WAR OF PERCEPTION

EU Legalizes Kosher Slaughter, Pro-Animal Groups Want Ban

(IsraelNN.com)

The European Union Parliament on Wednesday voted to legalize kosher slaughtering, which has been outlawed by six countries -- but a critical vote next month will determine if EU countries can effectively get around the approval by demanding pre-stunning, which violates Jewish dietary laws.

The European Jewish Congress and conference of European Jewish Rabbis lobbied heavily for the bill and defeated efforts by animal rights groups to ban kosher slaughtering, which demands swift death to the animal by use of a sharp knife at the throat.

Animal rights groups have claimed the method is cruel and have succeeded in banning kosher slaughtering in Latvia, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia and Lithuania. Switzerland allows the method for poultry but not for other animals.

Rabbi Michael Melchior, former chief rabbi of Norway and currently an Israeli Knesset Member, has said that kosher slaughter is actually more humane than the practices in slaughterhouses. "The Torah forbids cruelty to animals, and the shechitah [slaughter] process ensures that the animal loses consciousness immediately," he explained. "We have been dealing with this issue for many years, and there are many scientific studies that back us up."

The EU vote “represents the first time that ‘shechita’ has been recognized as a legitimate form of animal slaughter by any European institution," said Henry Grunwald, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Chairman of Shechita EU, which also fought for the new legislation.

The crucial vote on pre-stunning worries European Jews. "The [proposed] regulation must not be drafted to allow governments in Europe to threaten our culture and our freedom to observe our religion," said Philip Carmel of the Conference of European Rabbis. Serge Cwajgenbaum, Secretary General of the European Jewish Congress, added that “the Jewish community takes seriously the issues of human rights and the humane treatment of animals.”

The anti-kosher slaughtering bills have been viewed as anti-Semitic by many Jews in Europe, where Hitler banned the method as one of his first steps against Jews.

When Holland called kosher slaughtering "cruel" in 2003 but allowed Jews to continue using the method, Rabbi Melchior responded, "They simply don't want foreigners, and they don't want Jews. I won't say this is the only motivation, but it's certainly no coincidence that one of the first things Nazi Germany forbade was kosher slaughter.”

Attempts by Swiss Jews to lift its 100-year-old ban on kosher slaughtering caused an anti-Semitic backlash. In Sweden, there have been attempts to forbid circumcision, a Jewish law that has bound Jews for 3,500 years.

Abraham Foxman, the national director of the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League, has said that anti-Semitic politicians “aid and abet” animal right activists. “What other issues of animal rights have they engaged in to prohibit cruelty? When they begin and end with kosher slaughter, that's when it becomes suspect,” he stated.

Survey: Jews are Blamed for Economic Crisis

(IsraelNN.com) A survey conducted by the Boston Review in its May/June issue shows that nearly 25% of American non-Jews blame “the Jews” a moderate amount or more for the financial crisis.

Furthermore, a total of 38.4% of the non-Jews in the U.S. attribute at least some level of blame to the group.

Possibly most significant of all were the subconscious anti-Semitic tendencies revealed based on the way the questions were phrased to different groups.

Neil Malhotra, Assistant Professor of Political Economy in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, and Dr. Yotam Margalit of Stanford University, conducted the study. It was part of a survey of 2,768 American adults exploring responses and anti-Semitic sentiments vis-à-vis the economic collapse. 

They found that Democrats were significantly more prone to blaming Jews than Republicans: while 32% of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, compared to only 18.4% of Republicans.

The researchers carried out a fascinating experiment in the course of the study.  The goal was to see what happens when Wall Street corruption is explicitly associated with Jewish financiers such as Bernard Madoff; would that affect people’s views on bailing out big business?

To address this question, they randomly assigned national survey participants to one of three groups. All three were prompted with a one-paragraph news report that briefly described the Madoff scandal, and were then asked their views about providing government tax breaks to big business in order to spur job creation.

The text of the paragraph about Madoff had slight differences for the three groups: The first group was told that Madoff is an “American investor” who contributed to “educational charities,” the second group was told that he is a “Jewish-American investor” who contributed to “educational charities,” and the third group was told that Madoff is an “American investor” who contributed to “Jewish educational charities.”

