1. Baha’i blood is “mobah,” which means members of the Baha’i faith can be killed with impunity, the report says. Iranian authorities view Baha’is as “heretics” who may face repression on the grounds of apostasy. Since 1979, the Iranian government has executed more than 200 Baha’is and more than 10,000 have been dismissed from government and university jobs, the commission’s report says. Baha’is may not establish places of worship, schools, or any independent religious associations in Iran. In addition, Baha’is are barred from the military and denied government jobs.

From news article:

Back on June 29, 2005, DID covered the potential use of modified Phalanx weapons systems to counter mortars fired by insurgents et. al. That program appears to have taken a step forward; the U.S. Army selected Northrop Grumman Corporation as the prime contractor for the Counter-Rocket, Artillery, Mortar (C-RAM) Integration and Fielding contract. Under this $38 million contract, Northrop Grumman’s Mission Systems sector is developing a systems architecture and integrating the C-RAM target acquisition, fire control, warning and engagement subsystems. Here’s how it’s expected to work:

C-RAM will uses target acquisition sensors, including ThalesRaytheon’s AN/TPQ-36 Firefinder radar and SRC’s Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar, to detect and track fired rounds. Once a threat is detected, audio and visual alarms sound to warn exposed soldiers. Meanwhile, the fire-control subsystem predicts the mortar’s flight path, prioritizes targets, activates the warning system, and provides cueing data to target the mortar round while still in the air.

The fire-control subsystem Northrop Grumman Mission Systems provides for C-RAM uses software modified from FAAD C2 (Forward Area Air Defence, Command & Control), which ties together the sensors and weapons of the Army’s short-range air-defense battalions. FAAD C2 is operational throughout the world, including homeland security efforts in the Washington, DC area.

This appears to be a spiral development contract, with fielding of interim solutions as development progresses. The company will first deploy a mortar-attack warning capability, and install that capability at eight forward operating bases in Iraq. Northrop Grumman Mission Systems will also train soldiers to use the system, and will integrate an intercept subsystem as it is fielded.

The contract is managed by the Director, Counter-Rocket, Artillery and Mortar in the Army’s Program Executive Office: Command Control and Communications Tactical. See corporate release

]]> In The News Mediocrates http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18360 http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18359&goto=newpost Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:29:23 GMT that's right. Obama throws the state of Arizona to the HRC for human rights violations for upholding the Federal government's own laws on immigration.

http://www.israpundit.com/archives/27150 ]]> U.S. Politics Mediocrates http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18359 http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18358&goto=newpost Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:49:36 GMT Blame the victims: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/09/blaming-victims-new-york-times-sick.html Blame the Jews: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/09/mondays-nyt-bias.html Turn the Op-Ed page over to the PA and let them blame the Jews:... Blame the victims:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/201...imes-sick.html

Blame the Jews:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/201...-nyt-bias.html

Turn the Op-Ed page over to the PA and let them blame the Jews:
http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2010/0...attack-on.html ]]> In The News Mediocrates http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18358 http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18357&goto=newpost Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:51:35 GMT Ireland's men of terror scuttle back out of the shadows as Al Qaeda beckons
Sunday Express August 29, 2010 (Pages 12-13)
Focus by James Murray
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/...-Qaeda-beckons

IRISH terrorists have teamed up with Al Qaeda supporters to help them Uhleash attacks in Britain. A dissident republican arms quartermaster allowed scores of shotgun cartridges to be delivered to a Muslim extremist terrorist at an address in Dublin. Gunpowder from the cartridges was needed by the follower of Osama bin Laden to create a bomb, according to a security source.

In return, Al Qaeda invited Real IRA members to join them in training camps in Pakistan to pass on their bomb-making lmowledge. Although there is no formal link between the two organisations, the new co-operation is yete another sign that dissident republicans are expanding their operations with campaigns of violence to derail the Good Friday Agreement and herald a return to the dark days of The Troubles.

Last week it was alleged resurgent republican paramilitaries are planning to attack the Tory party's autumn conference in October, while on Friday it was revealed that the Taliban had made a determined effort to assassinate Prime Minister David Cameron when he visited Afghanistan last June. The Taliban's links with Al Qaeda are well established but the security services are increasingly concerned by the sharing of bomb-making lmowledge.

Today we can disclose that City of London police expect an attack on the capital'S financial heart in the coming months. A senior officer said: "The intelligence coming in from Northern Ireland is to prepare for an attack."
Dissidents in the Province have been steadily increasing their activities against the military and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, deaf to the pleas for peace from Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.

