Stealing @Akiva

This argument goes for banks, auto companies and not just porn, music and Hollywood. If piracy is systematic then precedent legally makes theft legal. When the system fails why must the burden fall on the citizens and not large corporations? when it becomes this convoluted I won't pay:

 CriticalAnalyst: @akiva I already have it from Bit Torrent. Blu-ray is for pussies

akiva: @CriticalAnalyst And BitTorrent is for thieves.

I don't pay to watch movies. I steal from Oliver Stone's bitches @Akiva ...GUILT? LOL! the market merely cannibalized itself. they created the situation. now we all don't make a buck. Social media: are you making a profit? go weap for the starving Anorexics in Beverly Hills. Imagine the pain I'm causing those porn stars for watching free porn. THE AGONY! Hollywood is ruled by thieves. let them try to profit from live performance. music does. let them reap what they sew. I'm a person that grew up in the arts, information and media realm. I paid for schooling. did I make a profit? no ...Hollywood profits. I consider it my patriotic duty to not pay for their fare. sorry no guilt. bit torrent for me

akiva: @CriticalAnalyst You can justify it however it pleases you. I pay for what I use. View Tweet

 CriticalAnalyst: @akiva I pay for what I use too. I expect the media to pay for using me View Tweet

via search.twitter.com

Europe drug trade funds Hezbollah

Israel needs to set precedent for the world and completely legalize all vices. the funds for these narcotics goes to terrorism. It is not enough for Israel to reflect American policy and have medical Marijuana

German police suspect Hezbollah, of using drug trafficking in Europe to fund activities, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday.

According to a report on the magazine's Web site, German police arrested two Lebanese citizens living in Germany in October after they transferred large sums of money to a family in Lebanon that has connections to Hezbollah's leadership, including Secretary General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Suspicion was first raised in May 2008, when police found 8.7 million euros in the bags of four Lebanese men at the Frankfurt airport. A police search of their apartment in Speyer, Germany turned up an additional 500,000 euros. According to the report, police suspected the men were selling cocaine in Europe and sending the profits back to Lebanon. It added that the two suspects were trained at a Hezbollah camp. The suspects deny the allegations. In other developments in Lebanon, the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL began five days of maneuvers in southern Lebanon that are to include live ammunition, including artillery. Israel has reportedly stepped up its patrols along the Lebanese border with helicopters and pilotless drones and its naval patrols near the border. In recent years Israel has accused Hezbollah of drug trafficking along the Lebanon-Israel border, a charge Nasrallah denies. In a speech in November he accused Israel of trying to put a political spin on what he said was a drug operation run by Lebanese drug dealers in collusion with Israeli border guards.

via haaretz.com

Posted via web from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Obama's Stability Police Force AKA S.P.F. Brownshirt Police AKA Gestapo is real

The Rand Corporation was asked by the US Army to prepare a report recommending whether or not the US Needed a National Stability Police force. Basically a call for American "Brown Shirts" Rand's answer was a resounding yes.

Our analysis clearly indicates that the United States needs an SPF or some other way to accomplish the SPF mission. Stability operations have become an inescapable reality of U.S. foreign policy. Establishing security with soldiers and police is critical because it is difficult to achieve other objectives—such as rebuilding political and economic systems—without it.

The cost of not fixing this gap is significant. The United States will continue to experience major challenges in stability operations if it does not have this policing capacity. These challenges include creating the ability to establish basic law and order, as well as defeat or deter criminal organizations, terrorists, and insurgents. In some cases, allied countries may be able to fill this gap. Allies did this effectively in Bosnia and Kosovo, both of which were successful in establishing security. In other cases, the United States may not be able to count on allied support. The United States should not depend on allies to supply these capabilities, because doing so would limit U.S. freedom of action on the international stage. Consequently, the United States should seriously consider building a high-end police capacity.

via yidwithlid.blogspot.com

it gets worse....

Why Does Interpol Need Immunity from American Law?   [Andy McCarthy]

You just can't make up how brazen this crowd is. One week ago, President Obama quietly signed an executive order that makes an international police force immune from the restraints of American law.

