Bombings spread in Syria as Al Qaeda seizes control of rebel factions

Around the first anniversary of the death of al Qaeda’s iconic leader Osama bin Laden at the hands of US special forces, the jihadist movement is making an operational comback in the Arab world and Africa. The suicide bombings hitting Damascus and Idlib in the last 24 hours were the work of Al Qaeda in Iraq – AQI, whose operatives have been pouring into Syria in the last two weeks, DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report.

Washington has not asked Iraqi premier Nouri al-Maliki to stem the outward flow, realizing he is glad to see the backs of the terrorists and waving them across the border into Syria. Our sources report from Western agencies fighting al Qaeda that several thousand operatives have arrived in Syria to fight the Assad regime, most entering the country from the north. They come fully armed with quantities of explosives. Among them are hundreds of Saudis, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, Iraqis and Sudanese.

They quickly join up with the hundreds of al Qaeda fighters from Libya present at Free Syrian Army-FSA training camps in southeast Turkey. There, they are instructed in the geography of Syrian government, army and security forces locations, led across the border and transported to their targeted locations by special guides.
Monday, April 30, the day after Norwegian Maj. Gen. Robert Hood took command of a painfully inadequate force of UN UN truce supervisors, al Qaeda let loose with a spate of bombings in Damascus and the northeastern flashpoint town of Idlib. I

In the capital, they bombed the Syrian central bank with RPG grenades, ambushed a police patrol in the town center and blew up a bomb car against a Syrian military convoy driving through the Qudsiya district. Two days earlier, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the Zain al-Abideen mosque of Damascus, killing at least 9 worshippers.
These attacks were followed later Monday with three bomb blasts in Idlib at security and intelligence centers in the town, killing some 20 people, most of them security personnel. One command center was destroyed and hundreds were injured by the force of the blasts.
The Syrian ruler Bashar Assad keeps on complaining that his regime is under assault by terrorists and many of the fatalities reported are members of his army and police. But his own brutal methods against dissidents have deafened the West to these complaints and the world addresses its demands to halt the violence to him and him alone.
There is nothing new about the refusal in the West to heed the fact that al Qaeda infiltrators are increasingly responsible for violence in the various parts of the Arab Revolt. In Libya too, Muammar Qaddafi warned repeatedly that his overthrow would result in al Qaeda-linked groups seizing control of the country and commandeering his vast arsenals of weapons.
In the seven months since the Qaddafi regime was destroyed, Washington, London and Paris have turned a blind eye to the impossibility of establishing a stable government in Tripoli because rebel factions and militias identified with al Qaeda which control Libya’s main towns are too busy running the biggest arms smuggling network ever seen in North Africa.
Rockets, explosives and every kind of weapon is reaching al Qaeda elements and affiliates in abundant quantities across northern Africa and the Middle East, including their offshoots in Egyptian Sinai and the Gaza Strip.

Groups identified with al Qaeda have seized control of large parts of Mali and directly threaten the stability of the Algerian government.
DEBKAfile’s counter-terror and Washington sources report fears that Syria might go the same way as Libya. Syrian officers and agents who have deserted from Syrian military and security agencies have made their way to Washington to implore administration officials to abandon the US policy of non-intervention in Syria. They warn that the rebel Free Syrian Army is falling into the clutches of al Qaeda. It won’t be long, they say, before these jihdist terrorists not only wreak mayhem in Syria, but turn that country into their haven and base for cross-border attacks against Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, the West Bank and Jordan. 

Their pleas have not moved the Obama administration. Our military sources note that so long as the Americans stay out of involvement in Syria, France, Turkey and Arab League nations will also stand aside, because the US alone is capable of establishing combined commands and infrastructure for coordinating an operation with multiple air support on the scale required for Syria.

By opting out of action in Syria, the West and the Arab League not only give Assad free rein to continue slaughtering his people but leave the door open for al Qaeda to move in on the various Syrian rebel movements and add the element of terror to the ongoing carnage.

Our Marie Antoinette President

On Friday, in yet another report tagged with the word “unexpected,” economic growth in the United States slowed to a 2.2 percent annual rate, well below economists’ predictions of 2.5 percent. This anemic trend represents part of the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression. Most Americans understand that such a reality requires a certain amount of belt-tightening on their part. President Obama and the First Family? Not so much. A series of upscale vacations, substantial portions of which are underwritten by taxpayers, continue to be an integral part of the Obamas’ lifestyle.
Few reasonable Americans begrudge “down time” for the president or his family. Yet at a time when the word “staycation” has become an increasingly familiar part of the American lexicon, one might think a president who both vilifies the rich and reminds Americans that he wasn’t born ”with a silver spoon in my mouth” might be a bit more sensitive to the kind of vacations taken by the president and his family.
In a rather odd way, he is. When the president’s 13-year-old daughter, Malia, took a Spring Break trip to Mexico with 12 of her friends and 25 Secret Service agents–one that reportedly cost taxpayers $2.5 million–it was covered by the mainstream media. AFP filed the initial report, and the story was subsequently picked up by Yahoo, the Huffington Post, and the International Business Times, as well as foreign publications, such as Daily Mail, theTelegraph and The Australian.
Yet by the same evening, all of the stories had been removed from each of those sites. The updated links either directed one to a site’s home page or 404 error pages, reading “page not found.” What happened? The White House got a compliant media to scrub the story. Kristina Schake, Communications Director to the First Lady, confirmed this to Politico: “From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest. We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.”
Again, such concerns for the safety of First Family members are entirely legitimate. Yet some questions remain unanswered. Why would the president allow his daughter to travel to Mexico despite a Texas Department of Public Safety warning not to go there because “cartel violence and other criminal activity represent a significant safety threat, even in some resort areas”? Why was it necessary to include a dozen friends, making the trip more expensive and security far more complicated? Why are members of the mainstream media taking marching orders from the White House? Why did the trip cost taxpayers $2.5 million?
Perhaps, as the saying goes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Last week, Judicial Watch released a report revealing that First Lady Michelle Obama’s trip to Costa Del Sol, Spain in 2010 cost taxpayers $467,585. Again, no reasonable person begrudges a woman in the public spotlight some rest and relaxation. But as the New York Times reports, part of that R&R included a stay at the “five-star Hotel Villa Padierna near Marbella, where at least 30 rooms were reserved for the entourage, including those for security. The hotel is one of Spain’s more luxurious establishments, with rooms ranging from $500-a-night to a $6,600 suite with 24-hour butler service.”

