How Iran persecutes its oldest religion

Jamsheed K. Choksy

(CNN) Editor's note: Jamsheed K. Choksy is professor of Iranian studies, senior fellow of the Center on American and Global Security, and former director of the Middle Eastern studies program at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Bloomington, Indiana (CNN) -- As Zoroastrian funerary processions enter the graveyard overlooking the Tehran suburb of Ray, their sobriety is often shattered by the sound of explosions and gunfire. Frequently, the way forward is blocked by Islamic Revolutionary Guards conducting a combat exercise among the tombs. According to Zoroastrian custom, burial needs to take place within 24 hours, and the Revolutionary Guards will not halt their training activities there for the funerals.
This is just another sign of religious freedom fading in the Islamic Republic.
Much that is written about the Zoroastrians of Iran portrays them as a venerable and quaint religious community. But these followers of an ancient faith are not insulated from the tribulations of their country.

Zoroastrianism is named after its founder, the prophet Zarathustra -- or Zoroaster, as he came to be known in the West -- who preached sometime between 1800 and 1000 B.C. Zoroaster spoke of humans siding with God (called Ahura Mazda, or the Wise Lord) against the devil (called Angra Mainyu, or the Angry Spirit) and fighting for all that is right. In time, those concepts became central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So did Zoroastrian beliefs that each soul faces judgment after death before entering heaven, limbo or hell, and that all of humanity will experience resurrection, final judgment and heaven on Earth.
Ancient Persian kings like Cyrus and Darius followed their faith's basic tenet of doing good by freeing Israelites from the Babylonian Exile and supporting construction of the Second Temple at Jerusalem. Zoroastrianism's clergymen, or magi, are known around the world as the wise men in attendance at the nativity of Jesus. Until Arabs conquered Iran during the seventh century, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians there could practice their own devotions unhindered. Thereafter, they became minorities who were persecuted and largely converted to Islam.
When the Islamic revolution occurred in 1979, fundamentalist Shiites stormed the fire temple at Tehran. There, Zoroastrians worship in front of a blazing fire, as a symbol of God's grace, just like Christians face a cross and Muslims turn to a qibla pointing toward Mecca. The portrait of Zoroaster was tossed down, a photograph of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was put up in its place, and the congregation was warned not to remove the image of Iran's new leader. Only months later could the prophet's picture be mounted upon an adjacent wall.
Their schools and classrooms began to be covered with images of Supreme Leaders Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and with verses of the Quran that denounce non-Muslims. Those who do well academically nonetheless find no openings within state-controlled universities.
When the bloody war with Iraq raged from 1980 to 1988, young Zoroastrians were involuntarily drafted for suicide missions in the Iranian army. Rejecting the Shiite mullahs' claim that military martyrdom would lead them to a heaven full of virgins was futile. Failing to offer their lives on the battlefield could result in execution for treason.
Then in November 2005, Ayatollah Ahmed Jannati, chairman of the Council of Guardians of the Constitution, disparaged Zoroastrians and other religious minorities as "sinful animals who roam the earth and engage in corruption." When the Zoroastrians' solitary parliamentary representative protested, he was hauled before a revolutionary tribunal. There, mullahs threatened execution before sparing his life with a warning never to challenge their declarations again. A frightened community subsequently declined to re-elect him.
Over the past two years, many Muslim Iranians have begun publicly rejecting the Shiite theocracy's intolerant ways by adopting symbols and festivals from Zoroastrianism. Those actions are denounced as causing "harm and corruption" by ayatollahs like Khamenei and Jannati.
Sensing that popular sentiment among Iran's Muslim majority is shifting away from the mullahs, even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has begun utilizing Zoroastrianism's past for his own political ends. In September 2010, he arranged for the Cyrus Cylinder, a sixth-century B.C. document that speaks of religious tolerance and Iranian greatness, to be loaned from the British Museum. During a public ceremony in Tehran, Ahmadinejad lauded indigenous traditions as superior to Arab-imposed Islam. Privately, his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, even referred to King Cyrus as "a messenger of God."
Their tottering political base has sharpened the Shiite clerics' ire. Like members of the Christian, Jewish and Baha'i minorities, Zoroastrian activists who protest the theocracy's excesses are sent to Tehran's notorious Evin prison on charges of sedition. At the ayatollahs' instigation, Iranian media characterizes the followers of Iran's ancient faith as polytheists and devil worshipers. Lesser mullahs rant against Zoroastrians not only in Iran, but even at mosques in Toronto.
The Zoroastrian cemetery outside Tehran now faces another challenge: The municipality seeks to lay a highway through it. Some schools and devotional centers in other Zoroastrian strongholds like Yazd and Kerman have also been notified of pending annexation. Communal gatherings are routinely monitored by fundamentalist Muslim authorities who allege that Zoroastrianism "threatens national security and subverts the Islamic revolution."
Protections offered by the Islamic Republic's constitution have been rendered meaningless in practice. Not surprisingly, the daily regimen of discrimination makes Zoroastrians feel wholly unwelcome in their Iranian homeland. Only between 35,000 and 90,000 now remain in a country of approximately 74 million citizens -- and, fearing persecution, many do not readily identify themselves as Zoroastrians.
Yet, Zoroastrians are no mere footnote in human history and religiosity. Their ideas still determine how many of the globe's residents behave. The end of Zoroastrianism in Iran should be prevented. Making religious freedom a priority in U.S. and EU foreign policies will help achieve that goal.

The Jews killed Marilyn Monroe!

Does it seem like I control any of the women in my life? No? ok... so then how could I manipulate women to do anything?

(Sheik yer Mami) Wherever Islamic psychology rules, there is the inevitable rule of despotism and criminal aggression.  They are all emotion, unbalanced, instantaneous, senseless. It is always the lunatic that speaks from their throat.
Egyptian Cleric Amin Al-Ansari: The Jews Use Women to Harm Muslim Society
Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian cleric Amin Al-Ansari, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on October 26, 2011:
Amin Al-Ansari: In The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they say: “Women benefit us. They help us, wherever they may be. Whenever a woman comes to our aid, we must not reject her, because we will definitely benefit from her.” If women use their clothing to do that – [Jews] benefit. If women use their makeup to do that – they benefit. If women use their moral values to do that – [Jews] benefit. If women aid them through their rebelliousness – they benefit. If women do so through any means – they benefit.

