So, Any thoughts on Bibi Netantahu's address to Congress

Israel is the only half-way sane democracy in the Middle East. Israel is correct to act against militant, religious fundamentalism; premptively if necessary, especially in the light of Iran's nuclear program and Middle East nuclear proliferation in general. I am with Christopher Hitchens on this one!

The Bomb in my Garden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCq514zp3V0

There are times I wish we could say, "Okay, we give up. Have it your way. We are suspending all negotiations with Iran...and encouraging all our allies to do the same thing.

You guys are now on your own. Take care of it. Let us know when you are finished, but do not contact us before that."

Just a thought. Do you think that if Israel would give up all its nuclear weapons that Iran would feel safer in not developing theirs? I ask you, would you trust a madman like Netantahu knowing his past and present history?

On April 9, 1976, South African prime minister Balthazar Johannes Vorster arrived at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem with full diplomatic entourage in tow. After passing solemnly through the corridors commemorating those gassed in Auschwitz and Dachau, he entered the dimly lit Hall of Remembrance, where a memorial flame burned alongside a crypt filled with the ashes of Holocaust victims. Vorster bowed his head as a South African minister read a psalm in Afrikaans, the haunting melody of the Jewish prayer for the dead filling the room. He then kneeled and laid a wreath, containing the colors of the South African flag, in memory of Hitler’s victims. Cameras snapped, dignitaries applauded, and Israeli officials quickly ferried the prime minister away to his next destination. Back in Johannesburg, the opposition journalist Benjamin Pogrund was sickened as he watched the spectacle on television. Thousands of South African Jews shared Pogrund’s disgust; they knew all too well that Vorster had another, darker past. In addition to being the architect of South Africa’s brutal crackdown on the black democratic opposition and the hand behind many a tortured activist and imprisoned leader, Vorster and his intelligence chief, Hendrik van den Bergh, had served as generals in the Ossewa Brandwag, a militant Afrikaner nationalist organization that had openly supported the Nazis during World War II. The group’s leader, Hans van Rensburg, was an enthusiastic admirer of Adolf Hitler. In conversations with Nazi leaders in 1940, van Rensburg formally offered to provide the Third Reich with hundreds of thousands of men in order to stage a coup and bring an Axis- friendly government to power at the strategically vital southern tip of Africa. Lacking adequate arms supplies, van Rensburg’s men eventually abandoned their plans for regime change and settled for industrial sabotage, bombings, and bank robberies. South Africa’s British-aligned government con sidered the organization so dangerous that it imprisoned many of its members. But Vorster was unapologetic and proudly compared his nation to Nazi Germany: “We stand for Christian Nationalism which is an ally of National Socialism . . . you can call such an anti- democratic system a dictatorship if you like,” he declared in 1942. “In Italy it is called Fascism, in Germany National Socialism and in South Africa Christian Nationalism.” As a result of their pro-Nazi activities, Vorster and van den Bergh were declared enemies of the state and detained in a government camp. Three decades later, as Vorster toured Yad Vashem, the Israeli government was still scouring the globe for former Nazis— extraditing or even kidnapping them in order to try them in Israeli courts. Yet Vorster, a man who was once a self- proclaimed Nazi supporter and who remained wedded to a policy of racial superiority, found himself in Jerusalem receiving full red-carpet treatment at the invitation of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

And the middle east is now in turmoil.

Unicef stressed that its figures were "cross-checked to the best extent possible in the current situation... subject to change based on further verifications."


"Between 8 July and 2 August 2014 (up until 11:00), at least 296 Palestinian children were reported killed as a result of airstrikes and shelling by Israel aerial, naval and ground forces," it said.

That was the first war in which Iraq occupied Kuwait. One annoying detail you didn't mention is that Israel was not a participant. Don't suppose that makes much difference here.

And the way the infrastructure in Gaza is so bombed out it's like a wasteland. There is something vastly wrong here.

The people in Gaza are suffering indeed.

And the US vetoes all resolutions against Israel.

It is so very sad.

I do not believe the US can cast aspersions on other countries because of human rights abuse.