‘IAEA can not check Israeli nuclear sites’
Israel's top-secret nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) acknowledges that the nuclear watchdog can not monitor and assess Israel’s undisclosed nuclear sites.
The IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said on Friday that Tel Aviv had restricted the agency in examining its nuclear potentials.
Amano’s comments were made public in a report to the Vienna-based watchdog’s Board of Governors.
In his visit to Israel last month, Amano called on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Tel Aviv, however, refuses to confirm it possesses a nuclear arsenal, estimated to be between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. Israel is considered to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East.
Amano also said he has asked Israel to “place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards,” AFP reported.
Meanwhile, the report expressed “concern about the Israeli nuclear capabilities,” and linked it to “concern about the threat posed by the proliferation of nuclear weapons for the security and stability of the Middle East.”
Tel Aviv has rejected Amano’s comments, arguing that his report is politically motivated. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that the IAEA intended to divert attention from Iran and Syria.
The international community, especially the Islamic nations, has been urging Tel Aviv to subject itself to nuclear inspections and to join the NPT.
The latest IAEA report also included more than 40 letters from IAEA member states in response to an April request by Amano for proposals on how to persuade Israel to sign the NPT.
Source: PressTV
Rothschild’s Biographer Reveals his Contempt for the Goyim
The following article was written by Marcus Eli Ravage, the Rothschilds’ approved biographer. It appeared in THE CENTURY MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 1928, Vol. 115
COMMISSARY TO THE GENTILES
The First to See the Possibilities of War by Propaganda
MARCUS ELI RAVAGE
Nathan Mayer Rothschild with his family; by W.A. Hobday 1821
YOU Christians worry and complain about the Jews influence in your civilization. We are, you say, an international people, a compact minority in your midst, with traditions, interests, aspirations and objectives distinct from your own. And you declare that this state of affairs is a menace to your orderly development; it confuses your impulses; it defeats your purposes; it muddles up your destiny. I do not altogether see the danger. Your world has always been ruled by minorities; and it seems to me a matter of indifference what the remote origin and professed creed of the governing clique is. The influence, on the other hand, is certainly there, and it is vastly greater and more insidious than you appear to realize.
That is what puzzles and amuses and sometimes exasperates us about your game of Jew-baiting. It sounds so portentous. You go about whispering terrifyingly of the hand of the Jew in this and that and the other thing. It makes us quake. We are conscious of the injury we did you when we imposed upon you our alien faith and traditions. Suppose, we say tremblingly, you should wake up to the fact that your religion, your education, your morals, your social, governmental and legal systems, are fundamentally of our making! And then you specify, and talk vaguely of Jewish financiers and Jewish motion-picture promoters, and our terror dissolves in laughter. The goi, we see with relief, will never know the real blackness of our crimes.
We cannot make it out. Either you do not know or you have not the courage to charge us with those deeds for which there is at least a shadow of evidence and which an intelligent judge and jury could examine without impatience. Why bandy about unconvincing trifles when you might so easily indict us for serious and provable offenses? Why throw up to us a patent and clumsy forgery such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion when you might as well confront us with the Revelation of St. John? Why talk about Marx and Trotski when you have Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus to confound us with?
You call us subverters, agitators, revolution-mongers. It is the truth and I cower at your discovery. It could be shown with only the slightest straining and juggling of the facts that we have been at the bottom of all the major revolutions in your history. We undoubtedly had a sizable finger in the Lutheran Rebellion, and it is simply a fact that we were the prime movers in the bourgeois democratic revolutions of the century before the last, both in France and America. If we were not, we did not know our own interests. But do you point your accusing finger at us and charge us with these heinous and recorded crimes? Not at all! You fantastically lay at our door the recent great War and the upheaval in Russia, which have done not only the most injury to the Jews themselves but which a school-boy could have foreseen would have that result.
But even these plots and revolutions are as nothing compared with the great conspiracy which we engineered at the beginning of this era and which was destined to make the creed of a Jewish sect the religion of the Western world. The Reformation was not designed in malice purely. It squared us with an ancient enemy and restored our Bible to its place of honor in Christendom. The Republican revolutions of the eighteenth century freed us of our age-long political and social disabilities. They benefited us, but they did you no harm. On the contrary, they prospered and expanded you. You owe your preëminence in the world to them. But the upheaval which brought Christianity into Europe was—or at least may easily be shown to have been—planned and executed by Jews as an act of revenge against a great Gentile state. And when you talk about Jewish conspiracies I cannot for the world understand why you do not mention the destruction of Rome and the whole civilization of antiquity concentrated under her banners, at the hands of Jewish Christianity. It is unbelievable, but you Christians do not seem to know where your religion came from, nor how, nor why. Your historians, with one great exception, do not tell you. The documents in the case, which are part of your Bible, you chant over but do not read. We have done our work too thoroughly; you believe our propaganda too implicitly. The coming of Christianity is to you not an ordinary historical event growing out of other events of the time; it is the fulfillment of a divine Jewish prophecy—with suitable amendments of your own. It did not, as you see it, destroy a great Gentile civilization and a great Gentile empire with which Jewry was at war; it did not plunge mankind into barbarism and darkness for a thousand years; it came to bring salvation to the Gentile world!
Yet here, if ever, was a great subversive movement, hatched in Palestine, spread by Jewish agitators, financed by Jewish money, taught in Jewish pamphlets and broadsides, at a time when Jewry and Rome were in a death-struggle, and ending in the collapse of the great Gentile empire. You do not even see it, though an intelligent child, unbefuddled by theological magic, could tell you what it is all about after a hasty reading of the simple record. And then you go on prattling of Jewish conspiracies and cite as instances the Great War and the Russian Revolution! Can you wonder that we Jews have always taken your anti-Semites rather lightly, as long as they did not resort to violence?
And, mind you, no less an authority than Gibbon long ago tried to enlighten you. It is now a century and a half since “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” let the cat out of the bag. Gibbon, not being a parson dabbling in history, did not try to account for the end of a great era by inventing fatuous nonsense about the vice and degradation of Rome, about the decay of morals and faith in an empire which was at that very time in the midst of its most glorious creative period. How could he? He was living in the Augustan Age in London which—in spite of nearly two thousand years since the coming of Christian salvation—was as good a replica of Augustan Rome in the matter of refined lewdness as the foggy islanders could make it. No, Gibbon was a race-conscious Gentile and an admirer of the culture of the pagan West, as well as a historian with brains and eyes. Therefore he had no difficulty laying his finger on the malady that had rotted and wasted away the noble edifice of antique civilization. He put Christianity down—the law which went forth from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem—as the central cause of the decline and fall of Rome and all she represented.
So far so good. But Gibbon did not go far enough. He was born and died, you see, a century before the invention of scientific anti-Semitism. He left wholly out of account the element of deliberation. He saw an alien creed sweeping out of the East and overwhelming the fair lands of the West. It never occurred to him that it was precisely to this destructive end that the whole scheme of salvation was dedicated. Yet the facts are as plain as you please.
Let me in very brief recount the tale, unembroidered by miracle, prophecy or magic.
For a good perspective, I shall have to go back a space. The action conveniently falls into four parts, rising to a climax in the third. The time, when the first curtain rises, is roughly 65 B.C. Dramatis personæ are, minor parts aside, Judea and Rome. Judea is a tiny kingdom off the Eastern Mediterranean. For five centuries it has been hardly more than a geographical expression. Again and again it has been overrun and destroyed and its population carried into exile or slavery by its powerful neighbors. Nominally independent, it is now as unstable as ever and on the edge of civil war. The empire of the West, with her nucleus in the City Republic of Rome, while not yet mistress of the world, is speedily heading that way. She is acknowledged the one great military power of the time as well as the heir of Greece and the center of civilization.
Up to the present the two states have had little or no contact with one another. Then without solicitation on her part Rome was suddenly asked to take a hand in Judean affairs. A dispute had arisen between two brothers over the succession to the petty throne, and the Roman general Pompey, who happened to be in Damascus winding up bigger matters, was called upon to arbitrate between the claimants. With the simple directness of a republican soldier, Pompey exiled one of the brothers, tossed the chief priesthood to his rival, and abolished the kingly dignity altogether. Not to put too fine a point on it, Pompey’s mediation amounted in effect to making Judea a Roman dependency. The Jews, not unnaturally perhaps, objected; and Rome, to conciliate them and to conform to local prejudice, restored the royal office. She appointed, that is, a king of her own choosing. He was son of an excise-man, an Idumean by race, named Herod. But the Jews were not placated, and continued making trouble. Rome thought it very ungrateful of them.
All this is merely a prelude, and is introduced into the action to make clear what follows. Jewish discontent grew to disaffection and open revolt when their Gentile masters began importing into Jerusalem the blessings of Western culture. Graven images, athletic games, Greek drama, and gladiatorial shows were not to the Jewish taste. The pious resented them as an offense in the nostrils of Jehovah, even though the resident officials patiently explained they were meant for the entertainment and edification of the non-Jewish garrison. The Judeans resisted with especial strenuousness the advent of the efficient Roman tax-gatherer. Above all, they wanted back a king of their own race and their own royal line.
