Wednesday morning catch-up

Usual story, too many open tabs in Firefox and not enough time:

1) RiaNovosti report that:

'Greece is planning to expand military-technical cooperation with Israel, Defense Minister Panos Beglitis said.

"We will soon sign an agreement on military cooperation which will mainly involve defense industry and supply of armaments," Beglitis said at a session of the Greek parliament on Thursday.

The minister emphasized the importance of closer military ties with Israel, but said bilateral cooperation with Tel Aviv would not affect Greece's relations with Turkey and Arab countries.'

As Turkey moves closer to Islamic rule this a good move by Israel, although I would hate to be the person who has to run the credit check...


2) CatchKevin claims to have a scoop. He claims that:

'Just when you thought all the talk about Barack Obama usurping the Constitution to bring the United States into compliance with the UN and the Sharia-dominated New International Order was little more than right-wing conspiratorial propaganda—Think Again! The “Appointed One,” in cunning Islamic style, is covering all the bases by laying the foundation, including placing an ally in the United States Supreme Court!

...

Elena Kagan’s views render her the first Supreme Court Justice who actively favors the introduction of Sharia law into national Constitutions and legal systems. It’s unprecedented in American history. We now have a liberal, pro-Sharia justice sitting on the highest court in the land. And is it any wonder? After all, as Obama’s Solicitor General, it was Kagan who blocked as many as nine lawsuits from being heard by the Supreme Court. Although the nine cases listed on the high court’s docket had nothing to do with Obama’s eligibility issues, there is no arguing Kagan’s advocacy for Islamic rule and Sharia Law as evidenced below. What do you want to bet that she refuses to recuse herself on any Sharia-related decision and instead leads the charge to legitimize Sharia law in America?'

If true, this is fascinating and I am sure will not be explored by the BBC or mainstream American media to whom nothing Barack Obama does is to be questioned.


3) Ed West in The Telegraph writes a piece under the headline 'If Rupert Murdoch is too powerful, then so is the BBC'. This is something that I have raised before, albeit mainly in the comments at Biased-BBC. Here's some of Ed West's piece:

'In all the furore over the size and influence of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, let’s not forget one crucial fact: that the greatest concentration of political power remains with the BBC.

Contrary to the idea that Right-wing press barons set the agenda, television and radio are far more powerful in influencing politics than newspapers. And the further down the newspaper market one goes, the less politics matters: the Sun and News of the World might be nominally Right-wing, yet during the 1980s a majority of Sun readers voted Labour; not only that, but a majority of Sun readers thought that their paper supported Labour. How much influence do downmarket newspapers really have? After all, British tabloids are universally hostile to immigration – and a fine load of difference that has made in recent years.

...

In contrast, the BBC and its house newspaper, the Guardian, wields huge power, both through its biased news coverage and its Left-leaning television making. As Michael Buerk wrote: “What the BBC regards as normal and abnormal, what is moderate or extreme, where the centre of gravity of an issue lies, are conditioned by the common set of assumptions held by the people who work for it.”'

Very true and this helps to explain why the BBC/Guardian nexus have been all over the News Of The World 'hacking' case, they see this as their best opportunity to a) destroy the hated Murdoch, b) keep their left-wing control of the British media, c) rehabilitate Gordon Brown's reputation and d) end this Conservative government as soon as possible.


4) Front Page look at the amount of money the Palestinians have received over the years and wonder a) where it went and b) are they really poor. Here's a few extracts from a must read piece:

'But do “Palestinian People” really need billions more in aid? The World Bank report for 2011 found that only 16 percent of the West Bank under PA control was living below the poverty line.

How serious is a 16 percent poverty rate? It’s better than the poverty rate in Washington D.C. which hit 18.9 percent. That means that politicians in Washington D.C. are diverting money that could have been used to help needy Americans a few miles from their offices, to help the comparatively better off terrorist populations in the West Bank.

Contrary to the barrage of news stories on the suffering of the Palestinians, the poverty rate for America and the West Bank aren’t that far apart. The California poverty rate is at 15.3 percent. And the national average at 14.3 percent is hardly that much better.

...

Many of the PA’s chief donors have poverty rates in the same range. Some are even worse off. Greece’s poverty rate is at 20 percent. Spain’s is nearly as high. And 17 percent of the EU population is considered to be at risk of poverty. Even Germany’s strong economy still has a 15.5 percent poverty rate. A few percentage points away from the West Bank.

But most damningly Israel’s poverty rate is nearly 24 percent. Worse than in the Palestinian Authority. About half those numbers come from its Arab population, which unlike their cousins in the Palestinian Authority, aren’t the beneficiaries of vast amounts of aid.

...



The Palestinian Authority payroll stands at over 150,000 people. That’s in an area with only 840,000 adult males and 1.5 million adult males and females. That’s one government worker for every 10 adults in the West Bank. 1 government worker for every 5 males.

...

Last month the PA passed a law putting all imprisoned terrorists, even members of Hamas, on its payroll. Now the Palestinian Authority is having payroll problems and expects foreign donors to bail it out– so it can continue paying money to convicted murderers.

And what else is all that money paying for? 1.3 million to computerize the records of the PA’s Religious Courts. So no offenders against Sharia law can hope to dodge the Islamic justice system. Plus another 29 million to construct “model buildings” for religious courts.'

5) WarChick has an interesting theory about what happened to the 2006 docudrama titled The Path to 9-11 which

'was released for public viewing. It was produced by the Disney Corporation. When aired the first night on ABC, it was the second most watched show on television; soon, it became the number one watched television show—number one on the second evening to be exact. Over 25 million viewers in two nights sat around their televisions and embraced as a nation the reality of the sequenced events that led up to the most devastating attacks against the United States since Pearl Harbor.'

Here's Warchick's explanation which if true is incredibly scary:

'Disney is being crippled by current economic hard times. They can make millions of dollars though via the release of DVD sales for the series The Path to 9-11. Michael Moore’s anti-Bush propaganda titled Fahrenheit 9-11 broke records in DVD sales with over 2 million sold on the first day of release. Imagine what The Path of 9-11 would sell if Disney stopped playing politics?
That’s correct, Disney is playing politics. CEO Robert Iger is a major contributor to the Clintons—something Brit Hume discussed several years ago on his Fox News television show. But even when Iger gets challenged about his decisions not to release The Path to 9-11, he cowardly evaded truth—something he obviously hates.'