Friday, May 7, 2010

370H-SSV-0773H

jajajaaja!

 

 

After the president has been in office for 6 months it is customary for the last president to send a note of congratulations to the new one.
 
So yesterday when the note came from Bush to Obama, the president was somewhat troubled because it was written in code and all it said was: 
 370H-SSV-0773H

This troubled him as he had always heard from his peers how former president Bush was perceived to have been scholarly challenged.
 
So he took the note to his wife. She was unable to decipher it .
 
They called in the VP, and he was unable to decode the message. They called in the chief of staff and the head of Secret Service detail and they were unable to determine the meaning of the note.
 
Next he called in the head of the Senate and Speaker of the House. They both were mystified by the meaning of the coded message..
 
Now there was complete panic in the oval office. They called all of their contacts in the media and sent copies of the note to all of them, and not one was able to come up with an answer.
 
A special emergency meeting was called by the staff. All branches of the military, counter intelligence, CIA, FBI were called in, and the best minds were unable crack the code.
 
After a sleepless night, a now humbled President picked up the phone and called the former president, and asked him the meaning of the Note.
 
Bush chuckled and replied:
Dude ............You're holding it upside down 

 

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Delegates walk out on Ahmadinejad’s U.N. speech

 
May 3, 2010
 
NEW YORK (JTA) -- Delegates to a United Nations conference on nuclear proliferation walked out as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began his speech, which attacked the United States and Israel.
 
The delegates from the United States, Britain, France, Hungary, New Zealand and the Netherlands left the room at the start of the Iranian president's address Monday.
 
Ahmadinejad used his opening speech at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review conference to parry attacks from an increasingly frustrated international community and to highlight what he deemed the hypocrisy of the United States and Israel.
 
Denying that his country seeks nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad told U.N. delegates that possessing such weapons is both "disgusting and shameful."
 
"The United States has threatened to use nuclear weapons against other countries, including my country," he said. "The Zionist regime, too, continuously threatens other Middle Eastern countries."
 
Ahmadinejad also indicted the United Nations for its futility in establishing lasting security against nuclear arms, accusing theh world body of a double standard toward countries seeking nuclear energy and first-world nuclear powers.
 
Israel did not participate in the conference; Israel is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
 
As the Iranian president delivered his speech, several protests took place outside the U.N.'s New York headquarters.
 
One protest featured several members of the U.S. Congress, New York state senators and Jewish leaders gathered across the street from the U.N. building to denounce Ahmadinejad's presence at the conference, which U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) called a "sham."
 
Most of the speakers, including Gillibrand, and New York Reps. Anthony Weiner, Carolyn Maloney, and Jerrold Nadler, focused on the need for tougher sanctions against Iran and expressed outrage at companies that do business with both the United States and Iran. In March, an investigation by The New York Times identified 74 companies that had dealings with the U.S. government and Iran.
 
"Today we renew our call to the companies and say when they do business with Iran, they fund its nuclear development," Gillibrand said, adding that she is pressing for Senate hearings to investigate the issue.
 
Gillibrand later told reporters that she was confident that the Congress would reconcile its disagreements and approve stronger sanctions against Iran in the coming weeks.
 
 

Taliban plot to bomb Times Square

The American anti-terror strategy seems to depend on a secret weapon. It is a top secret rabbit's foot, kept at FBI or CIA headquarters. This instrument has been blessed by a Hassidic rabbi, a priest, a minister, an Imam, a Hindu swami and an American Indian medicine man. The luck it brings enabled the forces of law and order to avert the last two terror attacks successfully. However, Usama Bin Laden is plotting to steal the rabbti's foot. But have no fear. Any casualties the US incurs in from terror attacks can easily be blamed on Israel.
 
Ami Isseroff
 
Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, suspect in foiled Times Square bomb plot, arrested at JFK

BY Alison Gendar, James Gordon Meek, Rocco Parascandola and Corky Siemaszko
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
 
Originally Published:Monday, May 3rd 2010, 4:46 PM
Updated: Tuesday, May 4th 2010, 3:31 AM
 
Busted!
 
Authorities late Monday night arrested a suspect in the botched plot to bomb Times Square.
 
Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American who recently returned from a trip to his home country, was nabbed at Kennedy Airport.
 
