3 Romney would up defense aid to Israel, and raise the U.S. military profile near Iran
Mitt Romney said he would increase defense assistance to Israel, raise the U.S. military profile near Iran and recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and frontrunner in the bid to secure the Republican nomination for president, delivered the first major foreign policy speech of his campaign Friday at The Citadel, a military college in South Carolina. He cast President Obama's policies as contributing to Israel's isolation.
"I will bolster and repair our alliances," he said. "Our friends should never fear that we will not stand by them in an hour of need. I will reaffirm as a vital national interest Israel’s existence as a Jewish state."
The Obama and Netanyahu governments have smoothed relations in recent months, and Israeli officials credit the administration with tightening defense ties and backing Israel at the United Nations. Obama also refers to Israel as a Jewish state, althoug he has not issued a formal declaration of such a recognition.
Romney suggested Israel might be further isolated by 2015 if Obama remains in office.
"Will Iran be a fully activated nuclear weapons state, threatening its neighbors, dominating the world’s oil supply with a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz?" he asked.
"In the hands of the ayatollahs, a nuclear Iran is nothing less than an existential threat to Israel. Iran’s suicidal fanatics could blackmail the world. "By 2015, will Israel be even more isolated by a hostile international community? Will those who seek Israel’s destruction feel emboldened by American ambivalence? Will Israel have been forced to fight yet another war to protect its citizens and its right to exist?"
"In the hands of the ayatollahs, a nuclear Iran is nothing less than an existential threat to Israel. Iran’s suicidal fanatics could blackmail the world. "By 2015, will Israel be even more isolated by a hostile international community? Will those who seek Israel’s destruction feel emboldened by American ambivalence? Will Israel have been forced to fight yet another war to protect its citizens and its right to exist?"
Romney said that as president he would "enhance our deterrent against the Iranian regime by ordering the regular presence of aircraft carrier task forces, one in the Eastern Mediterranean and one in the Persian Gulf region.
I will begin discussions with Israel to increase the level of our military assistance and coordination. And I will again reiterate that Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is unacceptable."
I will begin discussions with Israel to increase the level of our military assistance and coordination. And I will again reiterate that Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is unacceptable."
He also said he would centralize U.S. Middle East policy to ensure "that the Arab Spring does not fade into a long winter."
The speech came a day after Romney published a list of his foreign policy advisers, including many who have been active in or are close to the pro-Israel community.
Source: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/10/07/3089754/romney-would-up-defense-aid-to-israel
Source: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/10/07/3089754/romney-would-up-defense-aid-to-israel
0 Muslim, Christian graves desecrated in Israeli city
Headstones at a Muslim and a Christian cemetery were desecrated by unknown assailants in Jaffa on Saturday, the Jewish holy fast day of Yom Kippur, an Israeli website said.
Pictures on the www.nana10.co.il Hebrew website showed one gravestone with the words "death to Arabs" spray painted in Hebrew and the words "Price tag," a slogan used by militant Jewish West Bank settlers and their supporters, on another.
A third photograph showed a broken tombstone but none of the photographs could be independently verified due to the fast day's traditional travel limitations.The "price-taggers" have vowed to avenge any move by Israel to uproot settlement outposts built in the occupied West Bank without Israeli government permission and have torched mosques and vandalized both Israeli and Palestinian property.
Police and Jewish Israeli officials were not available for comment during the Yom Kippur fast day and a local Muslim community leader in Jaffa quoted in the article did not reply when contacted by Reuters.Jaffa is the ancient part of Tel Aviv which has a mixed Arab and Jewish population.
On Monday, a mosque in a Bedouin village in northern Israel was set on fire and graffiti sprayed on its walls in an attack authorities have blamed on hard-line Jewish settlers.
The torching drew broad condemnation from top Israeli leaders and President Shimon Peres and the country's chief rabbis also visited the scene to calm tensions.
In 2005 a Jewish couple was charged for throwing a pig's head into a Tel Aviv mosque in an attempt to derail Israel's then pullout from the Gaza Strip which went ahead in August of that year.
