It's the settlements, stupid!

set⋅tle⋅ment
  /ˈsɛtlmənt/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [set-l-muhnt] Show IPA
–noun
1. the act or state of settling or the state of being settled.
2. an arrangement or adjustment, as of business affairs or a disagreement.
3. an agreement signed after labor negotiations between union and management.
4. the settling of persons in a new country or place.
5. a colony, esp. in its early stages.
6. a small community, village, or group of houses in a thinly populated area.

Netanyahu and Obama!

No-holds-barred, no disqualifications, in a STEEL cage ONLY on PAY-PER-VIEW!!!!

Or at least that's how it seemed like last week's meeting between the two leaders was billed in the media. It was the "fateful encounter of two world leaders since Kennedy met Khrushchev" according to noted Israel-basher Professor Juan Cole (Guess who is Khrushchev in this analogy).

Jerusalem Post columnist David Horovitz, noted in his analysis of the meeting that:

Don King himself would have been hard-pressed to outdo the pugilistic hype...ahead of Monday's first White House meeting between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu. Viewers and readers would have been forgiven for anticipating anything up to and including fisticuffs in the Oval Office...

Even our insane conspiracy theorist friends from last month got into the fun. So after a week that saw our friend the president declare his undying love for the Jewish people, who did Obama pin the blame on for the continuing never-ending violence in the Middle East? Was it:

a) The Muslims

b) The Jews

c) Hamas

or

d) Sally Struthers

From the aforementioned David Horovitz article:

Undaunted by past failures, Obama is reportedly setting up a hugely ambitious sequence - Israel freezes settlement building, the Arab world begins normalizing relations with Israel, and Israel and the Palestinians then enter substantive talks.

Number 1 on the agenda? Why those evil, dirty, sneaky Jew settlers of course!

Not to be outdone, Hilary Clinton (another recipient of undying affection from "liberal" Jews) echoed her former hated rival's instructions for Netanyahu:

"We want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth - any kind of settlement activity"

Right. Of course. Stop the settlements and everything starts to work out! No settlers in the West Bank = peace. So sayeth the administration of hope and change.

Oh and another thing Benjy my man...about that city you thought was your capital...you know where two Jewish Temples stood almost a thousand years before Muhammad was even born...yeah that place...you know, Jerusalem:

"Jerusalem is a final status issue. Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to resolve its status during negotiations. We will support their efforts to reach agreements on all final status issues," a State Department spokesman said when asked to respond to Netanyahu's proclamation that Jerusalem would always remain under Israeli sovereignty.

But then, it's not like anything readers of this blog haven't known since December of 2007. Obama blames the Jews.

Or is it just the settlers? This goes back to the anti-Zionist/anti-Jewish debate that was the very basis for this blog's formation. Can you be pro-Israel and anti-settler? Well, in theory you can be but first we need to establish that the settlers cause Israel more harm than they do good. The most common example of this is that, like Obama (and Hillary) says...remove the settlements and you remove the barrier to peace. Less settlements = less war (and therefore less dead Israelis). More settlements = more war (and therefore more dead Israelis).

Well let's look at some history.

Before 1967 there were no settlers at all. The Jewish population of Gaza, Judea and Samaria was zero between 1948 and 1967. Israel fought three wars with its Arab neighbors. And before that, Jews had been hunted across the world for millennia. There were Holocausts and Crusades and pogroms and Inquisitions and riots.

Then the evil settlers came.

Israel has not fought a war against its neighbor states since 1973. The Jewish state has not been faced with a true existential war since that time. IDF military operations have consisted mostly of defensive incursions and riot control instead of full-scale military operations against states. Israel has seen a dramatic increase in American Jewish immigration as well as immigration from other Western countries. Oh and those evil settlers? They (along with other Orthodox Israelis) are the ones primarily responsible for staving off the "demographic time bomb" that was supposed to end Israeli democracy or end Israel within a few generations.

Now let's look at historical examples of post-settlement reality.

Well, Israel evacuated the Sinai settlement of Yamit after the 1978 Camp David Accords and returned the land to Egypt. Technically, the two states are now at peace so that's nice. Still no Palestinian state though.

The other case is Gaza. Before there were any Jewish settlers in the Gaza strip Palestinian fedayeen forces regularly used the territory to conduct attacks on sovereign Israeli soil. After 1967 (and subsequent settlement establishment in Gaza) these attacks became a thing of the past. I don't think I need to remind you what happened after the Gaza settler evacuation in 2005. In case you don't feel like reliving the past few years - here's a chart showing the documented cases of rocket attacks emanating from the Gaza Strip:



You see those gigantic spikes from 2006 and on? What do you think they coincide with? Ariel Sharon visiting the Temple Mount? New Gaza settlement construction? Another Muhammad cartoon hitting the press?