“The Holocaust began with boycotts of Jewish stores and ended with death camps,

 

One Bad Apple Spoils The Entire Bunch

“One bad apple spoils the entire bunch,” is sometimes called an old wives tale, although history has yet to provide us with enough information to determine whether those observant women worked inside or outside the home. Regardless, this simple observation is not only rooted in common sense but proven by science. Ethylene is a plant hormone, a simple alkene that stimulates growth and also helps ripen fruit, and when released prematurely has the ability to over-activate that same function in the fruit around it, proving that one bad apple can, indeed, ruin the whole lot. For the sake of argument, what happens when all the apples in a barrel are already bad, when there is no cross-contamination but a symbiotic relationship among the decaying vegetation? Could it be the reason for the stench that emanates from the policies advocated by this administration is not the byproduct of one bad apple, but instead the result of an intentional assemblage of rotten fruit?

After three years of consistent mistakes, misjudgments, miscalculations, and misrepresentations a strong case can be made that this isn’t your run-of-the-mill misfeasance but the result of design and intent, for decisions and actions that run in opposition to the laws, social mores, and history of the United States are the criteria for what today passes as “POLICY”. The cause of this morass is not identified by merely saying there are systemic issues in the GSA, Secret Service, and Congress, for the hollow record of underachievement, failure, and nihilism begins with Mr. Obama due to the ripple effect of his behavior and stratagems aimed antithetically to capitalism and liberty. The result is not only a grotesque present, but a ripple effect toward a perilous future littered with washouts, craters, and IED’s.

Mr. Obama has disgraced the post to which he was entrusted and is seemingly on a daily bent to develop new and novel ways of desecrating his office now that he no longer can, nor cares to hide his predilections. Clearly, he cannot manage, and like all poor managers, surrounds himself with toadies. He has overtly enabled radical Islamists to gain huge geopolitical advantage, insulted allies Israel, Great Britain, and Canada, surrounded himself with radical anti-American disciples steeped in the pseudo-intellectual teachings of Cloward, Piven, and Allinsky, and is in denial with respect to how his bungling and ineptitude have harmed America because in his mind and the mind of the lemmings with which he has surrounded himself, they have won. In three short years they have pushed the country they detest into a steep decline by jousting at the windmills of “fairness” and “struggle”, have championed fiscal malfeasance, apologized to the world for our country’s achievements, led by a president who would deign to publicly blow air kisses to Vladimir Putin. They have yet to deliver the matador’s estocada, though it still holds a prominent position on their “to-do list.”


Now that it has exhausted its repertoire of machinations, The Federal Reserve has been reduced to drawing pass patterns in the playground sand after Quantitative Easing, the last radical scheme in its playbook, has done little to resuscitate the corpse of this once great economy. Fed action, a cocktail party euphemism for market manipulation, has undeniably proven vital at times over the decades, but the flip side of that coin has led neophytic ideologues of this administration to harbor a belief that markets can be controlled. Markets of all types (stock, bonds, commodities, real estate) are independent forces that might react to a short term tweak, but ultimately continue to carve paths with the strength of a flooding river; they ebb and flow through natural cycles and not because of the actions of man.

The activity that led to the unnecessary bankruptcy of MF Global was based upon former Goldman Sachs CEO, former U.S. Senator, and former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine’s violation of a rudimentary securities law which prohibits the comingling of funds with customers in the event of profit OR loss, nothwithstanding the implicit “don’t steal their money, either.” What would prompt the once enormously successful and now disgraced Mr. Corzine to empty customer accounts like a cub broker with a cocaine problem?

He remains the second largest Obama campaign “bundler” in the country at a time when other people implicated in a crime of this stature would even be shunned by Bill Clinton’s White House, remanded to home confinement wearing an ankle bracelet, and awaiting trial. Yet, Corzine inexplicably remains a member of the president’s inner circle. Did the faux omniscience of this administration fog his glasses? Was he promised a quick turnaround on a misguided gamble? Was he given a wink and a nod that any loss would be covered for playing the role of this administration’s puppet-boy as it followed the delusional belief that it could prop up the avalanche of European debt with a little outside buying?
Unless Corzine is completely and utterly insane, he is some organ grinder’s monkey and I think it’s imperative we find out who’s providing the peanuts.

Is Accomodator General Eric Holder the answer? Not really. This guy enforces laws and turns a blind eye to others like a man tossing darts at a board full of balloons. Are there any young Woodwards or Bernsteins looking to make their bones with some crack investigative work? Not if they want to keep their jobs, and certainly not if their life insurance premiums aren’t paid. How about a John Dean staffer who gets a pang of conscience? There are better odds of a Middle East Peace.

Instead of being frustrated by this bleakness any longer today, I’m going to act presidential. My tee time is at 3:08.

