Harry's Place

This is a crosspost by Kenneth Bandler of AJC.

The propensity of some Israeli political leaders to speak publicly or take action before thinking clearly of the consequences hit a new low this week during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit.

If Israelis were looking for reassurance that the United States is genuinely the Jewish state’s number one ally, the vice president couldn’t have been clearer. “The bond between the U.S. and Israel has been and will remain unshakable,” declared Biden. “Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel.” But, alas, there is a significant gap, on settlements, and it was an Israeli Cabinet Minister who decided to remind all with international media focused on every step of Biden’s visit.

Biden is the highest ranking U.S. Administration official to visit since President Obama moved into the White House. His arrival coincided with the announcement by Senator George Mitchell, Obama’s special Middle East envoy, that Israel and the Palestinian Authority had agreed to resume peace negotiations, albeit indirect through so-called proximity talks. An intermediary is desperately needed, and the U.S., thankfully, continues to be seen as the key power to fill that role. Surely, no one would expect the vice president himself to come to Jerusalem and Ramallah to negotiate, but he was poised to endorse this apparent progress, and prod both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas to move forward with Mitchell’s team.

For months, it seemed that the Palestinians were the ones stalling the peace process. Abbas has traveled to Latin America and Europe to muster support for a Palestinian state, but not the short distance to Jerusalem to sit down with Netanyahu, who laid out a vision for peace, and a two-state solution, in a speech last June at Bar Ilan University.

In November, to woo Abbas back to direct negotiations — and to assuage Obama — Netanyahu took the bold step of announcing a ten-month freeze on new construction. But he stressed that Jerusalem is exempt, a posture that understandably infuriated the Palestinians, as well as the U.S., and set the stage for the unfortunate turn of events during Biden’s visit.

Within hours after delivering praise in Jerusalem, Biden was publicly criticizing Israel. “I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in east Jerusalem,” said the vice president, referring to Interior Minister Eli Yishai’s announcement that Israel would build 1,600 additional housing units in Ramat Shlomo, a Jerusalem neighborhood over the pre-1967 Green Line. “The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel,” Biden said.

Thanks to Minister Yishai, the tenor of Biden’s visit shifted quickly. Media focused on tensions between the U.S. and Israel, and the new construction plans became the centerpiece of Biden’s meeting with Abbas, who threatened to cancel the proximity talks even before they begin.

For now, the U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian talks appear to be back on track, though when they will begin is not yet clear. What is clear, however, is the reality that there is space between Jerusalem and Washington on the peace process, especially on the issue of settlements. It will come to the fore again. Indeed, just before Biden arrived, Israel announced approval for 112 new housing units in Beitar Illit, the fastest-growing settlement in the West Bank. This is another exemption from the ten-month freeze.

While Yishai later apologized for the “timing” of his announcement, no one in the White House can know if and when an Israeli official will again step forward to carry out the Netanyahu government’s policy to build new homes for Jews throughout Jerusalem. It is an ideological priority for Israel, but that comes as an unnecessary cost of an open confrontation with the United States. At some point soon, Israel’s leaders will need to decide which is more important.

“The United States will continue to hold both sides accountable for any statements or any actions that inflame tensions and influence these talks,” Biden stated publicly several times during his visit to Israel and the West Bank.

Let’s hope all in the Israeli Cabinet consider this core message that the U.S. wants to be helpful and means business in getting results through negotiations. Israel’s political leaders should take a cue from their own military, where discipline is essential for the country’s security, and dysfunction can be perilously costly.

This is a cross post by Peter Risdon

Further proof of Blair’s Law, “the ongoing process by which the world’s multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force”, can be found by clicking this link. After his innumerate article for The Telegraph was approvingly linked to by the BNP’s Lee John Barnes*, Darius Guppy has been set up as a contributor to New Statesman. Can one sense the hand of Mehdi Hasan in this?

I applaud the move. It will be nice to see Guppy earn some money honestly. And nowadays there is nothing surprising about the idea that the work of someone like Guppy will be appearing in the New Statesman.

* I decline to link to this fascist.

The National Union of Journalists has commissioned a 9/11 ‘Troofer’ to work with an organisation that has partnered with Salafi jihadis to develop a handbook advising its members – the majority of working journalists – on how to report news relating to terrorism.

According to a story on the Bristol NUJ website, Tony Gosling, has been appointed to the NUJ’s National Ethics Council and has been tasked with developing the guide on reporting on terror published by the NUJ last November in association with “The Campaign Against Criminalising Communities” (CAMPACC), a group with close tiesto CagePrisoners.

