the Reengagement War on the northern border and Gaza.

Rocket attacks rained down on the city of Afula late Sunday night, in addition to neighboring Jezreel Valley towns of Migdal Ha’Emek, Upper Nazareth and Givat Ela.

It was the first time that rockets fired from south Lebanon reached the 50 kilometer (31-mile) mark. It came less than a day after eight people were killed in a similar barrage in the port city of Haifa.

In that attack, the city’s train depot was hit, with at least 17 workers and many others injured by the Iranian-made missiles packed with ball-bearings. Security officials noted as well that some of the parts found in the rocket's remains had been made in Syria.

A total of 53 people were injured in the city’s surrounding areas since the first rocket attack on Haifa on Friday.

IDF officials said Sunday that Hizbullah has amassed well over 10,000 rockets of various sizes and ranges over the past several years since IDF forces pulled out of south Lebanon.

More than 1,200 rockets have been fired at Israel by Hizbullah terrorists in south Lebanon since the beginning of the Reengagement War at the northern front last week.

Arab Media: IAF Aircraft Down, IDF: Leaflet Container

2006-07-17T17:18:00.000+03:00

by Hana Levi Julian

Israel Defense Forces officials said Monday afternoon that Arab media reports that an Israeli aircraft crashed over Lebanon were false.

The Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, monitored in Israel, reported an Israeli plane had gone down, showing video of a flaming object falling from the skies. Two Arab news networks reported on Monday that an Israeli fighter jet was shot down over Beirut as it flew a sortie over the area. Al-Jazeera news network and al-Manar TV, the Hizbullah controlled television station, both reported that Hizbullah terrorists shot down the aircraf.

A Lebanese source confirmed the IDF response, saying that it was “some type of object” but was certain it was not an aircraft. According to a reporter on Army Radio, the explosion that followed the crash resulted in a “huge blaze”.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz told members of the Labor faction that “the chances that an aircraft or IDF aircraft parts crashed over Lebanon is very small.”

Various media reports identified the object as a “type of balloon”, according to Lebanese sources, a “leaflet container” according to the IDF or a “surface to air missile”, according to Hizbullah.

The IAF spokesman added that the leaflet container was hit by a surface-to-air missile fired by Hizbulla and that the container accidentally scored a direct hit on a truck carrying a Katyusha launcher. He added that it appeared that one of the missiles bounced out of truck as a result of the impact and was launched in the direction of Beirut.

Bush: Hizbullah to blame for violence

2006-07-15T20:40:00.000+03:00

From the Jpost:

US President George W. Bush said Saturday that Hizbullah is to blame for violence in the Middle East.

"In my judgment, the best way to stop the violence is to understand why the violence occurred in the first place," Bush said at a news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "And that's because Hizbullah has been launching rocket attacks out of Lebanon into Israel and because Hizbullah captured two Israeli soldiers."

Showing a divide that could dominate weekend meetings at the Group of Eight summit of world industrial leaders, Putin was more critical of Israel's massive bombing campaign in response to the capture of two soldiers. "Use of force should be balanced," he said.

At the same time, Putin said it was unacceptable that Hizbullah was trying to reach its goals with abductions and strikes against an independent state. "In this context we consider Israel's concerns to be justified," he said.

On Friday, Bush rejected Lebanon's calls for a cease-fire in escalating Mideast violence, saying only that Israel should try to limit civilian casualties as it steps up attacks on its neighbor.

"The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

Lebanon's prime minister asked Bush during a phone call Friday to pressure Israel for a cease-fire. But Bush, speaking to Prime Minister Fuad Saniora while flying from Germany to Russia, said Israelis have a right to protect themselves.

"We think it's important that, in doing that, they try to limit as much as possible the so-called collateral damage, not only on civilians but also on human lives," Snow said.

Saniora's office issued a statement saying Bush "affirmed his readiness to put pressure on Israel to limit the damage to Lebanon as a result of the current military action, and to spare civilians and innocent people from harm."

Snow said that wasn't so. Bush merely "reiterated his position" that Israel should limit the impact on civilians, he said.

"It is unlikely that either or both parties are going to agree to" a cease-fire at this point, Snow said.

Bush's conversation with Saniora was part of a round of telephone diplomacy aimed at quelling the flare-up in violence. The president also spoke with allies Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah II and thanked them for helping to try to ease the violence in their neighborhood, Snow said.

Bush was pleased that a number of major Muslim nations such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia "do not look on Hizbullah as being a legitimate government entity," Snow said.

Bush has not spoken with Israeli leaders, but US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Snow said. Snow did not provide details of the conversation.

Snow said it seemed inevitable that the G-8 members would issue some kind of a statement on the Mideast situation, but it was unclear what it would say. Rice said a three-person team sent by the United Nations to the region should get a chance to try to defuse the crisis.

Several drafts concerning violence in the Middle East were already on the table. "With the pace of events, they're going to have to redraft them," Snow said.

"It is important that everybody talk with one voice," Snow said.

Bush: Hizbullah to blame for violence

2006-07-15T20:38:00.000+03:00

US President George W. Bush said Saturday that Hizbullah is to blame for violence in the Middle East.

"In my judgment, the best way to stop the violence is to understand why the violence occurred in the first place," Bush said at a news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "And that's because Hizbullah has been launching rocket attacks out of Lebanon into Israel and because Hizbullah captured two Israeli soldiers."

Showing a divide that could dominate weekend meetings at the Group of Eight summit of world industrial leaders, Putin was more critical of Israel's massive bombing campaign in response to the capture of two soldiers. "Use of force should be balanced," he said.

At the same time, Putin said it was unacceptable that Hizbullah was trying to reach its goals with abductions and strikes against an independent state. "In this context we consider Israel's concerns to be justified," he said.

On Friday, Bush rejected Lebanon's calls for a cease-fire in escalating Mideast violence, saying only that Israel should try to limit civilian casualties as it steps up attacks on its neighbor.

"The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

Lebanon's prime minister asked Bush during a phone call Friday to pressure Israel for a cease-fire. But Bush, speaking to Prime Minister Fuad Saniora while flying from Germany to Russia, said Israelis have a right to protect themselves.

"We think it's important that, in doing that, they try to limit as much as possible the so-called collateral damage, not only on civilians but also on human lives," Snow said.

Saniora's office issued a statement saying Bush "affirmed his readiness to put pressure on Israel to limit the damage to Lebanon as a result of the current military action, and to spare civilians and innocent people from harm."

Snow said that wasn't so. Bush merely "reiterated his position" that Israel should limit the impact on civilians, he said.

"It is unlikely that either or both parties are going to agree to" a cease-fire at this point, Snow said.

Bush's conversation with Saniora was part of a round of telephone diplomacy aimed at quelling the flare-up in violence. The president also spoke with allies Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah II and thanked them for helping to try to ease the violence in their neighborhood, Snow said.

Bush was pleased that a number of major Muslim nations such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia "do not look on Hizbullah as being a legitimate government entity," Snow said.

Bush has not spoken with Israeli leaders, but US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Snow said. Snow did not provide details of the conversation.

Snow said it seemed inevitable that the G-8 members would issue some kind of a statement on the Mideast situation, but it was unclear what it would say. Rice said a three-person team sent by the United Nations to the region should get a chance to try to defuse the crisis.

Several drafts concerning violence in the Middle East were already on the table. "With the pace of events, they're going to have to redraft them," Snow said.

"It is important that everybody talk with one voice," Snow said

2006-07-14T12:36:00.000+03:00

1. Israel Shuts Down Lebanon in Response to Hizbullah Barrage
By Hillel Fendel

Dozens of Hizbullah-fired Katyusha rockets struck all over the north Thursday morning, killing two. Northern Israel had six years of quiet, and Hizbullah had six years to build up its rocket forces.
Israel has essentially imposed a total blockade on Lebanon, having taken out the runways of the Beirut International Airport and imposing a naval blockade of Lebanese seaports.

Israel also continues to attack dozens of targets throughout Lebanon, destroying bridges, roads, military positions, arms storehouses and missile battery locations. The city of Baalbek - the main Hizbullah stronghold in Lebanon, some 100 kilometers north of Israel - was also bombed. Close to 50 Lebanese have been reported killed in the Israeli attacks.

The Israel Air Force also hit the Al-Manar terrorist television studios. The station, however, apparently anticipated the attack, and moved its broadcasts to an unknown location ahead of time.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz says that Israel has warned residents of a southern Beirut suburb - home to Hizbullah chief Sheikh Nasrallah and many other leading Hizbullah terrorists - to evacuate the area. "It is unreasonable to assume that they will be allowed to live there in serenity for much longer," Halutz said. Hizbullah threatens to bomb Haifa if southern Beirut is bombed.

The Beirut-Damascus highway is also a target that "will be taken care of," IDF sources said.

Interior Minister Roni Bar-On (Kadima), a staunch supporter of the Disengagement plan, said today, "There is only one possible outcome: the victory of [our] army, leadership and nation."

Israeli officials said the purpose of Israel's offensive is to eradicate Hizbullah, and pressure Lebanon to withdraw its tacit support for the terrorist organization in its midst.

The names of the two soldiers who were abducted by Hizbullah yesterday were released this afternoon. They are Ehud Goldwasser, 31, of Nahariya, and Eldad Regev, 26, from Kiryat Motzkin.

Early Afternoon Attacks
After Hizbullah's initial Katyusha attack this morning, it continued firing afterwards at northern Israel, firing a total of more than 50 Katyushas. Rockets hit Beit Hillel again and caused a fire - one of several that were caused by the rockets - and struck other areas as well. Katyushas fell in Kfar Nasi in the Galilee and in Kibbutz Mahanayim, deeper into Israel than ever before. The hospital in Nahariya, operating on an emergency basis, has moved all of its hundreds of patients to underground floors, for fear of a Katyusha attack.

After a lull of 3-4 hours, another four Katyushas hit the city of Tzfat. Two people were hurt, with critical and moderate wounds, respectively, and several others were treated for shock. Rockets were also fired at Shlomi, in the northwestern Galilee, this afternoon.

Government and military officials say that the offensive in Lebanon will take weeks, and will be qualitatively different than any Israeli offensive since the 1982 Peace for Galilee War.

Israel's Retaliation Followed by Morning Katyusha Barrage
Israel attacked Hizbullah throughout yesterday (Wednesday) and over the night, following Hizbullah's killing of eight soldiers and its abduction of two others Wednesday morning. Israel's retaliation included more than 100 aerial attacks in southern Lebanon Wednesday night and early Thursday.

Hizbullah's response to the retaliation, as expected and long-planned, was quick to come: Shortly after 7 AM this morning (Thursday), a barrage of Katyusha rockets began, hitting an IDF position in Mount Meron, not far from Tzfat. No one was hurt, but soon afterwards, four more rockets hit the other side of the Galilee - the coastal city of Nahariya. One Katyusha hit the porch of a home where a woman was eating breakfast; she was killed on the spot.

Within minutes it became clear that Nahariya and Mt. Meron were not isolated attacks. Nahariya was rocketed again, as were many other locations throughout the north, including Rosh Pina, Tzfat, Margaliot, Machanayim, Machanayim Airport, Beit Hillel, Kfar HaNasi, and Mishmar HaYarden. The IDF Northern Command Headquarters was also hit. Ten Katyushas hit Tel Chai between 8 and 9 AM.

The total number of injured is close to 70.

The IDF has instructed residents throughout the north - hundreds of thousands of people - to enter their shelters and reinforced rooms. The orders have been largely ignored, however, and army officials have stepped up their tone, practically imploring residents to protect themselves.

If until now Nahariya and Kiryat Shmonah were always in range of Hizbullah's Katyusha rockets, communities further to the south are now in range as well - but the IDF estimates that Hizbullah has not even fired its longest-range Katyushas as of yet. The army is considering ordering the residents of towns and cities further to the south into their shelters.

Israel Police was placed on a level-3 alert, just one level below a state of emergency, anticipating a possible attempt by Palestinian terrorists to attack in the homefront.

The Israeli Offensive
Among the Lebanese targets attacked by Israel's air force over the night were a dozen bridges and much of southern Lebanon's highway infrastructure. One strike hit a vehicle in which two Hizbullah terrorists were traveling. Israel has announced that it views the Lebanese government as responsible for the attacks from within its borders, including the rockets and abduction of the two IDF soldiers.

The IDF announced the formation of a one-kilometer buffer zone, and any Lebanese seen in the area will be shot on sight. Until now, Hizbullah has stationed many outposts all along the border with Israel, practically adjacent to Israeli positions. Defense Minister Amir Peretz said that Israel would not allow Hizbullah to return to its former positions. "The only body that can operate there is the Lebanese Army," Peretz said.

Last night, Gen. Udi Adam, the Commander of the Northern Command, said he was unsure whether Hizbullah would be permitted to rebuild its positions. Just a few weeks ago, the IAF destroyed many Hizbullah positions, but allowed the terrorists to begin rebuilding immediately afterwards.

Sensing a Small Double Standard

2006-07-14T12:34:00.000+03:00

by David Bogner

I admit it is very tempting to fall into the trap of reacting to only the most current or pressing crisis. But when I look at the political and strategic landscape from 30,000 ft., instead of 300 ft., I see a very troubling trend.

In the run-up to Disengagement, I listened very closely to the arguments being offered by both sides of the issue.

On the Left was a large portion of the Israeli electorate who were ready and willing to turn a blind eye to our failure to win the slightest political capital from either the Palestinians or the international community with previous territorial concessions. This, despite assertions (that have now been confirmed by the former IDF Chief of Staff) that little or no strategic planning took place prior to Disengagement, and that a hard-right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's sudden co-opting of his political rival's agenda was conceived exclusively to provide Sharon with covering fire as he sought an escape from imminent legal woes.