Of course, when Zionism and Judaism, benefit, it means the decline not only of Muslim women, but of humanity as a whole. As proof, whenever any woman extends her hand to them, they cut off this pure hand, and it becomes – Allah forbid – despicable.
Look at the women of Hollywood, who extend their hands to the Jews – after all, it was the Jews who created Hollywood, and this is the most elite class of women in the world that cooperates with the Jews.
What did they do? Marilyn Monroe once said… A woman once said to her: “I’d like to be just like you. I’d like to become a famous actress like you.” Marilyn Monroe wrote to her – and this letter still exists: “My girl, you’d be better off marrying a man who goes to work, then returns at the end of the day with the daily bread, and you will live happily with him, raising your children. It’s better than being famous, but devoid of will and devoid of honor. Take a look at me. The Jews made me what I am, and now they are killing me.”

Avigdor Lieberman to France: Send the Foreign Legion to Gaza, Don't send girls with olive branches

(INN) Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday that Israel would be happy to lift its blockade on Hamas-run Gaza if France would pull its weight - by sending in the Foreign Legion to keep order.

Lieberman, known for his candid and colorful mode of expression, was responding to recent criticism from the government of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The Foreign Minister said he had raised the idea during talks with his French counterpart Alain Juppe in June.
"I have no problem in lifting the blockade tomorrow as long as there is a force to inspect everything coming into the Gaza Strip and (prevent) terrorist activity," Lieberman told MPs on Monday.
"Instead of us doing it ourselves, you (can) send the French Foreign Legion!"
A French foreign ministry official confirmed Lieberman's previous remarks to Alain Juppe to AFP.
"Don't send girls with olive branches," Lieberman added Monday, referencing a boatload of French activists who tried to breach Israel's blockade on Gaza.
The United Nations Palmer Report on the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident concluded Israel's blockade of Gaza was both "legal and appropriate" as a means of curtailing arms to the Hamas terror organization.
Israeli officials note that the Kerem Shalom crossing to Gaza is never at full capacity despite all requests for aid to Gaza being met.
French and Western criticism of Israel's arms embargo - predicated on the claim there is a 'humanitarian crisis' in Gaza - is unfounded, the officials say.  Bustling Gazan malls and thriving hotels bear this out. The humanitarian problem in Gaza is the wide gap between rich and poor, with the former ignoring the latter.

LOLZ... you ROCK!

The protocols of Gilad Atzmon

Bobby Fisher comes to mind. The problem with really smart people is that they begin to hate themselves... and eventually that self hate is projected on their own people, relatives, family... and anything that reminds them of where they come from. I'm not going to bother arguing any of his points. He's obviously "Beyond the PALE". I'd just like to say as a person who grew up in the arts... and around talented people... it was not easy. Smart people are like this. Noam Chomsky for example is a linguist... not an activist... a linguist... and a very good one. The problem is when people are very good at something then they think they can occupy an

other road. Think how much better the world would of been if Louis Farrakhan had kept up with his violin playing?

(ynet) Israeli musician living in London publishes book filled with troubling anti-Semitic statements. 'Israel is worse than Nazi Germany' and 'The Holocaust narrative is historically illogical' are only some of his beliefs 

LONDON – "We must take the accusations that Jews are trying to take over the world with utmost seriousness. Israel is the Nazi Germany of our time. In fact, Israel today is worse than Nazi Germany."

These harsh statements are not the beliefs of a German neo-Nazi, but rather of an Israeli living in London. The speaker is Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli jazz musician performing around the world, whose new book "The Wandering Who?" deals with world Jews and the State of Israel, and includes some very disturbing sayings.

Atzmon, 48, was born in Jerusalem and has been living in Britain since 1994. He is considered a gifted musician who performs in Europe's best jazz clubs, but also one of his homeland's most serious critics in Britain.

He has published quite a few books and articles blasting Israel in the past, but this time it seems he has crossed all red lines.

'Some will say Hitler was right after all' (Photo: AP)

In his new book he states that he is "proud to be a self-hating Jew", and says that his "insights" are based on the writings of Jewish Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger, who he describes as "an anti-Semite who loathed almost anything that wasn't Aryan manhood."

Atzmon says he is a strong opponent of "Jewishness" and clarifies, "I despise the Jew in me."

"To be a Jew is a deep commitment that goes far beyond any legal or moral order," he explains in the book, a commitment which he says draws an increasing number of Jews into a dangerous, unethical and vague partnership.

Eventually, he writes, a nuclear war will erupt between Iran and Israel, which will lead to the killing of tens of millions of people. "Some brave people will say that Hitler was right after all."

His reference to Hitler is not accidental. Atzmon often compares the Holocaust to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Holocaust, he writes, is "an ancient religion as old as the Jews themselves", and "even if it is accepted as the new Anglo-American liberal-democratic religion – people should be allowed to be atheists."

The text also includes some of the most classic anti-Semitic accusations. Atzmon claims that American Jews are trying to control the world, blames them for the global financial crisis, and rules that high-ranking Jewish officials in the United States – like Rahm Emanuel and Paul Wolfowitz – "stayed abroad instead of moving to 'Zion' in order to serve the Zionist interest in the best way possible."

He even accuses American media of failing to "warn the American public of the danger from within."

Moreover, Atzmon even addresses the classic blood libel, claiming that children should be allowed to ask their school teachers "how do they know that the accusations that Jews used the blood of gentile children to back matzot are indeed empty or groundless accusations."

Jesus hated Jews too

Asked why he hates Jews, Atzmon stresses that he is in good company. "The Jews who ultimately contributed to humanity are those who hated themselves," he says in an interview. "Jesus was a Jew who hated Jews, and so did Spinoza and Marx."