Among the masses the rebellion took the form of a revival of the old belief in a Messiah, a divinely appointed savior who was to redeem his people from the foreign yoke and make Judea supreme among the nations. Claimants to the mission were not wanting. In Galilee, one Judas led a rather formidable insurrection, which enlisted much popular support. John, called the Baptist, operated in the Jordan country. He was followed by another north-country man, Jesus of Nazareth. All three were masters of the technique of couching incendiary political sedition in harmless theological phrases. All three used the same signal of revolt—“The time is at hand.” And all three were speedily apprehended and executed, both Galileans by crucifixion.
Personal qualities aside, Jesus of Nazareth was, like his predecessors, a political agitator engaged in liberating his country from the foreign oppressor. There is even considerable evidence that he entertained an ambition to become king of an independent Judea. He claimed, or his biographers later claimed for him, descent from the ancient royal line of David. But his paternity is somewhat confused. The same writers who traced the origin of his mother’s husband back to the psalmist-king also pictured Jesus as the son of Jehovah, and admitted that Joseph was not his father.
It seems, however, that Jesus before long realized the hopelessness of his political mission and turned his oratorical gifts and his great popularity with the masses in quite another direction. He began preaching a primitive form of populism, socialism and pacifism. The effect of this change in his program was to gain him the hostility of the substantial, propertied classes, the priests and patriots generally, and to reduce his following to the poor, the laboring mass and the slaves.
After his death these lowly disciples formed themselves into a communistic brotherhood. A sermon their late leader had once delivered upon a hillside summed up for them the essence of his teachings, and they made it their rule of life. It was a philosophy calculated to appeal profoundly to humble people. It comforted those who suffered here on earth with promised rewards beyond the grave. It made virtues of the necessities of the weak. Men without hope in the future were admonished to take no thought for the morrow. Men too helpless to resent insult or injury were taught to resist not evil. Men condemned to lifelong drudgery and indigence were assured of the dignity of labor and of poverty. The meek, the despised, the disinherited, the downtrodden, were—in the hereafter—to be the elect and favored of God. The worldly, the ambitious, the rich and powerful, were to be denied admission to heaven.
The upshot, then, of Jesus’ mission was a new sect in Judea. It was neither the first nor the last. Judea, like modern America, was a fertile soil for strange creeds. The Ebionim—the paupers, as they called themselves—did not regard their beliefs as a new religion. Jews they had been born, and Jews they remained. The teachings of their master were rather in the nature of a social philosophy, an ethic of conduct, a way of life. To modern Christians, who never tire of asking why the Jews did not accept Jesus and his teachings, I can only answer that for a long time none but Jews did. To be surprised that the whole Jewish people did not turn Ebionim is about as intelligent as to expect all Americans to join the Unitarians or the Baptists or the Christian Scientists.
In ordinary times little attention would have been paid to the ragged brotherhood. Slaves and laborers for the most part, their meekness might even have been encouraged by the solider classes. But with the country in the midst of a struggle with a foreign foe, the unworldly philosophy took on a dangerous aspect. It was a creed of disillusion, resignation and defeat. It threatened to undermine the morale of the nation’s fighting men in time of war. This blessing of the peacemakers, this turning of the other cheek, this non-resistance, this love your enemy, looked like a deliberate attempt to paralyze the national will in a crisis and assure victory to the foe.
So it is not surprising that the Jewish authorities began persecuting the Ebionim. Their meetings were invaded and dispersed, their leaders were clapped into jail, their doctrines were proscribed. It looked for awhile as if the sect would be speedily wiped out. Then, unexpectedly, the curtain rose on act three, and events took a sudden new turn.
Perhaps the bitterest foe of the sectaries was one Saul, a maker of tents. A native of Tarsus and thus a man of some education in Greek culture, he despised the new teachings for their unworldliness and their remoteness from life. A patriotic Jew, he dreaded their effect on the national cause. A traveled man, versed in several languages, he was ideally suited for the task of going about among the scattered Jewish communities to counteract the spread of their socialistic pacifistic doctrines. The leaders in Jerusalem appointed him chief persecutor to the Ebionim.
He was on his way to Damascus one day to arrest a group of the sectaries when a novel idea came to him. In the quaint phrase of the Book of Acts he saw a vision. He saw as a matter of fact, two. He perceived, to begin with, how utterly hopeless were the chances of little Judea winning out in an armed conflict against the greatest military power in the world. Second, and more important, it came to him that the vagabond creed which he had been repressing might be forged into an irresistible weapon against the formidable foe. Pacifism, non-resistance, resignation, love, were dangerous teachings at home. Spread among the enemy’s legions, they might break down their discipline and thus yet bring victory to Jerusalem. Saul, in a word, was probably the first man to see the possibilities of conducting war by propaganda.
He journeyed on to Damascus, and there to the amazement alike of his friends and of those he had gone to suppress, he announced his conversion to the faith and applied for admission to the brotherhood. On his return to Jerusalem he laid his new strategy before the startled Elders of Zion. After much debate and searching of souls, it was adopted. More resistance was offered by the leaders of the Ebionim of the capital. They were mistrustful of his motives, and they feared that his proposal to strip the faith of its ancient Jewish observances and practices so as to make it acceptable to Gentiles would fill the fraternity with alien half-converts, and dilute its strength. But in the end he won them over, too. And so Saul, the fiercest persecutor of Jesus’ followers became Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. And so, incidentally, began the spread into the pagan lands of the West, an entirely new Oriental religion.
Unfortunately for Paul’s plan, the new strategy worked much too well. His revamped and rather alluring theology made converts faster than he had dared hope, or than he even wished. His idea it should be kept in mind, was at this stage purely defensive. He had as yet no thought of evangelizing the world; he only hoped to discourage the enemy. With that accomplished, and the Roman garrisons out of Palestine, he was prepared to call a truce. But the slaves and oppressed of the Empire, the wretched conscripts, and the starving proletariat of the capital itself, found as much solace in the adapted Pauline version of the creed as the poor Jews before them had found in the original teachings of their crucified master. The result of this unforseen success was to open the enemy’s eyes to what was going on. Disturbing reports of insubordination among the troops began pouring into Rome from the army chiefs in Palestine and elsewhere. Instead of giving the imperial authorities pause, the new tactics only stiffened their determination. Rome swooped down upon Jerusalem with fire and sword, and after a fierce siege which lasted four years, she destroyed the nest of the agitation (70 A.D.). At least she thought she had destroyed it.
The historians of the time leave us in no doubt as to the aims of Rome. They tell us that Nero sent Vespasian and his son Titus with definite and explicit orders to annihilate Palestine and Christianity together. To the Romans, Christianity meant nothing more than Judaism militant, anyhow, an interpretation which does not seem far from the facts. As to Nero’s wish, he had at least half of it realized for him. Palestine was so thoroughly annihilated that it has remained a political ruin to this day. But Christianity was not so easily destroyed.
Indeed, it was only after the fall of Jerusalem that Paul’s program developed to the full. Hitherto, as I have said, his tactic had been merely to frighten off the conqueror, in the manner of Moses plaguing the Pharaohs. He had gone along cautiously and hesitantly, taking care not to arouse the powerful foe. He was willing to dangle his novel weapon before the foe’s nose, and let him feel its edge, but he shrank from thrusting it in full force. Now that the worst had happened and Judea had nothing further to lose, he flung scruples to the wind and carried the war into the enemy’s country. The goal now was nothing less than to humble Rome as she had humbled Jerusalem, to wipe her off the map as she had wiped out Judea.
If Paul’s own writings fail to convince you of this interpretation of his activities, I invite your attention to his more candid associated John. Where Paul, operating within the shadow of the imperial palace and half the time a prisoner in Roman jails, is obliged to deal in parable and veiled hints, John, addressing himself to disaffected Asiatics, can afford the luxury of plain speaking. At any rate, his pamphlet entitled “Revelation” is, in truth, a revelation of what the whole astonishing business is about.
Rome, fancifully called Babylon, is minutely described in the language of sputtering hate, as the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, as the woman drunken with the blood of saints (Christians and Jews), as the oppressor of “peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues” and—to remove all doubt of her identity—as “that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” An angel triumphantly cries, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen.” Then follows an orgiastic picture of ruin. Commerce and industry and maritime trade are at an end. Art and music and “the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride” are silenced. Darkness and desolation lie like a pall upon the scene. The gentle Christian conquerors wallow in blood up to the bridles of their horses. “Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.”
And what is the end and purpose of all this chaos and devastation? John is not too reticent to tell us. For he closes his pious prophecy with a vision of the glories of the new—that is, the restored—Jerusalem: not any allegorical fantasy, I pray you, but literally Jerusalem, the capital of a great reunited kingdom of “the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.”
Could any one ask for anything plainer?
Of course, no civilization could forever hold out against this kind of assault. By the year 200 the efforts of Paul and John and their successors had made such headway among all classes of Roman society that Christianity had become the dominant cult throughout the empire. Meantime, as Paul had shrewdly foreseen, Roman morale and discipline had quite broken down, so that more and more the imperial legions, once the terror of the world and the backbone of Western culture, went down to defeat before barbarian invaders. In the year 326 the emperor Constantine, hoping to check the insidious malady, submitted to conversion and proclaimed Christianity the official religion. It was too late. After him the emperor Julian tried to resort once more to suppression. But neither resistance nor concession were of any use. The Roman body politic had become thoroughly worm-eaten with Palestinian propaganda. Paul had triumphed.
This at least is how, were I an anti-Semite in search of a credible sample of subversive Jewish conspiracy, I would interpret the advent of a modified Jewish creed into the Western world.
Turkey bombs PKK hideouts in Iraq
The Turkish Air Force has attacked northern Iraq, bombarding the positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) including their main mountainous hideout.