On the Right were a lot of people who were willing to ignore (or even actively deny) that that a total Jewish population of less than 10,000 in Gaza, after more than 30 years of active recruitment and government incentives, was a dismal failure that could no longer be ignored. People who had actively ignored Gaza for a generation suddenly started flocking there in droves, like a spoiled child who suddenly notices a discarded toy only when his parents threaten to give it away.

At the time, I grudgingly bought into the need for some kind of strategic retrenchment based solely on the numbers issue associated with the failed settler enterprise in Gaza. But the Sharon and media steamroller that was used to surge ahead with the Disengagement seemed more intent on punishing the hapless Gaza settlers than on demonstrating any strategic benefit to the nation.

During Disengagement, many otherwise sensible people parroted Sharon and his media 'amen choir', telling me (in extremely direct terms) that Israel had to give up Gaza in order to improve our ability to respond militarily. But also in order to provide the Palestinians with autonomy over their own population, so a military option wouldn't be necessary in the future. I was also assured that this would provide Israel with significant political capital with the Palestinians (not to mention with the international community), giving us more future bargaining power should the Palestinians fail to act like partners for peace.

I remember at the time quoting the old saw that 'the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results'. But any suggestions by me that unilateral concessions or appeasement had never provided positive positive results with the Palestinians in the past (quite the opposite, in fact), were shunted forcefully aside as unpatriotic and dogmatically hawkish. I was assured that once we were out of Gaza, we would be better able to defend ourselves, and that even the smallest provocation from within the newly Judenrein Gaza would be dealt with swiftly, now that there would be no worry about Israeli settlers being used as proximity hostages against large-scale retaliation.

Several people even emailed me quotes from old campaign speeches of the recently beatified St. Rabin in which he called predictions of Palestinian missiles falling on Ashkelon "alarmist fear-mongering on the part of the Likud."

What seems to be lacking these days is a taking stock of lessons learned. Call it saying, "I told you so." Call it "finger-pointing". But if both sides of the political aisle were making bold claims and issuing dire warnings a year ago, it seems to me that at some point, an assessment must be made of whose predictions turned out to be correct.

In the 11 months since Disengagement, every single warning that the anti-Disengagement lobby issued has come to pass. I'm not normally so organized, but for some reason I actually took the time to write down most of the warnings that were cast aside in the blind rush to move ahead with Disengagement. Warnings that...
unilateral retreat from territory would be perceived by the Palestinians as weakness and/or surrender in the face of terror;

little or no strategic planning had gone into assuring the political and military stability of Palestinian Gaza after withdrawal;

little or no logistic planning (i.e., housing, jobs, schools, etc.) had gone into providing for the Israeli citizens who would have to be relocated from the evacuated communities;

once Gaza became PA-controlled territory the IDF would no longer have the necessary freedom-of-movement to protect Israeli communities within striking range of Palestinian infiltrators and missile crews in Gaza;

Gaza would immediately become a central base of operations for every terror group on the planet (many of whom could could not possibly care less about the wants and needs of the Palestinian people);

sophisticated weapons would flow into Gaza via Egypt, despite the good intentions and promises of international observers;

by seeming to reward terror with territorial concessions we would be pushing the Palestinian population directly into the arms of militant factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which advocate violent struggle rather than a negotiated diplomatic solution;

once the inevitable infiltrations and missile attacks began, we would end up having to re-take large swaths of Gaza at considerable risk to our soldiers, not to mention squandering the questionable political capital we may or may not have built up with the international community.
Yet, now that I have tried several times to begin such a discussion of current events with friends who, a year ago, dismissed these warnings out of hand, I am told "attacking the Palestinians won't work; it has been tried before and it has never brought results."

blink

When I ask what, in their opinion would bring results, I've been told, "I don't know, but we've gone the military route too many times with the Palestinians and it hasn't helped."

blink, blink

There seems to be a terrible double standard at work here. When the Left wants to keep fielding failed strategies and discredited theories, anyone who points out the insanity of repeating such hopelessly flawed actions (in hopes of different results) is labeled unpatriotic, or worse - a messianic war-monger. Yet, when the Right favors deploying a military solution that has, admittedly, had mixed results in the past, the Left unabashedly plays the insanity card.

I'm sorry. The world has evolved quite a bit since the days of nations having no other recourse for settling disputes except the battlefield. But we aren't so far removed from the battlefield - or even the playground - that we dare forget what an aggressive thug looks like, or how some thugs' asses just desperately need to be kicked (if for no other reason then to win a few minutes of respite).

As to those who say that this sort of out-dated, discredited thinking dooms me to repeat past failures, I say:

ring, ring

"Hello kettle? Hi. It's the pot calling. You're black!"

IDF Re-Engages Lebanon, Reserves Called Up

2006-07-12T16:19:00.000+03:00

IDF Re-Engages Lebanon, Reserves Called Up

by Ezra HaLevi

IDF tanks and ground troops entered Lebanon in response to the kidnapping of two soldiers and killing of 7 others. The army is calling up reserves to report to Israel's northern border.

Air Force planes bombed bridges leading northward from Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, in order to prevent the movement of the kidnappers. Meanwhile, IAF helicopters and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) were combing the air above Lebanon searching for the captured soldiers as well.

By mid-day Wednesday, Israeli bombers were spotted flying over the Lebanese capital of Beirut. Massive shelling by IDF artillery on both land and sea was reported – striking at least 17 targets across southern Lebanon.

Defense officials reportedly are seeking approval for a much wider offensive, which may be granted following Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's emergency Cabinet session scheduled for Wednesday evening. Sources in the IDF Chief of Staff's office quoted COS Dan Halutz calling for Lebanon's infrastructure to be reverted back fifty years.

This is the first time the IDF has launched a large-scale re-entry into Lebanon since then-Prime Minister Ehu Barak initiated a unilateral IDF retreat from the region in May, 2000. Since then, Hizbullah has kidnapped three soldiers, launched several cross-border attacks and fired missiles at northern Israeli towns. The group has thousands of missile batteries deployed all along the border facing Israel.

As of noon, a full IDF division had already received their "Order 8s" - immediate emergency call-up orders for reservists. The IDF Spokesman's office refused to confirm the report, but did confirm that individual units were being called up.

The Hizbullah terror group launched a series of attacks on Israeli military positions and northern towns Wednesday morning. During the course of the attacks, two soldiers were captured, with Hizbullah telling Arabic news agencies that “at least one” of the soldiers is still alive.

"We told you so"

2006-07-08T21:42:00.000+03:00

This is without doubt the biggest "We told you so." in recent Israeli memory.
Palestinian terrorists succeeded in hitting the city of Ashkelon with a Qassam rocket fired from northern Gaza after months of trying.

The Qassam, which was fitted with a double engine to increase its range, landed on the grounds of a high school, causing damage to the building. No one was hurt in the attack, but that diminishes littl from the seriousness of the incident[If that sentence seems awkward, sorry]: As Ashkelon mayor Roni Mehatzri was quoted as saying: "a city with 120,000 people is not supposed to live under a threat of rockets."

This is precisely what opponents of last year's Gaza withdrawal said would occur after Israel withdrew – that it would strengthen Hamas, lead to a rise in Palestinian terror, and place Ashkelon and other major Israeli cities in range of rocket fire from the Strip.

July 4th 1776

2006-07-04T18:45:00.001+03:00

Well, it's here: another year in the life of our glorious country the United States; the good ol' U S of A: The country is now 230 years old( Or I may have the math wrong- I didn't get much sleep last night), But, you get the idea.

SO anyway, the 4th of July seems to be of great importance- and not only to americans.

Tosay in 2005 The Deep Impact collider hit the comet Tempel 1

Today in 2004 The The cornerstone of the Freedom Tower was laid on the site of the World Trade Center

In 1997 NASA's Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars

In 1987 Klaus Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment

In 1976 Israeli commandoes rescue 100 Israelis/Jews passengers and the flight crew of Air France Flight 13 being held Entebbe international airport in Uganda

In 1966 Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act into United States law.

In 1960 the 50-star flag was flown for the first time

In 1959 the 49-star flag was flown for the first time

In 1947 "Indian Independence Bill" was presented before British House of Commons

In 1946 After 381 years of colonial rule, the Philippines is granted full independence

In 1943 Birht of Geraldo Rivera(Although if that was a good thing is debatable)

In 1939 Lou Gehrig, recently diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, told a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considered himself "The luckiest man on the face of the earth" as he announced his retirement from major league baseball

In 1934 Joe Louis wins his first professional boxing match.

In 1918 The Bolsheviks killed Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family (Julian calendar date)

In !905 Birth of Irving Johnson

In 1881 The Tuskegee Institute opens, Ulysses S. Grant III(Who played a major role in World Wars I and II) was born

In 1863 Vicksburg, Mississippi surrendered: They didn't celebrate Independence until 1945, now that's what I call sore losers!

In 1859 The battle of Magenta in the Austro-Sardinian war

In 1854 Birth of Victor Babeş Romanian Bacteriologist

In 1845 Birth of Thomas Barnard

In 1840 The Cunard Line's 700 ton wooden paddle steamer RMS Britannia departs from Liverpool bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia on the first transatlantic passenger cruise

In 1837 Grand Junction Railway, world's first long-distance railway, opens between Birmingham and Liverpool

In 1827 Slavery is abolished in New York State.

In 1826 Birht of Stephen Foster

In 1817 Construction began on the Erie Canal

In 1807 Birth of Giuseppe Garibaldi

In 1804 Birth of Nathaniel Hawthorne

In 1802 At West Point, New York the United States Military Academy opens

In 1799 Birht of King Oscar I of Sweden

I could go on and on, except I'm braindead So I'll stop here and witsh you all a happy Fourth.

July 4th 1776

2006-07-04T18:45:00.000+03:00

Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe

2006-07-04T15:09:00.000+03:00

"The Inconvenient Truth" is indeed inconvenient to alarmists
By Tom Harris
Monday, June 12, 2006
"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

But surely Carter is merely part of what most people regard as a tiny cadre of "climate change skeptics" who disagree with the "vast majority of scientists" Gore cites?

No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change. "Climate experts" is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.

Even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from insects to polar bears to poison ivy. "While many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change," explains former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball. "They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies."

This is highly valuable knowledge, but doesn't make them climate change cause experts, only climate impact experts.

So we have a smaller fraction.

But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," asserts Ball. "Since modelers concede computer outputs are not "predictions" but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts."

We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and extent of global climate change. In this relatively small community, there is no consensus, despite what Gore and others would suggest.

Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear:

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."

Dr. Wibj–rn KarlÈn, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."

But KarlÈn clarifies that the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off. As a result, Ball explains, there is an increase in the 'calving' of icebergs as the ice dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans. When Greenland and Antarctica are assessed together, "their mass balance is considered to possibly increase the sea level by 0.03 mm/year - not much of an effect," KarlÈn concludes.

The Antarctica has survived warm and cold events over millions of years. A meltdown is simply not a realistic scenario in the foreseeable future.

Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology."

KarlÈn explains that a paper published in 2003 by University of Alaska professor Igor Polyakov shows that, the region of the Arctic where rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise. "For several published records it is a decrease for the last 50 years," says KarlÈn

Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K. gives the details, "There has been some decrease in ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic over the past 30 years but no melt down. The Canadian Ice Service records show that from 1971-1981 there was average, to above average, ice thickness. From 1981-1982 there was a sharp decrease of 15% but there was a quick recovery to average, to slightly above average, values from 1983-1995. A sharp drop of 30% occurred again 1996-1998 and since then there has been a steady increase to reach near normal conditions since 2001."

Concerning Gore's beliefs about worldwide warming, Morgan points out that, in addition to the cooling in the NW Atlantic, massive areas of cooling are found in the North and South Pacific Ocean; the whole of the Amazon Valley; the north coast of South America and the Caribbean; the eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caucasus and Red Sea; New Zealand and even the Ganges Valley in India. Morgan explains, "Had the IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance."

Gore's point that 200 cities and towns in the American West set all time high temperature records is also misleading according to Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "It is not unusual for some locations, out of the thousands of cities and towns in the U.S., to set all-time records," he says. "The actual data shows that overall, recent temperatures in the U.S. were not unusual."

Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."

In April sixty of the world's leading experts in the field asked Prime Minister Harper to order a thorough public review of the science of climate change, something that has never happened in Canada. Considering what's at stake - either the end of civilization, if you believe Gore, or a waste of billions of dollars, if you believe his opponents - it seems like a reasonable request.

