How the U.S. Allowed ISIS to Form a Terrorist Army
BY DAVID FRANCIS,
July 25, 2014
The United States has sent additional military advisers to Iraq and increased the number of drone flights to 50 per day, up from one flight a month. Yet so far this has done little to stop the rise of the jihadist terror group, the Islamic State, abbreviated as ISIS or ISIL, which has transformed itself from a loosely aligned band of militants to a full-blown army of terrorists, Brett McGurk, the deputy assistant defense secretary for Iraq and Iran, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
“ISIL is worse than al Qaeda,” said McGurk. “ISIL is no longer simply a terrorist organization. It is now a full-blown army seeking to establish a self-governing state through the Tigris and Euphrates valley in what is now Syria and Iraq.”
McGurk’s testimony shows just how quickly ISIS has grown and established itself as a legitimate military force. Back in February, McGurk warned that the threat from al Qaeda was increasing in Iraq. In the last six months, ISIS has broken with al Qaeda and introduced elements of sharia law across western Iraq and eastern Syria. It is now on the verge of taking Baghdad.
“We did see this coming,” said Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA). “And that makes it even more troubling that the administration didn’t do what was necessary to prevent [ISIL] from taking over such a large swath of Iraq.”
Royce and other Republicans on the committee slammed the Obama administration for failing to conduct drone strikes against ISIS. McGurk, however, said that it was not clear if a drone strategy would effectively stop the group.
“The first principle, and the president’s policy is that we want to enable local actors to be able to secure their own space as best we can. That was also the desire of the Iraqi government,” McGurk said. “The information we have now on these networks is night and day from where it was in May, when the request from the Iraqis first came in. And there is a significant risk, Mr. Chairman, of taking any military action without that level of granularity.”
“There will not be an exclusively U.S. military solution to ISIL,” added Elissa Slotkin, a defense department deputy for policy. “Iraqis must do the heavy lifting.”
Partisan squabbling continued throughout the hearing. This overshadowed the stark reality contained in McGurk’s testimony: The United States does not have an effective strategy for stopping Iraq, short of the unthinkable: sending troops back to Iraq to dismantle the group.
As McGurk and Slotkin said, drone strikes would be an ineffective way to stop ISIS. The group controls too large an area for precision strikes to be effective.
The only other option offered by McGurk and Slotkin was to assist the Iraqi military in its fight against ISIS. But the ease of the ISIS advance, combined with fractional fighting within the Iraq army, inspires little confidence in Iraq’s ability to turn back the group.
The creation of an organized ISIS military is also troubling for neighboring countries. The group has stated that it wants to expand its territory to Jordan, Lebanon, and parts of Israel. It now has the means to invade – which raises the prospect for war in the region.
The inability of the U.S. to take effective action to stop ISIS was best summed up by former Air Force pilot and Iraq war veteran Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
“The administration is just paralyzed – they don’t know what to do,” Kinzinger said. “Political solutions are not something that we can put in a microwave and expect to happen in a short amount of time.”
- See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/07/25/How-US-Allowed-ISIS-Form-Terrorist-Army#sthash.yq90QqvU.dpuf
1. Iran is Not Actually That Irrational
ReplyDeleteIran is constantly portrayed as a group of religious fundamentalists with an aim to destroy Israel and cause chaos in the Middle East. However, if we look at Iran’s history within the region, we will find very little evidence to support that. Sure, they will occasionally talk a big game, and are perfectly comfortable with hate speech, but in terms of actions, they lack a lot of local street cred.
During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq, led under Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran in hopes to take advantage of post-revolutionary chaos. Since then has Iran taken part in preemptive ground conflicts? How many wars have they started? That’s right, the number is basically zero. In fact, Iran has gone so far as to vow never to launch a military attack against anyone, and offered to work with the United States in relation to Iraq’s current ISIS/Islamic State crisis.
If we look at the US-led Iraq invasion, the wars and uprisings in Syria, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen, Iran looks positively stable in comparison.
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/5-reasons-the-iran-threat-is-a-smokescreen.html#ixzz38bhT0Qys
2. Iran Would Never Bomb Israel
DeleteRemember the furor surrounding Iran’s nuclear program? How if they got the bomb they were certain to bomb Jerusalem mere moments after? Now is an excellent time to pull out a map and note Jerusalem’s actual location. I’ll help:
If Iran were to nuke Israel, it would also be blowing up and poisoning a vast number of Palestinians along with them. Widespread fallout would put Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan at risk. Which basically means Iran would be declaring war on some of the key (stable) governments in the region. Second, if religious fundamentalism so part and parcel to the Iranian regime, we must realize the concept of ’ummah.’
Ummah translates to the “Muslim family” that exists around the world. Killing one is like killing “all of humanity.” Taking these two things together we can see that not only would an attack on Israel have devastating political ramifications, but devastating religious consequences as well. Iran, again, with no history of preemptive strikes, has nothing to gain from bombing Israel. Furthermore, if we consider Israel’s ability to literally flatten Tehran in a matter of hours (their armies are far from comparable), it’s unlikely Iran would ever take that chance.
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/5-reasons-the-iran-threat-is-a-smokescreen.html#ixzz38bhiE0A6
3. They Don’t Hate All the Jews
DeleteBut what about the Holocaust-denying conference? What about the hate speech directed at the Jewish people? Of course, like many countries on the planet, including those located in the West, Iran absolutely has issues with anti-Semitism. That said, they aren’t exactly as bad as people might assume. In fact, the Jewish community in Iran has existed for thousands of years.
These days, Iran’s Jewish community is formally recognized by the government as a protected minority group. The capital of Iran, Tehran, has 11 synagogues, a number of Hebrew schools, kosher restaurants, Jewish newspapers, libraries and hospitals dedicated to Jewish leaders in history.
Jewish Iranians are also in government, with a number of seats in Parliament dedicated to representing them as a minority group. It might also surprise you to learn that many have spoken out against Israel’s recent actions during the latest Gaza incursion, noting that they see Israel’s actions as political rather than religious.
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/5-reasons-the-iran-threat-is-a-smokescreen.html#ixzz38bhu02LT
http://news.yahoo.com/no-truce-12-hour-lull-gaza-fighting-begins-053300858.html
ReplyDeleteHamas fires rockets on Israel, ending 12-hour lull
...looks like Hamas will not allow Netanyahu to slink into the shadows...
4. Despite Bluster, They Cooperate Fairly Often
ReplyDeleteIn times of sanctions, Iran often lashes out, threatening to close routes around their shipping channels or kick out UN staff. Yet, they haven’t really followed through very often. Rather, more recent examples show that Iran is absolutely willing to cooperate in international diplomacy.
Recent news shows Iran is willing to take its enriched uranium, and dilute it into levels that are more acceptable to the international standards. The International Atomic Energy Agency even stated that Iranian leaders were following through on commitments. What do they get in return for this international cooperation? The United States will unfreeze 2.8 billion in Iranian currency. That seems fair, right?
Although Iran insists that they were enriching uranium for nuclear power plants and medicinal purposes, at last check their uranium supplies were enough to make one, just one, nuclear warhead. This was trotted out as a ‘crisis’ inside the UN.
While the United States is the only country in the world to ever use a nuclear warhead against civilians, and they are still perfectly allowed to have them because we can totally trust they’ve learned their lesson (we hope), it is perfectly acceptable for them to regulate the production of weapons in a foreign sovereign nation. Right?
