Simon Deng - The United Nations: Accessory to Slavery and other Crimes Against Humanity

Simon Deng tells it like it is.

With thanks to HNY

Like you, I came to this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance to protest this third Durban conference which is an effort based on a set of lies, and organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.

Durban III will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has lost its way. Its obsession with the Jewish obvious: . For over 50 years, 82% of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel. Hitler could not have been made happier.

Given all the good Israel does in the world, given its democracy and its striving to follow the highest standards of human rights, even in the face of the most brutal, the most fanatic enemies, the Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people know that.

But friends, I come here today to make a different case. I come with what you might at first think is a radical proposition: I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN's anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.

By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.

For over fifty years the indigenous black African population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- have been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.

In South Sudan, my homeland, Sudan, about four million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed, and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.

Everybody at the United Nations is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency to provide for them; this agency, UNWRA, treats them with a special privilege.

Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN even resisted using the word "slavery" to describe the enslavement of tens of thousands of my people. Why? Because slavery is a crime against humanity, apparently no one committing it wanted to end up before an international court. When Khartoum insisted that the term "abducted people" be substituted for the word "slaves," the UN, caved to Arab pressure and agreed. Try that in America. Try calling Frederick Douglas an "abducted person." It is outrageous.

The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the root causes of Sudan's conflicts. Take Darfur, for example. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a "tribal conflict." It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism, as it has typically been practiced in Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And they also do not want to be Arabized. They like their own African languages and dress and customs. They resist Arabization. The Arab response is genocide. But nobody tells the truth about Darfur.

In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The regime is targeting the black Africans -- Muslims and Christians. This happened to the Nuba people before. In the 1990's hundreds of thousands were murdered; a large number of women were raped; children were abducted and forcibly converted to Islam. Nobody at the UN told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.

Do you see a massive amount of outrage and reports and protests about this coming out of the UN or Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International? Do you hear them condemn Arab anti-black racism?

Look at the pages of the New York Times, or the record of the UN condemnations, What you will find is "Israeli crimes" and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages by the exaggerations of Palestinian suffering. Why? Because what Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin that we are all supposed to address.

The truth is that the West commits a real sin when it abandons us: the actual victims of non-Westerns. Our suffering has become almost taboo.

Let me return to the topic of slavery: while there are issues that divide public opinion, we can all agree that for one man to own another is a sin, and it should be stopped. The Americans tore themselves apart over the issue of slavery.

Chattel slavery, a centuries-long practice in Sudan, was revived as a tool of war in the early '90s. The Islamist regime in Khartoum declared jihad, or holy war, and thereby legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.

I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.

I do not like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.

I was only nine years old when I was made a slave. An Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat destined to Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family's left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word "no." All I could say was "yes," "yes," "yes."

The United Nations knew about the brutal enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs from the early days of the conflict. Human Right Watch issued extensive reports about the issue. These reports gathered dust on UN shelves. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish –led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening.

As soon as the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, the UN agency backtracked, and proceeded to criticize the Non-Governmental Organizations that worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN's actions.

My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League. So much for "human rights for everybody".

As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.

I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. In 2005, the refugees camped outside the offices of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Cairo looking for mercy. Instead, the United Nations closed its doors and left the helpless women and children at the mercy of the ruthless Egyptian security forces who brutally slaughtered at least 26 of them.

After this event the Sudanese realized that Arab racism is the same, whether it is in Khartoum or in Cairo. So they continued looking for a shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for punishingly long distances, the refugees' only hope was to reach Israel's side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.

The fact that even Darfuris, who are Muslims, chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area, speaks volumes.. Israel is racist? Israel is against the Muslim world? Ask the thousands of black Muslim Darfuris who found shelter inside the Jewish state.

When I asked the refugees about the treatment they receive in Israel, their response is absolutely the opposite of what the United Nations alleges. They were welcomed and treated like human beings. Compared to the situation in Egypt, they described their lives in Israel as "heaven." No-one called them "abid" – an Arabic word for slaves often used in Sudan, Egypt and other Arab nations.

Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. It is a state of people of the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with beautiful black Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Israel is a state that has taken my own black people in, rescued them, and helped them.

So, yes … my claim may be a radical claim: I claim that the victims who suffer most from the UN's anti-Israel policy are not just the Israelis but all those people who have to be ignored in order for the UN to tell its big lie against Israel: all those victims of non Western abuse, especially all those victims of Arab and Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab and Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.