Tom Harris is mechanical engineer and Ottawa Director of High Park Group, a public affairs and public policy company. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com

WHAT SENATOR JOHN GLENN SAID

2006-07-03T10:37:00.000+03:00

> Things that make you think a little:
>
>
>
> There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January.
> In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the
> Month of January.That's just one American city,
> About as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.
>
>
>
> When some claim that President Bush shouldn't
> Have started this war, state the following:
>
>
>
> A. FDR led us into World War II.
>
> B. Germany never attacked us; Japan did.
> From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ...
> An average of 112,500 per year.
>
>
>
> C. Truman finished that war and started one in Korea.
> North Korea never attacked us.
> From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost ...
> An average of 18,334 per year.
>
> D. John F. Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962.
> Vietnam never attacked us.
>
> E. Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
> From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost ..
> An average of 5,800 per year.
>
> F. Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent.
> Bosnia never attacked us.
> He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three
> Times by Sudan and did nothing Osama has attacked us on
> Multiple occasions.
>
> G. In the years since terrorists attacked us , President Bush
> Has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled
> Al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and North
> Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who
> Slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.
>
>
>
> The Democrats are complaining
> About how long the war is taking.
> But
> It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno
> To take the Branch Davidian compound.
> That was a 51-day operation.
>
>
>
> We've been looking for evidence for chemical weapons
> In Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to
> find The Rose Law Firm billing records.
>
>
>
> It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the
> Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard
> Than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his
> Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick
>
>
>
> Our Commander-In-Chief is doing a GREAT JOB!
> The Military morale is high!
>
> The media hopes we are too ignorant
> To realize the facts
>
>
>
> But Wait there's more!
>
>
>
> JOHN GLENN (ON THE SENATE FLOOR)
> Mon, 26 Jan 2004 11:13
>
>
>
> Some people still don't understand why military personnel
> Do what they do for a living. This exchange between
> Senators John Glenn and Senator Howard Metzenbaum
> Is worth reading. Not only is it a pretty impressive
> Impromptu speech, but it's also a good example of one
> man's explanation of why men and women in the armed
> Services do what they do for a living
>
>
>
> This IS a typical, though sad, example of what
> Some who have never served think of the military.
>
>
>
> Senator Metzenbaum (speaking to Senator Glenn):
> "How can you run for Senate
> When you've never held a real job?"
>
>
>
> Senator Glenn (D-Ohio):
> "I served 23 years in the United States Marine Corps.
> I served through two wars. I flew 149 missions.
> My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on 12 different
> Occasions. I was in the space program. It wasn't my
> Checkbook, Howard; it was my life on the line. It was
> Not a nine-to-five job, where I took time off to take the
> Daily cash receipts to the bank."
>
>
>
> "I ask you to go with me ... As I went the other day...
> To a veteran's hospital and look those men ...
> With their mangled bodies in the eye, and tell THEM
> They didn't hold a job!
>
>
>
> You go with me to the Space Program at NASA
> And go, as I have gone, to the widows and Orphans
> Of Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee...
> And you look those kids in the eye and tell them
> That their DADS didn't hold a job.
>
>
> You go with me on Memorial Day and you stand in
> Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends
> Buried than I'd like to remember, and you watch
> Those waving flags
>
>
>
> You stand there, and you think about this nation,
> And you tell ME that those people didn't have a job?
>
> What about you?"
>
>
> For those who don't remember
> During WW.II, Howard Metzenbaum was an attorney
> Representing the Communist Party in the USA.
>
> Now he's a Senator!
>
> It might not be a bad idea to keep this circulating.

Bush meets Bush

2006-05-02T07:43:00.000+03:00

I was l looking through ifilm when I came across this(Hilarious!) clip of George Bush poking fun at himself with the aid of Steve Bridges:

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2724013

Pass it aroound!

The Myth of "Price-Gouging" From the Ayn Rand Institute

2006-04-26T07:50:00.000+03:00

The Myth of "Price-Gouging"

By: Alex Epstein

The recent announcement of record profits by ExxonMobil and Chevron has revived widespread claims that these profits were extracted by "price gouging." Thus, the stage is set for Washington to pass a federal law banning "price gouging." Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, for his part, has promised that "if the facts warrant it, I will support a federal anti-price gouging law."

But there are no facts that could warrant such a law, because there is no such thing as "price gouging" by private businesses.

The term "price gouging" implies that gas stations have an ability to forcibly inflict harm on us--but they do not. Any price we pay for a gallon of gasoline--whether $1 or $3--we pay voluntarily, based on the value of the gasoline to us. If we think we are spending too much on gasoline, we are free to drive less, to buy more fuel-efficient cars, to use carpools or busses, or to travel by bicycle or on foot. Gas station owners cannot force us to buy gasoline; they can only offer us a trade, which we are free to accept or reject.

But, one might ask, without anti-"price gouging" laws won't owners of gasoline charge the absolute highest prices they can? Absolutely, and they have every moral right to do so--just as consumers of gasoline have every right to pay the lowest prices they can find. Gas station owners are not our servants. They are producers who spend money, exert effort, and assume risk to bring a product to market. They own the gasoline they sell, and like any property owner they should be free to set the terms of sale.

Since we pay the lowest price that we can find for gasoline (and never more than it is worth to us), and gas stations sell gasoline for the highest price they can get (and never less than it is worth to them), the price of gasoline is a reflection of mutually beneficial trade--the essence of proper interaction under capitalism. For a gas station owner to charge what the market will bear is no more "gouging" than it is for a computer programmer--or a cashier--to negotiate for the highest salary he can get.

Since the prevailing price of gasoline is the result of trade, it reflects not the arbitrary "greed" of gas station owners, but the facts of the market: the producers' costs, competition, and what customers are willing to pay. The reason that gasoline prices are higher after a natural disaster, for instance, is that the fact of relatively scarce supply leads various purchasers of oil and gasoline to compete to buy it, and bid up its price. Those who buy it are those who value it most, to the extent they value it most--like highly efficient factories overseas, or Americans providing for their most crucial transportation priorities.

Anti-"price gouging" laws prevent producers and their customers from trading at mutually beneficial prices--sacrificing their interests to the interests of those who wish to avoid the "hardship" of paying prices higher than they are used to. By what right can the government force producers to set artificially low prices and prevent consumers from bidding up the price to get the gasoline they are willing to pay for? By what right can the government demand that factory owners be deprived of the oil they are able to pay for--and their customers of the cheap products they happily purchase at Wal-Mart?

Anti-"price-gouging" laws are a particularly vicious form of price controls. Like all price controls, they deprive businesses of earned profit, promote shortages, and discourage future production. But they also forbid the indefinable: "unconscionable" prices, the meaning of which cannot be known until after the ruling of some bureaucrat. This added uncertainty discourages producers from being in business, period--especially in times of emergency, when "gouging" claims are most rampant. If a federal "price gouging" law is passed, will gas station owners do everything possible after the next natural disaster to remain open for business--will private contractors from other states rush to bring generators, food, and debris-clearing equipment? Or will they not bother for fear that the prices they set will be declared "unconscionable"?

The real threat to individual rights and justice is not the so-called price gouging of free individuals, but the price-control gouging of a coercive government. We must fight this threat by asserting, unequivocally, that gas station owners have a right to charge whatever prices they choose.

Iran Threatens to Destroy Israel, Elected to UN Commission

2006-04-16T07:48:00.000+03:00

From Arutz Sheva

Iran's leaders have reiterated their call for Israel's annihilation, announcing the advancement of the Iranian nuclear program, and winning a seat on the United Nations' Disarmament Commission.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated Iran's goal of "wiping Israel off the map." Speaking at a conference of visiting heads of Arab terrorist groups operating in areas under Palestinian Authority control, Ahmadinejad said, "Whether you like it or not, the Zionist regime is on the road to being eliminated."

Once again expressing his doubt as to whether the Holocaust happened, Ahmadinejad said that, although the Holocaust’s occurrence is "open to doubt, there is no doubt about the holocaust being carried out [by Israel] against the Palestinians." He went on to call upon Israelis to return to the countries from which their ancestors emigrated. "I tell the governments who support Zionism to allow the migrants [to] return to their countries of origin. If you think you owe them something [because of the Holocaust], give them some of your land," he said. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

Ahmadinejad announced last Tuesday that Iran had successfully enriched uranium in order to produce nuclear fuel, in violation of a call by the UN Security Council for Iran to end the project.

The day before, the UN's Disarmament Commission elected Iran's Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi as one of its three vice-chairs. "The continued existence of thousands of nuclear warheads in the stockpiles of the nuclear-weapon States, which could destroy the entire globe many times over, and the increasing resort to the threat of their possible use, are the major sources of concern with regard to global peace and security," Danesh-Yazdi said, adding that Israel was required to place all of its "clandestine nuclear facilities" under UN nuclear watchdog supervision.

Jordan's representative added that Israel's refusal to renounce nuclear weapons is a major source of tensions in the Middle East.

A British newspaper reported over the weekend that British military officers took part in a joint operation with the US military simulating an invasion of Iran in July 2004. The Guardian report said the exercise was carried out on a base in Virginia and was codenamed "Hotspur 2004." The country being invaded was codenamed Korona, but located exactly within Iran's borders and sharing the characteristics of Iran. The attack was scheduled for 2015.

The British Defense Ministry downplayed the report, saying the exercise was purely fictitious in nature, "using invented countries and situations" to "test officers to the limit" but "using real maps."

British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said military action against Iran was "inconceivable."

"You can start a war but it won't be you who finishes it," the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard General Yahya Rahim Safav said, addressing the report at the same pro-Hamas conference at which Ahmadinejad spoke (called the Jerusalem Conference in Tehran). "The Americans know better than anyone that their troops in the region and in Iraq are vulnerable. I would advise them not to commit such a strategic error."

Also attending the conference were heads of the PFLP and DFLP terrorist organizations, as well as several members of the ruling Hamas group, which now controls the Palestinian Authority. Hamas figure Khaled Mashaal promised to those present, "The Palestinians will never recognize Israel." He also congratulated the Iranian people on their nuclear achievements and goals. “Acquiring nuclear technology is every nation’s right, especially the deprived and exploited."

Islamic Jihad chief Ramadan Abdallah Salah also praised Iran's nuclear ambitions. “Every Muslim, Arab and Palestinian will be happy to see a Muslim state realizing its scientific potential. No power in the world has the right to prevent a Muslim nation from building itself or to stop its development."

The Meatrix

2006-04-01T21:38:00.000+03:00

Just thought I'd post this, the Meatrix 2 is out:

http://www.themeatrix2.com/

And if you missed the first one:

http://www.themeatrix.com/

Dont miss out on this great parody with an important message!

Military Humor

2006-03-19T10:03:00.000+02:00

I found this on Neptunus Lex(http://www.neptunuslex.com/):

“At this Command, we have written in large, black letters: DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) on the back of our security badges.” Maj (CENTCOM)

“‘Leaning forward’ is really just the first phase of ‘falling on your face.’” Marine Col (MARFOREUR)

“I am so far down the food chain that I’ve got plankton bites on my butt.”

“None of us is as dumb as all of us.” Excerpted from a brief (EUCOM)

“We’re from the nuke shop, sir. We’re the crazy aunt in the closet that nobody likes to talk about …” Lt Col (EUCOM) in briefings

“Things are looking up for us here. In fact, Papua-New Guinea is thinking of offering two platoons: one of Infantry (headhunters) and one
of engineers (hut builders). They want to eat any Iraqis they kill. We’ve got no issues with that, but State is being anal about it.” LT
(JS) on OIF coalition-building.

“The chance of success in these talks is the same as the number of “R’s” in ‘fat chance…’” GS-15 (SHAPE)

“His knowledge on that topic is only power point deep…” MAJ (JS)

“Ya know, in this Command, if the world were supposed to end tomorrow, it would still happen behind schedule.” CWO4 (EUCOM)

“We are condemned men who are chained and will row in place until we rot.” LtCol (CENTCOM) on life at his Command

“Right now we’re pretty much the ham in a bad ham sandwich…” GO/FO (EUCOM)

“If we wait until the last minute to do it, it’ll only take a minute.” MAJ(EUCOM)

“The only reason that anything ever gets done is because there are pockets of competence in every command. The key is to find them … and then exploit the hell out of ‘em.” CDR (CENTCOM)

“I may be slow, but I do poor work…” MAJ (USAREUR)

“Cynicism is the smoke that rises from the ashes of burned out dreams.” Maj (CENTCOM) on the daily thrashings delivered to AOs at his Command.

“WE are the reason that Rumsfeld hates us…” LTC (EUCOM) doing some standard, Army self-flagellation

“I finally figured out that when a Turkish officer tells you, “Its no problem,” he means, for him.” Maj (EUCOM)

“Never in the history of the US Armed Forces have so many done so much for so few…” MAJ (Task Force Warrior) on the “success” of the Free Iraqi Forces (FIF) Training Program, where 1100 Army troops trained 77 Iraqi exiles at the cost of, well, …way too much…

“Our days are spent trying to get some poor, unsuspecting third world country to pony up to spending a year in a sweltering desert, full of pissed off Arabs who would rather shave the back of their legs with a cheese grater than submit to foreign occupation by a country for whom they have nothing but contempt.” LTC (JS) on the joys of coalition building

“I guess the next thing they’ll ask for is 300 US citizens with Hungarian last names to send to Iraq…” MAJ (JS) on the often-frustrating process of building the Iraqi coalition for Phase IV
“Between us girls, would it help to clarify the issue if you knew that Hungary is land-locked?” CDR to MAJ (EUCOM) on why a deployment from Hungary is likely to proceed by air vice sea

“So, what do you wanna do?”…”I dunno, what do YOU wanna do?”…”I dunno, what do YOU wanna do?,” etc. — COL (DIA) describing the way OUSD(P) develops and implements their strategies.

“I’ll be right back. I have to go pound my nuts flat…” Lt Col (EUCOM) after being assigned a difficult tasker

“I guess this is the wrong power cord for the computer, huh?” LtCol (EUCOM) after the smoke cleared from plugging his 110V computer into a 220V outlet

“OK, this is too stupid for words.” LTC (JS)

“When you get right up to the line that you’re not supposed to cross, the only person in front of you will be me!” CDR (CENTCOM) on his view of the value of being politically correct in today’s military

“There’s nothing wrong with crossing that line a little bit, it’s jumping over it buck naked that will probably get you in trouble…” Lt Col (EUCOM) responding to the above.

“Never pet a burning dog.” LTC (Tennessee National Guard)

“Ah, the joys of Paris: a unique chance to swill warm wine and be mesmerized by the dank ambrosia of unkempt armpits…” LCDR (NAVEUR) [obviously this guy has been to the wrong parts of Paris…]

“‘Status quo,’ as you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in…’” Attributed to former President Ronald Reagan

“We are now past the good idea cutoff point…” MAJ (JS) on the fact that somebody always tries to “fine tune” a COA with more “good ideas”

“Nobody ever said you had to be smart to make 0-6.” Col (EUCOM)

“I haven’t complied with a darn thing and nothing bad has happened to me yet.”

“Whatever happened to good old-fashioned military leadership? Just task the first two people you see.”

“Accuracy and attention to detail take a certain amount of time.”

“I seem to be rapidly approaching the apex of my mediocre career.” MAJ (JS)

“Much work remains to be done before we can announce our total failure to make any progress.”