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/5-reasons-the-iran-threat-is-a-smokescreen.html#ixzz38bi4F05G
5. A Nuclear Bomb in Iran Might Actually Help Regional Stability
DeleteIn an article for Foreign Affairs Magazine, Kenneth Waltz makes the case for Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb. Although many shudder to think of what could come of this, Waltz makes a convincing argument that it would actually help bring peace to this embittered area. He notes that historically speaking, “By reducing imbalances in military power, new nuclear states generally produce more regional and international stability, not less.”
With Israel acquiring a nuclear arsenal years ago, Iran might create a counterbalance similar to that of India and Pakistan. Two neighbors with a terribly violent past, who now enjoy new diplomacy thanks to the delicate position they’ve put themselves into. He also addresses concerns about Iran handing off the bomb to terrorist groups.
“Once a country such as Iran acquires a nuclear capability, it will have every reason to maintain full control over its arsenal. After all, building a bomb is costly and dangerous. It would make little sense to transfer the product of that investment to parties that cannot be trusted or managed.”
He also points out:
“There has never been a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states. Once Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, deterrence will apply, even if the Iranian arsenal is relatively small.”
Sanctions, the common way we try to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state, aren’t actually helpful. The sanctions that we raise against Iran don’t actually hurt those in power. The government, which has plenty of money, gets along just fine. So there’s very little reason to think that sanctions would dissuade them from bomb making.
Rather, it’s the average citizen that sanctions tend to cripple. Meaning that if we’re trying to win a war of ’hearts and minds’ in the Middle East, this is the worst possible way to go about it.
Iran definitely has its issues. Human rights violations and the suppression of free speech are all problems inside the country. However, those are for the citizens of Iran to work out, not some foreign do-gooder force. If we are to really engage the reality of Iran, we will see that while they have plenty of memorable quotes, they aren’t exactly a “dangerous” force within the region. If we would take the time to engage them, rather than trying to control them, we might end up with a Middle East that looks remarkably more stable than it does today.
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/5-reasons-the-iran-threat-is-a-smokescreen.html#ixzz38biJHcMZ
The Iranians are all round good chaps. We should invite them to dinner. Ditch the wine list :-(
ReplyDeleteExcellent folks, the Iranians.
DeleteWhy, just look how they treat their own people. In the last effort at a revolution, it was all kids gloves.
Everyone has sexual and political freedom in Iran. Especially the women and the queers.
It is an enlightened society. The old boy Assahola Khomeini may have said "There is no fun in Islam" but he just didn't get out enough.
The BaHai love it there. As do the Christians. Jews are flourishing in Iran, that is common knowledge.
If anyone deserves nuclear weapons, they do. They don't really want to bring in the Mahdi, the 12th Imam fellow through conflict.
And the upper levels of their theocracy, why those fellows are incorruptible.
House Votes For Checks On Obama's Iraq War Powers
ReplyDeletePassed by a large 370 to 40 majority, the resolution declares: "The President shall not deploy or maintain United States Armed Forces in a sustained combat role in Iraq without specific statutory authorization for such use enacted after the date of the adoption of this concurrent resolution."
Seems like the House of Representatives does ot like the current Law, which authorizes the Presidet to use force, at his discretion..
So sorry, fellas, the Law is the Law and it empowers the President to Use Force, if he deems it necessary. ...
IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
There is a direct evolutionary line between al-Qeada and the ISIS.
Even if Israel prefers al-Qeada, the President is legally bound to act, to prevent future acts of international terrorism against the US.
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DeleteThe current law was created by Congress.
The current law can be modified or scrapped by Congress.
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DeleteThe current law was created by Congress.
The current law can be modified by Congress. It would only get tricky if the president refused to sign it. However, where there is a will there is a way. Nothing is permanent. Not even the Constitution.
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ReplyDeleteIraq: Kurdish politician Massoum named president
BAGHDAD (AP) — Kurdish politician Fouad Massoum has been named the new president of Iraq following a parliamentary vote.
Massoum, 76, is one of the founders of current President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party. He is considered a soft-spoken moderate, known for keeping good relations with Sunni and Shiite Arab politicians.
The vote for president -- a largely ceremonial post -- was delayed for a day when the Kurdish bloc requested more time to select a candidate. They named Massoum as their pick late Wednesday.
Under an unofficial agreement dating back to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Iraq's presidency is held by a Kurd while the prime minister is Shiite and the parliamentary speaker is Sunni.
As long as the Israeli will not agree to disarm their nuclear arsenal, the arms race is on !
ReplyDeleteNo rational reason why the Iranians would 'bow out'.
DeleteFrom the Iranian perspective, those nuclear armed Zionists represent a "Existential Threat" to the future of Iran.
Newsweak tells US ...
ReplyDeleteIt’s Still a Mess in Iraq
The Associated Press ✔ @AP
ReplyDeleteFollow
BREAKING: Hamas official says group rejects Israel's proposed four-hour extension of Gaza war truce
Because BiBi wears a white hat, he is going to honor a non-existent four hour ceasefire...my hero...what a guy...Israel gets to spend the night in bomb shelters. Way to go, BiBi!
ditto
DeleteWho knew? Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat! I bet that took a lot of brain cells to figure out.
ReplyDeleteOf course, they are existential! That's the point. One does not go to the trouble of acquiring them to decorate a rock garden. Thankfully, Netanyahu was a child when the decision was taken to manufacture them.
ditto
Delete'If Netanyahu signs a cease-fire, he's finished'
ReplyDeleteCabinet and Likud members vehemently oppose a cease-fire, but despite the great political risk, all signs indicate that Netanyahu is looking for a truce.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.607093
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/25/isil-has-created-all-female-bridgade-terrorize-wom/comments/
ReplyDeleteISIL creates all-female brigade to terrorize women into following Sharia law
Presumably, all have had their clits cut in the Muslim manner. There are Americans who support these barbarians. I hope to live to see the predictable outcome of this stupidity.
Genital mutilation seems to be a big item for the holy men of the ME , foreskins and clits, all at the hands of the men.
DeleteYea, there is much similarity to removing a little tissue from an eight-day old boy's penis and surgically mutilating a 46 year old woman. You slide lower and lower.
Delete
DeleteOn the Contrary - Michael Hoffman - Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
Orthodox Judaism treats women like filthy little things
If a man and a woman are drowning in a river, first they'll save the man, 'who is obligated to perform more commandments,' whereas a woman's 'wisdom is only in the spindle.' In fact,
'words of Torah should be burned rather than being given to women.'
Netanyahu has demonstrated to kol Israel that he is a moral and physical coward. His days are numbered (figuratively) and his name will become an epithet.
ReplyDeleteHe can sign whatever he likes; the next government, much further to the right I believe, can ignore it at the first provocation. There will be provocation, thanks to Hamas (they have resumed their bombardment of Israel).
BiBi has always loved living in the US. He will find plenty of like-minded company here.
I suggest that Israelis call this the "Shabbat Betrayal". May Netanyahu's name be used along with Haman's on Purim.
DeleteTake Texas; add in Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico.
ReplyDeleteYou have the approximate size of Iran.
Or, 8 Times the size of Idaho.
DeleteThat's big. And mostly filled with idiotic fanatics.
DeleteThank God I live here.
Heading toward Yellowstone in a few days.
DeleteFishing.
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ReplyDeleteThe ultimate reality is that the US will end up with only one natural ally to defeat ISIS: Iran
This may be true with respect to ISIS. Other than that, IMO, the US needs to choose its 'natural allies' in the ME on an ad hoc basis depending on the matter at hand.
Iran is one of at least four countries in the ME seeking regional hegemony. Any actions they take or don't take will be in what they perceive is in their national interest and to further their main goal.
