An internal presentation on the Silicon Valley operation, intended for senior analysts in the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, described the new tool as the most prolific contributor to the President’s Daily Brief, which cited PRISM data in 1,477 articles last year.
The PRISM program is not a dragnet, exactly. From inside a company’s data stream the NSA is capable of pulling out anything it likes, but under current rules the agency does not try to collect it all.
Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade key in “selectors,” or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness.” That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by the Post instruct new analysts to submit accidentally collected U.S. content for a quarterly report, “but it’s nothing to worry about.”
The problem is a complacent populace, which includes me and you, unless you're actually outraged enough to take some time off work and protest. I know I can't afford that shit. . . . But even we're not getting off our asses to do anything.
Stay on your butt and write letters to your representatives, or call, although I understand letters are better. Do that often. That gets their attention. They will probably never see you holding a protest sign.
Congress can always cut off funds if it turns out to be bad. I don't think I can think of something less useful and more destructive than truck bomb attacks at this point. If you want a republic, congress needs engage in close oversight of what is going on for this sort of activity. It might, might be legitimate, but it is darned suspicious.
There is no good way of predicting what would come next if the republic falls. Getting something better isn't likely. Much worse after a long period of suffering and destruction is what is likely.
When the people inform their legislators, good things can happen. Start writing and calling.
I assume you must be either a failing agent provocateur or a nitwit.
Benjamin Franklin said Americans had a republic, if they could keep it.
This is the time work on keeping it by: - Letters to congress put in the post box - Voting for a change of representation at the ballot box - Some time on the soap box. - Some government employees sitting in front of the jury box.
Suggested topics: - IRS suppression of legitimate peaceful political opposition groups - IRS suppression of legitimate peaceful religous groups - Possible involvement by the FBI, EPA, and OSHA in the above - IRS seizure of 60,000,000 medical records they are not entitled to in breach of the 4th Amendment - Unprecedented Justice Department investigation of reporters - Stonewalling by government officials before congress and refusing to turn over documents - Attempts by the administration to disarm the public by outlawing weapons seldom used to commit crimes - semiautomatic rifles - The very wide dragnet by the NSA when considered with the above
Slashdot has had stories on much of that recently. Search for IRS, or AP, etc.
It is legitimate for the NSA to monitor people in direct communication with terrorist groups, and other terrorists*. But this, considered in light of the above is cause for concern. Congress better be doing some good oversight.
* Genuine terrorists trying to bomb, shoot, poison or otherwise kill innocent people, typically in large numbers, with a very broad understanding of innocent.
Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army major facing court-martial for a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009, plans to argue that he acted in defense of the Taliban in Afghanistan. So much for the official US line that the shootings were an act of workplace violence, critics say.
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According to some, it's a hunt for every person in the world who may not in the future submit to the will of the US Government. War without End, in other words.
According to some? I often find what "some say" to be disingenuous and an easy way to work in libelous statements without direct attribution while providing no useful direction.
Much better to be concrete about it when you can. I generally consider government surveillance of those in direct contact with terrorist groups to be legitimate. In light of the ongoing misuse of government power by the IRS to suppress political opposition groups, religious groups, and donors to political opposition groups, with possible involvement from EPA, FBI, and OSHA, the Justice Department probes on reporters, the stonewalling before Congress, the administrations attempt to ban weapons little used in crime - semiautomatic rifles, the very wide dragnet by NSA is potentially very troubling. I wonder who is receiving the intelligence produced from the analysis, and for what purpose?
It is very much time to write your political representatives. Make sure to at least mention the IRS action against opposition groups, and as much of the above as you care to. Hopefully it isn't too late and things simply look worse than they are. At this moment I'm not placing bets.
The link below shows Anita Dunn, then White House Communications Director , quoting Chairman Mao. That is Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China, also known as communist China. Apparently all of the American, British, Canadian, Australian, French, and other assorted quotes were all used up.
Guess the 100,000+ killed by americans in Iraq dont count. Seek help for your delusions man.
The vast majority of the people killed in Iraq were either killed by terrorist attacks ( bombs in shopping markets, that sort of thing) or by extremist militias.
Yup, like nuclear weapon arming, and massive military investment from the US. The soviet union is long dead.
Funny, I don't see anything there about a long history of genocidal threats and intended genocide by the Arab Nations surrounding Israel. Some of those noted here in this same discussion. I also don't see any mention of Iran's continuing veiled and unveiled threats of genocide against Israel which led not long ago to a rebuke by the Secretary General of the UN.
US military aid to Israel is a minor fraction of its defense budget. At times it has been used to coax Israel into doing things against its interest and in the interest of the US. One example: during the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, the US sent a Patriot missile battery to Israel to help defend it against Iraqi Scud missile so Israel would not counter-attack Iraq after Iraq attacked Israel.
