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12/13/2011 -- ☢ Fukushima reactor #4 FUEL POOL reports say ready to collapse ☢
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12/13/2011 -- ☢ Fukushima reactor #4 FUEL POOL reports say ready to collapse ☢
BREAKING NEWS - E=mc2 Is Wrong! - Physics To Be Re-Written After CERN Breaks Speed Of Light
Scientists from all over the world are examining the results of an experiment that seems to disprove one of the cornerstones of modern physics.
Experts at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Switzerland believe they have clocked particles called neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light.
But they cannot quite believe it themselves, they say, because according to Einstein's famous 1905 equation, E=mc2, it is simply impossible.
"The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," said James Gillies, a spokesman for Cern.
According to Einstein, the speed of light, 186,282 miles per second (299,792km per second) is a "cosmic constant" and nothing in the universe can travel faster, because physical objects have a mass, whereas light does not.
Cern says a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 454 miles (730km) away in Italy arrived in a time that meant it had covered the distance 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light.
It's a shock. It's going to cause us problems, no doubt about that - if it's true.
Fermilab head theoretician Stephen Parke
The claim has been met with a range of responses from scientists, with some expressing amazement while others dismissed it as a mistake.
"The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," said James Gillies, a spokesman for Cern.
He said the readings have so astounded researchers that they are asking others to independently verify the measurements before claiming an actual discovery.
"They are inviting the broader physics community to look at what they have done and really scrutinise it in great detail," he said.
Dr David Whitehouse, a space scientist and author, said that if the experiment is proved to be true then it would be a revelation on a par with Einstein's own theories.
What Is Albert Einstein's Theory?
:: The speed of light is described by the scientists at CERN as "nature's cosmic speed limit".
:: Albert Einstein's 1905 Theory of Special Relativity says that the speed of light is a constant - and that nothing in the universe can travel faster.
:: But if the CERN experiment was correct then scientists measured the neutrinos as travelling 60 billionths of a second quicker than light would have travelled the same distance
Albert Einstein
"It is an earthquake, a revolution in physics," he said.
"As soon as you are arrogant enough to think you understand the universe, the universe comes along and shows you are not right."
Dr Whitehouse said the findings technically meant that time travel might be possible.
"Everything is now open - because time, speed and the speed of light are all linked."
However, one physicist based in Melbourne, Australia, concluded that the claim was simply the result of an error.
Dr John P Costella said the group at Cern had made an "embarrassing gaffe" by miscalculating the experiment's statistical uncertainty.
Cern scientists watch their computers as the first protons are injected in to the LHC
CERN scientists want other experts to verify their findings
"One must conclude that (the team) has simply made a mistake, albeit a highly embarrassing one which has gathered international media coverage," he said.
University of Maryland physics department chairman Drew Baden called it "a flying carpet", something that was too fantastic to be believable.
Scientists at the competing Fermilab in Chicago have promised to try to replicate the results.
"It is a shock," said Fermilab head theoretician Stephen Parke, who was not part of the research in Geneva.
"It is going to cause us problems, no doubt about that - if it is true."
The Chicago team had similar faster-than-light results in 2007, but those came with a giant margin of error that undercut its scientific significance.
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BREAKING NEWS - E=mc2 Is Wrong! - Physics To Be Re-Written After CERN Breaks Speed Of Light
See more at www.youtube.com
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Just a test, but Verizon's 'civil emergency' text message spells fear, confusion around N.J.
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Just a test, but Verizon's 'civil emergency' text message spells fear, confusion around N.J.
The unfamiliar noise from Jaclyn Boruch's cell phone startled her. She reflexively grabbed it. What she saw next scared her.
In bold red letters were the words "CMAS Alert" followed by "Civil Emergency in this area until 1:24 PM EST Take Shelter Now U.S. Govern."
The emergency alert message took up her entire screen. It locked her Android phone for several minutes.
"I didn’t know if it was something happening in the ocean, some happening on land or coming out of the sky. I had no idea so that’s why it was so frightening," said Boruch, 22, marketing director at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Monmouth County in Asbury Park.