Interpol is the shorthand for the International Criminal Police Organization. It was established in 1923 and operates in about 188 countries. By executive order 12425, issued in 1983, President Reagan recognized Interpol as an international organization and gave it some of the privileges and immunities customarily extended to foreign diplomats. Interpol, however, is also an active law-enforcement agency, so critical privileges and immunities (set forth in Section 2(c) of the International Organizations Immunities Act) were withheld. Specifically, Interpol's property and assets remained subject to search and seizure, and its archived records remained subject to public scrutiny under provisions like the Freedom of Information Act. Being constrained by the Fourth Amendment, FOIA, and other limitations of the Constitution and federal law that protect the liberty and privacy of Americans is what prevents law-enforcement and its controlling government authority from becoming tyrannical.

On Wednesday, however, for no apparent reason, President Obama issued an executive order removing the Reagan limitations. That is, Interpol's property and assets are no longer subject to search and confiscation, and its archives are now considered inviolable. This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.

Interpol works closely with international tribunals (such as the International Criminal Court — which the United States has refused to join because of its sovereignty surrendering provisions, though top Obama officials want us in it). It also works closely with foreign courts and law-enforcement authorities (such as those in Europe that are investigating former Bush administration officials for purported war crimes — i.e., for actions taken in America's defense).

Why would we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize?

via corner.nationalreview.com

David Brooks - Op-Ed Columnist - The Tel Aviv Cluster - NYTimes.com

With an Iranian threat the Israelis can still work remotely and still control their land. The amazing thing about smarts, which is something I think Brooks might not have, is that you can be anywhere, through social networks (and no I don't mean facebook and twitter, I mean real social networks like Judaism) keep you together. Israel is just about security, but even with the loss of security Jews can still innovate... and always will.

The tech boom also creates a new vulnerability. As Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic has argued, these innovators are the most mobile people on earth. To destroy Israel’s economy, Iran doesn’t actually have to lob a nuclear weapon into the country. It just has to foment enough instability so the entrepreneurs decide they had better move to Palo Alto, where many of them already have contacts and homes. American Jews used to keep a foothold in Israel in case things got bad here. Now Israelis keep a foothold in the U.S.
During a decade of grim foreboding, Israel has become an astonishing success story, but also a highly mobile one.

via nytimes.com

in his ideas and loyalties. David Brooks reveals a lot about a desire to see the Jewish community fragment and perhaps we should now understand that he is libidinally inclined to wish Jewish failure... it has nothing to do with Israel. David Brooks is threatened by Jews

But it’s more likely that Israel’s economic leap forward will widen the gap between it and its neighbors. All the countries in the region talk about encouraging innovation. Some oil-rich states spend billions trying to build science centers. But places like Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv are created by a confluence of cultural forces, not money. The surrounding nations do not have the tradition of free intellectual exchange and technical creativity.

between 1980 and 2000, Egyptians registered 77 patents in the U.S. Saudis registered 171. Israelis registered 7,652.

via nytimes.com

Brooks discounts the role that military necessity has played in forcing Israel to develop technologies that have military applications. In other words, he commits the opposite error of Senor and Singer's Start-Up Nation

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

hey Obama, Fatah = Hamas ...they just said so

Abbas: We have "no disagreement" with Hamas
about belief, policy or resistance

by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

In recent speeches, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has called on Hamas to sign a reconciliation agreement with Fatah, and has boasted that he did not give in to American pressure. US had asked Abbas not to sign an agreement with Hamas.

Speaking of reconciliation with Hamas,
Abbas insisted that the two factions agree
on essential issues:

"There is no disagreement between us
[Fatah and Hamas]:
About belief? None!
About policy? None!
About [violent] resistance? None!"

via docstalk.blogspot.com

of course I am certain that Obama, Mitchell and Clinton will merely resume their denial. I'm starting to think Obama = Hamas

Posted via web from noahdavidsimon's posterous

California Lawmakers consider bill to allow pot for pleasure

The State Assembly's Public Health Committee approved a bill that legalizes marijuana for all adults. It won't hit the debate floor anytime soon, but it's a step forward. WE WILL SEE THIS BECOME LEGAL IN OUR LIFE TIME!

The first step to legalize marijuana in California could happen Tuesday.