Well, in August/2005 Israel committed the awful crime against humanity of daring to give the Palestinians what they wanted...






The Gaza settlements along with several West Bank settlements were evacuated.

Families were ripped out of their homes in a show of good faith to the Palestinians despite their continuing terror campaign against Israeli women and children.

And so what happened the following year?

A 30% INCREASE in rocket attacks over the previous FIVE YEARS COMBINED. If (as Obama says) the obstacle to peace is the settler movement...but then the settlers are removed in tear-jerking, heart-wrenching fashion and the result is not only war but exponentially MORE war then before...

Well then the settlers are NOT the problem.

The SETTLEMENTS are.

The Oslo settlement. (1993)

The Wye River settlement. (1998)

The Camp David settlement. (2000)

The Taba settlement. (2001)

The "Road Map" settlement. (2003)

And finally the "End of the Gaza settlers" settlement. (2005)

Every time without fail the blame falls on the settlers. The blame falls on Israel. The blame falls on the Jews. And we offer more concessions to placate the Obamas of the world because that's what we do.

But what has it brought us exactly? Nothing but rockets, according to peace-process-believing, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

Tired of being asked for concessions, Peres told his guests that the side making concessions was Israel, which was not getting anything in return from the Palestinians other than the rockets and mortar shells being fired from Gaza.

It's not the settlers. It's the concessions. It's the retreats. It's the surrenders. It's the settlements.

At the same time, the most popular leader in the Arab world is ruthless dictator Bashar-al-Asad. In third place is notorious terrorist Hassan Nasrallah. Two men who are essentially glorified mass-murderers of both Arabs and Jews. Oh and our friends the Egyptians who received their permanent settlement back in 1978? Well they're stripping the citizenships of any Egyptians who dare to marry an Israeli citizen. Even ARAB Israeli citizens. How enlightened. How peace-loving.

To say nothing of the Hamas "leadership" that just can't get through a week without killing their Palestinian brothers or the supposedly "more moderate" Fatah "leadership" that is still naming computer centers and schools after a person who murdered 37 civilians (including 12 children). Because of settlers?

No my friends, it's because of SETTLEMENTS. Not settlers.

Memorial Day

Please remember today through your grilling, drinking and time spent with family and friends the sacrifices our men and women of the Armed Forces have given to this country over the years. Especially now, when they are volunteering their lives in defense of the freedom of not just America, but of the entire Western world. The future of Western democracy and culture rests on their shoulders.



Remember also that it is not only the soldiers themselves who sacrifice for the greater good but their mothers, fathers, siblings...and spouses. Take the time today (or any day for that matter) to recognize these heroes should you come across them.

Happy Memorial Day.

Hollow Hollow Words

This has to be a joke, right? I mean there's just no way on Earth that anyone could possibly think we would fall for this. Right? There can't be! It's just not possible...

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday declared May Jewish American Heritage Month, saying that the "United States would not be the country we know without the achievements of Jewish Americans."

It's Jewish American History Month?! Really? I didn't know...did you?? Did anyone?

Obama called on all Americans to "commemorate the proud heritage of Jewish Americans with appropriate ceremonies and activities."

"Unyielding in the face of hardship and tenacious in following their dreams, Jewish Americans have surmounted the challenges that every immigrant group faces, and have made unparalleled contributions," Obama said. He added, "Jewish American leaders have been essential to all branches and levels of government. Still more Jewish Americans have made selfless sacrifices in our Armed Forces."

Did someone suddenly decide that today is May Fools Day or something? What planet am I on? President Barrack Hussein Obama is declaring that this is Jewish American Heritage Month...on the 13th day of the month...after his administration is off to the one of worst starts vis-a-vis Israeli (read: JEWISH) policy in history? After his flunkies have been sending messages to Jewish lobbyists and Israeli leadership that the United States' Iran policy is mind-bogglingly somehow connected to Palestinian statehood. After his vice president warned Netanyahu that it would be a bad idea for the IDF to take the necessary steps to defend its citizens against Iranian nuclear terror.

After the Democratic primary's Biggest Loser and Obama Secretary of State Hilary Clinton decided that it would be a wise decision during the worst American economic disaster in decades to dump $900 million from the sky into Gaza with the naive assumption that it would never make it into the hands of Hamas baby-killers. After he has done nothing for Israel (the JEWISH STATE) except for prance around the world in photo-op after photo-op apologizing for the West's foreign policy of the past 100 years (READ: SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL THE JEWISH STATE). After he teased us by letting us think the US and A would actually participate in the Durban 2, Achmedinejad-fest. He thinks THIS is the answer?