Albert Einstein did not hate his Jewish identity.

"Einstein didn't contribute to humanity. He contributed to physics and was the person who started the Manhattan Project which led to the atomic bomb. When you talk about humanity, you talk about a universal system of values promoting love for one another – Einstein didn't contribute anything to that."

You define himself as a 'Jew hater'. Do you think your identity allows you to be Impartial?

"Of course. As a Jew who hates Judaism, I put myself under a magnifying glass and examine every Jewish aspect in me. I don't see any problem with it, and everything I say is subject to the readers' review. By the way, the book has already sold 6,000 copies on the first month of its publication, which is a significant achievement."

Are Jews responsible for the global financial crisis?

"When I diagnose the lobby which led to the global financial crash, I can’t ignore these two people, Paul Wolfowitz and Alan Greenspan. In 1994, Wolfowitz wrote that Israel is an important strategic asset, and he was also the architect of the Gulf War – I have no doubt he's a Zionist."

You have also voiced harsh claims against the Holocaust narrative accepted by the Western world today.

"I find this narrative unacceptable. History should be subject to criticism as part of a dynamic process of understanding. Holocaust museums perpetuate Jewish suffering, preventing Jews from reaching such an understanding."




The Holocaust issue is subject to an ongoing research process.

"This process institutionalizes the Jewish suffering and doesn't impress me. I heard about Holocaust deniers who were forced to sit in jail just because they wouldn't fall for the Holocaust narrative as described by the Zionists. Holocaust denial laws are the worst – they prevent Jews from understanding their own history.

"Take the death marches issue, for example. It's clear to everyone that at the beginning of the war the Nazis wanted to clear the Reich of Jews. If that's the case, why did the lead the Jews at the end of the war into the Reich in what people refer to as 'the death marches'? If the Nazis wanted to destroy the Jews, the last thing they should have done was lead them to Germany."

'Einstein didn't contribute to humanity' (Photo: Getty Images)

Jews were an essential labor force.

"Jews were no longer a labor force. They were too weak and therefore died in the marches. Jews say the Nazis wanted to conceal evidence, but that's an idiotic response because the Nazis left Jews behind in the camps."

Okay, so you tell me why the marches took place.

"According to one interesting answer, the Jews preferred to stay with the Germans than fall into the hands of the Russians. There was a typhus outbreak and the assumption was that if the Jews were taken to Germany, the Americans and Britons could deal with the disease.

"So the death marches were actually humane. This is a very consistent ruling."

So the marches were a demonstration of humanity. You also claimed that Israel is worse than Nazi Germany. Do explain.

"Both Nazi Germany and Israel are driven by ethnocentrism. They are both racist countries with a tendency to expand. Israel and the Nazi movement are similar in many categories. But since Israel is a democratic country, each of its citizens is responsible for its crimes, while in Nazi Germany only the Führer and his party members were responsible for the war crimes.

"Moreover, the Zionist movement was born before the Nazi movement. The Nazis disappeared, but the Zionists remain – and today they are even stronger than America."

Something very Jewish

Atzmon's statements are not troubling just because of their content, but mainly because of their surprising approval. Researchers from leading US universities, including Richard Falk of Princeton and John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, have adopted the book and saluted Atzmon for his "courage".

James Petras, Bartle Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Binghamton University, praised the text, calling it "a series of brilliant illuminations".

Mearsheimer, who is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, concluded that Atzmon "has written a fascinating and provocative book on Jewish identity in the modern world", which he said should be read by both Jews and non-Jews.

This troubling popularity is also expressed in the fact that the book can be purchased on Amazon, a website with a clear policy of not selling books promoting open racist opinions or any type of anti-Semitism. In case you were wondering, you won't be able to buy "Mein Kampf" there.

All this is naturally joined by Holocaust deniers and anti-Israel protestors, who have been praising the book and quoting from it. The fact that the text was written by an Israeli makes many of them accept it as legitimate and address it as a scientific document.

Atzmon, by the way, says he has a loyal audience in Israel too. "Quite a few people in Israel agree with what I'm saying, he states.

"Yoram Kaniuk asked to remove the Judaism classification from his identity card, and I've heard that hundreds of Israelis are following suit. It's a simple conclusion: Many have decided to become like me, to ask questions and wander, at least spiritually.

"My mother agrees with my ideas, and my father said recently that for the first time he understood where I was coming from. I had tears in my eyes."

"I read the book even before it was put to print and I think it's wonderful," confirms the mother, Ariella Atzmon. "It's a very important book, which was a best-seller and analyzes our existence in a very intelligent way.

"It's not at all anti-Semitic. Gilad has a problem with Jews, he talks about three categories of Jews, but you have to read everything to understand – rather than bring quotations and take them out of context.

"It's time for people to start thinking about the situation we are living in and about our past in a realistic manner, instead of living by myths. I am very proud of my son."

Israeli singer Yardena Arazi, who worked with Atzmon in the past as a musician, producer and player, is not so proud.

'Arguing with him is pointless.' Yardena Arazi (Photo: Daniel Hakim)

"He is extremely talented, really gifted, but I'm not surprised by his statements," she says. "He is a provocative and witty person, with a lot of humor, and when he first started talking like this – I thought he was joking.

"After he went to London I visited him there once with my daughter Alona, but over time he became even more radical, and it eventually ended between us when we slammed the phone in each other's face.

"I took a step back from him. He wrote very painful things, and I don't agree with any of his statements of course, but arguing with him is pointless. He is entrenched in very radical opinions, and there is no way of communicating with him on this level.

"He is an argumentative person and an outsider, and there is something very Jewish about him, even though he denies his Jewishness. I once told him that one day he would become a believer and a great rabbi, but I guess I was very wrong."

Valerie Carlton: Victimised for being Jewish!!