In 2008 riots erupted in the coastal city of Acre in northern Israel when Jews accosted an Arab man who drove his car into a predominantly Jewish neighborhood during Yom Kippur when all traffic halts and the country shuts down for 24 hours.
And the people suspected of this call themselves
"God's chosen people"?
funny way to show it.
0 80s Actor or Dead Terrorist?
If you’re a fan of 1980s adventure comedies but not quite up-to-speed on the war on terror, you could be forgiven for wondering why “The Jewel of the Nile” star Avner Eisenberg’s picture has suddenly gone viral.
“Jewel” lovers, take heed: It’s not actually Eisenberg’s picture you’re seeing but rather that of a disturbing Eisenberg doppleganger – al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a CIA drone strike in Yemen overnight.
At left, Anwar al Awlaki; at right, Avner Eisenberg as Jewel in "The Jewel of the Nile" (AP/Picture Desk)
Even Eisenberg himself admits that al-Awlaki bore an eerie resemblance to what Eisenberg looked like when playing the bearded, bespectacled title character in the 1985 Michael Douglas-Kathleen Turner film.
The cleric had a “really striking resemblance to that [Jewel] character. I wonder if he based his image on the movie,” Eisenberg told ABC News.
The 62-year-old Eisenberg is alive and well and living in Maine. The actor has traded celluloid for Vaudeville, frequently travelling to Europe and South America to stage his one-man show, “Exceptions to Gravity.”
With his now-gray beard and balding head, Eisenberg said that he no longer looks much like his Jewel character or al-Awlaki — and that’s a good thing, he said, for practical reasons.
“I suspect it would have caused problems because I do travel internationally a lot,” he said.
He said that he’s not the only Vaudeville entertainer who could be confused for a terrorist.
Shoe bomber Richard Reed, he said, is “the spitting image” of one of The Flying Karamazov Brothers.
“Maybe this Vaudeville thing is a dangerous business to be in,” he joked.
It would have been Anwar al Awlaki's handlers the CIA that chose his image.
The real irony here is Eisenberg was playing a devout Muslim, when in real life he's a white Orthodox Jew with a blacked up face.
I just loved the 80's.
0 Israeli author forces state to change "Jewish" classification
In its troubled peace talks with the Palestinians, Israel has demanded that it should be recognized as a Jewish state, but there is deep domestic division on what that means.
 |
| Yoram Kaniuk |
Yoram Kaniuk, a rambunctious 81-year-old author, was hailed by Israeli secularists this week for winning a court victory that compelled the state to stop listing Judaism as his "religion" while keeping "Jewish" as his "ethnicity." He is the first Israeli Jew to have done so.
Israel defines itself as a "Jewish and democratic" state. Kaniuk's legal triumph comes at a time when society is increasingly polarized between those who say the state's Jewish character must be strengthened and opponents who say this comes at the expense of civil rights and liberties.
"I feel great relief," said Kaniuk, one of Israel's best-known writers.
"I was sick and tired of an extremist right-wing religious establishment taking over our lives. We are a secular majority and we just give in to it. I hope (my) court ruling will change this," he told Reuters.
Kaniuk's wife is Christian, and because Orthodox rabbinical law identifies only those born to a Jewish mother as Jews, the couple's daughters are classified as "without religion." It was seeing his grandson also classified as without religion that prompted him to mount his protest against the influence of the religious establishment.
"I was never a practicing Jew and I don't believe in God," he said. "When the Jews were scattered across the world, religion bound us together, but we don't need this any more."
Tensions in the Holy Land run high on issues of citizenship, ethnicity and faith. All three categories are used in the census to classify Israelis, the majority of whom are listed as "Jewish" under both religion and ethnicity.
Kaniuk and his supporters from within the Jewish secular majority demand a clear separation of religion and state, and say they suffer religious coercion.
Full Story:http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/07/us-israel-author-jewish-idUSTRE79629M20111007
0 Former CIA Workers Discuss and Dimiss Saucer Work at Area 51
Area 51 is one of the most secretive places ever. What goes on at the infamous military base more than 80 miles north of Las Vegas stays there -- until it's no longer classified.
Men who once served their country at Area 51 took to the stage at UNLV Tuesday night.