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Who has Iran invaded in the last ten, twenty, fifty, sixty years?
DeleteThey have been invaded, by Iraq funded by, had their government toppled by US ...
Had a commercial airliner shot down, by US. ...
They have been invaded, by Iraq funded by US,
DeleteThat's disgusting, Quirk.
DeleteWhat has happened to your sense of nobility? Of the good, the true, and the beautiful?
Hell, Quirk, you sound as if you'd sell your own grandmother out on an ad hoc basis depending on the matter at hand.
DeleteShame on you.
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Delete"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
H.L. Mencken
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Hows about this: We let all those people over there sort it out among themselves, and we buy our oil from the Winner.
ReplyDeleteNot a great deal for Lockheed, General Dynamics, and Halliburton, but it'd save Us (the sheeples) a buttload of money.
DeleteIt makes no difference, Israel has no chance of winning a war against the Palestinians. It has no chance of winning a nuclear war against Iran. Israel built istelf on a myth, a dream and an Islamic tectonic fault. They bought into the fantasy with assistance of the great enablers the UK and the Conga Line. The British Empire is dead, The American people never fully bought into empire and the architects of the scheme, the Neocons are in full retreat.
ReplyDeleteSane people can create a pluralistic albeit lumpy society. It is possible but the fantasy island with mounts and wailing walls is just not sustainable. As usual God is awol, alway was, always will be and good riddance. The tectonic fault lines are widening.
It must be painful to miss G-d so much.
Delete.
DeleteI wish I was as sanguine as you.
I don't see the neocons being in full retreat. They are there politicking with every crisis, still trying to 'save the world'. There are too many people dependent upon war and the money involved. These guys have been with us at least since since the days of Ike. They are in both parties and they won't go away quietly.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
H.L. Mencken
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Bibi can safely return to the remains of the Hot Shoppes in Roslyn.
ReplyDeleteRussia has considerable interest in the ME and SW Asia. In any equation, Russia is a factor.
ReplyDeleteThey have million or more expatriates, in Occupied Palestine, as we speak.
Deleteor type ... which is a more accurate description
DeleteThe Russian language in Israel is spoken natively by a large proportion of the population, reaching about 20 percent of the total population by 1989, mostly by ...
DeleteRussian is by far the most widely spoken non-official language in Israel after English. At least 20% of Israelis are fluent in Russian after mass immigration from the USSR and its successor states in the 1970s, 1990s, and 2000s. The government and businesses often provide information in Russian, and it is semi-official in some areas. - Wiki
If there is a Russian outpost in the Middle East, it is in Occupied Palestine.
DeleteIn 1934, according to published statistics, 38.5 percent of those holding the most senior posts in the Soviet security apparatuses were of Jewish origin.
DeleteThey too, of course, were gradually eliminated in the next purges.
In a fascinating lecture at a Tel Aviv University convention this week, Dr. Halfin described the waves of soviet terror as a "carnival of mass murder," "fantasy of purges", and "essianism of evil."
Turns out that Jews too, when they become captivated by messianic ideology, can become great murderers, among the greatest known by modern history.
The Jews active in official communist terror apparatuses (In the Soviet Union and abroad) and who at times led them, did not do this, obviously, as Jews, but rather, as Stalinists, communists, and "Soviet people."
Therefore, we find it easy to ignore their origin and "play dumb": What do we have to do with them?
But let's not forget them. My own view is different. I find it unacceptable that a person will be considered a member of the Jewish people when he does great things, but not considered part of our people when he does amazingly despicable things.
Even if we deny it, we cannot escape the Jewishness of "our hangmen," who served the Red Terror with loyalty and dedication from its establishment. After all, others will always remind us of their origin.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342999,00.html
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Deleteessianism
Sweet. However, it is the first time I have seen the word. What does it mean?
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Probably a typo. Probably meant "Messianism."
DeleteYou illiterate serf.
DeleteYou dumb hay baler.
DeleteYou esshole.
Deletemessianic
Deletedrop the m and the ic
Here's the search page for "essian."
DeleteEssian
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Delete"messianic of evil"
Right.
Your an idiot, Bob.
Rufus' explanation makes more sense though it too is awkward. You can use context to try to noodle it out but it is still questionable.
If you were to judge that it was a neologism with an etymology derived from the base word Essene it would still be confusing.
All in all, I can only judge that Dr. Halfin was probably originally from Idaho. Or maybe Sweden.
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DeleteAlso, you're an idiot, Bob.
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The "Essenes"
DeleteA little later Josephus gave a detailed account of the Essenes in The Jewish War (c. 75 CE), with a shorter description in Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 CE) and The Life of Flavius Josephus (c. 97 CE). Claiming first hand knowledge, he lists the Essenoi as one of the three sects of Jewish philosophy[7] alongside the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He relates the same information concerning piety, celibacy, the absence of personal property and of money, the belief in communality and commitment to a strict observance of Sabbath. He further adds that the Essenes ritually immersed in water every morning, ate together after prayer, devoted themselves to charity and benevolence, forbade the expression of anger, studied the books of the elders, preserved secrets, and were very mindful of the names of the angels kept in their sacred writings.
The Essenes
"Messianic" was used in the next sentence.
Delete.
DeleteEven given the context Dr. H has laid out, the word usage is at best confusing even if 'essianism' is a neologism.
My question was what does 'essianism' (or for that matter 'essianism of evil') mean. Although, I can make some assumptions, I still don't know.
I fault the man for sloppy word usage.
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In a fascinating lecture at a Tel Aviv University convention this week, Dr. Halfin described the waves of soviet terror as a "carnival of mass murder," "fantasy of purges", and "essianism of evil."
DeleteTurns out that Jews too, when they become captivated by messianic ideology, can become great murderers, among the greatest known by modern history.
These two sentences, taken together, lead me to think that it was meant to be "Messianism."
Occam's razor.
...small minded, idiotic bigortry...That's why Hitler lost the war.
ReplyDeleteThe Russians are all over Iran. They are shielding Assad. Hezbollah has third-hand Russian arms in Lebanon. Egypt is being courted avidly by the Russians as is Iraq. Somewhere in the coming civil war in Libya will be the hand of Russia.
Obama's golf game is improving, I have been reading.
DeletePAPER: OBAMA HAS ALREADY CHECKED OUT...
DeletePlays Golf With ESPN Hosts.........drudge
There are many, many more Russians in Occupied Palestine than there are in Iran.
DeleteIf a Russian presence is a threat to the US, that threat is greatest in Israel.
They call that 'delegating authority' Robert Peterson.
DeleteIt is what executives do.
That may be what they call it. I call it fucking off and not giving a damn.
DeleteAnd successful executives, of which you are not one, delegate the least amount of authority possible.
But you would not know anything of that, running a few cows.
The Israeli have been selling military UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle ,Robert) technologies to the Russians.
DeleteThe Israeli and Russian governments have been close, in the past, will be again in the future.
With the Zionists it is always about the money.
They will follow it anywhere
In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia.
ReplyDeleteAfter giving up on invading England.
DeleteSounds familiar.
" Israel built istelf on a myth, a dream and an Islamic tectonic fault."
ReplyDeleteThey built Israel to get the hell away from Europe where they had been mistreated forever.
What world do you live in these days?
The Zionists stole Palestine, they did not build anything.
DeleteRegarding the Galilee, Mr. [Moshe] Sharett already told you that about 100,000 Arabs still now live in the pocket of Galilee.
DeleteLet us assume that a war breaks out.
