I am done. I see that the evil in this world has taken over. I have nothing to say anymore, online. I wish you all luck…you dont need me, I am preaching to the choir and the converted. What you all need is within yourselves. May you be blessed. Unless circumstances radically change for myself, I wont be back. Try to understand.
Archive for Uncategorized
‘Toronto film festival tool for Israeli propaganda’
I left.
Some 50 intellectuals and filmmakers including Briton Ken Loach have accused the Toronto film festival of complicity with an ‘Israeli propaganda campaign’.
The Toronto International Film Festival chose this year to present 10 films by local filmmakers on the Israeli metropolis for its ‘City to City’ program, which each year focuses its lens on a different city.
This year’s program was devoted to Tel Aviv and the Jaffa area. However, the choice led to protests that the film festival was ’staging a propaganda campaign’ on Israel’s behalf, given ‘the absence of Palestinian filmmakers in the program’, said an open letter to festival organizers.
The program, it said, “ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories” after a “mass exiling of the Palestinian population” in 1948.
“Looking at modern, sophisticated Tel Aviv without also considering the city’s past and the realities of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, would be like rhapsodizing about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.”
The 50 signatories to the letter include Canadian sociologist Naomi Klein, British filmmaker Ken Loach, American actress Jane Fonda and several other filmmakers.
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=105321§ionid=351020701
Zionists dress up as Native Americans and protest to US: Give us back Manhattan
*It really has to be seen to be believed.*
Some 20 people protested Wednesday outside the American Embassy in Tel Aviv against US pressure on Israel to freeze settlement building. Some of the protesters were dressed as Native Americans in a reminder to the US authorities that their country did not exactly ask the natives where they could live or build.
The protestors carried signs emblazoned with slogans like “Three countries for three races” and “America, we understand you – understand us, too” and “Freeze building west of the Atlantic Ocean. Red-skinned American within 1492 border.”
Their feathered headdresses and colorfully painted faces attracted the attention of passersby on the beachfront promenade. As a finishing touch, the protesters released balloons decorated with portraits of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“The protest today is against US meddling in Israel’s internal affairs,” Yossef Mendelvich, one of the protest organizers, said to Ynet. Mendelvich is a writer and a former prisoner of Zion.
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3764489,00.html
Sweden refuses assistance in priest’s Holocaust denial inquiry
Regensburg, Germany – Sweden has refused to summon a journalist for questioning in a possible German prosecution of Richard Williamson, the fundamentalist Catholic clergyman who caused a furor by questioning the scale of the Holocaust.
Prosecutors in the German city of Regensburg admitted Thursday the inquiry was effectively stalled.
Williamson, a British leader of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), gave an interview last year to a Swedish TV journalist near the German city, where the SSPX, an advocate of old-style Catholicism, has a seminary.
A re-broadcast of the interview this year, just after Pope Benedict XVI ended the excommunication of Williamson and three other SSPX leaders, triggered a storm worldwide.
Regensburg prosecutors opened an inquiry to see if he could be charged with Holocaust denial, which is a crime under German law.
They asked their Swedish counterparts to summon the journalist for questioning. But Sweden replied there was no legal basis to interrogate the journalist as requested.
Prosecutor Guenther Ruckdaeschel said this was apparently because of journalistic privilege in Sweden, although he said, from a German point of view, the argument made no sense.
‘Legally, we can’t see why. It wouldn’t be any problem here to question a journalist,’ he said.
‘If we don’t get anything from Sweden, we’ll just have to see how we can get on without this testimony.’
Population studies show that 5 million to 6 million European Jews were killed by all causes,including death camps, starvation, disease and battle, during the Nazi period.
In the interview, Williamson, 69, appeared to question that, contending there was no historical evidence of Nazi gas chambers and claiming ‘only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews’ had been killed in concentration camps.
Through his lawyer, he has told the German prosecutors he was assured his remarks were for broadcast in Sweden only, where there is no law against doubting the Holocaust.
‘FBI sting was a case of anti-Semitism’
*You know what? If you don’t see through this, you are an idiot.*
Anti-Semitism was behind the highly publicized arrests last week of rabbis, including three from the Aleppo-Syrian Jewish community in New York and New Jersey, according to Yitzhak Kakun, editor-in-chief of the Shas weekly Yom Le’Yom.
“There is a feeling here that the FBI purposely attempted to arrest as many rabbis as possible at once in an attempt to humiliate them,” Kakun said in a telephone interview Sunday.
“Regardless of the details of the case – I am not familiar with the precise charges and the evidence – you would never see the FBI and police behaving that way with Muslim sheikhs or Christian priests. It is so obvious that the whole thing is motivated by anti-Semitism,” he said.
Kakun added that he planned on devoting the editorial of his paper to an attack on the Obama administration for attempting to whip up anti-Semitic feelings against the Orthodox Jewish community in the US.