CagePrisoners is at the centre of the current Amnesty storm. They support terrorist sympathisers like hate-preachers Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza and convicted terrorists like Sajid Badat who plead guilty to conspiring to place a explosive device on an aircraft.

Tony Gosling is himself a curious creature. He was thrown out of the Green Party after we at Harry’s Place exposed his antisemitic and homophobic outbursts.

Worse, Gosling is a 9/11 ‘Troofer’ who runs the biggest UK website for conspiracy nuts. Quite why the NUJ promoted him to their ethics committee after the revelations about his homophobia, antisemitism and his involvement is the “Truth” movement is anyone’s guess.

Gosling is singularly unsuited for the task. A paranoid delusional, he’s had bizarre Hitchcockian run-ins with the law himself, and has fallen under the spell of another 9/11 Troofer called Webster G Tarpley, who calls himself a “Terrororolgist”. Tarpley churns out books and tours the world insisting that terrorist attacks, including 9/11 and 7/7 are all ”false flag” operations, a view Gosling largely shares.

Now, I know it is frustrating and slightly maddening to have to ask this, but:

Why did  Britian’s largest union of journalists engage a person like Gosling to write a handbook on terror reporting?

Here you have a man who creates wild conspiracy theories denying terrorism even exists, and he’s working with associates of known terrorist sympathisers apparently to produce the manual guiding how terror-related issues are reported in the British Press!

One article in a Bristol Community Radio newsletter describes Gosling as “a driving force behind new media guidelines designed to ensure high standards when it comes to covering terrorist incidents.”

How the hell did this happen?

And how on earth did this bigoted little snot,  with an hallucinogenic take on reality, get appointed to the Ethics Committee of a major media union in the first place?

It would be a huge relief if the NUJ could tell us that this appointment is just another one of Gosling’s delusions, that the article appeared on their website by some administrative or editorial oversight and that – contrary to indications – sanity is still very much in evidence at the Journalist’s Union.

This is a crosspost by efrafandays

Although my day-to-day diet is more akin to that of Robert Mugabe, I must admit, I do like an apple strudel now and again. Yet, I am a bit bemused that Kim Jong-Sung might have thought Austrian cuisine was the “best in the world”, and dispatch his personal chefs to learn its weird and wonderful wiley ways.

(Although, I will not be re-considering my palate, as I did with my watching habits when I discovered Kim Jong-Il was a fan of Daffy Duck.)

This is one of the insights into the high priests of the Juche religion which has been revealed by Kim Jong-Ryul, former personal shopper to the North Korean leaders. Sixteen years after faking his death and settling in Austria, Kim Jong-Ryul (all these Kims is like the Mackays in northern Sutherland) is understandably fearful of attempts on his life; considering North Korea’s tendency to kidnapJapanese and South Korean civilians from beaches, or to conspirewith Chinese authorities to repatriate refugees in China.

Yet, at 75, he appears to have reached a confessional stage in his life, and wishes only to relieve his conscience.

Kim Jong-Sung is reported not to have trusted Korean food, although I am unsure if this were because he feared poisoning (sort-of reasonable) or thought it inherently unclean (loo-loo). Same goes for installing heartbeat monitors lest anyone be hiding behind walls.

In addition to fine food, the high priests of Juche availed themselves of symbols of Western decadence such as fleets sport cars. Kim Jong-Ryul’s flight in 1994 coincided with the beginning of North Korea’s very own Holodomor in which an estimate 12% of the populationstarved to death.

Although Ricky Gervais Alejandro Cao de Benos de Les y Pérez y Cacacacacacacacac may boast of having supped on potatoes and onions, judging by his tailor made Mao suits, he has other sources of sustenance. Christine Ahn, of the Korea Policy Institute, however, is relatively svelte and does see the effects of increasing food-shortages which are leading to beggars appearing on Pyongyang streets:

I went to North Korea as a peace activist. North Koreans were living in very difficult conditions. Eight-year-old children were loitering around the hotel, shaking because of hunger. Even soldiers were extremely thin.

Alas, she spoils this moment of epiphany by leaping back into the maws of stupidity:

One thing that surprised me was the mental strength of the North Koreans. I strongly felt their pride and urge to preserve their system.

She is so dim I almost could fancy her.

Taliban gunmen have stormed into an office of the charity World Vision in Pakistan.

They took the staff into a separate room and executed them one by one, according to a news report on ABC.

The charity said they thought the office was targeted because it was running programmes to help women.

World Vision has decided to suspend its programmes and pull out of the country following the “brutal and senseless” attacks on its staff.

