Musical Interlude

Edwin Black’s ‘Financing the Flames’ Connects New Israel Fund to Historic Ford Foundation Anti-Israel Activism

In Edwin Black’s new book, ‘Financing the Flames,’ the author of ‘IBM and the Holocaust‘ follows the money trail to uncover the powers behind non-profit groups attempting to de-legitimize Israel.

The book focuses on the role played by the New Israel Fund, a non-profit initially funded by the Ford Foundation, that donates to hundreds of smaller non-profits, many of which Black ties to programs attacking Israel or attempting to de-legitimize the Jewish state.

Black’s book explores NIF’s funding sources and its out-sized influence as a lobbying force in the Knesset and as a destabilizing force for the IDF. He also profiles some of the fringe groups that receive its donor funds and makes the case that Americans are indirectly funding a controversial Palestinian Authority program that pays convicted terrorists in Israeli jails.

It’s just mutilation

A female genital mutilation (FGM) campaigner was left in tears after an experiment intended to assess the impact of political correctness on the fight against cutting saw 19 people sign a fake pro-FGM petition within 30 minutes.

Leyla Hussein, 32, who suffered female genital mutilation as a child, approached shoppers in Northampton with the petition, which argued that as FGM was part of her culture, it should be protected.

During the 30-minute experiment, 19 people signed the petition and just one refused – a result Hussein blamed on the all-pervading culture of political correctness.

 

History Months for Sale! Limited Supply. Hindus & Sikhs, get your ‘months’ too before them Jews do!

“Did you know we’re just completing what Canada’s Parliament has declared as “Islamic History Month”?

Yes, all Octobers in Canada shall be an opportunity for you infidels to learn from my people.

Learn about our often bloody history of conquest and enlightenment, including how we Muslims slaughtered our own Prophet Mohammed’s family, right up to modern times when we committed genocides in Bangladesh and Darfur and tried to kill innocent school girls like Malala Yousafzai.

It’s amazing how Canada is providing us Muslims the opportunity to reconcile the crimes and accomplishments of our forefathers, without us having to fear for our lives.

So, now that we have allotted October to Muslims, how about designating every month of the year as a “History Month” for all the religious (and other) groups in Canada?”

Starvation in Syria: a war tactic

One Syrian security official called it the “Starvation Until Submission Campaign”, blocking food and medicine from entering and people from leaving besieged areas of Syria.

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have used partial sieges to root out rebel forces from residential areas during the civil war. But a recent tightening of blockades around areas near the capital is causing starvation and death, residents and medical staff say.

If You Like Syria, You’ll Love Palestine

Few observers seem able to recognize noteworthy predictive connections between the unraveling situation in Syria and the likely outcomes of Palestinian statehood. Still, this overlooked linkage is significant. In essence, the whole abhorrent panoply of war crimes and crimes against humanity revealed in Syria, including perhaps the use of chemical weapons against civilians, is what we might also expect in “Palestine.”

There, openly fratricidal warfare between Hamas, Fatah and several other Palestinian splinter groups could effectively replicate what we are witnessing today between pro- and anti-Assad forces in Syria.

There is more. With a newly emerging geostrategic polarity between Russia and the United States, the old Cold War antagonists could quickly line up on opposite warring sides in Palestine. Among other things, including possibly parallel cleavages in a steadily nuclearizing Iran, this polarity could portend substantially enlarged instabilities in the Middle East.

For all of its predictable liabilities, both national and regional, Palestine would represent an historically new state. While still not generally understood, there has never been a Palestinian state. Never.

Within all contending Palestinian factions, there is agreement on one central objective: that all prospective Palestinian leaders seek statehood because of an alleged right under international law to “self-determination.” For them, the November 29, 2012 upgrade of the Palestinian Authority to the status of a “nonmember observer state” at the United Nations was merely an intermediary and partial achievement. Now, Hamas, Fatah and assorted sister groups will agree, there still needs to be a follow-on grant of full sovereignty.

Ironically, should this legally upgraded condition actually be realized, it would likely represent the juridical beginning of another Syria. Somehow, it has become customary to explain the Arab-Israeli conflict in terms of a purported absence of Palestinian “sovereign equality.” More precisely, so proceeds this conventional narrative, the Middle East plainly requires the decently enhanced juridical symmetry of a “two-state solution.” Only when a Palestinian state is created alongside the existing Jewish state, goes this contrived argument, can there be “peace.”