Netanyahu’s choices: Strike Iran before or after Israeli elections

Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak are facing another of the periodic opposition campaigns to unseat them – this time by pressure for an early election a year before its October, 2013 date. New faces have joined the opposition lineup. They are focused on challenging the current government’s credentials for leading an Israeli attack to preempt a nuclear Iran. These two goals are interchangeable. However, before the campaign peaks, DEBKAfile’s analysts report it has begun to backfire.
The newcomer to the anti-government ranks is the party registered Sunday, April 29, by ex-broadcaster Yair Lapid as “Yesh Atid” (There is a Future). His potential partners are former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former chief of staff Gaby Ashkenazi. They are all casting about for a political base, together or apart, from which to tip over the current government.  Incumbent President Shimon Peres cheers them on from the wings.
Diskin’s assault on Netanyahu and Barak as not to be trusted to lead a war and guided by “messianic” feelings was launched Friday, April 27, directly after Independence Day celebrations, at the same time as two leading opposition parties, Labor and Kadima, set the stage for an early election to stem the right-of-center government’s constant gains in opinion polls.

The ex-Shin Bet chief sounded the drum for them all by his assault on Netanyahu’s competence for leading any wars, least of all, a major conflict against Iran. Captions suddenly blossomed in foreign publications on the lines of “Israel’s Generals in Revolt,” implying that Israel’s security establishment was solidly against an attack on Iran.

This is far from the truth. The vocal opponents are a group of disaffected ex-security officials. There are questions about why they did not resign on the grounds of the views they are now voicing instead of fighting to have their tours of duty extended.
Now they are casting out lines for careers in politics.
Ehud Olmert, one of the Yesh Atid founding fathers and a member of its inner leadership, set the new party’s security agenda in New York Sunday with this comment:  “I think that fundamentally, Israelis believe that a nuclear Iran imperils their existence. That is not in dispute. Nor that we must do everything it takes to defend ourselves against this peril. The question is what should be done, who should do it and when. My answer is this: It is being done and continues to be done by the international community led by the United States.”

With this agenda, Olmert sought to place the question of an Israeli solo attack on Iran versus reliance on US President Barack Obama front and center of the election campaign to come.
He appeared to be drawing on Diskin’s words, that the Israeli public is “stupid” or “ignorant,” leading to his belief that the Israeli voter would swallow a straight black-and-white choice between the “good guys” and the “bad guys.’
The good guys would be Barak Obama and his advisers, who have worked so hard to hold Israel back from a military offensive against Iran, and the baddies are Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak who are making trouble for the US president.

On April 26, Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz tried to fracture this distorted picture: He reported that other armies stand alongside Israel ready to attack Iran and prevent its acquisition of a nuclear weapon.

He did not name those armies, but DEBKAfile’s military sources disclosed he was referring to the United States.

In their drive to discredit Netanyahu and Barak, President Peres, Olmert, Dagan, Diskin and Ashkenazi failed to take note of Gen. Gantz’s words or what they portended – namely: In the past week, the United States has brought forward its operational preparations for an attack on Iran.
Instead, in Jerusalem, Israel’s opposition parties gathered for the push to corner Netanyahu into announcing an early election.
They got their wish sooner than they expected.
The prime minister, after turning the situation over for 48 hours, assented. He figured that the key weapon adopted by his rivals to knock him over was not in fact in their hands but in his: It is up to him and him alone to decide whether to attack Iran. In fact, if an election was forced on his government, he could defeat their scheme by bringing the attack forward.
So the impression of Netanyahu and Barak fighting with their backs to the wall against a body of generals is totally misleading.

Their opponents are beginning to realize that their anti-government offensive has missed its mark and may well blow up in their faces. The pressure for an election may therefore dissipate in the coming days - or not. That too is up to Netanyahu. He may decide that a successful operation against Iran would assure him of an election victory and wipe out his rivals. For now, he's got his foes guessing.
President Obama was far from happy with the exes’ anti-government maneuvers because he realized that they offered Prime Minister Netanyahu his strongest incentive yet for bringing forward an attack on Iran, an eventuality which the US president had made every effort to prevent before he himself faces the American voter in November.

MIT develops fog resistant, glare-free glass, it's clearly amazing (video)

It sounds like it's not just us that spend half our sweet time with lint-free cloth in hand. Researchers atMIT have developed a new type of glass that "virtually eliminates" reflections, and is also water-repellent. By using techniques from the semiconductor industry, conical nano-textures etched into the layered surface that give the wonder-glass its fog, glare and self-cleaning properties. The hope is that the technology will find its way into our many daily screens and even windows. It's not all about gadget vanity though; solar panels lose efficiency over time through residual surface build up, and using the new glass could go some way to eliminate that issue. If they can just remember where they put the ultra-clear test sample that is.


http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/29/mit-develops-fog-resistant-glass/

UK's 5th largest food retailer boycotts 4 Israeli companies

Britain's fifth-largest food retailer, the Co-operative Group, announced over the weekend that it would stop doing business with four Israeli companies accounting for 350,000 pounds worth of trade over the companies ties to and operations in the West Bank.

The four companies the the Co-op is severing ties with are Agrexco, Arava Export Growers, Adafresh and Mehadrin, according to a statement. Going forward, the statement added, "we will additionally no longer engage with any supplier of produce known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements."

The food retailer clarified that the "position is not a boycott of Israeli businesses, and we continue to have supply agreements with some [20] Israeli suppliers that do not source from the settlements." Additionally, it added that it  will "continue to actively work to increase trade links with Palestinian businesses."

How good a friend of the Jews was Harry Truman?

PALO ALTO –“The Truman administration really crossed a line here. It’s one thing to have a policy that is anti-Zionist, but to threaten and intimidate American Jews goes beyond the bounds of the legitimate political world,” said Dr. Rafael Medoff of a disturbing historical discovery he recently made.