The Soviet Union may be long dead, but hatred on the part of many Muslims of Jews lives on as part of their religion. Muslims that have never met a Jew in their life are willing to kill them.
Of course Muslims aren't the only ones to have a problem with Israel.
The big question is, if it does fall down, will we have to endure 12 years of conspiracy theories about false flags, controlled demolition, and transwarpthermite? I don't think I would have the strength to endure that. Again.
So, being cut off from it oil supplier and having a key trade route blocked... no big deal then? That isn't what the Israels' leadership indicated. The Arab nations were quite open about their preparations and intent.
"Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight." - Gamel Abdel Nasser, May 3oth 1967.
“Those who survive will remain in Palestine. I estimate that none of them will survive.” - Ahmed Shukairy, chairman of PLO in Jordanian Jerusalem, asked in news interview what will happen to the Israelis if there is a war
“All Egypt is now prepared to plunge into total war which will put an end to Israel” - Cairo Radio
Israel [will] not initiate hostilities “...until or unless (Egyptian forces) close the Straits of Tiran to free navigation by Israel”- Prime Minister Levi Eshkol message to France’s President de Gaulle
I am intrigued about your "silent minority." Are they silent because they are sworn to secrecy by the government because they actually know something based on having held official positions? Or, on the other end of the spectrum, are they simply anti-Semitic cranks that find society no longer as hostile to their views so they begin spreading them? When it comes to Israel, either is possible. At the moment I don't have any indication that you are referring to anybody with secret government information, and various countries in Europe, for example, are becoming increasingly hostile to Jews and Israel. I would be interested in any light you care to shed on the matter.
And land? Would that be Sinai that Israel held as a buffer while Egypt was still openly hostile and its leaders threatening genocide? You know the Israelis eventually gave it back in a peace deal? And Gaza, which they unilaterally withdrew from several years ago?
Acts of war come in many sizes, some that will be ignored, and others that almost certainly won't. Bombing a shipment of weapons bound for an enemy in a civil war is one thing. Cutting off an entire nation's fuel and significant trade routes is another.
Israel's justification for starting the 1967 war is the Eygptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran.
So, Israel's justification for attack was an act of war by Egypt? Brilliant!!
Except that means that any and all attacks from Hamas or Hezbollah in response to Israel's total blockade of Gaza are completely justified, according to Israeli rules.
Wrong again. First, it isn't a total blockade. If it was, the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza would not have been able to build a new shopping center, would they? But weapons are being stopped, like the many Iranian rockets being smuggled into Gaza.
Second, Gaza is not a nation state, but a territory. It shouldn't be attacking anyone. Any attacks coming from there are either direct aggression by the Hamas government, or terrorism
Third, it doesn't have an army, navy, or air force.
Just as Israel's possession of a couple hundred nuclear weapons means that they should be threatened with economy-destroying sanctions and military strikes, if Iran is threatened with the same in case they someday decide they want a nuclear weapon.
Israel is not a member of the Non Proliferation Treaty, it has no obligations under the treaty, and its possession of nuclear weapons is unproven. Iran is a member, has obligations, and they seem to be in breach of treaty on top of being rebuked by the UN Secretary General for repeatedly threatening Israel's existence. Note that the issue between Israel and Iran is totally Iran's fault. Israel and Iran were allies when the Shah governed Iran. It was only after the Islamic revolution that the new Iranian government declared Israel an enemy to be destroyed. Israel did nothing to warrant that.
So, you continue to side with would-be genocidal aggressors and repeatedly condemn the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, often on specious grounds. For some reason this comes to mind:
No single group better exemplifies the cognitive dissonance on display at these rallies than Queers for Palestine, also known as QUIT -- Queers Undermining Israeli Terror. What is left to say about the fundamental self-contradicting nature of such a group?
In Israel, gays live openly and happily in a free and liberal society. There is a thriving gay scene, just as there is in the United States and many other Western democracies.
But in Palestine -- as in most Islamic countries -- being gay is not only frowned upon, it is a crime often punishable by death. Tales of what life is like for gays in Palestinian society are horrifying in the extreme. In fact, gay youth in Palestine frequently flee to Israel if they can get a chance. So why in the world would gay activists in the most gay-friendly city on Earth protest against one of the other centers of gay liberation (Israel) and for one of the planet's most violently oppressive homophobic societies?
This is the essence of cognitive dissonance -- the condition of holding two differing beliefs that are so incompatible and contradictory that the only way to internally reconcile them is to, well, go insane (to use the layman's term). Because, try as I might, I can't comprehend any other justification for being a member of QUIT other than insanity....more
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Which, for some reason, also entitled them to seize a great deal of sur
Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran (Gulf of Aqaba ) to Israeli shipping, thereby cutting off Israel’s only supply route with Asia and stopping the flow of oil from its main supplier, Iran. By international law, this was an act of war.