"Mr. Shahzad, an American citizen, was taken into custody at JFK Airport in New York as he attempted to board a flight to Dubai," Attorney General Eric Holder said in an early-morning news conference.
 
"This investigation is ongoing, as are our attempts to gather useful intelligence, and we continue to pursue a number of leads," the Queens-born Holder said.
 
"But it's clear that the intent behind this terrorist act was to kill Americans," he told reporters.
 
The Customs and Border Protection agents at Terminal 4 had Shahzad's name and photo, a source told the Daily News.
 
"He was looking to get out of the country," a source told The News.
 
Shahzad, 30, of Connecticut, bought his mobile weapon of mass destruction on craigslist - and paid a 19-year-old college student $1,300 cash for it.
 
He is believed to have links to international terrorists and was already under surveillance for two days when the feds moved in.
 
They had hoped he would lead them to other possible suspects but scooped him up at JFK when he looked ready to run.
 
Shahzad bought the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder that he left in Times Square last Saturday night two weeks ago in a deal without paperwork, sources said.The National Security Agency had also been tracking his cell phone calls, some of which had been made to overseas numbers.
 
The SUV was packed with enough fuel, fertilizer and explosives to ignite a massive fireball - and kill scores of people.
 
In Times Square, New Yorkers and tourists alike were thrilled to hear today that Shahzad was now in the hands of the law.
 
"They did a great job getting this guy so fast," said Diana Suliz, 22, a bartender from the Bronx. "I feel safer now that they've got him."
 
But she's still worried about the future.
 
"I'm scared now that this might be part of a bigger terrorism threat. I have a daughter, she's only 9 months old," she said. "I don't want her to have to grow up worrying about terrorists in her own city."
 
Holder assured New York - and the nation - that law enforcement officials are on the case.
 
"This investigation is ongoing, it is multifaceted, and it is aggressive," he said. "As we move forward, we will focus on not just holding those responsible for it accountable."
 
Sources told The News early Tuesday that the feds are tracking three associates who may have helped the suspect.
 
Shahzad tried to cover his tracks when he drove the Pathfinder to Times Square.
 
The vehicle identification number was defaced, but detectives found it stamped on the engine block and axle to get a lead on the current owner.
 
NYPD and FBI detectives identified Shahzad after tracking down the previous owner, Peggy Colas of Bridgeport, Conn., sources said. She told investigators she had turned over the keys to the mystery man at a Connecticut mall, sources said.
 
"Of course I'm scared. If I say something and he comes here, then what?" she said from her home earlier Monday night, before Shahzad was arrested. Authorities whisked her away to shield her from the encamped media.
 
Colas told cops the buyer paid with $100 bills, and he used a bogus name - though his cell phone number worked.When she found out who bought the car, Colas freaked out, posting on her Facebook page: "OMG! I had a crazy day. ... It's official. I have bad luck. ... I hope they find that bastard."
 
Her family couldn't believe her luck either.
 
"He came off like a nice guy, I guess," one of Colas' brothers said. "He told my sister, 'I'm going to New York.' He said he needed a car in the city."
 
As Shahzad was tracked, investigators have also started looking at a Connecticut-based Web site purporting to represent a faction of the Taliban in Pakistan, sources said. The site went up last week, and within 24 hours of the failed bombing was laying claim to an attack on American soil, law enforcement sources said.
 
The arrest appears to eliminate as a suspect the still-unidentified white man caught by security cameras stripping off a dark shirt to reveal a red one after the SUV was abandoned in Times Square.
 
The arrest came after a day of fast-moving developments:
 
- The White House uttered the T-word for the first time in connection with the failed plot that sent a scare through the city.
 
"I would say that was intended to terrorize, and I would say that whomever did that would be categorized as a terrorist," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
 
- Motorized traffic into Manhattan slowed to a crawl as officers checked trucks entering the East River tunnels - and gave New Yorkers a jarring flashback to the tense days after the 9/11 attacks.
 
- Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for federal funding for a midtown surveillance program that would use security cameras and license plate scanners to track every vehicle moving between 34th and 59th Sts.
 
Inside the Pathfinder, cops found dozens of M-88 firecrackers, three tanks of BBQ-style propane, two red plastic jugs of gasoline and a metal locker densely packed with eight supermarket bags of fertilizer.
 