Valerie Carlton

(Princess Pana) I first became aware of this case last Friday evening, after close of Shabbat, when reading Serach's story on Arutz Sheva, displayed on a friends wall in Facebook. I immediately did some research ..... this lady needs support. Jewish Support. She is Valerie Carlton, a 42 year old Jewish woman who married a non-Jew who became violently abusive to her. She has been kept in solitary in a US prison as her husband tries to get her extradited to where she will not survive, a guarantee he made to her and is in a position to carry out because of vindictiveness & Nepotism, and extreme Anti Semitism.
Just this week past ~ 8th November ~ was the Yarzeit of Rachel Immimeu, weeping Mother of Am Yisrael, and this Jewish mother is weeping too in an American jail. On November 10th, 2011, she learned whether a judge will extradite her from Monsey, New York where, according to one of her lawyers, Michael Ettinger, she “faces probable death” in a private for-profit Detention Center in Harford County, Maryland. I have not yet learned her fate that day ....
Valerie Carlton was falsely indicted on 28 felony charges in Harford County, Maryland, in May 2009. Ms. Carlton was held on $10,000,000 bail in the Harford County Detention Center in solitary confinement for over 13 months. Eventually all 28 felony charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Prosecutors don't usually give up on 28 charges if there is any hint that wrong has been done. The false charges, which included child sexual abuse, stemmed from the unsubstantiated allegations of her ex-husband who was seeking to terminate her visitation, and all parental rights, with her six-year-old daughter. What happened to the presumption of innocence in the American Justice System. Does it not apply to Jews??

About 10 months into her confinement in Harford County, when it became clear to the State's Attorney that the case could not go to trial and that Ms. Carlton would have to soon be set free, an "altercation" occurred that was captured on video. Although the Harford County Sheriff claims that Ms. Carlton assaulted a corrections officer, the enhanced forensic video of the incident shows the officer confronting the prisoner, pummeling her, throwing her on the floor and bashing her head three times into a concrete wall.

Valerie married a man who battered her, abused their young child, and then vowed to destroy her. According to Valerie’s advocates, Russell Carlton turned out to be a vicious psychopath who used his christian Evangelical and white supremacist brand of christianity (and his powerful, local connections) to try and “kill the Jew” who dared to return to her Jewish roots, light Shabbat candles, and “practice Judaism” with her daughter. According to her lawyers and advocates, “both the search warrant and the charging document for the criminal charges against Ms. Carlton stated that she was an Orthodox Jew who practiced Jewish customs with her daughter whenever they were together.”

BEING JEWISH IS BEING CLASSED AS A CRIME !!!!!!

Although he was the abuser, he falsely accused her of having sexually abused their daughter. These charges were never substantiated but nevertheless, the allegations got her locked up. The other prisoners were carefully told she had sexually abused children and, because prisoners are notoriously cruel to pedophiles, the sheriff put her in isolation “for her own good.” This is where the guards tried to “break” her, to get her to admit she was “insane,” and to give up full custody, maybe even parental rights, to her child.

Neither the court nor the sheriff ~ not even the Governor of the State ~ chose to intervene to spare Valerie’s suffering, not even when nationally recognized experts strongly recommended that she be freed and reunited with her child. To date, Valerie has not seen her daughter for 2 1/2 years. Her ex-husband was found guilty of assaulting her, she's been found guilty of nothing, but he has custody of her daughter. How is this Just??

Once the authorities realized they would have to release her, they had a guard beat her up ~ but the guard falsely claimed that she had attacked him, he brought charges. Fake Charges. (A video may be viewed at www.valeriecarlton.com which shows what really happened). Her jailors warned her that she would soon be re-arrested. Valerie fled the area and relocated to Monsey, New York.

Ten months ago, Ms. Carlton's mother applied for visitation with her granddaughter. Recently, however, the grandmother retained counsel to assist her. Afraid that there might be contact between mother and daughter (Ms. Carlton has been rendered unable to communicate with her daughter for two-and-a-half years) it appears that Mr. Carlton prevailed upon the Sheriff's office to have his ex-wife arrested in New York and brought back to Harford County to face trial on the "assault" charges.

It is unusual for US Marshalls to be sent to arrest someone in another state for a misdemeanor. No Jew should feel safe in America with such blatant hatred for justice when it comes to them. (IT ISN'T UNUSUAL IF YOU ARE A JEW!!!! It happened to NoahDavidSimon... the owner of this blog!!!!! WHEN THE POLICE REALIZE THEY DON'T HAVE A CASE AGAINST THE JEW THEY TRY TO GET MISDEMEANORS BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DEFEND THEMSELVES FROM ALLEGATIONS. MOST PEOPLE WHEN FACING FELONIES AND HAVE A PERFECT RECORD WILL TAKE THE MISDEMEANORS... I KNOW I SURE DID. IT ISN'T LIKE THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM CAN BE TRUSTED ANYMORE)

Valerie now faces a potential sentence of up to ten years for a beating she did not commit; in a jail that had no legal right to keep her; where she was literally tortured; and where her “baby son, wrongfully removed from her, ultimately perished through the County’s malfeasance.”
They removed her still breast-feeding son from her and put him in state care where he….just died. And they did not allow a rabbi to break the news to her. Not even a psychologist was allowed in to tell her. Her punishers literally tied her down and told her that her son was dead, waiting to see if she would “break.” This is INHUMANE!!
Dr. Mark J. Mills, a forensic psychiatrist, said in a letter that his evaluation of Carlton found she is not psychotic, not dangerous and it is extremely unlikely that she would commit sexual abuse on her child or any other child. Mills also wrote that he reviewed the transcripts testimony by the two girls and found no credible evidence of abuse. And the neighbour who laid charges has apparently done this on previous occasions where the allegations have proved to be FALSE in law!!

Michael Ettinger, Valerie's lawyer, described her persecutors, including her ex-husband, as “malevolent people who have no problem putting an innocent women in jail in order to destroy her.”

This is a Jewish mother who has known more than a Mountain of sorrow, a Jewish mother who faces certain barbaric treatment if she is extradited. Other prisoners have died in the Harford County Detention Centre. It is known for its “accidental” taser deaths.