"A few years back, we couldn't say anything about this at all," said Roger Anderson, an operations officer & support pilot for the CIA and U.S. Air Force. "It was kinda' difficult, because we had families that lived here in Las Vegas."
The men speaking at UNLV are veterans of the A-12 program in the 1960s, which developed the CIA's supersonic spy plane.
"The A-12 airplane was - at the time it was built and flying - the fastest thing around," said CIA pilot Frank Murray. "There's still nothing as fast as that airplane that breathes air in its engines."
Former Special Projects engineer T.D. Barnes referenced the UFO phenomenon at Area 51, which is located at Groom Lake.
"We flew 2,850 missions out of Groom Lake with the A-12," he said. "Of course, it didn't officially exist, and this accounted for a lot of UFO sightings at the time. We would leave a very heavy sonic boom, and thank goodness for the Navy at Fallon. They took the blame."
The brilliant minds at Area 51 also had some laughs at the spying Russians' expense.
"We would draw a shape of some kind of exotic plane out on the tarmac," Barnes said. "Just as satellites were coming over, we'd put a couple shop heaters in the rear of it - like the engine - give it a heat signature to make them think we had something crazy out there."
CIA chief historian Dr. David Robarge also joined the panel.
"We weren't allowed to talk about it for many, many years, and that tends to breed conspiracy theories and a lot of fantastical stories," he said. "In many ways, the truth is both more interesting and less interesting than the fiction that developed around it."The government went to great lengths to inform its Area 51 personnel of their top secret assignment. Anderson says he waited months for his orders. He finally received them in 1965, when he was told to report to a trailer park off Boulder Highway.
While these veterans opened up about their experiences at Area 51, the tales of flying saucers and impossible events are likely to live on.
0 Giuliani to star in ads for ageing nuclear plant near New York City
The operator of an ageing nuclear power plant near New York City has hired former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to vouch for its safety in a new ad campaign.
According to a spokesman for Entergy, the ads for the Indian Point plant will begin running next week on cable television and in newspapers.
The operator is seeking to renew its licenses for its two reactors.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called for the plant to be shut down due to safety concerns.
Entergy spokesman James Steets tells The New York Times ( http://nyti.ms/qBEu6i) the campaign is aimed to reassure the public about the plant's safety.
A spokesman for Giuliani's consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, declined to comment.
Giuliani has previously done promotional work for Indian Point.
Judging by the first draft of the posters, I can't see this being a major way forward for the Nuclear Industry....
0 NPR Report: "Libyan Rebels" Start looting and intimidating at will, well....Duh!
Residents of the Libyan capital Tripoli are growing increasingly angry at abuses said to be carried out by armed anti-Gadhafi groups. Some allege that once rebel fighting brigades have become criminal gangs, looting and intimidating at will.
Because these were never "Rebels" to begin with, the Libyan situation was never an "Uprising"...it was hired help, and now the money and support for them is becoming short and they are grabbing what they can.
Would this "conflict" have gone on for so long if the people of Libya really wanted rid of Gadaffi?
Forget our twisted media...Truth is the UN totally underestimated how much support the Libyan people actually have for Gadafi, for what he had done for Libya, and they want to keep it.
0 Traficant: The Congressman of Crimetown TRAILER: This Documentary Needs To Be Released....Please get behind it and pledge as little or as much as you can
55 days to go....
Below text taken from here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/traficant/traficant-the-congressman-of-crimetown?
About this project
THANKS!
I understand that everyone's time and money is very limited. I appreciate you taking the time to watch the trailer and read a little about this project. This is a passion that has consumed me over the past 10 years, and I'm on the cusp of a dream coming alive!
Your support and generosity can propel us over the finish line. Please help spread the good word!
BUDGET
My producer, Jeff Alberini, and I have been filming off and on since September 2009 when Jim Traficant was released from prison after 7+ years of incarceration. I've funded the project out of pocket up to this point, with Jeff providing all camera/sound equipment.
While we anticipate ultimately needing more money to complete the project, the desired $25,000 will kickstart our post-production and allow us to complete our final round of interviews. Any additional resources will be used to acquire expensive news coverage.