The whole shebang was wired to two cheap, yellow, old-fashioned travel alarm clocks set to work in tandem - one to blow up the propane tanks and the other to explode the contents of the locker.
 
The fertilizer was not explosive-grade and would not have produced the kind of devastation associated with ammonium nitrate bombs - like the one in Oklahoma City in 1995.
 
But the propane tanks pack an explosive punch that could have shattered windows and done all kinds of damage in Times Square, officials said.
 
The Pathfinder was parked by "The Lion King" marquee on W.45th St., right next to the 1515Broadway headquarters of Viacom, which owns Comedy Central.
 
The bombing plot was foiled by two sharp-eyed street vendors who spotted smoke seeping from the SUV just after 6:30 p.m. on Saturday and alerted mounted Officer Wayne Rhatigan. He then sounded the alarm.
 
 
With Kevin Deutsch in Stratford, Conn. and Bruce Furman
 

Sharetweet

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Our World: Barreling on, regardless




Obama and his advisers won't make any concession to keep the Jews loyal.

 
If safeguarding international security is the chief aim of US President Barack Obama's foreign policy, then at some point he can be expected to change course in the Middle East. For today, Obama faces the wreckage of every aspect of his Middle East policies. And largely as a consequence of his policies, the region moves ever closer to war.

In Iraq, Obama's pledge to withdraw all combat forces from the country by the summer has emboldened the various forces vying for control of the country to set it ablaze once more.

In Afghanistan, Obama's surge and leave policy has left would-be US allies hedging their bets, at best. And it has caused the US's NATO partners to question the purpose of their deployment in that country.

Then there is Iran. Last week's report by The New York Times that this January Defense Secretary Robert Gates penned a memo to National Security Advisor James Jones warning that the Obama administration has no effective policy for dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons program exposed the bitter truth that in the face of the most acute foreign policy problem they face, Obama and his crew are out to lunch.

Gates's attempt to mitigate the story's impact by claiming that actually, the White House is weighing all its options only made things worse. Even before the ink on his correction note was dry, his Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy was telling reporters in Singapore that the military option, "is not on the table in the near term."

Iran for its part continues to escalate its menacing behavior. Last week its naval forces reportedly interdicted a French ship and an Italian ship navigating through the Straits of Hormuz.

President Shimon Peres's announcement last week that Syria has transferred Scud missiles to Hizbullah in Lebanon was a sharp warning that Iran and its underlings are diligently preparing for war with Israel. It also demonstrated that the Obama administration's attempts to use diplomacy to coddle Syria away from Iran have failed completely.

Administration officials' statements in the wake of Peres's bombshell make clear that Syria's bellicose actions have not caused the US President to reconsider his failed policy. Obama's advisers responded to the news by irrelevantly boasting that their policy of "engagement" enabled them to bring the matter up with their Syrian interlocutors three times before Peres's announcement and once more after he made the statement.

AND THAT'S not nearly the end of it. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced last week, soon the Obama administration will expand its dialogue with Syria by returning the US ambassador to Damascus for the first time since Syrian President Bashar Assad ordered the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri five years ago. That is, Obama has chosen to respond to Syria's open brinkmanship by rewarding Assad with newfound legitimacy and panache.

And that's still not the worst of it. What is worst is that Obama's advisers openly admit that they have no idea why Syria remains a rogue state despite their happy talk. As one administration official told Foreign Policy, understanding why Syria – Iran's Arab client state – is acting like Iran's Arab client state is, "the million dollar question." "We do not understand Syrian intentions. No one does, and until we get to that question we can never get to the root of the problem," the official told the magazine.

But while they wait for the Oracle at Damascus to decode itself, they are content to continue wooing Assad as he provokes war.

Then there are the Palestinians. After rejecting Obama's envoy George Mitchell's latest plea to conduct indirect negotiations with Israel, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas explained that Obama's own statements have convinced the Palestinians that there is nothing to negotiate about.

As he put it, "Since you, Mr. President, and you, the members of the American administration, believe in [the urgent need for a Palestinian state] it is your duty to call for the steps in order to reach the solution and impose the solution. Impose it. But don't tell me it's a vital national strategic American interest... and then not do anything."