The message, according to Verizon Wireless, was just a test. But the test caused panic and thousands of phone calls to various 911 dispatchers around Monmouth, Ocean and Middlesex counties.
It also sparked the State Police to launch an investigation until Verizon Wireless confirmed the alert, which went out at 12:27 p.m. was a test, according to spokesman Sgt. Brian Polite.
About two hours after the mass alert went out, Verizon apologized to its customers.
"This test message was not clearly identified as a test," Verizon spokesman David Samberg said in an e-mailed statement. "We apologize for any inconvenience or concern this message may have caused."
Ernest Fiest, Monroe Township’s emergency management officer, said Verizon told him the "CMAS Alert" was inadvertently transmitted as part of an internal test of the company’s communication system.
CMAS refers to the Commercial Mobile Alert System, a public safety initiative that involves FEMA, the Federal Communications Commission and subscribed wireless phone carriers.
The alert appeared to have only affected Droid-operated phones, said Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden. His office was flooded with quadruple the number of calls it normally received, he said.
Rumson authorities issued its own alert to citizens in the Monmouth County community: "THERE IS NO EMERGENCY. The 'take shelter' message that Verizon sent IS NOT a VALID message. DO NOT CALL THE POLICE."
The alert sparked confusion that spread online via Twitter, before authorities confirmed that there was no actual danger.
The New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness also issued its own tweet within roughly an hour stating, "CURRENTLY THERE IS NO EMERGENCY!!!"
"Emergency government life alert on two phones went off in math to take shelter... what's happening?" tweeted Christiana Rutkowski of Middletown, also posting a photo of a phone displayling an "Extreme Alert" warning.
Barbara Rutkowski of Middletown was at the doctor’s office when her 16-year-old daughter Christiana, who posted on Twitter, asked "is anything bad on the news?" via text message around 1:30 p.m.
When her husband Joe checked his BlackBerry and saw nothing, the couple didn't worry, Rutkowski said.
"With technology, things can spread like wildfire before they can be verified," she said.
Star-Ledger staff writers Tom Haydon and Sue Epstein contributed to this report.
Related coverage:
• Verizon says 'civil emergency' alert in N.J. was only a test; company apologizes for 'inconvenience'
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The Vatican & the Mafia - Catholic Church Exposed for Money Laundering
The Protect Your Children Foundation invites you to take a look at the organized crime schemes orchestrated by the Catholic Church:
English:
http://jh.to/organizedcrime
Spanish:
http://jh.to/crimenes
Portuguese:
http://jh.to/casosdocrimeorganizado
For more info, visit:
English: http://www.vaticancrimes.us Spanish: http://www.protegeatushijos.org
To contact us:
You can write to us in complete confidence by emailing: contact@vaticancrimes.us
To learn more about the crimes committed by the corrupt and evil organization known as the Catholic Church, visit: http://www.vaticancrimes.us
The Vatican end is near due to the crimes they have committed against humanity since its inception. Their destruction in our lifetime is inevitable.
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For Families On Welfare, Few Protections From Theft And Fraud
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For Families On Welfare, Few Protections From Theft And Fraud
On a fall day in October 2009, Evelyn Carpio's wallet never left her side.
Yet criminals somehow managed to steal $720 from the card Carpio's family uses to obtain cash welfare assistance from California.
This kind of remote financial crime -- a practice known as financial information "skimming" -- is increasingly happening in the United States, according to federal officials. In 2009 alone, criminals stole $443 million though a combination of skimming, identity theft, and other types of financial crime investigated by federal officials. But for victims like Carpio, whose money was stolen from an electronic benefits transfer card (EBT) rather than a credit or debit card, getting that money back has proved difficult. In Carpio's case, nearly two years passed before the state returned her stolen welfare benefits.
When it comes to stolen credit or debit cards, the rules are straightforward: Federal law requires banks to rapidly return, refund or remove all but $50 of any unauthorized or fraudulent activity on any card reported lost or stolen. If fraudulent charges are made on a debit card that was never lost or physically stolen, the customer cannot be held responsible for a single dollar. No such protections exist for EBT card users, even as government agencies across the country are moving to distribute a growing share of public assistance on EBT and other cards.