0 Cain, Romney: Occupy Wall Street protesters are ‘dangerous class warfare’
Republican presidential candidate and former Godfather’s CEO Herman Cain joined former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney on Wednesday, criticizing a series of protests taking place across the nation.
Speaking Wednesday, Mr. Cain, who continues to skyrocket in recent polls, slammed the protest movement, saying their criticism of Wall Street was misplaced. The Georgia Republican said, instead, that protesters should blame themselves.
“Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!” Mr. Cain said. “It is not a person’s fault because they succeeded, it is a person’s fault if they failed. And so this is why I don’t understand these demonstrations and what is it that they’re looking for.”
The former businessman joined Mr. Romney in criticizing the movement. Speaking earlier in the day, Mr. Romney said the protester were engaged in “class warfare,” adding that the movement is “dangerous.”
Asked Wednesday whether President Obama supports or opposes the movement, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that the administration “understands” why people are frustrated.
With the Republican presidential field likely set, polls continue to show Mr. Romney and Mr. Cain among the leaders. Texas Republican governor Rick Perry remains well ahead of Mr. Cain, however, a series of straw polls continue to show support for the Georgia Republican.
Meanwhile, Democrats slammed Mr. Romney and Mr. Cain, saying the statements were indicative of how a Republican administration would handle the economy.
“In New York and across the country, thousands of Americans have taken to the streets, certain of the morality of their message: bringing fairness to Main Street,” Rep. John Larson, the House Democratic Caucus Chairman, said in a statement. “The silent masses aren’t so silent anymore. They are fighting to give voice to the struggles that everyday Americans are going through.
The movement, which has called on Wall Street to create jobs and put people back to work, has slowly spread across the nation. In a sign that it is shifting from a loose-knit fringe group to a bloc that could draw in mainstream America, the movement added thousands of people to the streets of New York on Wednesday after major labor unions gave their backing to its anti-greed message. Since beginning with a few dozen demonstrators in New York on Sept. 17, the Occupy Wall Street protests have not only grown, but have become increasingly organized, offering medical aid, legal help and a newspaper.
On Saturday, more than 700 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge roadway, after NYPD officers claimed the demonstrators were illegally blocking traffic.
The Answer to "Herr Cain and Romney".....
0 Gold Dispensing ATMs Debut in China
The machines are made in Germany, but they're being imported to meet strong Chinese demand for gold. The rare metal is the traditional fallback investment when economic forecasts are troublesome.
The machine prices gold at latest market quotes, which are automatically updated every 10 minutes, then dispenses it. There is a selection of shapes and sizes, and consumers can choose to pay with cash or an ATM card.
The company behind the Gold ATM is the Gongmei Gold Group.
[Zheng Ruixiang, Board Director, Beijing Gongmei Group]:
"After the outbreak of the international financial crisis, everybody in China became very keen to purchase and invest in gold. Under these circumstances, the traditional ways of selling gold cannot satisfy the demand."
Gongmei expects the gold ATM to be extremely popular, and plans to install 2,000 of these machines in banks and high-end hotels over the next two years—the first batch will be installed over the next two weeks.
Gold prices rose nearly 30 percent in 2010, and have soared to record highs this year, with the precious metal up 14 percent so far in 2011.
0 Un-edited Footage Of Planet Sized Comet Hitting The Sun, 2nd oct 2011
The guy that uploaded this video caught footage of a massive body hitting the sun with such force it created a huge ejection on its opposite side!, this has so far been completely unreported by Nasa.
The video below explains:
what is more startling is that if you now visit the site mentioned above where the video was originally downloaded from http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/current_mpg/current_mpg/
and download the same video C2.gif, the point were it comes in from the bottom and impacts is now missing, as the picture now skips very fast past 16:00 to 21:00 right at the very point it comes on screen (see below compared to original )
The origin of the original photo/gif used in the Youtube video is from an internal directory at LASCO (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment) and therefore it's authenticity is very hard to doubt, and the fact the impact has suddenly now disappeared makes this even more worrying.
I don't expect the above YouTube video to stay up very long once it gets some traction, so copies have been made of all relevant material in this event and will be reapplied to this post.
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