So far, the Israelis have only been cursed by the UN. But look at the situation of the Copts, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais and Sikhs who suffer from Islamic oppression. We all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned so that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.

Before I conclude let me tell you a story that reflects a special connection that the people of South Sudan feel toward Israel. In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor, and then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked and numb. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: "This is our people." I was never able to find an answer to my question.

On July 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. We achieved freedom despite the opposition from the Arab world and despite the United Nations, whose General Secretary, Bi Ki Moon, lobbied for the unity of Sudan. For the South Sudanese, that would mean continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.

In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland; and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel's legitimacy.

As a friend of Israel, I salute the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, who had the courage to state publicly that South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its people, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth.

This originally appeared in a a slightly different form as an address at a conference titled "The Perils of Global Intolerance", in New York City, September 22, 2011.

Petition: Cut off the $1.3B in aid annually to Egypt, unless they bring to justice the killers of the massacre of Coptic Christian

Sign here.

The Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church under the leadership of Pope Shenouda III met with seventy Bishops, on Monday October 10, 2011 in the Papal residence, Cairo, Egypt to discuss the events of the prior day in front of Maspiro where 24 of our beloved children were killed and at least 200 injured.

Coptic Christians feel that their problems are always being repeated without accountability and without the due justice of the law.Eyewitnesses & countless photographs and videos recount how the Egyptian Military used armored vehicles to mow down peaceful protesters.

WE PLEA to the President, and Congress, to push for a full investigation,to bring the perpetrators to justice in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to cut off military aid until FULL COMPLIANCE.

Iran vows 'decisive action' on US claims of assassination plot

Will this be Obama’s War?

Iran vows 'decisive action' on US claims of assassination plot from the Australian

IRAN'S Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has warned of a "decisive response" to any "inappropriate action" over US claims of a Tehran-directed assassination plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington.

"If American officials are entertaining any illusions, they should know that any inappropriate action - whether political or security-related - will meet with the Iranian people's decisive response," he said in a speech in western Iran yesterday.

Ayatollah Khamenei, who has labelled the plot claims "absurd", said: "The Islamic Republic of Iran will face off any plot, or destructive or obstructive measures, with all its might."

President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, in his first comments on US claims over the alleged plot, was quoted as saying: "Iran is a civilised nation and doesn't need to resort to assassination."

Addressing the US government, he said: "Terror belongs to you."

Highlighting an apparent schism with the President, Ayatollah Khamenei accompanied his warning with suggestion that Iran could scrap the post of a directly elected president.
He suggested that, in future, the president could be elected by MPs rather than through a national poll. It remained, he said, a "distant" prospect, but his words will embolden hardliners determined to oust Mr Ahmadinejad. Iran's two most powerful men have been in a power struggle since April, when Mr Ahmadinejad sacked his intelligence minister, only to see him reinstated by the Supreme Leader.

The President boycotted government for 11 days before bowing to an ultimatum from the Ayatollah to return or be dismissed.

US officials were yesterday consulting allies and other countries on ratcheting up pressure on Iran, which is already subject to UN and US sanctions over its controversial nuclear program.

Senior Democrat Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate intelligence committee, warned that the US and Iran were on a "collision course" as Tehran steps up its nuclear program and escalates hostilities with its alleged plot to kill the Saudi envoy to Washington. She said this was not the time for war with Iran, but for stronger international sanctions to change its behaviour, saying she favoured sanctions on Iran's central bank.

"Iran is escalating, I believe, its nuclear development. Iran is increasingly hostile," she said in an interview with Fox News. "It's a very dangerous situation.

"If you project out a number of years, we are on a collision course. If we want to avoid it, we have to take action to avoid it."

Iran denies any involvement in the thwarted plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir.

But US President Barack Obama has vowed Iran will "pay a price" for what he says is incontrovertible proof it had a hand in trying to contract a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit.

Saudi Arabia has said it will make "a suitable response" over the alleged plot, which it has requested be brought to the attention of the UN Security Council.

The US Justice Department and FBI say the alleged plot leads back to officials in the Quds Force, a special operations outfit within Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards.

Quds Force personnel are said to have transferred nearly $US100,000 ($97,094) to the bank account used by a member of the Mexican drug cartel who was really a paid US informant. The money was allegedly part of a $US1.5 million hit on Mr al-Jubeir, possibly through the bombing of a Washington restaurant.