On Thursday and Friday, Turkish warplanes pounded Mount Qandil, from which the militants launch their operations against Turkey, as well as the Hakurk area, the military said in a statement, the Associated Press reported.
The statement did not mention casualties.
The PKK, which is on the terrorist list of much of the international community, has been fighting Turkey since 1984. Some 45,000 people are estimated to have died since the group launched its armed offensive for an independent state in the southeast.
The militants called off a unilateral ceasefire in June and resumed their assaults with their spokesman Ahmed Denis warning that “We will take our operations to all Turkish cities.”
The Qandil mountain range is also where Israel and Israeli firms operate within the Iraqi borders. The International Strategic Research Organization, a Turkish think tank, warned earlier in the year that retired Israeli military men and members of the Israeli spy agency Mossad had been sighted providing training to PKK gunmen in Iraqi Kurdistan.
On August 25th, an explosion targeted a pipeline that carries Iran’s natural gas to Turkey in the country’s eastern province of Agri. The overnight explosion forced Turkish authorities to shut down the conduit, IRNA quoted Anatolia news agency as saying on Wednesday. Last month a similar blast occurred in another section of the pipeline close to the eastern Turkish town of Dogubayazit, near Iran’s border.
Earlier today Turkish security forces foiled a sabotage attack against Petroleum Pipeline Corporation’s (BOTAS) oil pipeline in Bismil district of southeastern Diyarbakir province. “Security forces defused a bomb placed along the pipeline linking oil fields in Batman province to Diyarbakir,” CNN Turk news network quoted Diyarbakir Governor Mustafa Toprak as saying on Sunday.
The bomb consisted of 20 kilograms of explosives deposited in two propane tanks rigged to a timer, officials said.Turkish security forces arrested three suspected PKK members on Sunday after they discovered 65 kilos (143 pounds) of explosives stashed in the petrol tank of a car, which was intercepted in Diyarbakir.
An American political campaigner was detained in the city of Diyarbakir in the southeastern Turkey earlier this month for alleged PKK links, raising further suspicion of the militants’ maintaining association with the foreigners. Jake Hess is suspected of collaboration with the reported PKK offshoot, the Union of Kurdistan Communities (KCK).
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community, including Turkey, Iran, the US, and the European Union.
More than 40,000 people have lost their lives since the PKK launched its armed campaign in 1984 as part of a quest to establish a Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey.
Source: PressTV
2011; the largest tax hikes in American history
On January 1, 2011, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.
They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves. (So far it looks as if the politicians in Washington will let the Bush tax cuts expire. Which is the first wave of changes we will see.)
On January 1, 2011, here’s what happens… (read it to the end, so you see all three waves)…
First Wave:
Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief
In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families.
These will all expire on January 1, 2011.
Personal income tax rates will rise.
The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed).
The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent.
All the rates in between will also rise.
Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates.
The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
* The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
*
* The 25% bracket rises to 28%
*
* The 28% bracket rises to 31%
*
* The 33% bracket rises to 36%
*
* The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%
Higher taxes on marriage and family.
The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income.
The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child.
The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level.
The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.
The return of the Death Tax.
This year only, there is no death tax. (It’s a quirk!) For those dying on or after January 1, 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes, a business, a retirement account, could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones. Think of the farmers who don’t make much money, but their land, which they purchased years ago with after-tax dollars, is now worth a lot of money. Their children will have to sell the farm, which may be their livelihood, just to pay the estate tax if they don’t have the cash sitting around to pay the tax. Think about your own family’s assets. Maybe your family owns real estate, or a business that doesn’t make much money, but the building and equipment are worth $1 million. Upon their death, you can inherit the $1 million business tax free, but if they own a home, stock, cash worth $500K on top of the $1 million business, then you will owe the government $275,000 cash! That’s 55% of the value of the assets over $1 million! Do you have that kind of cash sitting around waiting to pay the estate tax?
Higher tax rates on savers and investors.
The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011.
The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011.
These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.
Second Wave:
Obamacare
There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:
The “Medicine Cabinet Tax”
Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).
The “Special Needs Kids Tax”
This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children.
There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.
Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington , D.C. ( National Child Research Center ) can easily exceed $14,000 per year.
Under tax rules, FSA dollars can not be used to pay for this type of special needs education.
The HSA (Health Savings Account) Withdrawal Tax Hike.
This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.
Third Wave:
The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and Employer Tax Hikes
When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise-the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired.
The major items include:
The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year.
According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families-rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.
Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear.
Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000.
This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can currently expense half of their purchases of equipment.
In January of 2011, all of it will have to be “depreciated.”
Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses.
There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.
Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced.
The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available.
Tax credits for education will be limited.
Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses.
Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut.
Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed.
The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.
Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed.
Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA.
This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.” This ability will no longer be there.
PDF Version Read more: <http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171#>;; http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171#%23ixzz0sY8waPq1
And worse yet?
Now, your insurance will be INCOME on your W2′s!
One of the surprises we’ll find come next year, is what follows – - a little “surprise” that 99% of us had no idea was included in the “new and improved” healthcare legislation . . . the dupes, er, dopes, who backed this administration will be astonished!
Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that’s a private concern or governmental body of some sort.
If you’re retired? So what… your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get.
You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt. That’s what you’ll pay next year.
For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it’s even worse.
This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the15% that don’t have insurance and it’s only part of the tax increases.
Not believing this??? Here is a research of the summaries…..
On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001,
as modified by sec. 10901) Sec.9002 “requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income.”
- Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters.
- Go to Kiplingers and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you. Number 3 is what is above.
Posted by “Doran”
Israeli court releases racist rabbi
Rabbi Yossi (Yosef) Elitzur
An Israeli court has ordered the release of an extremist rabbi who sparked outrage across the globe for inciting Jews to kill non-Jews, even children.
Yossi (Yosef) Elitzur, a resident of the hardline Yitzhar settlement in the north of the occupied West Bank, was arrested on Thursday for incitement to racism and violence, AFP reported.
But a court in Rishon LeZion, near Tel Aviv, ordered that the rabbi be released the same day, saying police had failed to call him in first for questioning.
The King’s Torah, a controversial book Elitzur co-authored with another rabbi, says Jews are allowed to kill “those who, by speech, weaken our sovereignty,” adding that it is permissible to kill a non-Jew who threatens Israel even if the person is classified as a Righteous Gentile.
The book says is okay to kill children if they “stand in the way.” “They stand in the way of rescue in their presence and they are doing this without wanting to.”
“Nonetheless, killing them is allowed because their presence supports murder. There is justification in harming infants if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us. Under such circumstances the blow can be directed at them and not only by targeting adults,” Ha’aretz quoted the book as saying.
Published in November 2009, the book has drawn strong criticism from numerous rabbis who say it contradicts the teachings of Judaism.
Source: PressTV
Castro: US in checkmate over Iran
Former Cuban President Fidel Castr
Former Cuban President Fidel Castro has said Washington is in a checkmate position with Tehran, reiterating the devastating consequences of any US threats against Iran and the danger of a global nuclear war.
“The Yankees are in a checkmate, no matter how intelligent they are,” Castro said at a meeting with Cuban journalists on Sunday, where he presented his argument about the threat of a nuclear war.
Castro stressed the destructive consequences of a nuclear war for the world, saying that nobody will survive after such a war breaks out.
According to Xinhua, he said that US President Barack Obama is the one who will decide whether a nuclear war will occur.
“He (Obama) has the constitutional power. He has the say. What he can ask for is only one thing, peace,” Castro said.
In early August, Castro delivered a speech to the Cuban parliament to warn against US threats against Iran and the danger of a global nuclear war.
The former Cuban leader warned in the country’s parliament that an attack on Iran could push the world to the brink of a “nuclear holocaust,” which would take the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
“If war breaks out, the current social order will suddenly disappear and the price will be infinitely greater,” Castro said.
“Does anyone think the Iranians, a people with a culture of thousands of years and which is much more intertwined with death than ours, will lack the courage we have shown in resisting the demands of the United States?” the former Cuban leader asked.
On June 9, the UN Security Council approved a resolution, brokered and pushed ahead by Washington, which imposed new sanctions on Iran. The measure was soon followed by more unilateral sanctions by the US and the European Union, mainly targeting the Islamic Republic’s oil and gas sector.
Iran argues that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency it has the right to develop and seek access to civilian nuclear technology.
Tehran has downplayed the significance of the punitive measures and has vowed to stand up to the US and Israeli threats to strike its nuclear facilities.
Castro, who turned 84 on August 13, returned to public life on July 7 after four years of convalescence from a serious illness in which he handed over power to his brother Raul.
Source: PressTV
Netanyahu has no time for IAEA chief
IAEA chief Yukiya Amano
Netanyahu’s office cancelled their scheduled meeting, saying “he would speak on the telephone to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] Yukiya Amano later this week,” Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported on Tuesday.
The IAEA director general is on his first visit to Israel, having asked to hold talks with the premier months ago.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Security Adviser Uzi Arad would likewise not be meeting with Amano.
The prime minister’s bureau claimed Netanyahu had to take the vacation in advance to find time for the agency’s upcoming gathering in the next month.
The meeting is expected to focus on the issue of Israel’s nuclear weapons amid mounting international pressure on the regime to place its controversial nuclear facilities under the agency’s supervision.