That lack of security places many of the country's poorest families at serious risk of financial upheaval.
Last week, Carpio filed suit against the California Department of Social Services. She's not seeking compensation. Instead, Carpio aims to make the state replace welfare benefits stolen from an EBT card within five days of filing a police report and other required documents. Right now, California law requires DSS to replace lost or stolen welfare checks within five days if victims file a police report and meet other requirements. But cash welfare assistance is no longer distributed by check to the vast majority of poor families. They are instead issued via EBT card or direct deposit. So the law either needs an update or a new interpretation that includes EBT cards, advocates and Carpio's lawyers say.
"I realize now that I was really naive. I thought that once I proved what happened, brought them all the proof they asked for, DSS would just replace what was stolen," said Carpio, 34, a single working mother of five. "But that's not what happened at all."
Michael Weston, a spokesperson for the California Department of Social Services, declined to comment on Carpio's suit or the issues it raises.
Skimmers usually tamper with devices such as ATMs or point-of-sale terminals, by installing cameras, software and other devices that record account information, PIN numbers or card information, according to the Secret Service, the agency best known for protecting the President, which investigates large-scale financial crimes.
In the late 1990s, when the federal government began to encourage states to provide food stamps and cash welfare assistance on EBT cards, states lobbied federal banking regulators to exempt EBT cards from the laws that help debit and credit card holders who become victims of theft or fraud, Saunders said. The move to distribute public benefits electronically has created a multi-million dollar business opportunity for banks and other companies that secure contracts to provide EBT cards and ATM networks where the cards can be used in each state.
Simultaneously, the cards have been regarded as a fiscally-responsible decision for states. State agencies have saved millions on check mailing and printing costs and, public officials say, the cards help to prevent fraud.
For EBT cardholders, the problem is that the public is often far more interested in welfare fraud committed by the poor than crimes perpetrated against them, advocates for low-income families say.
"What we have is a situation where cards used by the poorest people -- people for whom the loss of a couple of hundred dollars can have very, very serious consequences -- have zero protection," said Lauren Saunders, managing attorney for the National Consumer Law Center.
This week, Congress is expected to pass some version of a bill that will limit the places where EBT cards can be used, a direct response to renewed concerns expressed by some governors and presidential candidates that welfare recipients frequently use public benefits on salacious non-necessities, luxury items, gambling and lifestyles where work isn't valued.
The federal bill, part of the unemployment benefits extension package, will require states to prevent EBT cards from functioning inside strip clubs, casinos and liquor stores. States that do not comply face federal penalties. Some states, including California, have already put such restrictions in place.
Last year, California restricted EBT card use in these locations after The Los Angles Times revealed that welfare recipients in California had pulled $4.8 million off of EBT cards in casinos over the course of nearly three years. In that same period, low-income California residents pulled roughly $12,000 out of ATMs stationed at strip clubs. But half of these transactions took place in rural areas where access to ATMs is often limited, according to a data analysis by The Western Center on Law and Poverty.
"If we are going to implement regulation to say where people can't use their benefits, at the very least we should also make sure that those benefits are protected from theft," said Jessica Bartholow, a legislative advocate at the Western Center on Law and Poverty, a California organization that advocates for low-income families and researches policy matters related to poverty.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services does not track or measure EBT card-related theft nor does it direct or monitor the way that states react when money is reported stolen from these cards. The program is administered by the states so, they decide how thefts are handled, said Kenneth Woolfe, a spokesperson for the agency.
Anyone using an ATM or point of sale device at a store register should exercise extreme caution, said Max Milien, a spokesperson for the Secret Service. That means covering the keypad while using it, avoiding any device that appears to have been compromised, and canceling transactions at terminals that ask for a pin number more than once, Milien said. Account statements and balances should be checked regularly and ATMs with unusual signage should be avoided, said Milien.
The Secret Service also does not track the number of EBT cards that have been compromised by skimmers, but the cards are subject to many of the same risks as other types of cards, Milien said.
Vanessa Lee, a lawyer with Neighborhood Legal Services, a California nonprofit agency that represents low-income families in a variety of cases, filed the suit on Carpio's behalf to try to force California to apply the existing state law governing lost or stolen checks to thefts involving EBT cards.