In the course of conducting research in 2011 for his new book,Herbert Hoover and the Jews: The Origins of the ‘Jewish Vote’ and Bipartisan Support for Israel, Medoff, who is also aJerusalem Post columnist, uncovered heretofore unpublished evidence that in late April 1948, two weeks before Israel declared independence, the State Department threatened to incite a wave of anti-Semitism in the United States if Zionist leaders proclaimed the State of Israel.

Related:

• The speech Obama should give at the Holocaust Museum

The evidence was contained in a nine-page report of a conversation between undersecretary of State Robert A. Lovett and Zionist official and World Jewish Congress co-founder Nahum Goldmann that the scholar found in Goldmann’s papers in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem.

“I’m not the first person to have looked at Nahum Goldmann’s papers,” Medoff told the Post, “but it appears that no one had previously taken notice of this critical section in the middle of this particular report.”

Although Truman had supported the UN Partition Plan in November 1947, by March 1948, his administration, fearful that partition could not be successfully implemented, had changed its position and was calling for an international trusteeship of Palestine (referred to as “the truce” in Goldmann’s report).

Goldmann reported that Lovett said to him: “As the situation is now, we must have a truce. If you prevent it we will become very tough. We will wash our hands of the whole situation and will prevent any help being given to you. We will publish a White Paper, which is already in preparation.”

Lovett went on to say that this White Paper would incriminate the Arabs, the British and the Jews.

“Anti-Semitism is mounting in an unprecedented way in groups and circles which are very influential and were never touched by Anti-Semitism. Such a White Paper would do great harm to the Jews in this country, and once it is published, I am not sure that outstanding Jewish leaders who are helping you today would go along with you,” Lovett threatened Goldmann and the Zionist leadership.

These intimidating remarks came within the context of the State Department’s demand for an indefinite postponement of the declaration of the State of Israel.

A week after Goldmann’s meeting with Lovett, Zionist leaders from the US and the Yishuv met in New York to decide how to proceed in light of the State Department’s threats.

“Goldmann was in favor of giving in to the American demands,” Medoff said. “But the majority voted to go ahead with the state.”

One of those who were vocal about proceeding was then-Zionist Organization of America president Emanuel Neumann, who wrote in his 1976 memoir, In the Arena: “I dwelt upon the historic significance of May 14, 1948, a moment which had to be seized to proclaim the Jewish state; not a week, nor a day, nor an hour should be allowed to intervene.... this might be our last chance.”

He said he was certain that the US government would not carry through on its threats.

“As for the veiled or open threats from the State Department, I was sure they did not have to be taken seriously,” he said. “With a presidential election due that November, it was out of the question that the Truman administration would attempt to harass us – with the vast and bitter repercussions that this would create in the American Jewish community.”

Lovett himself alluded to this fear of losing Jewish votes to the more pro- Zionist Republicans, in his conversation with Goldmann.

“Jewish political power began emerging in a significant way after the war. The Democrats were worried about the defection of Jews to the GOP because of the Democrats’ Holocaust policies,” Medoff noted. “We would have published it already if we hadn’t been afraid of grave repercussions in the United States,” Lovett told Goldmann in reference to the proposed White Paper.

In his research, Medoff did not come across any documents spelling out exactly what would have been in that White Paper, but he thinks it would have included suggestions of dual loyalty. In addition, it might have reiterated the warning to the Zionists by both presidents Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt that the Zionists would be responsible for America being compelled to send troops to the Middle East, resulting in American lives being lost due to Arab attacks there.

“The State Department was not acting in opposition to Truman. On the contrary, it was implementing presidential policy,” Medoff explained.

“Truman did not want a major international conflict that would draw the Soviet Union in, and then necessitate American intervention. He didn’t have a plan to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. He just wanted to keep things calm.” In the end, even when the War of Independence did break out, the US never did have to send in troops. “For Truman, it was simply a problem of timing,” Medoff said. With the election just months away, he acceded to his political adviser’s urging to support the establishment of the Jewish state.

Regardless of how history played itself out, Medoff finds the document he unearthed “most troubling.”

“It’s one thing for diplomats to get rough with one another. Threats can be made between the arguing parties,” he remarked. “But to threaten to harm bystanders? That is unprecedented.

It is deeply disturbing that the State Department would go to such extremes. Threatening to provoke racial hatred against American citizens should have been beyond the pale.”

Herbert Hoover and the Jews was authored by Medoff together with US foreign relations professor Dr. Sonja Schoepf Wentling. It was published this month by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, of which Medoff is the founding director.

In addition to revealing how concern about the Jewish vote influenced Truman to recognize the newborn State of Israel in 1948, the book documents efforts by Hoover and other top Republicans in the 1930s and 1940s to promote rescue of Jews from the Holocaust and creation of a Jewish state. It shows how the GOP’s adoption of a pro-Zionist plank in its 1944 platform forced the Democrats to do likewise, marking the first competition by the two parties for the Jewish vote.

Medoff believes that the newly revealed information and the events surrounding it are not only pertinent to the past.

“It’s possible to see 1948 in recent developments,” he suggested. “The intimidating of American Jewish Zionists for the possible loss of American lives is happening today. Like when Vice President Biden made a statement that the construction of apartments in certain neighborhoods of Jerusalem could lead to attacks on Americans. The tactic of using leaks to the media to try to pressure Israel not to take steps to defend itself against Iran does the same thing.”

“It’s the same implicit threat that the Jews will be blamed for the death of American soldiers,” Medoff said. “Is it a coincidence, or is it a pattern? Whatever it is, it’s as troubling now as it was then.”

