Muhammad Abbas: If the Egyptian army were capable of wiping Israel out, I wish it would. I demand that the army do the most that it can, but these are not the appropriate circumstances. We do not yet have the necessary array of systems, politicians, and intellectuals, who represent the nation and fear for it. Today, everybody is trying to get the army into trouble. I am afraid that the army will get into trouble. Oh army, do what you can. If you are capable of killing 70 of them in retaliation for each of our martyrs – do so. I demand that the army do its best, but it should not go too far, so that they do not destroy us. Remember the defeat of 1967.

I wish we had the ability to take revenge. If we do, we should destroy them completely, and not leave a single one of them alive. Anyone who immigrated to Israel without the legal authorization of the Muslims must return to his country or be annihilated. “And the stone shall say: There is a Jew behind me”… But I fear that our enthusiasm might be detrimental to us. I have been against Israel all the way, and I am certain that it will come to an end. Indeed, it will. If you tell me that 10 million Egyptians will be martyred in return for the destruction of Israel – I am all for it. but having 10 million Egyptians martyrs, and then having Israel occupy Sinai and Cairo – absolutely not. We must plan properly.Source.

Ex-Muslim Author: Koran Demands ‘Jihad’ and Teaches Believers to ‘Hate’ Christians and Jews.(TheBlaze).Al Fadi, a Saudi native now living in America, is setting out to educate the West about his former religion — Islam. His message, rooted in what he says are deep convictions and personal truth, is sure to inspire controversy.
Al Fadi converted to Christianity after coming to the United States for college. While he claims that he initially planned to convert everyone he met to Islam, something completely unexpected happened. After meeting Christians for the first time in his life, al Fadi became enamored. He explained his conversion to CBN’s Erick Stakelbeck:
“Basically, the more I met people who follow Christ, the more I realized that they are distinct and unique in their character. They’re kind, they’re patient, they’re loving, they have moral values, they don’t look at others with hatred.”
Before long, he abandoned Islam, leaving him to embrace Jesus Christ. His conversion, alone, would have led to a death sentence in his homeland. Even now, danger isn’t an impossibility (al Fadi is actually a pseudonym). But regardless of the dangers he faces for sharing his truth, he says that it’s worth it.
Now, al Fadi is making it a mission to correct what he says are the West’s misconceptions about Islam. In an interview with CBN, he explained, in detail, his interpretation of Islam and those who are not Muslims:
“When I lived in Saudi Arabia, not only did I look at non-Muslims as second class, you would look at non-devout Muslims as second class citizens.
If Islam has to prosper, be the superior religion, then certain steps must be taken by its followers, including spreading Islam at any cost, including the sword and killing any opposition.So you learn all of these things and then of course you learn that the Koran tells you to hate the Christians and the Jews.”It is these messages that al Fadi desperately wants Americans, among other Westerners, to better understand. To address these issues, he has written a book called ‘The Qur’an Dilemma.”
In particular, he believes that the West has been fed a more favorable, less volatile picture of Islam in its entirety. One subject he covers in-depth is the Koran’s call for jihad, or “holy” war, against non-believers.Read the full story here.

Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Chile 5.3 !More info here.

 

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to: Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog.Here.

 

• Israel evacuates embassy in Jordan ahead of protests.(JPost).Israel evacuated its embassy in Jordan Wednesday evening, hours before a Facebook organized march under the banner (in Arabic) of “No Zionist embassy on Jordanian territory.”Unlike in Egypt, where diplomats lived with their families, in Amman the Israeli delegation serves without their families, and comes home for weekends. The decision came just days after the 13-hour rampage at the Israeli embassy in Cairo, during which six security guards locked themselves behind a steel door while mobs ransacked the embassy.Egyptian commandos rescued those six security guards from the Cairo embassy, as protesters broke into archives and threw documents from the building’s windows into the street below where demonstrators were celebrating.The government has said that Israel would respect the peace treaty with Egypt, and was determined to return its envoy as soon as possible.Read the full story here.

 

• Erdogan’s beloved IHH Delivers Aid to Somali Terrorist Group.(IP).Two Turkish aid workers were arrested Monday near the Somalia capital of Mogadishu after meeting with a U.S.-designated terrorist organization during a humanitarian aid mission to the region.”The Turkish aid workers were arrested because they did not coordinate with our national security. They met with al Shabaab without clearance or approval from government security,” a government humanitarian coordinator told Reuters.The pair was released following talks between Turkey’s ambassador to Somalia, President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and the Horn of Africa country’s chief of intelligence. One of the workers is an emergency aid official working with the Hamas-tied Turkish charity IHH.An IHH official who declined to be named dismissed the incident as “normal, because of the security situation there.”The Turks were arrested after delivering food and supplies to an area outside Mogadishu known as KM 50, where thousands of Somalis are living in refugee camps. KM 50 is controlled by al-Shabaab, the Somali militant group tied to al-Qaida and fighting to overthrow the Somali government.This was the first aid group to visit the region controlled by al-Shabaab, which has banned aid agencies from operating in areas they control. The group arrived at the refugee camp on Monday, and a Turkish delegate said they were warmly welcomed by al-Shabaab officials in the region. The official added that the group will deliver aid to other regions controlled by the terrorist group.Sheikh Hassan Abu Ayman, a member of al-Shabaab’s committee for drought, said the Turkish men reached them to deliver humanitarian aid and food to the famine-hit Somalis.An IHH-sponsored humanitarian aid ship named “Gazze” arrived in Mogadishu on Monday, and was welcomed by the IHH aid teams in the region. IHH also intends to dispatch the Mavi Marmara ship, the site of the controversial May 2010 Gaza flotilla clash, on a humanitarian mission to Somalia.Hmmmmm…….”By their fruits you will know them”?Read the full story here.

 

• Palestinians back off UN Security Council statehood bid.(Debka).The tempest which Israel had tensely anticipated for September in the wake of a Palestinian bid for unilateral UN recognition of their state looks like fizzling out before it begins as a result of a massive US campaign to avert it, backed by Saudi Arabia, Europe and Egypt.Early Wednesday, Sept. 14, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas decided crucially not to submit his application to the UN Security Council. He also notified Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and European Union foreign executive Catherine Ashton in Cairo that he was considering watering down his application to the UN General Assembly – possibly by dropping the “state within 1967 borders” provision from the text.Abbas said he would make his final decision known in a public address from Ramallah Friday, Sept 16 before flying to New York to join world leaders at the UN General Assembly’s 66th session which began Tuesday.But first, he meets Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair in Amman for a conversation which debkafile’s exclusive sources term critical, because Blair will hand him a document termed by senior Washington sources “an outline” of a new format designed to oil Palestinian wheels into unlocking the long-stalled Palestinian dialogue with Israel.This outline has been endorsed by Washington, the EU and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. It is now subject to acceptance by Israel and the Palestinians. Moscow has not yet indicated whether it approves the document or wants changes.By Wednesday morning, the Israeli government had not yet received a copy. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has no doubt that he will be called upon for concessions extreme enough to lure the Palestinian leader back to the table. Blair is expected to deliver the document to Netanyahu some time Thursday after Abbas has seen it. To tie up the ends, senior White House envoys, Dennis Ross and David Hale, are due back in Jerusalem and Ramallah Wednesday.During his visit to Cairo, Mahmoud Abbas was sternly warned by Saud al Faisal, Ashton and Egyptian leaders of the grave consequences awaiting the Palestinians if he forced the UN to exercise its veto against their statehood at the UN Security Council. US President Barack Obama Tuesday made it crystal clear that he “objects very strongly” to the Palestinian statehood motion as “counterproductive” and “a distraction from solving problems that can only be addressed through negotiations.”US sources report that the US President has refused to talk to Abbas for the past eight months owing to his refusal to join Israel for direct peace talks. He was advised by the Europeans, the Saudis and Egyptians this week that the US presidential boycott would almost certainly extend to fellow Palestinian leaders and US financial aid. The Palestinian Authority would thus be placed under American sanctions. However, if he withdrew his statehood bid from the Security Council and accepted the new position paper, Obama would consider restoring communications.Tuesday, Sept. 13, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: “The path to creating an independent Palestinian state lies through direct talks between Ramallah and Jerusalem – not New York,” she said. Early Wednesday, the General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of Qatar reported that the Palestinians had not yet submitted their request to the General Assembly. It would therefore not come up for debate before October.debkafile’s sources report that while Mahmoud Abbas appears to have been hassled into a partial climb-down from his original plan to bypass talks with Israel by gaining UN approval of Palestinian statehood, he may not have caved in completely. Neither is it clear whether Netanyahu will swallow the new blueprint Tony Blair is about to dish up.Hmmmm…..Considering the source is Debka there’s a possibility that the ‘news’ is not completely trustworthy, still i posted it seeing that the independent posted it also.Read the full story here.

 

• Erdogan’s ‘Dangerous Macho Posturing’.EU Politicians Slam Turkey’s Anti-Israel Course.(Spiegel).Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not only using his tour of several Arab states for self-promotion, but for verbal attacks against Israel as well. “No one can play with Turkey or Turkish honor,” Erdogan said in Cairo on Tuesday. Israel lost Turkey as a strategic partner after the Israeli military attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla to the Gaza Strip in May 2010.During the Arab Spring, Erdogan has presented himself as a new power, a model leader and a “rising star” with “near pop-star status” in the region, as the New York Times has described the Turkish leader. His multi-day trip to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya is meant to strengthen his role in the region.However, Erdogan has also linked his solidarity with the Arab world to a strident anti-Israel foreign policy. Indeed, the political battle lines between Turkey and Israel have been intensifying in recent weeks:

■Erdogan expelled senior Israeli diplomats in early September. If the tension between the two countries wasn’t thick enough already, this step only served to escalate the dispute between them.