"We're simply asking that the law be consistently interpreted within the context that welfare benefits are actually paid," said Lee. "In this case, the state didn’t even replace her card, even though it had clearly been compromised, until it stopped working months later because it was accidentally demagnetized."
After Carpio discovered that money was missing from her benefits card, she filed a police report. County-level welfare officials also asked her to file an affidavit. In it, she swore that she had nothing to do with the crime and did not know the people who took her benefits. Welfare office staff even asked Carpio to obtain photos of the criminals using her account information at a bank ATM about 20 miles from her Van Nuys, Calif home. She did so with the help of the police, but her request to have her stolen benefits replaced was still denied.
After several appeals, California replaced Carpio's benefits in May. But in the interim, Carpio had to borrow money from her sister to pay her utilities, cover her rent and other basic needs. Carpio had to pay back her sister as soon as her own tax return arrived. Carpio's sister also needed the money.
"It wasn't an easy thing to just manage," said Carpio. "It was really a struggle."
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Gingrich’s Serial Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds
Newt’s Invented History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
by Jeremy R. Hammond
December 13, 2011
The Republican presidential candidates are falling all over themselves competing for who can be the most “pro-Israel”, with Newt Gingrich taking the game to a whole new level last week when he said in an interview with The Jewish Channel that Palestinians were an “invented” people. When asked whether he considered himself a Zionist, Gingrich responded (his emphasis):
Well, I believe that the Jewish people have the right to have a state, and I believe that the commitments that were made at the time—remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons, we have sustained this war against Israel now, since the 1940s, and it’s tragic.
Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes. Are we in a situation where every day rockets are fired into Israel while the United States—the current administration—tries to pressure the Israelis into a peace process. Hamas does not admit the right of Israel to exist and says publicly, “Not a single Jew will remain.” The Palestinian Authority Ambassador to India said last month, “There is no difference between Fatah and Hamas, we both agree Israel has no right to exist.” Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools. They have textbooks that say, “If there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left?” We pay for those textbooks through our aid money. It’s fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts and stand up and say, “Enough lying about the Middle East.”
Unfortunately, Newt Gingrich isn’t someone who has the guts to stand up and tell the truth, preferring instead with utmost hypocrisy to repeat numerous lies about the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Where to begin? Gingrich’s comment that the Palestinians are an “invented” people is not new. It’s simply a reiteration of old Zionist propaganda, dating back to before Israel even existed.
Chaim Weizmann, in a letter to Lord Arthur Balfour, wrote in May 1918 to say how the only guide to resolving the growing conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was through applying what he called “the democratic principle”. Since “the brutal numbers operate against us, for there are five Arabs to one Jew”, Weizmann wrote, the “present state of affairs would necessarily tend towards the creation of an Arab Palestine, if there were an Arab people in Palestine”. His meaning was not that there were no Arabs inhabiting the land—he had just acknowledged they were a large majority—but that they didn’t meet the criteria for a “people”, and thus that their right to self-determination could be denied to them under the colonialist application of “the democratic principle”.
In 1936, David Ben-Gurion, head of the Labor faction of the Zionist movement, similarly declared that “there is no conflict between Jewish and Palestinian nationalism because the Jewish Nation is not in Palestine and the Palestinians are not a nation.” His meaning, of course, was that Palestine was not “Palestine”, but the “Jewish Nation”, which belonged not to the Arabs but entirely to the Jews, the minor problem of the Arabs constituting the majority and possessing most of the land being of no consequence, since the colonialist “democratic principle” could be applied.
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir more famously remarked in 1969, “It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”
The basic logic of Gingrich’s argument about Palestine being part of the Ottoman Empire follows much along the same principle. Since the Arab inhabitants of the land never exercised sovereignty over Palestine as an independent nation before, this logic dictates, we may therefore continue to reject their right to self-determination today. Gingrich is effectively reiterating the same racist and colonialist “democratic principle”.