The findings were “revealing and disturbing,” the researchers wrote. Those people who were told explicitly that Madoff is Jewish were almost twice as likely to oppose the tax cuts to big business. While only 10% those who were given no information about his Jewishness said they opposed tax cuts for big business, over 17% of those who were told that Madoff is Jewish opposed the gestures to big business. “This difference is highly significant in statistical terms,” the researchers conclude.

To complete the picture, the “middle” group – those who were told that Madoff was an American who gave to Jewish charities – produced a 14% opposition rate.

When Jewish respondents were assigned to the three groups, they had “the exact same policy preferences in all three groups,” wrote Margalit and Malhotra.  Nor were there any differences between the groups on other proposals that did not deal with the business sector, but rather with federal support for state governments or with tax breaks for the middle class. 

The researchers noted that the greater tendency among Democrats than Republicans to blame Jews is “somewhat surprising, given the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals, and the fact that Jews are a central part of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition.%ad%

Sorting the results according to level of education provided another interesting finding: 18.3% of those with at least a bachelor’s degree blamed the Jews a moderate amount or more, while 27.3% of those lacking a 4-year degree did so. Yet, these numbers were basically reversed – as they were in the case of the Democrats and Republicans - when asked about the culpability of individuals who took out loans they could not afford.

 “Crises often have the potential to stoke fears and resentment,” the researchers conclude, “and the current economic collapse is likely no exception. Therefore, we must take heed of prejudice and bigotry that have already started to sink roots in the United States… The media ought to bear these findings in mind in their coverage of financial scandals such as the Madoff scam. In most cases, religious and ethnic affiliations have nothing to do with the subject at hand, and such references, explicit or implied, ought, then, to be avoided.”

An 'Eye For An Eye' Doctrine

“An eye for an eye” is arguably the most misunderstood Jewish commandment. Most condemn it as too harsh, some praise it as just, but few cared to actually read it. This commandment applies to the narrow class of situations only rather than to all crimes.

It is indeed odd to imagine that ancient Hebrews diligently pulled out a tooth of someone who kicked out a tooth. Realizing the impracticality of such strictly defined reciprocity, sages reinterpreted it as monetary compensation: a tooth’ value for a tooth kicked out.

That, too, ran into practical difficulties: what is a tooth’s value? Obviously, the value of the last tooth is greater than of the 32nd tooth. A lost tooth doesn’t diminish one’s “reference value” at slave market. A bruise, which is temporary, doesn’t affect one’s permanent value at all, and so the sages declared a bruise value to be a price someone would ask to willingly suffer such bruise.

That definition, too, is unworkable, as a rich man and a poor one would value the bruise widely differently, thus defying the common legal guidelines. Besides all of that, there is no hint in the Torah that “an eye for an eye” should be understood figuratively, as some sort of compensation.

Leviticus 24:19 describes lex talionis as “will be done to him [the offender],” thus refuting any notion of compensation

The difficulty evaporates when we realize that “an eye for an eye” principle only applies to exemplary punishment in the very specific situation. In such rare cases, reciprocal corporal punishment could be feasibly carried out.

The lawgiver makes his intention known by starting the Laws section (Exodus 21) with rules about Hebrew slaves. Now, that’s exceedingly strange. Judaism is about laws and justice, and the Laws section is a centerpiece of the Book of Exodus, literally the central (middle) chapter of the scroll. We would expect the laws to start with major themes, such as life and murder.

But eleven opening verses of the Laws detail the rights of Hebrew slaves.

Those rights were exceedingly generous even by the nineteenth century C.E. norms, let alone the ancient world’s habits.

Slavery of Hebrews was limited to six years. Slave girls were to be treated on par with wives.

What’s the point? In the opening lines, the Laws immediately shock the reader into the entirely different moral reality. The Hebrews must isolate themselves from the old habits: from barbarity of neighboring tribes, brutality of Egypt, even from the inbuilt human egoism.

At this point, Hebrews are commanded to abandon the natural human behavior of exploiting their compatriots to the utmost extent feasible. They are told to

care about the most vulnerable members of their society, Hebrew slaves.

It is not that caring of Hebrew slaves is the major civil law, but it relates the major legal principle, “Love your [Hebrew] neighbor as thyself.” That principle is not merely a moral piece, but a fully actionable law.

The Laws section then proceeds with common legal issues.

