Dang, Epa, If You Didn't Put Me In A Mood For This

The Infidel's Infidel

   

 

 

   

  

 Now how 'bout a double shot of Jack and a fuckin' Camel?

OT ..Recipe for Sinatra Burgers

‘Haniyeh: No Future For Israel In Palestine’, meanwhile Obama reinstated financial aid to PA under false pretense

(JPost)Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told an international pro-Palestinian delegation on Friday that there is no future for Israel “on the land of Palestine,” Gaza news portal Al-Resalah reported. 

Haniyeh was speaking at a meeting in Gaza with delegates from several countries including Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. “We must live up to our motto.. .which says, we will not recognize Israel,” the Hamas-affiliate quoted him as saying. 

He reportedly emphasized the importance of the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and lauded the “victory of the Palestinian hunger strikers.” Israel and Palestinian security prisoners signed a deal to end a 28-day hunger strike by the inmates on Monday. According to the terms of the agreement, Palestinian prisoners committed to refrain from dealing with “activities against security” within prison confines. 

In exchange, they will receive benefits from the Prisons Service, including the end of separation from the general prison population, and family visits. 

The Hamas prime minister also thanked the delegation for their efforts, “to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people in the besieged Gaza Strip, and strengthen their steadfastness on their land.” 

The Obama administration justified releasing more than $192 million in financial aid to the Palestinian Authority with false information, according to an Israeli expert who monitors the Palestinian media’s constant promotion of violent, hateful rhetoric. 

The administration quietly reinstated the P.A.’s aid last month after it was frozen by Congress in the wake of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s attempt to declare statehood before the United Nations. The administration also secretly attempted to restore funding to a U.N. cultural agency that unilaterally—and illegally—recognized the “State of Palestine.” 

In explaining the administration’s rationale for reinstating the funds, White House spokesperson Tommy Vietor claimed, “The P.A. has recognized Israel’s right to exist, renounced violence, and accepted previous agreements, including the Roadmap ...” 

Click here to read the whole thing.

The Obama Admin DESERVES CREDIT…

for negotiations to bring Chen Guangchen to the USA.

THAT WAS A GOOD SHOW

Update is that he is ENROUTE to the USA.

NYT

Chinese Dissident at Beijing Airport, Ready to Leave for U.S. 

Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal defender who made a dramatic escape from house arrest and whose decision to seek refuge in American Embassy jolted U.S.-Sino relations, was scheduled on Saturday to leave China for the United States, according to friends who have spoken to him.Mr. Chen was booked on a 3:45 p.m. United Airlines flight bound for Newark with his wife and two children, although the flight was later delayed.

Speaking by cellphone, Mr. Chen told friends he was excited to be leaving China but that he was also worried about the fate of relatives he leaves behind. “He’s happy to finally have a rest after seven years of suffering but he’s also worried they will suffer some retribution,” said Bob Fu, president of ChinaAid, a Christian advocacy group based in Texas.

Toots Thielemans

The Dolphin

with Jaco Pastorius (on Piano)

Three Views of a Secret

 

Narvey on Walker: Book Review

Jonathon Narvey´s review in full of my book, An Occasional Walker, follows this excerpt. 

This collection of Walker’s writings from the No Dhimittude blog reads at times like a stream of consciousness from a scripture-quoting American Tea Party recruiter. There are diatribes against the Islamist threat that (belatedly) burst into the public’s consciousness on the day of the 9/11 attacks; rages against policies of civilizational suicide in the wake of non-assimilating (and occasionally openly seditious) immigrant communities in the West; odes to the oil companies; screeds against environmentalists; nostalgic looks back at shoot-first ask-questions-later cowboy role models.

But occasional breaks in the commentary clue you in that you’re reading something more akin to a work of art by a tortured soul; there’s pain there. Rejection. Grim anecdotes of survival amid gritty poverty. Descriptions of places that might be war zones or just some plain old slum that looks like a war hit it. Haunting slices of life as a derelict. Love in the shadows.