■Ankara halted its military cooperation with Israel and announced an increased Turkish military presence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. All trade ties with Israel are currently frozen and Erdogan is threatening “further sanctions.”

■At the same time, Erdogan is presenting himself more and more as an advocate for the Palestinians. More than once, he has vociferously considered visiting the Gaza Strip, a move Israel would regard as an affront.

■Erdogan doesn’t shy away from verbal attacks, either. On Monday, he said Israel had behaved like a “spoiled child” and accused Israel of supporting “state terror.” He described Israel’s military action against last year’s flotilla to Gaza as a “cause for war.”

The conflict could also put Ankara’s relationship with the European Union to the test. The dispute over the deadly military raid on the Gaza flotilla, which left nine Turkish activists dead, could grow into a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and the EU. Indeed, among high-profile politicians in the European Parliament, criticism of Erdogan is growing.Elmar Brok, the foreign policy spokesman for the parliamentary group of the conservative Christian Democrats in the European Parliament, said he is skeptical of Turkey’s efforts to establish itself as a regional power within the Arab world. He said Erdogan is seeking to transform it into a regional power similar to the status it held “earlier with the Ottoman Empire.” He said Ankara isn’t pursuing the goal of EU membership and that “it is using the conflict with Israel in order to gain credibility in the region,” Brok told SPIEGEL ONLINE.Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, a member of the European Parliament with the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) said he also viewed the shift in foreign policy course by the Turkish government as a sign that Ankara’s EU ambitions are waning. Turkey, as a secular democracy, may be a role model for the countries currently undergoing a phase of transformation, the FDP party group leader in Brussels told SPIEGEL ONLINE, “but Ankara can in no way be allowed to link the reorientation of its foreign policy with anti-Western sentiment.” Lamsbdorff has accused the Erdogan government of using “gunboat rhetoric” in its statements about Israel. The Turkish government’s aggressive policy course against Israel, he said, shows that the country currently has “no interest” in pushing forward EU accession talks. “With a strident anti-Israel course, it isn’t making any friends in Europe” right now, Lambsdorff said. Hmmmm……Keep Turkey out of the European union and get them out of NATO.Read the full story here.

 

• ‘Jew Or Not Jew’ I-Phone App Provokes Outrage In France.(BigPeace).The app available in France is called “Juif ou pas Juif” (Jew or not Jew) and promises to reveal who is Jewish. ”All the information is already available online,” says creator Johann Levy, who lives in Marseille and is himself, Jewish. ”I’m just compiling it all.” The app costs 79 euro cents and has provoked outrage.“I don’t know if its irresponsible, but it’s incredibly dangerous,” said Alain Jakubowicz, president of Licra, a French anti-semitism group.Hmmmm……what’s next?Tattooed numbers?Read the full story here.

 

• Beijing as the Euro’s Savior -Europe and China Bound by Mutual Fears.(Spiegel).By Stefan Schultz. A few years ago, critics from the United States and Europe gave their trading partner China a less-than-favorable name: In an insulting bit of latent racism, they dubbed the emerging superpower a “yellow peril.” They warned of an army of Chinese minimum wage laborers, who would destroy entire industries in the West — and with them millions of jobs. They also warned of growing political influence from the East, which could ultimately even lead to an erosion of human rights.In recent months, the critics have gone quiet — because they have far more important problems to worry about. Problems with many zeros on the end. At around $15.2 trillion (€11.1 trillion), the US government’s debt at the end of 2012 could be as high as the amount of money the country generates in a year.In Europe, the debt prognosis is hardly any better. Italy: €1.9 trillion (approximately 120 percent of annual economic output); Greece: €472 billion (150 percent). The debt clocks of America and the euro countries are ticking relentlessly, and the slogan “Money rules the world” is being given a new meaning. In record time, it seems the current global balance of power is shifting — in favor of China.On Monday, the US government fired an urgent warning towards Europe. The euro crisis threatens global growth, President Barack Obama said. “As long as this crisis is not solved, we will continue to see weaknesses in the global economy.” But America itself is alarmingly high in debt; Obama’s exhortation seems like cheap campaign rhetoric, a maneuver to divert attention away from his own serious problems.China currently appears in quite a different light: The country has foreign exchange reserves of $3.2 trillion. The government is holding around a quarter of that in euro securities, mostly government bonds, said Daniel Gros of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. According to the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper, China has more than tripled its financial commitment in Europe since 2007, and this trend is growing. His country was ready to “extend a helping hand” and to invest more in European countries and the US, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Wednesday. China has already bought Greek and Portuguese government bonds, and, according to a report by London’s Financial Times this week, debt-ridden Italy has recently wooed Chinese sovereign wealth fund CIC for money. America can only warn, while China promises salvation: This is the new creed of the global debt crisis. The supposed “yellow peril” has positioned itself as a “white knight” which promises not to leave its trading partners in Europe and America in the lurch.In return, however, Beijing is demanding a high price — the Chinese government wants more political prestige and more political power:

■Prime Minister Wen has called for more access to American markets, saying the US should be more open for Chinese investors. If China invests more in US companies, new jobs would also be created, he argues. As conciliatory as that sounds, however, the words are poison for President Obama given that high unemployement in the US could ultimately scupper his chances for re-election.

■Wen is also demanding that the US lift restrictions on the export of high technology products to China. This would allow America to increase exports and improve its trade deficit. So far, US companies have held back from such a policy for fear their technology would be copied by potential Chinese competiters.

■Far-reaching demands have also been made of Europe by Wen: European Union countries, he argues, should at last recognize the world’s second largest economy as a market economy. He is hoping for a “breakthrough” to happen as soon as the next EU-China Summit on Oct. 25 in the Chinese city of Tianjin.

The demands are not all new — but China is pushing them with increasing intensity. This is especially shown by the discussion about the recognition of China as a market economy. This would happen automatically in 2016, but for China that is not fast enough, as such a recognition would at a stroke reduce many barriers to trade. In particular, direct investment in Europe would become much easier.Until now, the debate has been going in just one direction: To recognize China as a market economy sooner, Europe has demanded major concessions on human rights and the protection of intellectual property. China is now turning the tables: Much-needed support during the euro crisis will be available, it says — if Europeans recognize China as having a market economy.Europe must not be intimidated, however, because it is China’s most important trading partner after the US. “The crisis in the euro zone is also hurting China,” said Eberhard Sandschneider of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). “Not only because Beijing is holding a large amount of European debt securities, but also because the country wants to expand into Europe.” In addition, Beijing has consistently stressed that the US dollar should be replaced as the key currency by a triumvirate of dollar, euro and Chinese yuan — and therefore China wants to support Europe.Thus, Europe’s negotiating position is not all that terrible; it has more political leverage than it would appear at first. Not the least of which is the fact that the continent’s ominous weaknesses act as a means of putting pressure on China; it might not be an over-exaggeration to say there is a certain balance of horror. If one fails, both fail. Nevertheless, Europe will have to get used to the fact that China will be increasingly negotiating using the methods of the industrialized Western nations; that is to say, it will use its growing economic clout more and more as a political weapon.”The behavior of the Chinese government in the euro crisis has become a whole lot more confident,” said Sandschneider. “This is the new reality with which Europe and America must deal with constructively.”Read the full story here.

 

• Congressional Investigator: More Solar Bankruptcies to Come.(Heritage).A top congressional investigator said on Tuesday that he believes more companies that benefitted from the stimulus bill’s renewable energy loan guarantee program will go bankrupt before all allotted funds are spent.The program, which guaranteed a $535 million loan to Solyndra before the company declared bankruptcy last week, still has $8-10 billion in authorized funding that has yet to be spent. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said he had called on the administration to hold off on awarding more loan guarantees from the program.“The question is: how many Solyndras are out there?” Stearns said. “I’m convinced based upon what I’ve seen on this kind of industry and solar panel, that there’s more that are going to go bankrupt, and I think the president’s unwise to continue this idea of funding through taxpayer money industries that are not viable.”Stearns would not reveal which companies he thought are at risk, saying he would save that information for his panel’s Wednesday hearing on the Solyndra bankruptcy. “I’ve called upon the president not to award any more money for this kind of venture, and to return the money to the Treasury rather than put it out the door,” he added.Stearns’s hearing will examine two aspects of alleged corruption in Solyndra’s loan guarantee award, he said. The panel will examine both the possibility that political factors played a p[art in the award – a major investor in the company is also a large Obama donor – and the apparent lack of oversight by the White House Office of Management and Budget and other federal officials.OMB’s director will testify at the hearing Wednesday, as will the Energy Department official who supervised the loan program. Stearns said the committee had agreed to postpone the testimony of Solyndra’s CEO and CFO in exchange for agreements that they would not “plead the fifth” and refuse to answer questions when they eventually do appear before the committee.Hmmmm…..Can we start impeachment procedures now?Read the full story here.

Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Papua New Guinea 5.7 and 5.2  in Columbia ! More info here.

 

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to: Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog.Here.

 

• Kabul US embassy attack: live – Here.

 

• “SolyndraGate” – Obama Team Backed $535 Million Solyndra Aid as Auditor Warned on Finances.(Bloomberg).Solyndra LLC’s workers making solar-power panels in a California factory subsidized by U.S. taxpayers showed “the promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith,” President Barack Obama said on a visit to the company in May 2010. Two months before Obama’s visit, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP warned that Solyndra, the recipient of $535 million in federal loan guarantees, had financial troubles deep enough to “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.” The Obama administration stood by Solyndra through the auditor’s warning, the abandonment of a planned initial public offering and a last-ditch refinancing where taxpayers took a back seat to new investors. That unwavering commitment has come under increasing scrutiny since the company’s travails culminated in its filing for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 6 and a raid on its headquarters by the Federal Bureau of Investigation two days later. “People including our government put blinders on and did not want to believe in the obvious,” Jonathan Dorsheimer, an analyst in Boston for Canaccord Genuity Inc. of Vancouver, said in an interview with Bloomberg Government. “The fact that the government chose Solyndra as their white horse is mind- boggling.Since then, Republicans have pointed to connections between Solyndra and billionaire George Kaiser, an Obama campaign fundraiser. The George Kaiser Family Foundation, a charitable organization based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, holds about 36.7 percent of the company, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Kaiser made 16 visits to the president’s aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs. “George Kaiser is not an investor in Solyndra and did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan,” the foundation said in an e-mailed statement on Sept. 1. As Solyndra struggled to stay afloat, it worked to reassure lawmakers. The company spent $480,000 this year to lobby Congress, according to Senate records. Read the full story here.