The petty fascists at Indymedia are wet with excitement because some of their number have smashed up a few Tesco stores, apparently in the name of “anti-Capitalism”.

This is the new breed of authoritarian. Unlike earlier incarnations, they wear the symbols not of the far-right, but of the far-left.

They are utterly undemocratic. They cannot accept that people vote with their feet and their wallets. If the majority of people didn’t want a Tesco in their area, they simply wouldn’t shop there and the store would become unprofitable and close down. But frankly, people – normal everyday people – like having a convenient shop nearby with consistent quality and reasonable prices.

So, my message to them is this: What you are doing is forcing your distorted minority view on a community in the name of that community. You are not the community, you are vandals and thugs.

The victims of the attacks on Starbucks last year were not abstract corporate types in far-away global head-offices, they were the local staff, threatened and intimidated in their place of work by wannabe revolutionaries who chant slogans about workers’ rights but seem unable to appreciate what that means in the real world.

They say they want to smash ‘Capitalism’ and this means trashing supermarkets. How then do they expect an urban population to get its food and clothing? Perhaps they want us all to grow our own on allotments or work the land. That’s been tried before, and if tried here would mean that the “Garden of England” became the killing fields of Kent.

But that’s perhaps a small price to pay to get these misanthropes out of their squats and give them their day in the sun – prodding shopkeepers and teachers, students and bank clerks, from the rear, with their bayonets as they’re force-march us all to our new socialist agrarian utopia.

UPDATE:

Oh, I’ve just noticed. One ‘activist’ has just let the facade of an ’anti-Capitalism’ motive slip, announcing:

“The Tesco corporation funds and abets the deaply rascist and apartheid state of Israel. It sinks millions of pounds each year into financially backing Israels military with the express intention of aiding Israel to seize land it is already occupying illegally. The corporation Tesco is a central and highly valuable financier of the occupation and stands idly by while children and women are butchered with impunity. Without Tesco, the money needed to commit many of Israels war crimes would simply not be possible. “

So, for once I thought I had a story that didn’t involve Jew-hatred at its core. Oh well.

One of the few things I once admired about American conservatives is that, on the whole, they were less likely than liberals to threaten to leave the country if things don’t go their way politically.

No more, it seems.

King Conservative himself, Rush Limbaugh, suggested he will depart these shores if the Democrats’ version of health care reform is enacted into law.

Responding to a caller [to his radio show] who asked him where he would go for health care if Congress enacts reform, Limbaugh replied,

“I don’t know. I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.”

Yet another incentive to get the plan through Congress.

But Costa Rica?

Costa Rica has universal health care, one of the best health systems in Latin America. As always with nationalized health care, expect red tape and long waits, but the quality of Costa Rica’s health care is excellent. Private health care is also available, very affordable, and high quality. Many doctors speak English and have received training in Europe, Canada, or the U.S. There are three large, private hospitals that most expatriates use: CIMA hospital in Escazú, Clinica Biblica in San José, and Clinica Católica in San José-Guadalupe.

Statistics from the World Health Organization frequently place Costa Rica in the top country rankings in the world for long life expectancy, often even ahead of Great Britain and the United States, even though the per-capita income of Costa Ricans is about one-tenth that of the U.S. and the U.K.

Looks like the joke’s on you, Rush. In fact I doubt there’s a single country outside the US with completely free-market health care where you would care to live.

In related news, another icon of the political Right, Sarah Palin, made a rather shameful confession during an appearance in Calgary, Alberta.

The vocal opponent of health-care reform in the U.S. steered largely clear of the topic except to reveal a tidbit about her life growing up not far from Whitehorse [a town in the Canadian Yukon].

“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” she said. “And I think now, isn’t that ironic?”

Well, yes, I suppose that’s one way of putting it. I don’t know if Palin’s family had to pay out-of-pocket for using single-payer, government-run Canadian health care. But her use of the word “hustle” suggests there weren’t any of the months-long waiting lists to see a doctor suggested by the anti-single payer scare stories. And apparently the care was good enough to keep and sustain her to this day.

It fits in with my admittedly idiosyncratic theory that Palin is something of a secret socialist.

Some people might be tempted to cite as additional evidence the fact that her husband Todd’s snow machine racing team is sponsored by a government-owned company– and that the government in question is that of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Hugo Chavez, president). The former governor did pose next to what I assume is her husband’s snow machine with the logo of the Venezuelan company, Mystik Lubricants, prominently displayed.

But I won’t try to pin that on her. Besides, I don’t believe Chavez is a genuine socialist– no matter how loudly and frequently he proclaims it.