Obama said that Jewish American community has set an example for all Americans. "They have demonstrated that Americans can choose to maintain cultural traditions while honoring the principles and beliefs that bind them together as American," said Obama. "Jewish American history demonstrates how America's diversity enriches and strengthens us all."

What what what WHAT?!?!

Am I supposed to forget that even as he was just a Democratic longshot back in the good old days of December/2007 it was clear he would be no good for the state of the Jews? It's so obvious that Obama has stabbed his Jewish supporters in the back that even former Obama cheerleader Shmuel Rosner (who was the target of the article I wrote in 2007), had this to say in a recent post of Rosner's Domain:

3. Generally speaking, what we see here is a panel worried about future policies of an administration that hasn't yet clarified its positions.

4. Gates is getting higher marks than those he got three months ago mostly because the panel realized that at this point in time he is the only member of the administration who actually knows what he's doing.

Even Rosner realizes that only member of this administration that has any idea what is flying in the world is Bush holdover, Secretary of Defense Gates. It's enough to make your head spin.

What say the 77% of Jews who voted for Obama now? Are they realizing that maybe they made the wrong choice in voting the Party line instead of for a true friend of Israel and the Jews like McCain? Or Obama's predecessor President Bush - the man who ACTUALLY conceived of a Jewish Heritage Month?

More likely these people are fooled by this embarrassing attempt to distract us from the facts.

People like Jewish Uncle Tom, "Obama's Rabbi" David Saperstein who in an interview with Haaretz:

...stressed the importance of the connection between U.S. Jews and Israel, the rabbi said he didn't feel support for the country necessarily meant blanket approval of its actions.

"If I see my brother or sister doing something that I believe is truly harmful to them - I'm going to say something even if they are adults that make their own decisions," he said.

Well that's great rabbi...but if you have an argument with your brother or sister - do you do it in public? And when you say "brother" and "sister" is it really your place to criticize your sibling if you've been estranged from them for the majority of your life (if not the entirety of it)?

"You don't really show your love to someone by remaining silent when they're doing something counterproductive or might harm someone else - if you will say that in order to be supporter of Israel you must agree with all its policies - you're going to alienate millions of people who think of themselves as active Israel supporters."

Counterproductive...? Like what?

Saperstein added that he feels "it's far more effective when people who disagree with settlement policies, disagree with government positions on the right of the reform and conservative Jews, join together to support AIPAC for Israel."

Oh of course, those evil evildoers the settlers. So even the token Jew in Obama's religious council...is still going to be parroting the Party line that the SETTLEMENT policy is the reason why we have a problem in the Middle East. Well, is there anything that Obama's vision of the ideal Jew IS in favor of?

"The direction seems quite clear not just in Jewish leadership with more and more rabbis officiating it, but the Jewish community supporting overwhelmingly the full equality for gays and lesbians."

Right. The "Jewish community" is "overwhelmingly" supportive of "full equality" for gays and lesbians. I guess that's code words for gay marriage. Now I'm not sure who Saperstein thinks he's speaking for when he says that, but I can tell you that the OVERWHELMING majority of Orthodox and especially Hasidic Jews do not share this view. Since as we explored also in 2007, within a few generations the only Jews left in America will likely be exclusively of the Orthodox variety, it is safe to say that Rabbi Saperstein, like fellow sellouts Sarah Silverman and Jon Stewart does not speak for all of us.

I'm sure the Sapersteins, Silvermans and Leibovitzes of the world will all be very excited by Obama's declaration. But not the rest of us. We know what this is really about. In the end, our "friend" in the White House is laying a foundation to demand from Netanyahu that Israel cave into Fatah and Hamas terrorists and give up land in the West Bank (up to and including parts of the Israeli/Jewish capital of Jerusalem), the Golan Heights and maybe just maybe give into some Palestinian "right of return" as well. Not to mention that he sits on the sidelines while Iran becomes a nuclear power...

No...those of us who know this game will not be bought by these hollow words so easily. You can keep your Jewish American Heritage declarations...we know what's coming. We knew it was coming. And we won't be fooled.




Well...the other 23% of us at least.

What the hell is this...?

After a brutal two weeks of shutting down some 9/11 conspiracy nonsense, two weeks of memorials and celebrations in honor of Israel's 61st birthday, and a depressing study of the effect (or lack thereof) that "enhanced interrogation" techniques have on Islamic terrorism, I thought I would take short break from the all-consuming grind of Middle East commentary and ask my readers with some help in solving a mystery that has driven me insane for more than a year now.