To be sure, a great many evident holes puncture this feeble explanation, many of which have to do with its most utterly core assumptions. By now, we should all readily understand, no major Palestinian leader or faction could ever be content with “coexistence. ” Rather, for this person or group, peace can be expected only when all of Israel has finally been incorporated into Palestine.

Seeing requires distance. The movement for Palestinian statehood has never really been about land. It has always been about God. In its modern form, moreover, the grotesque and ultimately genocidal Palestinian view of Israel stems from Hajj Amin el-Husseini’s canonical Jew hatred, and the World War II-era Arab Muslim leader’s corresponding promulgation of Jihad.

The 1988 “Hamas Covenant,” a documentary wellspring of any future Palestinian state, explicitly ties the irreducible obligations of Jihad to Islamic rules: “It is necessary to establish in the minds of all the Muslim generations, that the Palestinian issue is a religious issue, and that it must be dealt with as such.”

This recalcitrant view remains unhidden. Today, on any Palestinian Authority or Hamas map of the region, Israel is unambiguously identified as “Occupied Palestine.” Naturally, such a conspicuously irredentist view does not bode well for area diplomacy. As recently as October 19, 2013, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh urged “armed resistance” as the only correct Palestinian orientation to Israel.

Enter Syria. With the Syrian civil war continuing to rage, even as President Bashar al-Assad is praised by U.S. President Barack Obama for reportedly complying with the destruction of his chemical weapons, we can get a palpable sense of what Palestine would look like. Although rarely considered in this manner, the current situation in Syria is actually a reliably portentous omen of what ultimately awaits in “Palestine.”

READ ON

Emotional baby

Norm Macdonald on Hitler

The Unbearable Lightness of Obama

Is there a method to President Obama’s style of leadership, his methods of decision-making, his habits of attention, oversight and follow-through? In recent months I’ve been keeping a file of stories that might suggest an answer. See what you think.

Lord and CEO of the underworld donates $25 million to York U

Nope, these people aren’t deranged Jew haters or anything.

Antony Piazza, who changed his name from HOUSHANG NAZEMI, charged with possession of explosive device components

A 71-year-old man has been charged with possession of an explosive device, endangering an aircraft and mischief in connection with a scare at Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport.

Antony Piazza was detained at the airport on Sunday as he tried to board a flight to Los Angeles.

Police said his carry-on bag contained components for making an explosive device, though it did not contain actual explosive material, police say.

“He had numerous parts of an explosive device, except the explosive itself,” said Montreal police Cmdr. Ian Lafrenière.

Piazza’s lawyer said police allege they found bullets, wires, charcoal and a powder in his luggage.

Art

A 19-year-old gay student is planning to lose his virginity in a gallery full of spectators for an art project he’s calling: “Art School Stole My Virginity.” The deflowering of Clayton Pettet is scheduled to take place January 25 in Hackney, London in front of an audience of between 50 to 100.

Clayton will reportedly engage in safe sex with a friend until completion, after which he will ask the audience questions related to his performance.

Taiwan’s new army uniforms are downright scary

Click the image.

Iran gives Christians 80 lashes for communion wine

Four Iranian Christians were reportedly sentenced to 80 lashes for drinking wine for communion, a shocking punishment meted out even as a new United Nations report blasted the Islamic republic for its systematic persecution of non-Muslims.

The four men were sentenced Oct. 6 after being arrested in a house church last December and charged with consuming alcohol in violation of the theocracy’s strict laws.

Palestinian terrorists: Salutes to Indigenous strugglers in Canada confronting state violence and land theft

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine saluted the Indigenous strugglers in New Brunswick, Canada on October 18, 2013, expressing its solidarity with the struggle of Native people in North America against colonialism, exploitation and genocide.

“The United States and Canada were built as settler colonial states on land stolen from Indigenous peoples and have enacted viciously racist policies of apartheid, racism and genocide against Indigenous peoples,” said Comrade Khalil al-Maqdisi of the PFLP. “We stand alongside the Native peoples of their land in resisting colonialism and land theft.”

Indigenous protesters led by the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society, who have blockaded a highway to prevent the use of Indigenous land for resource extraction and environmental destruction, were attacked on October 17 by Canadian state polie agencies who used tear gas, rubber bullets and mass arrests against the protesters.

“We are very familiar with these weapons of oppression used by settler colonial regimes in order to colonize our land and dispossess our people,” said Maqdisi. “The policies and practices of the occupation state in Palestine: the dispossession of our people, the theft and colonization of our land, the construction of settlement colonies, the mass imprisonment of our people, apartheid, segregation and the creation of subservient ‘self-rule’ systems in isolated cantons – these were practiced first by Canada, and by the United States, against the Indigenous people of their land.”