. On August 3 dissident bombers hijacked a taxi in Londonderry. They put a 200lb bomb in the boot and ordered the driver to park outside a police station. A 45-minute warning was phoned to police but, just 23 minutes later, the bomb went off, wrecking shops and causing severe damage to the police station. Amazingly, no one was hurt.

The so-called "army council" of ONH COglaigh na hEirearn, or Warriors of Ireland), claimed responsibility but callously lied when they claimed two of their men had accompanied the taxi driver. who fled his vehicle minutes before the blast.
"He was forced to drive over a mile on his own and told he would be shot if he didn't," said a relative of the driver. "All the time, he could hear the bomb ticking."
At one time Martin McGuinness had total control of the Provos in Derry but now he is seen by many of the new generation of ruthless republicans as a traitor for taking up his senior role with the Northern Ireland Assembly. Former Sinn Fein Assembly member Francie Brolly told the Sunday Express last week: "They would quite easily shoot McGuinness and Gerry Adams ior selling out."

Seamus Murphy, senior press officer for the mainly nationalist SDLP, worriedly paced his Stormont office last week as he spoke of his fears for the Province.
"The dissidents are going to do a big one soon, probably at a police station," he said. "All they are interested in is proving that there is a war on.
"There is a dissident superstructure encompassing the ONH, Continuity IRA and the Real IRA."

Estimates for the size of the grouping vary between 300 and 2,000.
In March last year Sappers Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey were shot dead in County Antrim in an aPl?arent Real IRA attack Two days later the Continuity IRA murdered policeman Stephen Carroll in Craigavon, the first officer to be killed in Northern Ireland since 1998. Mr Murphy believes the murders were to demonstrate the capability of the groups and encourage Provisional IRA members to join them.
"The groups needed the bomb-making skills of the Provos but they have decided they do not want political wings because they are vulnerable to infiltration by MI5," said Mr Murphy,

The decision to stay in the shadows and fight what they see as a "pure war" to oust the British means no one may ever know who is pulling the strings.
The Sunday Express can reveal that SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie held a private meeting recently with Northern Ireland Office junior minister Hugo Swire at which she expressed deep concern about MI5's ability to control the activities of the dissidents,

In a tense meeting, Mr Swire rejected her call for intelligence gathering to come under police control. Under pressure from Sinn Fein, the once higWy effective RUC Special Branch has been downgraded to a police division.
Sources say it has become reliant on MI5 passing over information, largely through bugging. However, the MI5 agents lack the ability to penetrate the dissidents, who have set up tight cells and rarely use mobile phones, which can easily be monitored. This means there has been an increasing number of incidents in recent months.
On August 7 a bomb was discovered under the car of a Catholic police woman at Kilkeel in County Down. A few days earlier a bomb was found under a soldier's car in Bangor.

In Lurgan three children suffered cuts in a bomb blast on August 14 and last Saturday a pipe bomb was found at a Belfast police station. Last Thursday another was found in Carrickfergus. The latest wave of terrorism has prompted Irish president Mary McAleese to appeal to the dissidents.

She said: "Your violent campaign will not succeed and it is long past the time to stop. Love is stronger than hate. It is as simple as that." However, the political reality is never as simple as that. Next year the Northern Ireland Assembly elections will see heated campaigns for the 108 Stormont seats and, as the political campaigning starts in earnest, many ghosts from the past have re-emerged. Last week Mr Mc Guinness was on holiday and unable to answer questions on whether suspected IRA killers in the Claudy bombing should be brought to justice.

Irish police also announced they are bringing a prosecution over the murder of Sinn Fein activist Dennis Donaldson, killed in the Republic in 2006 after it was revealed he spent years spying for MI5 while in contact with McGuinness and Adams.
================================================== ==============
'Police told me the names of the killers'

DETECTIVES know the identity of four IRA men who murdered three children and six adults in Claudy in 1972 but have made no effort to arrest them, writes James Murray
.
Former Sinn Fein Northern Ireland Assembly member Francie Brolly says police officers told him the names when they interviewed him over the bombing five years ago. At his home 10 miles from Claudy, Co Londonderry, Mr Brolly, who was interned in 1973 for two years, said was arrested and held overnight but he says he was being spoken to as a witness, not as a suspect.

He told the Sunday Express:
"Because of my proximity to Claudy and because of my Republican background they thought I might know something about it, but I don't.
"During questioning, they told me everything that happened. There were four men who made bombs 13 miles away and put them in dairy cans. Police even had the boxes from the clocks which were used."

