Monday, August 02, 2010

  • Monday, August 02, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
In a new MEMRI TV clip (transcript not yet available), Iranian head madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad starts off with a lengthy discussion of how the entire world is awaiting the Mahdi's return to Earth.

Then he says, 
Iran is an economic power, it is a cultural power, it is also a big political power. It is a great nation, 75 million people - that is the population of Iran. And the people are...their IQ is much higher than that of the world."
Well, there you have it. We should do what Iran says because they are so freakin' brilliant.
  • Monday, August 02, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
A couple of years ago, Islamic banking - that is, banking according to the principles of Islamic Sharia law - was booming. Major multinational banks were jumping on the bandwagon, and respected financial companies were hiring imams to ensure compliance.

That enthusiasm seems to have been dimming. Although initially "sukuk" bonds were touted as having lower risk, they started defaulting last year during the economic downturn just as other investments were. 

Now, things seem to be getting worse. From Arabian Business:

The lure of Islamic bonds appears to be wearing off for conventional borrowers in the Gulf, even as the global industry grows, with high-profile defaults and rising costs souring their appeal.

On a global scale, Malaysia continues to dominate the Islamic finance market, which is based on financial principles from the Koran, and has led sukuk issues so far this year.

A Reuters poll in July estimates global sukuk sales at $23-25bn, similar to 2009, but down from earlier estimates.

"Dealing with sukuk defaults, standardising sharia interpretation, and increasing sukuk liquidity, we believe, are at the root of issues that could curb future growth," said Mohamed Damak, analyst for Standard & Poors in a recent report.

No conventional borrowers have sold sukuk this year, and those in the pipeline, such as that of Qatar Islamic Bank, have not been able to come to market.

"There are likely to be various reasons for borrowers having held back from issuing sukuk, such as debates over sukuk structures, documentation issues," said Chavan Bhogaita, head of credit research at National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD).

Islamic finance had been seen as a hot market in the region, and foreign investors saw sukuk as a way to tap into abundant liquidity in the Middle East.

International demand was high, particularly from European and U.S. hedge funds, for perceived high-quality issues, such as the Dubai government's $2.5 billion sukuk sale in October.

But the near-default in December of the dollar-denominated sukuk from Dubai property developer Nakheel sounded alarm bells.

Kuwait's International Investment Group has defaulted on two sukuk payments this year, and The Investment Dar, which owns half of British carmaker Aston Martin, defaulted on a sukuk in May last year.

The effect has been not just reputational damage to the industry but also a stronger focus on structuring, costs, compliance, and the legal ramifications of default.

Islamic bankers say a number of mandated sukuk issuances are now being pulled from the market in the region, or are in the process of being restructured as conventional bonds.

Sukuk structures are usually more expensive due to the costs associated with sharia board approval, extra legal fees, and fees associated with the often complex structures.

While Islamic institutions accept the extra costs, other issuers need a good reason to opt for what is typically a longer, more expensive process.
  • Monday, August 02, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
Al Arabiya in Arabic published an article about Jewish groups who are not well known.

One is about the Iraqi Jewish community. With a picture of a website based in New York whose design seems to not have been updated since 1999, the article briefly discusses how Jews used to be 2.6% of the Iraqi population and how they are trying to get their confiscated property back. They also discuss how Zionist the Iraqi Jewish community is in America.

To blunt that last point, the article goes on to talk about Neturei Karta, the tiny anti-Israel group whose main accomplishment is to provide cover for anti-semites - even though they hate NK too.

The last piece is about a pro-Israel Kurdish organization that recently started a magazine. The magazine discusses Jewish Kurds as well as historical connections between Jews, Zionists and Kurds.
  • Monday, August 02, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
Mir-Hossein Mousavi, leader of Iran's opposition, is threatening to reveal secrets that he became aware of during his stint as Iran's last prime minister from 1981 to 1989, says a new report in Al Arabiya.

According to the article, Mousavi wrote a letter of resignation in 1988 which was rejected by the late Ayatollah Khomeini and president Ali Khamanei. This letter, which he is threatening to make public, discloses some foreign Iranian adventures in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. These reportedly include sniper attacks in Lebanon, airplane hijackings and bomb plots against pilgrims going to Mecca.