Former US President Jimmy Carter has said Israel has between 200 and 300 nuclear warheads, referring to Tel Aviv as the sole possessor of nuclear arms in the Middle East.
Israel has, however, avoided punitive measures so far owning to its oldest and most steadfast ally the United States. The US supports Israel’s policy of “nuclear ambiguity.”
The White House has, meanwhile, said that US President Barack Obama has vowed to shield Israel from being “singled out” at either the September gathering or an Egyptian-proposed 2012 regional conference on a nuclear-free Middle East.
Source: PressTV
‘BP just wants me to go away’
Capitol Hill police officers escort Code Pink co-founder Diane Wilson out of a congressional hearing in Washington, June 17, 2010.
A leader of a US anti-war group, who was arrested for interrupting two congressional hearings on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, says BP just wants her to go away.
Diane Wilson, who is one of the co-founders of Code Pink: Women for Peace, made the remarks in a telephone interview with Press TV on Saturday.
On June 17, Wilson interrupted testimony by BP CEO Tony Hayward before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce before she was eventually subdued and forced out by Capitol Police.
Wilson was protesting against the decision to lift the liability cap on energy giant BP.
Hayward had just started his opening statement when Wilson, with oil smeared on her hands and face, disrupted the hearing. “You need to be charged with a crime,” she shouted.
Wilson had also been arrested at a Senate hearing the previous week when she protested Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s blocking of a bill that would have lifted BP’s liability cap and now faces up to three years in prison.
“The liability cap would be 75 million (dollars) when they make 90 million a day… so I was just so outraged… I stood up and disrupted them,” the Texas shrimper told Press TV.
“They do not want any disruption in those Senate hearings… this is ‘we the people’… this is the worst environmental disaster we’ve ever had in this country,” she said, referring to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
“It was flagrant, there were violations, there were environmental violations, there were agencies with no oversight, there were politicians who have their hand in the oil budget.”
Despite the enormity of the crisis and the damage done, they only allowed five members of the public to attend the “huge” Senate hearing, she added.
Wilson said the authorities told her she faced two charges of unlawful conduct for disrupting the hearings and one for resisting arrest and could receive a three-year prison sentence.
She stated that she went to court but it appears that BP only wants her to go away.
They are trying to say that everything is over, the whole oil spill is gone, they are putting the fisherman back to work and there is no problem, she added.
On April 22, the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig sank following a massive explosion that killed 11 workers and allowed 4.9 million barrels of oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico in the biggest maritime oil spill disaster of all time.
Source: PressTV
Making Sense of the Media Cover-Up of 9-11
The theory of the free press is not that the truth will be presented completely or perfectly in any one instance, but that the truth will emerge from free discussion. – Walter Lippman, American editor and writer, 1889-1974
On 9-11, President George W. Bush said "America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." Minutes after the demolitions of the Twin Towers, Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, told the world on BBC World television that Osama Bin Laden was behind the attacks and that the United States should invade Afghanistan. This was, after all, the real plan behind the false-flag attacks.
Anyone who has looked at the events of 9-11 knows there are basically two competing histories. First, there is the official version, presented by President George W. Bush in a speech given shortly after the attacks and bolstered by the appointed 9-11 commission, that Muslim terrorists were responsible for the death and destruction. This version has since been adopted and supported by the Obama administration and virtually every member of Congress.
The second version is fundamentally opposed to the official version in that it claims that the terror attacks were a sophisticated “false flag” operation carried out by Israelis with the assistance of highly-placed Zionist agents inside the U.S. government. This version posits that the Israeli plan was for the attacks to be blamed on Al Qaida in order to usher in the Zionist-designed “War on Terror” with its pre-planned invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
While the official version is the only one discussed in the mainstream media, various strands of the unofficial version are found primarily on the Internet. As any serious student of 9-11 knows, the mainstream media ignores a whole host of legitimate questions, facts, and evidence about the attacks that would be reported and examined by the media if it were free to do so.
Americans are raised with the cherished belief that the United States has a free and unfettered press in which important matters are freely discussed. Yet, if the United States truly has a free press, how do we explain the conspicuous failure of the mainstream media, over a period of nine years, to discuss the crucial facts and discoveries about 9-11? If we believe that the press in America is free, how can we make sense of the media’s blatant cover-up?
For nine years, in lockstep with the government, the mass media has followed a strategy of concealment of the facts and evidence that contradict the official version. The media cover-up is meant to protect and bolster the official version of the terror atrocity by preventing the general public from being aware of the facts. By censoring any serious discussion of the evidence, the mass media has protected the criminal scheme and those who carried out the terror atrocity of our time.
IS THE PRESS FREE?
Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. - Hugo Black, American jurist and politician, 1886-1971
To grasp what is meant by the term “media cover-up”, let’s start with a simple question: Are the reporters and writers in the mainstream media free to discuss the pertinent facts and evidence of 9-11, or is this discussion being controlled and censored by a hidden hand? By “mainstream media” I simply mean the large national networks of print, television, and radio news outlets. These are the well known commercial and “public” media networks that inform and entertain Americans on a daily basis. For many Americans these mass media outlets actually define their reality. For these people, a subject is not considered “real” until it has been discussed and approved by the talking heads on the news programs they consume.
Although 9-11 ranks as one of the most outrageous criminal atrocities of all time, there is a long list of unanswered questions that the mainstream media avoids. As an independent journalist, I have covered many 9-11 events and discoveries that have been completely ignored by the mainstream media. The media’s refusal to cover significant 9-11 events has often been the subject of my articles, e.g. “Mass Media Avoids Questions about 9-11″ (2002) and “How the Controlled Press Avoids 9-11 Truth” (2005).
IGNORING THE FACTS
A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. – John F. Kennedy, U.S. President, 1961-1963
In March 2009, Professor Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University published photographic evidence of an extremely explosive compound of super-thermite, which he discovered in large amounts in the dust of the pulverized Twin Towers. The chips of super-thermite were fragments of a bi-layered coating, made using nanotechnology and applied to the interior surfaces of the Twin Towers. While this discovery explains the pulverization of the 220 concrete floors and the steel pans that held them, it also exposes the falseness of the government claim that burning jet fuel caused the towers to collapse. Like the many unanswered questions about the demolition of the three towers of the World Trade Center, Jones’ crucial discovery has been completely avoided by both the government and the media. How can such an important discovery be ignored by the government and media in a free and open society?
If the editors and journalists employed by the thousands of newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations across the United States were truly free to discuss the relevant facts and evidence of 9-11, how could it be that not a single national news outlet has covered Dr. Jones’ published discovery of super-thermite after two years?
SECRET ISRAELI VISIT
The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where the interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing. – Henry Adams (1838-1918), President of the American Historical Association
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, was in New York City on the very eve of 9-11 and was probably in the city during the attacks, something I discovered several years ago. As the mayor of New York’s sister city, Olmert (from the hard-line Likud, the party founded by Zionist terrorists) later made a high-profile sympathy visit to New York City about 10 days after the attacks, yet the Jewish-owned newspapers and tabloids of New York City completely ignored Olmert’s visit to their city the day before the attacks, something they and Mayor Rudy Giuliani certainly must have known about. How can this be? Why would the visit by a high-level Israeli politician to New York on the eve of 9-11 be kept out of the press – especially after the fact?
If the press in the United States were truly free, it would mean that thousands of news editors from each and every media outlet have consistently made the same decision that important 9-11 discoveries, events, and facts were not to be discussed in their newspaper, magazine, television or radio network. Because this is not possible, it must be that a hidden hand dictates what is reported about 9-11 in the mainstream media.
THE NATURE OF THE HIDDEN HAND
The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. – J. Edgar Hoover, First Director of the FBI, 1935–1972
Having concluded that the mass media in the United States is controlled, we should ask who controls it, and how. Considering the air-tight media cover-up of 9-11, what can we discern about the nature of the hidden hand controlling the media? Using Socratic dialectic we can ask questions and use logic to identify the nature of the power controlling the media.
Our first question would be: Is the control mechanism external or internal? Has an outside force, such as the government, imposed itself upon the media in order to stifle coverage of 9-11, or is the media controlled from within? While governments certainly do suppress and censor media coverage, it is highly unlikely that the U.S. government is behind the media censorship of 9-11. Any government edict of that sort would have been discovered and exposed during the past nine years. Therefore, we can conclude that the control mechanism must be internal and intrinsic to the ownership of the media.
Zionist secret societies operate something like a Russian matryoshka doll.
Having concluded that the controlling hand is intrinsic to the ownership of the media, we need to determine if the various owners of the major media networks are independent of each other or are they somehow united in a conspiracy to cover-up the truth of 9-11 and deceive the public? Judging from the 9-11 cover-up, which has been complete and universal throughout the mass media for nine years, we can see that the owners are united in purpose and working in concert. That is to say that the owners of the commercial media networks and directors of the public broadcasting system are all working under the same hidden hand. There is no dissent. The controlling power is pervasive throughout the media sphere of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and Europe. Given today’s consolidation of the global media, one individual such as Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation may own hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and television stations around the world. But Rupert Murdoch must be controlled by the same hidden hand as the owners of Time Warner (CNN), CBS Corporation, and the other media networks.
Sumner Redstone (born Rothstein) is majority owner of CBS Corporation, Viacom, MTV Networks, BET, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks movie studios. Leslie Moonves, a former used car dealer, is president and CEO of CBS Corporation. Moonves also happens to be the great-nephew of David Ben-Gurion, the Zionist leader of the Haganah who became the first Prime Minister of Israel. Whatever organization Redstone, Moonves, Murdoch, and the other media owners belong to and from whom they evidently take their marching orders, it must be a very secretive cabal.