Then we will be able to cleanse the entire area of Central Galilee, including all its refugees, in one stroke.
In this context let me mention some mediators who offered to give us the Galilee without war.
What they meant was the populated Galilee.
They didn’t offer us the empty Galilee, which we could have only by means of a war.
Therefore if a war is extended to cover the whole of Palestine, our greatest gain will be the Galilee.
It is because without any special military effort which might imperil other fronts,
only by using the troops already assigned for the task, we could accomplish our aim of cleansing the Galilee.
From a protocol of the Government of Israel, translated from Hebrew by Israel Shahak, in "Truth or Myth about Israel? Read between Quotation Marks" by Charley Reese in The Orlando Sentinel (13 June 1999); later published as "What Israeli Historians Say About 1948 Ethnic Cleansing" in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (September 1999)
DeleteNow the Zionists are working feverishly to destabilize the entire region.
They purchased from the absentee Turkish landlords.
Delete"With the Zionists it is always about the money."
With you, you asshole, it is always about anti-semitism.
God damn you are fucked up.
"Now the Zionists are working feverishly to destabilize the entire region."
Ah, sweet jesus..........
Totally fucked up.
Beyond repair.
Bob OreilleSat Jul 26, 06:18:00 PM EDT
DeleteWhat world do you live in these days?
One in which hatred has equated the minimal circumcision of baby Jewish boys at day eight with the coerced genital mutilation of about 4,000,000 Muslim women living within IS territory, on penalty of death. It is a dark, sick, irrational world filled with rage.
Who purchased it, Robert Peterson?
DeleteThere is a name, why do you not speak it?
And not from "absentee Turkish landowners"
The Turks were despotic occupiers, as well.
The Turks had no right to the land that other people were living on.
No more so than if the US government sold your farm / subdivision, to me.
The US government holds ultimate title to your property, can they sell it to foreigners?
You would be okay with that ?!?
That is what the Turks did, to the Palestinians.
Delete
DeletePull your head out of your ass and gain some perspective on the real world, Robert Peterson
If Obama sold 'your' farm to some Saudi Arabians ...
Deleteto pay down the National Debt from the war in Iraq ...
You'd be good to go with that program, Robert Peterson?
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DeleteThe Turks were despotic occupiers, as well.
The Turks had no right to the land that other people were living on.
Good heavens, rat, given your views we would all be living in combines. The 'Palestinians' (of all races and religions) have been ruled over for one period or another over millennia by one major power or another, most of them 'despotic' to one degree or another.
In 1948, Jews had purchased about 7% of the land within the Palestinian mandate. Why not leave it at that?
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Because the analogy stands, would Robert Peterson be good with it if Obama sold his farm to the Saudi Arabians?
DeleteThen comes the ethnic cleansing by the Zionists, no argument, there.
But back to the original premise, would Bob move quietly off the land, after Obama sold it to foreigners?
Multiple generations living on the land, then evicted when the government sells out to foreigners.
DeleteWho claim to be "Western" who claim to be "First World" but who, in reality are just another old school totalitarian socialist state....
The Israeli government has, to a large extent, continued the Ottoman legal system in regard to land ownership.
Thus, today the vast proportion of land within the State of Israel (roughly 93%) is owned and managed either by the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) or the JNF. This figure includes much of such extensive regions as the Negev and the Judean Wilderness (near the Dead Sea), which are sparsely populated.
Jewish settlements in the State of Israel usually are located on lands that are owned by the ILA or the JNF and that have been consigned to each settlement through long-term leases.
Less than 7% of the land in the State of Israel is privately owned.
http://elearning.la.psu.edu/jst060/lesson_2/land-ownership
Recall how upset Robert Peterson was with the planning and zoning department of his little town. How they made him include a park in his subdivision. When he thinks the town does not need a park, some bureaucrat in the town agreed with him, rather than listen to him whine incessantly.
DeleteBut what if the town said No, you cannot subdivide that land, in fact the town is taking it all, and giving it to Mexicans, and you, Robert Peterson, get nothing. When Robert does not vacate the home his grandfather built, the town comes and bulldozes it, while his wife is inside.
Robert would then be expected to walk away, move in with his son and future daughter-in-law, or die. The town does not care where he goes, what he does. As long as the land is available for the Mexican immigrants.
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“Do you know, Mother, that Haj Salem was buried alive in his home?
DeleteDoes he tell you stories in heaven now?
I wish I had had a chance to meet him.
To see his toothless grin and touch his leathery skin.
To beg him, as you did in your youth, for a story from our Palestine.
He was over one hundred years old, Mother.
To have lived so long, only to be crushed to death by a bulldozer.
Is this what it means to be Palestinian?”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin
So Robert moves in with his son and his new bride, into the home that Robert's father built, on a lot in the town.
DeleteAbout a month later the Police come to the door of the house, with the planning bureaucrat, who tells Robert's son that the an audit of the Planning and Zoning records revealed that the building was built without the proper permits. So the town was going to bulldoze it, they have an hour to vacate the house, while the demolition crew unloads the bulldozer from the lowboy trailer. .
Or course, Robert would walk away, quietly and without complaint...
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DeleteRat, my response was to your comments about land purchases by Jews under the Turks. For much of the 19th century, the Turks prohibited land sales in Palestine to Jews. From the late 19th century, they started allowing it and the majority of the land purchases was from absentee landowners. Most of the early purchases were of shit land in the coastal plains. The areas were sparsely populated and more importantly cheap.
During the Mandate period, the British also controlled and restricted Jewish land purchases.
Most of what you are talking about in response to my post happened after 1948.
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I am talking about both, Q.
DeleteStarting with the purchase of large tracts by Rothschild of lands from the GOVERNMENT of Turkey, in the person of the Emir
http://www.jta.org/1931/08/20/archive/baron-edmond-de-rothschild-86
Baron Edmond De Rothschild 86.
August 20, 1931
Paris (Aug. 19)
Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the “father” of Palestine colonisation,
...
He was roused by the pogroms in Southern Russia in 1880, when large numbers of refugees came to Constantinople, with a view to organising groups to purchase land in Palestine and settle there as farmers. It was Joseph Feinberg, the leader of the pioneers in Rishon-Le-Zion, the first of the Jewish colonies in Palestine, who obtained 50,000 francs from the Baron to enable the settlers to overcome their difficulties. The early settlers belonging to the Bilu. Society received generous financial and moral help from the Baron in the establishment of the important colonies of Petach Tikvah, Zichron Jacob, Hederah, Rosh Pinah, Yesod Ha’ Ma’aleh, and most of the older Jewish colonies in Palestine. Over thirty of these colonies were founded with his aid between 1880 and 1895.
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From wiki
Under the supervision of his administrators in Ottoman Palestine, farm colonies and vineyards were established, and two major wineries were opened in Rishon LeZion and Zikhron Ya'akov.[1] It is estimated that Edmond de Rothschild spent over $50 million in supporting the settlements,
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The Land was "Legally Stolen" legally by the Elites of the Ottoman Empire,
The Ottoman Land Code of 1858 "brought about the appropriation by the influential and rich families of Beirut, Damascus, and to a lesser extent Jerusalem and Jaffa and other sub-district capitals, of vast tracts of land in Syria and Palestine and their registration in the name of these families in the land registers"
Which were then sold to Rothschild or his funded proxies.
Read more: http://www.jta.org/1931/08/20/archive/baron-edmond-de-rothschild-86#ixzz38eI1xWJJ
...
The Land of Baron Rothschild, follows this singular man and his endeavor in developing Jewish settlements in Palestine, from the beginning of his activities in Palestine in 1882 until his death in 1934.
