مصر اسلامية

'I've Killed Lots Of Arabs In My Life And There's No Problem With That' - Naftali Bennett

The Huffington Post, submitted this gem:

... 972 Magazine reports a member of Israel's cabinet has declared his backing for simply killing Palestinian prisoners, rather than bringing them to trial.

On Sunday, Israel announced it would release 104 Palestinian prisoners, a key caveat in the John Kerry-brokered plan to renew peace talks.

But according to the 972 report, Israel's minister of Industry, Trade and Labor and Jewish Home Party leader Naftali Bennett could not have disagreed more, proposing during Sunday's cabinet meeting a swifter, but illegal way to deal with prisoners.

"If you catch terrorists, you have to simply kill them," Bennett allegedly said, according to a report in the Hebrew-language print edition of Yedioth Ahronoth.

Israeli National Security Adviser Ya’akov Amidror allegedly responded by saying that such a practice was illegal. 

Bennett then reportedly declared, "I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there’s no problem with that.”

A former IDF officer, the right-wing Bennett briefly joined protesters against the decision to release prisoners before attending Sunday's cabinet meeting. According to The Jewish Press, prior to Sunday's vote, Bennett said, "Terrorists should be killed, not released."

Has The US Started An Internet War?

By Bruce Schneier

Today, the United States is conducting offensive cyberwar actions around the world.

More than passively eavesdropping, we're penetrating and damaging foreign networks for both espionage and to ready them for attack. We're creating custom-designed Internet weapons, pre-targeted and ready to be "fired" against some piece of another country's electronic infrastructure on a moment's notice.

This is much worse than what we're accusing China of doing to us. We're pursuing policies that are both expensive and destabilizing and aren't making the Internet any safer. We're reacting from fear, and causing other countries to counter-react from fear. We're ignoring resilience in favor of offense.

Welcome to the cyberwar arms race, an arms race that will define the Internet in the 21st century.

Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued last October and released by Edward Snowden, outlines U.S. cyberwar policy. Most of it isn't very interesting, but there are two paragraphs about "Offensive Cyber Effect Operations," or OCEO, that are intriguing:

"OECO can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging. The development and sustainment of OCEO capabilities, however, may require considerable time and effort if access and tools for a specific target do not already exist.

"The United States Government shall identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power, establish and maintain OCEO capabilities integrated as appropriate with other U.S. offensive capabilities, and execute those capabilities in a manner consistent with the provisions of this directive."

These two paragraphs, and another paragraph about OCEO, are the only parts of the document classified "top secret." And that's because what they're saying is very dangerous.

Cyberattacks have the potential to be both immediate and devastating. They can disrupt communications systems, disable national infrastructure, or, as in the case of Stuxnet, destroy nuclear reactors; but only if they've been created and targeted beforehand. Before launching cyberattacks against another country, we have to go through several steps.

We have to study the details of the computer systems they're running and determine the vulnerabilities of those systems. If we can't find exploitable vulnerabilities, we need to create them: leaving "back doors" in hacker speak. Then we have to build new cyberweapons designed specifically to attack those systems.

Sometimes we have to embed the hostile code in those networks, these are called "logic bombs," to be unleashed in the future. And we have to keep penetrating those foreign networks, because computer systems always change and we need to ensure that the cyberweapons are still effective.

Like our nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, our cyberweapons arsenal must be pretargeted and ready to launch.

That's what Obama directed the U.S. Cyber Command to do. We can see glimpses in how effective we are in Snowden's allegationsthat the NSA is currently penetrating foreign networks around the world: "We hack network backbones -- like huge Internet routers, basically -- that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one."

The NSA and the U.S. Cyber Command are basically the same thing. They're both at Fort Meade in Maryland, and they're both led by Gen. Keith Alexander. The same people who hack network backbones are also building weapons to destroy those backbones. At a March Senate briefing, Alexander boasted of creating more than a dozen offensive cyber units.

Longtime NSA watcher James Bamford reached the same conclusion in his recent profile of Alexander and the U.S. Cyber Command (written before the Snowden revelations). He discussed some of the many cyberweapons the U.S. purchases:

"According to Defense News' C4ISR Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek, Endgame also offers its intelligence clients -- agencies like Cyber Command, the NSA, the CIA, and British intelligence -- a unique map showing them exactly where their targets are located. Dubbed Bonesaw, the map displays the geolocation and digital address of basically every device connected to the Internet around the world, providing what's called network situational awareness. The client locates a region on the password-protected web-based map, then picks a country and city -- say, Beijing, China. Next the client types in the name of the target organization, such as the Ministry of Public Security's No. 3 Research Institute, which is responsible for computer security -- or simply enters its address, 6 Zhengyi Road. The map will then display what software is running on the computers inside the facility, what types of malware some may contain, and a menu of custom-designed exploits that can be used to secretly gain entry. It can also pinpoint those devices infected with malware, such as the Conficker worm, as well as networks turned into botnets and zombies -- the equivalent of a back door left open...