There is plenty more at that site, you might want to wander around it.
The point was spelled out in the first paragraph. Allow me:
The US does in fact have a full political spectrum from left to right, including real, honest to Lenin and Marx Communists, and Communist Party. (More than one, actually.) It even includes people who have been willing to go the Stalin or Pol Pot route
I also commented on their participation in the electoral system.
Now, since you didn't pay attention - why don't you see if you can determine who Mr. Ayers might be connected to? Hint - it is someone powerful. Feel free to skip my posts if you don't want to bother reading them and applying at least minimal brain power.
What a fucking waste of time.
Your understanding and civility seem to have converged.
The United States doesn't really have a left-wing party.
That is a mistaken idea commonly held by people without a strong understanding of the American political system and politics. The US does in fact have a full political spectrum from left to right, including real, honest to Lenin and Marx Communists , and Communist Party. (More than one, actually.) It even includes people who have been willing to go the Stalin or Pol Pot route (see below after reading the rest of this). The difference is that people in the United States generally won't vote for Communists if they understand that is who is running for office. That is why many on the hard left camouflage themselves by rhetorically moving to the center and refer to themselves as progressives, or some other label, to merge into the larger body of the moderate left. If they make it into government, they are forced to govern by incrementalism using ordinary political means since they gain office by votes, not by revolution.
"I intend to vote against conferring the honorific title of our university to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father, Robert F. Kennedy. There can be no place in a democracy to celebrate political assassinations or to honor those who do so."
Who is BILL AYERS? (This page has link to download the Prarie Fire political manifesto referenced below.)
We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years. . . .
...We need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build a new society.
And more....
The Weather Underground openly discussed exterminating 25 million Americans who refused to be "re-educated" into communism...
... I bought up the subject of what's going to happen after we take over the government. We, we become responsible, then, for administrating, you know, 250 million people.
And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics; how are you going to clothe and feed these people.
The only thing that I could get, was that they expected that the Cubans and the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.
They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the southwest, where we would take all the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them... how things were going to be.
I asked, well, what's going to happen to those people that we can't re-educate; that are die-hard capitalists. And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill. 25 million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 2
As is usually the case, what Zionist shitbags complain about others doing, they did first. Stuff like of Palestinians and terrorist bombings of government buildings.
What you depict doesn't remotely resemble genocide, which was the topic. Killing 6 of 9 million Jews in Europe, or all of the Jews in Israel. Similar to the announced intention of the invading Arab armies in 1948. See this A bomb in the King David hotel compared to the mass murder of 6 million people? You don't really seem to have a sense of proportion, which might explain a lot.
From a bunch of immigrants from Europe, as Jews were less than 10% of the population in 1900.
Jewish immigrants that bought land, even the worst land that nobody else wanted, and made it productive. You also neglect to mention the large numbers of Arabs that immigrated there as well, especially as the Jewish population began improving the economy.
You seem to be making it your mission in life to remove whatever fig leaf of respectability "anti-Zionism" has and fully merging it with anti-Semitism.
Israel started the 1967 war with a sneak attack on the Egyptian Air Force, after Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran.
Blockades in international law are acts of war. You have it backwards as usual, but thanks for yielding the point.
The formation of Israel was impossible without ethnic cleansing and wars of conquest from the people living there, much like the formation of the United States.
The Jews that immigrated to Palestine bought land that nobody wanted and developed it. They paid high prices for other land. The Arab leadership had to threaten to kill anybody that sold more land to Jews to reduce the sales as the Jews were paying very good money. As noted in this post, it was Arab leaders that ordered the Arabs of Palestine to leave their homes so that the invading Arab armies could commit genocide. In 1967 the Arabs nations again gathered their armies to commit genocide, and failed, losing land in the process to tiny Israel. You don't really have a good grasp of the history there.
The NSA on Tuesday released audiotapes of Israeli pilots and ground control speaking in Hebrew, along with English transcripts.
The recordings were made by a nearby American surveillance aircraft in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
"For your info, it is apparently an Arab ship," says ground control.
"Roger," says the pilot.
"It is an Egyptian supply ship," says ground control.
"Roger," comes the response.
The NSA released the tapes and transcripts under the Freedom of Information Act in response to a request from Miami Judge Jay Cristol.
An author of a book on the attack, Cristol said the tapes show it was a tragic accident in a time of war -- that the Israelis mistook the ship for an Egyptian one.
"I don't think there's any question that anyone who reads these tapes would be absolutely convinced there was the fog of war out there," Cristol said.
It is a view with which historian Michael B Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem academic research institute, concurs.
"Many thousands of documents related to the Liberty have been declassified and in none of these documents will you find a scintilla of evidence to suggest any of these conspiracy theories are true," he says.