An Iranian used car salesman who is a naturalised US citizen, Manssor Arbabsiar, is said to have confessed to acting as the go-between for his cousin, whom he described as a top Quds official. Mr Arbabsiar is in US custody, charged with the plot. The US has charged another Iranian, Gholam Shakuri, said to be an Iran-based Quds agent who flew to the US to speak with Mr Arbabsiar.

PM Gillard Passes CO2 tax on Australians

A bad day for democracy in Australia, following on the heels of the judgement against Andrew Bolt’s right to free speech.

The West is falling badly, and democracy is losing its grip.

All politicians lie – we know that, but have a look at the video clip of Gillard’s pre-election promise (below) and I can’t really see any way that it can be misinterpreted.

She did not win in her own right but forged a coalition with the Marxist Greens, and a few ‘independents”, to hold onto power here.

Her political opponent, Tony Abbott, in spite of the leftist media bias, did remarkably well. Gillard’s party managed to entice the “independents” to stick with her.

Most Australians did not want this tax but she rammed it down their throats, much like Obamacare was rammed down the throats of American citizens.

I cannot help but wonder sometimes why politicians bother to read polls when they have absolutely no intention of taking any notice of what the average citizen really wants.

I have said before on other blog posts:

Is there any leader in the West who has not literally declared war against his/her own people?

I cannot think of anyone but am open to suggestions.

At one point I thought Netanyahu was an exception but today we find he is releasing over 1000 prisoners (aka jihadists) to obtain the release of Gilad Shalit.

Don’t misunderstand me – I am happy for Gilad Shalit – but now Netanyahu has placed his people, many more than one soldier, in harm’s way.

He has caved in to the demands of Hamas.

If he were going to do that anyway then why didn’t he do it years ago? Israel's current situation is more precarious than what it was when Gilad Shalit was first captured.

Sadly I see no Reagan or Churchill on the horizon.

(picture above of Parliament House, Canberra).

by Chris Kenny in The Australian

Tax triumphalism not a good look

Video of Julia Gillard’s pre-election promise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5pzSvSCUZo&feature=player_embedded

THE disconnect between the political/media fishbowl and mainstream Australia is often stark.

We have seen a clear demonstration of that with the Prime Minister and her team applauding, kissing and congratulating each other on the passage of their carbon tax bills through the House of Representatives.

Only yesterday Newspoll showed a massive primary vote split of 49 to 29 between the dominant, anti-carbon tax Coalition and the struggling, pro-carbon tax Labor government.

Climate change ranked as the lowest priority of the main issues for voters, and even then, more people thought the Coalition would handle the issue best. Polls have shown that well over half the population opposes the carbon tax and little more than a third support it.

Simply, the tax is unpopular.

Yet in the rarefied atmosphere of Canberra, Labor MPs publicly pat themselves on the back for passing it.

The political myopia of this self-congratulation is stunning. It only makes a bad situation worse.

Labor promised not to introduce a carbon tax and there is already a good deal of anger from voters about the broken promise. It is being expressed through talkback radio, letters to newspapers, and polling results.

So the optics of jubilant politicians is terrible politics: triumphalism at the trashing of a pledge. Away from Canberra, in the real world, the television pictures will only antagonise voters.

It suggests to voters that the government does not care what they think.

It solidifies a perception of politicians being out of touch - isolated from the daily concerns of voters.

Julia Gillard says she broke her word on the carbon tax because of political necessity and for a higher ideal - healing the planet. If we take that as a given, then a smart politician would look to pass the measure more in sorrow than triumph.

If Ms Gillard really wants to take voters with her on this crusade, she needs to tell them that it was with a heavy heart that she broke her word.

If the Prime Minister gets voters to listen, she might be able to convince some of them that the carbon tax is worthwhile.

But voters won't listen if they think Labor is celebrating how it turned its back on the wishes voters expressed through the ballot box last year.

Obviously enough, mainstream Australians like to be treated with appropriate respect.

Someone in the Prime Minister's office should be aware of these optics. The government should have been seen to pocket the win, in a sober fashion, with no sense of triumphalism.

Sarkozy: Turkey Should 'Revisit' Armenian Genocide and Israel is "silly"

Sarkozy: Turkey Should 'Revisit' Armenia Genocide from INN

What a disappointment Sarkozy turned out to be.

On one hand having a go at the Turks – a good thing - on the other calling Israel ‘silly’ for wanting to be recognized as a Jewish state! How many Islamic states are there again?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Turkey on Thursday to "revisit" its history regarding the 1915 massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, AFP reported.