What else can we tell about the secret organization that the owners of the media belong to? One of the most conspicuous and peculiar characteristics of the U.S. media is its unquestioning support of Zionism and the state of Israel. Although Israel is a tiny state, about the same size as Slovenia or Albania, it is always discussed in the U.S. mass media, but its overtly racist policies and blatant war crimes are never criticized. The mainstream media in the United States is actually more supportive of the hard-line Zionist policies of Israel’s Likud extremists than the Israeli press, which indicates that the secret organization behind the media must be extremely Zionist and pro-Israel by ideology.
As explained in my book, Solving 9-11 – The Deception that Changed the World, there is a great deal of evidence of Israeli and Zionist involvement in the “false flag” terror attacks of 9-11 – and the criminal destruction of evidence and cover-up that followed. Having concluded that the owners of the mass media networks are bound together in a secret Zionist organization, we can now understand how it is that they are in complete agreement in their refusal to cover or publish anything that would question the official version and shed light on the evidence of Zionist involvement in the terror atrocity that killed thousands of Americans on 9-11. This is evidently what the elders of their secret organization have ordered and what they must do.
Is there a secret international Zionist brotherhood of prominent Jewish men? Actually there are several, the largest being the International Order of B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant), which was founded in New York City in 1843. The first lodge was founded by twelve German Jews and sponsored by a Baruch Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild family, who came to America on a mission to organize the creation of a Jewish brotherhood of Freemasons.
A SECRET SOCIETY WITHIN A SECRET SOCIETY
There is nothing so despicable as a secret society that is based upon religious prejudice and that will attempt to defeat a man because of his religious beliefs. Such a society is like a cockroach — it thrives in the dark. So do those who combine for such an end. – William Howard Taft, U.S. President, 1909-1913
While the B’nai B’rith is an exclusively Jewish brotherhood closed to all non-Jews, members of the B’nai B’rith are often the highest-level members of other orders of Freemasonry. This means that members of the Jewish secret society are free to join and hold the highest positions in other non-Jewish orders. This relationship of a secret society within a secret society explains how Jewish members of B’nai B’rith can control any other order of Freemasons.
This is a pattern that is commonly seen in Zionist history. The Zionist movement has always been run by secret societies. The B’ne Moshe, for example, was the secret order behind the Hoveve Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement, with chapters in Russia and Poland in the late 1800s. The B’ne Moshe was founded in Odessa in 1889 and its statement of policy written by Ahad Ha’Am (a.k.a. Asher Zvi Ginzberg). The order was composed of an “elite body” of Zionists who “would serve their people with complete unselfishness and devotion and prepare it for national rebirth in the ancestral Homeland”, according to the Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel. ”Membership was not open to all but was limited to men of high moral caliber. New entrants were inducted in a solemn ceremony and sworn to observe the order’s rules and to keep its existence secret.”
The B’nai B’rith is a secret society very much like the B’ne Moshe. It is an international secret brotherhood of Zionists whose stated goal is to support the state of Israel. The B’nai B’rith is a Masonic-like organization that has more than 500,000 members in 58 nations. Despite the fact that it is an international organization that works on behalf of a foreign state, the B’nai B’rith enjoys the tax exemptions of a non-profit charitable organization
After being brutally attacked on my own property by a team of heavily armed undercover police, I was prosecuted by a Zionist prosecutor in front of a Zionist judge with a Zionist clerk. All of them were controlled by the B'nai B'rith and its Anti-Defamation League, which has defamed me since 2001 because of my writing about 9-11.
The B’nai B’rith is also the parent organization behind the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which liaises, trains, and informs police departments, prosecutors, and judges across the United States. As an independent journalist writing about 9-11, I was first accused by the ADL in late 2001 of anti-Semitism because of my articles about the evidence of Israeli involvement in 9-11. Although I wrote for the Washington-based American Free Press, which was extremely careful about what it published and had never published anything that could be construed as anti-Semitic, the owner of the paper did not sue the ADL for defamation. This is probably because the owner of the paper was himself a Zionist lawyer named Mark Lane.
Later, I received the same kind of treatment from Murdoch’s FOX News and CNN in interviews in which they pretended to be interested in the facts about 9-11, but were actually set-up to smear me as an anti-Semite. The CNN television interview was chopped and only presented in small bits so that the listener heard none of the context. An ADL spokesman was spliced in to give the impression that I was an anti-Semite. This show aired the night before my trial was scheduled to begin in January 2007.
When my trial finally began in June 2007, I realized that the B’nai B’rith and the ADL had influence or control over the local police who had attacked me at my home, the Jewish prosecutor, the Jewish judge and his clerk, who instructed the jury. The prosecutor – in the middle of America – had even stated that he was prosecuting me because of my writings. Although the police attack was highly irregular and despite the fact that I had ample evidence of a police conspiracy to attack and injure me, I was powerless to defend myself in a system in which a secret society controls all the levers of power – in the court and the media. When all was said and done, although the police clearly lied on the stand and presented fabricated evidence, I was found guilty on both misdemeanor charges. Having gone through a brutal attack by undercover police and the long hellish process of a rigged trial, I then faced sentencing at the hands of the corrupt Zionist judge, a situation which compelled us to leave our happy home in order to preserve the safety and security of our family.
Sources and Recommended Reading
Bollyn, Christopher, ” Mass Media Avoids Questions about 9-11″, June 12, 2002
http://www.bollyn.com/mass-media-avoids-questions-about-9-11
Bollyn, “How Ehud Barak Pulled Off 9-11″, May 5, 2010
http://www.bollyn.com/how-ehud-barak-pulled-off-9-11
Bollyn, “How the Controlled Press Avoids 9-11 Truth”, August 25, 2005
http://www.bollyn.com/how-the-controlled-press-avoids-9-11-truth
Bollyn, “The Jewish Secret Society That Controls the U.S. Media”, December 1, 2009
http://www.bollyn.com/the-jewish-secret-society-that-controls-the-us-media
Bollyn, “Did Rupert Murdoch Have Prior Knowledge of 9-11?”, October 3, 2003
http://www.bollyn.com/did-rupert-murdoch-have-prior-knowledge-of-9-11-2
Bollyn, “Top Secret: Ehud Olmert’s 9-11 Visit to NYC”, December 4, 2007
http://www.bollyn.com/top-secret-ehud-olmerts-9-11-visit-to-nyc
Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel, Edited by Raphael Patai, Herzl Press/McGraw Hill, New York, 1971
How the ADL Indoctrinates Police in Chicago, “Museum Teaches Police Recruits About the Holocaust”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMKqhlwRhFs
Icke, David, “The Zionist Elephant In The Room”, David Icke Newsletter, June 14, 2009
http://www.rense.com/general86/zelephant.htm
Makow, Henry, “Illuminati Created the U.S. to Advance New World Order”, March 29, 2010
http://www.henrymakow.com/the_united_states_is_a_masonic.html
‘Holocaust denier death, Mossad linked’
Dariusz Ratajczak - How is it that some people can reduce the six million to less than a million and nothing bad is happening to them?
American writer JP Bellinger dose not rule out the the involvement of Israeli spy agency, Mossad, in the tragic death of a Polish historian, who was researching the Holocaust.
Dariusz Ratajczak, a former professor at the University of Opole, was found dead in a car parked near a shopping center in Opole on June 11, 2010.
Forensic reports indicated that the body was in the car for nearly two weeks, but was in an advanced state of decay, suggesting that it was moved to the car long after Ratajczak’s death.
“After being questioned, a number of witnesses told the police that the car had only recently been parked there,” Bellinger wrote in his article.
“Professor Ratajczak’s death was ruled a ‘suicide,’ but skeptical people, perhaps bearing in mind the recent arrest of a Mossad assassin operating in Poland, are asking how a person in an advanced staged of composition was able to drive to a public parking lot and park a car?” He inquired.
He was referring to Uri Brodsky, a Mossad agent accused of helping fake a German passport that was used by one of the members of a hit squad involved in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas commander, in a Dubai hotel in January.
“Michael Bodenheimer” aka “Uri Brodsky”
Bellinger went on to say that Ratajczak’s troubles began with the publication of his booklet, “Dangerous Topics,” in March 1999 for which he was convicted of Holocaust denial in Poland.
“What possesses greater intrinsic value? Maintaining the mainstream version of the Holocaust at any cost or the life of a single human being whose only offence was to engage in historical research in a quest for the truth?”
Ratajczak believed it was not possible to kill millions of people in the Nazi gas chambers — a view that provoked a firestorm of criticism among his contemporaries and Israelis lobbies.
Michael Sobelman, the spokesman the Israeli Embassy in Poland, accused Ratajczak of anti-Semitism and expressed “surprise” that “such a man works at a Polish university.”
Sobelman’s comment preceded Ratajczak’s expulsion from the University of Opole.
Ratajczak believed that charge of anti-Semitism had become a sort of exceptionally brutal weapon, which the “establishment” uses ruthlessly against independent thinking men.
