Saturday, May 18, 2013

Is This Still America? by Americans Stand with Israel


Americans Stand with Israel
by Bee Sting
May 18, 2013


During the Oversight Committee hearing yesterday, May 17th, a Texas lawmaker, Brady,  asked, "Is this still America?"  

Americans have lost count of the scandals presented by and vomiting out of the lying mouths of this corrupt administration. And the three major scandals today do not include previous ones by President Obama and his minions.  Americans and even "Obama's" media are waking up to the fact that the IRS targeted Conservative groups, organizations, and individuals who supported Obama's opposition, Mr. Mitt Romney.  Is this still America?

Tea Party organizations across the country had complained since 2010 of being "singled" out by the IRS and the media and government all but ignored the complaints - until last week when "True Confessions" revealed that the IRS has been intimidating all of Obama's "enemies", as he liked to call American patriots who disagreed with his agenda and policies.  (see: Strassel: The IRS Scandal Started at the Top).

Americans have had 37 requests to repeal the socialist health care program implemented by the Obama administration during his first term.  However, the Court has redefined "un-Constitutional" when it determined Obamacare is simply a "tax" upon the people, forcing every single American to purchase something they do not want, nor can afford.  Is this still America?

President Obama has ignored Congress by signing Executive Orders whenever he feels he isn't getting his way.  Take for instance "gun control", which is against the Second Amendment. It was voted down by a thin margin a few months ago, but that isn't preventing this administration from seeking other ways to confiscate guns/ammo through other means.  Is this still America?

Four Americans died in Benghazi, Libya last September and to-date, the administration refuses to be honest with the American people and the families who lost their loved ones during an Islamic terrorist attack in Benghazi.  Is this still America?

Benghazi represents a danger to our national security!  The IRS represents a communist-style of government, as it attempted to repress freedom of speech through intimidation.  And so does the tapping of the phones of journalists, and congressional members conversations in the locker rooms!  Is this still America?

Last night I learned that $92 MILLION DOLLARS is awarded IRS employees n bonus checks and that this money is approved by Congress.  Is this still America?

Americans compare Bengahzigate and the IRS scandal to Nixon "coverups".  However, Nixon's own party did not fear an investigation and proceedings leading up to Impeachment.  Those were days when Americans came together and wanted the truth; did not balk at cutting out corruption within our government.  What is wrong with today's members of Congress?  Is this still America?

This administration has no difficulty running lavish parties, taking expensive vacations during a time when America is suffering the worse economy since the Depression.  The White House has no problem inviting members of the Muslim Brotherhood to "Tea" at the White House, but is not embarrassed to verbally attack our friend and closest ally in the Middle East, Israel.   I can't remember a time when America betrayed her friends, while apologizing to the Islamic world for what it considers "America's mistakes".  Is this still America?

Few use the word "lie" when describing the latest revelations coming from this White House; why?  For fear that they, too, will be audited by the IRS?  For fear of retribution by this vindictive regime?  And fewer politicians dare mention "impeach", in spite of the numerous acts that are impeachable.  Is this still America?

If Congress refuses to do the right thing and remove this Dictator from the White House, would these last three scandals be the end of the crooked path of destruction, by this administration?  Would the lies cease?  Would suddenly, honesty prevail?  To answer these last questions, I want to play a video by Michael Savage:
Published on May 17, 2013

Radio Commentary by Michael Savage Aired on May 17, 2013 --- Michael Savage Website: http://www.michaelsavage.com
Michael Savage - Obama Admin. Scandals Released as Distraction! 
Something Fishy Behind the Scenes!

Did you listen?

Is this still America?  Why not contact your state Representatives and ask them that question.


by Bee Sting






The Muslims the Media Doesn't See - by Daniel Greenfield/Sultan Knish



FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS

by DANIEL GREENFIELD May 13, 2013

The media coverage of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has one theme and one tack. Like 30 of the 31 men on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list, they were terrorists who just happened to be Muslim.