 

• Cyprus: Exploratory drilling for gas to begin soon, Turkish warships next?(CNS).NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — U.S. firm Noble Energy will soon begin exploratory drilling to confirm oil and gas deposits beneath the sea bed off Cyprus’ southern coast despite Turkey’s attempts to prevent such a move, the island’s president said on Tuesday.Dimitris Christofias didn’t specify a date for the start of drilling which officials have said will begin early next month. Christofias he said surveys have so far shown a “very great possibility” of hydrocarbon deposits inside an 800,000-acre (1,250-square-mile) area that Cyprus has licensed Noble to explore.That area is close to large natural gas fields that Noble has recently discovered in Israeli waters.Christofias says decisions on how the hydrocarbons will be exploited will be made once drilling confirms their quantity and quality.Israeli energy company Delek, which is already working together with the Houston-based Noble Energy Inc., has already proposed a partnership with Cyprus to build a facility on the island for processing and exporting natural gas found in Israeli and Cypriot waters.Cyprus’ energy service director, Solon Kassinis told lawmakers last week that natural gas could be pumped via a Noble-built pipeline as early as 2014.Christofias said the Cyprus government has lodged complaints with the United Nations and the European Union against Turkey, which is threatening to deploy its naval forces to deter Cyprus’ gas exploration efforts.”The navy is for the protection of Turkish national interests,” Egemen Bagis, the Turkish minister in charge of EU affairs told CNN-Turk television in an interview on Tuesday.Christofias said Cyprus expects the international community’s “robust and effective reaction” in case Turkey commits an “unlawful act.”Turkey strongly opposes Cyprus’ offshore gas search, saying that it disregards the rights of breakaway Turkish Cypriots on the divided island. Cyprus was split into a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a coup by supporters of union with Greece.Cyprus joined the EU in 2004, but only the internationally recognized south enjoys membership benefits.”Turkey’s policy is impermissible and condemnable,” said Christofias. “These threats against Cyprus, to prevent drilling and to create a military incident, disturb international justice and create a climate of instability and tension in the already tense eastern Mediterranean.”Christofias said Turkish Cypriots could share in the wealth generated by any gas find as part of a reunified island. He said the potential bounty can work as an incentive for achieving a swift accord in U.N. sponsored peace talks, now in their third year.Positive confirmation of sizable gas find would be a boon for Cyprus that is dependent on fossil fuel imports and ease the strain from a financial crisis that has fanned concerns it could be forced to seek a bailout.Read the full story here.

 

• “HolderGate ” Issa: Eric Holder “So Inept He Is Dangerous”.(TheHill).Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said that Attorney General Eric Holder is so “inept that he is dangerous to have as the Attorney General” and that President Obama should consider removing him from office.Issa made the comments on the Laura Ingraham show while commenting about the controversial “Fast and Furious” gun-tracking program.“He doesn’t want to admit that it was felony-stupid,” Issa said of the operation, which was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which allowed assault-type weapons to be illegally purchased and smuggled across the border.The Department of Justice was monitoring the weapons, but they have turned up at crime scenes across Mexico. Two weapons that were sold under the program were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson was removed from his position late last month as the result of an investigation pushed by Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. But Issa believes that Attorney General Holder either signed off on the operation or was “willfully ignorant.”“The only way the attorney general didn’t know is that he made sure he didn’t want to know,” Issa said.The congressman said the scandal was “dumber than Iran-Contra,” the program under which senior officials in the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran to fund Nicaraguan rebels. Both arms sales to Iran and funding of the Contras was explicitly prohibited by law, and Reagan national security advisers Oliver North and John Poindexter were convicted of violating the law.“What we need is an admission that it was wrong . . . and then we need assurance that it won’t happen again,” Issa said.For his part, Holder has admitted that the Fast and Furious program “was clearly a flawed enforcement effort,” but denied that he or any of his aides had knowledge of the operation.“The notion that this reaches into the upper levels of the Justice Department is something that at this point I don’t think is supported by the facts and I think once we examine it and once the facts are revealed we’ll see that’s not the case,” Holder said last Wednesday.The Department of Justice has launched an internal investigation to look into the matter, in addition to the one led by Issa.Holder also defended the decision to transfer Melson into the DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy, rather than fire him outright.“Ken has served this department well over the course of some three decades,” Holder said.Hmmmm…..A chip of the presidential block”?Read the full story here.

 

• Fogel family murderer gets 5 life sentences.(Ynet).The Samaria Military Court on Tuesday sentenced Hakim Awad, 18, who was convicted in the murder of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar last March, to five consecutive life sentences and another five years in prison – a total of 130 years behind bars. Hakim and his cousin Amjad brutally murdered Ehud Fogel, 36, Ruth Fogel, 35, 11-year-old Yoav, 4-year-old Elad and 2-month-old Hadas.During the court hearing, Awad claimed that Israeli security forces tied up and killed two men from his village. “I am 18 and in my teenage years. Not any young man of this age thinks about murder, only a Palestinian man whose land was taken. This is what the state does to me every day. When I want to leave my village I have to undergo a search which always involves beatings.” As he left the court he motioned the V sign for Victory with his fingers. The judges asked Awad, who confessed to the murder last month, to refrain from discussing politics and instead talk about himself. “I am a person like you, I have no mental condition, I never had a serious illness. My only illness is the Israeli occupation.” He replied negatively when asked if he regrets his actions.At one point during the hearing, one of the prosecutors presented a letter written by Yohai, Ruth Fogel’s brother as well as a letter from Elad’s nanny. “The children were murdered while screaming and fighting for their lives. It’s hard to imagine a situation where the person standing before you is wrestling with a 4-year-old or an 11-year-old who were murdered. The two-month-old baby’s only crime was that she cried. A helpless infant murdered by stabs to the head is a murder that is difficult to put into words.” The prosecutor said, “At the end of the day when one considers the murder and its consequences, a life sentence is still a light punishment. This event elevated the murder to an extreme level. It’s not an explosive where the terrorist does not know his victims. Here the hands of the murderers are covered in blood.” He called on the judges not to consider the fact that Awad was underage at the time of the murder and to disregard any arguments for rehabilitation. “The defendant, in his actions, distanced himself from human company and acted on an malicious and satanic ideology deserving of the punishment the prosecution is demanding,” he said. Defense Attorney Raed Erda claimed that the occupation was the cause of the murder. He noted that the Supreme Court had ruled that murders committed inside the territories are considered acts of war. “The prosecutor mentioned that the murder of a baby is a cruel and harsh act but all murders are harsh – no matter whether it’s of a baby, a young person or an adult. We’re all human beings and our blood is the same. No blood is more red than another.”Erda enraged the judges when he claimed that the defendant was as much a victim as the Fogel family was. “When you build a Jewish community among dozens of Arab communities and do not provide it with the necessary security you can expect this to happen. “Houses are being built on their lands, there’s no work, no education, the occupation is pushing people from all directions and a boy like the defendant goes out and does things like this without realizing their consequences.” Major Lieberman noted that the option of a death sentence was never considered, as Awad was underage when he committed the crime. He mentioned that Hakim’s accomplice, Amjad Awad, murdered three of the five victims with his bare hands and helped the defendant murder Elad and Ruth after he was unsuccessful in killing them himself. The trial of Amjad Awad is still ongoing and he has yet to be convicted. The judge noted that Hakim was a fully fledged partner to the crime and had hid the weapons after the act and tried to cover his marks.Read the full story here.

 

• Maryland Muslim Convert Hopes To ‘Chop Off Judges Head’ and ‘Kill the President’.(Vinienco).On Sept. 14 of last year, a federal judge received a one-page letter that read, in part, “BOOM see how easy this was, next time you wont be so lucky ERM Family ANTHRAX!!”According to the indictment, the letter also said: “I just hope Allah grants me the opportunity to be the one who chops off your head,” and the words “die die die!!!” followed by the sentence “If I ever get out I promise you I’m coming after you.”The letter wasn’t signed but the FBI quickly found Willie Ray Bryant’s prints on it. The 41-year-old was in prison in Cumberland; the judge had presided over one of his previous trials in state court. According to on-line records, the judge had overseen a case in which Bryant pleaded guilty to a handgun charge in 2001 and sentenced him to five years in prison.The FBI also said they found “the letter also bore imprints of letters and numbers appearing to partially match Bryant’s mother’s name and phone number,” according to federal prosecutors.The Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement:

“After the FBI determined the sender’s identity from Bryant’s fingerprints, a message was sent to Maryland Corrections officials to monitor Bryant’s use of the mail. Shortly thereafter, corrections officials intercepted a letter Bryant had addressed to President Obama excoriating the President for turning his back on Islam and threatening to kill the President. Bryant signed the letter and included his state prisoner number.”He faces 10 years in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 9.Read the full story here.