“What hurts me most is that I found myself in a group of historians who have been muzzled. After all, please see: from 45 years to now the number of Jews murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau has dropped from six million to less than one million. It’s official data. Indeed, even if they had killed one man, that would be a tragedy. But how is it that some historians may legitimately question the numbers of the Holocaust, and others can not? How is it that some people can reduce the six million to less than a million and nothing bad is happening to them? How is it that some people are not allowed to examine this subject and even be wrong, while other historians are allowed all this?” Ratajczak commented.
Bellinger says disturbing news of Ratajczak’s death shocked some traditionalist and patriotic organizations in Poland, and concludes by asking, “Is questioning the holocaust, or holocaust ‘denial’ of more intrinsic worth than the life of any human being?”
Source: PressTV
Fueling of Iran’s nuclear plant begins
Nuclear fuel is being transferred to the Bushehr reactor under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency and senior officials from Iran and Russia.
The Russian-completed plant is finally being launched after years of delay.
163 fuel rods are to be transferred to the core of the plant.
The fueling comes after head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi and Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency Director Sergei Kiriyenko held talks earlier on Saturday ahead of the inaugural ceremony of the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Iran’s AEOI chief said the fueling process will be completed by September 5.
For his part, Kiriyenko lauded the “physical launch process” of the plant and said, “Bushehr plant is a unique power plant, as most of its parts and equipment have been installed on the ones mounted by the Germans,” said Kiriyenko, quoted by IRNA.
He further expressed satisfaction with Russia’s commitment to its part of the deal and noted, “This is an important event. We declare that Russia has stood by all its commitments to the Bushehr nuclear power plant.”
Iranian officials say they expected to use nuclear-generated electricity two or three months following the fuel launch of the plant.
The reactor’s construction was resumed by Russia in 1995, after the German contractor withdrew from the project soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in the country.
Source: PressTV
Iran protests to UN over US war plan
Iran complains to UN officials about US threats of military attack on the country over its nuclear program, vowing a response to any such strike.In letters to the heads of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the General Assembly that circulated Wednesday, Iran’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Eshaq Alehabib, slammed the US plan for an Iran strike which is based on “totally false” grounds, AP reported.
This comes after Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said the US military has a plan to attack Iran, although he thinks a strike is probably a bad idea.
Mullen, America’s highest-ranking military officer, said he was extremely concerned about the possible repercussions of such a strike, warning that military action against Iran could have “unintended consequences that are difficult to predict in what is an incredibly unstable part of the world.”
The US and its allies accuse Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Iran dismisses the allegations, arguing that all its nuclear activities are under the full supervision of the International Atomic Energy Organization.
The Security Council passed a fourth round of sanctions against the Islamic Republic in June.
In addition to the UNSC sanctions, the US administration adopted unilateral sanctions against Tehran in July, targeting Iran’s financial and energy sectors.
On Wednesday, Iran’s Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali Asghar Soltanieh, called on the body to counter the “incorrect and unfriendly” attitude.
“The IAEA should counter the incorrect and unfriendly attitude, including sanctions and resolutions by the UN Security Council which undermine cooperation,” Soltanieh said.
“The IAEA should know that Iran has cooperated with the Agency beyond its undertakings to show its goodwill and build transparency,” he added.
Source: PressTV
Blackwater/Xe founder relocating to UAE
Erik Prince, the founder of the notorious security company Blackwater/Xe, has left the United States and is settling with his family in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.Prince, 51, personally is not facing any criminal charges for now, but his company, now known as Xe Services LLC, has been implicated in a series of scandals related to its operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, court documents say.
In documents filed with the Justice Department, the North Carolina-based company is facing multiple lawsuits, including a case in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, alleging that Blackwater/Xe defrauded the US government. The case was brought up by two former employees, AFP reported on Wednesday.
Five former executives have been indicted on federal firearms charges, and two former contractors are on trial in Norfolk, Virginia, accused of murdering two civilians in Afghanistan in 2009. They pleaded not guilty on Tuesday.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs had sought to obtain a statement from Prince before his departure for Abu Dhabi, saying he might not return to the United States “if he is indicted on weapons smuggling charges or other matters.”
Prince’s attorneys responded, saying, “There is no basis for such speculation.” But the judge in the case has ordered Prince to appear for the deposition on August 23, 2010 or another day, but not later than September 3, in Abu Dhabi.
Xe has earned over $1 billion doing security work for the US government in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prince put the company up for sale in June.
In the June 4 edition of The Wall Street Journal, it was reported that Xe’s most recent government contract tasked the group with protecting CIA bases in Afghanistan.
The report was confirmed at the end of June by Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta during a TV interview, the newspaper wrote.
Blackwater/Xe mercs were hated by the Iraqis during their time in that country because they were able to kill many civilians with impunity.
Source: PressTV
‘International law forbids attack on nuclear sites’
Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency says attacking or threatening to attack nuclear facilities is in violation of the UN charter.“According to Resolution 533 of the IAEA, attacking or threatening to attack operational or under-construction nuclear facilities is a blatant violation of the UN charter, IAEA statute and international regulations,” Ali Asghar Soltanieh said Wednesday.
“The remarks made by the former US envoy to the UN show Washington’s warmongering and aggressive attitude as well as its violation of international laws,” Soltanieh said in reference to John Bolton hinting that Israel has only one week to attack the Bushehr power plant.
“(If not stopped), Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the United States in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor,” Bolton said on Monday.
He said that once fuel rods are loaded into the reactor, “attacking it means a release of radiation,” suggesting that any attack should take place before the injection of fuel.
Soltanieh went on to add that some statements imply that until fuel rods are not transferred into the reactor’s building, nuclear facilities cannot claim international immunity.
“According to Resolution 533 of the agency… attacking or threatening to attack nuclear facilities without nuclear materials is also considered violation of international laws,” the Iranian official explained.
Iran’s first nuclear power plant in Bushehr built by Russia is expected to become operational on Aug. 21. A senior Iranian lawmaker says nuclear fuel will be loaded into the power plant on September 16, making the nuclear reactor fully operational.
“Nuclear fuel will be injected to the Bushehr nuclear power plant on September 16,” IRNA quoted Spokesman for Energy Commission of Iran’s Majlis (parliament) Emad Hosseini on Sunday.
Earlier on Saturday, the Director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi had said that the needed fuel would be transferred to the nuclear facility’s building next week.
He argued that Bushehr nuclear facility’s start-up will be a positive proof to the ineffectiveness of US-backed imposed sanctions on the country.
Western corporations began the construction of the Bushehr facility in the 1970s. However, following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Western companies reneged on their commitments and pulled out of the project due to political pressure from Washington.
Iran then turned to Russia to complete the project. In 1992, Tehran and Moscow signed a deal to complete the construction of the nuclear power plant.
The Bushehr plant was originally scheduled to be completed in 1999, but its start-up has been repeatedly delayed.
Source: PressTV
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10 Signs The U.S. is Becoming a Third World Country
Source: Activist Post
The United States by every measure is hanging on by a thread to its First World status. Saddled by debt, engaged in wars on multiple fronts with a rising police state at home, declining economic productivity, and wild currency fluctuations all threaten America’s future.
The general designations of the ranking system for world status date back to the 1950s, and have included countries at various stages of economic development. Since the Cold War, the definition has come to be synonymous with repressive countries where a wealthy class of ruling elites segment society into the haves and have-nots, many times capitalizing on the conditions that follow an economic crisis or war.
While much of the world is still mired in poverty, the reduced cost of innovative tools such as computing and connectivity ironically puts traditional Third World countries at the forefront of a new lean-and-mean economy that is based on ideas of empowerment for the disenfranchised. For better or worse, the world is leveling due to Globalism. However, America and other over-leveraged countries face this re-balancing of the globe at a time when they have dwindling resources. We can speculate about who and what is to blame for America’s fantastic fall, but for the purposes of this article we shall focus on the obvious signs that the United States is beginning to resemble a Third World country.
1. Rising unemployment and poverty: Unemployment numbers, food stamps, and home foreclosures continue to reach new record highs. The ugly reality of those numbers was recently on display when 30,000 people showed up to apply for public housing in East Point, GA for 455 available vouchers. Fights broke out, people were fainting from the heat while in line, and riot police showed up to handle the angry poor.
2. Economic dependence: The United States finished 2009 with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 85%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The current trend projects the United States to finish 2010 at 94% and 2011 at 98%. The 90% level has become the IMF’s make-or-break point for countries hoping to grow their way out of debt. If the government debt load climbs above 90% of GDP, economic growth slows so much that growth is no longer a viable solution for reducing that debt, and the IMF insists on austerity measures. Surpassing this debt threshold has also caused China’s lead credit rating agency to cut America’s credit rating.
3. Declining civil rights: Everyday freedoms are often a casualty of a society in collapse. As the anger of the populace mounts in response to declining economic conditions and political corruption, the government counters by increasing draconian measures that restrict the political rights and civil liberties of its citizens.
America is becoming a country like China, which has one of the lowest scores according to Freedom House. In America, private discussions and movements are monitored, free speech is corralled, the freedom to assemble for protest is by government decree, and independent thought that questions the political system is increasingly looked upon with suspicion. A final indicator is when the government insists upon secrecy for its own actions, while new laws and systems are created to put the individual under nearly constant surveillance.
4. Increasing political corruption: When political corruption becomes the accepted norm, as opposed to the exception, then there’s a good bet your country resembles the Third World. Congress and all major institutions face a growing crisis in confidence, where a record-low 11% of the population believe Congress is doing a good job. It now seems obvious to all observers that big corporations directly control the agenda in Washington — much like typically corrupt Third World countries.