Meanwhile, Shas MK Nissim Ze’ev said US police authorities had deliberately created the false impression that members of the Aleppo community were somehow connected with organ trafficking and extortion, when in reality their only crime was money-laundering.
“There is absolutely no connection between the rabbis from the Aleppo community and those others,” said Ze’ev, who was once a rabbi for the Aleppo community in Brooklyn and continues to pray with the community on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
“The US police are trying to make it seem as though there is some kind of Jewish mafia,” he said.
Ze’ev was referring to impression some media outlets had given by calling the group of rabbis involved the “Kosher Nostra,” a play on the words “Cosa Nostra.”
He also rejected any special connections between Shas and the Aleppo Jewish community in the US.
“Saul Kassin [one of the suspects in the money-laundering scheme] is a man who contributes to many different causes, many of them very Zionistic,” said Ze’ev.
“He helps various charitable institutions in Israel and he has also helped fund IDF projects,” added Ze’ev. “We are not talking about a community that is particularly supportive of Shas. They are much more Zionist and nationalist.”
Members of the Aleppo Jewish community who were arrested on suspicion of money laundering are Eliyahu Ben-Haim, rabbi of Congregation Ohel Yaacob in Deal, New Jersey; Edmond Nahum of the Deal Synagogue; and Saul Kassin of Shaarei Zion Synagogue in Brooklyn.
Ben-Haim is known to have ties to Yehaveh Da’at, a Torah institution headed by Rabbi David Yosef, the son of Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Members of the Aleppo community contributed to the construction of its large building, located near the elder Yosef’s home in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood.
Two other Orthodox Jews – Mordechai Fish of Congregation Sheves Achim, and Label Schwartz – were also charged with money-laundering.
Another man, Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, was charged with allegedly acquiring and trading in human organs.
Ze’ev claimed there was no connection between the members of the Aleppo community and the others, besides their mutual connections with Solomon Duek, an Aleppo Jew charged with bank fraud in 2006 who apparently turned FBI informant.
Revelations regarding the money-laundering came after the haredi community in Israel had been the subject of several negative media reports.
In recent weeks, a haredi woman from Beit Shemesh known as the “Taliban mother,” due to her custom of wearing multiple layers of clothing and covering all parts of her body, including her face and hands, was convicted of child abuse.
Meanwhile, another haredi woman from Jerusalem’s Mea She’arim neighborhood was accused recently of starving her three-year-old son. Her arrest sparked a string of violent street demonstrations and clashes between groups of haredim and police in the capital.
Moshe Grylak, editor-in-chief of the haredi weekly Mishpacha, said the recent spate of bad publicity had put the haredi community in Israel on the defensive.
“The secular population is convinced we are a bunch of Talibans who starve their children and money-launder,” said Grylak, who argued that the local media had broken the rules of journalistic ethics by labeling the perpetrators as haredi.
“And on top of it all, we are also a bunch of parasites who don’t work,” he said. “It’s been a tough time for us. And Tisha Be’av is just around the corner.”
Grylak added that the FBI had purposely created a media fanfare around the US incident in an attempt to cover up the bureau’s failures in uncovering the Madoff scam.
“It was obvious they were trying to prove something, trying to show they were capable,” he said.
Both Grylak and Ze’ev were concerned about possible anti-Semitic repercussions from the incident.
“After Madoff, now there is this. I’m frankly concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism in the US,” said Grylak.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1248277897130&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
That commenter on your blog may actually be working for the Israeli government
*Hmmm…*
Straight out of Avigdor Lieberman’s Foreign Ministry: a new Internet Fighting Team! Israeli students and demobilized soldiers get paid to pretend they are just regular folks and leave pro-Israel comments on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites. The effort is meant to fight the “well-oiled machine” of “pro-Palestinian websites, with huge budgets… with content from the Hamas news agency.” The approach was test-marketed during Israel’s assault on Gaza, and by groups like Give Israel Your United Support, a controversial effort to use instant-access technology to crowd-source Israel advocates to fill in flash polls or vote up key articles on social networking sites.
Will the responders who are hired for this also present themselves as “ordinary net-surfers”?