Ali, who sent me the link, says that this letter shows the level of division in the Iranian government at the time, and notes it is probably worse now. However, Mousavi himself was PM under Khomeini, so how much he should be trusted himself is not so clear.
  • Monday, August 02, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
See if you can make heads or tails out if this snippet of an article published in the bizarre Al-Jazeerah.Info site:

Wall Street Journal Media Launches Special Tel Aviv Operation

Monthly sham and shill additions. WSJ shills for Zionist Power Configuration. "Wall Street Journal Launches Special Tel Aviv Operation laments the role of the killer, while demonizing those who simply seek world peace?" Posted by Tim King

The 'Too Small To Be Saved' global citizenry, individuals, entities, and companies do not attack people with; self anointed reverse victimhood, published articles, media, book publishing, academic endeavors, or internet blogs. ZPC underachiever shills perpetuate persistent belligerence, contempt, promote hatred, and constant bellicose threats to all citizenry. The 'Too Small to be Saved' citizenry do not commit mass murder, destruction of civilizations, and manufactured environmental catastrophe negatively impacting people and the planet while accumulating great wealth by stealing their natural resources, labor, property, and assets.

Simultaneously, the ZPC shills that would be WSJ Simon&Shuster naming just a few continue perpetuating counterfactual events, eliminate and distort most of 20th Century historical facts then absolutely control the entire US foundation Nation of Laws. The US Constitution defining a Nation of Laws, Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus, Geneva Convention, Nuremburg Tribunal on War Crimes is not arguable and is not disputable. Therefore, America imperiously ignores this national and international law dynamic.
The best part about this piece is that it includes about 100 footnotes! Wow, it must be factual!

For fun, look at some history of computer generated faux-scholarly papers that were actually published by various journals. Is it possible that anti-Zionist writers are using computer programs to spew out these essays?

UPDATE:  OK, I found some software that generates random text. I mixed together four articles from the same website, and the results are pretty similar:


"[According class brought forth. if "backpack" WMD hits priced in dollars, war death and suffering ,even social riyadh al askariya. Israel is simply their class. More than price of oil would the system "got the "Learned Elders" have the first time since behind this propaganda the salient points that rulers of the Islamic the countries using even of their own, US and the this network. He than ever in the "base." The military austerity that impose of Americans.

It is very the systems memory and "enemies" in recent the "missing" nuke a possibility.

High potential for violent rights and welfare provisions, the attacks certainly "Jewish Utopia"…and they are for nuke material, blackmailing cross border assassinations, state assault on workers and sent to the by telephone: an of the "Jewish Utopia"…and than necessary for its myth in quite willing to embroil how knowledge invasion movement, the militia branches, held by Israeli justice, sources of statements email of the possibly Russia, China, someone to funnel guerrillas, and Great Lakes region NOTE: Israeli details of the of the imperial state arms, and money role with its accounting be accomplished before the European crimes put the clamping down on the barbarism is found in of clamping down on the corporate and political the power of the property . . .by US/Israeli forces…The next, Turkey in 2003 of Barbarism!
  • Monday, August 02, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
From AFP:
Iran's deputy culture minister lashed out at Western media on Sunday, branding them "dishonest, cocky cheats," who will be banned from an annual press fair in the autumn, the ILNA news agency reported.

"This year none of the Western media are allowed to participate in the fair," said Mohammad Ali Ramin, who is also a press watchdog official.

"We have eliminated them, because Western media are dishonest, cocky cheats and see themselves as the invincible sultans of the world," he said, adding that "there are rare exceptions" without elaborating.

Iranian authorities have cracked down on media and journalists since the June 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which the opposition dismissed as massively rigged, sparking street protests.

Scores of journalists have been jailed and several leading newspapers close to the opposition shut down, while journalists working for foreign media are banned from covering opposition protests.

After the June poll, a resident correspondent for the BBC was expelled and Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian reporter for Newsweek, was jailed for nearly four months and later sentenced in absentia to 13 years and six months behind bars plus 74 lashes.
Meanwhile, an Iranian official said that Iran is the most influential country in the world.

Who would want any dishonest, cocky cheats to disagree with such brilliance?
  • Monday, August 02, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
From YNet:

Five rockets were fired towards Eilat and the Jordanian port city of Aqaba Monday morning. There were no reports of injury or damage in Eilat. One of the projectiles landed in an open area in Israel's southernmost city, three more landed in the Red Sea - two of them in Jordanian territory - while a fifth rocket hit Aqaba.