Maqdisi noted that the Canadian state is one of the most prominent supporters of the occupation state and a constant supporter of the occupation’s assaults on the Palestinian people and violations of Palestinian rights, saying this is no surprise considering its own settler colonial nature.

Maqdisi said that indigenous people on their land have resisted for hundreds of years and have been met time and again by state violence and brutal repression yet have continued their struggle and their resistance. “We salute the Mi’kmaq Warriors and all Indigenous people who are struggling, fighting and resisting settler colonialism and who have been doing so for centuries, facing the armed force of the Canadian state. Our struggle to liberate Palestine and ensure the right of return of our people confronts the same enemies and powers. We are united in struggle.”

SOURCE

J Street, New Israel Fund slam ADL for Top 10 anti-Israel list

Scumbag kapos:

“Two major left-wing groups issued a stinging denouncement of the Anti-Defamation League’s list of “Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups in America” Wednesday, arguing that the lineup “exacerbates unnecessary confrontation” in an increasingly polarized Jewish community and that the choice of organizations cited was “shortsighted and unproductive.”

Good news: Iranian minister concludes: no need to “finish off” man who survived hanging”

An Iranian news agency says the justice minister has concluded there is “no need” to finish off a convict who survived his hanging.

A Tuesday report by the semi-official ISNA quoted Mostafa Pourmohammadi as saying there is “no need for re-execution” of the 37-year-old convicted of smuggling drugs who only was identified by his first name, Alireza.

Earlier this month, morgue technicians discovered that Alireza was alive a day after he was hanged in the city of Bojnourd, according to the media.

His case prompted debate, with some legal experts arguing he should be hanged again.

Last week Amnesty International urged Iran to spare Alireza, still in serious condition.

Drug smuggling is one of a number of crimes that can be punished by capital punishment in Iran.

SOURCE

Hasbara at York presents: Anti-Semitism on campus: How much do you know?

Dr. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at the University of California Santa Cruz, has written articles about academic anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and lectured widely on these developments and on the growing threat to the safety of Jewish students on college campuses.

Tammi works hard in helping students fight anti-Semitism on campus and is coming to York University to come speak about the topic. She recently co-founded the AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization devoted to investigating, documenting, educating about, and combating campus anti-Semitism in America.
Come hear her speak and learn how to fight the ongoing anti-Semitism at York University.

DEETS

Is Qatar propping up New Brunswick’s rioters?

When reporters from CTV, Global and Sun News Network were filming the burned-out police cars — long after the riot was dispersed — a carload full of “warriors” pulled up and threatened the reporters, screaming at them for their anti-riot editorial slant and threatening to torch their vehicles, too. They seized equipment belonging to CTV and Global (the Sun’s reporter, Kris Sims, refused to submit). One “warrior” recorded a video on YouTube, saying the only media to be trusted are the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network — and Al Jazeera.

As in the state-owned TV station of the dictatorship of Qatar. They had sent a camera crew to New Brunswick to cover the riots.

Legal experts teach Syrian rebels how not to be filthy barbarians

When law student Ibrahim Olabi concluded his presentation to a group of Syrian rebels, the fighters had some difficult questions concerning international humanitarian law.

Under the theory of collateral damage, they asked, was it permissible to starve civilians whom they had under siege along with government loyalist fighters in two Shiite Muslim villages north of Aleppo?

Olabi had to consult with human rights groups and law professors before eventually explaining that the law was conditional and unclear: Rebels are allowed to lay siege to military targets with some permissible collateral damage. At the same time, he said, civilians must be allowed to leave.

“There are a lot of gray areas,” said Olabi, who recently formed the Syrian Legal Development Program to help provide legal training to rebels seeking to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

U.S. tries to calm Saudi anger over Syria, Iran

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sought on Monday to calm rising tensions with Saudi Arabia, which has spurned a U.N. Security Council seat in fury at inaction over the crisis in Syria.

Saudi Arabia rejected a coveted two-year term on the council on Friday in a rare display of anger over what it called “double standards” at the United Nations. Its stance won praise from its Gulf Arab allies and Egypt.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal hosted a lunch for Kerry at his private residence in Paris on Monday. U.S. officials said Washington and Riyadh shared the goals of a nuclear-free Iran, an end to Syria’s civil war and a stable Egypt.