Finally there is Israel. In the same week that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen refused to rule out the possibility that the US will shoot down Israeli jets en route to attack Iran's nuclear installations, and Obama again blamed Israel for the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jim Jones tried to reassure Jewish Democrats that despite the administration's hostile actions and statements, it is not hostile to Israel.

Jones's speech was part of a very public outreach plan the administration adopted last week in the face of a groundswell of American Jewish anger at Obama for his adversarial posture towards Israel. Given that American Jews have been the Democratic Party's most secure voting bloc since 1932, recent polls showing that the majority of American Jews oppose Obama's treatment of Israel are a political earthquake.

According to a Quinnipiac poll published last week, a whopping 67 percent of American Jews disapprove of Obama's handling of the situation between Israel and the Palestinians. A poll of American Jews taken by John McLaughlin earlier this month showed that a plurality of American Jews would consider voting for a candidate other than Obama in the next presidential elections.

And on Israel, American Jewish disapproval of Obama is fully consonant with the views of the general public. As the Quinnipiac poll shows, only 35 percent of Americans approve of his treatment of Israel.

Jones's speech before the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy was a friendly affair. He waxed on dreamily about how wonderful the US's alliance with Israel is and how much Obama values Israel. And the crowd rewarded him with a standing ovation.

But the substance of his speech made absolutely clear that while Obama and his advisors are concerned that for the first time in 80 years a significant number of American Jews may abandon the Democratic Party, they are unwilling to pay even the slightest substantive price to keep the Jews loyal to their party.

After he finished his declarations of love and his joke about crafty Jewish businessmen in Afghanistan, Jones made clear that the Obama administration continues to view Israel's refusal to surrender more land to the Palestinians as the key reason its efforts to convince Iran to give up its nuclear program, the Syrians to quit the Iranian axis, the Palestinians and the Lebanese to quit the terror racket and the Iraqis and the Afghans to behave like Americans have all failed.

As he put it, "One of the ways that Iran exerts influence in the Middle East is by exploiting the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. Iran uses the conflict to keep others in the region on the defensive and to try to limit its own isolation. Ending this conflict, achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and establishing a sovereign Palestinian state would therefore take such an evocative issue away from Iran, Hizbullah, and Hamas."

JONES, OBAMA and the rest of their gang must have been asleep when the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians and the rest of the Arabs told them that Iran is unrelated to the Palestinian issue and that it must be stopped from acquiring nuclear weapons regardless of the status of Israeli-Palestinian relations. This after all has been the main message communicated to Obama and his advisers since January 2009 by every Sunni-majority state in the region as well as by many Iraqi Shiites.

They must have been at the golf course when their generals in Iraq and Afghanistan warned them about Iran providing weapons and training to irregular forces killing US servicemen.

The fact that even as he faced a Jewish audience, Jones couldn't resist the temptation to repeat the central fallacy at the root of the administration's failed policies in the Middle East makes clear that the Obama administration fundamentally does not care that the American people as a whole and the American Jewish community specifically oppose its policies. It will continue to push its policies in the face of that opposition no matter what. And if American Jews want to leave the party, well, they shouldn't slam the door on their way out.

The Obama administration's treatment of New York Senator Charles Schumer this week is case in point. Schumer has been one of Obama's most loyal supporters. If as expected Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid loses his reelection bid in November, Schumer is in line to replace him as the Democratic leader in the Senate.

Yet this week, responding to what has likely been an enormous outcry from his constituents, Schumer blasted Obama for his shabby and dangerous treatment of Israel. Rather than respond graciously to Schumer's criticism, Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed it sneeringly saying, "I don't think that it's a stretch to say we don't agree with what Senator Schumer said in those remarks."

In his interview last week with Channel 2, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he has no doubt that if Obama wishes to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons he is capable of doing so. As he put it, "Barack Obama demonstrated his determination with regard to issues he felt were important, and his determination was quite impressive. I think President Obama can show that same determination with regard to Iran."

No doubt Netanyahu is correct. Moreover, the politics of such a move would make sense for him. Whereas Obama's decision to ram the nationalization of the US healthcare industry through Congress against the wishes of the American public caused his personal ratings and those of his party to plummet, were Obama to decide to take on Iran, he would win the overwhelming support of the American public. Indeed, a determined and successful bid by Obama to block Iran's nuclear aspirations could potentially block what is currently looking like a midterm election catastrophe for his party in November.