Take a look at this video I recorded in early 2008:

No one was able to adequately explain it to me but I didn't post it then because I assumed it was just some transformer explosion that was too far away to hear. Two nights ago I witnessed a similar event happening in a completely different direction, much closer and much brighter.



This instance happened after two much brighter versions of this that I saw from my balcony so I finally ran to get my camera. I took probably 10 1 minute clips before I finally was able to capture this video. Then as I was standing on my balcony this happened:



Can anyone identify what the hell this is?!?!

Now that I think about it, maybe going back to reporting on the typical events of a week in the Middle East isn't such a bad idea.

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rusty cages

You wired me awake,
And hit me with a hand of broken nails.
You tied my lead and pulled my chain,
To watch my blood begin to boil.


This is not a debate on the pros and cons or the effectiveness of torture.

I repeat. This is NOT an argument in favor or against torturing or nearly torturing prisoners to extract information from them. That can be a topic for another posting.

Does everyone understand that? I am NOT arguing that torturing people is moral or immoral. Ok? Great, now let's continue.

I was listening to the Opie and Anthony show today and their guest Pete Dominick, who is a DJ on the Sirius/XM channel, POTUS. Unlike my last entry about the show, this exchange did not involve a lot of laughing and joking...rather it became a pretty serious debate about whether torturing al Qaeda prisoners is effective or not. Jim Norton and Anthony Cumia argued in favor of torture while Pete Dominick was adamant that he could convince them that it was not the way.

I'm going back up to say this one last time, this article is NOT about the merits (or lack thereof) of torture. It IS about the fact that Dominick, in an attempt to prove his point, related accounts he had read from CIA interrogators (known as "gators" to their colleagues) that captured Iraqis said the reason they were fighting the Americans was to avenge the humiliation of Abu Ghraib.

Since torture is back in the news once again, (and because this administration is obsessed with re-defeating Bush on a daily basis) I would like to once and for all, BURY this misconception. Because you see, this is a favorite tool of apologists and terrorist-sympathizers...to say that our actions in the world are what inspires the enemy to fight us. They, like Dominick point to editorials like this one, written by "Matthew Alexander" a former 'gator that did some tours in Iraq and was very upset by what he saw. I put his name in quotes because it's pseudonym, he uses a fake name for "security reasons." From the article:

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse.

Pretty damning stuff...except that it is based purely on emotions and not in reality at all. I have no doubt that Mr. Alexander was in Iraq and was told this fairy tale by the people he met there. I have no reason to doubt any part of his story (I guess) except for his interpretation of it.

For one thing, why on Earth would he believe these people that the reason they signed up to kill Americans was because of Abu Ghraib? If you captured a Nazi during WWII and he told you the reason he signed up to fight for Germany was because the Jews were responsible for Germany's humiliation in the first World War...would you believe him? Would you drop what you were doing and say to yourself "gee, every Nazi I talk to just HATES Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals....perhaps they have a point!" I thought rule number 1 of being a spy was not to buy into the enemy's propaganda.

But then let's even say that these prisoners, (again, people who were in the business of murdering Americans) actually believed what they told Alexander. Unfortunately, the statistics (as well as the history of the region) are just not on their side.

Let's first of all look at the statistics. The news story broke on April 28th, when 60 Minutes II aired photographs of Iraqi prisoners in pretty horrifying positions. For those who remember what Iraq was like in 2004, April of that year was one of the worst months on record for American soldiers in the entire conflict. In fact, according to icasualties.org, 135 American soldiers were killed in April/2004...2nd only to November of the same year which had 137 KIA. Obviously in April, Iraqis were extremely angry about something...proof positive you say that Alexander's point is a valid one? Not so fast...

Remember, the scandal broke at the END of April. If we look at the following month of May, the amount of Americans killed is 80...a 40% DECREASE at a time when Abu Ghraib fever was sweeping the world. Everyday another American or world leader was getting on international television and condemning the actions of these rogue soldiers. The "Arab street" was in an uproar all through May...and yet, we see a 40% decrease in attacks on Americans. Well, maybe al Qaeda was expending all of its resources on recruitment efforts in May and needed to devote some time to training.

You have to figure that it takes at least a month for new hires to be fully proficient in how to blow themselves up and how to demand a fair trial/lawyer when captured...insiders tell the RONMOSSAD blog that the "effectively managing Western laws and benefits to your advantage" part of the training program comes after HR explains to you how to put in a sick day request and what to do about sexual harrassment in the workplace. So with training out of the way, you have to figure then that there would be a major spike in violence in June. Right?

June/2004: 42 Americans killed. Almost a 50% decrease from the previous month. Hmmmm.