A senior State Department official told reporters after the lunch that Kerry cited the advantages of being on the 15-member body, which can authorize military action, impose sanctions and set up peacekeeping operations.

“Secretary Kerry conveyed that while it is Saudi Arabia’s decision to make, the U.S. values Saudi Arabia’s leadership in the region and the international community,” the U.S. official said.

“A seat on the UNSC affords member states the opportunity to engage directly,” the official added.

The council has been paralyzed over the 31-month-old Syria conflict, with permanent members Russia and China repeatedly blocking measures to condemn Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a longtime ally of Riyadh’s regional arch-rival Iran.

Saudi Arabia backs the mostly Sunni Muslim rebels fighting to overthrow Assad. The Syrian leader, whose Alawite sect is derived from Shi’ite Islam, has support from Iran and the armed Lebanese Shi’ite movement Hezbollah. The Syrian leader denounces his foes as al Qaeda-linked groups backed by Sunni-ruled states.

Riyadh’s frustration with Russia and China now extends to the United States, not only over Syria, but also over Washington’s acquiescence in the fall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and its new quest for a nuclear deal with Iran.

MORE

Oman to represent Iran’s Canada interests

Oman will look after Iranian affairs in Canada after diplomatic relations were suspended last year, Iran said on Tuesday, part of efforts by Tehran to improve ties with the West under President Hassan Rouhani.

Canada closed its embassy in Tehran and expelled Iranian diplomats in Canada in 2012. Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird at the time called Iran the biggest threat to global security.

Rouhani is trying to mend ties with Western nations to try to win the removal of economic sanctions imposed over Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme.

“Oman has been named the protector of Iran’s interests in Canada, and Italy has been named the protector of Canada’s interests in Tehran,” Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said, according to the ISNA news agency.

“This act took place after political correspondence and notes between the representatives of Iran and Canada were exchanged at the United Nations.”

Canada’s Conservative government has long had poor relations with Iran, enemy of Canadian ally Israel.

Canada’s move to cut ties with Iran came after Britain’s embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters in 2011 and then closed

Britain and Iran said last month they would appoint non-resident diplomats and have said they are in talks to restore diplomatic relations.

SOURCE

What each country leads the world in

From making babies to being struck by lightning, a new map has revealed the surprising things that countries are best at.

The map is based on statistics gathered from across the internet – ranging from sources as diverse as the World Bank to the Guinness World Records.

How FBI brought down cyber-underworld site Silk Road

Criminals who prowl the cyber-underworld’s “darknet” thought law enforcement couldn’t crack their anonymous trade in illegal drugs, guns and porn. But a series of arrests this month, including the bust of the black market site Silk Road, shows the G-men have infiltrated the Internet’s back alley.

Computer experts suspect the government simply beat the cyber-pirates at their own game: hacking.

The Silk Road website, which has a customer-friendly electronic storefront that displayed bricks of cocaine as deftly as Amazon displays books, was the cyber-underworld’s largest black market, with $1.2 billion in sales and nearly a million customers. Beyond illegal drugs, the site served as a bazaar for fake passports, driver’s licenses and other documents, as well as illegal service providers, such as hit men, forgers and computer hackers.

FBI Agent Christopher Tarbell of the FBI’s cyber-crime unit in New York called Silk Road “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today.”

“I don’t suck moral, spiritual and financial sustenance from six million corpses, then dump them when that gig turns sour and I need to find new and improved dead people to earn a living from”

Click the image.

Excellent artwork courtesy of BCF

PA-Linked Youth Newsletter Publishes List of ‘Hitler Quotes’

A youth magazine associated with the Palestinian Authority has published a list of “words of wisdom” – courtesy of none other than Adolf Hitler.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an NGO which monitors incitement and hate-speach in Palestinian Authority media, said that Zayzafuna – which previously lost UNESCO funding after publishing an essay glorifying the Nazi dictator – attributed a list of short quotes to Hitler in order to present him “as a sharp-witted and wise person.”

The one-liners attributed to Hitler include: “If you were stabbed in the back, know that you are in front”; “Don’t challenge a man who has nothing to lose”; and “Don’t find fault in your wife’s taste for she chose you in the first place.”

However, in a statement PMW said it could not find any record of Hitler making the comments, and that many of them appear to have been copied from other sources.

MORE

Today in palestinian savagery

A Palestinian man pulled a knife on a public bus outside Jerusalem Sunday night, threatening passengers before hopping off the bus and fleeing.