“Of course,” says Shturman. “Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the policy-explanation department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”
The full article, translated by Occupation Magazine into English here:
The Foreign Ministry presents: talkbackers in the service of the State
By: Dora Kishinevski
Calcalist 5 July 2009Translated for Occupation Magazine by George Malent
After they became an inseparable part of the service provided by public-relations companies and advertising agencies, paid Internet talkbackers are being mobilized in the service in the service of the State. The Foreign Ministry is in the process of setting up a team of students and demobilized soldiers who will work around the clock writing pro-Israeli responses on Internet websites all over the world, and on services like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. The Foreign Ministry’s department for the explanation of Israeli policy* is running the project, and it will be an integral part of it. The project is described in the government budget for 2009 as the “Internet fighting team” – a name that was given to it in order to distinguish it from the existing policy-explanation team, among other reasons, so that it can receive a separate budget. Even though the budget’s size has not yet been disclosed to the public, sources in the Foreign Ministry have told Calcalist that in will be about NIS 600.000 in its first year, and it will be increased in the future. From the primary budget, about NIS 200.000 will be invested in round-the-clock activity at the micro-blogging website Twitter, which was recently featured in the headlines for the services it provided to demonstrators during the recent disturbances in Iran.
“To all intents and purposes the Internet is a theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we must be active in that theatre, otherwise we will lose,” Elan Shturman, deputy director of the policy-explanation department in the Foreign Ministry, and who is directly responsible for setting up the project, says in an interview with Calcalist. “Our policy-explanation achievements on the Internet today are impressive in comparison to the resources that have been invested so far, but the other side is also investing resources on the Internet. There is an endless array of pro-Palestinian websites, with huge budgets, rich with information and video clips that everyone can download and post on their websites. They are flooding the Internet with content from the Hamas news agency. It is a well-oiled machine. Our objective is to penetrate into the world in which these discussions are taking place, where reports and videos are published – the blogs, the social networks, the news websites of all sizes. We will introduce a pro-Israeli voice into those places. What is now going on in Iran is the proof of the need for such an operational branch,” adds Shturman. “It’s not like a group of friends is going to bring down the government with Twitter messages, but it does help to expand the struggle to vast dimensions.”
The missions: “monitoring” and “fostering discussions”
The Foreign Ministry intends to recruit youths who speak at least one foreign language and who are studying communications, political science or law, or alternatively those whose military background is in units that deal with information analysis. “It is a youthful language”, explains Shturman. “Older people do not know how to write blogs, how to act there, what the accepted norms are. The basic conditions are a high capacity for expression in English – we also have French- and Swedish-speakers – and familiarity with the online milieu. We are looking for people who are already writing blogs and circulating in Facebook”.
Members of the new unit will work at the Ministry (“They will punch a time card,” says Shturman) and enjoy the full technical support of Tahila, the government’s ISP, which is responsible for computer infrastructure and Internet services for government departments. “Their missions will be defined along the lines of the government policies that they will be required to defend on the Internet. It could be the situation in Gaza, the situation in the north or whatever is decided. We will determine which international audiences we want to reach through the Internet and the strategy we will use to reach them, and the workers will implement that on in the field. Of course they will not distribute official communiquיs; they will draft the conversations themselves. We will also activate an Internet-monitoring team – people who will follow blogs, the BBC website, the Arabic websites.”
According to Shturman the project will begin with a limited budget, but he has plans to expand the team and its missions: “the new centre will also be able to support Israel as an economic and commercial entity,” he says. “Alternative energy, for example, now interests the American public and Congress much more than the conflict in the Middle East. If through my team I can post in blogs dealing with alternative energy and push the names of Israeli companies there, I will strengthen Israel’s image as a developed state that contributes to the quality of the environment and to humanity, and along with that I may also manage to help an Israeli company get millions of dollars worth of contracts. The economic potential here is great, but for that we will require a large number of people. What is unique about the Internet is the fragmentation into different communities, every community deals with what interests it. To each of those communities you have to introduce material that is relevant to it.”
The inspiration: covert advertising on the Internet
The Foreign Ministry admits that the inspiration comes from none other than the much-reviled field of compensated commercial talkback: employees of companies and public-relations firms who post words of praise on the Internet for those who sent them there – the company that is their employer or their client. The professional responders normally identify themselves as chance readers of the article they are responding to or as “satisfied customers” of the company they are praising.
Will the responders who are hired for this also present themselves as “ordinary net-surfers”?