In July the number went up to 54, an increase but not anywhere near where it was BEFORE the story broke. In fact we do not see a major increase in American fatalities until November of 2004, a full 6 months after the news of the abuses got out. And lest you think it was a slow burn that finally resulted in an explosion of Abu Ghraib-motivated, consistent violence against Americans, the following month of December had half the fatalities. The war as we know it did not become a real chaotic free-for-all until 10/2006-10/2007 when civil strife pushed American casualties fairly consistently into the triple-digit range. For the "recruiting tool" scenario to hold water we would have to accept that the enraged Iraqis sat on their anger for nearly 2.5 YEARS before finally erupting in violence. Does this make sense to anyone? Anyone at all?

The defense is wraawng

But wait - it gets better. In mid-March of 2006 additional Abu Ghraib pictures were released and we were forced to relive the scandal anew. March of 2006 had only 31 American deaths, the quietist month since February/2004. Breaking down the month into halves (the story was released on the 15th), 16 of these deaths occurred from the 1st-15th and 15 occurred from the 16st-31st. In short there is NO CORRELATION between the Abu Ghraib abuses and American deaths. None. Period.

Finally, let's not forget that historically, this argument doesn't work either as this issue did not begin with Abu Ghraib or Iraq. Our friends over at TROP have a counter that they update with every attack that is committed in the name of Islam:



Based on painstakingly meticulous record-keeping, they have a database of Islam-related violence that is broken down by day, week, month and year. If you click on this link, you will see that between September/2001 and the beginning of the Iraq war (which was a full YEAR before the Abu Ghraib story broke) Islamic terrorists had killed THOUSANDS of non-Muslims. What was the motivation for those attacks? Prisoner abuses? The Israeli operation in Gaza? The 2006 Lebanon war? What did Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have to do with the attacks in Mumbai from last Thanksgiving? And how about this historically random sampling of incidents:

April 18, 1983: U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut, Lebanon. 63 killed

January 28, 1980: A Lebanese jihadist hijacked a Middle East Airlines Boeing 707 with 137 people on board. This flight took off from Baghdad, Iraq and was scheduled to land in Beirut, Lebanon.

June 2, 1978: In Israel, five people were murdered and 20 were severely injured in an explosion on a bus in Jerusalem.

May 15, 1974: In Ma'alot, Israel, 22 Israeli high school students, aged 14–16, from Safed were killed by three members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Before reaching the school, the trio shot and killed two Arab women, a Jewish man, his pregnant wife, and their 4 year old son, and wounded several others.

August 19, 1974: In Cyprus, U.S. Ambassador Rodger Davies and one local employee, an embassy secretary, were killed when armed Cypriot Muslims fired shots at the ambassador's office and residence.

September 5, 1972: Eight Palestinians broke into the Israeli quarters of the Olympic Village during the Munich Olympic Games at dawn and took 11 members of Israel's wrestling team hostage. All the Israelis were executed by the time the crisis was over.

August 29, 1960: Jordon's Prime Minister, and 11 of his associates, were assassinated with a bomb placed in a public building.

Need more? Think American and Israeli foreign policy is to blame? Somehow these attacks are justified because of it? Ok...

1936: Haj-Amin al Husseini, the leader of the Palestinians and inspiration of Yasir Arafat instigated uprisings that left hundreds of Jews and thousands of Arabs dead in the British Mandate of Palestine. He later travelled to Nazi Germany and assisted the Nazis with planning the Final Solution...going so far as befriending Adolf Eichmann and training SS units. He also issued a fatwa encouraging "resistance" in Iraq that led to hundreds of Arab deaths and riots against the dwindling Jewish population of Iraq.

1915: The Turks blamed their lack of success in WWI on the Armenian Christians. They force the entire population of two million people from the homes and land - killing over a million unarmed Armenian men, women, and children.

Sources: Google searches, news stories, TROP and theprophetofdoom.net

Both of those events occurred LONG before the state of Israel was founded and DECADES before the very first American soldier ever set foot on holy Saudi Arabian or Iraqi or Lebanese soil.

And there's more...much more. Attacks on Jews. Attacks on Christians. Attacks on Muslims. Just general chaos emanating from the Middle East ever since Muhammad founded his new religion in the 600's. And before that, blood feuds between tribes lasted for generations...Muhammad just took it from the inter-tribal level and made it international. The Middle East has been a historically violent place years and decades and centuries and millennia before Abu Ghraib, or Gaza or the security fence or even the founding of the State of Israel. The torture scandals are as much a cause of Islamic terrorism as drinking cola is a cause of higher SAT scores. (it's NOT)

But perhaps more importantly than any of this, is a point that Norton brought up during the debate with Dominick (which is supported by the history). Saddam Hussein and other Arab/Muslim leaders have committed much worse atrocities against their own populations for centuries. Where was the insurgency against them? Or if there could be no insurgency for some reason...where was the outrage from the "Arab street" ? Where was the outrage from the apologists who are so quick to point fingers at American and Israeli foreign policy? Do they even know about Turkish foreign policy?? Or Iraqi, Egyptian and Palestinian domestic policy???