Obama lifts freeze on $192 million aid package to Palestinian Authority

It is? In what way? "Obama lifts freeze on $192 million aid package to Palestinian Authority," from the Times of Israel, April 27:

US President Barack Obama has lifted a ban on financial aid to the Palestinian Authority.
Obama stated that the aid was “important to the security interests of the United States.”

The US Congress froze a $192 million aid package to the Palestinian Authority after its president, Mahmoud Abbas, defied US pressure and sought to attain UN endorsement of Palestinian statehood last September. The presidential waiver means that aid can now be delivered....

The AFP news agency quoted White House spokesman Tommy Vietor as saying the $192 million aid package would be devoted to “ensuring the continued viability of the moderate PA government under the leadership of [Palestinian Authority] President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.”

Vietor added that the PA had fulfilled its major obligations, such as recognizing Israel’s right to exist, renouncing violence and accepting the Road Map for Peace.

Oh really? They've done all that, and yet still retail genocidal rhetoric about destroying Israel? Quite a balancing act.

Ex-Shin Bet chief runs down Netanyahu and Barak as war leaders

The criticism former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin leveled against current government leaders Friday, April 27, was intensely blunt and personal. “I don’t believe in either the prime minister or the defense minister,” he told a small gathering, and went on to accuse Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak of misleading the public by telling them that an Israeli attack would keep a nuclear bomb out of Iranian hands.

DEBKAfile’s military experts divide Diskin’s words into two parts: factual and political or personal. It is true that an Israeli or American strike against Iran may indeed be too late to pre-empt a nuclear capability, they confirm. Some sources believe Tehran had already reached this goal in the autumn of 2011.
But the ex-Shin Bet chief’s claim that “many experts” maintain an Israeli attack would accelerate an Iranian nuclear race is itself misleading. It implies that the Iranians have been idling until now and would step up their tempo justifiably only if attacked, whereas the truth is that they never slowed their momentum in the years in which Israel held back from an offensive.
 In the past year, Tehran has transferred accelerated uranium enrichment to the underground Fordow facility near Qom, was able to double the pace of its progress and is believed to be close to producing dirty bombs (radioactive material combined with conventional explosives for spreading pollution).
So the connection Diskin drew between an Israeli attack and the pace of Ian’s nuclear progress is artificial.
His choice of phrasing was however a giveaway on the personal and political issues he has with Netanyahu and Barak.

“I have no faith in the current leadership, which must lead us in an event on the scale of war with Iran or a regional war,” he said, adding, “I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings.”  

The ex-Shin Bet chief made no reference - any more than the two leaders he targeted - to the failures of Israel’s intelligence community, to which he and the ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan belonged, to make any real headway towards stalling the Iranian program in 12 years of covert activity, excepting only for short-lived, marginal delays.
His reticence is not surprising. What is, is the use of the term “messianic,” because it is a favorite insider word bandied about in far-left fringes to stigmatize any group which does not agree with its pro-Palestinian agenda. It is therefore revealing as to the former Shin Bet chief’s political leanings and bias.
Diskin, like Dagan, will no doubt deny that he has any political ambitions and insist his assault on the prime minister and defense minister is motivated purely by genuine concern about their ability to conduct a large-scale conflict.

At the same time, his comments “happened” to coincide with the campaign launched by the opposition Labor’s new leader Shelly Yacimovitch to bring general elections forward by a year to September or October, 2012.  She seems to believe she can buck the polls - the latest of which forecast 15 seats (out of 120) for Labor compared with Likud’s 31 (up from 27) - by bringing in new faces to replace the five members who followed Ehud Barak out of the party last year. Labor was left then with only six members of Knesset.
Yacimovitch’s platform highlights social and economic issues. She is strikingly wanting in security credentials. This dimension, Diskin may have been chosen to provide by means of spanner in a works of a potential Israeli preemptive strike against a nuclear-armed Iran.
Israel’s leftist camp, including Labor, is scrambling hard to arrest its steep plunge in recent years by injecting new blood into its upper ranks.  Diskin himself, like Dagan, former chief of staff Gaby Ashkenazi and heads of last year’s protest movement, may still be floating between Labor, far-left fringes, Kadima and the new party ex-broadcaster Yair Lapid is trying to assemble.

DEBKAfile has no problem with new faces rising on the political scene and would welcome the spontaneous appearance of authentically popular movements.
But the trouble with left-wing activists, new and established, is their boast of generous funding from likeminded overseas sponsors. Questions must therefore be asked about the loyalty of political groupings whose activities are financed by foreign political interests – most of them pro-Palestinian - and at least one known to be based in London

It is odd to find the successful terrorist fighter Yuval Diskin and other high security and military achievers in this company. It is even stranger to hear them lending their voices to imported sentiments even in relation to the Iranian nuclear question which bears heavily on Israel’s future. 

“Birth Certificate” a Distraction leading to an Undoing

Sometimes, what we know NOW as opposed to what we knew THEN can make a great deal of difference in clearing the picture.

I have suggested, for some time now, that anything this administration does, in a big way, is cover for something else. We need look no further back than a year ago to see this in what may well be its pinnacle usage.

I would also suggest, this is how Obama has painted himself into a corner.

It was one year ago, yesterday, that Obama made a big deal of releasing his “Birth Certificate.” He held a press conference. He showed it off. He said it was his, it was real and it would end any questions about it.

It was, as we know NOW, not his, not real and certainly did not end any questions about it.

Obama, it seems, didn’t take Sheriff Joe Arpaio into account.

I’ll get back to that.

The one question I asked the day he released that “birth certificate” and one that was asked by many was: Why then?