“Of course,” says Shturman. “Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the policy-explanation department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”
Test-firing in the Gaza WarAccording to Shturman, although it is only now that the project is receiving a budget and a special department in the Foreign Ministry, in practice the Ministry has been using its own responders since the last war in Gaza, when the Ministry recruited volunteer talkbackers. “During Operation Cast Lead we appealed to Jewish communities abroad and with their help we recruited a few thousand volunteers, who were joined by Israeli volunteers. We gave them background material and policy-explanation material, and we sent them to represent the Israeli point of view on news websites and in polls on the Internet,” says Shturman. “Our target audience then was the European Left, which was not friendly towards the policy of the government. For that reason we began to get involved in discussions on blogs in England, Spain and Germany, a very hostile environment.”And how much change have you effected so far?“It is hard to prove success in this kind of activity, but it is clear that we succeeded in bypassing the European television networks, which are very critical of Israel, and we have created direct dialogues with the public.”What things have you done there exactly?“For example, we sent someone to write in the website of a left-wing group in Spain. He wrote ‘it is not exactly as you say.’ Someone at the website replied to him, and we replied again, we gave arguments, pictures. Dialogue like that opens people’s eyes.”Elon Gilad, a worker at the Foreign Ministry who coordinated the activities of the volunteer talkbackers during the war in Gaza and will coordinate the activities of the professional talkbackers in the new project, says that volunteering for talkback in defence of Israel started spontaneously: “Many times people contacted us and asked how they could help to explain Israeli policy. They mainly do it at times like the Gaza operation. People just asked for information, and afterwards we saw that the information was distributed all over the Internet. The Ministry of Absorption also started a project at that time, and they transferred to us hundreds of volunteers who speak foreign languages and who will help to spread the information. That project too mainly spreads information on the Internet.”“You can’t win”While most of the net-surfers were recruited through websites like giyus.org, which was officially activated by a Jewish lobby [and has basically the same goal and modus operandi], in some cases is it was the Foreign Ministry that took the initiative to contact the surfers and asked them to post talkbacks sympathetic to the State and the government [of Israel] on the Internet and to help recruit volunteers. That’s how Michal Carmi, an active blogger and associate general manager at the high-tech placement company Tripletec, was recruited to the online policy-explanation team.“During Operation Cast Lead the Foreign Ministry wrote to me and other bloggers and asked us to make our opinions known on the international stage as well,” Carmi tells Calcalist. “They sent us pages with ‘taking points’ and a great many video clips. I focussed my energies on Facebook, and here and there I wrote responses on blogs where words like ‘Holocaust’ and ‘murder’ were used in connection with Israel’s Gaza action. I had some very hard conversations there. Several times the Foreign Ministry also recommended that we access specific blogs and get involved in the discussions that were taking place there.”And does it work? Does it have any effect?“I am not sure that that strategy was correct. The Ministry did excellent work, they sent us a flood of accurate information, but it focussed on Israeli suffering and the threat of the missiles. But the view of the Europeans is one-dimensional. Israeli suffering does not seem relevant to them compared to Palestinian suffering.”“You can never win in this struggle. All you can do is be there and express your position,” is how Gilad sums up the effectiveness so far, as well as his expectations of the operation when it begins to receive a government budget.(*) “department for the explanation of Israeli policy” is a translation of only two words in the original Hebrew text: “mahleqet ha-hasbara” – literally, “the department of explanation”. Israeli readers require no elaboration. Henceforth in this article, “hasbara” will be translated as “policy-explanation”. It may also be translated as “public diplomacy” or “propaganda” – trans.gm
Hungarian lawmakers reject Holocaust denial law
BUDAPEST (JTA) — Hungary’s lawmakers rejected constitutional amendments to make Holocaust denial a punishable offense.
Some local Jewish community leaders believe that Monday’s vote secured the first parliamentary victory for Jobbik, a rapidly rising local neo-Nazi movement widely predicted to win several seats in the national elections due within a year.
The proposals, put forth by the ruling Socialist caretaker government, attracted fewer than half the votes needed to adopt a constitutional amendment.
The frequently populist, ultra-Conservative Fidesz opposition party rejected the proposals along with the neo-Liberal Free Democrats, the erstwhile coalition partners of the Socialists.
The Association of Hungarian Jewish Religious Communities, or Mazsihisz — the country’s largest Jewish organization — has not issued an official comment. However, a commentary published on the Mazsihisz Web site by Tamas Palmai, an intellectual writing in his personal capacity, says many believe that Fidesz turned down the reforms for fear of provoking the wrath of Jobbik.
Holocaust denial is outlawed in many countries which, like Hungary, were occupied by the Nazis during World War II. The Hungarian government’s attempt at introducing the legislation that failed was made in response to provocations by neo-Nazis at Buda Castle that marred the last Holocaust Remembrance Day.
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/07/01/1006256/hungarian-lawmakers-reject-anti-holocaust-denial-law
Five people injured in Ontario school stabbing
Five people have been injured in a knife fight that took place at a Mississauga high school Wednesday morning.
Two male students have been rushed to Credit Valley Hospital with “severe” stab wounds, according to Brad Bowie with Peel EMS.
A female teacher at St. Joseph’s Secondary School was among the injured. She suffered minor injuries when she tried to break up the fight and was not transported to hospital.
Bowie said he does not know the condition of the other two students who were injured in the melee.
Police in Peel region were called to the school, located on Creditview Road near Eglinton Avenue, just before 8:30 a.m.
Two people have been taken in for questioning but it is unclear if they are students at the school.
The school was put under lockdown for about an hour. Administrators are now sending students home and closing the school for the day as a result of the police investigation.