"The Golan one is the easiest to disprove because of where the Liberty was, not off the coast of Israel, but Egypt. Its listening devices weren't that powerful that they could listen in on communications in Tel Aviv.
"Moreover the Israelis were very upfront in telling the US that they planned to capture the Golan Heights and the Americans agreed to it.
"Regarding a massacre of Egyptian POWs, there's no evidence of that. And why would the Israelis try to cover up one atrocity by committing another?
He says the attack has remained a source of controversy because "it has all the ingredients of a good spy scandal. It involves espionage and it involves the Israelis, who are forever a focus of conspiracy theories.
"If I could prove the Liberty was attacked in a premeditated fashion, I would write it - it would be a great historical scoop - but the truth is far more mundane."
No. But it does equate to a double standard. A different standard is applied to Israel than to everyone else. What's worse is that the other Arab countries are treating their own people like shit.
Despite your flamebait moderation, you are essentially correct.
As far as a double standard against Israel, the UN is a great example of that.
... The Case For Israel... Dershowitz points out that a full 27 percent of the U.N.'s country-specific resolutions critical of a state have been directed against it. In contrast, no resolution in the history of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights has condemned Syria, China, Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe, all of which are self-evidently far worse violators of human rights. Israel, asserts Dershowitz, has a "far better record on human rights than any other nation in the Middle East and most other nations in the world." As evidence, he notes that "Israel is the only nation in the world whose judiciary actively enforces the rule of law against its military during wartime" and that "Israel has killed fewer innocent civilians in proportion to the number of its own civilians killed than any country engaged in a comparable war."... The Case for Israel
For some reason you never really hear about those. What makes it doubly interesting is that Black September was specifically against the Palestinian Arabs.
The Armed Forces will begin on Saturday celebrations of the 39th anniversary of the 6th October War victory by staging air parades in the skies of 21 cities in 12 Egyptian governorates.
Different types of military aircraft will partake in the parade to show the high capabilities of the Air Force servicemen.
The military air shows will be held in the governorates of Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Beheira, Sharqiya, Daqahlia, Gharbia, Ismailia, Suez, Port Said, Beni Sweif and Minya
Israel must also know quite clearly that this will be perceived as provocation by their neighbours and after 60 years of continuous conflict
So, if the Arab countries alert their Hebrew reading population to get on the internet and go to that web page, some of them might be offended.... by reading what is in the history books, or more or less in Israeli newspapers? I think that is a bit of a stretch. The only people that are really likely to be offended about this are the people that already hate Israel.
Just a plain dick move.
I think you set the bar a bit low there. What is your reaction to this?
Ah the 1948 war, where the arabs told the other arabs living in said regions that if they flee, they'll be able to live on the land of the jews that they those arab armies were going to ethnically cleanse. Never mind that said arab armies did in fact commit cleansing...of their fellow arabs, and in those regions among others. That's not new, news.
The post above is essentially correct, and it shouldn't be down modded.
In ''Semites and Anti-Semites'' (New York, 1986), Bernard W. Lewis quotes (page 270) from the memoirs of Khalid al-Azm, Prime Minister of Syria in 1948-49, listing the factors that led to Israel's success:
''Fifth: the summons of the Arab governments to the population of Palestine to leave the country and take refuge in the neighboring Arab countries . . . this collective flight served the Jews and strengthened their position without effort. . . . Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes when we ourselves were the ones who induced them to leave them. . . . We doomed a million Arab refugees, by calling on them and insisting that they abandon their land, their homes, their work and their occupations, and we made them unemployed and homeless.''
You may want to review this post in this same topic for more information.
Slashdot Mirror
There are some surprising aspects of it.
An internal presentation on the Silicon Valley operation, intended for senior analysts in the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, described the new tool as the most prolific contributor to the President’s Daily Brief, which cited PRISM data in 1,477 articles last year.
The PRISM program is not a dragnet, exactly. From inside a company’s data stream the NSA is capable of pulling out anything it likes, but under current rules the agency does not try to collect it all.
Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade key in “selectors,” or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness.” That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by the Post instruct new analysts to submit accidentally collected U.S. content for a quarterly report, “but it’s nothing to worry about.”
SEEN ON FACEBOOK:
The problem is a complacent populace, which includes me and you, unless you're actually outraged enough to take some time off work and protest. I know I can't afford that shit. . . . But even we're not getting off our asses to do anything.
Stay on your butt and write letters to your representatives, or call, although I understand letters are better. Do that often. That gets their attention. They will probably never see you holding a protest sign.
Be polite. Be professional. Be clear.
Congress can always cut off funds if it turns out to be bad. I don't think I can think of something less useful and more destructive than truck bomb attacks at this point. If you want a republic, congress needs engage in close oversight of what is going on for this sort of activity. It might, might be legitimate, but it is darned suspicious.