 

• Obama’s politicization of jobs bill.(Politico).By Keith Koffler. It’s hard to keep from laughing when President Barack Obama insists that Republicans put party and politics aside and pass his new “jobs” plan. The president’s own approach has been so nakedly political that it consigns his demand to absurdity.The proof that this is politics — and not policy — accumulates by the day.In what sector of fantasyland can legislation paid for with $467 billion in new taxes – as announced by the White House Monday – pass the GOP-controlled House? The president is practically begging Republicans to reject his initiative — so he can blame them next year for failing to take action to improve the economy.The problem for the White House is that George W. Bush’s presidency has begun to recede too far into the mists of time for Obama to continue blaming his predecessor for the current economic mess. He needs a new culprit — and he wants voters to finger congressional Republicans.The tax increase “pay for” is only the latest piece of evidence of Obama’s political intent. Exhibits A and B were presented into evidence even before Obama gave his speech Thursday to a Joint Session of Congress, where he announced the plan.Republicans can be forgiven for wondering why they are being asked to put aside politics even as Obama is jetting around to three of the most critical battleground states.If the idea is to pressure Republicans to pass the bill, why not just go to Texas?Obama’s Richmond appearance put him in House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s district, a clear political jab at the man who fought him over deficit reduction this summer – and whose support is critical if Obama were actually intent on passing new legislation.The Democratic National Committee is also using the jobs plan to campaign for the president. It has produced TV ads supposedly designed to pressure lawmakers to pass Obama’s legislation. But the spots don’t target specific lawmakers — and they’re running exclusively in swing states and Washington.The DNC has also thrown up a website describing the proposal and outlining how it will benefit key groups that Obama needs in 2012 — including women, Latinos, African-Americans and low income families.Both the DNC website and the campaign outreach include efforts to pad their email lists, a critical element of the reelection strategy.Obama Monday was already drawing fractious political lines, accusing Republicans of politicizing his proposal by citing an unnamed GOP aide, who was quoted saying it would be bad politically for Republicans to cooperate.That Obama would cling to the opinion of one unnamed Republican aide makes it clear the president is desperate for evidence showing that Republicans don’t want to work with him.The hypocrisy of demanding that Republicans avoid politics, while he wallows in it with such exuberance is stunning. It begs the question of whether Republicans can trust this president enough to work with him on anything.Hmmmm….”By their fruits you will know them”.Read the full story here.

 

• EPA regulation forces closure of Texas energy facilities, eliminates 500 jobs.(DailyCaller).Texas energy company Luminant announced on Monday new burdensome Environmental Protection Agency regulations are forcing it to close several facilities, which will result in about 500 job losses.The company will be idling — stopping the usage of — two energy generating units. It will also cease extracting lignite from three different Texas mines.The EPA regulation Luminant cites as too burdensome is the new Cross-State Air Pollution rule, which requires Texas power generators to make “dramatic reductions” in emissions beginning on January 1, 2012.“We have hundreds of employees who have spent their entire professional careers at Luminant and its predecessor companies,” Luminant CEO David Campbell said in a statement. “At every step of this process, we have tried to minimize these impacts, and it truly saddens me that we are being compelled to take the actions we’ve announced today. We have filed suit to try to avoid these consequences.”The company said it has been trying to meet the new standards, but won’t be able to do so without closing down several facilities and eliminating 500 jobs.As always, Luminant is committed to complying fully with EPA regulations,” Campbell said. “We have spent the last two months identifying all possible options to meet the requirements of this new rule, and we are launching a significant investment program to reduce emissions across our facilities.”“However, meeting this unrealistic deadline also forces us to take steps that will idle facilities and result in the loss of jobs,” Campbell adds.Hmmmm…….Obamanomics in action.Read the full story here.

 

• Gunmen ‘kill five children’ in attack on Pakistan bus.(BBC).Gunmen have ambushed a school bus near the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least five children, police say.The driver was also killed and 19 other children were wounded in the attack in Matani town about 20km (12 miles) south of Peshawar, police said. The area is close to Pakistan’s volatile tribal areas where Taliban militants are active.But so far no group has said it carried out the attack.Matani has been targeted before. In June, six people were killed in a bomb blast at a bus stop in the town.The BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that Matani has been the scene of a struggle between the Taliban and a local tribal volunteer force battling to prevent militants from entering the area. This is the first time a school bus has been targeted, our correspondent says. However, militants have attacked civilian targets to punish residents in the area for not supporting them.The bus is thought to belong to a private school in Matani and was taking children back to a village after lessons. One report said that those who were killed were aged between nine and 14.”First a rocket was fired but it didn’t hit. Then gunmen opened fire,” said Sahibzada Sajjad, police deputy superintendent in Peshawar.Police also said that it was not clear whether the gunmen had arrived by car or were on foot. They escaped from the scene after the shooting.Read the full story here.

Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Japan 4.7 and 4.8 in Chili and Guam  ! More info here.

 

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to: Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog.Here.

 

• Breaking – Blast rocks nuclear plant in France.(RT).At least one person has been killed and three more wounded in an explosion which rocked on Monday a nuclear power plant in Marcoule, southern France.According to emergency services, there is a risk of a radioactive leak after the blast. Meanwhile French nuclear authorities say there is no leak “at this time”.All of the plant’s reactors have been shut down following the incident. There is no clear information immediately available as to how much risk the incident poses.The site is involved in the decommissioning of nuclear facilities, and operates a pressurized water reactor used to produce tritium.Sources say the blast happened in one of the workshops where nuclear waste is disposed of.Le Figaro newspaper reports that there was also a fire in the storage site where explosion set off.Read full story here.

 

• The Secret Blue State Plan To Steal The 2012 Elections.(JosuahPundit).The deep Blue states above all have something in common. They’re all ruled by solid Democrat majorities in their State Legislatures and they’ve all passed legislation designed to favor Democrat urban strongholds, disenfranchise less populated Red States and have a decisive effect on the 2012 election.And very few people know about it.The legislation is known as The National Popular Vote bill, and there’s an ongoing attempt to get it passed in as many states as possible. It’s mainly being championed by Democrats, with a sprinkling of Republicans to give it the aura of ‘bi-partisanship’.The states above control 138 electoral votes. Because they’ve all signed on to The National Popular Vote Act, those electoral votes will automatically go to the candidate who gets the most popular votes nationally – regardless of how the citizens of these states actually vote.For instance, let’s say that in 2012 the largely Republican voters in downstate Illinois and some of the suburbs manage to outvote the Democrats, corpses, illegal aliens and vagrants put together by the ward bosses and the machine in Chicago and Cook County. Because the Democrats in the Illinois Legislature have managed to push the National Popular Vote Act through, Illinois’ 20 electoral votes would go not necessarily to the Republican candidate the majority of voters in the state chose but to whichever candidate got the majority of votes nationally. If Barack Obama were to win the popular vote nationally by even as little as 100 votes, Illinois’ 20 electoral votes will automatically go him.This scenario is also known as Al Gore’s wet dream.

None of these states held a referendum on this. It was all done by legislative fiat.It’s also interesting to look at some of the people behind this.The Chairman, Dr. John Kozas of Los Altos California is a wealthy lefty who made his money from co-inventing the scratch-off lottery ticket and then lobbying state governments to sell them. Among many other far Left and socialist groups and candidates he’s supported as a donor and/or bundled for is Howard Dean’s Democracy For America ( DFA) political organization, Berkeley nut case Rep. Barbara Lee, Senator Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Keith Ellison, The Democratic Farmer/Labor Party, the DNC, Senator Boxer’s PAC for a Change, and of course, Barack Obama. The list is a long one.Tom Golisano is a prominent business man with deep pockets who was the co-counder of the Independence Party of New York, a party split between Perotistas and a strong Marxist element. He was also a Kerry donor. Forbes estimates his personal wealth at $1.2 billion.Barry Fadem, the president, is a long-time Democrat operative in California, who worked for Governor Jerry Brown and Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally arguably one of the most incompetent and perhaps racist public officials in state history. He’s another Boxer donor, as well as to ActBlue, an organization that seeks to organize boycotts to penalize businesses thought to be too ‘Republican’.Jason Roe was a Republican operative in the northeast with all that implies until he got a little too close to Jack Abramoff.National Popular Vote Secretary Chris Pearson is another long time far Left Democrat operative who worked with admitted socialist Bernie Sanders and the Progressive Party.Larry Sokol is a longtime Democrat legislative staffer and lobbyist in California. His connections were instrumental in shepherding the Nation Popular Vote Bill through the California Legislature.Former Minnesota GOP Representative Laura Brod is something of the odd person out here.While the cast of the group is overwhelmingly Left- leaning, Brod says there is a conservative argument for NPV.She claims that this is a state’s rights prerogative according to Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, that the current system means that national candidates spend their time and resources and craft policy based on the needs of battleground states while ignoring states with little electoral clout and states they feel they have no chance of carrying. Brod’s argument is that NPV will make every vote count and force National candidates to campaign in every state. These arguments all have some validity. Democrat nominees usually give Utah and Texas a pass and Republicans do the same to Connecticut and Massachusetts.Where she’s mistaken, in my opinion is the ultimate outcome. Widespread adoption of the NPV would simply give the Democrats an opportunity and the incentive to build up huge vote tallies in the corrupt urban strongholds they control by means fair or foul in an attempt to simply overwhelm voters in smaller Red states.Voting illegal aliens, dead people, ‘activists’ being carted from state to state taking advantage of same day registration and felons in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York City and similar areas wouldn’t just affect those states anymore…it would infect the voting process throughout the country and ultimately make the Electoral college irrelevant.This is a Trojan Horse. And that’s exactly why this group is mainly led by Left wing Democrats and why legislatures dominated by Democrats in Blue states are in love with it.Make no mistake about it. This is a well-funded, highly organized group and could have a major impact in 2012. And hardly anyone knows about it.Hmmmm….Democracy or Dictatorship?Read the full story here.

 

• Crowd Cheers Bush at Ground Zero… Silence For Obama Video.(BarracudaBrigade).During the ceremonies today at Ground Zero on the 10 year anniversary of the attacks, the crowd was noticeably silent when Obama walked to the microphone. But the reaction was entirely different for Bush.Read and see the full story here.