(Hat tip: Andrew Murphy)

Update: Limbaugh later insisted that he had no plans to move to Costa Rica, but would go there for health care if the Democratic health care plan is implemented.

(Hat tip: mesquito in the comments)

Since 2006 a group has assembled at Belmarsh prison during the month of Ramadan for an iftar meal, breaking the fast and demonstrating solidarity with Muslims behind the prison walls. Not all of them, mind you. This event is for men inside on terrorism charges or held under control orders.

It is a radical group, bringing together people like hate preachers Murtaza Khan and Shakeel Begg, Tehran lackey Yvonne Ridley, and Moazzam Begg of Cageprisoners.

The event’s main organiser is the Muslim Prisoner Support Group, the charity with two terrorists among its former trustees. One of them, al Qaeda operative Mohammed Al Ghabra, has been among the speakers.

This is a message from a member of another organiser, the Woolwich Dawah Network. It will give you a sense of the mentality at work here. He sees the IRA as a model and British mosques as insufferably weak in the face of the enemy – the police:

We are so scared of putting ourselves forward for fear that we might be next that we have left our brothers and sisters to the whims of others. In Ireland if they wanted to make arrests they would have to with the army and full riot gear for fear of what the community would do. For the Muslims they can send a couple of voluntary police and that will suffice as they know the Muslims will pull their curtains and not help. Our mosques refuse to address any of these issues. Our leaders look the other way. It is our silence that is killing us.

The same poster provided an enthusiastic report after the event. Oh joy, Abu Hamza’s son!

Where do I start?
…
Do I talk about the beautiful recitation of Abu Hamza’s son who moved the people so much that down the road where Muslims were working in a pizza shop they came all the way to find out why Quran was being recited outside a prison and then asked how they could help?
…
Do I talk about the people who would come up to be one after the other filling my hands with money? Do I mention the brother who shook my hand leaving hundreds there?

Do I mention the talk by Mozzam Begg who had being driving for over 3 hours just to come talk to us for 15 minutes? Do I mention that he spoke while the people ate?

Do I talk about the amazing recitation by former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Moussa Zemmouri as he led us in Magrib followed by Qunnot for our brothers?

The Woolwich Dawah Network is another extremist grouping. This extreme: last month it was represented by Usman Ali at this meeting. Ali is the former member of al Muhajiroun who was banned for life from a Woolwich mosque after showing a video of the planes hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11 to children in the mosque while he chanted “God is great”.

Turning back to the Belmarsh iftar, one of the regulars, appearing every year since 2006, is Uthman Lateef, also known as Abu Mujahid (“father of a holy warrior”). He is the preacher profiled here earlier this week.

You can listen to his speech in 2008 here.

It is a nasty, divisive and separatist message, presenting terrorists as good Muslims who must be supported against “the enemy” that has imprisoned them. In fact, it is a fine example of just the type of talk that should not be welcome in any institution that holds to “moderation and tolerance”, as the East London Mosque claims to do (actually it will host Lateef in April).

In the midst of an invocation of the story of Yusuf (Joseph), Lateef says:

Guard your post in the land of the enemy. Don’t renounce your religion in the land of the enemy. Guard your post. Guard Islam. Hold on to Islam in the land of the enemy so that you will be successful in the last day, towards the end. [5:00]

He calls on his audience to support the prisoners for Islam. The prisoners need them just as Mohammed needed his companions:

What was he in need of? Response. He needed his companions to support him. The same way that Muslims today require our support. The same way that those who found themselves in prison require our support. The same way that those who are humiliated require our support, our voice, our assistance. [9:00]

Predictably, Islamist heroine Aafia Siddiqui appears, among other “brothers and sisters”. At that point she was in US custody. She was subsequently found guilty in open court of attempted murder. For Lateef, she and others charged or convicted with serious offences are “brothers and sisters”, and it is important for Muslims to say “we’re struggling right with you”.

Those Muslims who are in prison, Aafia Siddiqui, our sisters, our brothers, in the dungeons that they found themselves in, the same words that they want to hear from us, the Muslims, that we’re with you. We’re supporting you. You’re struggling, we’re struggling right with you. We’re struggling on your right, on your left, from before, from behind you. And we’re not going to do to you what others may have done to you by abandoning you but we’re going to assist you. [12:00]

Then he suggests that Muslims are only persecuted for their faith:

Who are we allying ourselves with? Are we allying ourselves with the Muslims, those downtrodden people, who are only where they are because of “there is no God but Allah”? Who are only where they are because of “there is no God but Allah”? Because that is so powerful and so threatening. [14:00]

Bolstering anger and paranoia on behalf of terrorists, he continues, stressing the importance of not helping the police:

We have a sense of pride that there are people in this ummah who have sacrificed far more than we can ever sacrifice. We have a sense of pride, this is our ummah, the ummah of Mohammed. We are representing them. They are representing us. We are one and the same ummah, one body. They’re in pain, we feel the pain.