While the New York Times dispatched its best and brightest lackeys to Boston to write sensitive 

pieces on how hard it was for the two Tsarnaevs to fit in leaving them no choice but to bomb the Boston Marathon and then send LOL texts to their friends, it fell to a UK tabloid like The Sun to conduct an interview with the ex-girlfriend of the lead terrorist and learn that he wanted her to hate America and beat her because she wouldn't wear a Hijab.

There are all sorts of jobs that Americans won't do. Like pick lettuce, bomb the Boston Marathon and report honestly on the motives of the bombers. The only news network that operates outside the media consensus is owned by an Australian mogul who also owns The Sun.

Americans like to think of their press as freer, but it's only free in the sense that it voluntarily puts on its own muzzle. European tabloids get into bloody brawls with regulators. American newspapers have nothing to brawl about. They will gleefully report anything that undermines national security at the drop of a hat, knowing that they won't be touched, but there is a long list of subjects that they won't touch with a million mile pole.

In Europe, editors risked their lives to publish the Mohammed cartoons. In America, on the rare occasion that they were depicted, they were usually censored. CNN, which could show Kathy Griffin trying to molest Anderson Cooper, without the benefit of pixelation or a suicide button, blurred out Mohammed's face; assuming that Muslims would appreciate the sensitivity of treating their prophet's face like an obscene object.

The American media does not need to be censored. It censors itself.

Did the New York Times really fail to come across Tamerlan Tsarnaev's ex-girlfriend and domestic abuse victim while they were busily interviewing every single person in Boston who ever ran into the future terrorists? Doubtful. The New York Times may be incompetent, but it isn't that incompetent. If it could track down Tamerlan's old coach, it could track down his old girlfriend. It chose not to.

So did every other paper.

Either The Sun is staffed with crack journalists who could do what no American newspaper, news channel and network news program could, or The Sun got the scoop on Nadine Ascencao because no newspaper on this side of the ocean wanted to touch it. And it's easy to see why.

Nadine talks about being beaten in the name of Islam, forced to memorize Koran verses and being taught to hate America. Most journalists on this side of the ocean want quotes on what nice boys the two Tsarnaevs were and how, in true liberal fashion, no one could have expected them to do something like this.

Every background story on them is filled with the same pabulum, because the endless march of "We couldn't have known" quotes provides the government-media complex with the plausible deniability it needs to continue doing the same thing all over again. If the people couldn't have known, then it stands to reason that their government or their media couldn't have known either.
No Islam please, we're American was the mainstream media's unspoken message. We don't do Islamic terrorism. We only report on terrorists who happen to be Muslim.

The only newspaper besides The Sun to do an interview with Nadine Ascencao was the Wall Street Journal; which just happens to be owned by the same tabloid mogul. But there is an interesting difference between The Sun and the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ piece doesn't mention Hijabs, Koran verses or hating America. It doesn't mention Islam at all.
Co-written by a Pakistani journalist, it emphasizes only that Tamerlan was a bully of no particular religion. That reporter's twitter feed features a retweet from another Muslim WSJ reporter who broadcasts that the plans of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to head to Times Square amounted to nothing. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Nothing to see here is the theme of the media's coverage. Like a movie, it begins with inspirational tales of courage, and then just when the villains were about to come on the scene, the credits began to roll. It's only been twenty minutes, but the audience gets hustled out of the theater and told to leave their sodas and popcorn behind.

The "folks who did this", in Obama's patently false folksy parlance, were caught. Or at least one of them was. The sacred liberal ceremony of the Miranda warning was recited by a judge at his bedside and the trial will now move through the traditional phases of expensive lawyers paid for by the taxpayer pleading that their client was traumatized by our foreign policy and the entire story being shoved to the back of the media's coat rack behind the next sports star who comes out of the closet.

This is the surreal world of the American media, which wields its weapons of mass distraction with clinical precision, so that the news hour and the local paper are virtually indistinguishable in content from an old episode of The Jerry Springer Show. But it can't possibly spare the time for a coherent discussion of the real world motives of two men who carried out a major terrorist attack in Boston.