Murder of a man is generally punishable with execution (Exodus 21:12). In case of premeditated murder, there can be no excuses whatsoever (21:14); the intent to murder a fellow Jew undermines the society’s very basis.

There is a legal innovation: manslaughter, voluntary or otherwise, is not punishable; the offender can find refuge among Levites and later in specially designated towns. The only criterion is whether the offender waited for his victim to kill. In Jewish law, generally only actions matter rather than intentions.

Why this case is different, why one murder is different from another? Even the nicer modern legal system punishes for manslaughter. The reason is to be seen in the opening verses on the treatment of Hebrew slaves. In such a compassionate society, unpremeditated murder must be presumed unintentional, purely an accident which does not call for punishment.

The murderer fled to a place of refuge, but what about his clan or immediate family? In barbarian societies, they would be targeted for vendetta. Jewish law, however, contains no hint of preventing vendetta, suggesting that it was non-existent in the society.

Absence of collective (clan-level) or extrajudicial retribution testifies to the Hebrews’ high morality and law obedience. The law was not idealistic, but successfully converted the throng into the perfect society.

Contrary to the common misunderstanding of “an eye for an eye,” bruises incurred in fights among men are not subject to retribution, but merely compensated.

Exodus 21:18-19, “And when [the] men would squabble, and the man will hit his neighbor with stone or fist, and he will not die but lie in bed: If he rise up and walk outside [his house] on a support, then cleansed [from the guilt of murder] will be the one who hit, only gives [for] his idleness and shall treat, treat.”

The period of acceptable illness is any. The lawgiver didn’t forget specifying the period, as it is explicitly mentioned in the following verse on beating slaves.

A good reason for not treating a fighting injury as a criminal offense is that both sides are guilty: they equally participated in fight. So there is no punishment per se, but merely compensation of lost earnings and medical expenses.

The law is careful to clarify that any squabble suffices to exonerate the offender. There need not be a fight, but merely a squabble.

Now we know the punishment for murder (execution) and any injuries incurred in a squabble (compensation).

What about the injuries inflicted without a fight: by surprising one’s opponent or where one man is clearly stronger than another?

In such situations, murder is a more likely outcome. Or, we may apply a fortiori argument: if the injuries incurred in a squabble (where both men are equally involved) are compensated, then all the more the injuries incurred in a surprise attack should be compensated.

Fully conforming to the liberal ideal, Hebrew law discusses only generic situations; in contrast, modern law is concerned with specifics, thus creates a heap of highly specific legislation and, consequently, loopholes.

Next, the law deals with the most tender and valuable members of Hebrew society: pregnant Jewish women. Exodus 21:22, “If [the] men would fight, and hit a pregnant woman, and the fetuses come out, and there will be no harm [to the woman], then he will be fined, fined as the woman’s husband imposes on him, and gives as they lay [on him].”

Contrary to anti-abortionists’ views Hebrew law does not treat fetus as a human being: killing a fetus is punishable with fine only, it is not a criminal offense such as killing a human being.

The fine is not specified here, and whether it is large or small, is a matter of conjecture. On one hand, the law carefully specifies the double and quadruple fines, and therefore leaving this fine unspecified hints at it being insubstantial. On other hand, the law uses strong language: “fined, fined” and “lay on him.” My feeling is that the first option is true, and the fine is small, thus not subject to specification; strong language refers to sureness of the fine rather than its amount.

And here the Hebrew criminal law culminates. Exodus 21:23-25: “And if there would be harm [to the woman], then give a soul for a soul, an eye for an eye, etc.” The tit-for-tat retaliation is prescribed only for harming pregnant women.

The legal status of women in Hebrew society vastly exceeded the men’s. Maiming a man is subject to fine only, but similar harm to woman involves harsh retaliation. The legislator recognized that women are inherently more vulnerable than men and need stronger protection.

The law teaches us that men cannot claim weakness: it is their responsibility to be on par with any attacker, as they will not be awarded any compensation beyond the costs of treatment and idleness. Women are not expected to counter the attackers except by screaming (and surely must not serve in the army). The society, therefore, punishes even the innocent harm to women severely. The law enjoins the women from participating in men’s fights: a woman who indecently touches a man involved in brawl with her husband, is punished.

What about the non-pregnant women? Young females are not expected to come close to men; only married women might defend their husbands. Old females were uncommon in antiquity. So the generic case was a pregnant woman.