Deletehttp://www.eretzmuseum.org.il/e/119/
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“From 1882 on - fifteen years before Theodor Herzl created his Zionist Organization -, Baron Edmond de Rothschild had invested around half-a-million dollars (the budget of a nation) buying lands which traced the invisible frontier of the future State of Israel. In thirty-two years, he had founded around twenty settlements, and had laid the foundations of its future industrialization.
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under a newly-made arrangement with the Sultan allowing these first-ever purchases. Other private acquisitions followed, and by 1882, some 2,200 hectares had been purchased by Jews....
in the final declining phase of the Ottoman Empire, were either hostile to or uninterested in Jewish holdings in the sparsely populated backwater province that Palestine had become. Nearly all land was owned by the state ....
...
Baron Benjamin (Edmond James) de Rothschild (1845-1934) enlisted in this cause after being petitioned by the leaders of Rishon Lezion, one of the First Aliya villages. His patronage embraced 12 settlements at all three levels of land redemption: purchase, reclamation and economically viable settlement. ...
In 1900, Rothschild transferred the settlements, their agricultural enterprises, and 25,000 hectares of land to the Jewish Colonization Association (ICA, est. 1891), which he continued to support in various ways.
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All the land was owned by the Emir / Sultan who personified the "State", that is who Rothschild was uying the land from.
The State of israel continued the land ownership practices of the ottoman Empire. Where people did not 'own' the land, but 'leased' it, historically in perpetuity, but that changed under Zionism. The families being evicted from their historical mufti-generational holdings
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DeleteThe Ottoman Land Code of 1858 "brought about the appropriation by the influential and rich families of Beirut, Damascus, and to a lesser extent Jerusalem and Jaffa and other sub-district capitals, of vast tracts of land in Syria and Palestine and their registration in the name of these families in the land registers"
You post the information yourself but then you misread it.
From the 1880s to the 1930s, most Jewish land purchases were made in the coastal plain, the Jezreel Valley, the Jordan Valley and to a lesser extent the Galilee.[8] This was due to a preference for land that was cheap and without tenants.[8] There were two main reasons why these areas were sparsely populated. The first reason being when the Ottoman power in the rural areas began to diminish in the seventeenth century, many people moved to more centralized areas to secure protection against the lawless Bedouin tribes.[8] The second reason for the sparsely populated areas of the coastal plains was the soil type. The soil, covered in a layer of sand, made it impossible to grow the staple crop of Palestine, corn.[8] As a result this area remained uncultivated and under populated.[4] "The sparse Arab population in the areas where the Jews usually bought their land enabled the Jews to carry out their purchase without engendering a massive displacement and eviction of Arab tenants".[8]
In the 1930s most land was bought from small landowners. Of the land that the Jews bought, "52.6% of the lands were bought from big non-Palestinian landowners, 24.6% from Palestinian-Arab landowners and only 9.4% from the Fellahin".[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_Palestine
The following link is from a Palestinian source and describes the Jewish land purchases under the Ottoman Empire prior to the end of WWI. After 1918, those land purchases were controlled by the Allies and then the British under the mandate. In reading it don't confuse Jewish the growing Jewish population numbers with Jewish ownership of the land.
http://www.palestinelink.eu/palestine/timeline/1876-1918/
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http://gunssavelives.net/blog/court-cases/breaking-washington-dc-ban-on-carry-outside-of-the-home-struck-down-in-court
ReplyDeleteBREAKING: Washington DC Ban on Carry Outside of the Home STRUCK DOWN in Court
"In light of Heller, McDonald, and their progeny, there is no longer any basis on which this Court can conclude that the District of Columbia’s total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny. Therefore, the Court finds that the District of Columbia’s complete ban on the carrying of handguns in public is unconstitutional."
Look for the crime rate to go down.
DeleteOne in which hatred has equated the minimal circumcision of baby Jewish boys at day eight with the coerced genital mutilation of about 4,000,000 Muslim women living within IS territory, on penalty of death. It is a dark, sick, irrational world filled with rage.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the tribal obsession with mutilation of the genitalia of babies? One side has a clitoral obsession and the other fixated on the penis.
God ordered them to do it because he is busy and would have got around to it himself? If it is a design flaw why doesn’t God have a word with engineering, put out a change order, do a redesign on a couple of prototypes and be done with it?
Do you not see how unbelievably stupid and naive such idiocy is? The rage, if any , is against such stupid criminal nonsense.
Savages,
ReplyDeleteSo where are we after 19 days of rage by the IDF?
ReplyDeleteGAZA CITY — With safe passage promised by a 12-hour humanitarian cease-fire, residents of the areas hardest hit in Gaza fighting returned to their homes Saturday. They could not believe what they saw.
Many roads were barely passable, and almost silent. Women did not wail. The men looked stunned. Their neighborhoods were reduced to ugly piles of gray dust, shattered cement block and twisted rebar.
Huge bomb craters marked the spot where on Friday four-story apartment blocks had stood. On some streets, it seemed as if every house was riddled with bullet holes or shrapnel spray, charred by flames or leveled.
The scale of the damage from Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire was the worst seen in the 19 days since Israel launched its offensive. Much of the damage witnessed Saturday had occurred in the past 24 to 48 hours as diplomats debated the terms of a possible truce.
“It looks like an earthquake,” said Rafet Sukar, at the front door of his home on the main street in Shijaiyah, a residential district east of central Gaza City. The back half of his house was gone.
“It was a miracle we got out of here alive,” said Rami Sukar, his brother.
The tops of mosque minarets — perhaps sources of sniper fire — were blasted away. Schools and hospitals were peppered with shrapnel from missiles and shells that fell within their perimeters.
Water pump stations were blown up, electrical lines toppled onto the streets, the main roads blocked by deep impact craters.
At the front lines, within sight of the concrete wall that separates the Gaza Strip from Israel, fresh trails from Israeli tanks and combat bulldozers snaked through backyard gardens and rolled over greenhouses.
Fires still smoldered as the first reporters and residents reached the towns on the front.
There was no looting, nor any police on the streets.
Ambulances struggled to reach the dead. Search crews followed bulldozers that cleared a path forward. There were reports of wounded still trapped in buildings. The Gaza Health Ministry said its crews had recovered at least 85 bodies Saturday.
According to the ministry, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the course of the 19-day campaign.
In some places, the odor of bodies came so strongly that passersby gagged.
ReplyDelete“It will take more than 12 hours to dig them out,” said Yussif Abid al-Hamid, an emergency medical technician wearing latex gloves and trying to get his mask back over his nose. “We need heavy equipment here. We need earthmovers. We can’t dig with our bare hands.”
There were many dead animals, too. Donkeys, horses, cows were scattered at the edges of fields and in the marketplaces. The farm towns at the edges of Gaza are where the shepherds live, and in the shelling they were forced to abandon their flocks.
Down one lane, two men carried a cage filled with songbirds. People in Gaza are so desperate that some who came home to gather up belongings left with a few cans of fruit or a half-gallon of cooking oil.
Local reporters and Gaza residents said the scale of destruction in the areas targeted — the acres of bombed housing — exceeded damage done in the two previous wars of 2009 and 2012. No detailed assessment of the most recent damage was available.
In Beit Hanoun in the northern tier of the Gaza Strip — the scene of intense street battles between Hamas fighters and Israeli troops — there were brass bullet casings and pools of blood and soiled bandages, but no sign of who had won or lost.
Fighters with Hamas and the other militant factions were nowhere to be seen, although Israeli military commanders assumed that the militants would use the 12-hour window to redeploy men and materiel.