“It’s not a lot of work unless you have to do it.” LTC (EUCOM)

“Creating smoking holes (with bombs) gives our lives meaning and enhances our manliness.” LTC (EUCOM) at a CT conference

“Eventually, we have to ‘make nice’ with the French, although, since I’m new in my job, I have every expectation that I’ll be contradicted.” DOS rep at a Counter Terrorism Conference

“Everyone should have an equal chance, but not everyone is equal.”

“You can get drunk enough to do most anything, but you have to realize going in that there are some things that, once you sober up and realize what you have done, will lead you to either grab a 12-gauge or stay drunk for the rest of your life.”

“Once you accept that a dog is a dog, you can’t get upset when it barks.” Lt Col (USSOCOM)

“That guy just won’t take ‘yes’ for an answer.” MAJ (EUCOM)

“Let’s just call Lessons Learned what they really are: institutionalized scab picking.”

“I can describe what it feels like being a Staff Officer in two words: distilled pain.” CDR (NAVEUR)

“When all else fails, simply revel in the absurdity of it all.” LCDR (CENTCOM)

“Never attribute to malice that which can be ascribed to sheer stupidity.” LTC (CENTCOM)

“CENTCOM - the ‘L’ is for ‘leadership.’ “

My Personal favorite. . .

“Working with Hungary is like watching a bad comedy set on auto repeat…” LCDR (EUCOM)

Meet Dr. Jafa Sultan

2006-03-17T10:59:00.000+02:00

Wafa Sultan: The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete. ...
[...] I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others' right to believe in it.

Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Are you a heretic?

Wafa Sultan: You can say whatever you like. I am a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural...

Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran...

Wafa Sultan: These are personal matters that do not concern you. [...] Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me.

The New York Times featured a profile of Dr. Sultan this week: For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats.

In response [to Dr. Sultan's comments], clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private. ...
"I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings," she said in an interview this week in her home in a Los Angeles suburb.

Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater and skirt, with fleece-lined slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes and hair are jet black and her modest manner belies her intense words: "Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs." ...

Dr. Sultan said she took those words [the "heretic" accusation by Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli] as a formal fatwa, a religious condemnation. Since then, she said, she has received numerous death threats on her answering machine and by e-mail.

One message said: "Oh, you are still alive? Wait and see." She received an e-mail message the other day, in Arabic, that said, "If someone were to kill you, it would be me."

Dr. Sultan said her mother, who still lives in Syria, is afraid to contact her directly, speaking only through a sister who lives in Qatar. She said she worried more about the safety of family members here and in Syria than she did for her own.

"I have no fear," she said. "I believe in my message. It is like a million-mile journey, and I believe I have walked the first and hardest 10 miles."

TIA Daily's Robert Tranciski provide a good analysis of the above stories as well as a Los Angeles Times piece: "The Escaped Prisoner": Wafa Sultan's Forward Strategy of Intellectual Freedom.

[The interview] was Wafa Sultan's declaration of intellectual independence from Islam. It was a declaration, by an Arab speaking in Arabic to an Arab audience, that Islam is a backward, violent religion, and that a secular, free society—a culture of science, independent creative thought, and political freedom—is superior to the Islamic culture of faith. ...
[T]he fact that Wafa Sultan is not a "moderate Muslim" is precisely what makes her so important. What the Arab world needs—and what we need to deploy as our primary intellectual offensive against Islamic fanaticism, is not such a watered-down version of the same violent Islamic dogmas. As I remarked when I originally covered this story on March 1, the reason I admire Wafa Sultan is that "She's no 'moderate Muslim'—she's an uncompromising firebrand in the defense of reason and freedom."

Let us hope that this firebrand can set off a conflagration of independent thought. And let's do whatever we can to add fuel to those flames and spread them across as much of the globe as possible.

See the Interview on Al-Jazeera:

http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1050#

Netanyahu: Election is a Referendum on Future Disengagements

2006-03-12T15:52:00.000+02:00

By Hillel Fendel

"The coming elections are a national referendum on the Olmert-Kadima plan to give away land to Hamas for nothing in return," Binyamin Netanyahu said last night.

The Likud's Chairman and Prime Ministerial candidate was speaking on Channel Two's Meet the Press program. "It is now clear that the citizens of Israel will have to choose between two different paths," he said.

Netanyahu said that if Kadima wins the elections and wishes to form a government based on its platform, "the Likud will not be there."

The former Prime Minister said that the Likud means to ensure that the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert remain in Israeli hands, and will "set a new route for the separation fence/wall that will distance it from Gush Dan [the Tel Aviv area] and Ben Gurion International Airport."

"It is unbelievable that Ehud Olmert has passed Yossi Beilin on the left," Netanyahu marveled. "Even Beilin says that giving away more land must be done in the framework of an agreement with the PA."

In order for Kadima to form a center-left government after the election, it will need the support of the far-left Meretz party. Meretz leader Yossi Beilin said that in view of this, "We will influence his platform, and, for example, ensure that the E-1 project of Jewish housing between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim is not built, because that would prevent any future agreement with the PA."

Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, does not rule out joining a future Kadima government. He said that Olmert's plan of additional unilateral withdrawals "is not a political/diplomatic plan, but rather electoral, based on his drop in the polls... We do not automatically rule out joining any government; we will check the guidelines of the ruling party and decide."

Shas Party leader Eli Yishai said, "Olmert's plan is bad; giving away territory is a prize for terrorism. We will not support another disengagement."

Labor Party leader and Prime Ministerial candidate Amir Peretz, who has supported additional disengagements in the past, said last night, "Unilateral withdrawals were appropriate in Lebanon and Gaza, where we withdrew back to our borders. But the situation in Judea and Samaria is much more complex, and therefore we have to make every effort to take actions only with mutual consent."

Weekend polls continue to show a gradual drop in support for Kadima, whose support is now estimated at between 34.5 and 38 Knesset seats. The ultimate question, however, is what type of government will be able to be formed after the election. A Kadima-Labor-Meretz coalition, according to current polls, falls just shy of a majority, and Kadima will have to court Yisrael Beiteinu, the Arab parties, and/or Shas in an effort to form a government.

William Herskovic(91)

2006-03-09T10:16:00.000+02:00

Not many people know the name of William Herskovic; He was just an old man who owned a camera store in LA.

But before he came to the US from Europe, he escaped from a german concentration camp, and helped save the lives of hundreds others.

William Herskovic was brought to Auschwitz in September 1942, he escaped three months later, on the first day of Hanukkah with two friends, cutting through a wire fence with a wirecutter he'd hidden in the snow.

hopping trains across europe, the three stopped for a short while in Breslau, Germany, but where thrown out by a local Rabbi when they tried to tell him about the horrors of Auschwitz.

They spent the next three weeks trekking across Nazi-occupied Europe by bus and train, living off the proceeds from the sale of a three-carat diamond Herskovic had hidden in the sole of his shoe.

Herskovic met with Resistance leaders in his prewar home of Antwerp, Belgium, giving one of the earliest firsthand accounts of the atrocities of the Holocaust. the Resistance mobilized, placing bricks on the tracks to stop a transport train caerrying jews to poland. Derailing the train and allowing about 250 prisoners to escape.

Herskovic hid for the next three years until the liberation. In 1945 he married Mireille, the younger sister of his first wife, who had been killed in Auschwitz with their two daughters.

He had operated a photography studio in Antwerp as a teenager and continued to do so for a decade after the war. But it didn't work for him anymore: "The things he saw-his artist's soul was pretty tromped up." His daughter said.

In LA, he was convinced to but the camera business, Bel Air Camera, his family still owns.

Almost fifty years after escaping, Herskvic sat down with his film-producer daughter, Patricia, and wrote an account of the Holocaust.

In addition to Patricia, Herskovic is survived by two other daughters, two brothers, four grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.

The leica family train

2006-02-28T09:45:00.000+02:00

This is a human interest story of courage, integrity and humility that
is only now coming to light, some 70 years after the fact. A
FASCINATING READ……Bob
A TALE OF COURAGE, INTEGRITY AND HUMILITY

The Leica is the pioneer 35mm camera. It was the first Camera to use
35mm movie film to be widely publicized and successfully marketed.
It created the "candid camera" boom of the 1930s.

It is a German product - precise, minimalist, utterly efficient.
Behind its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was a family-owned,
socially oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with uncommon
grace, generosity and modesty.

E. Leitz Inc., designer and manufacturer of Germany's most famous
photographic product, saved its Jews. And Ernst Leitz II, the steely
eyed Protestant patriarch who headed the closely held firm as the
Holocaust loomed across Europe, acted in such a way as to earn the
title, "the photography industry's Schindler."

As George Gilbert, a veteran writer on topics photographic, told the
story at last week's convention of the Leica Historical Society of
America in Portland, Ore., Leitz Inc., founded in Wetzlar in 1869, had
a tradition of enlightened behavior toward its workers. Pensions,
sick leave, health insurance - all were instituted early on at Leitz,
which depended for its work force upon generations of skilled
employees - many of whom were Jewish.

The 'Leica Freedom Train' - As soon as Adolf Hitler was named
chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II began receiving frantic
calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and
their families out of the country. As Christians, Leitz and his
family were immune to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg laws, which restricted
the movement of Jews and limited their professional activities.

To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established
what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as "the Leica
Freedom Train," a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in
the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas. Employees,
retailers, family members, even friends of family members were
"assigned" to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and
the United States.

Leitz's activities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November
1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across
Germany. Before long, German "employees" were disembarking from the
ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier and making their way to the
Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them
jobs in the photographic industry.

Each new arrival had around his or her neck the symbol of freedom â a
new Leica. The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find
work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians,
salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press.

The "Leica Freedom Train" was at its height in 1938 and early 1939,
delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with
the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders.
By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America,
thanks to the Leitzes' efforts.

How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it? Leitz Inc. was
an internationally recognized brand that reflected credit on the newly
resurgent Reich. The company produced range-finders and other optical
systems for the German military. Also, the Nazi government desperately
needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz's single biggest market
for optical goods was the United States.

Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their good
works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to help
Jews and freed only after the payment of a large bribe. Leitz's
daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she
was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland.

She eventually was freed but endured rough treatment in the course of
questioning She also fell under suspicion when she attempted to
improve the living conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave laborers,
all of them women, who had been assigned to work in the plant during
the1940s.

(After the war, Kuhn-Leitz received numerous honors for her
humanitarian efforts, among them the Officier d'honneur des Palms
Academic from France in 1965 and the Aristide Briand Medal from the
European Academy in the 1970s.)

Why has no one told this story until now? According to the late Norman
Lipton, a freelance writer and editor, the Leitz family wanted no
publicity for its heroic efforts. Only after the last member of the
Leitz family was dead did the "Leica Freedom Train" finally come to
light.

It is now the subject of a book, "The Greatest Invention of the Leitz
Family: The Leica Freedom Train," by Frank Dabba Smith, a
California-born rabbi currently living in England.

This was written 106 years ago!!!!!!!!!

2006-02-26T19:13:00.000+02:00

> WINSTON CHURCHILL ON ISLAM - SPEECH IN 1899!
> 106 years ago:
>
> "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its
votaries!
> Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as
> hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.
>
> The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits,
> slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and
> insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet
> rule or live.
>
> A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement;
> the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law
> every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either
> as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction
of
> slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among
> men.
>
> Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of
> the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
>
>
> No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being
> moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has
> already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors
at
> every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the
> strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly
> struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the
> civilization of ancient Rome."
>
> Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages
> 248-50
> (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

From Reuters: Dutch MP says necessary to criticise Islam.

2006-02-21T08:54:00.000+02:00

A Dutch politician and self-styled Muslim dissident urged Europeans to stand firm on Thursday in an international crisis over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, saying it was "necessary and urgent" to criticise Islam.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali praised newspapers in many countries which have printed the cartoons, considered blasphemous by many Muslims, but said others had held back for fear of criticising what she called "intolerant aspects of Islam".

"Today I am here to defend the right to offend within the bounds of the law," she told a news conference organised by her publisher during a visit to Berlin.

"It's necessary and it's urgent to criticise Islam. It is urgent to criticise the teachings of Mohammad."

Hirsi Ali, who was born in Somalia and brought up as a Muslim, has received frequent death threats for her criticism of Islam, including in a controversial film called "Submission" for which she wrote the script.

Its director Theo van Gogh was shot and stabbed to death by a Dutch-born Islamist militant in 2004, and a note threatening Hirsi Ali was pinned to his chest with a knife.

"Many Muslims are peaceful people; not all are fanatics. As far as I am concerned they have every right to be faithful to their convictions. But within Islam exists a hard-line Islamist movement that rejects democratic freedoms and wants to destroy them," the Dutch liberal member of parliament said.

She heaped shame on editors and politicians who had argued it was insensitive or irresponsible to reproduce the Mohammad cartoons, including one showing him with a bomb in his turban.

Arab Knesset Merger Calls For Islamic Rule, Praises Hamas

2006-02-16T07:50:00.000+02:00

By Ezra HaLevi

Two Israeli Arab parties have merged ahead of Knesset elections, launching their campaign by calling for Islamic rule in Israel and praising the Hamas terror group.

"Rule on earth, at least in Arab and Muslim land, should be by the Caliph [Islamic ruler and heir to Muhammad's authority –ed.]," chairman of the new merger between the United Arab List and the Ta'al Party Ibrahim Sarsour said Wednesday. "We believe in Islam and in the Caliphate and not in separation between state and religion."

Sarsour made the statement during a joint press conference with Arab MK Ahmed Tibi to announce the joint list's platform and party list.

The chairman took the opportunity to blame Zionists and the US government for a clash of civilizations being forced upon the Muslim world. "There is a hidden hand that acts in a bid to bring the world to a clash of civilizations," Sarsour said, referring to the cartoons of Islam's founder published recently in European newspapers. "I speak of that gang in the White House that tries to force one society's culture on another's. This is a part of a campaign against Islam, a campaign aimed at enlisting support in the West for military action against Iran."