No warning was issued to the police when the three car bombs exploded on July 31, 1972, killing four Catholics and five Protestants and injuring 30. Last week a report by police ombudsman AI Hutchinson concluded that Catholic priest Fr James Chesney, who died aged 46 in 1980, was among the killers.

However, Mr Brolly said that his was not one of the four names given him by police.
A former RUC Special Branch officer said last week he had wanted to arrest Fr Chesney but had been overruled by senior officers.

The ombudsman said the RUC "colluded" with the then Northern Ireland Secretary Willie Whitelaw and the Catholic Church to protect Fr Chesney, who was moved to Co Donegal in the Republic.

The Sunday Express understands one of those involved in the bombing later took his own life. Another is . thought to live in New York. The historical inquiries team, which investigates atrocities, says it hopes to hold a review of the case. ]]> EU politics Bill Sticker http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18357 http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18356&goto=newpost Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:15:41 GMT http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-po...he-arab-lobby/

Lee Smith's review of
http://www.amazon.com/Arab-Lobby-Inv.../dp/006172601X

From news article:

With all the demands for U.S. presidents to pressure Israel, it’s worth noting that U.S. officials have rarely done anything but accommodate the Saudis. The one striking exception, as Bard notes, was John F. Kennedy’s demand that Saudi Arabia abolish slavery. Typically, U.S.-Saudi relations have been conducted in the dark, a trend that started in July 1945, when President Harry Truman approved construction of the Dhahran air base using existing War Department funds to evade congressional oversight. This became a precedent for keeping most of the U.S.-Saudi relationship secret, or at least beyond public scrutiny. For years, the U.S. government acceded to the wishes of the Saudis and other Gulf states to conceal information about Arab investments in the United States, and even U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia were classified between 1950 and 1972.

Today the unspoken issue is Saudi support for terror. Were U.S. officials to complain about how the kingdom funds jihad against the United States and its allies, “there’s a fear,” says Bard, “that the Saudis may punish us by withdrawing some of their billions of dollars in investments, cut U.S. companies out of deals to explore for gas or oil, or take other measures to damage our interests.”

Nor are the Saudis shy about promising to unleash jihad against those who cross their path, as when they threatened the British government when it was investigating the unsavory details of a Saudi arms purchase from a British weapons maker.

Given the nature of the Saudi regime, it is little wonder that the oil lobby prefers to work in the shadows. As one publicist explained in laying out his PR strategy for Riyadh: “Saudi Arabia has a need to influence the few that influence the many, rather than the need to influence the many to whom the few must respond.”

“This is a fairly smart lobbying tactic,” Bard told me. “It is very difficult to take a democratic approach, when most people don’t take your position.”

]]> U.S. Politics Mediocrates http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18356 http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18355&goto=newpost Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:10:44 GMT While the number of Palestinian Arab murders has gone significantly down this year compared to the past two years, the past five days have seen four murders (and one person killed in a tunnel collapse.)

On Friday, a man's body was found in an abandoned tunnel in Rafah.

On Saturday, a man was found stabbed to death in Gaza City.

On Sunday, a 15-year old boy was stabbed to death near Jenin.

And on Monday, a man was killed in the al-Bureij camp during a "clan clash."

Also during Ramadan a 12-year old girl was murdered, and a 62-year old woman was killed because she was thought to be a witch.

Nevertheless, the pace of violent deaths this year in the territories is a little less than half that of last year at this time.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/201...n-ramadan.html ]]> In The News Mediocrates http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18355 http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18354&goto=newpost Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:08:35 GMT I guess no one told the State Department.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139420

If you're an American, worse an American Jew, in Israel you can be murdered with complete impunity as far as the US government is concerned. ]]> In The News Mediocrates http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18354 http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18353&goto=newpost Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:05:47 GMT Hamakom Yinakhem . May God comfort the families of those murdered tonight, and also protect Palestinian families from attempts at revenge. There was already one attempt this evening, and security forces are protecting the family. In another location there is currently an attempt to uproot...

From news article:

As Trotsky implied, fellow-travelling with communism was not always akin to endorsing the creed. Communists accepted crimes committed in the name of the revolution without hesitation. The fellow-traveller looked away from communism's victims and invited others to do the same. Communists damned "bourgeois democracy". It disillusioned communism's fellow-travellers, too, but not enough to persuade them to give up on democratic politics completely and join the revolution. They wished the Soviet Union well and found its experiments on the human race bracing. But in the words of David Caute, the best historian of fellow-travelling, their support was a "commitment at a distance".