In the debate, Gingrich added:
The fact is the Palestinian right of return is based on a historically false story. Somebody ought to have the courage to go all the way back to the 1921 League of Nations mandate for a Jewish Homeland, point out the context in which Israel came into existence—and “Palestinian” did not become a common term until after 1977. This is a propaganda war in which our side refuses to engage, and we refuse to tell the truth while the other side lies, and you’re not going to win in the long run if you’re afraid to stand firm and stand for the truth.
Would that Gingrich would stand for the truth, instead of lying and repeating Zionist propaganda. He claimed to be speaking “as a historian”, but his narrative is a fiction from start to finish. The truth is that the inhabitants of Palestine were known as “Palestinians” long before Israel was established. An example has already been shown, in the above quote from Ben-Gurion, who elsewhere described the Arab revolt of 1936 as “an active resistance by the Palestinians to what they regard as a usurpation of their homeland by the Jews” (emphasis added). Notice in this usage, “Palestinians” refers specifically to the Arabs, even though the term was also used to refer to native Jewish inhabitants.
Shall we dare to go back to the Palestine Mandate? We first must go back even further, to the document known as the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Lord Balfour said in a letter to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a representative of the Zionist movement:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine….
It’s worth noting that President Wilson established a commission to examine the question of Palestine, headed by Henry Churchill King and Charles R. Crane. The King-Crane Commission report of 1919 observed, with regard to the British policy, that the creation of a Jewish state would constitute “the gravest trespass upon the ‘civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.’” In their discussions with Zionist representatives, “the fact came out repeatedly … that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine”. The report concluded that if the principle of self-determination was to rule, the will of the people of Palestine must be respected, and the great majority of the population was “emphatically against the entire Zionist program.”
The British government elucidated on its policy in the Churchill White Paper of June 1922, which emphasized that the Balfour Declaration had not aimed “to create a wholly Jewish Palestine”, but that the “Jewish National Home” they envisioned would be “in Palestine” (emphasis added). The paper stated further that “all citizens” of Palestine “in the eyes of the law shall be Palestinian”—notice we again find the term Gingrich says didn’t come into use until 1977. The paper went on to describe its vision of what amounted to autonomous Jewish communities existing within a greater state of Palestine.
The League of Nations issued its Palestine Mandate the following month, July 1922. Although the Covenant of the League of Nations stated that the wishes of the population of occupied territories “must be a principle consideration in the selection of the Mandatory”, the Palestinians were not consulted. The Zionist Organization, on the other hand, was. In issuing the Mandate, the League of Nations included the wording that Britain “should be responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour] declaration”, the terms of which were repeated.
British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon objected strongly to the Mandate. He recognized that while his government officially did not support the establishment of a Jewish state, its policy effectively furthered that Zionist goal. “The Zionists are after a Jewish State with Arabs as hewers of wood and drawers of water,” he said. “So are many British sympathizers with the Zionists.”
That category included Lord Balfour, who had once declared to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis, “I am a Zionist”, and who admitted that despite Western rhetoric about democracy and self-determination, “in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country”.
Continuing, Curzon pointed out that British policy consisted of “flagrant” contradictions and blasting the hypocrisy of the Mandate. “Acting upon the noble principles of self-determination,” he said, the League of Nations “then proceed[ed] to draw up a document which … is an avowed constitution for a Jewish State.” In the British Parliament, Lord Sydenham, in a reply to Balfour, admonished that “the harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country … may never be remedied”. The injustice done to the Arabs would “start a running sore”, he presciently proclaimed, “and no one can tell how far that sore will extend.”
One widely propagated myth about the conflict is that Israel was created by the United Nations. While this belief is extremely popular, it is categorically false. The truth is that the report of the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine explicitly acknowledged that its majority recommendation to partition Palestine was a rejection of the Arabs’ right to self-determination. The General Assembly’s own ad-hoc committee appointed to further review UNSCOP’s majority recommendation rejected it as “contrary to the principles of the [U.N.] Charter”. The U.N., the committee observed, could not “deprive the majority of the people of Palestine of their territory and transfer it to the exclusive use of a minority in the country … in complete disregard of the wishes and interests of the Arabs of Palestine.”