5. Military patrolling the streets: The rise of a militarized police state is a hallmark of most Third World countries, particularly in times of rapid economic collapse. America’s declaration of the War on Terror has created a constant threat to National Security that has allowed for the military to be deployed on American soil. Building upon the War on Drugs, this has created a fusion between the military and local police, where military-grade weapons and tactics are being used against American citizens in a cascade of violent confrontations over non-violent offenses. Military checkpoints are moving farther inland, away from meaningful border control functions, and a full-blown military presence in American cities has been planned by the U.S. Army War College.
6. Failing infrastructure: As 46 of 50 states are on the verge of bankruptcy, cities are going dark, asphalt roads are returning to the stone age, and nationwide budget cuts are leaving students without teachers, supplies, or a full-time education. These are common features one will see as they travel through the poorest of Third World countries.
7. Disappearing middle class: During the last presidential debate season, they argued that a family income of $250K was solidly middle-class. Well, Census data shows less than 15% of families make over $100K, and only 1.5% of families make over $250K. The income gap between the rich and poor has increased at a staggering pace, while many more middle-class folks join the ranks of the poor every day. Cavernous income gaps may be what Third-World nations are best known for.
8. Devalued currency: The value of the Federal Reserve Note (U.S. dollar) has declined 96% since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913. The value of the dollar is based on its supply in circulation and, to a lesser extent, the demand for those dollars. For the last three years, the money supply has spiked literally off the charts. It can be argued that the dollar has become America’s top export as the world’s reserve currency, and if the volatile dollar is scrapped, which the U.N. and IMF now suggest, then demand will plummet, killing the currency.
9. Controlling the media: A government-influenced media that censors information is a key component of Third World countries. In some countries it is openly owned by the State. In America, privately-owned major media is not as balanced or as diverse as it seems; the concentration of ownership has led to censorship when national and corporate interests have sometimes overlapped. The persecution of high-profile investigative journalists such as WikiLeaks is set amid a backdrop of the proposed Internet censorship of bloggers who wish to remain anonymous. The end of net neutrality creates a pay-to-play system that can lead to further corporate and government control of information and opinion. Cybersecurity initiatives are the final nail in the coffin, as the entire free flow of information can be vetted in a China-style system of “identity management.” On the street, the police state and media control have converged in the recent rise of arrests for those who videotape the police. This is a huge blow to First Amendment rights and the role of photojournalists who wish to document public police behavior.
10. Capital Controls: Many nations have enforced capital controls as their economies collapse. It most recently happened in Argentina and Venezuela as they sought to keep the remaining wealth within their borders. The SEC already has adopted policies to allow money market funds to suspend withdrawals during a financial crisis, while the recent HIRE bill (HR 2487) puts restrictions on Americans moving capital to foreign countries. Some economists suggest that the national debt has gotten so high that the government must now force investment of private capital into U.S. Treasury debt.
Key economic indicators point to a situation potentially worse than the Great Depression. The land of opportunity for so many is devolving into a system of government corruption, corporate looting, and military rule that threatens to sink the American Dream. The capital flight from America has left a dwindling middle class holding an empty bag. This style of underinvestment in the foundation of society is similar to what already has led to the exodus from the rural Midwest. Now, there are ominous signs of a silent exodus of young, intelligent professionals seeking opportunities to realize their dreams outside of America; they are becoming known as Generation Xpat. Lastly, many skilled immigrants have returned to their home countries to seek a better quality of life, which might be the scariest indicator of all.
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Double Vendetta – The Insanity of the Iran Confrontation
WARS BASED ON LIES
The United States has waged war in Afghanistan for nearly 9 years based on a pack of lies that Osama Bin Laden, based in Afghanistan, carried out 9/11, while the U.S. government ignores the proof that the World Trade Center was pulverized using an extremely advanced nano-composite form of Super-Thermite.
The chips of super-thermite found in the dust of the World Trade Center are scientific proof that the government explanation of what happened on 9/11 is nothing but a pack of treasonous lies designed to get public opinion behind a pre-planned war to occupy mineral rich Afghanistan.
The pulverization of the concrete floors of the World Trade Center - and everything on them - was clearly not caused by a fire-induced collapse, as the government investigators claim. Nobody from Al Qaida or Afghanistan had anything to do with the explosive demolition of the Twin Towers.
On February 5, 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented a litany of lies and fabrications to the United Nations to try to gain legal cover for the pre-planned invasion and occupation of Iraq. As Dr. Hans Blix wrote later, "Powell’s presentation helped to build U.S. support for launching a war that should not have taken place--and that has had terrible consequences."
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The United States has waged war against Iraq since January 1991. The 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq is just the final phase of a twenty-year old war to occupy and control the oil-rich nation. The invasion of Iraq was based on blatant lies and fabrications foisted on the world by George W. Bush and Tony Blair, acting as the front men for the House of Rothschild and their Zionist criminal network.
MORE LIES, MORE WAR. WHO NEEDS IT?
Continuing the deception of the previous administration, President Barack Obama has adopted the false premise of the illegal war in Afghanistan and escalated the effort to conquer the Central Asian nation. Meanwhile, at the behest of his Zionist masters and based on a new pack of lies, Obama is beating the Zionist drums for war against Iran, a nation that has not aggressed any other nation in living memory. How can we stop the madness?
Anthony Lawson sent me a video he has put together about the Zionist and Anglo-American campaign against Iran. “How long can we allow the maniacs who are driving us to the brink of World War Three to stay in power?” Lawson asks, adding, “We’d better do something soon, or we will all be done for.”
The Lawson video of less than 10 minutes presents the essential and relevant history of the relationship between Iran and the United States, Britain, and Israel. It is recommended viewing:
Double Vendetta — The Insanity of the Iran Confrontation
President Barack Obama signs the Iran Sanctions Bill on July 1, 2010, imposing new tough sanctions against Iran. As lawmakers looked on, Obama called the new law the "toughest sanctions against Iran ever passed by the United States Congress."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhp3kJv1H9I
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Mottaki: US invasion will be pathetic
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
The Iranian foreign minister says attacking Iran would throw the US into a quagmire of greater magnitude than the situation it is struggling with in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“The Zionist regime (Israel) and the Americans know entering a battle with Iran would not be a limited conflict rather it would be an all-out one,” ILNA quoted Manouchehr Mottaki as saying on Friday.
Mottaki added that invading Iran would be very destructive for Israel, and it would cost the US much more than the “pathetic overall situation it is grappling with in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“That is the reason why Israeli leaders have promised their American counterparts in their recent summits not to attack Iran without consulting one another [first] …because they are well aware of the consequences [of such an attack],” Mottaki told reporters upon returning to Tehran from his Syria tour.
The Iranian minister said the US had used every opportunity over the past 30 years to conspire against Iran and pressure the country, adding that Washington’s recent unilateral sanctions against Tehran are “unfair, illegal” and in line with past US actions.
He said imposing pressure on Iran over its nuclear program was part of the policy by US’s Democratic administration to conceal one and a half years of failure in its domestic policy ahead of the November’s midterm elections.
Mottaki further criticized the European Union (EU) for behaving like White House. He described Europe as the real loser regarding its recent US-backed sanctions against Iran. “We will make the West regret such illegal acts,” he said.
In addition to a fourth round of the UN Security Council sanctions on Iran, approved on June 9, the US and the EU have imposed tougher measures on Tehran.
The new EU sanctions target the financial, transport, and banking sectors as well as investments in or the sales of equipment to Iranian oil and gas companies. The US sanctions include blacklisting one state bank and a group of companies, as well freezing any Iranian assets that may be under US jurisdiction.
Source: PressTV
UN wants Hezbollah intel. on Hariri case
The UN tribunal probing the murder of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri has called on Hezbollah to submit all information it has in a bid to assist the inquiry.
The request came after Hezbollah Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah presented new indications of Israeli involvement in the killing of Hariri in a massive car bomb explosion in 2005.
The evidence included footage from Israeli spy drones of routes used by Hariri and recorded confessions by Israeli spies substantiating that the assassination of Hariri was carried out on orders from Tel Aviv.
Nasrallah says the Lebanese Defense Ministry reports also show Israeli surveillance planes and warplanes flew over the area where Hariri was assassinated on the day of his murder.
“In line with its mandate, the Office of the Prosecutor has requested the Lebanese authorities to provide all the information in possession of (Hezbollah) Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah,” the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon said in a statement on Wednesday.
“This request includes the video material that was shown on television during the press conference, as well any other material that would be of assistance to the Office of the Prosecutor in unveiling the truth,” the statement added.
Chief prosecutor Daniel Bellemare has promised the court will assess the information thoroughly.
Source: PressTV
‘Israel could go rogue on Iran in 1 year.’
Israeli Air Force F-16 fighter jets
Israel could launch a military attack against Iran within a year in an attempt to stop Tehran’s nuclear program, even without a green light from the US, a report says.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the author of the article published in the September issue of the Atlantic magazine, writes that “a consensus emerged that there is a better than 50 per cent chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July.”
Goldberg says that his assessment is based on conversations with more than 40 past and present Israeli decision-makers, including “an extended discussion” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as with many US and Arab officials.
The report comes only a week after Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former CIA intelligence officers, warned that Israel will be destroyed if it attacks Iran.
In a memo to US President Barack Obama last week, VIPS warned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ready to go unilateral on Iran.
“Wider war could eventually result in destruction of the state of Israel,” the group said.