Ms. Carlton faces a potential sentence of up to ten years for .....
* a beating that was administered by a jail guard to HER,

* in a jail where the State had no legal right to hold her,
* where she was tortured and abused,
* where her baby son, wrongfully removed from her, ultimately perished through Maryland County's malfeasance. What YOU can do .....

*EMAIL to the Governor's of New York & Maryland County.

Send a Cheque to help defray & pay her legal costs to: ~
Philip J. Murphy, Esq., Escrowee
10 Esquire Road, Suite 10
New City, New York 10956
Mark your cheque "Valerie Carlton Defence Fund."
*Send an email of support, or with any comments or questions, to Valerie Carlton .... VindicateValerie@gmail.com

This is all being done in furtherance of a vindictive ex-spouse's scheme to destroy the mother of his child. A Jewish Woman for Practicing her Judaism!!

extradited to another state... for what? WTF is going on in America? THIS HAPPENED TO ME TOO! If you are a JEW then this is what you face in the prison system. THEY WILL DENY YOUR ACCUSER IS AN ANTISEMITE!!! EVEN IF YOU HAVE PROOF WRITTEN IN AN OFFICIAL DOCUMENT. THEN THEY WILL CENSOR YOU ON THE INTERNET!!!!!!! Trust me... it happens. OUR GOVERNMENT IS SILENCING JEWS!!!! OUR JUDICIAL SYSTEM IS SILENCING JEWS!!!! OUR MEDIA IS SILENCING JEWS!!!! IN POUGHKEEPSIE NY A BLACK MUSLIM CORRECTIONS OFFICER NAMED MOHAMMAD CALLED ME AN ELITIST FOR PRAYING IN HEBREW.... In Washington I was libeled on television before facing a trial... all bogus charges fabricated. THIS MUST STOP!!!!

Biden says Israel bond is ‘unbreakable’

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Vice President Joe Biden said the U.S. commitment to Israel was "unbreakable."

Biden made his remarks Sunday in an address to the annual dinner for Yeshiva Beth Yehudah, an Orthodox Jewish day school in suburban Detroit, the Detroit News reported.
The commitment, the vice president said, "is a key component of our broader efforts to secure this region and the wider world as well as our own security. America's bond with Israel is unbreakable. I guarantee you, we will stand with Israel because we know she has nowhere else to go and we want her to stay right where she is."
Biden said President Obama shared his views. The White House and the Obama re-election campaign are pushing back hard against Republican claims that the president has distanced the United States from Israel.

This from the guy who said he would not let Obama free Pollard. History is not going to think well of Biden

OccupyDenver, Hamas and Israel

Meet the Occupy Denver protester who, besides having some very warped views about Israel, seems to have trouble keeping his tongue in his mouth, as well as a hard time pronouncing “PLO” (0:45).

via Anti-Israel Occupy Protester Of The Day : Israellycool

86 non-Islamic member states who did not vote for Palestine's admission to UNESCO to also cut or withhold their financial contributions to UNESCO

(CFP/Eye) Palestine’s membership of UNESCO could be under serious legal threat - as the vote approving such admission comes under increasing scrutiny. [...]

[...] UNESCO cannot be seen to create the impression that any of its actions are not in strict accord with its Constitution and that it is prepared to act in possible contravention of its own Constitution.

To do so - whilst the above two questions remain definitively unanswered by the International Court of Justice - could well persuade those 86 non-Islamic member states who did not vote for Palestine’s admission to UNESCO to also cut or withhold their financial contributions to UNESCO until the Court’s ruling is obtained.

That would surely be the beginning of the end for UNESCO- which cannot be seen as a law unto itself and certainly cannot financially afford to do so. Make sure to read the whole thing.

buh bye

Helena Rubinstein and the Business of Beauty

(New Yorker) “Rubinstein’s New York living room, like everything else about her, was tasteless but full of gusto,” Brandon writes. “It sported an acid-green carpet designed by Miró, twenty Victorian carved chairs covered in purple and magenta velvets, Chinese pearl-inlaid coffee tables, gold Turkish floor lamps, life-sized Easter Island sculptures, six-foot-tall blue opaline vases, African masks around the fireplace, and paintings covering every inch of wall space.” She once invited Edith Sitwell over for lunch and, upon hearing that Sitwell’s ancestors had burned Joan of Arc at the stake, exclaimed, “Somebody had to do it!” In the nineteen-fifties, she took as a companion a young man half a century her junior, wooing him on a date that began with an enormous lunch (“I need to keep up my energy!”) and a showing of “Ben-Hur” (“Most interesting! I’m glad the Jewish boy won!”). From then on, Rubinstein took the young man everywhere, even to a state dinner with the Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who asked her, “Who’s your goy?” Rubinstein replied, “That’s Patrick! And . . . and, yes, he is my goy.”

Note the backhanded accusation of racism at the Jewish entrepreneur. It is as if implying that even the Jewish business woman is a bigot. Some interesting history here, but told in a frame that is hostile to profit and business. Hate is not profitable and though the editorial feels otherwise, the greater story is that haters go to considerable illogical choices to guide their decisions. Rubinstein is compared to the L'Oreal owner Schueller who bought her business after she died and was a Nazi and Arab League collaborator against Israel and it's Jews. It is pointed out that L'Oreal could of just as well bought another cosmetics company like Elizabeth Arden, but the point is that he bought Rubinstein... and like Lehman Brothers before him... bought her company in what would turn out to be a poor business decision. The was written in March; back when business was still under attack. It was written in the New Yorker and used a Jewish historical business figure to prove how shrewd business decisions are often immoral. After looking it over months later I have realized how biased the New Yorker actually is, because if you look at the underlying story (hidden behind the writer's bias and behind the critic of the writer's bias) is a story about how vanity, ego and bigotry led to a poor move. Oscar Schindler is also brought up. Suppose Oscar had not saved those Jews? Would he of become a hero after the war?

Hamas Leader Al-Zahhar: Western Civilization "Will Not Be Able to Withst...