Lawmakers will vote on Assembly Bill 390 -- legislation to tax and regulate marijuana. The assembly's Public Safety Committee is expected to vote after a hearing that begins at 9 a.m. hearing in Sacramento.

The bill, authored by San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, would essentially treat pot the same way alcohol is treated under the law and would allow adults over 21 to possess, smoke and grow marijuana.

The law would also call for a fee of $50 per ounce sold and would help fund drug eradication and awareness programs. It could help pull California out of debt, supporters say, raising up to $990 million from the fees.

via nbcbayarea.com

Members of the California State Assembly's Public Health Committee approved a bill that would remove marijuana from the state's criminal and civil codes and effectively legalize marijuana for all adults over 21.

The bill, AB 390, was written by Tom Ammiano, a Democrat from San Francisco. While it was not heard by the other committee -- Public Safety -- that must approve it in order for it to move forward through the legislative process, the fact that it was heard and approved by a committee at all is a win, according to Stephen Gutwillig, California state director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

“While actually passing a bill to tax and regulate marijuana may be a heavy lift in any state legislature right now, members of the Assembly today reflected the sentiment of a majority of Californians,” Gutwillig said. “Voters will get a chance to decide if California should tax and regulate marijuana at the ballot box in November."

Indeed, as I've written recently, Tax Cannabis 2010 has qualified for the California mid-term election in November. It will let the electorate decide what state legislators may be reluctant to.

Because the vast majority of medical marijuana laws have passed at the hands of voters rather than politicians, experts believe the California ballot initiative is the best chance for marijuana legalization here.

As I've written, Tax Cannabis faces many hurdles -- namely the fact that support for it is only in the lower to mid-fifties, according to polls -- but the fact that a group of legislators in Sacramento have given a bill similar to it a stamp of approval could normalize the idea of marijuana legalization for many hesitant Californians.

via alternet.org

IRAN: Chinese activists to opposition delusional

I'm not certain that the Green Revolution is friendly to China. I suppose the Chinese underground might find this out the hard way. The Green Revolution for example is hostile to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's dealing with the Russians. a lot of correlative information has been lost here. the Russians and the Iranians are fighting over reserves of gas and other resources in the Black Sea. The Green Revolution if anything is more isolationist then the present Iranian regime. The Chinese anti-establishment might be getting a dose of lethal reality on their romance with the oppostion.

China's dealings with Iran are generally portrayed as business decisions. But the Wall Street Journal reports that there's more to it than business alone.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

The implication of all this for the Obama Administration is that it shouldn't wait for China to come around on sanctions, or pre-emptively water them down to meet Chinese approval at the Security Council. The better idea is to form a coalition of the willing outside the U.N. that, among other things, bars companies around the world that do business with Iran from access to Western capital markets. This is likely to get Beijing's attention in a way that more diplomatic pleading never will.

via online.wsj.com

As for Iran, Time magazine reported last week that a state-owned Chinese company has shipped armored vehicles to the Islamic Republic for use against opposition protestors. One Chinese company, LIMMT Economic & Trade Co., is also under indictment in New York for allegedly selling missile components to the Iranian military. This is hardly the behavior of a responsible world power seeking to advance the prospects of peace and stability.

via online.wsj.com

The governments of Iran and China have grown considerably closer in recent years as the two regional powerhouses find themselves with complementary economies and little love for Western-led attacks on their domestic and foreign policies.

But now it appears relations are warming from the bottom-up, which could pose a threat to both governments.

Chinese democracy activists have launched an online campaign known by its Twitter tag #CN4Iran, or "China for Iran," expressing solidarity with the Iranian opposition and condemning their own government's complicity in the crackdown.

When pictures surfaced of Chinese armored trucks being unloaded in Iran, the CN4Iran contributors were quick to translate and spread the message through Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.

The movement's website is slickly designed and sports the opposition's signature green as a background; a banner at the top reads: "We are watching you, and we are supporting you! Go, our great Iranian friends! Go!"

China has traditionally been opposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic, not wishing to damage its multi-billion-dollar trade in everything from oil and gas to fly swatters and subway cars.

Instead, China favors a position of noncommittal concern. It recently backed a United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency resolution condemning Iran over its nuclear program, but still opposes sanctions.