"The buying and using of such a subscription by nation-states could be seen as an act of war. 'If you are engaged in reconnaissance on an adversary's systems, you are laying the electronic battlefield and preparing to use it' wrote Mike Jacobs, a former NSA director for information assurance, in a McAfee report on cyberwarfare. 'In my opinion, these activities constitute acts of war, or at least a prelude to future acts of war.' The question is, who else is on the secretive company's client list? Because there is as of yet no oversight or regulation of the cyberweapons trade, companies in the cyber-industrial complex are free to sell to whomever they wish. "It should be illegal,' said the former senior intelligence official involved in cyberwarfare. 'I knew about Endgame when I was in intelligence. The intelligence community didn't like it, but they're the largest consumer of that business.'"

That's the key question: How much of what the United States is currently doing is an act of war by international definitions? Already we're accusing China of penetrating our systems in order to map "military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis." What PPD-20 and Snowden describe is much worse, and certainly China, and other countries, are doing the same.

All of this mapping of vulnerabilities and keeping them secret for offensive use makes the Internet less secure, and these pre-targeted, ready-to-unleash cyberweapons are destabalizing forces on international relationships. Rooting around other countries' networks, analyzing vulnerabilities, creating back doors, and leaving logic bombs could easily be construed as an act of war. And all it takes is one over-achieving national leader for this all to tumble into actual war.

It's time to stop the madness. Yes, our military needs to invest in cyberwar capabilities, but we also need international rules of cyberwar, more transparency from our own government on what we are and are not doing, international cooperation between governments and viable cyberweapons treaties. Yes, these are difficult. Yes, it's a long slow process. Yes, there won't be international consensus, certainly not in the beginning. But even with all of those problems, it's a better path to go down than the one we're on now.

We can start by taking most of the money we're investing in offensive cyberwar capabilities and spend them on national cyberspace resilience. MAD, mutually assured destruction, made sense because there were two superpowers opposing each other. On the Internet there are all sorts of different powers, from nation-states to much less organized groups. An arsenal of cyberweapons begs to be used, and, as we learned from Stuxnet, there's always collateral damage to innocents when they are. We're much safer with a strong defense than with a counterbalancing offense.

Leopards

Courtesy Of The BBC

Jonathan Scott narrates the extraordinary story of the leopard - the one big cat that still survives across half the world while tigers, cheetahs and lions are all struggling.

By following the lives of leopard mothers and their cubs in East Africa, the film investigates what it is about the natural history of these cats that makes them born survivors.

Perhaps the most extraordinary revelation is that leopards are living undercover on farms and even in cities across Africa and Asia.

The War On Syria Planned 2 Years Before “The Arab Spring”

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin

In an interview with the French TV station LCP, former French minister for Foreign Affairs Roland Dumas said:

‘’ I’m going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria.

This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate.

Naturally, I refused, I said I’m French, that doesn’t interest me.’’

Dumas went on give the audience a quick lesson on the real reason for the war that has now claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people.

‘’This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned… in the region it is important to know that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance.

Consequently, everything that moves in the region- and I have this from the former Israeli prime minister who told me ‘we’ll try to get on with our neighbours but those who don’t agree with us will be destroyed.

It’s a type of politics, a view of history, why not after all. But one should know about it.’’

Dumas is a retired French foreign minister who is obliged to use discretion when revealing secrets which could affect French foreign policy. That is why he made the statement ‘I am French, that doesn’t interest me’.  He could not reveal France’s role in the British plan as he would be exposing himself to prosecution for revealing state secrets.

There have been many disinformation agents in the British and French press, many of them well known ‘leftist’ war correspondents and commentators, who have tried to pretend that Israel secretly supports Assad.  Those who make such arguments are either stupid, ignorant or deliberate disinformation agents of NATO and Israel.

Israel’s support for Al Qaeda militants in Syria has even been admitted by the mainstream press. For example, Germany’s Die Welt newspaper published a report on June 12th on Israel’s medical treatment of the Al Qaeda fighters.

Israel planned this war of annihilation years ago in accordance with the Yinon Plan, which advocates balkanization of all states that pose a threat to Israel. The Zionist entity is using Britain and France to goad the reluctant Obama administration into sending more American troops to their death in Syria on behalf of Tel Aviv.

Of all the aggressor states against Syria, Israel has been the quietest from the start. That is because Laurent Fabius, Francois Holland, William Hague and David Cameron are doing their bidding by attempting to drag Israel’s American Leviathan into another ruinous war so that Israel can get control of the Middle East’s energy reserves, eventually replacing the United States as the ruling state in the world. It has also been necessary for Tel Aviv to remain silent so as not to expose their role in the ‘revolutions’, given the fact that the Jihadist fanatics don’t realize they are fighting for Israel.

This is the ideology of Zionism which cares no more for Jews than it does for its perceived enemies.   The Jewish colony is determined to become a ruling state in the Middle East in the insane delusion that this will enable it to replace the United States as a global hegemon, once the US collapses fighting Israel’s wars.

Israeli Prime Minister once told American talk show host Bill Maher that the reason why Israel always wins short conflicts, while the United States gets bogged down in endless wars. ‘’ The secret is that we have America’’, he said.

But Israel is itself slowly collapsing. If one excludes the enslaved Palestinian population, the Jewish state still has the highest level of poverty in the developed world with more and more Jews choosing to leave the ‘promised’ land, a garrison state led by mad men, an anti-Semitic entity threatening to engulf the world in war and destruction. Israel cares no more about its own working class Jews than any other ethnic community.