"Turkey, which is a great country, would be honorable to revisit its history like the other great countries in the world have done: Germany, France," Sarkozy told journalists at a joint press conference with Armenian President Serge Sarkisyan.

Sarkozy, who is on a 48-hour tour of the Caucasus, arrived in Armenia on Thursday and will visit Azerbaijan and Georgia as well. His entourage includes four ministers, film director Alain Terzian and singers Charles Aznavour and Helene Segara.

He was to meet with the Patriarch of Armenia's Christian church, and then visit the Genocide Memorial Museum to pay respects to Armenians killed by the Ottomans in 1915.

Sarkozy angered Turkey before his election in 2007 by backing a law making it illegal to deny the fact that the Armenians were victims of genocide. The French lower house of parliament later rejected the measure.

Earlier in the week, Sarkozy was quoted as saying that Israel's insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state is "silly."

Kevin Rudd shouldn't join chorus line of Israel bashers

Kevin Rudd shouldn't join chorus line of Israel bashers

By Greg Sheridan in The Australian

KEVIN Rudd is making a serious mistake and misjudgment about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which is reducing Australia's potential to play a constructive role, harming our relationship with Israel and damaging the Gillard government.

This mistake does not emerge from ill will or ignorance on Rudd's part but from a fundamental misjudgment about where the Israeli-Palestinian dispute has got to and how outsiders can help.

A few days ago Rudd issued a statement criticising Israel's approval of 1100 new housing units in Gilo, an area of Jerusalem. This statement was a mistake in its own terms, but it also reflects Rudd's basic strategic misjudgment. That judgment is that what the situation needs most of all is increased international pressure on Israel.

It is perfectly legitimate to make reasonable demands of Israel. But I have not seen, from the Australian government or from most Western commentators, commensurate demands on the Palestinian Authority. For the past two years it has been the PA, not the Israelis, that has refused direct negotiations. Shouldn't Rudd have called on the PA to engage in direct negotiations? Or how about some passing reference to continued anti-Jewish incitement among many Palestinian groups?

The Gillard and Rudd governments have been friends of Israel, but substantially less supportive than the Howard government. They are also substantially less supportive of Israel than is Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.

Abbott has told me he believes Australia should vote against the UN resolution in favour of granting the Palestinians full statehood outside negotiations with Israel. This resolution, which at present is held up in Security Council study, will reach the UN General Assembly in due course. Rudd is reported to incline towards abstaining, which would be a big step away from Israel by Canberra. Gillard is reported to lean towards voting no.

Rudd's statement on the housing units in Gilo is perplexing. When he was in Israel last December he did not mention the settlements in his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, nor in his speeches. Yet Rudd's recent statement suggests settlements are a central issue. It accords with official US statements. But authoritative analysts such as Martin Indyk believe Barack Obama made a disastrous blunder by elevating settlements to a key place in his early diplomacy, a position he subsequently abandoned.

The dispiriting interpretation of the Australian government's latest statement is that it serves only to echo conventional wisdom, to keep us in the club of the like-minded UN types on this dispute, and to support our bid for a temporary UN Security Council seat.

The several steps the Gillard and Rudd governments have taken away from Israel, especially expelling an Israeli diplomat over the misuse of Australian passports, an action that neither the French nor Germans took in similar circumstances, and which was opposed by Abbott, have a sad consequence. They have diminished our credibility with the Israelis. Lots of nations have credibility with the Palestinians, very few with the Israelis. Australia has lost that distinctive chance for influence and become just another member of the international chorus line that always blames Israel.

The actual question of Israeli settlers in the West Bank is exceptionally complex. More than 300,000 Israelis live in the West Bank proper, while about 200,000 live in parts of Jerusalem that Israel did not control before 1967, that is East Jerusalem.

Every single peace plan of any consequence has envisaged a Palestinian state of almost all of the West Bank and Gaza, of course, some sort of sharing of Jerusalem, and land given to the Palestinians from Israel to compensate for land they lose to settlements.

Most Jewish settlements are adjacent to the 1967 lines or on the edge of Jerusalem. Some of them have a serious military consequence in providing Israel with a fraction more strategic depth and potential early warning of infiltration and attack.