Terrified passengers scrambled for cover as the man ran down the length of a bus trying to stab fellow travelers.

There were no injuries in the incident, but one ultra-Orthodox man said the attacker sliced off one of his sidelocks.

Methodist church bent on destroying Israel

The British Methodist Church, with the help of the infamous BDS Movement, is distributing a questionnaire calling for the consumer boycott of Israel. This is a significant step against Israel. In April 2010, they declared a partial boycott of “settlement” products. Now they are hitting on the whole of Israel.

Robin Shepherd pointed out in “The banality of Methodist evil,” (Jerusalem Post April 7, 2010), that an institution professing the pursuit of love, truth, and justice is now pursuing hate, lies, and hypocrisy against Israel.

They are doing it at precisely the time when peace talks are being conducted between and the Palestinian leadership. Strange timing, don’t you think?  Maybe, in this context, they are doing it as a friendly gesture to push Israel into ending what they perceive as the injustice of the Palestinians?   I don’t think so.  They deny it’s a campaign against Israel, but it is.

If “occupation” is the issue, why hasn’t the Methodist Church proposed boycotts against other countries practicing occupation?  If it’s “occupation” and “oppression” they object to, why haven’t they come out against Turkey, who displaced 400,000 Cypriots in a violent invasion and forty year old occupation of Northern Cyprus? China’s occupation of Tibet? Or Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara? Not a peep over these places. No, it’s only Israel they beat up on by making the Palestinians their poster child.

The ultimate in Muslim victimhood mythology: ‘they were victims of the Nazis, just like Jews were’

Click the image.

Video: The truth about palestinian rock throwing (and B’Tselem)

VIDEO: Israel presents – The first Bedouin cosmetics label in the world

In the Bedouin town of Tel Sheva, located in the Negev desert near the Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, Maryan Abu Rakayek has set up a natural cosmetics company. Using methods learned from her grandmother, and passed down in the Bedouin community from generation-to-generation, Maryan transforms traditional herbs and other natural ingredients into cosmetics, soaps and other treatments. “Desert Daughter” is a growing company, and the first Bedouin cosmetics label in the world.

Quebec doctors warned to stop performing virginity tests

The Quebec college of physicians has issued a clear warning to doctors to stop performing virginity tests, a practice linked to bridal purity and family honour.

Chastity is not a medical or health condition, Charles Bernard, president of the Collège des médecins, told The Gazette. Gynecological exams for virginity certificates contravene the profession’s code of ethics on several grounds, including breaching patient confidentiality, Bernard said

The practise is outrageous, repugnant, irrelevant and unacceptable, he said.

NeverWet

Two arrested for Taliban “coat drive”

Two New York City men have been arrested on charges that they sought to supply the Taliban and other terrorist fighters with warm clothes and equipment for use in wintertime battle with United States forces in Afghanistan, the authorities said on Thursday.

The men, Humayoun Ghoulan Nabi, 27, of Queens, and Ismael Alsarabbi, 32, of Brooklyn, were taken into custody Monday after an investigation that began in 2011 following a tip from a confidential informant, according to the New York Police Department and the office of the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown.

In meetings with the informant in August and December that year, Mr. Nabi said he wanted to raise money for the fighters and to get them winter clothes, according to a criminal complaint.

“The defendant stated that the source of the Americans’ strength is their equipment, specifically good jackets, good goggles, good GPS,” Mr. Nabi told the informant, according to the complaint.

Mr. Nabi took Mr. Alsarabbi along to a meeting with the informant in March 2012, and the three men drove to a Western Union office and wired $2,000 to Lahore, Pakistan, the complaint said. Six months later, Mr. Nabi and the informant went to a warehouse, in Jamaica, Queens, where merchandise could be stored. Days after that, they met with a man Mr. Nabi introduced as “Brother Mohammed,” a clothing supplier.

No clothing or equipment was ever sent overseas, the authorities said. But in a statement, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the arrests “demonstrate the spectrum of terrorism threats” that the police must guard against. He said the equipment that the men sought to provide “could have endangered the safety of Americans as much as supplies of guns and ammunition.”

Saudis brace for ‘nightmare’ of U.S.-Iran rapprochement

When Saudi Arabia’s veteran foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, made no annual address to the United Nations General Assembly last week for the first time ever, his unspoken message could hardly have been louder.

For most countries, refusing to give a scheduled speech would count as little more than a diplomatic slap on the wrist, but for staid Saudi Arabia, which prefers backroom politicking to the public arena, it was uncharacteristically forthright.