The legislator makes sure that his intention of protecting the weak is clear by the following verses, “And if a man would strike his slave or concubine in an eye and destroys it, he will set him free for his eye. And if he would kick out a tooth of his slave or concubine, he will set him free for a tooth.”

How unusual is that, freeing a slave for merely a tooth! In that era and for three millennia afterwards, masters could kill their slaves with impunity.

This rule is a Jewish version of the affirmative action. According to the tradition, the rule does not apply to Hebrew slaves. Thus, Hebrew concubines are treated on par with wives (Exodus 21:7-11). Such a concubine should be set free even if her master/husband diminished her allowance of clothes. As she has her own clothes, she is a subject of property rights, and not a rightless slave.

Similarly, Hebrew male slave owns his wife and children (Exodus 21:3), and so is not a slave in the regular sense. Hebrew slaves are set free at the end of six-year periods, so in effect they are temporary laborers rather than slaves.

In the case of foreign slaves, their masters own their bodies, but Hebrew slaves possess property rights: if they own their wives, then all the more they own their own bodies. Any injury done to a Hebrew slave’s body should be compensated like to free men.

The legislator here solved a curious puzzle: since foreign slaves are their masters’ property, a master cannot compensate his slave for injury like he would compensate a free person. Sort of fining oneself for breaking one’s own instrument. That paradox surfaced in Exodus 21:20-21: murder of a slave is a punishable offense, but any other harm is not punishable as slave’s body is “his master’s silver.”

Freeing injured slaves is both ethical, instructive (to slave-owners), and the only logical way to enforce justice while respecting the property rights.

Here is the affirmative action: a Hebrew slave is only compensated for his eye or tooth, but foreign slave is released for the similar injury.

The master is, in effect, fined by the tooth’ cost and the entire slave’ cost, respectively. Therefore the fine for harming the rightless, defenseless foreign slave is much larger than for similarly injuring a Hebrew slave.

No system of justice accounts for all the possible circumstances. Murdering a slave is a criminal offense (Exodus 21:20), injuring him permanently is a civil offense (21:26-27), but what about the situation when the slave died a considerable time after the beatings?

Being dead, he cannot be released on the account of injuries, as Exodus 21:26-27 prescribes. At the same time, he was not exactly murdered, as he did live for considerable time afterwards; perhaps the blows were not lethal but his treatment was wrong?

Even in the modern courts, which have the benefit of autopsy and other types of expert analysis, there is often no clear-cut answer. And so the legislator sighs, “And if he lives for a day or two, he should not be avenged, as he is [his master's] silver.”

Note that the great kindness was prescribed not to the weak in general, but only to loyal (wives) or submissive (slaves). Nothing in the Hebrew law implies kindness or even restraint to enemies, but only to subjugated enemies.

The law equates hitting (21:15) and abasing (17) one’s parents; both actions are punishable with death. There is no issue about murdering them: such crime is covered by generic rule of executing murderers. The law is a direct consequence of, “You shall respect your father and your mother” in the Ten Commandments.

Rabbis effectively abrogated a similar law about unruly child by demanding unrealistically that both father and mother accuse him in the same voice tone. In the law, however, abasing any parent is a capital offense, no other evidence is required. The law does not sentence merely for a heated argument: only the one [continuously] abasing his parents is liable to death.

How do we know it is a crime to abase any parent rather than both of them, for it is said, “his father and his mother”? By comparing this law with, “And he who is hitting his father and his mother, shall die by execution” (21:15): obviously, it is a crime to hit any parent rather than both of them.

Why so harsh a punishment?

It’s not because of primitive paternalistic concerns; such concerns would justify execution for insulting one’s father (head of the clan) but not mother.

The law is meant to strengthen the society by strengthening family. The law emphasizes family in the modern sense rather than clan. By making it unthinkable to abase mothers, the law forced Hebrews to leap into the mutually respectful society.

Now we see that Jewish law prescribes different levels of retaliation: mild for the offenses between men, harsh tit-for-tat for attacks on women, hyper-compassionate for wounding slaves, and exceedingly cruel for offending parents.

What about the other nations? The Torah deals with two classes of the offending nations.

One is Amalek: those who harassed the Jews; such nations must be exterminated even in the remotest generations for their past crimes, probably on the presumption that national character doesn’t change and children would readily repeat their parents’ sins if given an occasion.