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has published the best demographic and cartographic study of the settlements. It concluded that Israel could retain 80 per cent of the 300,000 settlers in the West Bank by keeping less than 5 per cent of West Bank territory. The general formula for Jerusalem is that Jewish areas should be Israeli and Arab areas should be Palestinian. Under every imagined scenario, Gilo would remain part of Israel, which makes new Israeli housing there less than crucial.

I have spent a fair amount of time in the West Bank, talking to Palestinians, and a fair amount of time in the West Bank settlements, talking to Israeli settlers. The international stereotype of the settlers as religious extremists with a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other is wildly inaccurate.

Let me be quite clear. There is an ugly and extreme element of the settler movement. There are some Israelis who want no compromise. There are movements to implant Israeli Jewish families in the most Arab East Jerusalem neighbourhoods along with accompanying security guards, to make territorial compromise involving those neighbourhoods as difficult as possible. But the extremists are a small minority of the settlers.

The situation is further complicated by Israel having annexed East Jerusalem. Most Israelis accept they will have to compromise on Jerusalem but the annexation makes it hard for them to say so.

Of course, all the territorial considerations in the world pale into insignificance compared with the threshold question: can the Palestinian leadership ever embrace and enforce a peace that involves an end of claims and conflict, and a credible guarantee that Israel will not be attacked from within a future Palestinian state?

Even within the settlements, most Israelis I have met accept an ultimate need for compromise. In Ma'ale Adumim, just east of Jerusalem, I met basically secular people happy to have cheaper housing so close to the city. In Gush Etzion, further south, my impression was people were a little more religious, fulfilled in part by living on biblical land, but attracted most of all by the almost kibbutz-style social solidarity of the settlement. In Ariel, much further to the north, the people I met, though very nice, were more nationalistic and a little more militant rhetorically.

The real weakness in Israel's public position is not having its territorial bottom line clear. The Israelis say they must keep the detail of this for negotiation. But the lack of final clarity opens them up to charges of expansionism and confuses their supporters at least as much as their opponents.

There is not much Australia can do to help in all of this. Joining the chorus line of Israel bashing, and diminishing our friendship with Jerusalem, is not at all helpful.

Further reading: The Anti-Semitic Labor Party

‘Suspended Election Revolution’ by Barry & the Obamunists; Does it Play?

Keep your eyes on this story

Video and much more at Gulag Bound

by Cliff Kincaid

Presented for you now, an exercise in considering the incredible: that Barack Obama, et. conspiratorial al. would plan to suspend elections in an orchestrated national emergency, perhaps a false flag operation blamed on his opposition.

I do not say this will happen, nor am I selling the idea. The point is, this should be scrutinized and in principle when such things are fully sounded out, their probability — that is, the opportunity for them, lessens. And the objective in this: with an open mind, to gain the situational awareness necessary to keep from being duped by normality bias (what we are accustomed to, what we think we know) and by agitprop.

“Forewarned is forearmed.” If you would embark upon such a war-gaming journey of the mind, we suggest six initial steps, given below....

US-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki killed in Yemen

The man behind the underwear bomber and Fort Hood murderer is gone!
from the Australian

RADICAL US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed with several other suspected al-Qa'ida operatives, the Yemeni defence ministry said tonight.

The ministry did not elaborate on the circumstances of Awlaki's death in a statement released to the media.

A senior US official confirmed Awlaki's death.

"I can confirm... he's dead," the senior administration official said, without providing further details.

But tribal sources said Awlaki, who was on a US wanted list, was killed in an air strike which hit two vehicles in Marib province, an al-Qa'ida stronghold in eastern Yemen, early today.

One tribal source said the plane that carried out the strike was likely to be American, adding that US aircraft had been patrolling the skies over Marib for the past several days.

The Yemeni defence ministry had previously announced Awlaki's death late last year.

On December 24, the Yemeni government said he had been killed in an air strike only to admit later that he was still alive.

In February, the director of the US National Counterterrorism Centre, Michael Leiter, told US members of congress that Awlaki probably posed "the most significant risk" to the United States.

Awlaki, a US-Yemeni citizen who had eluded capture for years, was believed to be a key leader of al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula.

In April last year, a US official said President Barack Obama's administration had authorised the targeted killing of Awlaki, after American intelligence agencies concluded the cleric was directly involved in anti-US plots.

US intelligence officials believe Awlaki was linked to a US army major who allegedly shot dead 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas, and to a Nigerian student accused of trying to blow up a US airliner on December 25, 2009.

Bad News for Free Speech in Australia: Andrew Bolt Loses "Racial Vilification" Case

Disgraceful verdict today Downunder.