Soviet citizens listened to the Voice of America to find out what their own government wouldn't tell them. American citizens have to read The Sun and the Daily Mail, publications whose standards are slightly above that of The Huffington Post and yet, like the National Inquirer, have become one of the few outlets that will chase after the stories that the media has embargoed as effectively as Pravda.

Instead of wasting time on a dead end like Islam, the media has spent its time chasing down every other possible angle.

Did Tamerlan turn terrorist because he took too many blows to the head while boxing? Could the Boston Marathon bombing have been prevented if only we had let him win?

The New York Times assembled a touching story of an aspiring immigrant boxer radicalized by the petty restrictions of a government that wouldn't let him apply for citizenship because of his history of domestic violence and appearance on a terrorist watch list. But how does that jibe with the Tamerlan from five earlier who beat up a boy that his sister was dating because he wasn't Muslim? 

When the media must deal with Tamerlan's theology, it keeps him in the category of the troubled man who turned to some wacky extremist version of Islam propounded by a YouTube convert. The man who beat his sister's boyfriend because he wasn't a Muslim and beat his ex-girlfriend because she wouldn't wear a Hijab wasn't some brainwashed drone who had his mind stolen by YouTube videos. He was a Muslim.

The Tamerlan of 2007 might not have watched as many Jihadist videos, but it would be a mistake to assume that he would have disagreed with their content. That Tamerlan might not have been looking at bombing targets, but neither would he have been upset and angry if some other Muslim had done what he would go on to do. Like Dzhokhar's two Muslim friends, his first reaction would have been to cover it up.

When it comes to serial killers and mass shooters, the media is conditioned to look for a break that follows some life crisis. But with Muslim terrorists there is no discontinuity, only continuity. A few setbacks might have made terrorism more appealing to Tamerlan, but that would not have happened if it had not already been on his menu of life choices. Or that of his brother.

That angle is the most terrifying one that the media can think of. It's the one that they can't touch. It's the one that they won't let anyone else touch either. If they have to mention the "I" word, they will sandwich it between "extremist" and "radicalization". But it's not Tamerlan who was the radical extremist. Among Muslims, his views were mainstream. The Wahhabis are in ascendance in most parts of the world, including the United States. Islamist parties roundly won the Arab Spring.

What was the difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and any of the Syrian Jihadists held up by the media as the epitome of courage and bravery? What is the difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Hamas and Fatah terrorists that the media peevishly contends Israel must make peace with? What is the difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and any of the tens of thousands of Muslim terrorists fighting in conflicts around the world?

While the European media, for all its faults, occasionally grapples with the incompatibility of liberal values and Muslim values; on this side of the ocean the topic is all but untouchable. There is no national censorship body that does this. Instead stories are held down by the weight of a consensus that insists the media exists to promote liberal values. All else follows from there.

The stories that promote liberal values are reported. The stories about a future Muslim terrorist beating his girlfriend because she wouldn't wear a Hijab are not because those stories create a sneaking suspicion that Muslim multiculturalism is incompatible with liberal values. And the incompatible Muslims, like Mohammed's face, have been pixelated out of existence in reports on the terrorist attacks by disgruntled boxers, doctors and perfume salesmen who just happen to be Muslim.

These are the Muslims that the media doesn't see. And it is doing everything possible to make sure that we don't see them either.


Daniel Greenfield is a blogger, columnist and freelance photographer born in Israel, who maintains his own blogSultan Knish.


Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-muslims-the-media-doesnt-see#ixzz2Tf0HntNl
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution


Real Zionists use Bing

Bee's Note:  News about the Google's change to its "tagline" is flying like wildfire among the social media, including many of my friends on Facebook (in case Google thought no one noticed!).  However, Fresno Zionism has one of the best explanations as to why "Bing" is FAST becoming "Number One":