Jordanian authorities said a Grad rocket landed near vehicles parked at the entrance to the InterContinental Hotel in Aqaba. Local media outlets reported that five people were injured in the attack. The hotel's public relations director told Ynet it was not damaged.

The IDF estimates the rockets were fired from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula by Global Jihad terrorists. Large police forces have been dispatched to the scene.

However, Egyptian security officials said the attack did not originate in the Sinai Peninsula.

"Firing rockets from Egypt requires extensive logistical preparations and a lot of equipment. This is impossible because Sinai is heavily secured," one official said.
This is almost exactly the same as an event from April when two Katyushas were shot towards Eilat, one landing in Jordan.

The idea that the Sinai is so secure is laughable, as smugglers of drugs and people seem to get through the border every day and Israel is planning to build a fence specifically to stop such activities.

While commenter L. King during the last event somewhat whimsically floated the idea that the rockets could have theoretically come from Saudi Arabia, it appears that in both cases the attackers came from Egypt.

UPDATE: Joel comments that the Debka site - which is often unreliable but occasionally gets stuff right - is saying that the rockets came from Jordan's Edom Mountains, and that there is Jordanian helicopter activity in the area now.

UPDATE 2: One of the people injured in Aqaba has died.

Sunday, August 01, 2010

  • Sunday, August 01, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Xinhua:

One Palestinian was killed and 36 others injured Monday in an explosion in a house of a Hamas militant in Der el Balah refugee camp in central Gaza strip, a Palestinian medical officer said. Adham Abu Selmeya, a Hamas medical officer in Gaza said that the explosion was a result of an Israeli surface-to-surface rocket.

Senior Hamas militant Abu Anas el-Danaf survived, according to Hamas sources.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Force spokesman said that the Israeli army wasn't involved in any attack on any house in central Gaza Strip. The explosion is apparently a work accident.
It's too early for the PalArab newspapers to report on this, but invariably when the IDF denies the attack, at first the PalArab papers make it appear like an Israeli strike and then they end up admitting it was a "heroic martyrdom operation."
  • Sunday, August 01, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
Lee Smith in Tablet discusses the responsibility of blogs for their commenters, something I am not sure I agree with completely. But he also has a very useful Jew-Baiter's Lexicon.  (h/t Callie)

Yaacov Lozowick writes on a Mondoweiss article about the "one state solution."  (partial h/t jcb)

In a piece I missed when it was originally published in the WSJ, Leon DeWinter talks about how anti-semitism is "Salonfähig" again. (h/t Viiit)

Perhaps 2000 Muslim girls will be subjected to female circumcision this summer - with video.

The newest power couple managed to find a reform rabbi to co-perform their intermarriage ceremony, together with what appears to be a nonsensical ketubah and irrelevant chuppah, on the Jewish Sabbath. Oy vey.
  • Sunday, August 01, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
In what may be a new low for Robert Fisk, which hardly seems possible, he starts off his latest screed this way:
The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this week raised scarcely a headline.

There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that's OK then. Now imagine the death of five Hamas fighters in a helicopter crash in Romania this week. We'd still be investigating this extraordinary phenomenon. Now mark you, I'm not comparing Israel and Hamas. Israel is the country that justifiably slaughtered more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza 19 months ago – more than 300 of them children – while the vicious, blood-sucking and terrorist Hamas killed 13 Israelis (three of them soldiers who actually shot each other by mistake).
You get that? Fisk is saying, sarcastically, that Hamas is more moral than Israel by over a hundredfold because of the casualties of Operation Cast Lead, a war that Hamas started! As if Cast Lead occurred in a vacuum, where Israel just decided out of the blue to slaughter 300 children for no reason whatsoever. Rockets, terror, Shalit, weapons tunnels, not to mention years of suicide bombings - nope, none of that is in Fisk's calculus of blame.

But there is one parallel. Judge Richard Goldstone, the eminent Jewish South African judge, decided in his 575-page UN inquiry into the Gaza bloodbath that both sides had committed war crimes – he was, of course, quite rightly called "evil" by all kinds of justifiably outraged supporters of Israel in the US, his excellent report rejected by seven EU governments – and so a question presents itself. What is Nato doing when it plays war games with an army accused of war crimes?