In fact, if the Likudnik crooks running the Israeli colony get their way, working class Israelis will be among the first to pay as they are conscripted to fight terrorists created by their own government. With orthodox Jews protesting in the streets of New York against Israel and Haredi Jewish minority opposing Israel’s rampant militarism, Zionism is coming under increased attack from Jewish religious authorities and non-Zionist Jews both inside and outside of the occupied territories.

This is not the first time that Roland Dumas has spoken out against wars of aggression waged by successive French regimes. In 2011 he revealed that he had been asked by the United States when he was foreign minister in the Mitterrand administration to organize the bombing of Libya. On that occasion the French refused to cooperate.  Dumas, a lawyer by profession, offered to defend Colonel Gaddafi, at the International Criminal Court in the event of his arrest by Nato.

Dumas was also vocal in condemning France’s brutal neo-colonial bombing of the Ivory Coast earlier in 2011, were death squads and terrorists similar to those later deployed in Libya and Syria were unleashed upon the Ivoirian population in order to install a IMF puppet dictator Alassane Quattara in power. Gbagbo was described as one of the greatest African leaders of the past 20 years by Jean Ziegler, sociologist and former member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council.

Gbagbo had plans to nationalize banks and wrest control of the country’s currency from the colonial finance institutions in Paris. He also wanted to roll back many of the worst effects of IMF restructuring by nationalizing industries and creating a functioning, universal free health service. All of this threatened the interests of French corporations in the former French colony. So, the Parisian oligarchy went to work to find a suitable replacement as caretaker of their Ivoirian colony.

They sent in armed terrorist gangs, or ‘rebel’s in the doublespeak of imperialism, who murdered all before them while the French media blamed president Gbagbo for the violence that ensued. Gbagbo and Gaddafi had opposed Africom, the Pentagon’s plan to recolonize Africa. That was another reason for the  2011 bombing of their two African countries.

The formula is always the same. Imperialism backs ‘rebels’, whenever its interests are threatened by regimes that love their country more than foreign corporations.  One should not forgot that during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, General Franco and his cronies were also ‘rebels’ and they, like their counterparts in Libya in 2011, were bombed to power by foreign powers, replacing a progressive, republican administration with fascism.

There are pro-Israeli fanatics in France who have used the analogy of the Spanish Civil War as justification for intervention in Libya and Syria. The pseudo-philosopher Henry Bernard Levy is one of them.  Of course, the ignoramus Levy doesn’t realize that the reason France, England and the USA did not officially intervene in the Spanish Civil War is because they were covertly helping the ‘rebels’ from the start. They enabled arms shipments to the Francoist ‘rebels’ while preventing arms deliveries to the Spanish government, who, like Syria today, were helped by Moscow. Anyone who has studied the Spanish Civil War knows that all the imperialist countries wanted Franco as a bulwark against communism.

There is nothing imperialism loves more than a rebel without a cause. What imperialism hates, however, are revolutionaries. That is why the ‘rebels’ which imperialism sends into other countries to colonize them on behalf of foreign banks and corporations, have to be marketed as ‘revolutionaries’ in order to assure the support of the Monty Python brigade of petty-bourgeois, ‘ leftist’ dupes such as Democracy Now! and their ilk.

Dumas is not the only top French official to denounce the New World Order.  Former French ambassador to Syria Michel Raimbaud wrote a book in 2012  entitled ‘Le Soudan dans tous les états’, where he revealed how Israel planned and instigated a civil war in South Sudan in order to balkanize a country led by a pro-Palestinian government. He also exposed the pro-Israeli media groups and ‘human rights’ NGOS who created the ‘humanitarian’ narrative calling for military intervention by the United States in the conflict.

The subject was covered extensively by African investigative journalist Charles Onana in his 2009 book, Al-Bashir & Darfour LA CONTRE ENQUÊTE.

There are many more retired French officials who are speaking out about the ruinous policies of this French government, including the former head of French domestic intelligence Yves Bonnet. There have also been reports of dissent in the French armed forces and intelligence apparatus.

After the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi in October 2011, the former French ambassador to Libya Christian Graeff told French radio station France Culture that it was responsible for the diffusion of lies and war propaganda on behalf of Nato throughout the war.  Graeff also warned the broadcasters that such disinformation could only work on the minds of serfs but not in a country of free minds.

The power of the Israeli lobby in France is a subject rarely discussed in polite circles. In France there is a law against questioning or denial of the holocaust. However, denial of the Korean holocaust, Guatemalan holocaust, Palestinian holocaust, Indonesian holocaust and the dozens of other US/Israeli supported genocides is not only perfectly legal but is the respectable norm.

The same lobby which introduced the Loi Gayssot in 1990, effectively ending freedom of expression in France, would also like to ban any independent investigations of genocides whose narratives they have written, such as the Rwanda genocide, where Israel played a key role in supporting the ‘rebels’ led by Paul Kagame, who invaded Rwanda from Uganda from 1991 to 1994, leading to the genocide of both Tutus and Tutsis. Many serious scholars have written about the Rwandan genocide, which the Israel lobby repeatedly uses as a case study to justify ‘humanitarian’ intervention by Western powers.  The Zionist thought police would like to see such authors prosecuted for ‘negating’ imperialism’s disgusting lies on African conflicts.