So next time you turn on the TV and someone from MSNBC or PBS that tries to shill for the Arab Spring as merely being inclusive and Democratic when they allow the Muslim Brotherhood and so called Islamists (which really means Islam... I don't buy the bullshit from the Barry Rubins, Daniel Pipes camp), don't believe the hype.

Hugo Boss 'Sorry' for Founder's Nazi Past

Hitler shakes hands with SS officers wearing Hugo Boss' spring 1937 outfits. (Getty Images)(Newser) After the end of World War II, Hugo Boss said he had supported the Nazis to keep the company he founded afloat. But the fashion firm has admitted that there was another reason: He was a big fan of the Nazis. Boss—who was Hitler's favorite tailor and supplied the Nazis with uniforms from the party's early days onward—"did not only join the party because it led to contracts for uniform production, but also because he was a follower of National Socialism," writes the author of a history of the company during the Nazi years, which it commissioned itself, the BBC reports. Records unearthed by the author show that one of the company's factories was staffed by 140 forced laborers kidnapped from Poland by the Gestapo, reports the Telegraph. The firm wishes to "express its profound regret to those who suffered harm or hardship at the factory run by Hugo Ferdinand Boss under National Socialist rule," it says on its website. The company's founder, who died in 1948, was tried and fined after the war for his links to the Nazis.

Jay-Z, the 1%, and his decision to drop that "Occupy All Streets" t-shirt

(h/t Atlantic Yards Report) The New York Post reported: Jay-Z has pulled his $22 Rocawear t-shirts, which showed “Occupy Wall Street” altered to read “Occupy All Streets” after criticism of his company's failure to share profits with protesters.

Another article on the Post web site, attributed to Newscore, slammed him harder:

Jay-Z, who has had 12 No. 1 albums, has spent much of his career promoting the massive accumulation of wealth and celebrating the people that do so.

The Jay-Z defense
On the other hand, those defending Jay-Z point out that, while he may be in the 1% of wealth, he's earned it through creativity and drive, not through the crony capitalism and unfair rules that the Occupy protesters have decried.
That's a significant point, except it breaks down when it comes to Jay-Z's promotion of Atlantic Yards and the new Brooklyn arena.
Comments on Jay-Z from Gothamist
Gothamist quoted Occupy Wall Street spokesman Patrick Bruner:

Naturally there will be some bloodsuckers who come out of the woodwork. We have a screen-printers guild on camp, and it's easy to find many other T-shirts that actually benefit the cause.

As to questions of appropriation, one Gothamist commentator, Daniel, made a salient point:

Exactly a sad tale of cultural appropriation of art forms, culture, and entertainment of poor whites starting with such exploitive black men like Elvis, through The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin blatantly lifting entire songs of the white man for the black man's profit. Oh wait, that's not how that happened! One cultural idea appropriated and all this outrage?

Where does Occupy All Streets come from?
To quote the Wall Street Journal (quoting uncredited 'blogs'):

The Occupy Wall Street protesters can’t claim complete ownership over the “Occupy All Streets” phrase, however. As blogs have pointed out, that phrase appeared in the SlutWalk protests in Berlin.

Updates on Iran's "mysterious blast"

From Time:

AP photo from video of blast

Israeli newspapers on Sunday were thick with innuendo, the front pages of the three largest dailies dominated by variations on the headline "Mysterious Explosion in Iranian Missile Base." Turn the page, and the mystery is answered with a wink. "Who Is Responsible for Attacks on the Iranian Army?" asks Maariv, and the paper lists without further comment a half-dozen other violent setbacks to Iran's nuclear and military nexus. For Israeli readers, the coy implication is that their own government was behind Saturday's massive blast just outside Tehran. It is an assumption a Western intelligence source insists is correct: the Mossad — the Israeli agency charged with covert operations — did it. "Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the official tells TIME, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. "There are more bullets in the magazine," the official says.
The powerful blast or series of blasts — reports described an initial explosion followed by a much larger one — devastated a missile base in the gritty urban sprawl to the west of the Iranian capital. The base housed Shahab missiles, which, at their longest range, can reach Israel. Last week's report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran had experimented with removing the conventional warhead on the Shahab-3 and replacing it with one that would hold a nuclear device. Iran says the explosion was an accident that came while troops were transferring ammunition out of the depot "toward the appropriate site."
[I]n Sunday's editions, the Hebrew press coyly listed what Yedioth Ahronoth called "Iran's Mysterious Mishaps." The tallies ran from the November 2007 explosion at a missile base south of Tehran to the October 2010 blast at a Shahab facility in southwestern Iran, to the assassinations of three Iranian scientists working in the nuclear program — two last year and one in July.
At the very least, the list burnishes the mystique of the Mossad, Israel's overseas spy agency. Whatever the case-by-case reality, the popular notion that, through the Mossad, Israel knows everything and can reach anywhere is one of the most valuable assets available to a state whose entire doctrine of defense can be summed up in the word deterrence. But it doesn't mean Israel is the only country with a foreign intelligence operation inside Iran. The most recent IAEA report included intelligence from 10 governments on details of the Iranian nuclear effort. And in previous interviews, Western security sources have indicated that U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have partnered with Israel on covert operations inside Iran. Sometimes the partner brings specific expertise or access. In other cases, Iranian agents on the ground who might harbor misgivings about Israel are allowed to believe they are working only with another government altogether.
Saturday's blast was so powerful it was felt 25 miles away in Tehran, and so loud that one nearby resident with combat experience thought he had just heard the detonation of an aerial bomb. "Frankly it did not sound like an arms depot from where I was because when one of those goes off, it is multiple explosions over minutes, even hours depending on the size of the facility," the resident says. "All I heard was one big boom. I was sure from the quality of the noise that anyone in its immediate vicinity was dead. Something definitely happened, but I would not trust the [Revolutionary] Guards to be absolutely forthcoming as to what it was."