The questions of his birth certificate had swirled for years. Since 2008. During his campaign. Why, if the certificate was that available to him, did he wait 2 ½ years to release it? If he could get his hands on it in April of 2011, why couldn’t he get his hands on it in April of 2008? Why not when he received the nomination? Why not on the day before his election? The day of his inauguration?

Why did he wait until April 27^th 2011?

Simple.

He thought he needed a distraction. Some way to focus the press on something. The press would then focus the people. Social media would be spiked with posts regarding it. He needed a distratction and…the “birth certificate” was it.

In truth, he only THOUGHT he needed a distraction because nobody knew what HE knew. The press didn’t know. Nobody in social media knew.

Bin Laden.

The original date for the bin Laden raid in Abbottabad was to have been…April 30^th, 2011.

Obama was deeply engaged in making the decision to strike that compound. Intell had been gathered. There was a good chance he was there. The Seal team had been rehearsing.

We are told that Obama didn’t make the decision, the final decision, until April 29^th but…I suggest, that decision had been made earlier. Maybe a week earlier, maybe 2 weeks earlier. Certainly those planning the mission knew the cycle of the moon and that darkness would provide the best cover and a timeline of the best possible nights to strike would have included a narrow window of opportunity.

The window would open on a certain date and close on a certain date.

I would suggest the first or earliest date was to be, April 29^th or 30^th. The closing date would have been May 2^nd or 3^rd.

Obama and his team felt a distraction was necessary and because the mission to get bin Laden was big…the distraction needed to be BIG as well.

The “birth certificate” issue. THAT was big. Release the “birth certificate” that’ll distract em.

The problem, in the run-up to the bin Laden strike, was there was no birth certificate to release. Obama knew it, his team knew it but…they NEEDED that distraction.

Create a “birth certificate” out of thin air. Do it. Do it fast. Make it look good…Obama himself will release it…press conference…social media will jump on it…everybody will be focused on the distraction instead of what’s really going on.

The problem was, those who created the forgery for purposes of distraction were NOT forensic document experts. They were just people with access to some basic scanners and enough know-how to cut and paste and layer.

In a state of arrogance, nobody thought far enough ahead to realize the blogosphere was full of computer nerds who would, within 24 hours, reveal the truth and when they did, the liberal/socialist Obama machine did what they had done since the questions regarding the birth certificate first came to light back in 2008…They labeled those who knew it was a forgery as loons…Crazy people…Conspiracy theorists and fools.

They didn’t count on Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Arpaio launched the only law enforcement investigation into the “birth certificate” at the urging of the Surprise Arizona Tea Party. The Surprise Tae Party was, no doubt, driven by those blogosphere computer nerds who were spurred into action by the distraction Obama never needed to begin with.

Obama’s DOJ has been investigating Arpaio virtually since day one and while Arpaio says his investigation into the “birth certificate” is not in response to BEING investigated himself, one could hardly blame him if it were. Indeed, the DOJ ramped up their efforts against Arpaio when he took on the “birth certificate” issue but poking at Cujo with a sharp stick is no way to back him off.

Obama painted himself into a corner by creating a distraction…a forged birth certificate…to provide cover for the bin Laden raid, which was already under such a blanket of secrecy it needed no further cover.

The distraction is now the issue. The forged birth certificate has led Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse and lead investigator, Mike Zullo, to the forged Selective Service registration and no doubt, a great deal more. I’s are being dotted and T’s being crossed…eventually, more information will be released by Zullo, the Posse and Arpaio.

Obama is already using the bin Laden raid in his reelection campaign. He will continue to do so and I believe, eventually, he will release the photos of a dead bin Laden.

Obamacare is likely to fall in the Supreme Court as is the lawsuit over Arizona’s SB1070. The economy is still in trouble. Green energy is a bust. Fast and Furious is a disaster. Holder, I believe, will be held in contempt of the House Committee. Obama’s policies regarding Iran, Israel, the United Nations, Egypt, Syria, Libya and others have been dismal. Gas prices are sky high and will most likely get worse. Inflation. Class warfare. Continued playing of the race card. The list of Obama failures just goes on and on.

The one thing on which he can hang his hat and no one can disagree with is that he presided over the bin Laden Raid.

The ultimate irony is that Obama CREATED a distraction from the singular thing he’s done right and that distraction could well prove his undoing.

It would also be the ultimate price of arrogance.

Presidents Don’t Chest Bump And First Ladies Don’t Hump The Floor by Mychal

Can you imagine the wife of the CEO of Exxon Mobil rolling around and gyrating up and down on the floor during a national television talk show hosted by a lesbian talk show host? Can you imagine President Dwight Eisenhower, President John Kennedy, or President Ronald Reagan doing a mac-daddy ghetto shuffle to a stage where they do chest bumps and fist bumps with those on the platform? Have you ever heard or witnessed Samantha Cameron, wife of the British Prime Minister, gyrating her way from late night show to late night show? Can you point to a time that President Reagan swaggered to the microphone at West Point stopping along the way to chest bump the cadets? Can you identify another wife of a world leader that behaves like Michelle Obama?

Have you ever seen the wife of General Colin Powell photographed time after time shaking her behind for school children? Can you imagine any scenario of First Lady Jackie Kennedy wallowing around on the floor in front of Ellen Degeneres and a national audience? Has any other First Lady behaved as this one has? Have you seen photos of the wives of the Fortune 100 companies appearing in public unkempt, tacky, and with pants so tight that nothing is left to imagination including the type of undergarment they are wearing?

Can you imagine former Naval Officer the late John Kennedy greeting those under his command as Obama does the troops under his command? Has any other First Lady been photographed in the equivalent of a cheap work-out video where afterward the athletic trainer made veiled, earthy references pursuant to her squats?