A Muslim is a brother to another Muslim. He does not wrong him. He does not oppress him. He does not look down on him, does not imprison him, does not hand him over to be imprisoned by anyone, does not hold him in contempt as if he is some kind of criminal. [16:00]

Later he offers some “it could happen to any of us” scaremongering (well, yes, if you get mixed up in terrorism, that is):

Oh prophet of Allah, you command us to ride all the way to a far place, we would do that. This is a response that this ummah needs to make, with Allah in our hearts, for one another. Because it could be any day we will find ourselves in the same situation. Any day. Any day. We have this responsibility, brothers and sisters, of brotherhood, of sisterhood, of mercy, looking at Muslims in difficulties with the lens of mercy. [19:00]

He does relish in the divine punishments facing “oppressors” of Muslims, but even this comes with a warning. Worried about judgment day? Best help Cageprisoners, and that means you:

Neither will we escape on the day of judgment. There is no thing about saying, well, “the other Muslims were doing it, and so therefore maybe I am doing it, because I’m one and the same ummah”. Or that “I remember that my neighbour set up a standing order with Cageprisoners, and so, because I told him to do that, so that means I get the reward, but I didn’t do that, but he did that, so maybe I get the same reward.” [28:00]

It is an utterly dismal speech, designed to imprison minds in a labyrinthe of paranoia, division, anger and hatred. This is what makes Mr Lateef a natural at Belmarsh iftars and the East London Mosque too.

This Friday Lateef will speak at Aston University, Birmingham, as part of the Islamic student society’s “Islam Awareness Week”. He’ll appear there again on March 17.

A Muslim Imam has been denounced as being in league with the right-wing by a leading British socialist for opposing “a misogynistic apartheid in the house of God” and urging “good neighbourliness”.

Gee, that’s not really news, is it?

Bob Pitt of Islamophobia-Watch is upset with Taj Hargey,  Imam of the Summertown Islamic Congregation in Oxford, who opposes the building of an ultra-conservative Tablighi Jamaat mosque in Camberley.

Pitt has been very fond of describing ex-Muslims as Islamophobes. But it wasn’t enough. Soon he moved onto secular Muslims, and more recently observant liberal Muslims.

Now even Imams are “Islamophobic” when they stand up to Jamaat-aligned fundamentalists and the political Islamist movement.

This is a crosspost by efrafandays

I have no idea if Alejandro Cao de Benos de Les y Pérez, Noah Tuckerand Andrew Murray smoke, but if they do, solidarity would dictate a North Korean brand (seen on the right). Although import of such luxury items to North Korea is advized against by the UN, individual countries are able to set their own advice.

In 2001, the Arnold Hammer-like British American Tobacco went into partnership with Korea Songyong Trading to form Taesong-Bat, and with little fanfare established factories in North Korea: although BAT sold its share in 2007, it continues to import its State Express 555 brand for domestic consumption.

It is to be assumed that any economic partnership is with the anointed ones of Kim Jong Il, but as repugnant as the regieme is, I can see that cigarettes might represent one of the few pleasures open to Koreans north of the 38th.  Yet my sympathy does not extend to attempts to divert BAT products for re-sale on external markets in order to generate hard cash, as reported by theFinancial Times (subscription may be required, although NK Econ Watch reproduces it).

BAT, to its credit, has investigated and taken action against its Singaporean distributor following these events in 2009.  But, if the DPRK was seeking foreign currency then, they certainly need it now after the deranged currency ‘reform’ in November 2009 which rendered worse-than-useless many Koreans’ life-savings (they had to buy matches to burn it).

Some realization appears to have seeped through the Ultra Matte White screen which separates Kim Jong Il from reality, and a rare apology was issued in February 2009.

Monk Beopryun of Good Friends claims that in the period since this Great Confiscation, some two thousand Koreans have died of starvation.  Although the country was not the best fed in the world, at the same time as said apology, the Cosun Ilbo reportedthat food riots were breaking-out: such as at Puryong-Gun where at least one individual was killed whilst attempting to offload rice being imported from China.

Given that China has now leased a pier at Rajin, these wretched souls look as if they are in it for the long-run (and cannot expect much attention from Andy Newman).

Ricky Gervais Alejandro Cao de Benos de Les y Pérez y Cacacacacacacacac can be seen below, looking like the one who has at least 12 full meals a week.