An Occasional Walker is a hard book. Sometimes amusing, other times perplexing; often surprising. Just stay away from the absinthe while you’re reading it.

http://jnarvey.com/2012/05/07/book-review-an-occasional-walker/

More reviews here:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

Many thanks to Jonathon for the review. 

Chinese repay for US Stealth drone intelligence?

Geostrategy Direct (Bill Gertz):

Iran acquires Chinese communications, GPS jammers via North Korea

LONDON — Iran has received advanced communications jammers over the last year and employed them as part of its air defense network. Sources said the jammers were believed to have arrived from North Korea, Teheran’s leading military ally.

Iran claims it cracked the code on its U.S. Air Force’s RQ-170 Sentinel UAV, captured over Iran in December 2011.    WorldNewsTribune.com 

---

The sources said the jammers might have been linked to the downing of the U.S. Air Force’s RQ-170 Sentinel UAV over Iran in December 2011. Teheran has asserted that its electronic warfare systems downed the UAV, something rejected by U.S. officials.

“These jammers have been used by Iran as well as North Korea to disrupt communications of both military and civilian aircraft,” a Western industry source said.

The sources said the Chinese-designed jammers were meant to torpedo global positioning systems on a range of platforms, including fixed-, rotary-wing aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles. They said the jammers could also disrupt navigational and communications systems.

South Korea said the Chinese jammers disrupted 252 civilian flights in late April. The government said none of the flights was in danger of crashing.

“There has been no problem in our military operations,” the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

As early as 2010, Seoul warned of the Chinese-origin jammers. Officials said the jammers could also disrupt guided weapons as well as military communications. 

Ed Klein: Jeremiah Wright Said “It’s Hard to Tell” if He Converted Obama to Christianity (Video)

Now that Israel is united, leaders suddenly become vewwy vewwy quiet!

One of the results of a untied govt now, with 75% of the Knesset behind them, is that Israel’s leaders are FREE TO COMMIT ACTS, without the backbiting natural to partisan govt.

Iran attack decision nears, Israeli elite locks down

A private door opens from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in central Jerusalem directly into a long, modestly furnished, half-paneled room decorated with modern paintings by Israeli artists and a copy of Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence. It contains little more than a long wooden table, brown leather chairs and a single old-fashioned white projector screen.

This inner sanctum at the end of a corridor between Netanyahu’s private room and the office of his top military adviser, is where one of the decade’s most momentous military decisions could soon be taken: to launch an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

Time for that decision is fast running out and the mood in Jerusalem is hardening.

Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of international pressure, saying it needs the fuel for its civilian nuclear program. The West is convinced that Tehran’s real objective is to build an atomic bomb - something which the Jewish state will never accept because its leaders consider a nuclear armed-Iran a threat to its very existence.

Adding to the international pressure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said this week American military plans to strike Iran were “ready” and the option was “fully available”.

The central role Iran plays in Netanyahu’s deliberations is reflected in the huge map of the Middle East hanging by the door of his office. Israel lies on one edge, with Iran taking pride of place in the centre.

Experts say that within a few months, much of Iran’s nuclear program will have been moved deep underground beneath the Fordow mountain, making a successful military strike much more difficult.

LOCKDOWN

As the deadline for a decision draws nearer, the public pronouncements of Israel’s top officials and military have changed. After hawkish warnings about a possible strike earlier this year, their language of late has been more guarded and clues to their intentions more difficult to discern.

“The top of the government has gone into lockdown,” one official said. “Nobody is saying anything publicly. That in itself tells you a lot about where things stand.”

Last week Netanyahu pulled off a spectacular political surprise, creating a coalition of national unity and delaying elections which everyone believed were inevitable. The maneuver also led to speculation that the Israeli leader wanted a broad, strong government to lead a military campaign.

The inclusion of the Iranian-born former Israeli chief of staff and veteran soldier, Gen. Shaul Mofaz, in the coalition, fuelled that speculation - even though both Mofaz and Netanyahu deny that Iran was mentioned in the coalition negotiations.