Neighborhoods visited by reporters just a day earlier were transformed. Mohammad Shawesh returned to his home in Beit Hanoun on Saturday morning, thinking there might be some minor damage. It was a wreck. He and his family were picking through the gutted rooms, and they assembled at the curb a pitiful bag of rice and a couple of cooking pots.
“I don’t think the truce will last,” he said.
“The Jews are coming.”
ReplyDeleteA few hundred yards away, an Israeli tank started up with a cough of brown smoke and began rumbling forward.
Zuhair Hamad had not seen his home in 17 days. It was destroyed. “We came to get some clothes for the kids,” he said. “The clothes are under there somewhere.”
A hysterical neighbor shouted at journalists — “This was an atom bomb!” — before his friends pulled him away.
At the end of their block, another Israeli tank turned a corner around a sandy berm and residents began to run back, shouting, “The Jews are coming!”
After a few hundred yards, Shijaiyah’s main boulevard became impassable for vehicles, and so residents walked. The Israeli military said the district sits on a vast network of underground bunkers, weapons caches and “terror tunnels.”
“I worked 20 years to make my home, to buy the furniture to put inside,” said Mohammad Helou, a carpenter who had lived in a four-story apartment house with the families of his three brothers.
All that was left was a deep hole in the ground, and a prayer rug they dug up.
William Booth is The Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief. He was previously bureau chief in Mexico, Los Angeles and Miami.
OOrah motherfuckers.
ReplyDeleteGood job diverting the world’s attention from the ISIS fanatics spreading their own stench of death and destruction.
ReplyDeleteBoth tribes are savages, religoius fanatics, killing for the land, doing it because they love god or fear god. Flip a coin. He loves me, he loves me not. The penis or the vagina?
Nine Palestinians were killed during clashes with the IDF and Border Police over the weekend, in one of the deadliest days in the West Bank in the last 10 years.
ReplyDeleteNasri Mahmoud, 14, was killed late Friday night in Beit Fajar, near Bethlehem, Palestinian medics and witnesses said.
Palestinians hurled stones, and soldiers responded with stun grenades and live and rubber bullets, the sources said.
In Jenin, Basem Abu Alrub, 19, was killed and Eid Rabah Fdilat, 28, was killed in the Arroub refugee camp near Hebron on Friday, according to Palestinian sources.
They said he was a bystander who was walking home from the mosque.
They also said three Palestinians were killed in stone-throwing protests in the village of Beit Umar near Hebron.
The clashes began during a demonstration against Operation Protective Edge, which was held after the midday prayer at a local mosque.
Hashem Abu Maria, 45, was shot in the chest. Abu Maria works at the Defense for Children International organization, the sources said.
Palestinian sources said as the clashes raged on, 30-year-old Sultan Zaqiq and 39-year-old Abdul Hamid Bregeith were both shot and killed by IDF troops.
In a separate incident near another protest against the conflict in Gaza, witnesses said a person in a car, believed to be a settler, shot dead Khaled Azmi Odeh, 18, and wounded three others near Nablus.
The victims were walking along a main street used by both Palestinians and settlers.
A question of morality
ReplyDeleteWhat would we be hearing from the media if the score was reversed, 1000 dead Jews, 65 dead Gazans?
If the stench was of rotting flesh was Jewish flesh?
The destruction was of Jewish homes and towns?
Check points for Jews instead of check points by Jews?
I think we know. Don’t we?
From the massacre of Arab villagers by Israel’s new army in 1948, as it is set down by Israeli historians, to the Sabra and Shatila massacre, when Lebanese Christian allies of Israel murdered up to 1,700 people in 1982 while Israeli troops watched; from the Qana massacre of Lebanese Arabs at the UN base – yes, the UN again – in 1996, to another, smaller terrible killing at Qana (again) 10 years later.
ReplyDeleteAnd so to the mass killing of civilians in the 2008-9 Gaza war. And after Sabra and Shatila, there were inquiries, and after Qana there was an inquiry and after Gaza in 2008-9, there was an inquiry and don’t we remember the weight of it, somewhat lightened of course when Judge Goldstone did his best to disown it, when – according to my Israeli friends – he came under intense personal pressure.
In other words, we have been here before. The claim that only “terrorists” are to blame for those whom Hamas kills and only “terrorists” are to blame for those whom Israel kills (Hamas “terrorists”, of course).
And the constant claim, repeated over and over and over, that Israel has the highest standards of any army in the world and would never hurt civilians. I recall here the 17,500 dead of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, most of whom were civilians. Have we forgotten all this?
And apart from impunity, the word stupidity comes to mind. I will forget here the corrupt Arabs and the killers of Isis and the wholesale mass murders of Iraq and Syria.
Perhaps their indifference to “Palestine” is to be expected. They do not claim to represent our values. But what do we make of John Kerry, Obama’s Secretary of State, who told us last week that the “underlying issues” of the Israeli-Palestinian war need to be addressed? What on earth was he doing all last year when he claimed he was going to produce a Middle East peace in 12 months? Doesn’t he realise why the Palestinians are in Gaza?
The truth is that many hundreds of thousands of people around the world – I wish I could say millions – want an end to this impunity, an end to phrases such as “disproportionate casualties”. Disproportionate to what? Brave Israelis also feel this way.
They write about it. Long live the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. Meanwhile, the Arab, Muslim world becomes wilder with anger. And we will pay the price.
ROBERT FISK
For the passengers on MH17, we demand – immediately – proper burial and care for the relatives of the dead. We curse those who left bodies lying in the fields of eastern Ukraine – as many bodies have been lying, for a shorter time, perhaps, but under an equally oven-like sky, in Gaza.
ReplyDeleteAnd there’s something very odd, isn’t there, about our reactions to these two outrageous death tolls. In Gaza, we plead for a ceasefire but let them bury their dead in the sweltering slums of Gaza and cannot even open a humanitarian route for the wounded.
For the passengers on MH17, we demand – immediately – proper burial and care for the relatives of the dead. We curse those who left bodies lying in the fields of eastern Ukraine – as many bodies have been lying, for a shorter time, perhaps, but under an equally oven-like sky, in Gaza.
Because – and this has been creeping up on me for years – we don’t care so much about the Palestinians, do we? We care neither about Israeli culpability, which is far greater because of the larger number of civilians the Israeli army have killed. Nor, for that matter, Hamas’s capability. Of course, God forbid that the figures should have been the other way round. If 800 Israelis had died and only 35 Palestinians, I think I know our reaction.
We would call it – rightly – a slaughter, an atrocity, a crime for which the killers must be made accountable. Yes, Hamas should be made accountable, too. But why is it that the only criminals we are searching for today are the men who fired one – perhaps two – missiles at an airliner over Ukraine?
If Israel’s dead equalled those of the Palestinians – and let me repeat, thank heavens this is not the case – I suspect that the Americans would be offering all military support to an Israel endangered by “Iranian-backed terrorists”. We would be demanding that Hamas hand over the monsters who fired rockets at Israel and who are, by the way, trying to hit aircraft at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. But we are not doing this. Because those who have died are mostly Palestinians.
More questions. What’s the limit for Palestinian deaths before we have a ceasefire? Eight hundred? Or 8,000? Could we have a scorecard? The exchange rate for dead? Or would we just wait until our gorge rises at the blood and say enough – even for Israel’s war, enough is enough. It’s not as if we have not been through all this before.
ROBERT FISK
" Long live the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. Meanwhile, the Arab, Muslim world becomes wilder with anger. And we will pay the price.”
