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Thu, 21 Oct 2021
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Vader

US: Psychopath Newt Gingrich Defends Calling Palestinians 'Invented' People, Supports Peace Agreement with Israel

Newt Gingrich
© The Associated Press/Charlie Neibergall
Republican presidential hopeful former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during the Iowa Veterans Presidential Candidate Forum, Saturday Dec.10,2011.in Des Moines, Iowa. At left partially visible is Gingrich's wife, Callista.
Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich on Saturday defended his statement that the Palestinians are an "invented" people, brushing aside criticism that he had unnecessarily made the Mideast peace process more difficult.

"Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes," Gingrich said during a candidate debate in which he drew applause for asserting that it was time someone spoke the truth about the nature of Israel's struggle with the Palestinians.

"Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists," he said. "It's fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, 'Enough lying about the Middle East.'"

Gingrich's earlier remarks to a cable channel struck at the heart of Palestinian sensitivities about the righteousness of their struggle for an independent state. Applying the label "invented" to Palestinians suggests that their quest for independence is not legitimate, though Gingrich later said he indeed supports the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a settlement with Israel.

Bad Guys

UN General Assembly Passes Nine Resolutions on Israel-Palestine

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© unknown
On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly passed nine resolutions related to Palestine as part of a set of 24 resolutions and two texts related to human rights and decolonization.

The resolutions were passed by the General Assembly after the recommendation of the Special Political and Decolonization Committee. Several of the resolutions were passed almost unanimously, with only Israel voting against them.

Among these were a resolution that called for an accelerated return of displaced persons who became refugees in 1967, and called on donor countries to assist the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in meeting the needs of the Palestinian refugees. This resolution was passed by a vote of 160 in favor to 1 opposed (Israel), with 9 abstentions.

Another resolution urged Israel to reimburse UNRWA for all transit charges incurred and other financial losses sustained as a result of delays and restrictions on movement and access, and to cease obstructing the movement and access of the staff, vehicles and supplies of the Agency. That resolution passed with a vote of 163 in favour to 7 against (Israel, Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, United States), with 2 abstentions (Cameroon, Vanuatu).

Stormtrooper

US: Police Employ Predator Drone Spy Planes on Home Front

Predator B
© unknown
Unmanned aircraft from an Air Force base in North Dakota help local police with surveillance, raising questions that trouble privacy advocates.

Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.

Dollar

Pulling Back the Curtain on the Wall Street Money Machine

Wall St sign
© n/a
On November 27, Bloomberg News reported the results of its successful case to force the Fed to reveal the lending details of its 2008-09 bank bailout. In 29,000 pages of documents, the Fed revealed that by March 2009, it had committed $7.77 trillion in below-market loans and guarantees to rescuing the financial system; and that these nearly interest-free loans came without strings attached. The Fed insisted that the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, but the banks reaped a $13 billion windfall in profits; and "details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger."

The revelations provoked shock and outrage among commentators. But the Fed was doing only what banks and the money market do for each other under normal conditions every day: making "liquidity" available at very low interest rates. In 2008, bank liquidity dried up after Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the banks could not get the cheap, ready credit on which their lending scheme depends; so the Fed therefore stepped in as "lender of last resort."

Star of David

Israeli Tank Shell Hits Northern Gaza

An Israeli tank has attacked an animal farm in the northern Gaza Strip city of Beit Lahiya amid intensifying attacks by Israeli troops against Palestinians.
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© unknown
Palestinian youths stand at the door of a house damaged by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on early Friday, Dec. 9, 2011.

No casualties have yet been reported in the Saturday attack.

However, the farm was destroyed and several of its animals were killed, the Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.

Meanwhile, a 28-year-old Palestinian man lost his life earlier on Saturday after he was hit in the face with a tear gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier.

Also on Saturday, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy died of injuries he sustained in an Israeli airstrike on the Gaza strip on Thursday.

Tel Aviv justifies its attacks on the Gaza Strip by saying they are measures taken in response to rockets fired into the occupied territories from the Gaza Strip.

Heart - Black

Palestinian Hit in Face by Tear Gas Canister Dies

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© The Associated Press/Nasser Ishtayeh
Israeli troops run towards Palestinian demonstrators, not seen, during a protest in the village of Kufr Qaddum near the Israeli settlement of Kdumim, in the northern West Bank, Friday, Dec. 9, 2011.
A Palestinian protester who was struck in the face by a tear gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier at close range died of his wounds Saturday, activists said, accusing the army of using disproportionate force.