Now, the Israeli Lobby is forcing the (their) French government to prosecute twitter messages which the lobby deems ‘anti-Semitic’. This is one further step towards the creation of a totalitarian state where any criticism of imperialism, foreign wars, racism, oppression, perhaps eventually capitalism itself could fall under the rubric of ‘anti-Semitism’.

These people are sick, and those who cow down to them are sicker. Perhaps the etymology of sickness, a word cognate with the German Sicherheit (security) according to dictionary.com, is not a coincidence. For what is particularly sick about our society is the cult of security,  endless surveillance, ubiquitous cameras, the cult of the all seeing eye, the prurient gaze as part of the incessant discourse on terrorism by those who specialize in the training of the very terrorists they claim to be protecting us from.  Whether or not the words security and sickness are linguistically related, they are certainly cognate in a philosophical sense.

Roland Dumas and others like him should be highly commended for having to guts to say what so many others are too morally corrupt, too weak and cowardly to admit.

As the French government and its media agencies drum up hysteria for war on Syria, Roland Dumas, now in the twilight of his years, is warning people of the consequences of not understanding where Israel is leading  the world. Will enough people heed the warning?

"They Were Shooting To Kill"

WARNING: The video is EXTREMELY graphic. Viewer discretion is highly  advised.

Cairo Massacre: Field Hospital At Rabaa Al Adawiyya Square

"We received maybe four or five hundred through this hospital in maybe three hours. In this place more than 50 have died. They were murdered. From five o'clock in the morning until eight thirty we were overwhelmed. We have many doctors here, but when many casualties came at one time we couldn't manage. We had to do just the best we could: administer first aid and then refer them to the hospitals.

"This is the worst I have seen. The people here are innocent; they carry no weapons. The interior ministry are liars. We could not stop receiving casualties last night. Injuries came in the neck, in the head, in the chest and from the back."  They were shooting to kill". [Dr. Asharaf el-Din]

"At six o'clock, we ran out of medical supplies. We had to block the entrance to the hospital and call for help at the central stage.

When I arrived, the attack was very bad. I had never seen patients injured like this", he explained. "In the main field hospital we have only ten beds."

I cried as I worked. Mostly the casualties were young men between the ages of 20 and 30. One body was brought in with a bag. We opened it and inside we found a burial shroud. He had brought it with him."
[Dr. Salahuddin Osman, general and plastic surgeon from Mahala]

"I couldn't believe our army and our police would come at us like this. I returned at 8am which is when I saw the killings - just horrible things. I can't imagine why this happened."
[Mahmoud Ahmed, a medical student from Al Azhar University]

"I could not sleep because I thought as I tried to sleep what kind of creature would do what has happened? How can an Egyptian, a Muslim, do this to their own people? I will not sleep tonight either. I have to help my friends with whatever I can."
[Ibrahim Gemeah, teaching assistant from Al Azhar University]
.
"If this was animals being killed, people would care. But because it's us, they don't."
[Lawyer Islam Taher, alluding to the indifference of mainstream Egyptian opinion to the death of Morsi supporters]

"We asked them to record his death as a murder by police. But they forced us to accuse anonymous sources." [Ashraf Mamdouh, loading the body of his brother-in-law, Hegazy Zakaria, into a van that would take him to his funeral in a village outside Cairo]


"We didn't have enough places in the fridges to fit all the bodies. We had to do autopsies on the floor. At some points we had to ask families to help us with the process. It was chaos." [Dr Hazem Hossam]

The Audacity Of A Muslim Writing About Jesus

Adam Peck, of Think Progress, filed the following piece:

... host Lauren Green launched into an Islamophobic attack on Aslan’s credentials and expressed incredulity that he, a self-professed Muslim, would be able to write about Christianity in a fair and honest way.

Throughout the nearly 10 minute interview, Green inaccurately sought to portray Aslan as a religiously-motivated agitator with a hidden agenda out to discredit the very religion that he himself once practiced:

GREEN: This is an interesting book. Now I want to clarify,you’re a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?

ASLAN: Well to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees — including one in the New Testament, and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades — who also just happens to be a Muslim. So it’s not that I’m just some Muslim writing about Jesus, I am an expert with a Ph.D in the history of religions…

GREEN: But it still begs the question why would you be interested in the founder of Christianity?

ASLAN: Because it’s my job as an academic. I am a professor of religion, including the New Testament. That’s what I do for a living, actually.

Undeterred, Green continued by reading aloud from an equally Islamophobic FoxNews.com column by John Dickerson in which he dismissed Aslan’s academic pedigree, referring to him simply as “an educated Muslim” with an “opinion” about Jesus.

Green would pivot back to Aslan’s religion at least seven more times during the interview, simply refusing to accept that a Muslim could also be an impartial scholar of Western religion.

As Aslan pointed out towards the end of his interview, many scholarly works have been written about Islam by Christian academics. Those authors, he noted, are rarely if ever asked to defend their credentials or explain why they chose to cover a religion apart from their own, certainly not on Fox News, which regularly provides a platform to hate-mongers like Pamela Geller andFrank Gaffney and passes them off as experts on Islam.

Dan Murphy, of the Christian Science Monitor had this to say:

American public discourse about Islam is filled with essentialist paranoia, fear, and the commentary of people who not only don't know much about the topic but are often dismissive of people who do.