There is no good way of predicting what would come next if the republic falls. Getting something better isn't likely. Much worse after a long period of suffering and destruction is what is likely.
When the people inform their legislators, good things can happen. Start writing and calling.
I assume you must be either a failing agent provocateur or a nitwit.
Benjamin Franklin said Americans had a republic, if they could keep it.
This is the time work on keeping it by:
- Letters to congress put in the post box
- Voting for a change of representation at the ballot box
- Some time on the soap box.
- Some government employees sitting in front of the jury box.
Suggested topics:
- IRS suppression of legitimate peaceful political opposition groups
- IRS suppression of legitimate peaceful religous groups
- Possible involvement by the FBI, EPA, and OSHA in the above
- IRS seizure of 60,000,000 medical records they are not entitled to in breach of the 4th Amendment
- Unprecedented Justice Department investigation of reporters
- Stonewalling by government officials before congress and refusing to turn over documents
- Attempts by the administration to disarm the public by outlawing weapons seldom used to commit crimes - semiautomatic rifles
- The very wide dragnet by the NSA when considered with the above
Slashdot has had stories on much of that recently. Search for IRS, or AP, etc.
It is legitimate for the NSA to monitor people in direct communication with terrorist groups, and other terrorists*. But this, considered in light of the above is cause for concern. Congress better be doing some good oversight.
* Genuine terrorists trying to bomb, shoot, poison or otherwise kill innocent people, typically in large numbers, with a very broad understanding of innocent.
Everybody of significance involved in planning 9/11 is dead,
No, far from it. As far as I know, these plotters are very much alive and in custody:
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Ramzi Binalshibh
Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi
Abi Abd al-Aziz Ali
Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek bin Attash
And there appears to be a sleeper cell to track down:
Boston Marathon Bombings: FBI Hunts Terror 'Sleeper Cell' Linked to Tsarnaev Brothers
But a little of the pressure may be off since it looks like the Boston bombing will shortly no longer be the first major terrorist attack since 9/11.
With Nidal Hasan bombshell, time to call Fort Hood shooting a terror attack?
Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army major facing court-martial for a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009, plans to argue that he acted in defense of the Taliban in Afghanistan. So much for the official US line that the shootings were an act of workplace violence, critics say.
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According to some, it's a hunt for every person in the world who may not in the future submit to the will of the US Government. War without End, in other words.
According to some? I often find what "some say" to be disingenuous and an easy way to work in libelous statements without direct attribution while providing no useful direction.
Much better to be concrete about it when you can. I generally consider government surveillance of those in direct contact with terrorist groups to be legitimate. In light of the ongoing misuse of government power by the IRS to suppress political opposition groups, religious groups, and donors to political opposition groups, with possible involvement from EPA, FBI, and OSHA, the Justice Department probes on reporters, the stonewalling before Congress, the administrations attempt to ban weapons little used in crime - semiautomatic rifles, the very wide dragnet by NSA is potentially very troubling. I wonder who is receiving the intelligence produced from the analysis, and for what purpose?
It is very much time to write your political representatives. Make sure to at least mention the IRS action against opposition groups, and as much of the above as you care to. Hopefully it isn't too late and things simply look worse than they are. At this moment I'm not placing bets.
The link below shows Anita Dunn, then White House Communications Director , quoting Chairman Mao. That is Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China, also known as communist China. Apparently all of the American, British, Canadian, Australian, French, and other assorted quotes were all used up.
Remember this... Anita Dunn On Mao
EDITORIAL: What would Mao do?
Mao bore no small responsibility for the enormous loss of life in China during communist rule, as many as 60,000,000 people.
The Black Book of Communism
Guess the 100,000+ killed by americans in Iraq dont count. Seek help for your delusions man.
The vast majority of the people killed in Iraq were either killed by terrorist attacks ( bombs in shopping markets, that sort of thing) or by extremist militias.
No, I was equating genoide with genocide - the extermination of a people. Not sure how you failed to understand that.
Israel has long suffered threats of genocide against it by Middle East leaders. You can see a couple of them in this discussion in this post.
Yup, like nuclear weapon arming, and massive military investment from the US. The soviet union is long dead.
Funny, I don't see anything there about a long history of genocidal threats and intended genocide by the Arab Nations surrounding Israel. Some of those noted here in this same discussion. I also don't see any mention of Iran's continuing veiled and unveiled threats of genocide against Israel which led not long ago to a rebuke by the Secretary General of the UN.
US military aid to Israel is a minor fraction of its defense budget. At times it has been used to coax Israel into doing things against its interest and in the interest of the US. One example: during the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, the US sent a Patriot missile battery to Israel to help defend it against Iraqi Scud missile so Israel would not counter-attack Iraq after Iraq attacked Israel.