ReplyDeleteI've never known anyone anywhere in my entire life so deeply concerned about a circumcised penis.
ReplyDeleteI have one, and I never ever even think about it.
What is the answer, Robert Peterson, if Obama were to claim eminent domain of your property, take it without recompense, and give it to Mexican Immigrants, would YOU go quietly into the night?
DeleteParis's Kristallnacht
ReplyDeleteby Guy Millière • July 26, 2014 at 5:00 am
This was the first time since World War II that an anti-Semitic pogrom took place in France.
Almost all French politicians adopt an attitude of appeasement toward the enemies of Israel and Jews. They act as if they did not see that the hate speech that France finances in the Middle East is now spreading throughout France itself.
No major French television report speaks of Hamas's genocidal Jew-hatred or of the use of Arab women and children as human shields. Criticizing radical Islam on public television is now almost impossible. Members of the Israeli government are never interviewed on French television.
French politicians know that 70% of all the inmates in French prisons are Muslims, and that these prisons have been transformed into recruiting centers for jihadists.
If rat weren't banned from flying, he could go now and join the fun in Paris.
DeleteHe owns his own Cessna Skymaster, he does not take "Public Transportation"
DeleteCircumcision
ReplyDeleteFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about male circumcision. For female circumcision, see female genital mutilation.
Page semi-protected
Circumcision
Intervention
Circumcision central Asia2.jpg
A circumcision performed in Central Asia, c. 1865–1872
ICD-10-PCS 0VBT
ICD-9-CM V50.2
MeSH D002944
MedlinePlus 002998
eMedicine 1015820
Male circumcision (from Latin circumcidere, meaning "to cut around")[1] is the surgical removal of the foreskin (prepuce) from the human penis.[2][3][4] In a typical procedure, the foreskin is opened and then separated from the glans after inspection. The circumcision device (if used) is placed, and then the foreskin is removed. Topical or locally injected anesthesia may be used to reduce pain and physiologic stress.[5] For adults, general anesthesia is an option, and the procedure is often performed without a specialized circumcision device. The procedure is most often elected for religious reasons or personal preferences,[1] but may be indicated for both therapeutic and prophylactic reasons. It is a treatment option for pathological phimosis, refractory balanoposthitis and chronic urinary tract infections (UTIs);[2][6] it is contraindicated in cases of certain genital structure abnormalities or poor general health.[3][6]
The positions of the world's major medical organizations range from considering neonatal circumcision as having no benefit and significant risks to having a modest health benefit that outweighs small risks. No major medical organization recommends either universal circumcision for all infant males (aside from the recommendations of the World Health Organization for parts of Africa), or banning the procedure.[7] Ethical and legal questions regarding informed consent and autonomy have been raised over non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision.[8][9]
A 2009 Cochrane meta-analysis of studies done on sexually active heterosexual men in Africa found that circumcision reduced their acquisition of HIV by 38–66% over a period of 24 months.[10] The WHO recommends considering circumcision as part of a comprehensive HIV program in areas with high endemic rates of HIV, such as sub-Saharan Africa,[11][12] where studies have concluded it is cost-effective against HIV.[11] Circumcision reduces the incidence of HSV-2 infections by 28%,[13] and is associated with reduced oncogenic HPV prevalence[14] and a reduced risk of both UTIs and penile cancer,[5] but routine circumcision is not justified for the prevention of those conditions.[2][15] Studies of its potential protective effects against other sexually transmitted infections have been inconclusive. A 2010 review of literature worldwide found circumcisions performed by medical providers to have a median complication rate of 1.5% for newborns and 6% for older children, with few instances of severe complications.[16] Bleeding, infection and the removal of either too much or too little foreskin are the most common complications cited.[16][17] Circumcision does not appear to have a negative impact on sexual function.[18]
About one-third of males worldwide are circumcised.[1][16] The procedure is most prevalent in the Muslim world and Israel (where it is near-universal), the United States and parts of Southeast Asia and Africa; it is relatively rare in Europe, Latin America, parts of Southern Africa and most of Asia.[1] The origin of circumcision is not known with certainty; the oldest documentary evidence for it comes from ancient Egypt.[1] Various theories have been proposed as to its origin, including as a religious sacrifice and as a rite of passage marking a boy's entrance into adulthood.[19] It is part of religious law in Judaism[20] and is an established practice in Islam, Coptic Christianity and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.[1][21][22]
What is the answer, Robert Peterson, if Obama were to claim eminent domain of your property, take it without recompense, and give it to Mexican Immigrants, would YOU go quietly into the night?
DeleteThe difference here between Jews and Moslems seems mostly to be that Moslems widely practice female genital mutilation and Jews do not. Both practice circumcision.
ReplyDeleteIt does seem to offer benefits in regards to AIDS and other unhealthy conditions.
Seems to me to be and odd thing for a grown male to be uptight about.
What is the answer, Robert Peterson, if Obama were to claim eminent domain of your property, take it without recompense, and give it to Mexican Immigrants, would YOU go quietly into the night?
DeleteIf I've learned anything from mythology, circumcision began in the long ago as a rite of passage from youth to manhood.
ReplyDeleteIn Australia the abo - back in a better day - used to make a slit on the under side of the penis as if to designate a woman's equipment.
Thus this male became both male and female.
This was to symbolize the overcoming of duality in a developed mature abo, as things were back in the beginning, in the dream time.
The abo had the odd idea, to us, that the further one was away from the beginning, from the dream time, the further one was away from Absolute Reality.
DeleteThey wished to recapture this fullness of the beginning in their rites and dances.
Thus to them, the world was in a continual state of decline, a devolution......
DeleteWhat is the answer, Robert Peterson, if Obama were to claim eminent domain of your property, take it without recompense, and give it to Mexican Immigrants, would YOU go quietly into the night?
DeleteFor God's sake, rat, rat of the repetition compulsion, Obama is much too busy golfing to worry about my property.
ReplyDeleteNow go to bed, finally.
You have had a long day and it shows.
Judge Jeanine Pirro is really taking the Pope and the Vatican to task for not getting out there and raising hell about the slaughter of Christians in the middle east.
ReplyDeleteAnother wonderful person who would make a fine President.
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
ReplyDelete"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Delete" The fool that knows himself a fool is wise."
DeleteThat appears to be your only shot at wisdom. Do you actually know you are a fool?
DeleteHow about that article yesterday, did you actually read it? Your comments suggest you didn't.
ReplyDeleteHow the Media Is Helping Hamas
by Bassam Tawil • July 27, 2014 at 5:00 am
"We know that Hamas uses human shields. But why would you report this when you are sitting in the middle of the Gaza Strip, surrounded by Hamas gunmen?" — Reporter covering the war, who asked not to be identified.
Besides the human shields story there is another item that the international media choose to ignore: the extrajudicial execution of Palestinian "collaborators" during the last two weeks. The executions were reportedly carried out in the most brutal manner. Hamas has also been shooting suspected "collaborators" in the legs to prevent them from moving around.
It is the media that is helping Hamas get away with war crimes.
Hamas broke the ceasefire.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteTotally unwarranted.
DeleteJuly 27, 2014
ReplyDeleteIndicting Hamas for War Crimes
By Michael Curtis
Hamas must be indicted in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Evidence of Hamas’s crimes in the Gaza Strip has been visible for a decade to anyone not blinded by an obsessive commitment to an anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic outlook. It is now obvious to the head of the United Nations, even as it is denied by the U.N. Human Rights Council; by Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights; by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; and by all those dedicated to the demonization or destruction of Israel
The truth has been revealed, unexpectedly, by two organizations: the European Union and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), a body that challenges the United Nations Human Rights Council for the title of the most worthless international organization in the world.