“I think they have made a decision to attack,” said one senior Israeli figure with close ties to the leadership. “It is going to happen. The window of opportunity is before the U.S. presidential election in November. This way they will bounce the Americans into supporting them.”

Those close to Netanyahu are more cautious, saying no assumptions should be made about an attack on Iran - an attack with such potentially devastating consequences across the volatile Middle East that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas even went so far as to predict in an interview with Reuters last week that it would be “the end of the world”.

Israelis particularly fear retaliation from Iran’s proxy militias - the Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon and the Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip. Both are believed to possess large arsenals of rockets which could hit major Israeli towns and cities.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem told Reuters in February that an Israeli attack on Iran would set the whole Middle East ablaze “with no limit to the fires”. “Gone are the days when Israel decides to strike, and the people are silent,” he said.

The Israeli Prime Minister and his key allies repeat for public consumption the mantra that economic sanctions against Iran must be given time to work and that now is not the time to speak about military options.

Top officials explain the new coalition on purely domestic grounds, saying it was needed to tackle the thorny and divisive issue of pressing Orthodox Jews into military service - in other words, that its formation has much more to do with the agenda inside Israel than abroad.

BURIED NUCLEAR STATES

Diplomats are divided. “I think the Iran thing is a red herring,” said one senior Western envoy. “This is 98 percent about domestic politics”. Others are less convinced.

Mofaz himself refuses to speak about military action against Iran, even in the theoretical.

A military veteran with almost 40 years’ operational experience, whose office in the Israeli parliament displays a poster of Israeli warplanes flying low over the Auschwitz concentration camp, he scoffs at the idea that his Iranian descent gives him special influence on an Iran attack decision. He derides the idea any serious official in the know would talk to visiting journalists about such a sensitive military subject.

But behind the carefully evasive language of top officials, basic facts are clear. Time is running out. Iran’s nuclear program - regarded by Netanyahu as an existential threat to the state of Israel - will soon be buried deep enough underground to render an Israeli attack impossible. The Jewish state’s options are narrowing.

“I think they’ve gone into lockdown mode now,” the senior Western diplomat said. “Whatever happens next, whatever they decide, we will not find out until it happens.”

There are indeed those who see in Israeli posturing over Iran only bluff intended to press world powers into harsher sanctions and avoid war. Some military experts openly doubt how much damage Israel could inflict. The risk of a fiasco is big.

Perhaps the strongest clue as to Israel’s real intentions is to be found in Netanyahu’s private office, behind his desk. Officials say the Israeli premier was strongly influenced by his father, who died last month at the age of 102.

Benzion Netanyahu was a distinguished scholar of Jewish history and his strong sense of the past lives on in Benjamin, who laments to visitors that “most people’s sense of history goes back to breakfast time”.

On a shelf behind Netanyahu’s desk, along with pictures of his family, is a photograph of Winston Churchill. Netanyahu admires the British wartime premier because he saw the true dangers posed by Nazi Germany to the world at a time when many other politicians argued for appeasing Hitler.

The parallels with modern-day Iran are obvious and Netanyahu is explicit about the dangers he believes are posed by militant Islam: as he puts it, its convulsive power, its cult of death and its ideological zeal.

But Churchill, although eloquent on the dangers posed by the rise of Nazi Germany during the 1930s, ultimately failed to prevent Hitler’s ascent to power, the world war he unleashed or the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered.

Netanyahu, those who know him say, is determined to avoid going down in history as the man who shirked his opportunity to stop Iran going nuclear.

PS. In May 1967 Levi Eshkol of the Labor Party established a unity govt with Menachem Begin of Likud. When they were then faced with an Egypt which had removed UN peacekeepers from their border, and armies all around LITERALLY promising a war of annihilation, and a mobilized Israeli nation whose every worker was in the front lines …. it made it a lot easier to order a preemptive air attack on Syria and Egypt. This single action, made possible ONLY by a unified govt, WON THE 1967 war in the first few hours.

And now?

Had Churchill been able to act the way HE thought wise in 1936 when Germany entered the Rhineland, he would have been remembered as an over-nervous, imperialist aggressor whose warmongering and fear mongering led England and Europe to ‘needless’ warlike efforts.