--Meris Lutz in Beirut

via latimesblogs.latimes.com

we are not reading the Green Revolution. they are hostile to cooperation with China and Russia because yes China supplies Mahmoud's military, but also Russia steals Iranian resources in the Black Sea in exchange for enabling Iranian Nuclear state.
While I do empathize with their anger at foreign treachery here... certainly Iran is getting the shaft, but I think we are missing the hidden correlative which is that the Green Revolution will be more isolated then Mahmoud's government and we could be dealing with a greater threat then the present Iranian power structure. MSM has a hard to time seeing that things could get worse, but I am very skeptical of the "Green Revolution" and don't think we should have anything to do with internal politics. Iran's experience being shafted by China and Russia could heighten their anger at everyone else and we can't pretend that they will come running into our arms

Don’t make me laugh - Israel Opinion, Ynetnews

if Obama is going to threaten Israel with financing, he'd better look at his own... lol.... this is very sad. Obama still thinks he has leverage. news flash! the United States is a debtor to Israel

denial of history: Dead Sea Scrolls are not from Israel?

I've heard of revisionism, but this is ridiculous. In Iraq the Arabs are remodeling the tomb of Daniel into a Mosque and Jordan thinks it should control the Jewish Dead Sea Scrolls and the West of course will be enabling enough to allow this. If you thought the destruction of the large Afghan Buddhist statues were bad, the loss of the Dead Sea Scrolls would put an end to scholarship on the historical element of the Torah and Christian ideas. Why are we entertaining these haters?

Jewish Heritage of 'Palestinians'? Jordan and the PA have asked Canada to seize Israel's 2,000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls, currently on display in Toronto. The PA acknowledges that the scrolls are Jewish, but claims that they are "also part of Palestinian heritage just as ancient Roman and Byzantine ruins comprise part of their history." (Wasn't the existence of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem recently denied by 'educated' Arabs?)

via docstalk.blogspot.com

Jordan has demanded that Israel hand over some of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. The kingdom claims Israel seized the scrolls illegally from a museum in East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War in 1967.

Israel seized the scrolls and other antiquities from the Palestinian Museum, which was managed by Jordan in east Jerusalem when it occupied this part of the city in 1967,” said Rafea Harahsheh of Jordan’s antiquities department.

The scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947. The famous parchments number 900 documents and biblical texts belonging to the Essenes, a breakaway Jewish sect that lived in the craggy hills above the Dead Sea where the scrolls were discovered.

They provide a rare insight into life in the Holy Land and the emergence of early Christian groups in the area.

The Jordanians recently asked the Canadian government to seize some of the scrolls while they were on display in Toronto.

They have also appealed to the United Nations in support of their case.

Israel has refused to discuss handing back the scrolls. Its foreign ministry told the Jerusalem Post, “Jordan’s occupation of the West Bank was never recognized by the international community and the kingdom relinquished all claims on the territories. The scrolls have no relation to Jordan or the Jordanian people.”

Jordan says Israel seized 14 scrolls kept in a museum in the eastern sector of Jerusalem when its army occupied that Jordanian-controlled part of the city in the 1967 war. Israel annexed eastern Jerusalem soon after the war and now says the entire city is its unified, eternal capital. Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem has not been internationally recognized.

”We are very keen on getting them (the scrolls) by reminding different countries of the international accords on cultural wealth they signed,” Maha Khatib, Jordan’s tourism minister, told the AP, citing the 1954 Hague Convention governing the protection of cultural property during armed conflict.

Earlier this month, Canada refused a Jordanian request to stop the scrolls’ return to Israel, after they were displayed at a Toronto museum. It also refused a similar request made by the Palestinian Authority, according to Canadian diplomats.

Khatib said Jordan has given up hope that Israel would directly give back the more than 2,000-year-old scrolls and now hoped Western nations would return them to the Arab kingdom when they host them in exhibitions.

The scrolls include the earliest known version of portions of the Hebrew Bible and have shed important light on Judaism and the beginnings of Christianity. Their origin is the subject of an insular, but notoriously heated, academic debate.