The Soviet Union may be long dead, but hatred on the part of many Muslims of Jews lives on as part of their religion. Muslims that have never met a Jew in their life are willing to kill them.
Of course Muslims aren't the only ones to have a problem with Israel.
The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews
Looks like more information is needed:
VAN JONES
Van Jones, 'Green Jobs Czar', a self-described 'communist' arrested during Rodney King riots
White House Adviser Van Jones Resigns Amid Controversy Over Past Activism
The resignation (and coming MSM/left-wing martyrdom) of Van Jones; Obama “thanks him for his service”
The big question is, if it does fall down, will we have to endure 12 years of conspiracy theories about false flags, controlled demolition, and transwarpthermite? I don't think I would have the strength to endure that. Again.
So, being cut off from it oil supplier and having a key trade route blocked... no big deal then? That isn't what the Israels' leadership indicated. The Arab nations were quite open about their preparations and intent.
"Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight." - Gamel Abdel Nasser, May 3oth 1967.
“Those who survive will remain in Palestine. I estimate that none of them will survive.” - Ahmed Shukairy, chairman of PLO in Jordanian Jerusalem, asked in news interview what will happen to the Israelis if there is a war
“All Egypt is now prepared to plunge into total war which will put an end to Israel” - Cairo Radio
Israel [will] not initiate hostilities “...until or unless (Egyptian forces) close the Straits of Tiran to free navigation by Israel”- Prime Minister Levi Eshkol message to France’s President de Gaulle
source
I am intrigued about your "silent minority." Are they silent because they are sworn to secrecy by the government because they actually know something based on having held official positions? Or, on the other end of the spectrum, are they simply anti-Semitic cranks that find society no longer as hostile to their views so they begin spreading them? When it comes to Israel, either is possible. At the moment I don't have any indication that you are referring to anybody with secret government information, and various countries in Europe, for example, are becoming increasingly hostile to Jews and Israel. I would be interested in any light you care to shed on the matter.
And land? Would that be Sinai that Israel held as a buffer while Egypt was still openly hostile and its leaders threatening genocide? You know the Israelis eventually gave it back in a peace deal? And Gaza, which they unilaterally withdrew from several years ago?
Acts of war come in many sizes, some that will be ignored, and others that almost certainly won't. Bombing a shipment of weapons bound for an enemy in a civil war is one thing. Cutting off an entire nation's fuel and significant trade routes is another.
I hope you aren't throwing in with a bad lot.
Israel's justification for starting the 1967 war is the Eygptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran.
So, Israel's justification for attack was an act of war by Egypt? Brilliant!!
Except that means that any and all attacks from Hamas or Hezbollah in response to Israel's total blockade of Gaza are completely justified, according to Israeli rules.
Wrong again. First, it isn't a total blockade. If it was, the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza would not have been able to build a new shopping center, would they? But weapons are being stopped, like the many Iranian rockets being smuggled into Gaza.
Biggest mall in Gaza Strip opens its doors
Second, Gaza is not a nation state, but a territory. It shouldn't be attacking anyone. Any attacks coming from there are either direct aggression by the Hamas government, or terrorism
Third, it doesn't have an army, navy, or air force.
Just as Israel's possession of a couple hundred nuclear weapons means that they should be threatened with economy-destroying sanctions and military strikes, if Iran is threatened with the same in case they someday decide they want a nuclear weapon.
Israel is not a member of the Non Proliferation Treaty, it has no obligations under the treaty, and its possession of nuclear weapons is unproven. Iran is a member, has obligations, and they seem to be in breach of treaty on top of being rebuked by the UN Secretary General for repeatedly threatening Israel's existence. Note that the issue between Israel and Iran is totally Iran's fault. Israel and Iran were allies when the Shah governed Iran. It was only after the Islamic revolution that the new Iranian government declared Israel an enemy to be destroyed. Israel did nothing to warrant that.
So, you continue to side with would-be genocidal aggressors and repeatedly condemn the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, often on specious grounds. For some reason this comes to mind:
Queers for Palestine
No single group better exemplifies the cognitive dissonance on display at these rallies than Queers for Palestine, also known as QUIT -- Queers Undermining Israeli Terror. What is left to say about the fundamental self-contradicting nature of such a group?
In Israel, gays live openly and happily in a free and liberal society. There is a thriving gay scene, just as there is in the United States and many other Western democracies.
But in Palestine -- as in most Islamic countries -- being gay is not only frowned upon, it is a crime often punishable by death. Tales of what life is like for gays in Palestinian society are horrifying in the extreme. In fact, gay youth in Palestine frequently flee to Israel if they can get a chance.
So why in the world would gay activists in the most gay-friendly city on Earth protest against one of the other centers of gay liberation (Israel) and for one of the planet's most violently oppressive homophobic societies?