The answer to all the above questions is no. No other President, First Lady, or CEO of a top company has behaved as these two have. And therein lies the problem. He is the leader of the free world. That means there is to be an inherent respect for the office and position held. But with these two it appears they want to reduce the positions to that of social directors at a hip-hop party in Cabrini-Green.

The reducing of the Office of President to a fraternity house may have started with Bill Clinton, but the Obamas have reduced the Office to levels heretofore unwitnessed. PastFirst Ladies behaved with eloquence and demureness that in no way diminished them–while Hillary abandoned that Michelle has plumbed new levels of commonality.

In the eyes of those blacks who are sans understanding what it means to be president the Obamas are viewed as “keeping it real.” The problem with that is said behavior isn’t synonymous with the office and position they hold. Leaders, be they generals, CEOs, or presidents are called to a higher level of propriety than those occupying other positions. I’m reminded of a conversation between the Michael Douglas character and the Martin Sheen character in the film “The American President.” The Douglas character who was the President and the Sheen character who was the Chief of Staff were alone in the White House shooting pool late one evening. The Douglas character turned to Sheen’s character and told him he could call him by his first name when they were out ofpublic view. He reminded Sheen’s character that Sheen had been the best man at his wedding. To which Sheen’s character responded Yes Sir, Mr. President.


There’s dignity and a requisite level of respect inherent in positions the magnitude of the president, CEO, etc. and those occupying same. That respect is a necessary protocol for the effectual operation of the office. I was a guest, a couple years back, at an event at the private residence of the British Ambassador. General and Mrs. Colin Powell were also in attendance. I can tell you that people were not walking up to General Powell giving him ghetto hugs and chest bumps. Mrs. Powell was not dressed in an outfit that was more suitable for lap dancing or Soul Train. We addressed General Powell as Mr. Secretary or General as we laughed and engaged in casual conversation about the evening, sports, etc., I’ve never walked up to a Congressperson and greeted them with a chest bump nor have they greeted me in such manner. It has always been with a hand shake.

This is why many blacks and young people have so little respect and have dim views of those who behave commensurate with the positions of leadership they hold. In the eyes of many blacks and liberal voters, Michelle Obama may be a rock star, but to those who understand the propriety of her position she is nothing more than a ghetto queen who wears expensive clothing that most of the time is in poor taste for the occasion and unflattering

WHITE HOUSE INSIDER NEWS by Ulsterman

TIME Magazine obtained a memo written by then CIA Director Leon Panetta outlining the Chain of Command parameters of the Osama Bin Laden mission that took place in May of 2011. This memo makes clear the version of a Barack Obama “gutsy call” is in fact far from the truth - just as our own White House Insider had indicated to us in almost real time in the moments after the story of the mission was breaking.

Here is an excerpt from Breitbart.com regarding the developing story:

WHAT GUTSY CALL?  CIA MEMO REVEALS ADMIRAL CONTROLLED BIN LADEN MISSION

Today, Time magazine got hold of a memo written by then-CIA head Leon Panetta after he received orders from Barack Obama’s team to greenlight the bin Laden mission. Here’s the text, which summarized the situation:

Received phone call from Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault.

The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:45 am.

…The memo puts all control in the hands of Admiral McRaven – the “timing, operational decision making and control” are all up to McRaven. So the notion that Obama and his team were walking through every stage of the operation is incorrect. The hero here was McRaven, not Obama. And had the mission gone wrong, McRaven surely would have been thrown under the bus.

…President Obama made the right call to give the green light to the mission. But he did it in a way that he could shift the blame if things went wrong. Typical Obama. And typical of him to claim full credit for it, when he didn’t do anything but give a vague nod, while putting his top military officials at risk of taking the hit in case of a bad turn.   LINK

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HERE NOW IS AN EXCERPT FROM THE VERSION GIVEN TO US BY WHI BEFORE BARACK OBAMA HAD EVEN ANNOUNCED THE OSAMA BIN LADEN MISSION TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC:

UM:   You stated that President Obama was “overruled” by military/intelligence officials regarding the decision to send in military specialists into the Osama Bin Laden compound.  Was that accurate?

WHI:   I was told – in these exact terms, “we overruled him.” (Obama)  I have since followed up and received further details on exactly what that meant, as well as the specifics of how Leon Panetta worked around the president’s “persistent hesitation to act.”  There appears NOT to have been an outright overruling of any specific position by President Obama, simply because there was no specific position from the president to do so.  President Obama was, in this case, as in all others, working as an absentee president.

…Every time military and intelligence officials appeared to make progress in forming a position, Jarrett would intervene and the stalling would begin again.  Hillary started the ball really rolling as far as pressuring Obama began, but it was Panetta and Petraeus who ultimately pushed Obama to finally act – sort of.  Panetta was receiving significant reports from both his direct CIA sources, as well as Petraeus-originating Intel.  Petraeus was threatening to act on his own via a bombing attack.  Panetta reported back to the president that a bombing of the compound would result in successful killing of Osama Bin Laden, and little risk to American lives.  Initially, as he had done before, the president indicated a willingness to act.  But once again, Jarrett intervened, convincing the president that innocent Pakistani lives could be lost in such a bombing attack, and Obama would be left attempting to explain Panetta’s failed policy.  Again Obama hesitated – this time openly delaying further meetings to discuss the issue with Panetta.  A brief meeting was held at this time with other officials, including Secretary Gates and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but Gates, like Panetta, was unable to push the president to act.  It was at this time that Gates indicated to certain Pentagon officials that he may resign earlier than originally indicated – he was that frustrated.  Both Panetta and Clinton convinced him to stay on and see the operation through.