Google Palestine
FRESNO ZIONISM
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
News item:
Internet giant Google has changed the tagline on the homepage of its Palestinian edition from “Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine”.
The change, introduced on 1 May, means google.ps now displays “Palestine” in Arabic and English under Google’s logo.
This was noted in most media outlets, but generally treated as unimportant:
“Google can do anything they want. They’re not a diplomatic entity so they can do Google La-la Land if they want to and that’s fine,” says Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. “Still, the question remains, this is a highly sensitive international politics issue, so what made Google decide they wanted to take a position on this?”
Google wouldn’t talk about this, but the company put out a statement saying it was following the lead of the United Nations and other international organizations. It also provided several examples of other name changes.
Israel’s deputy foreign minister sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page, saying Google’s move could hurt peace negotiations.
“I can tell you that it has no diplomatic meaning, and it hasn’t,” says Palmor. “But if people on the Palestinian side believe that they can get anything they want through unilateral steps by international bodies, well in that case they will be more reluctant to talk to Israel.”
As my readers know, I place “peace negotiations” with PLO terrorists somewhere on a line between pointless and dangerous. Rather than an alternative to giving them everything they want unilaterally, they are simply a way of obtaining the same result while maintaining the pretense of bilateral legitimacy.

So that isn’t what I would have told Page. Rather, I would have explained that sovereignty over the territories is disputed and that Israel has a prima facie claim on them in international law going back to the Palestine Mandate. I would have added that today’s “United Nations” is a sham and a scam, dominated by a group of the 56 (‘Palestine’ is no. 57) members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and their “nonaligned” lackeys who have a permanent majority for the elimination of the state of Israel, and probably the Jewish people as well.

I would point out that regardless of the votes of the UN representatives of these various dictatorships, kingdoms and theocracies, ‘Palestine’ can’t be a state because it doesn’t control the territory it claims, nor does it have defined borders (the application presented to the UN refers to the lines of the unimplemented 1947 partition resolution), nor is there a single government. Not only that, it has no economy other than the aid it extorts from the West, and its rulers are a bunch of racists and gangsters (not that this matters in international law, but still…)

Google should understand that by agreeing with said gangsters that ‘Palestine’ is a state, they are in effect agreeing that the Jewish people do not have a legitimate state, and that it is perfectly fine to murder Jews wherever and whenever you can in order to create ‘Palestine’, because these are the basic principles expressed in the charters of the PLO and Hamas, the two ‘Palestinian’ governments.

It’s really pretty simple. You’d think the geniuses at Google could figure it out.


___________________________







Why Russia supports Iran

Still dangerous
Still dangerous

Recently, PM Netanyahu traveled to the Kremlin to try to talk Russian President Vladimir Putin out of sending advanced weapons, including the S-300 air defense system, to Syria.
Although I wasn’t there, my guess was that Netanyahu said something like, “don’t do this, because if you do we will have to bomb them.” In particular, the S-300 would make it much harder for Israel to interdict arms transfers to Hizballah, or prevent possible chemical attacks against Israel by Syrian rebels or Hizballah, if they should get control of some of Assad’s arsenal.

According to American officials, Netanyahu’s arguments were not successful:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s last-minute trip to Russia on Tuesday apparently did not change the Russians’ intentions to also deliver the advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Syria. According to the [Wall St.] Journal, U.S. officials believe that Russia is moving more quickly than previously thought to deliver S-300 surface-to-air defense systems to Syria. U.S. officials told the paper that the S-300 system, which is capable of shooting down guided missiles and could make it more risky for any warplanes to enter Syrian airspace, could leave Russia for Syrian port of Tartus by the end of May.
Together, the S-300 anti-aircraft and anti-missile system, and the Yakhont anti-ship system, would pose a formidable threat to any outside intervention in Syria, based on the international Libya model. The anti-ship missiles would be a serious threat to the Israeli navy, as well as the facilities above Israel’s newfound underwater gas reserves. The S-300 could threaten Israeli military and civilian aircraft flying Israeli airspace, and not just over Lebanese and Syrian airspace.

Providing weapons like this to the unstable Syrian regime (or even a stable one) is remarkably irresponsible; but then, this is Putin. My guess is that Putin countered with threats of his own if Israel interferes with Russian actions.