This is the essence of cognitive dissonance -- the condition of holding two differing beliefs that are so incompatible and contradictory that the only way to internally reconcile them is to, well, go insane (to use the layman's term). Because, try as I might, I can't comprehend any other justification for being a member of QUIT other than insanity. ...more
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Which, for some reason, also entitled them to seize a great deal of sur
Egypt committed an act of war against Israel. The historians you refer to may not be doing their job properly.
May 23rd 1967
Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran (Gulf of Aqaba ) to Israeli shipping, thereby cutting off Israel’s only supply route with Asia and stopping the flow of oil from its main supplier, Iran. By international law, this was an act of war.
There is plenty more at that site, you might want to wander around it.
The point was spelled out in the first paragraph. Allow me:
The US does in fact have a full political spectrum from left to right, including real, honest to Lenin and Marx Communists, and Communist Party. (More than one, actually.) It even includes people who have been willing to go the Stalin or Pol Pot route
I also commented on their participation in the electoral system.
Now, since you didn't pay attention - why don't you see if you can determine who Mr. Ayers might be connected to? Hint - it is someone powerful. Feel free to skip my posts if you don't want to bother reading them and applying at least minimal brain power.
What a fucking waste of time.
Your understanding and civility seem to have converged.
The United States doesn't really have a left-wing party.
That is a mistaken idea commonly held by people without a strong understanding of the American political system and politics. The US does in fact have a full political spectrum from left to right, including real, honest to Lenin and Marx Communists , and Communist Party. (More than one, actually.) It even includes people who have been willing to go the Stalin or Pol Pot route (see below after reading the rest of this). The difference is that people in the United States generally won't vote for Communists if they understand that is who is running for office. That is why many on the hard left camouflage themselves by rhetorically moving to the center and refer to themselves as progressives, or some other label, to merge into the larger body of the moderate left. If they make it into government, they are forced to govern by incrementalism using ordinary political means since they gain office by votes, not by revolution.
When Emeritus Isn't Automatic
"I intend to vote against conferring the honorific title of our university to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father, Robert F. Kennedy. There can be no place in a democracy to celebrate political assassinations or to honor those who do so."
Who is BILL AYERS? (This page has link to download the Prarie Fire political manifesto referenced below.)
William Ayers says Weather Underground, Boston bombings not same
William Ayers' forgotten communist manifesto: Prairie Fire
We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years. . . .
...We need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build a new society.
And more....
The Weather Underground openly discussed exterminating 25 million Americans who refused to be "re-educated" into communism...
... I bought up the subject of what's going to happen after we take over the government. We, we become responsible, then, for administrating, you know, 250 million people.
And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics; how are you going to clothe and feed these people.
The only thing that I could get, was that they expected that the Cubans and the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.
They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the southwest, where we would take all the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them... how things were going to be.
I asked, well, what's going to happen to those people that we can't re-educate; that are die-hard capitalists. And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill. 25 million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 2
As is usually the case, what Zionist shitbags complain about others doing, they did first. Stuff like of Palestinians and terrorist bombings of government buildings.
What you depict doesn't remotely resemble genocide, which was the topic. Killing 6 of 9 million Jews in Europe, or all of the Jews in Israel. Similar to the announced intention of the invading Arab armies in 1948. See this A bomb in the King David hotel compared to the mass murder of 6 million people? You don't really seem to have a sense of proportion, which might explain a lot.
From a bunch of immigrants from Europe, as Jews were less than 10% of the population in 1900.
Jewish immigrants that bought land, even the worst land that nobody else wanted, and made it productive. You also neglect to mention the large numbers of Arabs that immigrated there as well, especially as the Jewish population began improving the economy.
More on Arab immigrants, So called "Palestinians". When they started to flood Palestine as Jews changed and cultivated the vacant land
The Arabs in Palestine
You seem to be making it your mission in life to remove whatever fig leaf of respectability "anti-Zionism" has and fully merging it with anti-Semitism.
The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews
Israel started the 1967 war with a sneak attack on the Egyptian Air Force, after Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran.
Blockades in international law are acts of war. You have it backwards as usual, but thanks for yielding the point.
The formation of Israel was impossible without ethnic cleansing and wars of conquest from the people living there, much like the formation of the United States.
The Jews that immigrated to Palestine bought land that nobody wanted and developed it. They paid high prices for other land. The Arab leadership had to threaten to kill anybody that sold more land to Jews to reduce the sales as the Jews were paying very good money. As noted in this post, it was Arab leaders that ordered the Arabs of Palestine to leave their homes so that the invading Arab armies could commit genocide. In 1967 the Arabs nations again gathered their armies to commit genocide, and failed, losing land in the process to tiny Israel. You don't really have a good grasp of the history there.