The list of Iranian "accidents" over the past few years includes:

• November 2007 - Explosion in a missile base south of Tehran. Dozens of technicians are killed.
• July 2008 - Explosion in a convoy of trucks carrying missiles probably intended for Hezbollah. 15 deaths.
• August 2009 - a passenger plane crashes after takeoff from Tehran. On board were probably explosives and rockets destined for Hezbollah. 168 dead.
• October 2010 - Explosion of the Revolutionary Guard base in south-western Iran where Shahab missiles are stored. 18 dead.
• June 2011 - aircraft carrying Russian scientists who assisted in building the Bushehr reactor crashes. Dozens killed, including six scientists.
• November 2011 - Explosion at the base of the Revolutionary Guards missile. 17 killed.

And from AP:

A Revolutionary Guard commander killed in an explosion at an ammunition depot west of Tehran was a key figure in Iran's missile program, the elite military force said in a statement Sunday.
Gen. Hasan Moghaddam was killed together with 16 other Guard members Saturday at a military site outside Bidganeh village, 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Tehran.
Saeed Qasemi, a Guard commander, said Iran owes its missile program to Moghaddam.
"A major part of (our) progress in the field of missile capability and artillery was due to round-the-clock efforts by martyr Moghaddam," Qasemi told the conservative news website rajanews.com.
Another Guard commander, Gen. Mostafa Izadi, called Moghaddam a "founder of the Guard's surface-to-surface missile systems."
Qasemi said Moghaddam was one of a few Guard commanders favored by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"The exalted leader had a special interest in him," he said.

Mako says that Moghaddam had worked closely with Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the senior Hamas member assassinated in Dubai nearly two years ago.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, when asked to comment on the explosion, answered with the Hebrew phrase  "כן ירבו" which translates roughly to "May there be many more."

via elderofziyon.blogspot.com

Do attractive people write better online dating profiles

Recent research is not anything to go by: (guardian.co.uk) Academics at Villanova University in Philadelphia have found that more physically attractive men are also able to write more attractive online biographies. The researchers asked 100 women to assess 25 online dating photographs on physical attractiveness, and then to separately assess the 25 biographies on how kind, confident, intelligent or humorous they seemed. The results were conclusive: "The overall attractiveness of the photo was positively correlated with the overall attractiveness of the text. In other words, those who are physically attractive also write more appealing profiles."

Another example of how you can't trust a damn thing in the U.K. Guardian. Yes, men who are generally judged sexually by their mates in terms of their ambitious nature are more likely to make an impressive resume. Obviously if women are not held up to the same biological standard of attractiveness, they will not make as an attractive a resume. The only thing interesting that the U.K. Guardian points out is that their readers (known for hating Israel) is that they are slanted to their female and possibly gay readers who want to think of themselves as equivalent to men in their libidinal nature. That is called vanity and it is not an attractive trait when it appears in any document you write.