At the meeting on July 22, 2014, the 28 foreign ministers of the EU declared that the indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas and militant groups in the Gaza Strip, directly harming civilians, constituted “criminal and unjustifiable acts.”
One can paraphrase the quote from Oscar Wilde. To find unexpectedly hidden in one of the UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip a batch of 20 rockets on July 16, 2014 that Hamas was planning to fire against Israeli civilians may be regarded as a misfortune; to find a second batch of rockets in another UNRWA school three days later looks like carelessness. Wilde might also have mentioned incompetence. UNRWA said it was unable to confirm the precise number of rockets in the second school. Nor did it mention any other of the UNRWA schools that have been misused, with or without its knowledge or approval, to house weapons to be used by Hamas.
UNRWA may well be the only group of individuals “shocked” at these “discoveries” known previously to every objective observer of Middle Eastern affairs. The naive UNRWA did issue a statement that it “strongly and unequivocally condemns the group or groups responsible for this flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law.” Yet it appeared uninformed of the name of any such group. In fact, declaring that it was doing so in order to preserve the safety and security of the schools under its auspices, UNRWA handed the rockets in its schools back to unnamed “local government authorities in Gaza.” The “authorities” turned out to be the terrorist group Hamas.
DeleteUNRWA officials, after being caught out by their “discoveries,” stressed the importance of neutrality on all premises. What neutrality? They refuse to acknowledge their partisanship: the use of UNRWA schools for stockpiling weapons and as alleged bases for firing rockets. Those officials do not concede that Hamas has used its facilities to commit war crimes by attacking Israeli civilians while it uses schoolchildren as human shields, and operates the schools to safeguard its rocket facilities.
UNRWA, at a minimum, has been irresponsible in turning a blind eye to Hamas crimes. Instead, it called for an investigation after a girls’ school, believed to be hiding rockets, was shelled by Israel. UNRWA discounts the Israeli behavior that contrasts so strongly with that of Hamas. Israel, in Operation Protection Edge, issues warnings; drops leaflets to Gaza civilians; and sends phone, TV, and radio messages before its attacks. The level of Gaza civilian causalities is disquieting, and no doubt mistakes have been made, as in all wars, but the level is the consequence of Hamas’s use of civilians as shields, and its putting weapons systems in populated areas. UNRWA should be aware that Israel has set up a field hospital near the Erez Crossing to treat wounded Palestinians, an act it had done once before in January 2009.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon witnessed the reality for himself. In Jerusalem on July 22, 2014, he declared it “quite shocking” to see all kinds of rockets fired by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on “the heads of all the people and neighborhoods where many people are living.” No country, he added, would accept rockets raining down on its territory. A day later, on July 23, 2014, Ban Ki-moon also expressed outrage and regret at the placing of weapons in a U.N.-administered school. Those responsible, he said, are turning schools into military targets and endangering the lives of innocent children.
The Obama administration has not been as forthright as it should be on this issue. The call by some administration officials for the disarming of Hamas is a pious aspiration. In similar manner, the State Department spokesperson, Marie Harf, explained that UNRWA was "a relief organization, not a peacekeeping organization that can deal with rockets.” UNRWA does offer relief to Palestinian refugees, but it also runs a children’s summer camp that includes recitals of chants with the words “we have to liberate Palestine.” UNRWA has 30,000 employees, some of whom are supporters of Hamas. The textbooks used in its schools have sometimes referred to Jews as pigs and monkeys, and they contain implications that action against the State of Israel is heroic.
DeleteIt was surprising that Secretary of State John Kerry stated on July 21, 2014 that the U.S. was planning to grant the Gaza Strip $47 million in humanitarian aid, $15 million of which will be distributed by UNRWA. The U.S. administration is aware of the extent and the considerable number of “offensive tunnels” built by Hamas to infiltrate Israeli territory. Some calculations are that each tunnel costs $1 million to build and uses large quantities of concrete, material that could be put to better use for civilian housing, which is sadly lacking. One tunnel is located under the al-Wafa hospital, where Hamas has a command post and stores weapons. Can Secretary Kerry ensure that the $47 million will be used only for civilian housing?
What the United States administration and the U.N. secretary-general should be doing is indicting Hamas before the International Criminal Court. The Court was established on July 1, 2002 on the principles adopted by the Rome Statute on July 17, 1998. The Court has jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. This jurisdiction is applicable to acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.
In its behavior towards Israel, Hamas is guilty of both crimes against humanity and war crimes according to Article 7(1) of the Rome Statute, which applies to murder and extermination. Hamas is guilty of a government policy in which those two crimes are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Its actions are more than isolated inhumane acts and constitute a consistent pattern of behavior. The stated aim of Hamas is not simply to harm Israeli civilians, but rather a policy of genocide, the killing of Jews, and the elimination of the State of Israel. Hamas has really only one grievance: the existence of Israel.
DeleteArticle 8(2)(b) of the Rome Statute deals with the war crime of using protected persons as shields. Hamas has been guilty on numerous occasions of this crime – the intention to shield a military objective from attack or shield, favor, or impede military operations. The major war crime of Hamas is to use children for this purpose. Golda Meir, in her straightforward manner, once commented, “We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” In contrast, Hamas has stated that preserving the capacity to bomb civilians in Israel is more valued than the loss of Palestinian children.
Those children have been used not only as human shields to protect the terrorists. They have also been used for actions such as being messengers and couriers for the terrorists, for digging tunnels into Israel, and for smuggling. Hamas has used them for military activities, including throwing grenades and rocks, and even for suicide bomber missions. Schools and kindergartens have been used to store missiles and mortars and as launching sites, in the same way as hospitals, mosques, and public places have been used. The sad reality is that Gaza children do not dream of becoming rocket scientists; they dream of firing rockets and becoming holy martyrs.
There is ample evidence to present to the International Criminal Court, including the outspoken statement of the U.N. secretary-general, the discovery that tunnels used for aggression are located under hospitals and private property, and the videos of Hamas actions. One video clearly shows rockets being fired next to civilian buildings. Another shows a demonstration of human shields as civilians were forced to gather on top of the home of a known Hamas terrorist to prevent an attack by Israel. Ban Ki-moon has spoken of the need to address the “root causes” of instability in Gaza. A case brought against Hamas before the International Criminal Court would find that the basis of instability in Gaza is the crimes against humanity and the war crimes committed by Hamas.
Michael Curtis is author of Jews, Antisemitism, and the Middle East.
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DeleteWhat the United States administration and the U.N. secretary-general should be doing is indicting Hamas before the International Criminal Court. The Court was established on July 1, 2002 on the principles adopted by the Rome Statute on July 17, 1998. The Court has jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. This jurisdiction is applicable to acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.
This is at least a bit ironic in that both the US and Israel have indicated their states will not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC.
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It is a little ironic.
DeleteNevertheless the sentiment is correct.
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ReplyDeleteNow, now, now, that was hardly warranted. It was just an article after all, with one slight edit.
DeleteUpon getting pummeled again, the ignoble Hamas asks for another cease fire.
ReplyDeleteIsrael however may not agree this time, ignoble Hamas having broken the previous ceasefire.
Deuce vanished my wonderful circumcision posts.
ReplyDeleteHe is losing his sense of humore.
humor
DeleteFighting around here is like typing with only one hand......and sometimes in disappearing print.
ReplyDelete