Dore Gold explains which weapons Israel considers ‘game changers’ that it cannot permit to fall into the hands of Hizballah:
a. Chemical weapons.
b. Iranian surface-to-surface missiles equipped with heavy warheads, like the Fateh 110, which has a highly destructive 600 kg. warhead as compared to the 30 kg. warhead on Hizbullah’s Katyusha rockets that it launched against Israel in the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
c. Long-range anti-aircraft missiles, like the Russian-manufactured SA-17, which can limit the freedom of action of the Israeli Air Force if deployed by Hizbullah in southern Lebanon. The SA-17 uses a mobile launcher. Israeli diplomacy has been especially concerned with the Russian sale of even more robust S-300 anti-aircraft missiles by Russia to Syria, though there are no indications that Hizbullah is a potential recipient of this system.
d. Long-range anti-ship missiles, like the Russian supersonic Yakhont cruise missile, that has a range of 300 km. and can strike at Israeli offshore gas rigs in the Eastern Mediterranean. Russia recently sent a shipment of the missiles which will be added to an initial inventory of 72 missiles received first in 2011.

If Iran manages to prop up Assad at the price of turning Syria into a wholly-owned satrapy, then I’m not sure that it would be much better than if Hizballah itself had the weapons, from an Israeli point of view. Israel’s deterrence will be markedly weakened if the decision to use such weapons is taken out of the hands of a semi-autonomous Syrian regime and placed in Iran.

What motivates the Russians?

I think they have decided correctly that control of the Muslim Middle East hangs in the balance, with the main players in the struggle being Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunni elements, and Turkey. I think they have decided that the ‘strong horse’ is Iran and the Shiites. In addition, Russia faces challenges from Sunni Islamists within Russia itself and in Muslim states bordering it.

Russia has also always been unhappy with a Western-aligned nuclear power like Israel so close by. In fact some historians have suggested that the Soviets provoked Syria and Egypt to make war on Israel in 1967 in order to justify a strike on Israel’s nuclear facility in Dimona. Israel is also shaping up to be a future rival to Russian domination of the natural gas supply to Europe. An Iranian victory — and incidentally the end of the Jewish state — would be just fine for them.

Ugly? You bet. The forces opposing the Iran-Russia axis include the hostile and economically devastated Egypt, the super-extreme Sunni Salafists (some allied with al-Qaeda), the neo-Ottoman Islamist Turkish regime, Saudi Arabia — and the United States, which may or may not still be a formidable military power, but certainly does not appear to have the resolve to confront Iran, not to mention Russia.

But Israel has survived, even thrived, against similar odds before.

Shabbat shalom!


Bee's Note:
See:  ‘Significant signs’ point to third Israeli natural gas field

Read more: http://www.jta.org/2013/05/16/default/significant-signs-point-to-third-israeli-natural-gas-field#ixzz2TekGknzO



Israel Appears to Have More Natural Gas










Canada to boycott UN committee


Canada to boycott UN committee

CANADIAN FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER JOHN BAIRD

Credits: IAN KUCERAK/QMI AGENCY
QMI AGENCY
OTTAWA - Canada condemns the fact Iran will lead a United Nations-sponsored disarmament committee and will express its displeasure by boycotting the forum for the five weeks Iran is in the chair.
"This makes a mockery of disarmament issues and the world's sincere desire to make progress," said Rick Roth, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.

"In Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere, the regime is working directly against global disarmament goals and subverting the fundamental principles of this committee."

Geneva-based UN Watch said Iran is an outlaw state and already the target of UN sanctions for its nuclear program and other activities in the Middle East.  "This is like putting Jack the Ripper in charge of a women's shelter," said Hillel Neuer, the group's executive director.

Iran takes over leadership of the committee May 27 as part of a rotation among the committee's 65 members.

SUN NEWS
4:48 pm, May 13th, 2013
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/politics/archives/2013/05/20130513-164859.html







France opposes Syria conference if Iran attends

 THE DAILY STAR
May 18, 2013 12:46 AM
Russian sailors are seen aboad the Admiral Panteleyev Russian war ship moored at the Cypriot port of Limassol on Friday, May 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Pavlos Vrionides)
Russian sailors are seen aboard the Admiral Panteleyev Russian war ship moored at the Cypriot port of Limassol on Friday, May 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Pavlos Vrionides)
BEIRUT: France spelled out Friday that it would oppose a peace conference for Syria if Bashar Assad’s regional ally Iran is invited, clouding the prospect for a U.S.-Russian initiative to end the 2-year-old war.