Sarsour praised the Hamas terror group, which he said would lead the Arabs of the Palestinian Authority to "progress and achievements, not catastrophes [the Arabic word for catastrophe – Nakba – is how the Muslim world refers to the Arab defeat in the 1948 War of Independence –ed]."

The Arab politician said the overarching goal of the new merger of Arab parties is to prevent the "Israelization" and "Zionization" Arabs of Israel have had to combat. Specifically, Sarsour said the party would work to increase Arab immigration to the Jewish state and increase relations between Arabs with Israeli citizenship and the PA.

MK Ahmed Tibi said that the sentiments outlined by Sarsour represent the wishes of Israeli Arabs and said he did not think he was running against other Arab parties, but against "Zionist parties attempting to win Arab votes."

Fellow MK Taleb A-Sana promised that the party would support bills such as those that brought about the withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria and budgets that benefit the Arab public. He did not rule out sitting in a coalition government.

A-Sana, together with Balad Party MK Azmi Bishara were questioned earlier this week by Israel’s Police International Serious Crimes Unit in Petah Tikva regarding their recent trips to enemy states such as Syria and Lebanon, which were taken without receiving permission from the Interior Ministry. While in Syria, A-Sana met with Baath Party officials and members of the Syrian parliament. MK Tibi was investigated for similar infractions last June.

Cartoon Mania and Maniacs

2006-02-12T14:00:00.001+02:00

by Ellen W. Horowitz

Three of my kids were in Amona. All returned safely (thank G-d), but with accounts of such horror and brutality that I found myself too distressed and shaken to write down my thoughts. I write when the spirit moves me, but these last several days have knocked both the wind and inspiration out of me.

If you're some kind of ostrich and have, up until now, avoided viewing scenes or video footage from the atrocity at Amona, then you're under obligation to do so. At the very least, view the photo collection compiled from a variety of news sources which appear at sites like http://satlavi.co.il/amona.html.

Unable to write, but too tortured not to express myself, I gave an interview on the Tovia Singer Show, which pretty much exposed me as an anguished and distraught Israeli mother who has come to the very sick realization that the State of Israel has sanctioned and declared open season on her children.

I also reverted back to my skills as a cartoonist, and I tried my hand at a couple of placards for Sunday night's protest in Zion Square in Jerusalem. Sometimes, a simple black-and-white line drawing can restore a bit of clarity to a tortured soul. Plus, the recesses of an artistic imagination have, in the past, provided me with a great escape - and an occasional laugh.

But there was no escape, because the reality is far more devastating than anything I could conjure up in my fantasy world. It simply isn't funny. When rendering ideas, it's either the gross exaggeration through caricature or the over simplification via cartoon form that gives us the room to laugh. But the actual images and footage of Israel's prized SWAT team bludgeoning our Jewish youth with truncheons went beyond imagination; so any image I attempted to draw was unable to even hint at the profound horror of it all.

Nevertheless, the drawings did receive some attention from a variety of press sources. One cartoon depicted a rearing horse posed to crush a downed and bleeding youngster. The riot squad rider had a sinister smile and was saying, "Olmert's orders." The second placard depicted Pharaoh Olmert decreeing that his riot squad officer should, "Bash the head of every Zionist youth."

I wonder if those Danish cartoonists are suffering from a similar syndrome. In today's inverted world, perceived fantasy has become reality and what we thought to be our sane reality may be nothing more than an illusion. The cartoons of our imagination may fall flat or ignite unwanted reactions, because they are just too close to the truth.

The real-life lslamic loony-toons of today can inflict more damage in this world than Warner Brother's Taz can wreak on Toon Town in a year. It's reality gone daffy.

There's a lot of power in the pen. Like today's controversial cartoons, the plans, accords, contracts, scripts and speeches drawn up on simple paper are capable of either bringing our worst nightmares to life, or actualizing our best dreams.

There is a bit of poetic justice at play here. A seemingly neutral and composed Northern Europe is the place where the mere paper Oslo Accords were born and real Arab terrorism, in the form of arch-villain Yasser Arafat, was resurrected. A region of the world that managed to successfully feign fairness and neutrality for so many years may now be unable to escape from some of the chaos it helped to conceive.

It used to be that if one wanted to freely and brazenly express everything and anything that popped into their fertile or perverted mind, they would relocate to Northern Europe - and let it all hang out. Otherwise, they could end up like Tatiana Soskin, who was arrested in 1997 and subsequently sentenced in an Israeli court to two years in prison for offending religious sensitivities. It seems she had produced a drawing that depicted Mohammed as a pig reading the Koran. She was apprehended while attempting to post the cartoon on an Arab storefront in Hebron. Israel and the rest of the world condemned her at the time, while breathing sighs of relief that World War III had been averted.

The hot-headed Russian immigrant, Tatiana, was prevented from doing the deed that the cool-headed dudes of Denmark have done with their relatively mild renderings.

I don't know if that's funny, but it sure is ironic.

If today's moderate leaders and followers of Islam were sane and secure in their faith, then these type of cartoons would be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders as being tasteless and ludicrous, or the clerics would have had the courage to step forward and ensure that any outrage would have been properly vented via legitimate action and protest. As a Jew, the Arab European League's recent rendering of Anne Frank in bed with Hitler doesn't do much for me, but I'm surely not going to torch Mecca for it.

However, those vengeful thoughts do cross my mind as I watch a Jewish mother sit vigil over her seven-month-old baby who suffered serious head wounds in Friday's Kassam rocket attack. The attack, which emanated from Gaza, hit a kibbutz in Southern Israel that temporarily houses Jewish families expelled from Gaza under last summer's universally hailed Disengagement Plan. It seems that the Israeli government neglected to provide secure rooms or take other measures to protect the uprooted families, and much of the Diaspora Jewish world just doesn't give a damn.

Ironic, yes? It calls for a cartoon, but it just wouldn't be funny.

This whole row really isn't about cartoons. It's more about the way we've ignited Islamic fervor by empowering and encouraging the terrorists of Hamas and the tyrants in Iran. Empowerment is a very popular term in the Western or Free World's lexicon (they probably use the word a lot in Northern Europe). Look at the damage we've caused by liberating and sanctioning the beasts among us.

My hunch is that as the world awakens to this reality, and recognizes that we in the Western world brought upheaval upon ourselves by fostering excessive tolerance and freedom, those sinister living and breathing cartoon characters in our lives will consume themselves with their own hatred. This type of evil can't sustain itself indefinitely. I imagine the bad guys know it, too. And perhaps it's the insecurity and fear of losing their place in this world that has caused the tyrants and terrorists to run amok in an orgy of gore. They may be in their death throes, but they're not going down without a fight.

Islam may have met its match. The pen, when wielded by righteous people who express the truth, is indeed mightier than the sword.

Ehud Olmert may have met his match, too. The creativity, spirit and devotion of our Jewish youth is far stronger than any crushing blows the acting prime minister's police force can deliver.

In the meantime, things just aren't too funny. It seems that the good, creative people of the world should keep their pencils sharpened and heads protected, and pray for the day when we can all laugh again. "Then our mouth will be filled with laughter, and our tongue with songs of joy." (Psalm 126)

Cartoon Mania and Maniacs

2006-02-12T14:00:00.000+02:00

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

2006-02-10T11:58:00.000+02:00

world's easiest history quiz

2006-02-08T12:05:00.000+02:00

World's easiest quiz. Passing requires only 4 correct answers....a
> measly 40%.
>
> 1) How long did the Hundred Years War last?
> 2) Which country makes Panama hats?
> 3) From which animal do we get catgut?
> 4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
> 5) What is a camel's hair brush made of?
> 6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
> 7) What was King George VI's first name?
> 8) What color is a purple finch?
> 9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
> 10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?
>
>
>
>
> All done? Check your answers below! Scroll Down

> ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ
>
>
>
> 1) How long did the Hundred Years War last? 116 years
> 2) Which country makes Panama hats? Ecuador
> 3) From which animal do we get catgut? Sheep and Horses
> 4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution? November
> 5) What is a camel's hair brush made of? Squirrel fur
> 6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal? Dogs
> 7) What was King George VI's first name? Albert
> 8) What color is a purple finch? Crimson
> 9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from? New Zealand
> 10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane? Orange, of
> course.
>
>
> What do you mean you failed??????? Pass this on to all of your "brilliant"
> friends.

Yesha's Jewish Population Swells Despite Expulsion

2006-02-07T15:16:00.000+02:00

By Ezra HaLevi

Despite the forced removal of 10,000 residents, the construction of the Partition Wall and ongoing terror attacks, the number of Jews living in Yesha (Judea and Samaria) increased in 2005.

According to figures released by the Peace Now group and confirmed by the Central Bureau of Statistics, 12,000 new residents moved into Judea and Samaria, resulting in a net population growth following the expulsion of close to 10,000 people from communities in Gaza and northern Samaria. The number of Jews living in Judea and Samaria, not counting eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods, is 250,000.

The report also says that the natural growth of the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria continues at a far greater rate than that of those residing within the pre-1967 Green Line. Residents of Yesha have an average annual growth rate of 5.5 percent, whereas the rest of Israel has a 1.8 growth rate.

Additionally, despite the destruction of permanent structures in several outlying neighborhoods, 33 of the 120 long-standing communities Peace Now defines as "illegal outposts" have built permanent structures on their land, including synagogues, mikvaot (ritual baths) and community social halls.

The Peace Now report also laments the continued construction in Jewish towns located on the eastern side of the Partition Wall. Though the government has largely frozen funding to towns located outside the fence-route, private contractors and individuals have continued to build in places like Tekoa, Beit El, Itamar, Yitzhar, Hevron and Ofra.

Cdn. troops 'ready' for Afghan mission: General

2006-02-06T09:47:00.000+02:00

Large numbers of new Canadian soldiers have begun arriving in perilous southern Afghanistan, where they will be deployed in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

The Canadian troops are set to take over control of the coalition operations in the troubled province from the United States.

Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, who is leading the troops, says they are well-trained and equipped and are ready to hunt down insurgents and Taliban holdouts if necessary.

Brig.-General David Fraser

"Our soldiers are top-notch, first class and ready for this mission," he told a news conference in Ottawa Thursday.

"They are ready to conduct operations, be it humanitarian assistance, presence patrolling or offensive operations with their Afghan partners."

Scott Taylor, of Esprit de Corps magazine, described Kandahar as "a different kettle of fish" to the Afghan capital of Kabul.

"There's been a lot of controversy about this particularly now that we're going from a security assistance force to a combat mission," he told CTV's Canada AM Friday.

"We're going to be out hunting down the last of the Taliban. I don't think many Canadians realize that we're now going to war."

About 2,200 Canadian soldiers are expected to be on the ground in Afghanistan within the next few weeks.

The troops have been training for the mission, known as Operation Archer, for the past four months.

"Canada's goal in Afghanistan is to assist Afghans rebuild their country so that it is stable, democratic, self sufficient and prosperous," Brig.-Gen. Fraser added.

"This is about Canadians giving hope and opportunity to Afghans the same way that we take hope and opportunity for granted in this great nation."

Some of the Canadian troops will be helping the Afghan army hunt down Taliban insurgents, a mission which poses significant risks as attacks in the Kandahar region have been increasing.

Just last month, Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry was killed and three Canadian soldiers seriously wounded in a suicide car bomb attack.

"We can expect, and we've been told to expect, even more casualties because we have yet to start mounting offensive operations," added Taylor.

The Canadians will also support a number of rebuilding projects with their provincial reconstruction team (PRT).

Retired major Howard Michitsh recently spent 20 months in Afghanistan. He told CTV Newsnet the upcoming mission is unique because it will see the military working with other organizations to accomplish its goals.

"This is the first time from my perspective, you not only have the commanding general, you actually have someone from Foreign Affairs, from CIDA, from the Mounties, all together pushing in the same direction," Michitsh said. "And no matter what the military does, you can't establish the government, so you really need diplomats and CIDA and other people to do that sort of thing."

Brig.-Gen. Fraser is to take command of the multi-national brigade in the Kandahar area this summer, as NATO takes over much of the Afghanistan load from the American-led coalition that has been in the country for more than three years.

The Canadian troops will join around 4,000 soldiers from at least six other nations, including Britain.

Canada is expected to lead the coalition operation from late February until October 2006.

Must see!

2006-02-05T19:22:00.000+02:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8442014088728649932

The cartoons Islam doesn't want you to see

2006-02-04T20:00:00.000+02:00

After four months, the furor starting from the printing of twelve cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper still hasn't died down. In fact, it's gone on long enough for even me to notice it!

if you are easily offended by racist elitist comments, then stop right here.

The arrogance of muslims appears to be a constant; coming into the civilized countries of europe, with different customs, laws, and societies, and think they can throw around and intimidate the people already there like they do the barbaric countries they come from.

I warned you.

Islam, is a barbarous, savage religion that promotes the slaughter and genocide of those not of the people. Under Sharia law, women and children are property, and treaties, conventions and agreements are made and broken on a moment's notice.

By my writings so far, you may have arrived at the conclusion that i don't like muslims.

You are correct.

Saudi Arabia is a fine example of the modern Islamic country: a minority ruling class, inheriting their wealth, status, and power and no notice to the virtual Serfs who live in squalor, supporting their oppressors with their blood and sweat, programmed to hate worthwhile things such as Freedom, Democracy, and all that Mishugas

Do you remember, in Laurence of Arabia, how at the end, the NEAR east(Because it IS the NEAR east, not the MID east) is broken up between the British and French? I found myself feeling sorry for Laurence, but heaving a sigh of relief at the downfall of his 'arab league.'

If you have never watched laurence of Arabia, you should; it's an exellent biography of T.E. Laurence, who helped shape the modern NEAR east, and a history of the latter part of the struggle against the Turks.

So, anyway, I didn't intend to rant there, but now it's there, here's the cartoons that started this whole post:

Alito ... Boo!