Are WE ready here in the USA? Or will this be an effort from hour one to turn the war off (as govt war gaming showed we would)?

Dwight Eisenhower regretted the rest of his life, his actions over the Sinai in 1956.

Or, just build a wall and call it East Berlin

It’s called acceleration.

It’s what some people do when the enforcement plans fail. Do more, harder and that will teach the kids / bastards / whoever.

Senators to Unveil the ‘Ex-Patriot Act’ to Respond to Facebook’s Saverin’s Tax ‘Scheme’Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a status update for Facebook co-founderEduardo Saverin: Stop attempting to dodge your taxes by renouncing your U.S. citizenship or never come to back to the U.S. again.

In September 2011, Saverin relinquished his U.S. citizenship before the company announced its planned initial public offering of stock, which will debut this week. The move was likely a financial one, as he owns an estimated 4 percent of Facebook and stands to make $4 billion when the company goes public. Saverin would reap the benefit of tax savings by becoming a permanent resident of Singapore, which levies no capital gains taxes.

At a news conference this morning, Sens. Schumer and Bob Casey, D-Pa., will unveil the “Ex-PATRIOT” – “Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy” – Act to respond directly to Saverin’s move, which they dub a “scheme” that would “help him duck up to $67 million in taxes.”

The senators will call Saverin’s move an “outrage” and will outline their plan to re-impose taxes on expatriates like Saverin even after they flee the United States and take up residence in a foreign country. Their proposal would also impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship.

The plan would bar individuals like Saverin from ever reentering the United States again.

Here’s how that works …. if you have an idea that might work, and you have confidence in that idea, and it can be financed, and you know it … YOU LEAVE RIGHT AWAY, before it comes to fruition.

Inventors, engineers, scientists … hello?

HUMAN NATURE cannot be legislated this way.

This situation calls for AMORAL attitudes.

What is practical?

MAKE IT EASIER FOR THEM TO MAKE MONEY, COLLECT LESS REVENUE FROM EACH BUT HAVE MORE SOURCES, MORONS.

This is like a town manager, who upon seeing businesses leaving the town center for the mall area which just falls in a different town, RAISES TAXES ON THOSE LEFT.

That’s the senate, STUPID TOWN MANAGERS

Hound Dog Taylor & Little Walter

Wild About You Baby

Little Walter's Jump

Tom Cruise Is Not Gay - CORRECTION ADDED - TOM CRUISE IS NOT GAY, AFTER ALL

I'm not gay.
   --- Tom Cruise

CORRECTION - For the record, when I posted this I thought this was merely a photograph presented by Tom Cruise in the interest of showing off his new tattoos.

 I did not know it was a publicity photo to promote his new movie. 

That makes the photo DECIDEDLY LESS GAY.

 So, please allow me to correct any misunderstanding my post may have cause that, perhaps, Tom Cruise is gay, when I said he was not gay.

For suresies this time, TOM CRUISE IS NOT GAY.

Never let anyone tell you IBA does not attempt to correct it's mistakes.

Tel Aviv rape suspect's DNA matches

The Muslim who raped a 17 year old girl in Tel Aviv was checked for DNA and it matched the samples from the scene:

DNA evidence has linked the 21-year-old Palestinian man suspected of subjecting a young couple to a prolonged rape and sexual assault to the scene of the crime, senior law enforcement sources confirmed Wednesday.

Police arrested the West Bank resident in Tel Aviv this week on suspicion of following the couple to the Gan Ha’ir parking lot, brandishing a knife and forcing them into the parking lot’s bathroom, where he allegedly forced them to carry out sexual acts on one another and raped the 17-year-old girl.

The DNA development came as police were set to hold a lineup to see if the couple could identify the suspect.

The suspect, from the Nablus area, who cannot be named due to a media ban, denied raping the girl and said he did not carry out any sexual offenses.

He has also denied being in possession of a knife. However, the suspect did say he stole the couple’s cellphones.