Fox has been filled with Christian and Jewish commentators explaining Islam to their audience over the years. Daniel Pipes has been one of them. As has Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity and who describes Islam as fundamentally violent and has written books attacking the faith. As have Pamela Gellerand Robert Spencer, who both describe Islam as inherently violent. In the past, it's even had conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck give long expositions of the essence of Islamic law as he sees it.

None of those people are Muslims, yet as far as I'm aware their comments have never been questioned on the network as suspect since they came from non-Muslims. 

Green, a Christian, doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong about expressing her own opinions about Islam.

She wrote in 2011: "My area is religion, not politics. So my queries about Islamic terrorism tend to break the question down theologically and ask the question:"

is there something in Islam itself that makes believers more susceptible to radicalization?... I believe essentially there are three things that may make Islam more prone to radicalization. One is the Koran itself. The fact that it's not a narrative makes it easier to pick and choose verses to fit your interpretation. Two, the Prophet Mohammed's own words and deeds. In Islam's early days, Mohammed spread the faith with the sword. Three, Islam was introduced into a world rife with tribalism; a shame and honor culture which revered and respected power. Much of what's going in Libya and what went on under Saddam Hussein, are extensions of that tribalism.

Green has a right to her opinions, of course. But they are ill-informed.

On her first point, while it's true that elements of the Quran have been emphasized at the expense of others by various Muslim schools and sects, that's also happened with Christianity. Elements of the Bible about slavery, the role of women, giving of alms, sexuality, and even snake handling and the speaking in tongues have been seized upon by various Christians down the centuries.

To say that Islam was spread by the sword is a gross oversimplification. While Mohamed and his followers conquered Mecca by force in 630, the earliest years of the faith were focused on peaceful proselytization. While Islamist conquests spread Islam throughout the Arab world after his death, Islam spread largely through trade and cultural contacts in strongholds of the faith like India, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

Her third point is particularly incoherent. While it's true that Islam, founded in the 7th century AD, "was introduced into a world rife with tribalism" the same is true for the advent of Christianity six hundred years earlier.

I'm interested in this topic because as someone who lived in Muslim majority countries from 1993 to 2008, I find the level of hostility to Islam back here in the US to be deeply frustrating. I have known Muslims with a wide range of political views. I have met some who I'd describe as terrorists, others whose political views, informed by their faith, I find profoundly regressive and disrespectful of fundamental individual rights – and many more who were thoughtful, open-minded and respectful of other creeds.

Yet frequently the US mass media places Muslims all in one box and it's not only inaccurate, but also harmful to a real understanding of the world and its problems.

Green presses on, quoting a Fox op-ed by Christian pastor John S. Dickerson, who wrote: "Media reports have introduced Aslan as a 'religion scholar' but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim."

Really? On July 16, the excellent WNYC host Brian Lehrer had Aslan on and mentioned his faith before asking the first question: "Just some background on you first. You come from Iran originally, you've been through Christianity and Sufi Islam among your personal beliefs. Are you a practicing anything today?" Aslan responded: "Yeah, I'm definitely a Muslim and Sufism is the tradition within Islam that I most closely adhere to."

I'm sure other interviews and reviews have failed to mention his faith. But, well, so what? This is a classic case of attacking the man, and not the argument.

Green appears confused – or perhaps angry about – the separation of scholarship and belief (she herself is a devout Christian who was brought up in the African Methodist Episcopal Church).

"You're promoting yourself as a scholar and I've interviewed scholars who have written books on the resurrection, on the real Jesus ... who are looking at the same information that you're saying is somehow different from theirs is really not being honest here," she charges.

Aslan answers back: "I think it's unfair to just simply assume because of my particular faith background that there is some agenda on this book – that would be like saying a Christian who writes about Muhammad is by definition not able to do so because he has some bias against it."

Green responds: "I believe you've been on several programs and have never disclosed that you're a Muslim and I think that there's an interest in full disclosure." 

To that he said: "Ma'am, the second page of my book, the second page of my books says I'm a Muslim ... it's simply incorrect that media isn't saying I'm a Muslim."

The Practice Of Pre-Emption

By Paul Balles

We’re now living and dying in an age of pre-emptive actions.

The practice of pre-emption has an early history in America. According to the Concise Encyclopaedia U.S. policy allowed the first settlers, or squatters, on public land to buy the land they had improved.

Since improved land, coveted by speculators, was often priced too high for squatters to buy at auction, temporary pre-emptive laws allowed them to acquire it without bidding.

The Pre-Emption Act (1841) gave squatters the right to buy 160 acres at $1.25 per acre before the land was auctioned.

The Homestead Act (1862) made pre-emption an accepted part of U.S. land policy. By 1900, 600,000 homesteaders had claimed 80 million acres.

Fast forward to Israel. The connection should be clear:

American homesteaders took land that should have remained in the hands of the indigenous tribes of American Indians.

Is there any stronger excuse for Israeli settlers to misappropriate land that rightfully belongs to the Palestinians?

Who in America can deservedly fault Israeli settlements for committing the same type of seizures of property that Americans stole from the Indians?

Israelis are guilty of the same crime that should haunt Americans in their own settlement history.

The idea and practice of pre-emption have become a social disease including pre-emptive defence, pre-emptive assassinations, pre-emptive security, pre-emptive judgments, pre-emptive laws and pre-emptive wars.