The Assembly nevertheless adopted Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947. This resolution did not partition Palestine. It was merely a recommendation, which was all the General Assembly was authorized to do under the Charter. It had no legal authority to partition Palestine, and it didn’t purport to. It referred the matter to the Security Council, where it died. The Council rejected the plan because the only way to implement it would be through the use of force against the will of the majority of the population. The U.S. delegate, Warren Austin, eloquently pointed out that such a use of force would be contrary to the principles of the very Charter under which they operated.
Israel was not created by U.N. fiat in 1947. It was created on May 14, 1948 when the Zionist leadership under Ben-Gurion unilaterally declared its existence, without defining its borders. It is important to stress that Jews at that time owned only 7% of the land of Palestine, and that Resolution 181 neither partitioned Palestine nor conferred upon the Zionist leadership any legal authority for its unilateral declaration.
In the conflict that ensued, more than 750,000 Arabs were ethnically cleansed from Palestine. The right of return is an internationally recognized legal right guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, recognized explicitly in the case of Palestinian refugees first in U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948.
Which brings us back to Gingrich’s remarks. When he speaks of the “commitments that were made at the time”, he is referring the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate and the fiction that the latter constituted some kind of legal basis for the establishment of the state of Israel, which falsehood rests further upon the racist and colonialist assumption that the nations of the West somehow had the authority to take land away from the Arabs and give it to the Jews.
When he says that Palestinians “had a chance to go many places” and explicitly rejects their right of return, what he is saying is that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was a legitimate action, and that Palestinians—who apparently must have no special affinity for their birthplace or the land of their ancestors—should just accept its legitimacy.
When he says the U.S. has “sustained” a “war against Israel”, what he means is that the U.S. doesn’t recognize the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of Israel. Gingrich was joined in this sentiment onstage at the debate by fellow Zionist Rick Santorum, who said, “The Israelis have the right to determine what happens in their land, and all of Israel, including the, quote, ‘West Bank’, is Israeli land.”
The truth is that all of the West Bank—including East Jerusalem—and Gaza are “occupied Palestinian territories”, to quote from the judgment of the International Court of Justice. Israel’s annexation of Palestinian East Jerusalem has been rejected by the international community as “illegal”, “null and void” in numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions, including 252, 267, 271, 298, 446, 452, 465, 471, 476, 478, 592, 605, 607, 636, 694, 726, and 799. Similarly, all of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank “have been established in breach of international law”, to quote again from the ICJ ruling. And whatever “history” and “truth” Zionists like Gingrich and Santorum would have Americans believe, the fact that all of the West Bank and Gaza are Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories under international law is completely uncontroversial.
As for Palestinian militant groups firing rockets into Israel from Gaza, Gingrich is absolutely right to condemn such violence, indiscriminate in nature and thus a war crime under international law. But what Gingrich hypocritically neglected to mention was the fact that Israel is responsible for the vast preponderance of the violence and murdering of civilians, which it carries out with full U.S. support.
Israel’s massacre in Gaza from December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009, codenamed “Operation Cast Lead”, for instance, was a U.S.-backed full-scale military assault on the civilian population perpetrated with U.S.-supplied arms, including F-16s and Apache helicopters. The U.S. took its complicity in Israel’s war crimes and other violations of international law in blocking the implementation of the recommendations of the report of the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, the most important of which was that the Security Council—where the U.S. exercises a veto—should refer the matter to the ICJ.
It should also be noted that this massacre followed a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that Israel violated, just as it had been Israel that violated numerous previous ceasefires.
Gingrich said President Obama is guilty of pressuring Israel into the so-called “peace process”. The truth is that this is the process by which the U.S. and Israel have sought to block implementation of the international consensus on a two-state solution, which envisions a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and the establishment of a Palestinian state along the pre-June 1967 armistice lines, with minor and mutually agreed revisions to the final border. The truth is that Obama has pressured the Palestinians to return to this “peace process”, and demanded that they do so “without preconditions”, which means while Israel’s illegal colonization of the West Bank continues. The Palestinian leadership ultimately rightfully rejected a return to the “peace process” and its rejectionist framework in favor of turning to the international community to recognize their legal rights and legitimate political aspirations. The transparent truth of the matter, to anyone who has eyes to see or ears to hear, is that the U.S. hasn’t been waging a war on Israel for many decades, as Gingrich would have Americans believe, but on Palestine.
