what would you do about Syria? overthrow it and put what in power? don't get pissed. I'm open for discussion.

Flotilla of fools to sail from Turkey at the end of Ramadan?

'Israeli Arab' weekly Kul al-Arab is reporting that the Greek government has agreed to release the yachts from the flotilla of fools to Turkey, and that Turkey will allow the flotilla of fools to sail from its harbors at the end of Ramadan (approximately August 31).  A member of the Turkish delegation to the second Freedom Flotilla told the Arab-Israeli weekly Kul Al-Arab that the Greek and Turkish governments have agreed that the flotilla ships, which Greece prevented from sailing to Gaza, will be transferred to Turkey, and sail towards Gaza at the end of Ramadan.  A member of the International Committee to Break the Siege of Gaza said that Turkish President Abudllah Gul approved this agreement after the failure of negotiations with Israel, in which Turkey demanded an apology and restitution payments for the events of the first Freedom Flotilla. Another activist said that Germany mediated between Greece and Turkey via Israel Matzav

hey Greece? WTF! a loophole here is not helping. these people are not trying to aid Gaza. They have made this very clear.  Also forgive my ignorance, but isn't after Ramadan when the Muslims like to attack?  I've heard this before.

Who does the boycott hurt?

A while back, one Israeli company decided to move out of the Barkan (Settler) Industrial Park because of the pressure from the Left. As a result, its 90 Arabs employees were fired as they couldn’t work within the “Green Line”, the Jewish employees merely had to commute in the opposite direction. The firing of 90 Arabs means that some 800 Arabs no longer had a provider of income.
The truth is, a successful boycott would in reality hurt the Palestinians far, far more than it would hurt the Jews. But don’t confuse the Leftists with that piece of information, because their calls for boycott are helping improve the Settler economy they hate so much.

Ahmed Tibi

Oh, and here’s a question for you (as asked in Makor Rishon).
If Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli citizen currently living over the Green Line (making him a Settler) were to open a factory, would the Left call for its boycott too? Or are their calls to boycott actually racist and only targeting Jews? more via muqata.blogspot.com

you can not reason with the unreasonable though

THE TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN OIL BOOM? This surge in domestic production would leave Iran, Kuwait and the Arab emirates combined in the rear-view mirror”

A US oil boom — unless greens abort it - By ARTHUR HERMAN

Just a year after the BP oil spill, America is on the verge of a new golden era of oil exploration and production — unless President Obama and his environmentalist friends get their way.

This surge in domestic production would leave Iran, Kuwait and the Arab emirates combined in the rear-view mirror.

The US drilling boom rests on a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to open shale-oil reserves. It’s why wells are springing up in places like North Dakota, California and Pennsylvania, with thousands of new jobs in their wake.

Fracking has also opened up supplies of natural gas, sending prices plummeting. Now, even New York’s regulators have recommended lifting the state’s ban on the fossil-fuel gold rush that’s pushed North Dakota’s unemployment rate to 3.2 percent — the lowest in the nation.

The irony is that Obama had hoped higher oil prices would make us all drive electric cars and install backyard windmills. Instead, they’re making it profitable for US companies to expand the hunt for new reserves and to use fracking to reopen old ones.

Just last month, Exxon-Mobil announced the discovery of a vast field in the Gulf of Mexico, with as many as 700 million barrels waiting to be tapped. Other companies are using fracking to return to the Texas basin, the center of US oil production in the 1930s — which will mean millions in investment and thousands of jobs for that state. Montana and North Dakota are sitting on a shale-oil formation that could yield nearly 4 billion barrels.

Not many Americans realize we are already the world’s No. 3 oil producer, at 7.5 million barrels a day. The coming boom should add another 1.5 million by 2015. That’s closing in on Saudi Arabia’s daily total.

And oil-shale rich Canada could surpass Iran’s barrel-per-day output in a few years — so we’re looking at a major shift in the geopolitics of oil.

Easy-to-find oil is running out in the Mideast. After deliberately wrecking a multibillion-dollar deal with BP, Russia — the world’s biggest oil and gas producer — is looking more and more like a bad bet for foreign investors. If you want to make money in the oil biz, America will be the place to go.

But the environmental lobby is bent on preventing it — waging an all-out war on fracking, claiming (against all evidence) that it contaminates ground water. The ideologues hope to use memories of the BP spill and a more recent one on the Yellowstone River to dam up all exploration and pipeline construction.

Never mind that fracking goes on thousands of feet below groundwater sources, and that Obama’s moratorium on offshore drilling did more damage to the Gulf economy than the BP spill ever did — or that the Yellowstone accident has affected an area of less than 10 miles on the edge of a national park of 3,500 square miles.

The promise of prosperity and jobs was enough to get even a blue state like New York to ignore the green lobby’s fearmongering. But Obama may yet derail the boom.

The president has had the oil industry’s two most important tax incentives — the percentage-depletion allowance and the deduction for intangible-drilling costs — in his cross hairs for a long time.

Both help oil and drilling companies recoup the heavy capital investment they need to look for oil, even when they turn up nothing. The White House argues that we must end both “tax breaks for Big Oil” to close the budget deficit.

This is nonsense. Manhattan Institute oil guru Robert Bryce notes that the entire value of the industry’s tax advantage comes to $4.4 billion a year. The notion that scrapping tax abatements that have been around since the 1920s will put a dent in a deficit of $1.4 trillion is laughable — and dangerous.

Besides, those few billions in savings would be washed away in rising oil prices if the impending rebirth of the US oil industry is aborted.

So there’s more at stake in the debt-ceiling impasse than just how we pay for our government. It’s also about whether America will dictate its own energy and economic future — or whether it’s left in the hands of sheiks, dictators and the EPA.

Arthur Herman is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise via ibloga.blogspot.com

2000 Israelis and Arabs march in Jerusalem to support Palestinian independence

check out the amusing advertising on Haaretz
where the article was found

....Approximately 2,000 Palestinians and Israelis (I thought Haaretz said thousands? I feel misled) took part in the "March for Independence" Friday, calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state. Although the organizers of the march issued a statement saying the march was carried out peacefully, police had to intervene and separate right-wing and left-wing activists. The event was coordinated with the police, and organizers had pledged to prevent any violence from breaking out, despite the expected right-wing counter-protests. The event was coordinated with the police, and organizers had pledged to prevent any violence from breaking out, despite the expected right-wing counter-protests.  Participants in the march held signs quoting South African leader and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela saying "only free men can negotiate", while others bore slogans calling for support of Palestinian independence. Several MKs participated in the march, including Zehava Galon of Meretz and Dov Hanin of Hadash. Other prominent public figures took part as well, such as former Speaker of the Knesset Avraham Burg and former Attorney General Michael Ben Yair. via haaretz.com

the original post said thousands of protesters on the Haaretz website. The reality in the actual writing was 2000 people. Which sounds about right.via haaretz.com