Well now that's basically a confession of guilt. And he should be given a sound belting for what he put the poor girl through.

This Week On The Gathering Storm: Midnight Rider!

Listen to The Gathering Storm Radio Show, hosted by WC and Always On Watch. The show broadcasts live for 30 minutes every Friday beginning at noon, Pacific Time.

The call-in number is 646-915-9870.

This week's scheduled guest is Midnight Rider.

Listen to the May 18, 2012 edition of The Gathering Storm Radio Show, live or later, by CLICKING HERE.

UPCOMING SHOWS:
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Eastern Germany is most atheist place on the globe

In this Die Welt article translated on World Crunch, they discuss how this once communist dominated region has become the most godless place you can be (via Hot Air):

A comparison of generations around the world shows that virtually everywhere, atheism is much more pronounced among the youth than it is among people ages 55 and more, thus showing the considerable influence that modernization has had on religious belief. In Poland, for example, 79.3% of those over 68 believe in God, as opposed to only 58.4% of those between 28 and 37.

The only exception is Israel, where belief is God is markedly more pronounced among young people. This could be related to the immigration of non-secular Jews to Israel, but the study’s authors also think that it is partially due to a growing split along Jewish and Muslim religious lines. Under conditions of competition and separation, religious belief comes to have greater meaning for one’s sense of personal identity, they write. Religious competition of that sort is virtually nonexistent in eastern Germany because so few Muslims live there.

Researchers found other reasons for atheism in the former East Germany, not least the deep mark left by the National Socialists and the Communists. But they also point to the fact that many Slavic and non-Orthodox communities present in the area since the Middle Ages were nonreligious; that the secularization movements during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) were particularly strong in the states of Thuringia and Saxony; that the resistance of most DDR dissidents to the church was not seen, unlike the way it was perceived in Catholic Poland, as specifically religiously motivated.

Now what does this signal for starters? That the nazis clearly did have a secular/atheist influence - them first, commies next - on eastern Germany.

As for Israel and its own influence in Judaism (Zionism too, but that's another story), that's certainly flattering that they acknowledge by contrast how in the world of Judaism, the problems with godlessness are a lot less than in Germany. But is that really so that not many Muslims live in eastern Germany? Odd, because they certainly are quite a presence in the west end.

If eastern Germany is tops in secularity though, then Britain must be coming a strong second. According to this Guardian article from a year and a half ago:

In the latest 2010 BSA report, published earlier this month, only 42% said they were Christians while 51% now say they have no religion. Admittedly, some other surveys – including the last census – have produced different findings on these issues, usually to the advantage of the religious option. There is also a margin of error in all such exercises. All the same, and particularly since the trends in opinion over time seem well set, it is hard not to feel that this latest finding marks a cultural watershed.

It's downright disturbing if it allows for Islamofascism to fill the void the former Christian majority is leaving behind. One of the commentors even says:

Trouble is while Christianity slowly disappears - Islam grows to fill the void.

And as has been discussed plenty here, that's exactly what's happening: Islam is busily filling the vacuum left as Christianity vanishes in the UK, and the Religion of Rape could very easily be the 9 percent not cited in this particular report.

This was found through the blog of an athiest, who even had the gall to say:

Obviously, we have a long way to go, but this does bring some measure of hope that one day we might live to see a saner, more rational society.

Oh god. Who knew that someone could possibly think being an athiest automatically makes one a saint? Shudder. A society in which Islamic "honor" murders run rampant and are all but swept under the rug by the press and politicians is not one you can consider sane and rational. And what about Karl Marx and all the damage he caused for many years to come with the atheist/secular philosophy he conceived, which the commies took up as part of their indoctrine? Is that not an example of how atheism can have some very bad impacts?

And it's not simply because of a growing split between Judaism and Islam that younger folk in Israel have stronger faith as the researchers for Die Welt think - it's because having faith in Judaism is one of the best ways to counter the influence and threat of Islam. And for Israelis, having strong faith in God and the Torah is something that can help to guard them against what the Koran teaches.