 

• • How Harvard Remembered 9/11.Hint: their Middle East program is funded by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.(PajamasMedia).While most of the nation was commemorating the fallen of 9/11 with sadness and resolve to understand the ongoing threat of Islamic extremism, arguably the nation’s foremost institution of higher learning approached the tenth anniversary from a very different perspective.At Harvard, the theme was — you guessed it — “Islamophobia.” From Harvard’s introductory declaration for its “campus-wide panel”:Today marks the anniversary of the horrific attacks of September 11th, 2001. As Americans reflect and mourn the loss of nearly 3000 people, Muslim Americans not only share their grief, but also express their own challenges amidst stereotyping, discrimination, racial profiling and hate crimes.Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the event’s producer, declined to invite a single representative from any victims’ groups. There were no speakers from the September 11th Families Association, 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America, Uniformed Firefighters of Greater New York, or Tuesday’s Children (a support group for those who lost relatives on that day).Thanks in great measure to Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s Islamic Studies Program, there were — in abundance — plenty of academics obviously recruited to remind students of their take on the real tragedy surrounding 9/11: the racism, bigotry, and, of course, Islamophobia inherent in American society.It was the deep-pocketed prince whose $10 million “donation” to the Twin Towers Fund was summarily refused by then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Having been rebuffed, the prince quickly dropped $20 million into the laps of Harvard and Georgetown shortly thereafter — no refusals there.And what a bounty those riyals have yielded. The prince knew precisely where to monetize Saudi influence at the two most prestigious academic factories supplying the State Department. At Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the prince’s suggestion that the United States “re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinians” has produced results. For a decade, Harvard has presented a wildly skewed lineup of jihadist apologists and anti-Israel academics, from discredited charlatans like Ilan Pappe to spokesmen like Mustafa Abu Sway — who likes to remind us that “terror is the weapon of the weak.”The session’s components were designed not to commemorate the dead and to discover the role played by al-Qaeda and its jihadist antecedents, but to examine the ingrained bigotry of non-Muslim white Americans. The CMES sought to reduce the murders to a PC lesson plan for high school teachers:What role do you think Muslim artists and authors might play in dispelling stereotypes about Islam?In keeping with banishing the victims to the shadows, educational gobbledygook reigned supreme, again highlighting the nastiness of America and its fundamental bias against Muslims:How do the notions of uniforms and the flags inform our idea of identity? Of “other?”Is there/who is the implied “other” in both of these images?Other PowerPoint slides revealed a distinct absence of attention to human suffering, focusing more on the mechanics of destruction:The Facade Falls: The latticework facing of the south tower came tumbling to earth upon impact of the hijacked plane.Were the authors cleverly trying to insinuate their views of America’s “facade” of tolerance?Overseeing the apologist gala was Professor Jocelyne Cesari, the French Algerian-born political scientist, recently of — where else? — Columbia University, and director of Harvard’s “Islam in the West” and “Islamopedia” programs. Among other brilliant observations, Professor Cesari has dubbed the misogynistic, Jew-hating, homophobic (to the point of extermination) Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi “not a radical.”Other faculty advisers included Duncan Kennedy, Carter professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School, whose attention for many years has been focused less on general jurisprudence and more on the delegitimization of Israel. Following Operation Cast Lead in 2008, Kennedy convened a discussion/tribunal declaring Israel guilty of violating basic tenets of international humanitarian law. They barely mentioned Hamas.The historical reality of the theory and practice of jihad was not a welcome concept at this event. The word was virtually unutterable. In a brief glossary, however — apparently provided by another happy recipient of Prince bin Talal’s largesse, John Esposito of Georgetown’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding — jihad is described this way:Jihad may refer to a defensive military action undertaken to protect a Muslim community from an armed aggressor, generally understood to be non-Muslim

Aggressive jihad, it would seem, does not exist and has never existed. Were the 19 terrorists performing a “defensive military action” on 9/11?Hmmmmm……The Institution who ‘produced’ Barack HUSSEIN Obama.

• Read the full story

here

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• Saudi  Prince Turki Al Faisal threatens the United States on Palestinian veto exactly ten years after 9/11.(NYT).The United States must support the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations this month or risk losing the little credibility it has in the Arab world. If it does not, American influence will decline further, Israeli security will be undermined and Iran will be empowered, increasing the chances of another war in the region. Moreover, Saudi Arabia would no longer be able to cooperate with America in the same way it historically has. With most of the Arab world in upheaval, the “special relationship” between Saudi Arabia and the United States would increasingly be seen as toxic by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, who demand justice for the Palestinian people. Saudi leaders would be forced by domestic and regional pressures to adopt a far more independent and assertive foreign policy. Like our recent military support for Bahrain’s monarchy, which America opposed, Saudi Arabia would pursue other policies at odds with those of the United States, including opposing the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq and refusing to open an embassy there despite American pressure to do so. The Saudi government might part ways with Washington in Afghanistan and Yemen as well. The Palestinian people deserve statehood and all that it entails: official recognition, endorsement by international organizations, the ability to deal with Israel on more equal footing and the opportunity to live in peace and security. Israel should see the Palestinian bid for statehood not as a threat, but as a chance to return to the negotiating table and prevent further conflict. Recent polls show that up to 70 percent of Palestinians say they believe there will be a new intifada if the deadlock is not broken shortly; this should encourage Israel to seek peace with the moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. The Obama administration has had ample opportunities to lead Israelis and Palestinians into bilateral peace talks, but American policy makers have unfortunately been more preoccupied with a deteriorating domestic economy and a paralyzed political scene than with finding a workable solution to this epic injustice. Because Washington has offered no viable new proposals, the least it can do is step aside and not hinder Saudi, European and moderate Arab efforts to advance Palestinian rights at the United Nations.Today, there is a chance for the United States and Saudi Arabia to contain Iran and prevent it from destabilizing the region. But this opportunity will be squandered if the Obama administration’s actions at the United Nations force a deepening split between our two countries. Although Saudi Arabia is willing and able to chart a new and divergent course if America fails to act justly with regard to Palestine, the Middle East would be far better served by continuing cooperation and good will between these longstanding allies. American support for Palestinian statehood is therefore crucial, and a veto will have profound negative consequences. In addition to causing substantial damage to American-Saudi relations and provoking uproar among Muslims worldwide, the United States would further undermine its relations with the Muslim world, empower Iran and threaten regional stability. Let us hope that the United States chooses the path of justice and peace.Hmmmm…….Obey……or else.Hmmmm……Is this the same Prince Turki al-Faisal that met with Osama Bin laden in in June 2001 in a hospital in Dubai?Prince Turki Al Faisal had confirmed meetings with the Bin Laden Group and Osama bin Laden himself, several times in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan before he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994. In July 1998, as the lawsuit said, Al Faisal met Taliban leaders in Kandahar, Afghanistan and reached agreement on fresh aid from Riyad. “Prince Turki also promised to provide oil and generous financial assistance to both the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After the meeting, 400 new pick-up trucks arrived in Kandahar for the Taliban, still bearing Saudi Arabia license plates.Read the full story here.

From now on, Turkeys’ relations with Israel will be at the level of second secretary, and even this level will not be permanent.

Second, we have frozen our commercial ties pertaining to military industries. Israel is not honest in this regard. It does not conform to proper commercial values. We have purchase and sale agreements, which include the maintenance of unmanned aircrafts by Israel. The agreement requires Israel to do this, but because of the problems between us, Israel has not handed these aircrafts over to us.

Third, from now on, we will be seeing Turkish ships in the international waters of the eastern Mediterranean. We will be seeing them more and more. I am referring to Turkish military ships. The world will see more and more warships, especially in maritime areas in which we have economic interests. From now on, Israel will not be able to impose its influence in these regions however it likes. It must realize this.

There is another important measure. Based upon its relations with us and our goodwill, Israel conducted joint military operations with us. Of course, a year ago, we stopped maneuvers of this kind. We cancelled them, and from now on, there will be no military cooperation or joint military maneuvers. This is impossible. We will not do this anymore.

The fifth issue pertains to our slain brothers – the victims aboard the Marmara, in particular. We will defend their rights. We will give them the greatest support, and we will continue to defend their rights, and we will pursue their case in the Hague court to the end.

As you know, Israel has begun to declare its control over areas of economic influence, as it sees fit, and has declared them areas in which it has interests. It will see that it has no authority in these areas. 

Turkey has economic interests in these regions, especially in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Turkey is a guarantor state in Cyprus, and its position is well known there. Therefore, Turkey must display its resolve there, and guarantee freedom of navigation in international waters at all times.

With regard to the ships sailing to Gaza, [Turkey] will not hesitate to take measures. We will give all possible support to the transfer of humanitarian aid, and will provide the necessary arrangements.
The main mission of Turkish military ships is to protect Turkish vessels. This is their duty. We will send humanitarian aid to [Gaza], and this aid will not be subject to any attack like the one on the Mavi Marmara. If they are attacked, the attackers will meet an appropriate response.Hmmmm…..Since Erdogan and Obama have weekly phone calls one can only conclude he has Obama’s backing on this.Source here.

Turkey is a member of NATO. Article One of the NATO charter reads as follows:

The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.
Turkey’s warlike threats obviously contradict the NATO charter.

Ave Maria
Vergin del ciel
Sovrana di grazie e madre pia
Accogli ognor la fervente preghiera
Non negar
A questo smarrito mio amor
Tregua nel suo dolor!
Sperduta l’alma mia ricorre a te
E piena di speme si prostra ai tuoi pi?
T’invoca e attende la vera pace
che solo tu puoi donar
Ave Maria!

Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Maria, gratia plena
Maria, gratia plena
Ave Ave Dominus
Dominus tecum,
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus
et benedictus fructus ventris
ventris tui, Iesus.
Ave Maria.

Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Japan 4.9 and 4.9 in Guam ! More info here.

 

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to: Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog.Here.

 

• Hurricane Katia : Latest Updates here.

• From the MEMRI 9/11 Documentation Archives: MEMRI Films Presents ‘The Arab and Iranian Reaction to 9/11: Five Years Later’ – Narrated by Acclaimed Actor Ron Silver.(Memri).Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has been monitoring, translating, and recording statements from the Arab and Iranian media about what took place on that day. Among these statements are conspiracy theories, by prominent journalists, members of academia, leading religious figures, and even Arab government officials, about what “really” happened.To mark the fifth anniversary of the attacks, MEMRI produced a film and a book exposing conspiracy phenomena surrounding these events in the Arab and Iranian media. The MEMRI Films documentary, focusing on the Arab and Iranian reaction to 9/11, includes footage from various television and satellite television channels in the Middle East, was narrated by the late acclaimed actor Ron Silver.

To view the film on the MEMRI website, visit www.memrifilms.org.

To view the entire film, visit http://www.memrifilms.org/9-11-five-years-later.php

Part I, visit http://www.memrifilms.org/videos/9-11-part-1.mpg

Part II, visit http://www.memrifilms.org/videos/9-11-part-2.mpg.

Part III, visit http://www.memrifilms.org/videos/9-11-part-3.mpg.

Read and see the full story here.

 

• Why Hasn’t KSM Been Tried Yet? (Hint: Obama).The Washington Times has a story today about the slow progress in the effort to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a military court. It seems that delays may continue for months or even years.The cause of the latest delays? President Obama.Buried DEEP within the story lies the truth about Obama’s meddling:Retired Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, a former top legal adviser to the commission convening authority, said that while Mr. Holder was mulling the KSM case, President Obama changed the Manual for Military Commissions by executive order in 2010. The change requires that defendants facing capital charges in military tribunals have access to a “learned counsel” — a lawyer experienced in death penalty cases.“Much of the time since April has been consumed by finding ‘learned counsel’ and going through the process to secure such counsel the requisite security clearance,” Gen. Hemingway said.Source: Washington Times
  He can’t hide behind Holder on this one because of the executive order. Hope!Change! Read the full story here.

 

• MUST READ:: FBI Releases Image of Man Wanted For 911 Threats (SHARE WIDELY).(Vinienco).This is believed to be one of the men counter terrorism chiefs say are plotting a terrorist attack in America on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11. An image of American-born 22-year-old Jude Kenan Mohammad has been posted on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. He has been linked to what officials have called a credible but unconfirmed al-Qaeda threat to set off a car bomb on bridges or tunnels in New York City or Washington. Mohammad is among three al-Qaeda leaders that investigators believe pose a particular threat because they have lived in the U.S. Should that mission prove impossible, the attackers have been told to simply cause as much destruction as they can. Mohammad, who was born in Florida, dropped out of North Carolina’s Fuquay-Varina High School in 2006 and left the U.S. two years later to visit Pakistan, his father’s homeland. A federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted him and seven other men in 2009 on charges that they conspired to carry out terrorist activities around the world. Two of the men have pleaded guilty, and the trial of four others is set for September 19 in New Bern. Federal authorities have never arrested Mohammad in the case, saying that they believe he has been in Pakistan since the indictment was issued.Hmmmm…..He doesn’t look like the guys in the DHS videos(White,middleaged)?Read and see the full story here.

 

• Obama Using “Jobs” Plan to Pay for Campaigning.By Keith Koffler.This is really so annoying. Obama is campaigning on your dime again.Ostensibly, he’s headed out into the hinterland to “discuss the bipartisan proposals to grow the economy and create jobs as part of the American Jobs Act he unveiled in an address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday,” as the White House puts it.But really he’s using this new “jobs” bill as an excuse to campaign in key swing states. Since the travel is billed as “official business,” taxpayers pick up the tab. So all expenses get added to the national debt.The SOJA – or the Save Obama’s Job Act, aka The American Jobs Act – now serves two main purposes: to put Republicans on the spot to support the bill or risk being stigmatized by Obama as job killers; and to help the president reach voters. It’s effect on the economy will be marginal at best.Today, Obama appeared in Virginia, flying to Richmond, the “Dixie” part of the state where he needs votes to add to the majorities he’ll likely get in Northern Virginia, which is demographically part of the Northeast.On Tuesday he’s off to Columbus, Ohio, supposedly again to urge congressional action on his proposals.And, the White House just announced, he’ll be in the Raleigh-Durham area Wednesday,Virginia + Ohio + North Carolina = 46 electoral votes Obama desperately needs in states where the presidential hand to hand combat will be brutal.Hmmmm….”I Feel your pain”Thanks for paying my bills,Save Obama’s Job .Read the full story here.

 

• “Indoctrination 101” : Pictures of a 3rd-Grader’s Social Studies Text Book.(DougRoss).Wondering whether elementary school students are truly indoctrinated in the left wing agenda? Well, wonder no more. They are; and it’s worse — far worse — than you can possibly imagine.Consider, if you will, McGraw-Hill’s Our Democratic Heritage, a textbook designed for third-graders and published in 2010. If you’d assume that it was intended to teach kids about America’s founding and its institutions of government, you’d assume wrong.The book is a veritable cornucopia of left wing spin.

There is but one sentence devoted to the Bill of Rights. It reads, “These rights [of citizens] are listed in the part of the U.S. Constitution called the Bill of Rights”.

• Two pages cover the Declaration of Independence

• Two pages describe the Constitution, all of which are devoted to the three branches of government and separation of powers

• No pages are devoted to James Madison and the authors of the Constitution; there is no mention of federalism

• Six pages are spent describing the background of Paul Revere

• Ten pages are devoted to the history of democracy in ancient Greece.

• George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are mentioned only in passing, almost as if they are immaterial scenery on the road to diversity and social Utopia.

In the section entitled “America’s Freedom Fighters”:

• Eight pages are spent covering the life of Frederick Douglass

• Five pages on Susan B. Anthony

• Six pages on Mary McLeod Bethune,

• Zero pages are devoted to the life of Abraham Lincoln

In fact, the entire Civil War is described only as a backdrop to the lives of Frederick Douglas and Mary McLeod Bethune.

In the section entitled “The Fight for Freedom Continues”:

• Seven pages are spent on praise for FDR (including 2 pages on Pearl Harbor)

• Six pages on Eleanor Roosevelt

• Six pages are devoted to Thurgood Marshall

• Six pages are spent on LBJ’s life and the wondrous effects of “Great Society”

• Six pages are spent on Cesar Chavez and the lionization of the labor movement

There is no list of American Presidents.There is no mention of the two-party system, nor the fact that there exists a group called “The Republican Party”.And there is no mention of a Republican President other than Abraham Lincoln, who merits but a picture and a single sentence. In fact, you would not know from reading this book that there ever was a Republican President.A total of four paragraphs are spent describing World War II. There is no mention of President Harry S. Truman or of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan to mercifully end World War II.There is, of course, no mention of Ronald Reagan.One of the goals we Constitutional conservatives must have is to regain control of our public school systems, which appear to be — if this book is any indication — completely out of control.Hmmmm……Indoctrination 101.Read and see the full story here.

 

• Congress expands Fast and Furious probe to White House.(LATimes).Congressional investigators reviewing the failed gun-tracking program Operation Fast and Furious have formally asked the Obama administration to turn over copies of “all records” involving three key White House national security officials and the program, other ATF gun cases in Phoenix, and all communications between the White House and the ATF field office in Arizona. The letter signed Friday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was sent to National Security Advisor Thomas E. Donilon, a top aide to President Obama. It marks a significant step in the committee’s investigation into the failed gun-tracking operation, as the committee begins to broaden its investigation from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and targets White House and Department of Justice officials. This material, Issa and Grassley said, “will enable us to determine the extent of the involvement of White House staff in Operation Fast and Furious.” White House officials, along with those at the Justice Department, said they have been cooperating in the widening probe, begun earlier this year when several ATF whistleblowers alerted Congress that Fast and Furious weapons were found at the scene of the slaying of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. A White House official said that “no one at the White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk.” The official, who asked not to be identified Friday because the case is continuing, also said White House staffers and some members of Congress, including Issa, were given Fast and Furious briefings as early as April of 2010, but not about the investigative tactics of the operation. “These e-mail exchanges show nothing more than an effort to give local color to a policy initiative that was designed to give more resources to help with the border problem,” the official added. Under the program, ATF agents allowed illegal gun purchases and hoped to track the weapons to Mexican cartel leaders. But most of the more than 2,000 firearms were lost. Hundreds have reportedly turned up in Mexican crime scenes, two at the shooting where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed, and a semi-automatic was used in an altercation and assault with police in Maricopa, Ariz. The congressional letter comes after a series of emails surfaced last week showing that William D. Newell, the ATF field supervisor in Phoenix during Fast and Furious, was in routine contact with Kevin O’Reilly, then the White House director of North American Affairs for the National Security Council. The emails discussed a broad range of gun-trafficking investigations on the Southwest Border, and White House officials have since acknowledged that the cases were part of Fast and Furious. The White House has said that O’Reilly forwarded the emails to two other White House officials – Dan Restrepo, special assistant to the president and senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs on the NSC, and Greg Gatjanis, director for Terrorist Finance and Counternarcotics, Counterterrorism Policy, also on the NSC. In their letter, Issa and Grassley discussed a new email in which Newell told O’Reilly about a specific case that ATF agents had been aware of for three months involving a 22-year-old illegal gun purchaser whom the ATF allowed to buy nearly 700 firearms. The purchaser was on food stamps and, Newell said in a follow-up email to O’Reilly, “when a 22-year-old kid on State financial assistance walks into a gun store and plops down $12,000 in cash to buy a tripod mounted .50 caliber rifle that’s a clue (even for us) that he’s involved in trafficking firearms for a Mexican DTO [cartel].’ According to Issa and Grassley, that exchange of information makes it “clear that the case Mr. Newell and Mr. O’Reilly were communicating about was Fast and Furious.”The letter requests all emails, documents, briefing papers and handwritten notes involving O’Reilly, Restrepo and Gatjanis during the Fast and Furious period, which ran for 15 months between fall 2009 and January 2011. The committee also wants to personally interview O’Reilly by the end of this month.Hmmmmm…….Gunwalker ‘These boots are made for walking,one of these days these biooots will walk all over you’.Read the full story here.