So don't tell me it's about Abu Ghraib or torture or any of that nonsense. Torture may or may not be an effective tool for intelligence officers but it does NOT create new terrorists or new enemies for the West. PERIOD.

But I'm gonna break,
I'm gonna break my,
Gonna break my rusty cage and run.
-Johnny Cash (cover of Soundgarden)

And anyone who tells you differently is just selling you the enemy's propaganda. Intentionally or unintentionally.

ENDOFSTORY.

Death sentences for juveniles, real estate brokers and pigs: just another week in the Middle East

Shifting gears after the emotions of Israel Independence week and a sanity-draining trip down the rabbit hole, it's time to get back to business with some news items from around the Middle East.

Yesterday, Iran executed a woman named Delara Darabi for a murder that she allegedly committed when she was 17. From the article:

Amnesty International said it was "outraged" at the execution, drawing particular attention to the fact that her lawyer was not informed about it, despite the legal requirement that he should receive 48 hours' notice.

"This appears to have been a cynical move on the part of the authorities to avoid domestic and international protests which might have saved Delara Darabi's life," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program. Darabi was executed despite her having been given a two-month stay of execution by the Head of the Judiciary on April. 19, which Sahraoui said indicates "that even decisions by the Head of the Judiciary carry no weight and are disregarded in the provinces."

Darabi was convicted of murdering a relative in 2003 when she was 17. She initially confessed to the murder, believing she could save her boyfriend from the gallows, but later retracted her confession. She was being detained at Rasht Prison in northern Iran since her arrest in 2003.

RIP Delara Darabi 1986-2009

So...the "authorities" told her on April 19th that she was off the hook for at least two months and on May 1st she was swinging from the noose with NO WARNING and NO OPPORTUNITY for her lawyer to do anything. What a lovely system of "justice" they have in the Islamic "Republic" of Iran. This is nothing new though as Iran executes juvenile offenders like Americans eat donuts...



What caught my attention was the fact that Amnesty International is "outraged" by this act, as if this kind of barbaric behavior is something new in the Middle East. Maybe if they stopped wasting all their time being obsessed with condemning Israel for acts of self defense they would have time to pay attention to what's actually going on in the world around them.

Blatantly silent however, is Amnesty International on this story about a Palestinian who had the audacity to conduct a real estate transaction...with a Jew. From the British Broadcasting Corporation:

A Palestinian military court has condemned a man to death by hanging for treason for selling land to Israelis. Anwar Breghit, 59, was convicted by a court in the West Bank town of Hebron. He sold property near his village "that he did not own", prosecutors said.

You know on second thought, maybe executing shady real estate salesmen in the US and A isn't such a bad idea...the article continues:

Only two people have had death sentences against them carried out, although others have been summarily executed over suspicions that they sold land to Israelis.

Paging Amnesty International...come in Amnesty International...

Not to be outdone however, the amazingly impartial BBC writer wraps up the story with a brief history lesson:

Israel occupied the West Bank and other Arab territory in the 1967 war. It has settled more than 400,000 of its own citizens in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - illegally in the eyes of international law, although Israel disputes this. The continued presence and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank is one of the main points of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Friction between settlements and the more than two million Palestinians in the West Bank frequently leads to violence and bloodshed.

They also throw in this picture and caption, just in case you naively believed they were blaming anyone other than Israel for this:


Israel has settled hundreds of thousands of its citizens on occupied land

Whaaaat?! In an article about a businessman being sentenced to DEATH for the crime of selling land to Jews, 4 out 10 paragraphs as well as the picture and caption (almost half of the entire article!) were devoted to reminding you that Jews don't belong in Judea and Samaria at all! Where are the worldwide condemnations from human rights groups? Where is Hilary Clinton? Barack Obama? The EU? The UN? Is there any leadership in the West at all? Where is the reaction from moderate Palestinians who condemn this insanity? Oh that's right there aren't any...because the people doing the sentencing here, Fatah, ARE the moderates.