2006-02-02T21:52:00.000+02:00

by Ann Coulter
Posted Feb 01, 2006

There now ... nominating a conservative to the Supreme Court wasn't that scary, was it? Hey, who wants to go again?

Democrats have the most exaggerated reputation for fearsomeness since Saddam Hussein's vaunted "Elite Republican Guard" -- the ones who ran like scared schoolgirls when U.S. forces toppled Iraq in 17 days flat.

A few years ago, the Democrats wouldn't allow a vote on Bush's Hispanic, black and female judicial nominees. Sen. Bill Frist was afraid of what the Democrats might do, so he backed down. Scary Democrats! And not just Joe Biden's hair plugs -- all of them were scary to Sen. Frist!

The nominations languished, and eventually some of the nominees, like Miguel Estrada, withdrew their names.

Then a Republican lawyer on the Judiciary Committee, Manuel Miranda, found memos Democrats left on open computer files proving that the Democrats were targeting Bush's Hispanic nominees like Miguel Estrada solely because they were Hispanic.

What do you suppose the Democrats would have done if they ever found a memo by Republican Senate staffers opposing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, say, because she was Jewish?

For reasons I still don't understand, instead of these memos being the Democrats' scandal, they became the Republicans' scandal. Democrats were outraged that Miranda had not chastely refused to read the memos Democrats had stupidly left on open files. Consequently, Frist fired Miranda.

The man most responsible for blocking Bush's judicial nominees in the first term was Sen. Tom Daschle. He is now citizen Tom Daschle, having been thrown out of office by South Dakota voters for not running enough TV ads showing him hugging President Bush. Daschle's loss gave Republicans an even larger majority in the Senate.

Yes, these Democrats certainly were a force to be reckoned with!

I will dispense with recapitulating the unpleasantness over Bush's last high court nominee, except to say that within days of Bush's nominating Democrat Harry Reid's friend Harriet Miers, every Republican in the nation was opposed to her. The only exceptions were people whose sole reason for living is to receive a personal phone call from Karl Rove.

Only because of the grassroots revolt against Miers were Republicans in Washington finally forced to face their worst nightmare.

Terror, thy name is Samuel Alito. Or as he is now known: "Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito."

The New York Times recently described the Republican campaign to get Alito on the court as a calculated strategy similar to Gen. Eisenhower's execution of the Normandy invasion. The meticulous plan, according to the Times, was mapped out by a secret conspiracy of Republicans similar to the Illuminati, also known as "the same weenies who gave us Harriet Miers."

According to Times reporter David Kirkpatrick, the weenies "laid out a two-part strategy to roll out behind whomever the president picked, people present said. The plan: first, extol the nonpartisan legal credentials of the nominee, steering the debate away from the nominee's possible influence over hot-button issues. Second, attack the liberal groups they expected to oppose any Bush nominee."

At no point in the article exposing the secret Republican plan did Kirkpatrick mention that the nominee ignored the plan. Sam Alito was a walking hot-button issue. I believe his sainted mother's remarks put a quick end to the Republicans' genius "stealth" campaign. Alito is everything Washington weenies have been petrified of since -- well, probably since the Bork nomination.

And yet, despite the NARAL ladies running around Capitol Hill with machetes, Alito was confirmed by the Senate in the exact same 58-42 vote that Robert Bork got (except reversed this time!).

That's what happens when you win elections. No wonder Democrats don't get this -- they've only won a couple of elections in the last quarter-century.

It's one thing for Democrats to be in denial about steady Republican election victories since 1994. It's quite another for Republicans to be in denial about them, too.

Why the Hamas Victory is a Good Thing

2006-01-29T22:18:00.001+02:00

by Steven Plaut

Perhaps the best indication of the extent to which the world has been Orwellized is the toady news coverage of the Palestinian "election", including in the Israeli media, itself largely the occupied territory of the far-left.

For months, the media were all in suspense over whether the victors in the "election" would be the Hamas terrorists or the PLO terrorists. As it turned out, Hamas evidently won the "election" by a huge majority.

The first part of the absurdity in the message daily inculcated by the Israeli political elite is that there is any significant difference between the PLO and Hamas. There is not. Both are equally dedicated to unlimited terror and violence, to genocide and the eradication of Israel in any form and in any borders. Both have conducted suicide bombings and in fact, if I am not mistaken, the PLO's terror brigades carried out more such attacks than Hamas did over the past two years. The Kassam rockets are at least as much the initiative of the PLO as they are that of Hamas. The PLO proliferates anti-Semitic propaganda as much as Hamas and is just as allied with the Hizbullah, Syria and Osama Bin-Laden.

But the Israeli establishment has been repeating the empty "we have a peace partner in the PLO" mantra for so many years that they managed to fabricate artificial suspense over the Palestinian "election". If the PLO were to win, then "Palestine" would be ruled by moderates, people with whom Israel could strike a deal, could do business - the pragmatists. Nice Nazis. Israel has been awash in speeches by politicians and mindless bumper stickers proclaiming: "We have a peace partner."

Now, this may strike you as bizarre, but I have been arguing that the best thing that could happen in the Palestinian Authority "election" would be a strong Hamas victory. Let me explain.

A strong Hamas victory is the only thing that stands a chance of forcing Israelis to open their eyes and wake up. As long as the PLO is in charge, the gigantic game of make-pretend continues. When the Hamas is marching about with costumes of suicide bombers and with its swastikas and other paraphernalia, then there can be no delusions about the Nazification of the Palestinians. It is not that the Palestinians would really be any less Nazified with the PLO in charge. It is just that the Abu Mazen-type representatives at the Potemkin negotiations, and the make-pretend respectability of the PLO hoodlum chiefs, allow the politicians and the media to continue acting as if there is a peace process.

The Hamas victory - and I wish it had been stronger - puts the lie to the game of make-pretend. No longer can any intelligent Israeli pretend that there is any way to deal with the Palestinians other than war. The only way to stop the Kassams and suicide bombers is R&D - Re-Occupation and De-Nazification. And with the Hamas in charge, everyone in Israel is forced to acknowledge this.

Well, almost everyone. Haaretz and the far-left have actually been preparing the Israeli public for a Hamas victory in recent months, and they are spreading the new epistle: "We can do business with Hamas."

Leftist after leftist proclaims that the solution is to negotiate with Hamas. After all, Hamas is as "genuine" and "representative" of Palestinians as the PLO, and it even wins "elections". Some Hamas officials are encouraging the trend of self-annihilation in Israel by putting out duplicitous statements about how Hamas acknowledges that Israel exists (as an empirical reality that needs to be corrected, that is). Such statements recall Yasser Arafat's duplicitous words.

So, get ready for new calls to enter into negotiations with Hamas. We can try to persuade them to have a salad bar on the cattle cars transporting Israeli Jews, and perhaps institute recycling and free tuition at the concentration camps Hamas is seeking to build. Israeli professors will soon be wearing their Hamas lapel pins. Hamas poetry will soon be taught to Israeli schoolchildren. Israeli schools will be screening films celebrating the heroism of Palestinian suicide bombers (like the University of Haifa screened Paradise Now this week).

And Second Shoah Now will be the fastest growing movement in Israeli society, holding mass demonstrations for peace in Rabin Square.

Police Find 3 Children Dead in Ark. Home

2006-01-29T17:05:00.000+02:00

DE QUEEN, Ark. - Police found the bodies of three children lying side-by-side on a bed in their home Saturday after their mother said she smothered them, investigators said.

Officers were sent to the southwestern Arkansas home after the father called authorities from New York saying his wife had confessed to the killings.

Paula Eleazar Mendez, 43, collapsed when officers arrived and was taken to a hospital to be treated for ingesting a toxic substance, officials said. She was under guard there until she could be taken to a jail to face homicide charges, Police Chief Richard McKinley said.

Notes found in the house may disclose a motive, McKinley said, though he would not elaborate.

Officers discovered the 6-year-old twin boys and their 8-year-old sister on a queen-size bed in what appeared to be a master bedroom near the rear of the wood-frame house, said Chris Brackett, a Sevier County sheriff's investigator. The children's names weren't released.

"Why the kids? It's terrible and sad," Brackett said. "I can't think of anything worse."

The children's father, Arturo Morales, 37, is a construction worker in New York. His wife and children had moved to Arkansas because it was safer, said the Rev. Salvador Marquez-Munoz of St. Barbara Catholic Church, where the children were enrolled in catechism classes.

"They were active in the church. She never missed a Sunday," Marquez-Munoz said. "They were just like any other children — bright and lively. I can't believe she could have done this."

FORK REPLACES DONKEY AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY SYMBOL

2006-01-28T19:42:00.000+02:00

By Ann Coulter Wed Jan 11, 8:13 PM ET
I'm not sure Sen. John Cornyn was helping with that lengthy presentation attempting to establish the many similarities between Samuel Alito and Sandra Day O'Connor.

It doesn't matter. Liberals are being routed. They can change the lineup, the manager, the coach, but the losing streak never ends. By and large, Republicans aren't even bothering to send in their A team anymore. Alito can start wearing his iPod to the hearings. By the end of the hearings, he'll be addressing the senators as "dude."

For fun, we ought to replace all the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee with "American Idol" contestants (assuming they wouldn't object to serving on a committee that includes a degenerate like Teddy Kennedy). Democrats would still not be able to persuade a single normal American that Sam Alito is "out of the mainstream."

With all their hysteria about Valerie Plame, I had nearly forgotten what the Democratic Party stands for. It's good to be reminded that the sole item on the Democrats' agenda is abortion.

According to Dianne Feinstein, Roe v. Wade is critically important because "women all over America have come to depend on it." At its most majestic, this precious right that women "have come to depend on" is the right to have sex with men they don't want to have children with.

There's a stirring principle! Leave aside the part of this precious constitutional right that involves (1) not allowing Americans to vote on the matter, and (2) suctioning brains out of half-born babies. The right to have sex with men you don't want to have children with is not exactly "Give me liberty, or give me death."

In the history of the nation, there has never been a political party so ridiculous as today's Democrats. It's as if all the brain-damaged people in America got together and formed a voting bloc.

The Federalists drafted the greatest political philosophy ever written by man and created the first constitutional republic. The anti-Federalists -- or "pre-Democrats, as I call them -- were formed to oppose the Constitution, which, to a great extent, remains their position today.

Andrew Jackson, the father of the Democratic Party, may have had some unpalatable goals, but at least they were big ideas. Wipe out the Indians, kill off the national bank and institute a spoils system. Love him or hate him, he never said, "I'll be announcing my platform sometime early next year." The Whigs were formed in opposition to everything Jackson stood for.

The Republican Party emerged from the Whigs when the Whigs waffled on slavery. (They were "pro-choice" on slavery.) The Republican Party was founded expressly as the anti-slavery party, which to a great extent remains their position today.

Having won that one, today's Republican Party stands for life, limited government and national defense. And today's Democratic Party stands for ... the right of women to have unprotected sex with men they don't especially like. We're the Blacks-Aren't-Property/Don't-Kill-Babies party. They're the Hook-Up party.

Leave aside any moral questions about baby-killing -- a term I have come to understand the baby-killing party dislikes. Smoking is fun too, but even I wouldn't support a political party whose sole raison d'etre was to eliminate non-smoking sections across the nation. That's not exactly the Magna Carta.

This week's conventional wisdom is that the Democrats weren't even trying to nail Alito at the confirmation hearings. Au contraire! The Democrats were tigers! They proved exactly what they set out to prove.

In fact, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-Hillary's state, was so deft in his questioning, he even has me convinced that Alito is going to vote to overrule Roe v. Wade. (And just when I thought I couldn't be more enthusiastic about the nomination!)

I'll go out on a limb and bet that, after the Democrats' expert cross-examination, Judge Alito has lost the support of every single member of NARAL.

The problem for the Democrats is: NARAL members aren't like most people. "Give me liberty or give me the right to have unprotected sex with men I don't want to have a child with" just isn't that attractive a principle in the light of day.

2006-01-24T10:22:00.000+02:00

Suicide attack in Tel Aviv financed by Teheran - planned in Syria - same day as Ahmadinejab's visit to Assad for' terror summit'

By Suleiman al-Khalidi

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/1/20/worldupdates/2006-01-20T181529Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_-232966-1&sec=Worldupdates

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on a visit to regional ally Syria, pledged support to militant Palestinian factions at a meeting with their leaders in Damascus on Friday, a Palestinian group said.

The talks came a few hours after Israel's defence minister accused Iran and Syria of being directly responsible for Thursday's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv which wounded 30 people.

"The Iranian president stressed that Iran strongly stands behind the Palestinian people and their just struggle," Maher al-Taher, senior official of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, told Reuters.

"He said the Palestinian people will be victorious as a result of their steadfastness, sacrifices and heroism."

Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reiterated after talks on Thursday that they backed the right of the Palestinians and Lebanese to resist Israeli occupation.

Israel's Haaretz daily reported that Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israeli authorities had "decisive proof that the attack in Tel Aviv was a direct result of the Axis of Terror that operates between Iran and Syria".

TEL AVIV BOMB

Mofaz was also quoted as saying that Iran had funded the attack while the operational orders to the suicide bomber, who came from the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, were issued at the Islamic Jihad headquarters in Damascus.

Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Mofaz as saying that Ahmadinejad was holding a "terrorism summit" with his host, Assad.

Islamic Jihad, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, claimed responsibility for the Tel Aviv bombing, the first in the Jewish state since an 11-month truce expired at the end of last year.

Taher said Islamic Jihad leader Abdallah Ramadan Shallah was among those who attended the 90-minute meeting with Ahmadinejad. Also present was Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and Ahmed Jibril, leader of the PFLP-GC pro-Syrian faction.

"We discussed the issue of pressure against Syria, Iran and Lebanon and confirmed the need to form a front that groups all the forces that opposes the Zionist-American schemes in the region," Taher said.