No date has yet been agreed for the international meeting, which appears to face growing obstacles, including the announcement by a top U.S. military officer Friday that a Russian shipment of advanced missiles to Syria could embolden Assad.

Western leaders have been cautious about the prospects of the talks achieving any breakthrough, and Russia’s desire that Iran should attend could complicate matters.

“As far as we are concerned, not Iran,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot told reporters in Paris, discussing who should attend. “What’s at stake is regional stability and we can’t see how a country that represents a threat to this stability could attend this conference.”

Apart from the question of which countries will attend, it is also far from clear whether the Syrian foes would accept it. The main Syrian opposition, expected to decide its stance next week, has previously demanded Assad’s exclusion from any future government as a precondition to talks.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday and said the conference should take place as soon as possible.

“We should not lose the momentum,” Ban said of the conference proposal. “There is a high expectation that this meeting should be held as soon as possible,” he said after talks in Sochi with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Lavrov agreed: “The sooner the better,” he said.

A Western diplomat at the United Nations in New York said the target date for the conference was June 10-15, but it depended on the readiness of the Syrian parties. An alternative plan would be to hold an international conference and then have the Syrians meet at a later date when they would be prepared.

Russia has made clear it believes Iran should attend the conference.

“Moscow proceeds from the position that all the neighboring countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the participants of the first Geneva conference, must be invited,” Lavrov said, referring to an international meeting on Syria held a year ago.

The Geneva talks on June 30 produced an agreement that a transitional government should be created in Syria, but the United States and Russia disagreed over whether that meant Assad must leave power.

Moscow says his exit must not be a precondition for a political solution, but most Syrian opposition figures have ruled out talks unless Assad and his inner circle are excluded from any future transitional government.

A factor complicating possible talks was an announcement Friday by U.S. officials that Russia had sent advanced anti-ship missiles to Syria, bolstering Assad’s defenses despite pleas from Washington to stop supplying the regime’s forces.

An official, who did not want to be identified, said the latest Yakhont surface-to-air missiles were delivered recently. The transfer of the missiles was first reported by the New York Times.
A spokesman for Russian state arms exporter Rosoboron export declined to give a comment.
Lavrov repeated that Russia is fulfilling existing contracts to deliver defensive weapons to Syria but would not comment on whether Moscow has sent an upgraded air defense system.

The anti-ship missiles to Syria could embolden Assad’s forces and prolong the conflict, a top U.S. military officer said.

“It’s at the very least an unfortunate decision that will embolden the regime and prolong the suffering, so it’s ill-timed and very unfortunate,” General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon.

Washington also confirmed a report that Russia had deployed a dozen or more warships to patrol waters near its naval base in Syria.

“This is not necessarily a deterrence approach designed specifically for Syria. It’s probably a broader power projection for the Russian navy,” an official said.

Russia has flexed its muscles in the eastern Mediterranean since the start of the Syria conflict and military officials say it has begun implementing plans for the permanent deployment of a naval task force in the Mediterranean for the first time since shortly after the 1991 Soviet collapse.

In Washington, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a staunch opponent of Assad, said Friday he backed the involvement of Russia and China in the talks.

Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington a day after discussing Syria with President Barack Obama, Erdogan said “a second Geneva process with Russia and China included has our support.”

He also said a no-fly zone could be discussed at the peace conference.

“We are in the process of putting together a conference in Geneva ... If that process decides on such a zone, as Turkey we would also do whatever is necessary,” he said.

Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, has been one of Assad’s fiercest critics, throwing its weight behind the uprising against him, allowing the rebels to organize on its soil and sheltering 400,000 refugees.

But Erdogan has grown frustrated by a lack of international consensus on how to respond to the violence. Car bombs, which tore through a Turkish border town last weekend in the deadliest spillover of violence yet, have added to the sense of urgency.