We don't hear anything from the wise leadership of Obama or the UN because these are the people they want Israel to negotiate with in exchange for their support against Iran! We don't hear anything from human rights groups on this (but we do hear about Darabi) because as we have already explored previously - deep down they don't back Israel at all. Hence also why the BBC writer feels the need to put a context around this. You need to know that this event would not take place if Israel was not "occupying" the West Bank so that you can be sure to understand that all these people want you believe that in the end...this too is the fault of the Jews.

And just in case you thought that this wholesale barbarism that surrounds the only real democracy in the Middle East is limited to intelligent human beings who should know the difference between right and wrong, we shift our focus now to the Arab "Republic" of Egypt panicked "leadership's" response to the swine flu hysteria.


An Egyptian butcher carries a pig in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, April 30, 2009. Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country Wednesday as a precaution against swine flu even though no cases have been reported here, infuriating farmers who blocked streets and stoned vehicles of Health Ministry workers who came to carry out the government's order. (AP Photo/Nasser Nouri)

Nevermind of course that swine flu isn't actually being spread by pigs at this point or that by all accounts the forecasted "global pandemic" is (as usual) turning out to be a bust. Nor is this the first time Egypt has instituted an unnecessary mass-slaughter of defenseless animals either. From the Associated Press article:

Egypt, which has no swine flu cases, is the only country in the world to order a mass pig slaughter in response to the disease. The move mirrored Egypt's battle with bird flu, in which the government killed 25 million birds within weeks in 2006.

Am I the only one who's blown away by these numbers? I mean, I'm no vegetarian or anything but isn't there something fundamentally unnecessary about ending the lives of 25 MILLION birds or 300 THOUSAND pigs? Put aside the fact that these tactics have proven entirely ineffective in the past...these animals are living beings after all. But you won't hear anything about it from PETA who's too busy campaigning against kosher food to care about what's going on in the Middle East.

Having human rights groups AND animals rights groups so unbelievably biased against you might seem strange somewhere else, but not in Israel.

Over there, it's just another week in the Middle East...

Show's over for Niels Harrit, Steven Jones and the rest of the conspiracy crew

Before reading this article, you will most likely want to catch up on the previous posts on the topic of 9/11 conspiracy theories, nanothermite and Niels Harrit:

Angry Arabs Attacked Americans and Annihilated Assests

Everything you never wanted to know about thermite and didn't care to ask

and of course

Mere mortal Niels Harrit is no match for supergenius George W. Bush or even RONMOSSAD

I hope you'll excuse my sarcastic titles for the links (in actually they're quite serious posts that I spent a lot of time on) but I'm frankly sick and tired of this topic and the lunatics it keeps bringing to the site. However, one of my readers, Steve S has taken the time to translate an article in Danish (which I don't speak or read) that should put an end to this discussion once and for all. I had linked to this article (in Danish) during a previous exchange in the comments section of the third article and felt it would be wise to post the English translation for usage in the United States if any of my other readers get into debates over this. So thanks to Steve S for this RONMOSSAD blog near-exclusive:


TRANSLATION OF Chefredaktør skrider efter kontroversiel artikel om 9/11 FROM Videnskab.dk

Unofficial, by Steve S.

Editor in chief resigns after controversial article on 9/11

28 April 2009

From videnskab.dk ( Danish science news service)

An article on explosives in the World Trace Center was published in a scientific journal without the editor in chief knowing about it. Now she is resigning, she tells Videnskab.dk ([science.denmark])

By Thomas Hoffman (th@videnskab.dk).

It created a great attention, surprise and suspicion when the Open Chemical Physics Journal in April published a scientific article on remains of nanothermite which were found in great amounts in the dust from the WTC.

One those most surprised is apparently the editor in chief of the journal. Professor Marie-Paule Pileni first heard about he article when videnskab.dk wrote to her to ask for her professional assessment of the article’s content. The e-mail got her to immediately close the door to the journal.

“I resign as the editor in chief”, was the abrupt answer in an email to videnskab.dk

PRINTED WITHOUT PERMISSION

A telephone call reveals that editor in chief Marie-Paule Pileni had never been informed that the article was going to be published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, which is published by the journal giant Bentham Science Publishers.

“They have printed the article without my permission, so when you wrote to me, I did not know that the article had appeared. I cannot accept this, and therefore I have written to Bentham that I resign from all activities with them”, explains Marie Paule Pileni, who is professor with a specialty in nanomaterials at the renowned Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in France.

She feels not only stabbed in the back, but is puzzled that the article on dust analysis following the terror attack on the U.S. on 11 September 2001 could at all have found its way to the Open Chemical Physics Journal.

“I cannot accept that this topic is published in my journal. The article has nothing to do with physical chemistry or chemical physics, and I could well believe that there is a political viewpoint behind its publication. If anyone had asked me, I would say that the article should never have been published in this journal. Period.” Concludes the former editor in chief.