Others have said far worse. Bolt was stating facts. One of the plaintiffs said much worse about another Aboriginal woman:

More offensive than 'sex with a horse': Larissa Behrendt's Twitter slur against Bess Price

My fears for a totalitarian government are getting more and more real.

Andrew Bolt loses racial vilification court case from The Australian

HERALD Sun columnist Andrew Bolt has lost an action brought in the Federal Court in which the columnist was accused of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act.

Bolt was found to have contravened Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Nine aboriginal applicants brought a class-action against Bolt and the Herald and Weekly Times claiming Bolt wrote they sought professional advantage from the colour of their skin.

There were cheers and applause in the court when Justice Mordecai Bromberg read out his verdict.

He ordered no settlement on the parties, who will negotiate between them what measures Bolt and the Herald Sun will take.

In the judgment, the Justice said he was satisfied that the fair skin Aborigines were “offended, assaulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations conveyed by the newspaper articles”.

The Justice ruled that Bolt could not use fair comment or public interest to defence those particular articles.

At issue was Bolt's assertion that the nine applicants had chosen to identify themselves as “Aboriginal” and consequently win grants, prizes and career advancement, despite their apparently fair skin and mixed heritage.

The nine applicants were led by activist Pat Eatock and included artist Bindi Cole, NSW Australian of the Year Larissa Behrendt, author Anita Heiss and former ATSIC chief Geoff Clark.

Four articles published by the Herald Sun columnist in the newspaper and his blog were “a head-on assault on a group of highly successful and high-achieving” Aborigines, Ron Merkel QC told the court during proceedings in late March and early April.

The nine people sought an apology from the Herald & Weekly Times and an order against republishing, but no compensation.

In an occasionally explosive case, Bolt’s writings about Aboriginal identity were painted as being akin to a “eugenics approach” and similar to writings that led to the Holocaust.

Bolt subsequently protested the slurs in court as “an unforgivable travesty.”

In concluding the eight day proceedings, counsel for the plaintiffs conceded Bolt's writings did not incite “racial vilification or racial hatred”, rather they “constituted highly personal, highly derogatory and highly offensive attacks” on the nine individuals.


Andrew Bolt says on his blog:

I am very grateful to all the readers who have offered me support and sympathy. I’m afraid I cannot respond or comment further for now. But I can’t tell how moved I am. And how sad, but not just for myself.

UPDATE

I am sorry to the hundreds of people who’ve responded on this thread. I am extremely touched by your support, but the moderators obviously need to get guidance on what we dare publish. Such are the times.

Antiquity and the Internet Meet: Dead sea scrolls published online

From the Australian

TWO thousand years after they were written and decades after they were found in desert caves, some of the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls went online for the first time today in a project launched by Israel's national museum and web giant Google.

The appearance of five of the most important Dead Sea scrolls on the internet is part of a broader attempt by the custodians of the celebrated manuscripts - who were once criticised for allowing them to be monopolised by small circles of scholars - to make them available to anyone with a computer.

The scrolls include the biblical Book of Isaiah, the manuscript known as the Temple Scroll, and three others. Web surfers can search high-resolution images of the scrolls for specific passages, zoom in and out, and translate verses into English.

The originals are kept in a secured vault in a Jerusalem building constructed specifically to house the scrolls. Access requires at least three different keys, a magnetic card and a secret code.

The five scrolls are among those purchased by Israeli researchers between 1947 and 1967 from antiquities dealers, having first been found by Bedouin shepherds in the Juddvean (sic) Desert.

The scrolls, considered by many to be the most significant archaeological find of the 20th century, are thought to have been written or collected by an ascetic Jewish sect that fled Jerusalem for the desert 2000 years ago and settled at Qumran, on the banks of the Dead Sea.

The hundreds of manuscripts that survived, partially or in full, in caves near the site, have shed light on the development of the Hebrew Bible and the origins of Christianity.

The most complete scrolls are held by the Israel Museum, with more pieces and smaller fragments found in other institutions and private collections.

Tens of thousands of fragments from 900 Dead Sea manuscripts are held by the Israel Antiquities Authority, which has begun its own project to put them online in conjunction with Google.

That project, aimed chiefly at scholars, is set to be complete by 2016, at which point nearly all of the scrolls will be available on the internet.

Video here.

Phyllis Chesler: America - The Chief Subsidizer of UN Rapists and Traffickers

Pajamas Media has the story.