Both regional allies Syria and Iran are facing prospects of showdowns with the U.N. Security Council -- Damascus over limited cooperation with an inquiry into the killing of a Lebanese ex-prime minister and Tehran over its attempts to produce nuclear power.

Ahmadinejad has caused an international furore by calling for Israel to be wiped out and describing the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed, as a myth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4630650.stm Israel attacks 'axis of terror'

Israel has accused Iran and Syria of complicity in a suicide attack that injured at least 30 people in Tel Aviv.

It "was financed by Tehran, planned in Syria and carried out by Palestinians," Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz was quoted by security officials as saying.

Mr Mofaz was also quoted as blaming the attack on "the axis of terror that operates between Iran and Syria".

Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad earlier said it carried out the attack near Tel Aviv's old bus station.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the US have condemned the bombing.

It was the first bomb attack in Tel Aviv since February last year.

SUICIDE ATTACKS IN ISRAEL 19 Jan: 30 injured, Tel Aviv 5 Dec 2005: Five die, Netanya 26 Oct: Six die, Hadera market 28 Aug: 20 hurt, Beersheba 12 July: Two die, Netanya 25 Feb: Five die, 50 hurt, outside Tel Aviv nightclub

Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Mr Mofaz as saying that Israel had "decisive proof" the Tel Aviv attack could be blamed on the "axis of terror".

"Iran supplied the money, and [Islamic] Jihad's headquarters in Damascus directed the organisation's operatives in Nablus, giving operational orders and instructions," Mr Mofaz reportedly said.

Israel's Army Radio said the minister had shared the evidence with officials in the US, Europe and Egypt.

A spokesman for the Islamic Jihad's military wing - al-Quds Brigades - earlier named the bomber as 22-year-old Sami Abd al-Hafiz Antar, from the West Bank town of Nablus.

A top official in the Israeli foreign ministry, Gideon Meir, said on Thursday the attack highlighted the consequences of the Palestinian government's failure to disarm militant groups.

Mr Abbas said the bombing was meant to derail the Palestinian legislative elections on Wednesday, which Islamic Jihad is boycotting.

"This is sabotage and aimed at sabotaging the elections, not only the elections, but also the security of Palestinians. The culprits must be punished." the Palestinian leader said.

'Swayed strangely'

The attack took place at about 1530 (1330 GMT) on Solomon Street in Tel Aviv's commercial district.

"The guy was standing at the corner of the street, looking like he was waiting for someone," Yehiel Ohana told the Associated Press news agency.

"He swayed strangely. Then he went into the shwarma (food) stand, and two to three seconds later, we heard the explosion. Everything shuddered," he said.

"We entered the shwarma stand, and we saw him lying on the floor, and then we understood he was a suicide bomber."

The bombing took place on the same day as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began two-day talks with Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, in what Mr Mofaz described as a "terror summit".

It was the first suicide attack in Israel since 5 December, when five Israelis were killed by a suicide bomber outside a shopping centre in Netanya.

Police Investigation: Kfar Darom Protestors Did Not Throw Lye

2006-01-22T18:37:00.000+02:00

16:42 Jan 22, '06 / 22 Tevet 5766
By Hillel Fendel

Many protestors at the Kfar Darom expulsion in Gush Katif were indicted based on reports that caustic soda was thrown at policemen, but the latest tests show no evidence that it was thrown.

Following another examination of the uniforms of policemen who claimed to have been hit by the substance during the evacuation, the police now say that no evidence of the material was found. Parents and other supporters of the indicted youths responded angrily, blaming the police, the prosecution and the media.

Miriam Goldfisher of Beit El, whose son was among the hundreds who were on the roof of the Kfar Darom synagogue during the resistance, told Arutz-7 that there are several scandalous aspects of the story:
* The police and prosecution released outright lies;
* indictments were indiscriminately handed down based on a person's presence at the site and not based on his actions;
* the media did not allow reporters to report certain facts, and more.

"Some 320 people were on the roof that day," Mrs. Goldfisher said. "We know that because that's how many people were taken down from there into buses and straight into jail - for a week or more. I know of over 100 indictments that have been handed down so far, and more and more keep trickling in. The language of the indictment is downright scandalous. In many cases, the boys are not accused of anything specific, but rather: 'As part of that crowd from which caustic soda was thrown on security forces, the accused supported, by his presence, the acts of violence.'"

"When the university students rioted, and injured policemen and caused traffic jams," Goldfisher said, "they weren't indicted for being 'part of the crowd,' but for specific actions... The ease with which the police and prosecution publicize false information is simply intolerable, and necessitates a commission of inquiry."

She blames the media as well. The main news story at the time of the expulsion from Kfar Darom - Thursday, August 18, 2005 - was the alleged throwing of caustic soda at the policemen. Goldfisher said that two reporters on the roof - one from Reshet Bet (Voice of Israel) and one from Channel Ten television - immediately reported live that there was no caustic soda there, "but they were quickly hushed-up by their home studios... Furthermore, we had two doctors who immediately checked the policemen who complained, and they said that the policemen were not hit by caustic soda."

A-7: "Then what were they hit by? It was reported that about ten policemen started screaming in pain and ripped off their shirts..."

Goldfisher: "We also had some boys who had the same symptoms. The police threw some blue-colored liquid or water on the boys on the roof, possibly so they could identify them better, and the boys threw it back at them."

MK Sha'ul Yahalom (National Religious Party) said that the police and State Prosecution had been "partners in one big blood libel," while MK Michael Eitan called for the establishment of a commission of inquiry.

"The revelation that no evidence of caustic soda was found on the policemen's clothes," Yahalom said, "is like the testimony of 1,000 witnesses that the [many] indictments - which apparently were just a result of politics and had nothing to do with reality - should be withdrawn."

MK Michael Eitan, Chairman of the Law Committee, has written to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz as follows: "To my regret, despite my repeated requests, the Prosecution filed indictments based on this false information. Now dozens of indictments have to be erased, and a commission of inquiry must be established to find out how this mishap occurred in the law enforcement network."

MK Eitan noted that the Law Committee is still waiting for explanations from Mazuz and the Prosecution as to the policy governing the way in which the indictments were handed down against resistors who engaged in passive resistance.

Yahalom noted that it has long been known that the accusations against the youths were false: "At our session of the Knesset Law Committee, with hospital experts who treated the policemen, it was clear that all the talk that lye had been thrown at them was one big lie."

Uri Ariel (National Union) said that Attorney General Mazuz should be fired:
"The man who stood behind the false arrest and dishonest indictments against the rooftop protestors of Kfar Darom, and who led a tendentious investigation and indictment against Avri Ran, and who thwarts every possible agreement in Hevron, and who drags the police and the IDF into difficult and unnecessary clashes - is not suitable to continue to stand at the helm of Israel's law enforcement system."

Orit Strook, head of the Yesha (Judea and Samaria) Council's civil rights desk, said that the damage caused to the arrestees was significant, and included long incarceration, harm to their good name, prevention of their enlistment in the IDF, and financial expenses. The Yesha Civil Rights Organization is taking initial steps to collect all the relevant information and possibly file a suit against Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi, Attorney General Mazuz, and senior State Prosecution official Atty. Shai Nitzan.

Al Gore's 'Living Constitution' Leaves U.S. Vulnerable to Another 9/11

2006-01-21T18:01:00.000+02:00

by Terence P. Jeffrey
Posted Jan 18, 2006

When Al Gore ran for president in 2000 he said “our Constitution is a living and breathing document” that changes its meaning over time. This week we learned that among the things changing in Gore’s Constitution is the war power. It meant one thing when Bill Clinton was president, but means another thing now.

Seven years ago, then-Vice President Gore supported Clinton in launching a war Congress didn’t authorize. Now, he says the Constitution denies President Bush the power merely to intercept an enemy’s communications in and out of the U.S.--without permission from a federal judge--in the midst of a war Congress did authorize.

The program in question has been described by Gen. Michael Hayden, principal deputy director for national intelligence, as yielding information about terrorists that could not have been gleaned through court-ordered wiretaps, while intercepting only international communications involving persons linked to al Qaeda.

Yet, on Monday, Gore described the program as “eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens” and claimed it “virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law, repeatedly and insistently.”

While the liberal ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights are bringing lawsuits against the program, Gore is calling for a special counsel to investigate Bush.

Now flash back to 1999--the year when only a failed Senate impeachment prosecution stood between Gore and the presidency.

On March 23, 1999, President Clinton ordered U.S. forces to begin bombing Yugoslavia because of its treatment of people in Kosovo. Clinton bombed for three months. The day the war started, then-White House Spokesman Joe Lockhart was asked whether Clinton believed congressional support was “constitutionally necessary.” Lockhart said, “Well, I don’t think he believes it’s constitutionally necessary because we don’t believe that.”

Congress, in fact, declined to authorize it. The Senate voted 58 to 41 for a resolution “authorizing the President of the United States to conduct military air operations and missile strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.” But the House defeated the resolution, 213 to 213.

Gore aggressively backed Clinton’s unauthorized war, suggesting its critics were guilty of “politics.” “I think the American people want to see politics removed from any kind of action where our military forces are involved overseas,” he said on the April 2, 1999 edition of CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

Was the Clinton-Gore Kosovo War constitutional? No.

As I have argued before, citing Louis Fisher’s Presidential War Power, the Framers unambiguously denied the President the power to initiate offensive military action. But as Framers James Madison and Elbridge Gerry, authors of the war-powers clause, explained at the Constitutional Convention, they did leave “to the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks.”

In the Founding era no one doubted Congress needed to approve any act of war beyond what was necessary for the President “to repel sudden attacks.” In the 1801 case Talbot v. Seeman, involving a ship seized as a war prize, Chief Justice Marshall explained: “The whole powers of war being, by the Constitution of the United States, vested in Congress, the acts of that body can alone be resorted to as our guides in this inquiry. It is not denied, nor in the course of the argument has it been denied, that Congress may authorize general hostilities, in which case the general laws of war apply to our situation; or partial hostilities, in which case the laws of war, so far as they actually apply to our situation, must be noticed.”

Was Clinton repelling a sudden attack on the U.S. when he bombed Yugoslavia? Even Gore never claimed that.

In the war against al Qaeda--including his order for the NSA to intercept al Qaeda-linked communications in and out of the U.S.--was President Bush acting either under a congressional war authorization or his own authority to repel sudden attacks?

He was doing both.

After 9/11, Congress authorized the President to make war against “those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks.” If this authorized the President to invade Afghanistan, surely it authorized him to intercept communications between the U.S. and suspected terrorists in Afghanistan.

But even if Congress hadn’t authorized a war, it is reasonable to conclude the President could intercept al Qaeda-linked communications in and out of the U.S. even in circumstances where a court-order could not be secured. Surely, the President’s authority to repel sudden attacks includes the authority to listen at our frontier for sounds from the enemy.

But--at least so long as there is a Republican in the White House--it seems that Gore’s “living and breathing” Constitution would put earplugs in the sentries who guard the border between us and the next 9/11.

U.S. Tally of Wounded Drops 26%

2006-01-19T08:29:00.000+02:00

USA Today | January 16, 2006
WASHINGTON - The number of U.S. troops wounded in Iraq fell by more than a quarter in 2005 from a year earlier, Pentagon records show. Military officials call that a sign that insurgent attacks have declined in the face of elections and stronger Iraqi security forces.
The number of wounded dropped from 7,990 in 2004 to 5,939, according to the Defense Department. There hasn't been much change in the number of deaths, however. Pentagon figures show 844 U.S. troops were killed in the Iraq war during 2005, compared with 845 in 2004.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has announced plans to cut the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to about 130,000, down from about 160,000 for last month's elections. Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said he's optimistic that security in Iraq will continue to improve and more U.S. forces could leave.

U.S. military leaders say that one of the biggest changes was in the number and quality of Iraqi forces. About three dozen Iraqi battalions, each with about 700 soldiers, are taking the lead in battling insurgents, said Army Lt. Gen. John Vines, commander of multinational forces in Iraq. There were no such battalions in early 2005, he said.

Those Iraqi forces are better trained and equipped than they were a year ago, but their contribution to Iraq's long-term stability is in question, said military analyst Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"We really don't know how ethnically cohesive they are and how much their loyalty is to the central government rather than their ethnic kinsmen," O'Hanlon said. "Their long-term political loyalties remain to be tested, although their technical skills are getting better."

Vines told reporters in a videoconference Friday that violence also ebbed because some of the Sunni Arabs who make up the backbone of the insurgency decided to participate in last month's elections. "We have indicators that many who we believe may have been involved in violence are seeing that they can and must reject that violence," he said.

Another factor is the lack of the kind of fierce urban fighting that U.S. forces saw in Fallujah during 2004. Casualties spiked when forces led by Marines raided the insurgent stronghold in April and November 2004. The highest number of American troops wounded in battle for any month in Iraq was 1,424 that November.

Vines and other commanders say coalition and Iraqi forces also are doing a better job of preventing and disrupting planned attacks.

Army Maj. Gen. William Webster, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, said the number of suicide car bombs and roadside bombs fell by half during 2005. Only about 10% of insurgent attacks cause injuries or damage now, down from about 25% a year ago, Webster said late last year.

Rumsfeld has said that one possible reason the death rate has not fallen as quickly is that many of the successful attacks have been particularly deadly. In August, for example, a huge bomb destroyed a Marine vehicle, killing 14.

Tense Quiet in Hevron, Now the Stories Come Out

2006-01-19T08:22:00.000+02:00

By Hilleel Findel
Police harassment of Jews in Hevron is not a new phenomenon. Long-time residents David Shirel and Shani Horowitz tell their harrowing stories of the past two days.

With police and army forces walking freely around buildings and onto private porches and roofs, the feeling in Hevron is that the unrest of the past few days is not yet over. "I just had a few moments of great tension," one resident told Arutz-7 at around 5 PM today, "when a rumor went around that it's about to happen - the police are coming to take us and throw us out. But then we heard that it wasn't true, so we have another short respite..."