Pre-emptive killing is a daily event in occupied Palestine. The Israeli occupation forces have murdered 1,518 Palestinian children from the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000 to April 2013. That’s the equivalent of one Palestinian child killed by Israel every 3 days for almost 13 years.

If settling Indian Territory in America wasn’t enough for western cowboys, it hasn’t satisfied the mock settlers in Israel. Both have adopted pre-emptive actions on multiple fronts.

Just as America has established 700-1000 military bases around the world to pre-empt any strategic advantage from nuclear countries like Russia or China, Israel has established its own pre-emptive defences.

Apart from its unwarranted attacks on Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, Israel has threatened Iran as a pre-emptive measure against Iran’s potential development of nuclear arms.

Israel used its lobbyists and governmental followers in America to support its paranoid fears of an imagined Iraq developing WMDs that might be directed toward Israel.

To fulfil that pre-emptive Israeli wish, America slaughtered 1,455,590 Iraqis, 4883 Americans and 3323 International Occupation troops at a total cost of $1,443,877,869,222, according to Information Clearing House.

Scholars have argued that “the concept of pre-emptive war can be used to start a war by claiming that the nation would soon be under attack and therefore had to defend itself. The concept is controversial because it can be used and abused as a justification to start a war on questionable grounds.”

Justification attempts supported America’s war on Iraq, though America was defending Israel. The same argument is regularly used by Israel to defend its attacks on Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

In America and Israel, the idea of pre-emption has been used frequently to justify attacks on others.

The same arguments have been used to justify sanctions against Iran. Both American and Israeli governments continue to justify current actions and future potential for engaging in a war against Iran.

Lois Becker points out that even the NRA has been pushing for “pre-emption” laws to block cities from enacting their own gun policies, effectively requiring cities with higher rates of gun violence to have the same gun regulations as smaller towns.

Pre-emption is a disease that is part paranoia and part the war-mongering insensibilities of both Israel and America.

Israeli Death Merchants And Palestinian Guinea Pigs

By Gilad Atzmon

“The Lab” is a new groundbreaking Israeli documentary film that redefines our entire understanding of the Jewish state, its aims, its identity and its global destructive role. It is a fundamental and most important commentary on Israel.

In “The Lab”, Director Yotam Feldman exposes the Israeli military industry and its operation, and interviews key figures in Israel’s “security’ trade. He elaborates on the role of the industry within the Israeli society and economy – in the last few years Israeli “security” exports reached an unprecedented 7 billion US dollars a year. A full 20 per cent of Israeli exports are military or military related. Approximately 150,000 families in Israel are dependent on that industry. Israel is now the fourth biggest military exporter.

Here is a clip from “The Lab”:



In the last decade every Israeli military operation led to an immediate and sharp increase in Israeli military export around the world: weaponry, systems, intelligence, strategies, doctrines, knowledge and experience.

Feldman gives us a glimpse into a very organized universe. We visit Israeli weapon fairs around the world and see arenas filled to capacity with foreign generals, officials and diplomats shopping for Israeli military products. The message is clear: the 7 billion dollars is just part of the story. The Israeli military elite is now deeply interwoven with the political and military elite of every country around the globe. This emerging Israeli business buys the Jewish state influence and support.

Watch foreign generals shopping for Israeli military products:



“The Lab” makes it evidently clear that the Palestinian civilian population in the West Bank and Gaza are viewed as guinea pigs for Israeli tactics, weaponry and fighting philosophy (“Fighting Torah” – Torat Lechima – as the Israelis call it). The destruction of the Palestinians has now been transformed into a very profitable industry. We are dealing here with nothing short of highly calculated murder.

Through a set of fascinating interviews, Feldman conveys a very genuine picture of the Israeli death merchants. Feldman lets them talk, he hardly interferes. They are sharp, they are genuine, they are even funny at times, occasionally witty, and a few of them, might even be charming if you did not know who they are. But make no mistake: they are sinister, and some of them are clearly psychotic. They are mass murderers and they are free. They sell destruction and havoc and do it very successfully.

Watch the Israeli army’s Yoav Galant, the planner and executioner of Operation Cast Lead, coldly discussing “ratios”:



As an Israeli-born and raised musician and writer, I think I can recognize Israeli dedication, perseverance and creativity when I see it, no matter in what field it is deployed. (Perhaps I was lucky to be rescued by bebop.) The talent of those Israeli death angels is used to amplify human misery. The consequences are tragic.

Game Changer

It is hadrly a secret that a century of Palestinian struggle has led to practically nothing. The state of the Palestinian solidarity movement is even more embarrassing. Feldman’s film, “The Lab”, is a game changer, for it can explain decades of impotence.

We are immersed in flawed terminology – “colonialism”, “apartheid”, “conflict resolution”, “Zionism” are just a few examples. Gaza is now a vast laboratory – the Israelis are the “scientists” and the “technicians”, the Palestinians are the “guinea pigs”.

Watching “The Lab” must lead all of us to fundamentally question our notions. We are dealing with a premeditated war crime. The notion of resolution (as in “two-state solution”), for instance, is not applicable. It is clear beyond doubt that in the real world the “scientist” does not negotiate with the “guinea pig”. The “scientist” also doesn’t consider sharing reality with his “guinea pig” in a “one democratic state”. Yotam Feldman’s “The Lab” is a glimpse into the Israeli mind: you clearly do not find much compassion there.