Palestinian Theologian" Trashes "Palestinian Theology

(Hudson) For over two decades, parts of the Christian world have been bemused by the writings of self-styled "Palestinian Christian theologians." Since their brightest lights are Protestant pastors, they are minor figures among the overwhelmingly Orthodox and Catholic faithful of the Holy Land. But they are strangely popular in Liberal Protestant circles abroad and especially beloved of church bureaucrats.
Now one of them, Lutheran Pastor Mitri Raheb of Bethlehem, has trashed all the efforts of "Palestinian theology" to date as an irrelevant rehash of nineteenth century European theology. And what is his new starting point? Basically, nineteenth century race theory.
For decades, Raheb and his Anglican counterpart Naim Ateek have been touring Protestant churches in Europe and North America and conducting seminars in "Palestinian theology." That is: purported theological underpinning for Palestinian political aims. Students in Protestant universities have been obliged to swallow down their books and regurgitate them in examinations. Those who questioned this new orthodoxy might face serious obstacles to their academic future.
Ateek in Jerusalem and Raheb in Bethlehem opened educational institutions to which theology students were sent from abroad. Recently, Raheb received authorization from the Palestinian Authority to grant BA and MA degrees. So for Raheb to denounce all that purported theologizing was to drop a big bomb.
Raheb was talking on "Contextual Palestinian Theology as It Deals with Realities on the Ground" at the March 2010 "Christ at the Checkpoint" conference in Bethlehem. He began by promising a "new way of thinking" because "we all, even as Palestinians theologians, we were dancing on the rhythm of European theology of the 19th Century, trying to react here, to react there, to change here and there, but the assumptions, the systems of thinking, was [sic] still 19th Century Europe."
Thus far, in trashing all the previous work of himself and Ateek, together with the lesser luminaries of this genre, Raheb was correct. Both Raheb and Ateek hold doctorates from foreign universities, written under that kind of old-time European influence. But the continuation of Raheb's talk is so academically frivolous that one wonders how he received a doctorate in the first place.
The "first assumption" of his new way of thinking, he announced, is that "the Bible could not have been written anywhere else but in Palestine." Now, such books as Esther and Revelation explicitly state that they were composed outside the Land of Israel (in Persia and on a Greek island respectively). Is Raheb so ignorant of his Bible?
His second assumption is outrageous, echoing nineteenth century attempts to obscure the Jewish origins of Jesus, which peaked in the "Aryan Christianity" of Nazi Germany. It is that "the Palestinian people and part of the Jewish people are the continuation of the peoples of the land" whereas "Israel represents Rome of the Bible, not the people of the land."
Why? Because "I'm sure if we were to do a DNA test between David, who was a Bethlehemite, and Jesus, born in Bethlehem, and Mitri, born just across the street from where Jesus was born, I'm sure the DNA will show that there is a trace. While, if you put King David, Jesus and Netanyahu, you will get nothing, because Netanyahu comes from an East European tribe who converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages."
Even if Raheb's claims about the ancestry of himself and Binyamin Netanyahu were true, he would be putting them at the service of a shameless racism. But, of course, he also has not the slightest evidence to support those claims. He knows nothing of Netanyahu's ancestry. And he himself, for all he knows, may be descended from Greek pilgrims or from Europeans who arrived with the Crusaders, as I have pointed out elsewhere. As for DNA, had he taken the trouble, Raheb could have found that genetic studies on Jews have shown that European Jews are genetically much more closely related to Jews in the Middle East, and even to some non-Jews there, than to non-Jewish Europeans.
Recall that the leitmotif of "Christ at the Checkpoint" was the claim that today Israeli checkpoints would prevent Joseph, Mary and Jesus from ever getting to Bethlehem. In fact, of course, if today a Jewish couple expecting their first child tried to set up house in Bethlehem, they would be denounced by the UN, the US State Department and all the world's foreign ministries as illegal settlers. And Mary would be lucky to live long enough to give birth.
So here comes Raheb to the rescue. As Yasser Arafat liked to say, Jesus and Mary were not Jews but Palestinians; so no problem. "And being born just across the street from where Jesus was born," adds Raheb, "I always loved to say that most probably one of my grand, grand, grand, grandmas used to babysit for Jesus." Once again, Raheb displays ignorance of or contempt for his Bible. According to Matthew's Gospel, the Holy Family fled Bethlehem for Egypt shortly after the birth of Jesus. If anyone babysat for Jesus, it was Copts.
We need not pursue further Raheb's "new thinking" except to note its fundamental aim: to show that wherever the Bible talks about a Chosen People, it means today's Palestinians and specifically the Palestinian Arab Christians. Yes, he really means to make that preposterous claim. Consider a few quotations, and note that his initial inclusion of "part of the Jewish people" has vanished: now it is just Palestinians.
"Actually, the Palestinian Christians are the only ones in the world that, when they speak about their forefathers, they mean their actual forefathers, and also the forefathers in the faith." "So, that is the reality of the peoples of the land. Again, they aren't Israel. This experience I'm talking about, it's only the Palestinians who understand this, because Israel represents Rome." "It was our forefathers to whom the revelation was given..."
If one reads attentively all the "Palestinian theology" produced by Raheb and Ateek and their like, one finds that this claim about Palestinian chosenness, with the concomitant disqualification of Israel, is the whole point of the exercise. All the rest is baseless rigmarole, churned out in the attempt to get to that conclusion. The significance of Raheb's speech is his acknowledgement that all their previous rigmarole cannot survive serious examination. His puerile attempt to start a new rigmarole merely confirms this.
Not that this will diminish the adulation of Raheb and Ateek among their admirers. For they are admired not for their intellectual integrity, but for their services in the delegitimization of contemporary Israel and of the contemporary Jewish people. Despite his averred repudiation of nineteenth century theology, Raheb is repackaging the claim of old-time theologians that the Church is the "New Israel" that has replaced the Jewish people, that the Bible now belongs to Christians alone. In Raheb's view – it belongs just to Palestinian Christians.
Thus Raheb habitually receives rapt attention in Germany. He was awarded the "International Aachen Peace Prize" in 2008. Frequently, he has been fêted at Kirchentage, the mass jamborees of German Christians. He was most recently featured at the joint Protestant-Catholic Kirchentag hosted by the Lutheran Church of Bavaria in May 2010, two months after his Bethlehem speech. No matter what he said.
Raheb was also the star witness at the session of the 2004 General Assembly at which the Presbyterian Church of the USA voted to divest from various firms that do business with Israel. Two years later, after much controversy, the next General Assembly of the PCUSA voted to replace that resolution and apologize for allowing itself to be misled in 2004.
Still, we have to be grateful for the spectacle of Raheb's performance in Bethlehem. On the one hand, he threw all previous "Palestinian theology" into the rubbish bin. On the other, any decent university would grade his "new thinking" with a fail, if submitted by a non-Palestinian student. "Palestinian theology" may still have its admirers, but they are staring at a naked mini-monarch.

Israel rushes airliner defenses as Libya leaks SAMs

(Reuters) - Israel has accelerated the installation of anti-missile defences on its airliners, a security official said on Friday, seeing an enhanced risk of attack by militants using looted Libyan arms.

Jets flown by El Al (ELAL.TA) and two other Israeli carriers are being equipped with a locally made system known as C-Music that uses a laser to "blind" heat-seeking missiles, the official said, giving a 2013 target for fitting most of the fleet.

As a stop-gap, Israel is adapting air force counter-measures for use aboard civilian planes, said the official, who declined to elaborate on the technologies involved, or to be identified.

"We have long been aware of the threat and were ahead of the rest of the world in preparing for it. Libya has meant government orders to step things up even further," the official said, citing intelligence assessments that chaos during the North African nation's uprising against Muammar Gaddafi allowed trafficking of Libyan shoulder-fired missiles to Palestinians and al Qaeda-linked groups in the Egyptian Sinai.

Israel began deploying another system, "Flight Guard", on El Al after al Qaeda tried to shoot down a planeload of Israeli tourists in Kenya in 2002. Flight Guard's use of diversionary flares set off safety concerns abroad and the Israelis turned to C-Music, manufactured by Elbit Systems Ltd. (ESLT.TA).

According to the Israeli official, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is covering the $1 million to $1.5 million that it costs to fit C-Music to each plane.

The bathtub-sized pods, built into the planes' bodies, increase drag in flight, meaning "a few million (dollars) a year" in extra fuel expenses, the official said, adding that this, too, would be borne by the government.

Israel's main international gateway, Ben-Gurion Airport, is 10 km (6 miles) from the occupied West Bank where, along with the Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip, Palestinians want a state.

The Israeli official said he had no information indicating the presence of anti-aircraft missiles in the West Bank -- unlike in Gaza, which has seen an influx of smuggled weaponry from Egypt since Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers in 2005.

The official said Netanyahu had, in closed-door discussions, described C-Music as a way to help reassure the Israeli public about security should the government one day return occupied land to the Palestinians under a peace agreement.

Asked for confirmation, Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev, quoted him as saying that "in any possible peace deal there have to be effective security arrangements that can deal with a range of security threats, including shoulder-fired missiles".

Israel also wants to protect traffic to its small airport in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, which abuts Jordan and Egypt, where Islamist militants have operated in the past. Armed infiltrators killed eight Israelis on the Egyptian border on August 18.