The 28-year-old, Mustafa Tamimi, was hurling rocks at the military vehicle on Friday in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh when a soldier inside opened the rear door and fired at him from just a few yards away, witnesses said. He was taken to an Israeli hospital, where he died of his injuries on Saturday.

The army's use of the gas canisters has come under sharp criticism in the past few years. Military officials say they are using the gas to quell violent demonstrations. The canisters, which emit choking, acrid smoke, are meant to push back crowds. But some Israeli troops have fired them directly at demonstrators, causing severe injuries and death.

Eagle

BOMBSHELL: US Caught Meddling in Russian Elections!

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© http://en.rian.ru
What would Americans say if they found their polling stations and certain political parties entirely infiltrated by Chinese money, Chinese observers, and Chinese-backed candidates promoting China's interests in an AMERICAN election? The answer ranges from incarceration, to trials featuring charges ranging from fraud, to sedition and even treason with sentences ranging from decades to life in prison, perhaps even death, as well as possible military action for what could easily be considered an act of war.

Indeed, the attempted subversion of a foreign nation and/or meddling in its elections are acts of war, an act of war the United States government through its various "Non-Governmental Organizations" (NGOs) have been committing on and off for decades around the globe. In fact, the very "Arab Spring" is a geopolitical conflagration tipped off by this vast network of Western backed NGOs.

The New York Times in its article, "U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings," clearly stated as much when it reported, "a number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington."

The Times would continue by explaining, "the Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department."

Black Cat

Who Hates Our Freedoms? Part I

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© Tolles/The Washington Post
1. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. . . . America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." ~ George W. Bush, address to the nation, September 11, 2001

"They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." ~ George W. Bush, address to Congress, September 20, 2001

In context, all Americans assumed that Bush was talking about Moooooooooslims. Maybe he was really talking about somebody else but just couldn't say so? Let's see who hates our freedoms.

Where to begin? It seems the US has so many enemies these days. We could start with Pakistan, they hate our elections don't they? Oh, but they have elections too. Hell they even elected a woman as president. I know, they hate us because we have the right in the United States to keep and bear arms. Pakistanis don't have that right, right? Well, not quite. The gun situation in Pakistan would be the envy of everyone living in Bumfuck, Idaho. But I digress.

Oh, maybe they hate us because we bomb the shit out of them with drones? Damn, I bet killing lots of women and children probably does piss them off quite a bit, them being Moooooslims and all. Ungrateful bastards.

Maybe if we stopped killing them they might like us more. Naah.

Vader

Gingrich: Palestinians Are an 'Invented' People

Newt Gingrich
© unknown
Newt Gingrich
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich dismissed the Palestinian bid for statehood as the effort of an "invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community."

Gingrich also said the Palestinian Authority, which has typically represented the moderate wing of Palestinian leadership and formally accepts Israel's right to exist, is motivated by "an enormous desire to destroy Israel."

Gingrich's comments, in an interview with The Jewish Channel, edge him and his party further away from the two-state solution embraced over the last decade by presidents of both parties, and are the latest in a series of comments from Republican leaders that will set a sharply confrontational tone toward the Arab world if a Republican is elected next year.

Gingrich has suggested in the past that he could support a Palestinian state in theory but that he has deep doubts about current Palestinian leadership and worries about Israeli security, but his comments casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Palestinian national movement align him with more conservative voices who believe Israel has a permanent right to the West Bank territories.

Star of David

Israel Prepares for "Dirty Bomb" Drill

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© Unknown
Israeli defense officials are preparing for a January drill on the response to a radiological "dirty bomb" attack against a backdrop of regional instability and fears about Iran's nuclear development, the Jerusalem Post reported on Friday (see GSN, Nov. 29).

The "Dark Cloud" simulation would be the Israeli civil defense force's first exercise that deals with the fallout of a radiological attack. The exercise is being directed by ex-Israeli air force Material Command chief Brig. Gen. Zev Snir, who advises the Israeli defense minister on WMD threats.

Jerusalem has long feared a nuclear attack by extremists. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said on multiple occasions he is more concerned that the nation's enemies could smuggle an improvised radioactive weapon into the country via the Port of Haifa than of Iran launching a nuclear-tipped long-range missile at Israel.

A number of military and defense personnel from other countries are set to observe the drill in northern Israel.

"Israel is one of the leading countries in the world when it comes to preparing for such attacks. But we have to test ourselves and ensure that the responses we have in place are applicable and appropriate for the wide variety of threats we face," Snir said.