For decades we were foolish to examine the success and failure of Israeli military operations with reference to Israeli military and political “objectives” as we surmised them. We were clearly wrong.

As we learn from Feldman’s film, the real objective of Israeli operations may as well be examining new doctrines and operational systems in order to distribute them around the world soon after. Ehud Barak, for instance, wasn’t exactly the most sophisticated Israeli minister of defence – he clearly failed to defend his people or even make them feel secure. However, he was very successful in selling Israeli weapons and doctrines.

The prospect of Tel Aviv being subjected to a barrage of rockets may be seen by Israelis as devastating news but, from a military-industrial point of view, it was a golden opportunity to examine and promote the Israeli anti-missile system, the Iron Dome. If I am correct here, it becomes clear that, as with the Palestinians, more and more Israelis are also becoming “guinea pigs” in this ever growing military laboratory.

One may wonder how and when “the Zionist dream” transformed itself into a military business. Only a few of us, writers and scholars, have attempted to answer this question. The transformation of the Jewish state into an oppression factory seems to be a direct outcome of Israel’s supremacist ideology. If we want to understand what is happening in the Jewish state, we must first grasp the notions of choseness, Jewishness and Jewish identity politics.

I guess that enough Palestinians in Gaza do realize by now that they have been part of an Israeli experiment. Too often we learn from Palestinian doctors that while treating casualties of Israeli aggression they encounter new types of wounds. “The Lab” explains it but it isn’t Palestine alone. We also witness a growing similarity between the operational mode of police forces around the world and the Israeli military’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Watching Yotam Feldman’s “The Lab” explains it all. We are all Palestinians. We are either occupied by Israel or by its proxy forces around the world – those who are trained in Israel and implement Israeli weaponry and tactics.

Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born musician, writer and anti-racism campaigner..His New Book: The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics http://www.gilad.co.uk

لدينا العزيز الجبا

All 138 pictures of the heartbreaking massacre @ رابعه العدويه, Cairo, Egypt. That took place on July 26, 2013, which resulted in 200 people being murdered and 4,500 injured, from the anti-military coup camp.

Syrian Air Force Bombing Civilians

Courtesy Of Human Rights Watch

(Aleppo, April 11, 2013) -- The Syrian Air Force has repeatedly carried out indiscriminate, and in some cases deliberate, air strikes against civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. These attacks are serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war), and people who commit such violations with criminal intent are responsible for war crimes.

The 75-page report, "Death from the Skies: Deliberate and Indiscriminate Air Strikes on Civilians," is based on visits to 50 sites of government air strikes in opposition-controlled areas in Aleppo, Idlib, and Latakia governorates, and more than 140 interviews with witnesses and victims. The air strikes Human Rights Watch documented killed at least 152 civilians. According to a network of local Syrian activists, air strikes have killed more than 4,300 civilians across Syria since July 2012.

Is The US A Force For Good In The World?

Mehdi Hasan Goes Head To Head With Thomas Friedman On The Morality Of America's Global Role

Courtesy Of Al-Jazeera

Critics say American self-interest has trumped democracy and human rights time and again, and that Obama’s America is no different. So is the US foreign policy counter-productive? Or is America a force for good in the world?

A Military Coup Aborts Egypt's Fledgling Democracy

قائد قوة تأمين منزل الرئيس يكشف مخطط الانقلاب



قال العميد طارق الجوهري - قائد بقوة تأمين الرئيس - أن الرئيس محمد مرسي تعرض لمؤامرات كبيره في الفترة الماضية وأن بعض الضباط تأمروا عليه يوم حصار الاتحادية الشهير وأنهم ارتكبوا جرائم تحت بيت الرئيس وفيها تآمر واضح عليه.

وأضاف الجوهري في لقاء على قناة مصر 25 أن إحدى تلك المؤامرات حدثت في شهر نوفمبر الماضي يوم الثلاثاء الدامي عندما تم حصار قصر الاتحادية وبيت الرئيس وقرر بعض الضباط وهم يسبون الرئيس أمامه الانسحاب وترك البلطجية يقتحمون البيت وكان اللواء المسئول عنهم صامت وتركهم ينفذون مخططهم.

وقال الجوهري:"أحد الضباط قال لي وصدمني أن مرسي نصف ساعة وسيكون في السجن وكانوا يحرضون المتظاهرين على الاقتحام وأن يحشدوا أعداد كبيرة لقتل أو اعتقال الرئيس وأن مفتش المباحث كان يؤيد أفعالهم وتركهم يتآمروا على الرئيس وشعرت أن هناك مؤامرة كاملة على الرئيس مرسي من جهات متعددة".

يذكر أن العميد طارق الجوهري تمت أحالته للمعاش بعد إدلاءه بهذه التصريحات لمراسل قناة مصر 25 دون أبداء أسباب الإحالة.

تعليق اللواء طاهر عزالدين ضابط سابق في القوات المسلحة المصرية على الانقلاب العسكري



ويفضح الله المجرمين مداخلة تلفزيونية قلبت الدنيا في مصر




ضابط قوات خاصه يطلق النار على معتصمي رابعه ثم يرسم ثالوث النصارى على صدره







فيديو مسرب لازم يوصل لكل اسلامي وللمستشار الغرياني خاصة ميعرفوش انه بث مباشر



The first speaker claims that Egypt is "secular" by nature and not "religious" by nature.