Engaged in what they see as a life-and-death struggle for the future of the Middle East with arch-rival Iran, Saudi rulers are furious that the international body has taken no action over Syria, where they and Tehran back opposing sides.

Unlike in years past, they are not only angry with permanent Security Council members China and Russia, however, but with the United States, which they believe has repeatedly let down its Arab friends with policies they see as both weak and naive.

Iran arrests ‘network of homosexuals and satanists’ at birthday party

Until recently same-sex sodomy was punishable by death but a new amendment to the penal code, approved in 2012, has brought new changes. Under the new penal code, in effect, the person who played an active role will be flogged 100 times if the sex was consensual and he was not married, but the one who played a passive role will still be put to death regardless of his marriage status. Punishment for mosahegheh (lesbianism) is 100 lashes for all individuals involved, but it can lead to the death penalty if the act is repeated four times.

Globe and Mail ‘incentivising newsroom staff’

Canada’s Globe and Mail is incentivising newsroom staff to create compelling content that results in people signing up and paying for a monthly subscription to the paywalled site.

The package is offered to “a specific team of people”, Phillip Crawley, publisher and chief executive of the Globe and Mail, said in a conference presentation today. “It’s probably half a dozen people” out of a newsroom staff of 300, he explained.

This strategy of targets and bonuses causes “shock horror” in the industry, Crawley acknowledged, but is necessary to drive forward the business.

Guardian readers vote for Iranian president to win the Nobel Prize

Click the image.

 

Boutique Katom: Purchase works by artists of Judea & Samaria

Via Elder of Ziyon. Click the image.

Musical Interlude

The Stunning Percentage of Science Journals That Accepted a Completely Bogus Study

Science magazine wanted to figure out just how legitimate open-access, peer-reviewed journals are. So, it set out to dupe them with a completely fake study.

What it found is surprising some in the scientific industry, while only confirming the fears of others. More than half of the journals John Bohannon submitted his paper about the fictitious, anticancer properties identified in a lichen compound were accepted for publication.

The first and easiest clue that could have been picked out by the journals was that the study’s author, Ocorrafoo Cobange, does not exist as a real person, nor does his research institute, the Wassee Institute of Medicine.

But beyond that, Bohannon wrote in Science that “any reviewer with more than a high-school knowledge of chemistry and the ability to understand a basic data plot should have spotted the paper’s short-comings immediately.”

Central Asia concerns over US pullout from Afghanistan

The five republics – Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan – do not trust the Americans or Nato to secure the region after 2014, because of their collective failure to secure peace inside Afghanistan or a regional settlement among countries bordering Afghanistan.

They feel politically slighted by the US and the Kabul government.

Meanwhile the Central Asian states are themselves deeply at odds with each other as they cannot agree on a common plan to protect their region after 2014.

Some are turning back to their old overlord – Russia.

Pali Ping Pong

While sports tournaments around the world are usually a chance for healthy competition and for talented sportsmen and women to exhibit their abilities, the Palestinian Authority recently sponsored a tournament with a somewhat different agenda.

The “Martyr Dalal Mughrabi Table Tennis Tournament” was sponsored and attended by Jibril Rajoub, a top member of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and the head of the PA Olympic Committee, and was held to honor mass-murdering terrorist Dalal Mughrabi.

The event was covered by the PA media, and picked up and translated by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).

The tournament was geared toward female ping pong players, including children and teenagers.

Not only did Rajoub attend the event, but other officials explicitly noted that the event took place with PA approval, PMW said. Palestinian Table Tennis Association official Radwan Al-Sharif stated that “the Table Tennis Association acts in accordance with the Olympic Committee’s agenda.”

Sharif made a speech at the event’s closing ceremony in which he spoke in praise of “the glorious deeds of hero Martyr Dalal Mughrabi.”

Dalal Mughrabi led a terrorist cell that carried out the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history: the hijacking of a bus on Israel’s Coastal Highway in which 38 Israelis were murdered, among them 13 children. The infamous attack in 1978 is known in Israel as the Coastal Road Massacre.

Federal inmates go on strike to protest pay cuts

“Prisoners are frustrated and angry about the  cumulative effects of the harsh measures brought in by the Harper government in recent years.

“They are feeling the crushing effects of longer sentences, double bunking and now this,” he said. “We’ve had no recreation budget for the past three years and the infrastructure is crumbling.”

No word on the recreational habits of the criminals’ victims or what they get paid.