By order of Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, the army and police are in fact set to throw 11 families out of their homes in Jewish-owned land in the ancient Jewish Quarter of Hevron. One of those families, the Shlissels, has turned to the Beit Shemesh Magistrates Court, demanding - and receiving - a temporary stay. The Shlissels maintains that a family that is about to be thrown out of its home deserves a legal hearing - and that, contrary to popular perception, this has not been done.

"The famous Supreme Court case that everyone is talking about," said Rabbi Yisrael Shlissel, "did not rule that we must be thrown out. Rather, Arabs turned to the Court against us, and the Court asked the State what its position was, and the State said it would throw us out. This was not a Court decision, but rather a State decision - specifically by Menachem Mazuz."

The State claims that the Beit Shemesh Court has no jurisdiction in the case. A ruling is expected today or tomorrow.

As the tense suspense continues, Arutz-7 heard two stories of police harassment in Hevron. David Shirel, a 25-year-veteran of Hevron, told Arutz-7 this story:

"My 14-year-old daughter is accused, apparently of actually throwing an egg, six months ago, that landed near an Arab. For this, the police have come no fewer than four times in the past two weeks with a warrant for her immediate arrest - and turned our house upside-down in the process. The last time was yesterday evening, though the other times they came at 6:00 in the morning. They come with around 30-40 policemen who stand around the building, and about 7-8 of them come inside, and basically cause hysteria. They push us around, cause the kids to scream - and basically begin to humiliate us. In the course of looking for our 14-year-old daughter, they look in the refrigerator, the vegetable bin, in drawers of underwear - and they even have to rip open plastic bags of summer clothes in our attic…. At one point, when I asked one of them to be careful, he said, 'I'll do exactly what I want.'"

Shirel lives with his wife and nine children in Beit HaShishah (House of the Six). The complex is named for six men who were murdered by Arab terrorists outside Beit Hadassah in a Sabbath-night attack in May of 1980. He said that this morning, after the army declared Hevron a "closed military zone," he and some of his neighbors decided to see how this was being played out:

"We drove over to Kiryat Arba [about a kilometer away], and then promptly made a U-turn to return to Hevron. The soldiers then stopped us and demanded our ID cards, which we refused to show. This is our land and our homes, and in addition to the fact that they didn't even produce any documents showing that a closed military zone had actually been declared, it is totally illegitimate to use this tool for political purposes. Military zones can be declared closed when there is a danger to security and the like, but by what rights is it being used to serve someone's political interests? ... We stood outside there in the pouring rain, honking and walking around; it definitely caused a disturbance, and finally, after about two hours, they just gave in and let us through."

It was later reported that five women from Hevron had been arrested by security forces for refusing to present ID cards.

In another case reported today, a 14-year-old boy was grabbed by policemen in Kiryat Arba last night and dragged roughly down a staircase into a police van. Helpless children burst into tears at the sight. Only after adults intervened was the boy freed. The police later released this response:
"Rocks were thrown at a Yassam force in Kiryat Arba by several youths who ran away. A boy was arrested near the site of the incident, and as soon as it became clear that he was not connected with the case, he was released. Every complaint about violence that was perpetrated illegally should be submitted to the Department for Investigation of Policemen."

Shani Horowitz, who has been living in Hevron for 24 years told IsraelNationalRadio.com the following story:
"Two days ago, I heard knocking at my door, and I saw about 50 special Yassam police forces standing outside. They were also standing at the other entrance to the house, to make sure that the 'criminal' - my 17-year-old son - wouldn't run away. He is accused of insulting a police officer. The officer claims that my son said he was garbage. So after it happened, my husband, a very peace-loving person, went over to the policeman and apologized... You know, the children here have had very bad experiences with policemen the policemen are not too well-loved here because of many different things we've gone through. I one time had a search done in my house because a Palestinian boy threw a cell phone at my child and then he claimed that my child stole the cell phone - so the police came and took apart all my bookcases and closets to look for this cell phone... Another time, a son of mine went to testify that an Arab boy had hit his [my son's] youth counselor, and then the Arab testified that my son had hit his own counselor - and the police actually opened an investigation on that! ... In short, my children don't have a great love for the police force...

"In any event, in the last case, my son wanted to apologize... but the police didn't accept that, and they want a court case. So they came to arrest him for that. The other day, when I was on my way to Kiryat Arba, about 20 policemen came and jumped on my car in a very frightening way, opening all the doors and scaring my baby very much. When I asked why, they said they were looking for my son again..."

Asked how she sees the situation developing, Shani said,
"It's hard for me to believe that they [the government] will back down, because they're trying to prove that just as good as Sharon, and if Sharon was able to do what he did [in Gush Katif] , then Olmert is no worse and Mofaz is no weaker; I think the name of the game at this point is to oppress the settlers in any way possible. But, on the other hand, I believe in G-d, and He can help us get out of anything..."

Shani lives with her husband and 10 children in the Beit Hadassah complex. Asked about her overall spirit at this time, Shani said,
"You want to know something? I come from America, and for me it's the biggest privilege that I'm here; I know this is a very critical time in the history of the Jewish country. With G-d's help, I believe that everything is going to bring to the total Redemption. All these things that now look to us very black - they will soon bring us great light."

US army in Iraq institutionally racist, claims British officer

2006-01-16T09:19:00.000+02:00

Richard Norton-Taylor and Jamie Wilson in Washington
Thursday January 12, 2006
The Guardian

A senior British officer has criticised the US army for its conduct in Iraq, accusing it of institutional racism, moral righteousness, misplaced optimism, and of being ill-suited to engage in counter-insurgency operations.
The blistering critique, by Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was the second most senior officer responsible for training Iraqi security forces, reflects criticism and frustration voiced by British commanders of American military tactics.

What is startling is the severity of his comments - and the decision by Military Review, a US army magazine, to publish them.

American soldiers, says Brig Aylwin-Foster, were "almost unfailingly courteous and considerate". But he says "at times their cultural insensitivity, almost certainly inadvertent, arguably amounted to institutional racism".

The US army, he says, is imbued with an unparalleled sense of patriotism, duty, passion and talent. "Yet it seemed weighed down by bureaucracy, a stiflingly hierarchical outlook, a predisposition to offensive operations and a sense that duty required all issues to be confronted head-on."

Brig Aylwin-Foster says the American army's laudable "can-do" approach paradoxically led to another trait, namely "damaging optimism". Such an ethos, he says, "is unhelpful if it discourages junior commanders from reporting unwelcome news up the chain of command".

But his central theme is that US military commanders have failed to train and educate their soldiers in the art of counter-insurgency operations and the need to cultivate the "hearts and minds" of the local population.

While US officers in Iraq criticised their allies for being too reluctant to use force, their strategy was "to kill or capture all terrorists and insurgents: they saw military destruction of the enemy as a strategic goal in its own right". In short, the brigadier says, "the US army has developed over time a singular focus on conventional warfare, of a particularly swift and violent kind".

Such an unsophisticated approach, ingrained in American military doctrine, is counter-productive, exacerbating the task the US faced by alienating significant sections of the population, argues Brig Aylwin-Foster.

What he calls a sense of "moral righteousness" contributed to the US response to the killing of four American contractors in Falluja in the spring of 2004. As a "come-on" tactic by insurgents, designed to provoke a disproportionate response, it succeeded, says the brigadier, as US commanders were "set on the total destruction of the enemy".

He notes that the firing on one night of more than 40 155mm artillery rounds on a small part of the city was considered by the local US commander as a "minor application of combat power". Such tactics are not the answer, he says, to remove Iraq from the grip of what he calls a "vicious and tenacious insurgency".

Brig Aylwin-Foster's criticisms have been echoed by other senior British officers, though not in such a devastating way. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the army, told MPs in April 2004 as US forces attacked Falluja: "We must be able to fight with the Americans. That does not mean we must be able to fight as the Americans."

Yesterday Colonel William Darley, the editor of Military Review, told the Guardian: "This [Brig Aylwin-Foster] is a highly regarded expert in this area who is providing a candid critique. It is certainly not uninformed ... It is a professional discussion and a professional critique among professionals about what needs to be done. What he says is authoritative and a useful point of perspective whether you agree with it or not." In a disclaimer he says the article does not reflect the views of the UK or the US army.

Colonel Kevin Benson, director of the US army's school of advanced military studies, who told the Washington Post the brigadier was an "insufferable British snob", said his remark had been made in the heat of the moment. "I applaud the brigadier for starting the debate," he said. "It is a debate that must go on and I myself am writing a response."

The brigadier was deputy commander of the office of security transition for training and organising Iraq's armed forces in 2004. Last year he took up the post of deputy commander of the Eufor, the European peacekeeping force in Bosnia. He could not be contacted last night.

Pakistan’s Federal Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao in Exclusive interview to DEBKAfile’s Special Correspondent in Pakistan:

2006-01-16T09:12:00.000+02:00

January 14, 2006, 10:32 AM (GMT+02:00)

Neither Al-Qaeda's number two, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, nor Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar was in Damadola village at the time of Friday’s US air attack which killed 18 villagers.
The minister also denied the removal of five dead bodies of al Qaeda leaders.
"The US planes apparently acted on wrong information while trying to target some top al-Qaeda leaders, thereby killing Pakistani civilians", said the interior minister who made his report after Pakistani security and intelligence agencies had inspected the site of the air strike by two CIA-controlled Predator surveillance aircraft firing Hellfire air-to-ground missiles. This method has been used in the past to kill high-value terrorists.
According to DEBKAfile’s sources, Minister Sherpao’s remark indicates that al Qaeda or Taliban had managed to plant a false lead with US intelligence by means of informers. This decoy operation had two objectives:
1. To confuse the commanders of the American forces hunting for bin Laden and Mullah Omar and expose their failure to penetrate al Qaeda’s top ranks.
2. To expose US pursuit tactics and uncover any American collaborators in their midst. The speed with which the news of the air raid appeared on US TV channels Friday night was a mark of the CIA’s certainty that this time it had hit one of its primary marks in the war on terror, Zawahiri.
DEBKAfile’s Special Correspondent in Pakistan reported earlier:
The target was a cluster of three houses owned by a jeweler named Abdul Ghafoor, whose relatives were among the victims.
The Pakistani authorities pointed out that in December, the Americans claimed to have killed Abu Hamza Rabia, a leading al-Qaeda operative, in an air strike in the Pakistani tribal area. However, the body was not produced, leaving the American claim in doubt.
DEBKAfile adds: Bajaur is one of the seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA running down the border with Afghanistan. These mountain areas, home to six million inhabitants, have long been used as sanctuaries and rear bases by Al Qaeda and Taliban.
Zawahiri in his latest videotape Friday, Jan. 6, called on the United States to admit its defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan and threatened the Americans with the same defeat in Palestine.

More Skirmishes Between Residents & IDF in Hevron

2006-01-15T15:05:00.000+02:00

IDF Colonel Motti Baruch reports there were additional confrontations near Beit Hadassah between Jewish residents and soldiers on Sunday afternoon.

Baruch reportedly was forced to chamber a bullet of his weapon as some 200 residents confronted soldiers, some throwing objects at them. Riot control adjuncts were deployed against the unruly residents.

Hevron officials accuse troops of using unjustifiable force against residents. Hevron community leaders released a sharp statement criticizing Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who warned he will not tolerate anyone lifting a finger against security forces.

Hevron leaders explain that Olmert is waging a media war to discredit Hevron’s residents ahead of a planned expulsion, seeking to discredit them for legitimately opposing plans to evict them from their homes.

DEBKAfile: Combined al Qaeda-Palestinian strike against Israeli power station plotted from Lebanon and Gaza

2006-01-14T09:10:00.000+02:00

January 13, 2006, 6:47 PM (GMT+02:00)

Friday, Jan. 13, Lebanon charged 13 al Qaeda members with plotting terrorist attacks –without disclosing where. The 7 Syrians, 3 Lebanese, 1, Saudi, 1 Jordanian and 1 Palestinian will be brought before a Lebanese military court.

DEBKAfile adds: Since its Dec. 27 Katyusha rocket barrage on northern Israel, al Qaeda has been actively preparing further attacks. This week, the Lebanese authorities disclosed the capture in Tripoli harbor Sunday, Jan. 8, four Palestinian al Qaeda members aboard a boat loaded with explosives, recoilless rocket grenades and other weapons setting out to strike a strategic target on the Israeli coast.

Lebanese investigators, according to our sources, discovered a conspiracy for a dual strike to emanate for the first time from two places. The seaborne team from Lebanon planned to strike Israel’s big Eshkol power station in Ashkelon from the water, while the Gaza attackers would have again aimed for the plant with Qassam missiles.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away. . .

2006-01-10T22:08:00.000+02:00

Liberals stood for freedom and equality around the world. Now all they seem to stand for is total insanity and appeasement, where they aren't out-and-out communists.

Sorry about that, I needed to get that out of my system.

One thing that makes me mad is when a man says Iraq is 'Another Veitnam'; there can be no comparison between the two:

Veitnam was a jungle war fought against a communist-backed civilian uprising; Iraq is a Desert war fought against Neo-fascist Sharia-backed Terrorists

in Veitnam, there was a US conscript army supporting a corrupt Regime; in Iraq, there is a multilateral force, composed of volunteer armies from a number of nations supporting a democratically elected government with the support of the populace.

Casualties: we had more casualties in Veitnam in one year than we've had in Iraq for the entire war: Even counting Iraqis, Brits, Aussies, Poles, and all the rest(which Liberals, at lest, never do), you still come to significatly fewer casualties throughout the entire war than were sustained in Veitnam in twelve months.

I'd like to go on, but it's really late and I need to get some rest; I'll just finish up with this little tidbit:

December 9, 2005 (CNN) While interviewing an anonymous US Special Forces soldier, a Reuters News agent asked the soldier what he felt when sniping members of Al Quaeda in Afghanistan. The soldier shrugged and replied, "Recoil."