 

• Officials investigate missing ammo at Fort Bragg.(Fox).FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) – Officials at Fort Bragg say an investigation is under way into the disappearance of nearly 14,000 rounds of ammunition at the Army base. Staff Sgt. Joshua Ford, a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division, says the ammunition went missing from the 1st Brigade Combat Team at Fort Bragg. The Fayetteville Observer reports that Ford believed the ammunition was taken overnight on Tuesday. The 1st Brigade team was placed on lockdown for a few hours Wednesday night while officials conducted a search. The missing ammunition can be used in an M-4 or M-16 assault rifle. Ford says the 82nd Airborne Division and military police are taking the matter seriously and that “any amount of ammunition that goes missing” has “got to be accounted for.”Hmmmmm…….Read the full story here.

Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Chile 5.3 and 5.2 Atlantic Ocean ! More info here.

 

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to: Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog.Here.

 

• Hurricane Katia : Latest Updates here.

 

• Memorials of Grief.By DanielGreenfield.I think Daniel has summerized it perfectly what every American feels on 9-11.

“September 11 is not the day we cry, it is the day we get angry. It is the day we remember who our killers were, how many have been lost, and how little has been done to bring down the ideology responsible as completely as they brought the towers down. It is the day we remember not to forget. It is the day we remember that the war has just begun and that until it ends, there can be no comfort or solace. The fight goes on.”Read the full story here.

 

• What is the Super Congress their mission?Pay for Obama’s plans?The term Super Congress refers to a select group of 12 members of both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate chosen to identify ways to reduce the national debt by $1.5 trillion over 10 years.The Super Congress, or super committee, was created under the Budget Control Act of 2011. The law was passed by the U.S. Congress in the first two days of August 2011 to increase the nation’s $14.294 trillion debt ceiling in order to avoid a potential default. It was the fourth increase of the mandatory borrowing cap in President Barack Obama’s first term.The Super Congress consists of six members of the House and Senate, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. The House members were chosen by Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The Senate members were chosen by Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.The official name for the Super Congress is the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

Super Congress Responsibilities

The Budget Control Act of 2011 immediately raised the nation’s debt ceiling by $400 billion, to $14.694 trillion, so the federal government could meet spending obligations previously approved by Congress. But it required the Super Congress to find ways to reduce the national debt by $1.5 trillion before the end of 2011. If the panel’s plan is approved by Congress, the debt ceiling can be increased by the same amount. If the committee fails in its mission, automatic spending cut measures will be triggered.Proposals from the Super Congress would be placed on a fast track through the House and Senate, with no allowance for the legislation to be amended by lawmakers.Hmmmmm…..President Obama wants $ 220Billion of his ‘plan’ financed by the ‘Supercommittee’……..find ways to reduce the national debt?

 

• KUHNER: Obama and the lunatic left.President and his followers intend to end America’s greatness.(Washingtontimes).President Obama is politically insane. This is the real meaning of his speech Thursday night in front of a joint session of Congress. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. By that definition, Mr. Obama is a lunatic leftist.Much of his speech called for more of the same – government activism; massive spending on infrastructure, bridges and roads; extending the payroll tax cut; and more public aid to states and municipalities. In short, he seeks to perpetuate the dismal policies of Obamanomics. He is a reckless ideologue masquerading as a pragmatist.Mr. Obama’s presidency has been dominated by one seminal reality – failure. His nearly $1 trillion stimulus; record budget deficits; unprecedented levels of public spending; the government bailouts of the auto, insurance, housing and banking sectors; billions heaped on “green jobs”; Obamacare; Dodd-Frank to reform Wall Street, and huge outlays for food stamps and unemployment benefits – all have failed to restore the economy.In fact, they have done the opposite. Unemployment is 9.1 percent. Growth is anemic. In August, no new net jobs – none – were created. Consumer confidence is low. Inflation is rising. The value of the dollar plummets. Burdensome regulations are strangling business. America is being buried under a mountain of debt. For the first time in history, its credit rating has been downgraded. The country is not only on the verge of national bankruptcy, but of economic collapse.Any reasonable person would change course – but not Mr. Obama. He is a big-government liberal who worships at the altar of statism. The fact that we are broke and can no longer afford his borrow-and-spend policies means nothing. Like all fanatics, he is disconnected from reality.Contrary to popular myth, liberalism is not politics committed to science or rational thought. It is a substitute religion – a secular philosophy similar to Marxism that seeks to replace Christianity and provide believers with existential meaning. Hence, it must be defended at all costs, even in the face of irrefutable evidence or logic. Mr. Obama is not an anomaly among progressives. They share his stubbornness. Reassessment is not possible. If Mr. Obama truly were to tack to the center, it would represent a fatal admission of error. The liberal faith would collapse.In 2009, Mr. Obama vowed that if the stimulus were passed, the jobless rate would remain under 8 percent. Under his tenure, America has lost more than 2 million private-sector jobs. Mrs. Wasserman Schultz is the equivalent of a Stalinist-era hack jabbering about the Soviet economic miracle. No one believes her – not even her staunchest supporters.This leaves political gangsterism. Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa recently said that it’s time for unions to declare “war” on Republicans and Tea Partyers. “President Obama, this is your army,” Mr. Hoffa thundered at a Sept. 5 Labor Day rally in Detroit. “We are ready to march. Let’s take these SOBs out and give America back to an America where we belong.” Mr. Hoffa’s comments were vile, reprehensible and could foment civil violence. Labor unions, such as the Teamsters, have a long history of street brawls and physically intimidating opponents. Once these kinds of furies have been unleashed, it is difficult to contain them.The Democrats’ hypocrisy is staggering. For days following the Tucson shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others, leading Democrats and the liberal media blamed conservative talk radio, Sarah Palin and a “climate of hate” for the massacre. Mr. Obama even called for a “new civility” and “tone,” tacitly chastising his critics. Yet, now that a key ally has called for blood to flow in the streets, the White House is silent.Mr. Obama is a man of the hard left. He deeply loathes everything America stands for – capitalism, limited government, individual freedom and Christian civilization. In particular, he despises our exceptionalism. His stated goal is to create a “post-American world” where the United States is simply one of many countries – no bigger, better or stronger. He exhibits a form of madness, a self-loathing, reminiscent of the late pop singer Amy Winehouse. Mr. Obama keeps injecting the heroin of class warfare and socialism into our national bloodstream. And he can continue to play on the biggest stage and boast a huge audience. In the end, however, it leads to the same result: insanity and death.Read the full story here.

 

• Obama’s Illegal Alien Uncle Quietly Released From Jail: House chairman; Obama’s Uncle Got Backdoor Amnesty.(BirtherReport).Boston Globe: Officials released President Obama’s uncle from Plymouth County jail yesterday after holding him for more than two weeks on an immigration detainer for violating an order to return to his native Kenya in 1992.US officials refused to disclose any other information about Onyango Obama, who remained in the United States undetected until Framingham police arrested him Aug. 24 on drunken driving and other charges.Yesterday, federal immigration officials refused to say whether the 67-year-old Framingham resident posted bond, whether they are keeping track of his whereabouts, or even whether they are still seeking his deportation, raising questions about public accountability in the case.

Washington Times: The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said Friday that President Obama’s half-uncle, an illegal immigrant who was picked up but has reportedly been released from jail, appears to have benefited from the new “backdoor amnesty” the administration announced last month.“It appears there is a double standard — one for President Obama’s family and one for everyone else,” Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, said. “Last year, President Obama’s illegal immigrant aunt was granted asylum and now his illegal immigrant uncle has been released from [the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency] custody, even though he was arrested by authorities for drunk driving.”Mr. Smith said the case will be the first “test case” for a new Homeland Security policy announced last month that gives immigration authorities more discretion to let illegal immigrants go, rather than pursue efforts to deport them.Hmmmm……”Let my ‘people’ go”.Got suddenly a whole different meaning.Read the full story here.

 

• FACT CHECK: Obama’s jobs plan paid for? Seems not.(AP). By Calvin Woodward and Tom Raum.WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions.It will only be paid for if a committee he can’t control does his bidding, if Congress puts that into law and if leaders in the future – the ones who will feel the fiscal pinch of his proposals – don’t roll it back.Underscoring the gravity of the nation’s high employment rate, Obama chose a joint session of Congress, normally reserved for a State of the Union speech, to lay out his proposals. But if the moment was extraordinary, the plan he presented was conventional Washington rhetoric in one respect: It employs sleight-of-hand accounting.A look at some of Obama’s claims and how they compare with the facts:

OBAMA: “Everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything.”

THE FACTS: Obama did not spell out exactly how he would pay for the measures contained in his nearly $450 billion American Jobs Act but said he would send his proposed specifics in a week to the new congressional supercommittee charged with finding budget savings. White House aides suggested that new deficit spending in the near term to try to promote job creation would be paid for in the future – the “out years,” in legislative jargon – but they did not specify what would be cut or what revenues they would use.Essentially, the jobs plan is an IOU from a president and lawmakers who may not even be in office down the road when the bills come due. Today’s Congress cannot bind a later one for future spending. A future Congress could simply reverse it.Currently, roughly all federal taxes and other revenues are consumed in spending on various federal benefit programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, food stamps, farm subsidies and other social-assistance programs and payments on the national debt. Pretty much everything else is done on credit with borrowed money.So there is no guarantee that programs that clearly will increase annual deficits in the near term will be paid for in the long term.