The reception given to Tariq Ramadan when he arrived in New York in April showed that today a type of fellow-travelling with radical Islam has spread from Europe to America. From the applause he drew, it seemed to me that no one involved would be changing trains for a while. The willingness of Ramadan's admirers to ignore the victims of totalitarianism was familiar but everything else was different. The readers of the New York Review of Books and the Nation, like the readers of Le Monde Diplomatique and the New Statesman, are not committing to radical Islam, even at a distance. They do not believe in the subjugation of women, the murder of homosexuals and apostates, the Jewish conspiracy theory and the creation of a theocratic empire in the way that communism's old fellow-travellers in socialism believed to varying degrees. The best they can manage is a feeble relativism. "But it's their culture to oppress women," they insist. "It's imperialist to impose Western human rights standards on others." For good reasons as well as bad, they hate the policies of their own governments. I accept that their denunciations can often give the impression that they want the Iranian mullahs or the Taliban to triumph. But with the exception of the far Left which has merged with the Islamist far Right, most don't think about what Islamism represents, let alone what a victory for Islamist forces would entail.

The absence of a positive commitment sets them apart from the intellectual friends of communism in the early- and mid-20th century. Modern fellow-travellers go along for a ride with ideas they would find repugnant if they could ever bring themselves to confront them.

Books by Nick Cohen

http://www.amazon.com/Nick-Cohen/e/B..._athr_dp_pel_1

Books by Paul Berman

http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Berman/e/..._athr_dp_pel_1 ]]> U.S. Politics Mediocrates http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18350 http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18349&goto=newpost Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:22:52 GMT Hamas gunmen murder four Israelis in ambush near Hebron (http://debka.com/article/9001/) Two of the victims were a pregnant woman and her husband. The gunmen sprayed their car at the Beni Naim junction near Kiryat Arba Tuesday night, Aug. 31. They then approached the vehicle and shot all four... Hamas gunmen murder four Israelis in ambush near Hebron

Two of the victims were a pregnant woman and her husband. The gunmen sprayed their car at the Beni Naim junction near Kiryat Arba Tuesday night, Aug. 31. They then approached the vehicle and shot all four victims again at point-blank range to make sure they were dead. Hamas leaders threatened to sabotage the Israeli-Palestinian talks in Washington this week with a wave of terror. DEBKAfile's military sources note: The IDF and security authorities failed to anticipate this attack.


Last Wednesday, Aug. 25, DEBKAfile reported the Hamas threat. Damascus-based Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal warned in a speech last week that his terrorists were set for a round of terrorist attacks against Israelis and the Palestinian Authority alike if the talks in Washington go forward. ]]> In The News Sanket http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18349 http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18348&goto=newpost Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:46:15 GMT Not much but a little However, a major grievance is that Palestinians are still barred from working in professions like medicine, engineering, law, real estate management, and accountancy. The new law has changed very little, said Layla el-Ali, head of Association Najdeh (AN), a... Not much but a little

From news article:

However, a major grievance is that Palestinians are still barred from working in professions like medicine, engineering, law, real estate management, and accountancy.

The new law has changed very little, said Layla el-Ali, head of Association Najdeh (AN), a Palestinian NGO in Lebanon. “Palestinians never took out many work permits, as they mainly work inside the [Palestinian refugee] camps or are self-employed.” According to AN, 249 work permits were issued in 2007-2009 and of these only four were new.

UNRWA estimates that 425,000 Palestinians live in Lebanon. “The socio-economic conditions in all 12 camps in Lebanon are deplorable,” said Salvatore Lombardo, director of UNRWA affairs in Lebanon. “An increased number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are deprived of the enjoyment of a decent standard of living.”

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=90327

They're actually treated better in Syria. ]]> The Lebanon Factor Mediocrates http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18348 http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18347&goto=newpost Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:36:04 GMT With all this name calling and nonsense about Park51 and amidst the ijyuts in Murfreesboro torching a mosque, the left is heavily invested in carrying that line forward. In the meantime, A Memphis church opens its doors to Muslims who need a home. ... With all this name calling and nonsense about Park51 and amidst the ijyuts in Murfreesboro torching a mosque, the left is heavily invested in carrying that line forward. In the meantime, A Memphis church opens its doors to Muslims who need a home.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news...ommon-threads/

Strangely it's the town of Cordova. ]]> Religion/Culture Mediocrates http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=18347