Or, more to the point, what on earth is the EU doing when it cosies up to the Israelis? In a remarkable, detailed – if slightly over-infuriated – book to be published in November, the indefatigable David Cronin is going to present a microscopic analysis of "our" relations with Israel. I have just finished reading the manuscript. It leaves me breathless. As he says in his preface, "Israel has developed such strong political and economic ties to the EU over the past decade that it has become a member state of the union in all but name." Indeed, it was Javier Solana, the grubby top dog of the EU's foreign policy (formerly Nato secretary general), who actually said last year that "Israel, allow me to say, is a member of the European Union without being a member of the institution".

Pardon me? Did we know this? Did we vote for this? Who allowed this to happen?

Fisk then outdoes himself, implicitly blaming Israel for Afghan casualties!
Israel, by the way, has been praised for its "logistics" help to Nato in Afghanistan – where we are annually killing even more Afghans than the Israelis usually kill Palestinians – which is not surprising since Israel military boss Gabi Ashkenazi has visited Nato headquarters in Brussels to argue for closer ties with Nato.
The Israeli Chief of Staff visited NATO only a few months ago. Yet Fisk wants to retroactively blame Afghani civilian deaths on his visit in March? (Forgetting the fact that Israeli logistics is almost certainly being used to reduce civilian casualties by NATO, not to increase them - another perversion that Fisk purposefully ignores in his zeal to demonize and delegitimize Israel.)

Fisk doesn't go down this path of extreme illogic, because if he did, he would find himself tied in a rhetorical knot that would upset his focused anti-Israel agenda.

If NATO is killing more Afghanis than Israel is killing Palestinian Arabs, and if the definition of immorality is a pure death count, then isn't NATO more guilty of war crimes than Israel is? And if it is, then why is Israel's participation in NATO any more objectionable than, say, Great Britain's? Why is he not campaigning to have British generals arrested as war criminals? Why is he not saying that Hamas, by only killing a handful of Israelis in a three week period in 2009, is more moral than his own country and continent? Why is he not calling on Israel to arrest NATO leaders when they visit the comparatively moral state of Israel, using his own definition of immoral?

If he was to be consistent, that would be the logical outcome of his fevered thesis. But since his target is Israel, he would rather try to imply that somehow Israel is behind NATO's "immoral" war against the Taliban, and somehow the Europeans are helpless victims of a sophisticated  "Zionist" mind control game that only he is wise enough to see through. That's why deaths by NATO are not the EU's fault - because the sinister Zionists are really the ones behind those deaths as well.

No, Hamas would be a better partner for the EU and NATO. Let's throw Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad into the mix as well. After all, when all is said and done, only one entity is truly immoral in Fisk's mind, and the facts must be twisted in whatever way necessary to make sure that the world understands his deep wisdom.
  • Sunday, August 01, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
An op-ed in the Jerusalem Post by a Jordanian Palestinian who argues that the focus on Israel is actually counterproductive for Palestinian Arabs:
Amazingly enough, the international media, and particularly the Western ones, pay very little attention to the conditions of the Palestinians living in Arab countries, despite the extreme oppression they have been enduring for decades in most Arab countries.

This tendency to blame Israel for everything has lead to the development of numerous myths about the situation of the Palestinian there that have provided an excuse to purposely ignore and compromise the human rights of the Palestinian in many Arab countries.

THE EXAMPLES for that are plentiful and sometimes cross the line into tragic comedy. While the world is crying over the Israel-imposed blockade on Gaza, the media, for some unknown reason, choose to deliberately ignore the conditions of the Palestinians living in camps in Lebanon.

Lebanon, a country with some of the most hostile forces to Israel, has been holing up Palestinians inside camps for almost 30 years. Those camps do not have any foundations of livelihood or even sanitation and the Palestinians living there are not allowed access to basics such as buying cement to enlarge or repair homes for their growing families. Furthermore, it is difficult for them to work legally, and are even restricted from going out of their camps at certain hours. Compare this to the fact that Palestinian laborers were still able to go to work every day in Israel while Hamas was carrying out an average of one suicide bombing per week a few years ago, and until recently launching missiles daily on southern Israel. Not to mention the fact that Israel allows food items and medications into Gaza if handled through the Palestinian Authority.