What happened from there is what was described by me as a “masterful manipulation” by Leon Panetta.  Panetta indicated to Obama that leaks regarding knowledge of Osama Bin Laden’s location were certain to get out sooner rather than later, and action must be taken by the administration or the public backlash to the president’s inaction would be “…significant to the point of political debilitation.”  It was at that time that Obama stated an on-ground campaign would be far more acceptable to him than a bombing raid.  This was intended as a stalling tactic, and it had originated from Jarrett.  Such a campaign would take both time, and present a far greater risk of failure.  The president had been instructed by Jarrett to inform Mr., Panetta that he would have sole discretion to act against the Osama Bin Laden compound.  Jarrett believed this would further delay Panetta from acting, as the responsibility for failure would then fall almost entirely on him.  What Valerie Jarrett, and the president, did not know is that Leon Panetta had already initiated a program that reported to him –and only him, involving a covert on the ground attack against the compound.  Basically, the whole damn operation was already ready to go – including the specific team support Intel necessary to engage the enemy within hours of being given notice.  Panetta then made plans to proceed with an on-ground assault. This information reached either Hillary Clinton or Robert Gates first (likely via military contacts directly associated with the impending mission) who then informed the other.  Those two then met with Panetta, who informed each of them he had been given the authority by the president to proceed with a mission if the opportunity presented itself.  Both Gates and Clinton warned Panetta of the implications of that authority – namely he was possibly being made into a scapegoat.  Panetta admitted that possibility, but felt the opportunity to get Bin Laden outweighed that risk.  During that meeting, Hillary Clinton was first to pledge her full support for Panetta, indicating she would defend him if necessary.  Similar support was then followed by Gates.  The following day, and with Panetta’s permission, Clinton met in private with Bill Daley and urged him to get the president’s full and open approval of the Panetta plan.  Daley agreed such approval would be of great benefit to the action, and instructed Clinton to delay proceeding until he had secured that approval.  Daley contacted Clinton within hours of their meeting indicating Jarrett refused to allow the president to give that approval.  Daley then informed Clinton that he too would fully support Panetta in his actions, even if it meant disclosing the president’s indecision to the American public should that action fail to produce a successful conclusion.  Clinton took that message back to Panetta and the CIA director initiated the 48 hour engagement order.  At this point, the President of the United States was not informed of the engagement order – it did not originate from him, and for several hours after theorder had been given and the special ops forces were preparing for action into Pakistan from their position in Afghanistan, Daley successfully kept Obama and Jarrett insulated from that order.

ORIGINAL FULL STORY HERE

___________________

It appears highly unlikely the similarities between the memo obtained by TIME Magazine from then-CIA Director Leon Panetta that seems to link Panetta and military officials as the true acting powers behind the Osama Bin Laden mission and the version of given to us by WHI is mere coincidence – far from it.  What this memo confirms is what we (myself and my readers) have long known – Barack Obama was far from the “hero” of the Osama Bin Laden mission but rather, as always, an uncertain and isolated president leaning heavily on the influence of senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.  But once the mission was accomplished and safely deemed a success, he was only too happy to play the role of Commander in Chief.

I must also wonder if the timing of the memo’s release has anything to do with the Obama administration’s more recent willingness to push Leon Panetta out for his travel expenses flying from D.C. to his home in California.

Perhaps a bit of a message from Mr. Panetta to the administration they would do well not to push him too hard?

_____________

NOTE:  Thank you to Jo Anne Moretti for bringing the CIA Memo story to my attention.

Egypt plans 'farewell intercourse law'

HOW SICK ARE THESE PEOPLE!!!!. THIS IS THE GROUP THAT OBAMA PUT IN POWER IN EGYPT

Outrage as Egypt plans 'farewell intercourse law' so husbands can have sex with DEAD wives up to six hours after their death

By LEE MORAN

PUBLISHED: 04:28 EST, 26 April 2012 | UPDATED: 05:55 EST, 26 April 2012

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Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives - for up to six hours after their death.

The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament.

It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women's rights of getting education and employment.

Controversial: The 'farewell intercourse' law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament

Egypt's National Council for Women is campaigning against the changes, saying that 'marginalising and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country's human development'.

Dr Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, wrote to the Egyptian People’s Assembly Speaker Dr Saad al-Katatni addressing her concerns.

Egyptian journalist Amro Abdul Samea reported in the al-Ahram newspaper that Talawi complained about the legislations which are being introduced under 'alleged religious interpretations'.

 

More...

• 100,000 women undergo brutal genital mutilation illegally in Britain (and some of the victims are as young as TEN)
• 'Down with military rule': Tens of thousands pack Tahrir Square to protest against army generals and pro-Mubarak election candidates

The subject of a husband having sex with his dead wife arose in May 2011 when Moroccan cleric Zamzami Abdul Bari said marriage remains valid even after death.

He also said that women have the right to have sex with her dead husband, alarabiya.net reported.

It seems the topic, which has sparked outrage, has now been picked up on by Egypt's politicians.

Outrage: Egyptian husbands could soon have sex with their dead wives if a new law is approved (file picture)

TV anchor Jaber al-Qarmouty slammed the notion of letting a husband have sex with his wife after her death under the so-called 'Farewell Intercourse' draft law.

He said: 'This is very serious. Could the panel that will draft the Egyptian constitution possibly discuss such issues? Did Abdul Samea see by his own eyes the text of the message sent by Talawi to Katatni?

'This is unbelievable. It is a catastrophe to give the husband such a right! Has the Islamic trend reached that far? Is there really a draft law in this regard? Are there people thinking in this manner?'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135434/Outrage-Egypt-plans-farewell-intercourse-law-husbands-sex-dead-wives-hours-AFTER-death.html#ixzz1tADvLUSg