I wonder if that broadcast will include the attack on the US Liberty in which they killed 34 American Sailors and was covered up for MANY years
The attack wasn't covered up, it was front page news. The fact that you didn't know about it doesn't mean nobody else did.
USS Liberty attack tapes released
The NSA on Tuesday released audiotapes of Israeli pilots and ground control speaking in Hebrew, along with English transcripts.
The recordings were made by a nearby American surveillance aircraft in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
"For your info, it is apparently an Arab ship," says ground control.
"Roger," says the pilot.
"It is an Egyptian supply ship," says ground control.
"Roger," comes the response.
The NSA released the tapes and transcripts under the Freedom of Information Act in response to a request from Miami Judge Jay Cristol.
An author of a book on the attack, Cristol said the tapes show it was a tragic accident in a time of war -- that the Israelis mistook the ship for an Egyptian one.
"I don't think there's any question that anyone who reads these tapes would be absolutely convinced there was the fog of war out there," Cristol said.
Why did Israel attack USS Liberty?
No. But it does equate to a double standard. A different standard is applied to Israel than to everyone else. What's worse is that the other Arab countries are treating their own people like shit.
Despite your flamebait moderation, you are essentially correct.
As far as a double standard against Israel, the UN is a great example of that.
From: Middle East Quarterly - Winter 2004
The Case for Israel
... The Case For Israel ... Dershowitz points out that a full 27 percent of the U.N.'s country-specific resolutions critical of a state have been directed against it. In contrast, no resolution in the history of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights has condemned Syria, China, Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe, all of which are self-evidently far worse violators of human rights. Israel, asserts Dershowitz, has a "far better record on human rights than any other nation in the Middle East and most other nations in the world." As evidence, he notes that "Israel is the only nation in the world whose judiciary actively enforces the rule of law against its military during wartime" and that "Israel has killed fewer innocent civilians in proportion to the number of its own civilians killed than any country engaged in a comparable war."... The Case for Israel
Fighting the Lies Harder Than Fighting the War - Israel does not "deliberately" target civilians.
Regarding the mistreatment of Arabs by Arabs, two interesting cases that immediately come to mind:
Black September - In Context
Hama 1982 – The Syrian massacre you never heard about (Not for those of weak constitution. The SS had nothing on the Syrian Army.)
For some reason you never really hear about those. What makes it doubly interesting is that Black September was specifically against the Palestinian Arabs.
Are they completely tone-deaf to public opinion?
Whose public opinion? All the Hebrew speaking twitter readers spread across the world and in all the Arab lands?
I don't suppose you know of any Arab nations that have actual celebrations and parades for their armed forces instead of twitter posts, do you?
Egypt: Armed Forces Begin Sixth October Victory Celebrations By Air Parades - 5 October 2012
The Armed Forces will begin on Saturday celebrations of the 39th anniversary of the 6th October War victory by staging air parades in the skies of 21 cities in 12 Egyptian governorates.
Different types of military aircraft will partake in the parade to show the high capabilities of the Air Force servicemen.
The military air shows will be held in the governorates of Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Beheira, Sharqiya, Daqahlia, Gharbia, Ismailia, Suez, Port Said, Beni Sweif and Minya
Good grief, who will warn them?
Israel must also know quite clearly that this will be perceived as provocation by their neighbours and after 60 years of continuous conflict
So, if the Arab countries alert their Hebrew reading population to get on the internet and go to that web page, some of them might be offended.... by reading what is in the history books, or more or less in Israeli newspapers? I think that is a bit of a stretch. The only people that are really likely to be offended about this are the people that already hate Israel.
Just a plain dick move.
I think you set the bar a bit low there. What is your reaction to this?
So you are saying that excluding news about Israel shows you are even handed? I'm not buying that one.
Ah the 1948 war, where the arabs told the other arabs living in said regions that if they flee, they'll be able to live on the land of the jews that they those arab armies were going to ethnically cleanse. Never mind that said arab armies did in fact commit cleansing...of their fellow arabs, and in those regions among others. That's not new, news.
The post above is essentially correct, and it shouldn't be down modded.
Time Now for a Declaration of Mideast Peace; Doomed Arab Refugees
In ''Semites and Anti-Semites'' (New York, 1986), Bernard W. Lewis quotes (page 270) from the memoirs of Khalid al-Azm, Prime Minister of Syria in 1948-49, listing the factors that led to Israel's success:
''Fifth: the summons of the Arab governments to the population of Palestine to leave the country and take refuge in the neighboring Arab countries . . . this collective flight served the Jews and strengthened their position without effort. . . . Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes when we ourselves were the ones who induced them to leave them. . . . We doomed a million Arab refugees, by calling on them and insisting that they abandon their land, their homes, their work and their occupations, and we made them unemployed and homeless.''
You may want to review this post in this same topic for more information.