The Lebanese atrocities toward the Palestinians have been tolerated by the international community, not only by the media. Today, while some Israeli military commanders have to think twice, in fear of legal consequences, before they visit London or Brussels, well-known Lebanese leaders who had directly participated in mass killings of Palestinian civilians, during and after the Lebanese civil war, are becoming world-respected political figures – Nabih Berri, for example, the leader of Amal Shi’ite militia who enforced a multi-year siege on Palestinian camps, cutting water access and food supplies to them. The Palestinians underBerri’s siege were reported to be consuming rats and dogs to survive. Nonetheless, he has been the undisputed speaker of the Lebanese parliament for a long time. He travels frequently to Europe and criticizes Israel for its “crimes against the Palestinians” on every occasion.

MANY OTHER Arab countries are no different than Lebanon in their ill-treatment and discrimination against the Palestinians. Why do the media choose to ignore those and focus only on Israel? While the security wall being built by Israel has become a symbol of “apartheid” in the global media, they almost never address the actual walls and separation barriers that have been isolating Palestinian refugee camps in Arab countries for decades.

...The demonization of Israel by the global media has greatly harmed the Palestinians’ interests for decades and covered up Arab atrocities against them. Furthermore, demonizing Israel has been well-exploited by several Arab dictatorships to direct citizens’ rage against Israel instead of their regimes and also to justify any atrocities they commit in the name of protecting their nations from “the evil Zionists.”

This game has served some of the most notorious Arab dictatorships, and still does today, as any opposition is immediately labelled “a Zionist plot.”

This model had served Gamal Abdel Nasser in ruling Egypt with an iron fist until he died, and was the main line for Saddam Hussein, who was promoting that “Iraq and Palestine are one identical case” in his last years in power.

The global media must be fair in addressing the Palestinians’ suffering in Arab countries and must stop demonizing Israel. It should start focusing on the broader conditions of the Palestinians in the Middle East region.

There is much to see.
(h/t Zvi)
  • Sunday, August 01, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
From JPost:
The UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon is reportedly set to announce that Mustafa Badr al-Din, a senior Hizbullah operative and close relative of the former Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh, is the main suspect in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

According to an Israel TV report on Thursday night, Hariri’s son, the current Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, asked the tribunal to postpone releasing Din’s name, because of the potentially incendiary implications for Lebanon of such an announcement.

Zvi comments:




This man was no "undisciplined element. [as Hezbollah leader Nasrallah hinted in a recent speech about possible Hezbollah involvement in the assassination.] " He was very, very well connected within Hezbollah.

Mughniyeh himself was arguably Hezbollah's most important military/terrorist figure, and was THE liaison between Hezbollah and Iran. It is inconceivable that in the strictly controlled Hezbollah organization, the assassination of an enemy would occur without the active participation of either the "head of the security section" (Imad Mughniyeh) or the organization's top leadership (Nasrallah and his cronies).

Is Hezbollah really tightly controlled? Of course it is. Hezbollah members don't even fire off the odd random rocket into Israel. They don't engage in random gun-battles in which they kill each other. When the Hezbollah leaders say "attack," they attack suddenly, showing a great deal of preparation. When the Hezbollah leaders say "vanish," they vanish. Contrast the tight control under which Hezbollah members operate with the chaotic laxity of Fatah or the "zeal" and lack of control displayed by Hamas. Nobody in HA assassinates the prime minister without instructions from above, and ultimately without obtaining either instructions or permission from Tehran.

The Saudi king and Bashar al-Assad visit Lebanon and encourage the Lebanese to appease Hezbollah and unite, in the traditional pan-Arabist fashion, around hatred of Israel. The UN coordinator thinks that this idea is just peachy:
The joint communique by Assad and King Abdullah urged Lebanese parties to "pursue the path of appeasement and dialogue and to boost national unity in the face of outside threats," referring to Israel.
...
"The visits of these Arab heads of state will be enormously important and beneficial for Lebanon's stability and future," Michael Williams, the UN's special coordinator to the country, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah's political allies are aligning behind that group to pre-emptively slander the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, calling it the worst insult they can: Zionist.
House Speaker Nabih Berri who has been very quiet over the issue of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) joined Hezbollah in denouncing the court on Saturday and stressed that Israel is aiming to exploit STL in order to create internal strife in Lebanon.

During the reopening of the Bint Jbeil hospital in southern Lebanon, Berri said: “Israel has nothing better to do than create division between the Lebanese.”

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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