U.N. officials announced that the number of refugees fleeing the fighting in Syria had exceeded 1.5 million. The war has claimed the lives of at least 80,000 people, the U.N. says.
 
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on May 18, 2013, on page 1.

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/May-18/217533-france-opposes-syria-conference-if-iran-attends.ashx#ixzz2TcfL0Hry
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb) 

Turkish PM: Hey America, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?!"

WAIT UNTIL YOU HEAR WHO THE TURKISH PRIME MINISTER REPORTEDLY INVITED TO JOIN HIS ENTOURAGE DURING U.S. VISIT
Turkish Prime Minister Invited Father of Radical Islamist Killed in Gaza Flotilla to Join His Entourage on US Visit
 
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan allegedly invited a special personal guest to accompany him on his visit to the U.S. this week.
According to Turkish media, the father of one of the radical Islamist activists killed in Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara in 2010 (the Gaza flotilla) was included as an invited guest in the prime minister’s delegation in the hopes he might be able to meet President Barack Obama.
Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old with both Turkish and U.S. citizenship, joined the Gaza flotilla where he expressed his desire for “martyrdom.” His father now wants the U.S. government to sue Israel over the raid in which the IDF says its forces were defending themselves from what appeared to them to be an organized attack launched by passengers armed with knives and metal bars as the commandos boarded the ship.
Today’s Zaman reports:
Ahmet Dogan, who asked Erdogan to deliver a letter to US President Barack Obama, joined Erdogan’s delegation upon a request by the Turkish prime minister.
Dogan said Erdogan told him: “I can give this letter [to him], but it is better if you give the letter to him yourself. I will include you among the members of the official delegation.” Dogan also said the prime minister told him he should meet with Obama if they can arrange an appointment with him. The victim’s father said he described Furkan and wrote about his son’s life in the letter.
It’s unknown if the father’s letter was delivered to Obama or if he actually met the President during the trip. That the radical activist’s father was with the prime minister’s entourage was not addressed during the joint Obama-Erdogan press conference Thursday or at the White House or State Department briefings of the past few days.
Furkan Dogan, along with eight Turkish activists, was killed in a battle with Israeli commandos who boarded the ship to enforce the naval blockade on Gaza, instituted after Palestinian terrorists were caught smuggling heavy weapons to the territory by ship.
Flotilla organizers claimed they were on a humanitarian mission, but an Israeli think tank reported that seven of the nine passengers killed had professed a desire to die as “martyrs” before the boat set sail to Gaza. Radical Muslim terrorists and their supporters often glorify the idea of martyrdom for Allah, achieved via jihad.
The Jerusalem Post cited the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center which reported a month after the raid that eight of the nine passengers killed were members of the IHH, a Turkish group that calls itself humanitarian but which the Israeli government along with some U.S. and European lawmakers characterize as radical Islamist in nature. The State Department has not included the IHH on its list of terrorist groups.
According to the Israeli think tank report, a Turkish newspaper printed this quote from 19-year-old Furqan Dogan’s diary, in which he said he wanted to be a martyr, providing strong evidence his intentions were not peaceful: “These are the last hours before I join the sweet experience of being a shahid (martyr). Is there anything more beautiful than this?”
On his visit to Israel in March, President Obama convinced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to issue an apology to Turkey for the killing of the flotilla activists and to offer financial compensation for those killed. In exchange, Turkey was supposed to promise to drop any legal suits against the Israeli servicemen involved.
Ever since the apology, Turkey has appeared to backtrack on the deal personally brokered by Obama. Earlier this week, lawyers for the Turks killed filed a complaint against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. That venue is chosen when parties seek investigations of war crimes, genocide or crimes against humanity.
Officially, the suit was referred to the court by Comoros, a small African country in which the Mavi Marmara was registered. Michael Rubin of Commentary Magazine suggests Erdogan wants“plausible deniability,” that it’s not the Turkish government filing the suit in defiance of Obama’s request.
Rubin reveals that the law firm behind the ICC filing employs one principal who is “a long-time AKP party [Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party] activist and the other has been intimately involved in the IHH.” Rubin writes:
Anyone who believes that Erdogan seeks to bury that hatchet more than rub salt into the wounds of the last two years needs only to consider the special guest whom he has had join his delegation.[…]
It is actually quite amazing: Erdogan has endorsed an Al Qaeda financier, embraced not only Hamas but the most militant faction within that terrorist organization, defended the Sudanese leader against charges of genocide, and has been the largest leak in multilateral efforts to sanction Iran. And yet, Obama will not only welcome him to the White House with the highest honors, but help fulfill the Turkish premier’s blatant desire to use the White House as the backdrop to follow through on his pledge to bash Israel at every opportunity.
Erdogan has already rejected a personal request from Secretary of State John Kerry to hold off on visiting the Gaza Strip. Positioned next to Obama, Erdogan used the White House backdrop Thursday to announce the June timeframe for his trip to meet with Hamas leaders in Gaza, a group the U.S. defines as a terrorist organization.
At the press conference, Obama emphasized his strong relations with the Turkish leader. “This visit reflects the importance that the United States places on our relationship with our ally, Turkey, and I value so much the partnership that I’ve been able to develop with Prime Minister Erdogan,” Obama said according to the White House transcript.
Just two days after Turkish citizens got the International Criminal Court to investigate a possible case against Israel, Obama took a moment to compliment Erdogan for the steps he’s taken to fulfill the arrangement Obama brokered between Israel and Turkey.
“Given our shared interest in peace, I want to note the Prime Minister’s efforts to normalize relations with Israel,” Obama said.
White  House Press Secretary Jay Carney said at his daily news briefing Tuesday, “Turkey is one of our strongest partners.”
Besides meeting Obama, Erdogan placed a foundation stone at a new Turkish-American cultural center in Maryland.
According to Hurriyet Daily News, Erdogan said the center reflects the “alliance of civilizations.”
“In a period marked by Islamophobia, this center will express the brotherhood showing how wrong [Islamophobia] is, he said.
UPDATE: Today sources familiar with the delegation’s visit told TheBlaze that Furkan Dogan’s father, Ahmet, did not enter the White House or meet President Obama or give him a letter. Phone calls to the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., to confirm this information were not returned.
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Bee's Note:
September 11, 2011 - World Trade Center, NYC
Interesting choice of words the Turkish PM used - "In a period marked by Islamophobia", blah, blah, blah!
Interesting, in that the Muslims alway play the "victim" - the "poor me, everyone hates me; going to eat a can of worms" victim.  Never mind the fact that in over 90% of today's wars, uprisings, civil unrest, slaughters, demonstrations of hatred towards America and our ally Israel, right down to the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, all committed by Islam.  
So, knock off the piety party and accept the responsibility of Islam's ideology causing most "woes" in this old world and then, as outrageous as it appears, they expect their victims to pay retribution for the evil they cause i.e. Israel paying those who attacked the IDF on the flotilla.  Perhaps the United States should pay the Saudis for the attack on 9/11 - would that cause them to love us more?  Islamophobia is simply a derogatory name given infidels (non-Muslims) and there are plenty of us around who recognize evil when we see and/or experience it firsthand.
An American flag was raised at ground zero as crews sifted through the rubble at the World Trade Center after 9/11.Americans are not apologists to Islam; no, we leave that job up to President Obama.  All we need to know about Islam is what happened to our nation on 9/11, where a huge hole in the ground symbolized the attack on our buildings; and where the fires burned at the Pentagon; and where another huge hole in the fields of PA became the burial ground of our citizens.
If you become bored, please visit "The Religion of Peace" and read up on the latest Islamic attacks throughout the world.  "An alliance of civilizations" has no room for those who constantly attempt to blow us up and murder our diplomats and Ambassador.  Islam is incapable of coexisting with the civilized world.
This coming weekend America pays tribute to our "fallen"; our heroes; our Military men and women who have died fighting for the United States, so that their children and children's children may live with the freedoms fought for us by America's forefathers.  The very symbol of our flag is freedom.  We bow to no other nation or its nations' leaders - that, too, is only something Barack HUSSEIN Obama does - because he is unfamiliar with America's greatness and generosity.