But as Gates's memo about Iran, Clinton's announcement that the administration will go ahead with its plan to dispatch an ambassador to Damascus, Mitchell's latest failure with the Palestinians, Jones's newest accusation against Israel, and the US's strategic incoherence in Iraq and Afghanistan all show, mere politics are irrelevant to Obama. It doesn't bother him that his most loyal supporters abandoning him. It doesn't matter that his policies have endangered the Middle East and the world as a whole.

Obama's refusal to acknowledge his own failures make clear that his goal is different than that of his predecessors. He is here to transform America's place in the world, not to safeguard the world. And he will move ahead with his transformative change even if it means abetting war. He will push on with his transformative change even if it means that Iran becomes a nuclear power. And he will push on even if it means that US forces are forced to leave Afghanistan and Iraq in defeat.

 caroline@carolineglick.com


Equalization for Jews but not for Muslims



When Israelis want to build 1,600 apartments on land owned by Jews in the Jewish capital, the world is outraged.  But when Palestinians seize other Palestinians' homes by force, well . . . it's the symphony of crickets chirping.
hamasemblem2
Check out what happened to A'lyia Aweida, when she left her home to take care of her sick father-in-law.  And this was reported by the Palestinian Ma'an News Agency, so that should tell you something.  Life under terrorist group HAMAS–and under most Islamic regimes–makes life under the old Soviet Union look like a fantasy paradise. (Thanks, IMRA–Independent Media Research & Analysis).
Gaza – A family apartment was seized and handed over to de facto government police after its owner temporarily moved out of the home to take care of her sick father-in law.
A'lyia Aweida said she returned to the apartment on 3 April to collect some belongings, only to find a de facto government police officer, who she identified only by his initials, RAH, and his wife living in her home.
"What right and by what religion does he feel permission to take over my home and my belongings?" Aweida asked, "How can he himself accept to live in a home where the things are not his? How does he sleep on a bed he knows was taken by force?"
"By what religion"? Islam, that's the religion.
The first hint of the problem, Aweida said reflecting on the matter, came months before, when a de facto government ministry of the interior official asked her to provide papers showing that her family in fact owned the home.
"Paper"? Hmmm . . . where is Barack Obama denouncing this requirement of showing papers? I guess when Islamic thugs do it, it's okay.
It was the end of January, and Aweida had already moved in with her father at the time, who was released from the Intensive Care unit at Gaza City's Ash-Shifa Hospital where he was being treated for late-stage cancer.
"His condition forces him to remain in bed," she explained, noting her family had moved in to her father's home in order to stay together and help care for him.
So, the apartment in the upscale neighborhood of Ar-Rimal, in the Golden Beach Tower of the Sheikh Ijlin block was left locked, with Aweida and her husband periodically checking in or gathering necessary belongings for themselves or their children.
It was a Ministry of the Interior official, who Aweida identified by his initials, AA. "He asked for papers proving we owned the home, and said he believed that the apartment was in fact owned by the Palestinian Authority," she said.
She said she showed him the deeds, that the apartment was owned by her husband Sa'eed Aweida. "We showed them all of the papers that prove that the apartment is privately owned by the Aweida family and that is it not owned by the Palestinian Authority."
Aweida went to the de facto government's Ministry of the Interior to speak with under secretary of the ministry Kamel Madi. "We did not find him in, and instead met with a man who said he was the head of Madi's office. He told us the apartment was seized on account of an embezzlement charge against Said Aweida, and that the decision was taken by the undersecretary of the ministry," she said.
When the family requested a copy of the decision to confiscate the department, they were told to return the following week. There was no document ready when they returned, and after several inquiries, found that there "was no such decision concerning our issue," Aweida explained.
Yup, let's hear it for a Palestinian state. This is what life is like under Islamic rule everywhere around the world. They are thugs and they seize your property and take away your rights at will. Now we know why many Palestinians say off the record that they secretly wish to remain under Israeli rule, where they have freedom, safety, and a better life that they won't get under HAMAS or Muslim rule anywhere else.
Exit Question: Since they spoke out, how much longer do you give the Aweida family to live? I predict HAMAS will pick one of them off soon enough. That's how they rule. That's how they stay in power. All Muslim regimes. It's the "religion of peace," after all. And they have a reputation to maintain.
www.thereligionofpeace.com