Israel, which is the only entity in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons, has repeatedly voiced its determination to halt Iran’s nuclear program, even through military means.
Source: PressTV
‘Israel responsible for flotilla killings’
Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
Turkey says Israel must take full responsibility for the killing of nine peace activists during an attack in May on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza.
“Nobody can lay on the responsibility of killing civilians in international waters onto somebody else,” AFP quoted Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as saying on Tuesday.
“We have a very clear situation. Israel has killed nine civilians in international waters. Before anything else, they should take responsibility for this… Turkey has absolutely no responsibility in the incident,” Davutoglu added.
On May 31, the Israeli military attacked the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla of international aid in the Mediterranean Sea, in international waters, killing nine activists onboard the Turkish-flagged M.V. Mavi Marmara and injuring about 50 other people who were part of the team on the six-ship convoy.
The Turkish foreign minister’s remarks came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the attack on Tuesday alleging that organizations sponsoring the Gaza Freedom Flotilla “were preparing for armed conflict to embarrass Israel.”
Netanyahu said Turkey had ignored repeated warnings and appeals “at the highest level” to stop the flotilla.
The United Nations named a panel in August to look into the deadly incident.
Israel threatened on Tuesday to pull out of a UN investigation as the international probe seeks to question Israeli soldiers.
The Turkish foreign minister expressed his confidence in the UN panel which will investigate the ship, and said that the panel will surely find those who are responsible for the deaths.
“We trust the work of the international commission and believe it will find those responsible in line with international law,” he said.
Source: PressTV
Hezbollah exposes Israeli hit men
Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah has presented evidence proving that Israel masterminded the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
At a press conference in Beirut on Monday night, the Lebanese resistance movement’s secretary general presented video materials captured by Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) as well as recorded confessions by Israeli fifth columnists substantiating that the February 14, 2005 assassination of Hariri in the capital was carried out on orders from Tel Aviv.
The Lebanese network Al-Manar aired the speech and incorporated the evidence, showing intercepted footage of Hariri’s house in the lead-up to the massive car bombing which killed him and claimed the lives of 22 other people.
The network showed videos, taken by the drones, monitoring the route that Hariri used to take every day.
The Lebanese Defense Ministry reports show Israeli warplanes and reconnaissance aircraft flew over the area where Hariri was assassinated on the day he was murdered, Nasrallah said.
Al-Manar also aired film footage showing Israeli espionage agents acknowledging their roles in the assassination.
One of the Israeli operatives, Ahmad Hussein Nasrallah, “gave false information to former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri through someone who worked with Hariri in the security area,” the Al-Manar narrator stated, and added, “He said that Hezbollah wanted to assassinate Rafik Hariri.”
Afterwards Al-Manar showed the agent admitting to the ruse.
Syria was accused of being behind the plot to assassinate Hariri, which undermined the tenuous ties between Damascus and Beirut and eventually led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.
The Hezbollah leader said Ahmed Nasrallah had sought to frighten the late Lebanese premier with the allegations as part of a larger plot to drive Syria out of Lebanon.
He went on to say that the assassination was meant to spark a sectarian and religious war in Lebanon, adding that if the United Nations tribunal investigating the case fails to consider the new evidence, it will show that the investigation has been politicized.
Nasrallah had said last month that he had been informed by the slain leader’s son and successor, Saad Hariri, that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon “will accuse some undisciplined [Hezbollah] members.”
He rejected the allegation and warned that the plot was part of “a dangerous project that is targeting the resistance.”
The United Nations tribunal is expected to announce its findings by the end of the year.
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Source: PressTV
Israel insists Flotilla attack lawful
Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu testifies before an Israeli inquiry panel examining the legality of Tel Aviv's attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, August 9, 2010.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Tel Aviv acted lawfully in attacking a Gaza-bound aid convoy, which killed nine Turkish civilians onboard the fleet.
In a testimony before an Israeli inquiry panel, Netanyahu expressed confidence that the investigation would end finding the Israeli army “acted in accordance with international law,” AFP reported.
He said Israel had made every diplomatic effort to have the ships turn back or dock elsewhere, charging Turkey with making no effort to prevent the six-ship fleet from breaking the Israeli blockade.
Netanyahu said that he had ordered troops to make “a supreme effort to be made to avoid harming anyone.”
He also reiterated Israel’s long-held claim that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, charging human rights groups of efforts to undermine the blockade through “false claims of a humanitarian crisis.”
The inquiry team, headed by retired judge Yaakov Tirkel, was to hear the rest of Netanyahu’s testimony behind closed doors after a late morning recess. (Former supreme court judge Yaakov Turkel, was appointed by Netanyahu in June.)
The five-member panel — including only two foreign observers with limited powers — was created in June under mounting global pressure for an international investigation into the deadly incident of May 31.
The committee was mandated to examine the international legality of Israel’s naval blockade on the Gaza Strip and of actions taken to enforce it, as well as the actions of the activists onboard the Turkish-flagged Gaza Freedom Flotilla on their blockade-busting journey.
Panel members are not authorized to probe the decision-making process which led up to the operation, nor do they have the authority to question troops involved in the fatal onslaught.
Following Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi are scheduled to testify before the Tirkel panel on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.
Netanyahu blamed the Turkish government for failing to “halt” the flotilla, which was organised by a Turkish group, IHH.
“Despite our diplomatic efforts, the Turkish government did nothing,” he said. “[It] did not consider the confrontation between Turkish activists and Israel to be against its interests.”
Netanyahu also maintained that Israel had the right to search for weapons on board the flotilla. He accused Hamas of “stockpiling weapons” in Gaza, and denied that Israel’s blockade of Gaza created a humanitarian crisis.
“Elements hostile to Israel used the bogus rationale of a humanitarian crisis in order to try to break the naval blockade,” he said.
Navi Pillay, the United Nations’ human rights chief, called the blockade “devastating” last year. A 2008 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross found that 70 per cent of Gaza’s population suffered from food insecurity; Gaza has less than one-fourth the hospital capacity of Israel; and four out of five Gazans depend on external aid to survive.
The Israeli government did not find any weapons intended for use by Hamas or other groups when it searched the ships after the raid.
Closed testimony to come
The panel recessed late Monday morning, with additional testimony expected behind closed doors in the afternoon.
Netanyahu refused to answer several questions in public. He would not name the officials who talked with the Turkish government prior to the raid, nor would he say if the Israeli government considered a non-military approach to stopping the flotilla.
Eight Turkish and one Turkish-American activist were killed in Israel’s May raid on the flotilla. The Israeli government insists that the raid was consistent with international law, and that the soldiers who boarded the ships only opened fire after they were attacked.
Activists on board claim they were fired on first.
This is why UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon finally named his own panel last week to look into the attack. The team includes representatives from Israel and Turkey and is set to begin work on Tuesday.
The UN Human Rights Council is also carrying out an inquiry while Turkey is looking to file a criminal case against Netanyahu, Barak and Ashkenazi, charging them with piracy and murder.
Source: PressTV AlJazeera.net
Hezbollah to unleash ‘thunder’ on Israel
A poster shows assassinated former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri.
Hezbollah says it is to prove through a “thunderous” revelation that Israel masterminded the former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination.
The Lebanese resistance movement’s Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah will provide “comprehensive” evidence, verifying that the 2005 murder benefited from Tel Aviv’s engineering, said the group’s media relations officer, Ibrahim Mousavi.
Speaking to the Palestinian Ma’an news agency on Saturday, he said that the evidence would be “revealing conclusive information.”
Nasrallah said on Tuesday, “I accuse the Israeli enemy of the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and… I will prove this by unveiling sensitive information at a press conference on Monday.”
He has also warned of attempts by the Israeli side and the United Nations tribunal, which is probing the assassination, to link Hezbollah to the foul play.
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, set up by the UN and the Lebanese government in May 2007, is to come up with the results of its investigation by the end of the year.
Source: PressTV
Iran casts doubt on US, Israel war plans
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki shakes hands with Lebanese counterpart Ali al-Shami following a meeting in Tehran, August 8, 2010.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki says it is highly unlikely that the US or Israel will act on a scenario to instigate war in the Middle East.
“Inciting altercations and conflicts as well as imposing wars is not without costs and sometimes the objective of a war is creating crisis while other times it is escaping an existing one,” Mehr News Agency quoted Mottaki as saying on Sunday.
When asked whether an imminent war against Iran or its regional allies, Lebanon and Syria, was in the offing, Mottaki said, “My answer to the potential possibility of war is yes, but whether this potential turns [into a] likely [scenario] is the responsibility of our region and it seems farfetched to me.”
“I believe there are still a few rational people [left] in the US and Western states who weigh national interests and public welfare before making decisions.”
Mottaki told al-Shami that the Iranian government and nation will fully support the Lebanese and Syrian nations and governments in the face of a possible Israeli aggression. The Iranian minister further added that the three countries are constantly exchanging views about Israel’s war threats and said Iran will offer any assistance to Lebanon and Syria.
Earlier in the week, a border clash erupted between Israel and Lebanon after Tel Aviv moved to uproot trees, which it claimed were blocking its border monitoring cameras.
Two Lebanese soldiers, one reporter, and a senior Israeli officer were killed in the brief incident.
On Sunday, the Israeli Navy opened fire on a Lebanese fishing boat.
Mottaki criticized the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) for failing to protect Lebanon’s sovereignty.
Source: PressTV