The second class is the nations which settled the Promised Land before Jews; such nations would always remember that the land was theirs, will consider the Jews occupiers, and hate us. Unlike Amalek, they should not be wiped out as they committed no crime against Jews, but rightfully defended themselves against aggression.

Jews must evict the core inhabitants (Exodus 23:31), destroy their places of worship (23:24), and God will efface them (23:23).

The raw justice mercilessly extirpates the offenders so that law-abiding Jews can live comfortable lives. Jewish criminal law is unforgiving: neither a victim, nor the society can forgive, but the offender must be punished severely. Forgiveness paves the way to repeated crimes.

Leviticus 24:19-20 suggests that Jews originally adhered to across-the-border “an eye for an eye” and that rule was later softened to apply to pregnant women only.

Jews, themselves recently slaves in Egypt, hardly acquired Jewish slaves already in the Sinai. The subsequent verses deal with a settled society with houses, pastures, holes on the roads, and so on. Whatever the legislative sequence, at some point Jews were given a law that presumed goodwill among neighbors, protected the weak, and severely punished the wicked.

By Obadiah Shoher

Is Your Mouth A Little Weak?

By Patrick Grimm

'Is your mouth a little weak
When you open it to speak
Are you smart?'

(My Funny Valentine / Rogers and Hart)

We have no free speech in any meaningful sense. Any academic can boast of the fact that he is a Marxist/Leninist or a Communist ideologue. But let one professor claim himself a National Socialist or an adherent to an ideology of nationalism in any meaningful sense, and he will be driven into oblivion.

The Communist Left controls the institutions, the government and the think tanks. This is due to the Jewish onslaught. The radical Jews, along with their minions in the socialist media now grip America by the hairs of her collective head. Any nationalism, and for that matter, any racialism that dares to upset the Jewish apple cart (if you can imagine the shiftless Jews growing produce) is squelched, is quelled with a vehemence rivaling Stalin’s most extreme excesses.

The Jews want to destroy whiteness. They desire more than anything else, for the white race to voluntarily extinguish itself, without guns, without war, with tumult, to choose, out of guilt and self-flagellation, to bring about its own expiration date.

Our free speech is null and void. Though it may be a few more months before the swine flu hysteria wears off and Jews turn America into a FEMA camp totalitarian society worthy of Trotsky and Lenin’s wet dreams, we are done. We are a country betrothed with the legacy of a Hidden Tyranny we dare not identify, much less fight openly. Dare I say I am pessimistic about our prognosis thus far. We don’t have the intestinal fortitude to shake ourselves free of our Marxist/Leninist overlords and yes, Zionist Jewish masters, who dictate what our proper behavior should be.

Is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak? Of course it is. You have been conditioned, lulled into a love of the soft tyranny of Jewish demands. The valentine has been ripped from out your chest. The love of your people has been jettisoned from your beating breast. You would rather become a prisoner of your own fear than dare to stand against the anti-freedomist Jews who now threaten to tear your cowardly heart from out your rib cage.

Stand, dear white soul, stand. Or would you rather be yanked into the maelstrom of a Jewish-induced insanity? Recall the three most influential thinkers of the 20th century. Athwart the last one hundred years stand three intellectuals. They are Marx, Freud and Darwin. The first two are Jewish hacks. The third is the only “survivalist” worthy of still citing as much as a footnote in the history of ideas.

Our free speech has been ripped from the moorings of the Magna Carta and the Constitution. Why? Because the Jew believes in neither of these documents. He believes in nothing, nay not self-sacrifice, nay not logic or reason. He believes in egotism writ large and nothing more than the nationalism that is his own. Every other nation must be crushed beneath the boot of Talmudic totalitarian tyranny. Is this enough to elicit your righteous anger and your white European fury? I doubt it. For it has been smothered like a candle in a windstorm. It has been silenced amidst the vortex of pragmatism and practicality worthy of a Puritanical Jewish wannabe Self-Chosenist.

We have no free speech. We have politeness and apologies and self-loathing. What we don’t have are the stuff that will save us. What we have in excess are the traits that guarantee that the internationalist, Marxist/Leninist/Zionist Jew can play upon both our sympathies and our hubris, bending our future to his will, his way and his wickedness.

Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict

Shoher's Musings

The book's dedication could be expanded to include Baruch Goldstein. Isn't he a criminal? For one, aren't Bonnie and Clyde criminals, and yet they became popular, almost positive characters.

An “Eye For An Eye”

I disagree with Goldstein on technicality, the place. Terrorists do not largely attack synagogues, and he should not shoot in a mosque. An idea behind an eye for an eye is very clear connection between damage and retribution. Had he been shooting in a bus - like the terrorists do - many would find that less objectionable.

Hurrah For Osama!

I love bin Laden! I was telling the Israelisfor years to start reprisals against Saudi oil facilities to stop financing of Wahhabism and Palestinian terrorists. The only one who listens is Osama. Oil corporations are greedy but cowardly. Few attacks will sent them looking for more stable sources - Russian, Central Asian, and American. Without Saudi money, Islamic clerics worldwide will abandon Wahhabism. That will not extinguish terrorism, but will dry its religious support base. Besides, I believe in vengeance. So, hurrah to Osama! Go on against the Saudis!

Censorship

We launched a petition to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, and what is really odd, the number of news agencies that refuse us coverage because of the violence involved. They have no problem to cover Islamic terrorism or Iraqi insurgency, though. In politically correct societies, media forget that they serve to deliver news, and begin censoring opinions. Done with government censorship, welcome to corporate censorship. Back to the violence, everyone lauds police violently catching violent criminals. Not violence per se is bad, but only initiated violence; we object violence that initiate damages, not violence that mitigates them.

Religion Of Peace?

Some rabbis, mostly Reform, tell us that Judaism is a religion of peace, and we should not introduce violence. My reply is, Read the Tanakh! Moses killed the Egyptian. Hebrews incessantly warred in Sinai, and Joshua exterminated the Canaanites. Prophets urged Jews for the utmost intolerance toward idolaters, and many respected Jewish kings led expansionist wars. Psalmist was much less than loving toward enemies (remember where that hate-no-one-love-your-enemies is from?) Maccabees were everything but nice to Jewish gentilizers, and neither was bar Kochba. Modern Israelis violently swept Arab enemies in every war, and only the pseudo-liberal government prevents the Jews from carving a decent state for themselves.

Judeo-Christianity

What a bizarre notion Judeo-Christianity is! Judaism and Christianity are the different poles, practicality and idealism. Jews do not preach poverty and humility. Judaism and Christianity are incompatible, not parts of the same culture. If anything, Islam is closer to Judaism than Christianity is. It is also repugnant to side with people who oppressed and exterminated Jews for millennia against Muslims who were reasonably tolerant to the Jews. Peaceful relations with Christians are perfect, but lumping Jewish heritage together with Christian doctrine is abominable.

“Cooks Can Govern The Country”

Opponents of Revisionist Zionism tout Einstein's condemnation of Zhabotinsky. If Zhabotinsky understood nothing in physics, why assume Einstein understood anything in politics? Menachem Begin and Arik Sharon were great soldiers, but they committed major political mishaps. Lenin exaggerated when remarked that cooks can govern the country. Politics is an art, and requires high and specialized skills.

Divine Intervention

Nazis exterminated European Jews; how can we still claim the divine protection and biblical rights? The Lubavitcher Rebe remarked that he sees divine intervention in Germany, the military superpower, being crashed. Also in being a few months short to develop nuclear bomb. But the German annihilation of Jews reminds of the generation of Egyptian bondage that perished in Sinai steppe. Only free Hebrews were to enter the Promised Land with Joshua. Could not it be the divine intention to keep the shtetl Jews out of Israel? In the last moment, the divine compassion saved the remnant: the accursed Stalin died before realizing the already launched relocation of the remaining Jews to Siberia, exactly the place the Nazis initially fathomed for their bloodless extermination.

Hamas

Hamas' victory benefits Israel. Efficient terrorists will become corrupt, non-delivering politicians. Involving them in political process is the most straight way to discredit them.

Major Terrorist Attack Brewing

Bin Laden's offer of truce concerns me a lot. Earlier, he offered the West to convert, and himself as spiritual guide for that conversion. The symbolism is there, Osama shows that he tried every option to spare the West. It looks like a major terrorist attack is brewing.

So much attention to Rafsanjani's anti-Israeli pronouncements... His is mere rhetoric, common among Muslims. The attention will only provoke him to talk more in the same vein.