OBAMA: “Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans, including many who sit here tonight.”

THE FACTS: Obama’s proposed cut in the Social Security payroll tax does seem likely to garner significant GOP support. But Obama proposes paying for the plan in part with tax increases that have already generated stiff Republican opposition.For instance, Obama makes a pitch anew to end Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which he has defined as couples earning over $250,000 a year or individuals over $200,000 a year. Republicans have adamantly blocked what they view as new taxes. As recently as last month, House Republicans refused to go along with any deal to raise the government’s borrowing authority that included new revenues, or taxes.

OBAMA: “It will not add to the deficit.”

THE FACTS: It’s hard to see how the program would not raise the deficit over the next year or two because most of the envisioned spending cuts and tax increases are designed to come later rather than now, when they could jeopardize the fragile recovery. Deficits are calculated for individual years. The accumulation of years of deficit spending has produced a national debt headed toward $15 trillion. Perhaps Obama meant to say that, in the long run, his hoped-for programs would not further increase the national debt, not annual deficits.

OBAMA: “The American Jobs Act answers the urgent need to create jobs right away.”

THE FACTS: Not all of the president’s major proposals are likely to yield quick job growth if adopted. One is to set up a national infrastructure bank to raise private capital for roads, rail, bridges, airports and waterways. Even supporters of such a bank doubt it could have much impact on jobs in the next two years because it takes time to set up. The idea is likely to run into opposition from some Republicans who say such a bank would give the federal government too much power. They’d rather divide money among existing state infrastructure banks.Hmmmm……..Indeed there is a ‘serious threat to America’.Read the full story here.

 

• Reaction Roundup: Heritage Responds to Obama’s Jobs Speech.Heritage’s experts are watching President Barack Obama’s address on jobs to a joint session of Congress. Here are some of their immediate reactions.

 

• The market stall jihadists: Ex-Afghan camp extremist used inner city stall to peddle hatred.(DailyMail).A Muslim who used his market stall as a front to persuade people to join a holy ‘Jihad’ war against the UK was facing jail last night.Munir Farooqi, 54, turned his inner city book stall into a secret Al Qaeda recruiting school.He targeted young British men and used literature and films to brainwash them to convert to Islam.Using fanatical Islamic manuals, books and DVDs at the market stall in Manchester, he converted a former British soldier, an estate agent and even members of a local crime gang.Over a two year period Farooqi – who boasted of being a Taliban fighter and was detained in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks – tried to persuade people visiting his stall to travel to training camps and battlefields abroad to fight in Afghanistan.Last night he was facing jail after he was convicted of soliciting multiple murder and a series of terrorism offences.Matthew Newton, 29, an estate agent, was convicted of preparing acts of terrorism and distributing terrorist publications.Farooqi was arrested in November 2009 after two white undercover policemen infiltrated the recruiting school and underwent radicalisation ceremonies in the basement of his terraced home in Longsight, Manchester.During the undercover investigation one of the detectives taped Farooqi boasting: ‘If we die, we win. You have Allah on your side, how can we lose?‘You know Jihad is not about you giving your life away. If we’re going to go there you make sure you take at least 40 or 50 people with us so we’ve done something.’ When police raided his house they found a haul of extremist literature and pamphlets and up to 5,000 DVDs.Manchester Crown Court heard Farooqi had been born in Pakistan and came to England in 1962 with his family when he was five-years-old.But he became an active supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan and went there in 2001 after the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.He was captured by authorities in Afghanistan and jailed from November 2001 to May 2002 before being released.He returned to the UK after his wife flew out with some money and successfully applied for a new UK passport in 2003.A 12 month undercover anti-terror operation was launched in November 2008 with officers monitoring his market stall in Longsight, Manchester.Speaking from behind a screen, one undercover officer told the court: ’I was playing the part of someone who has very low social ties, somebody who was for want of a better word down on their luck.‘Mr Farooqi asked me if I was an atheist and I asked what he meant by that. He said: ‘Do you believe in God?’’ The jury heard the pair later exchanged mobile phone numbers and the officer was handed a series of Islamic leaflets, a copy of the Koran and some DVDs.He was given the Islamic name Abdul Rahman and converted to Islam on December 30, 2008 in a ceremony.One imam was secretly filmed by the undercover officer conducting a lecture at Indian restaurant in which he discussed the 9/11 terror attacks – but told followers not to record his speech as it could be used against him.The undercover officer said Farooqi told him he had been jailed for fighting in Afghanistan and he had been trailed by MI5 after returning to Britain.Among the literature found at his terraced house were two books described as in court as ‘classic jihadi texts‘.There was no evidence that anyone from the UK had travelled abroad to fight as part of a Jihad.Farooqi’s son, Harris Farooqi, 27, who ran a perfume stall was acquitted of various terror charges.Jurors are still deciding on verdicts upon former Trafford centre shop assistant Israr Malik, 22.Read the full story here.

Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen), of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando).

Coppola’s and John Milius’s script is based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, and also draws from Michael Herr’s Dispatches, the film version of Conrad’s Lord Jim (which shares the same character of Marlow with Heart of Darkness), and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972).

The film drew attention for its lengthy and troubled production. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse documented Brando showing up on the set overweight, Sheen’s heart attack, and extreme weather destroying several expensive sets. The film’s release was postponed several times while Coppola edited millions of feet of footage.

Honored with the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, the film was also deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” and selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 2001.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen), a seasoned and deeply troubled special operations veteran, has returned to Saigon from deployment in the field. He drinks excessively and has difficulty adjusting to life in the rear-area. Two intelligence officers, Lt. General Corman (G. D. Spradlin) and Colonel Lucas (Harrison Ford), and a civilian (Jerry Ziesmer) approach him with an assignment: follow the Nung River into the remote Cambodian jungle to find Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a member of the US Army Special Forces who has gone insane, and kill him. Their claims are supported by bizarre radio broadcasts and recordings made by Kurtz himself.

Once considered a model officer and future general, Kurtz has gone rogue and is commanding a legion of his own Montagnard troops deep inside neutral Cambodia. Ordered to terminate the Colonel’s command “with extreme prejudice”, Willard joins the crew of a Navy Patrol Boat, Riverine (PBR) composed of boat commander George “Chief” Phillips (Albert Hall), and crewmen Lance Johnson (Sam Bottoms), Jay “Chef” Hicks (Frederic Forrest), and Tyrone “Mr Clean” Miller (Laurence Fishburne).

Willard and the PBR crew rendezvous with Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall), commanding a squadron of Air Cavalry attack helicopters, for escort to the Nung River. Initially scoffing at their request for escort, Kilgore, a keen surfer, learns Johnson is a professional surfer and befriends him. When Willard suggests the coastal mouth of the Nung River for the boat and crew to be taken, Kilgore is reluctant to approach the heavily fortified position held by the Viet Cong, but changes his mind after learning of the excellent surfing conditions there. The beach is taken amid napalm strikes and “Ride of the Valkyries” played over the choppers’ loudspeakers, after which Kilgore orders Lance and other surfers in his command to surf the beach amid enemy fire. While Kilgore nostalgically regales all around him of a previous napalm strike, Willard gathers his men to the PBR, which has been dropped from a helicopter into the river, and they begin their journey.

While navigating upstream, the crew has a run-in with a tiger, watches a USO show featuring Playboy Bunnies, and encounters a sampan, mistakenly killing almost all civilians onboard. Willard shoots the one survivor to prevent any delay of his mission. On reaching a US Army outpost at a bridge under constant attack, Willard is informed that an army captain named Colby (Scott Glenn) was sent to find Kurtz and is now missing. The next day, the boat is fired upon by an unseen enemy hiding in trees by the river, killing Mr Clean and causing Chief, who had a close relationship with Clean, to become increasingly hostile toward Willard.

Later, Montagnard warriors begin shooting arrows at them. The crew opens fire and Chief is impaled with a spear. Willard tries to help the dying Chief, who tries to kill Willard by pulling him onto the spear tip protruding from his chest. Willard grapples with Chief, who finally dies. Afterwards, Willard confides in Chef and Lance about his mission, and the two surviving crew of the boat reluctantly agree to continue their journey upriver. As they draw closer to Kurtz’ camp, they see the coastline is littered with bodies. After arriving at Kurtz’ outpost, Willard takes Johnson with him to the village, leaving Chef behind with orders to call in an airstrike on the village if he does not return. In the camp, the two men are met by a manic freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper), who explains that Kurtz’ greatness and philosophical skills inspire his people to follow him. As they proceed, they see bodies and severed heads scattered about the nearby Buddhist temple that serves as Kurtz’s living quarters, and encounter the missing Captain Colby, who is nearly catatonic.

Willard is brought before Kurtz in the darkened temple, where Kurtz derides him as “an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill”. Bound to a post, he watches helplessly as Kurtz drops Chef’s severed head into his lap. After some time in captivity, Willard is released and given the freedom of the compound. Knowing that Willard would not leave, Kurtz lectures him on his theories of war, humanity, and civilization. As Kurtz explains his motives and philosophy while praising the ruthlessness and dedication of the Viet Cong, he asks Willard to tell his son everything about him in the event of his death.

That night, as the villagers ceremonially slaughter a water buffalo, Willard enters Kurtz’ chamber as Kurtz is making a recording, and attacks him with a machete. Lying bloody and dying on the ground, Kurtz whispers “The horror … the horror …” before dying. Willard descends the stairs from Kurtz’ chamber and drops his weapon. The villagers do likewise, and silently allow Willard to take Lance by the hand and lead him to the PBR. The two of them sail away as Kurtz’ final words echo.Hmmmm…..what can you say?”I love the smell of Napalm in the morning?”