FAILING GRADES TO THE JOURNAL

The editor-in-chief’s dramatic departure gives critics additional reason to doubt the article’s conclusions, but Marie-Paule Pileni points out that because the topic lies outside her field of expertise, she cannot judge whether the article in itself is good or bad.

Nevertheless, the publication gets her to give the Open Chemical Physics Journal failing grades.

“I was in fact in doubt about them before, because I had on several occasions asked about information about the journal without having heard from them. It does not appear on the list of international journals, and that is a bad sign. Now I can see that it is because it is a bad journal”, says Marie-Paule Pileni and continues:

“There are no references to the Open Chemical Physics Journal in other articles. I have two colleagues who contributed to publishing an article which was not cited anyplace either. If no one reads it, it is a bad journal, and there is not use for it”, is the harsh verdict.

The professor informs us that a few years ago she was invited to be editor in chief of a journal which would open new possibilities for new researchers and because she supports the idea of open access journals where the articles are accessible to everyone, she said, “Yes” thank you.

“It is important to allow people to try and gain success, but one should not be allowed to do everything, and all this is certainly a bunch of nonsense. I try to be a serious researcher, and I will not have my name connected with this kind of thing,” concludes Marie-Paule Pileni.

DOES NOT CHANGE THE INVESTIGATION

The editor-in-chief’s decision is viewed as regrettable by the Danish chemist Niels Harrit, who is one of the authors to the controversial article on nanothermite in the dust from the WTC.

“It surprises me, of course, and it is regrettable, if it discredits our work. But her departure doesn’t change our conclusions, for it is a purely personnel related thing she his angry about. I still believe that we have carried out chemical physics, and if there is something wrong with our study, she is welcome to criticize us for it,” says Niels Harrit, Associate Professor at the Institute of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen.

It is Niels Harrit’s coauthor Steven Jones who was in charge of contact to Bentham, and therefore the Danish researcher is presently not aware which responsible assistant editor the group has been communicating with.

However, he does know the names of the two researchers –so-called referees—who have reviewed he article, but he will not give their names because they ‘are in principle anonymous’.

DANE WITHDREW FROM THE JOURNAL

Niels Harrit’s superior at the University of Copenhagen, Nils O. Andersen has himself participated in the pool of researchers who could be selected as editor, on an article which should be published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal. He has recently chosen to resign from the journals Editorial Advisory Board.

He informs videnskab.dk that the decision has nothing to do with Niels Harrit’s article, and that he otherwise did not achieve having any experiences with the journals, so that he cannot shed further light on how the journal operates.

“Open access is an exciting development, and as a principle the idea should be tried out for there is no reason for the commercial publishers to earn money from our work. But professionally, the journal lay at the margin of my expertise, and as I had said No to be editor of two articles, I decided that I would not use my time on anything else.”, explains Nils O. Andersen, dean of the faculty of Natural Sciences and editor of the European Physical Journal D.

It has not yet been possible to get any comment from Bentham Science Publishers.

I say "near-exclusive" because this was also previously posted on the excellent site Screw Loose Change - a vital resource for 9/11 debunking. Thank you to Steve S for taking the time to do this. I am looking forward to reading any further work you put into this (or any) topic.

But wait you say, how does the editor resigning from the paper impact the scientific process that went into this? Well, it doesn't. All it does is prove that the authors were dishonest in their approach to publishing the article and that according to the former editor of the journal:

"The article has nothing to do with physical chemistry or chemical physics, and I could well believe that there is a political viewpoint behind its publication. If anyone had asked me, I would say that the article should never have been published in this journal. Period."

Still her departure doesn't actually prove that the science behind the study was faulty. However, this breakdown by Enrico Manieri asserts that the most likely explanation for the "chips" that Harrit and company found is not a top-secret, government-funded tool of destruction at all. Rather, it is much more likely to be a significantly less exciting substance known as...



paint.

From the linked article:

In practice, the red layer of the wafers identified by the researchers contains exactly the same elements that we now know were present in the corrosion-resistant coating used during the construction of the World Trade Center, including the organic base constituted by linseed oil and alkyd resin.

Paint.

All this...over paint. And not just any paint...exactly the same type of fireproofing paint that would have been used by Turner Construction Company in the 1990's. In fact it is this same work order for "re-fireproofing" that is frequently cited as the basis for their conspiracy by the true believers! According to them this was be the exact opportunity to spray on the destructive nanothermite material that they claim would eventually knock down the World Trade Center.

So can we PLEASE move on from this topic now? There is just way too much else going on this week to be dealing with this stuff.