They will next be exhibited in Milwaukee, Wisc., starting Jan. 22.

via vladtepesblog.com

Promoting Pius XII? - Hudson New York

It doesn't look good for Joseph Ratzinger aka Benedict XVI. My first reaction was hope in that it seemed that he wasn't afraid to identify problems in Islam, but he never stood hard on his position and then stood and listened to a sermon from an Anti-Semitic Imam without walking out till the speech was done. He made motions to absolve bishops in his church who had preached some Anti-Semitic ideas and bring them back into the fold, and only retracted after word wide Jewish and Catholic protests. now he is Promoting Pius XII?

regarding Pius XII... "A provisional conclusion, drawn from the study of thousands of documents, is that the mass murder of Jews was fairly low on his list of priorities. Of course, much the same could be said of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, but they did not claim to be the “Vicar of Christ” or to represent the Christian conscience."...

"The million or so unpublished documents from the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-1958) according to the Vatican’s most recent estimate, will only be available in about four year’s time."...

meanwhile the church is rushing to judgement before anyone can see these documents

Pius XII strikes me as a polished diplomat far more worried about the Allied bombing of Rome than about the thousand Roman Jews who were being deported by the Germans to their deaths in Auschwitz, virtually under the windows of the Holy See. True, other Roman Jews were discreetly given sanctuary in ecclesiastical establishments in and around Romeafter October 1943, but it remains unclear if this was the result of a direct papal instruction. In some instances we know that Pius XII did try to intervene against Nazi or racist anti-Semitic legislation, but in general this was almost always on behalf of baptized Jews since they were protected by the Church as Catholics. Pius’s rare references to the mass murder of the Jews were invariably veiled and very abstract, as if he found it difficult to utter the word itself. Was it fear of further German reprisals? A latent anti-Semitism? Was it his visceral anti-Communism which also led him to hope for a Nazi victory in the East? Or perhaps the desire to spare German Catholics a conflict of conscience between their loyalty to Hitler, the fatherland, or their Church? Whatever the reasons, this was hardly heroic conduct.

So why has Benedict XVI chosen to take this step now? Why risk unnecessary damage to Catholic-Jewish relations? My own inclination is to think that the present pope regards Pius XII as a soulmate — both theologically and politically. He shares with the wartime pontiff an authoritarian centralist world-view and a deep distrust of liberalism, modernity, and the ravages of moral relativism.

I disagree on this analysis. Benedict XVI has shown signs of respecting internationalist financial oversight that smacks of socialism. While this might be centralist and authoritarian, it is also liberal and considered to be modernistic in contemporary frames. I disagree with this frame, but one can not deny it's cultural current and Benedict XVI seems very much interested in meeting Obama's socialist agenda.

He was 31 years old when Pius XII died in 1958, and already then regarded him as a venerated role model. Moreover, the German-born Joseph Ratzinger (today Benedict XVI) certainly knew that Pius XII (an artistocratic Roman) was also a passionate Germanophile, surrounded by German aides during and after the war, fluent in the German language, and a great admirer of the German Catholic Church. Not only that, but Ratzinger probably knows that Pius XII personally intervened after 1945 to commute the sentences of convicted German war criminals. This solicitude for Nazi criminals contrasts sharply with Pius XII ignoring all entreaties to make a public statement against anti-Semitism even after the full horrors of the death camps had been revealed in 1945.

...yikes! the pope Pius XII spoke out for German war criminals, but not Holocaust victims? What is pope Benedict XVI thinking. Pius XII is obviously a hypocrate

In this context it is profoundly unsettling to think that the ultraconservative Benedict XVI and his entourage can identify so completely with Pius XII as a man of “heroic virtue.” The present pope, no doubt, deplores anti-Semitism, though his statements on the subject have been noticeably less robust than those of his predecessor, John Paul II. At Yad Vashem last summer he expressed no personal regret as a German for the unspeakable horrors of the Shoah, even though he had once been a member of the Hitler Youth. True, he had little choice in the matter. However, he was disturbingly vague about the truly monstrous German role in the Holocaust. Earlier this year Benedict also showed remarkably poor judgment (to put it charitably) in reinstating an unrepentant Holocaust-denying British bishop into the mainstream Catholic Church, an action he only retracted after worldwide Jewish and Catholic protests."

via hudsonny.org