And what about Gingrich’s comment that Hamas rejects Israel’s “right to exist” and wants to expel or exterminate all the Jews? It is true that Palestinians don’t recognize that Israel has a “right to exist”. And, of course, it doesn’t. No state does. This is an absurd formulation. The proper framework for discussion is the right to self-determination, and it is this right that is being denied not to the people of Israel, but to the Palestinians. The demand that Palestinians recognize Israel’s “right to exist” is a demand that they accept that the Zionist’s unilateral declaration of the existence of the Jewish state of Israel and ethnic cleansing of Palestine (required for the state to be demographically “Jewish”) were legitimate—as Gingrich clearly himself believes. Furthermore, the truth is that Hamas’s leadership has repeatedly and for many years reiterated its willingness to accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel on the ’67 borders.
And what about Gingrich’s comments about Palestinians teaching their children to hate Jews, that they learn math by subtracting numbers of Jews? Glenn Kessler touched on that in his Washington Post blog, The Fact Checker, in which he stated, “We cannot immediately find evidence of the statement claimed by Gingrich.” Kessler further cites the U.S.’s own State Department as observing that “International academics concluded the [Palestinian] textbooks did not incite violence against Jews, but showed imbalance, bias, and inaccuracy”, all of which certainly applies to school textbooks in the U.S., or in Israel, for that matter. Kessler also cited the Israeli daily Haaretz observing that Israel’s education system “is hardly better than the Palestinian one when it comes to inserting political messages in textbooks.”
But let us congratulate Mr. Gingrich for at least one true statement: This is indeed a propaganda war. And let us applaud his statement that it is about time for someone to have the courage to stand up and say, “Enough lying about the Middle East!” The lying certainly does need to stop, but Mr. Gingrich should begin with the plank in his own eye.
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Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst whose articles have been featured in numerous print and online publications around the world. He is the founder and editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com), an online source for news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on U.S. foreign policy. He was a recipient of the 2010 Project Censored Awards for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. Read more articles by Jeremy R. Hammond.
http://www.jeremyrhammond.com
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Reclaim Your Faith
Reclaim Your Faith
We all know somebody that was once walking with Jesus and enthusiastic about being a Christian, but then for some reason they stopped attending church. Maybe you know some friend or family in that category? Do you wish there was something you could do to help bring them back to church?
On January 13-15, on Hope channel, Amazing Facts will be presenting a new series of programs called “Reclaim Your Faith”.
These four presentations are especially designed to address the main reasons people drift from their church families. So if you know someone who has wandered from the fold, invite them over for a little warm soup and encourage them to view these programs with you. And then pray the Holy Spirit will help them reclaim their faith!
Series Highlights
Presented by Doug Batchelor, author, preacher, and national television host who attended churches of six different denominations before finding his church home
90 minute programs dealing with key issues that have caused people to leave their church
Presented live from Washington, D.C. Join us at 12501 Old Columbia Pike, Silver Spring, MD 20904
Live on Hope Channel--DIRECTV channel 368, Glorystar channel 104
Book available with series - order today.
It’s Time to Renew Your Faith!
Reclaim Your Faith, a four-part series
January 13-15, 2012
Program Schedule
Hope Channel: DIRECTV ch. 368 and Glorystar ch. 104
January 13, 7:30pm ET, Nightly Topic: Divisions in the Church
January 14, 11:00am ET, Morning Topic: Distractions
January 14, 7:30pm ET, Nightly Topic: Doctrinal Differences
January 15, 7:30pm ET, Nightly Topic: Dedication
Rebroadcast Schedule
Hope Church Channel
January 13, 7:30pm PT, Nightly Topic: Divisions in the Church
January 14, 11:00am PT, Morning Topic: Distractions
January 14, 7:30pm PT, Nightly Topic: Doctrinal Differences
January 15, 7:30pm PT, Nightly Topic: Dedication
http://www.faithreclaimed.com/
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1k9z6
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