He also demands that anyone practicing Islam or affiliated with a religious party, must be excluded from political participation.

Main Core - Big Brother

A List Of Millions Of Americans That Will Be Subject To Detention During Martial Law

By Michael Snyder

Are you on the list?  Are you one of the millions of Americans that have been designated a threat to national security by the U.S. government?  Will you be subject to detention when martial law is imposed during a major national emergency?  As you will see below, there is actually a list that contains the names of at least 8 million Americans known as Main Core that the U.S. intelligence community has been compiling since the 1980s.  A recent article on Washington’s Blog quoted a couple of old magazine articles that mentioned this program, and I was intrigued because I didn’t know what it was.  So I decided to look into Main Core, and what I found out was absolutely stunning – especially in light of what Edward Snowden has just revealed to the world.  It turns out that the U.S. government is not just gathering information on all of us.  The truth is that the U.S. government has used this information to create a list of threats to national security that the government would potentially watch, question or even detain during a national crisis.  If you have ever been publicly critical of the government, there is a very good chance that you are on that list.

The following is how Wikipedia describes Main Core…

Main Core is the code name of a database maintained since the 1980s by the federal government of the United States. Main Core contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security. The data, which comes from the NSA, FBI, CIA, and other sources, is collected and stored without warrants or court orders. The database’s name derives from the fact that it contains “copies of the ‘main core’ or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.”

It was Christopher Ketchum of Radar Magazine that first reported on the existence of Main Core.  At the time, the shocking information that he revealed did not get that much attention.  That is quite a shame, because it should have sent shockwaves across the nation…

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might constitute a “national emergency.” Executive orders issued over the last three decades define it as a “natural disaster, military attack, [or] technological or other emergency,” while Department of Defense documents include eventualities like “riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, [and] disorder prejudicial to public law and order.” According to one news report, even “national opposition to U.S. military invasion abroad” could be a trigger.

So if that list contained 8 million names all the way back in 2008, how big might it be today?

That is a very frightening thing to think about.

Later on in 2008, Tim Shorrock of Salon.com also reported on Main Core…

Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as “Main Core,” the database reportedly collects and stores — without warrants or court orders — the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security. According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as “an emergency internal security database system” designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law.

So why didn’t this information get more attention at the time?

Well, if Obama had lost the 2008 election it might have.  But Obama won in 2008 and the liberal media assumed that he would end many of the abuses that were happening under Bush.  Of course that has not happened at all.  In fact, Obama has steadily moved the police state agenda ahead aggressively.  Edward Snowden has just made that abundantly clear to the entire world.

After 2008, it is unclear exactly what happened to Main Core.  Did it expand, change names, merge with other programs or get superseded by a new program?  It appears extremely unlikely that it simply faded away.  In light of what we have just learned about NSA snooping, someone should ask our politicians some very hard questions about Main Core.  According to Christopher Ketchum, the exact kind of NSA snooping that Edward Snowden has just described was being used to feed data into the Main Core database…

A host of publicly disclosed programs, sources say, now supply data to Main Core. Most notable are the NSA domestic surveillance programs, initiated in the wake of 9/11, typically referred to in press reports as “warrantless wiretapping.” In March, a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal shed further light onto the extraordinarily invasive scope of the NSA efforts:

According to the Journal, the government can now electronically monitor “huge volumes of records of domestic e-mails and Internet searches, as well as bank transfers, credit card transactions, travel, and telephone records.” Authorities employ “sophisticated software programs” to sift through the data, searching for “suspicious patterns.” In effect, the program is a mass catalog of the private lives of Americans. And it’s notable that the article hints at the possibility of programs like Main Core. “The [NSA] effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called black programs whose existence is undisclosed,” the Journal reported, quoting unnamed officials. “Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach.”

The following information seems to be fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards. All of this information is archived on government supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main Core database.

This stuff is absolutely chilling.

And there have been hints that such a list still exists today.

For example, the testimony of an anonymous government insider that was recently posted on shtfplan.com alluded to such a list…

“We know all this already,” I stated. He looked at me, giving me a look like I’ve never seen, and actually pushed his finger into my chest. “You don’t know jack,” he said, “this is bigger than you can imagine, bigger than anyone can imagine. This administration is collecting names of sources, whistle blowers and their families, names of media sources and everybody they talk to and have talked to, and they already have a huge list. If you’re not working for MSNBC or CNN, you’re probably on that list. If you are a website owner with a brisk readership and a conservative bent, you’re on that list. It’s a political dissident list, not an enemy threat list,” he stated.

What in the world is happening to America?

What in the world are we turning into?

As I mentioned in a previous article, the NSA gathers 2.1 million gigabytes of data on all of us every single hour.  The NSA is currently constructing a 2 billion dollar data center out in Utah to store all of this data.

If you are disturbed by all of this, now is the time to stand up and say something.  If this crisis blows over and people forget about all of this stuff again, the Big Brother surveillance grid that is being constructed all around us will just continue to grow and continue to become even more oppressive.

America is dying right in front of your eyes and time is running out.  Please stand up and be counted while you still can.