The Wilsonian ideals of the UN are not realizable. In turn, the UN is built on a lie: that its diplomats are morally decent.

Caroline Glick: The Palestinians' bid for Statehood

This week at the UN could be a game-changer for all of us.

I am not even going to hazard a guess other than to say that with the current President of the USA I am not inspired with confidence and optimism.

The Palestinian Obsession

by Caroline Glick

If nothing else, the Palestinians’ UN statehood gambit goes a long way towards revealing the deep-seated European and US pathologies that enable and prolong the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

In a nutshell, the Palestinian Authority – or Fatah – or PLO initiative of asking the UN Security Council and the General Assembly to upgrade its status to that of a sovereign UN member state or a sovereign non-UN member state is an act of diplomatic aggression.

Eighteen years ago this week, on September 13, 1993, the PLO signed the Declaration of Principles with Israel on the White House lawn.

There, the terror group committed itself to a peace process in which all disputes between Israel and the PLO – including the issue of Palestinian statehood – would be settled in the framework of bilateral negotiations.

The PA was established on the basis of this accord. The territory, money, arms and international legitimacy it has been given was due entirely to the PLO pledge to resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel through bilateral negotiations.

By abandoning negotiations with Israel two years ago, and opting instead to achieve its nationalist aims outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel, the Palestinians are destroying the diplomatic edifice on which the entire concept of a peace process is based. They are announcing that they have no intention of living at peace with Israel. Rather they intend to move ahead at Israel’s expense.

Read it all here at Accuracy in Media

Newt Gingrich vs. Muslim Brotherhood Fronts

by Ryan Mauro

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has become the first presidential candidate to say that he would support a Justice Department investigation and possible prosecution of Muslim Brotherhood​ fronts tied to Hamas.

He made the remarks in response to a question from the United West, and his unplanned statement could help revitalize his campaign.

“I would support an Attorney General​ who would look very aggressively at prosecuting any group which supports terrorism or which sends money to terrorism or which encourages terrorism,” Gingrich told the United West.

The questioner mentioned that the federal government says that Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) are tied to Hamas.

He then asked if he’d support an investigation into these specific groups, to which Gingrich replied, “Sure, absolutely.”

He nodded his head as the question was asked, expressing familiarity with the topic....

Read it all at FPM

Further: Pat Condell Islamophobia – Wake Up America!

It begins: Freedom of the press under threat in Australia

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has floated a government-funded media regulator from the Australian.

Make no mistake.

This government in coalition with the Greens cannot handle any criticism whatsoever, and even though most of the media here has a demonstrably left-wing bias this isn’t enough for them.

The Greens are a Marxist/Totalitarian party, who support BDS in Australia - even though some deny it.


The Labor Party is showing its true totalitarian/Fabian Socialist roots.

Not only are they introducing a National Broadband Network that will be obsolete by the time it is completed - read 'censorship', but now they want to censor our media.

Of course it goes without saying that this is an attempt to censor any conservative-leaning writers and bloggers.

Their disregard for democracy knows no bounds.

I have often wondered if I will ever see another election in this country, and the USA as well.

These people must know they will be thrown out of government and yet it doesn't bother them one bit!

Voters' opinions are not important to them at all.

Both have very low approval figures.

Maybe they know something they don't want to let us in on.

Note as mentioned in the article below, this also gives them an excuse to go after the Murdoch press Downunder.

NEWSPAPERS could face scrutiny from a government-funded regulator as a result of a new media probe, but they would not fall under government control, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said today.

Senator Conroy confirmed a single media regulator overseeing all print, online and broadcast media could be one of the changes to flow from the government's independent media inquiry launched yesterday.

He agreed the days of the Australian Press Council, which he called a "toothless tiger", could be numbered

But he rejected the suggestion a single regulator would hand the government control of newspapers.

"That's absurd. The government doesn't have any more control or reach about how Channel Nine or Channel Ten or Channel Seven or even the ABC under the existing laws today," he told the ABC.

"To suggest that because the Press Council might become a more professional organisation of part of a merged entity that suddenly the government has got more control is just wrong."

Senator Conroy said the inquiry covered a specific area not covered by a separate review looking at the convergence of media types.

He said Labor had set the terms of reference, staring down Greens Leader Bob Brown who wanted to use the inquiry to further his campaign against News Limited, publisher of The Australian.

Senator Brown continued his attack News Limited today, accusing it of mixing news with opinion and of conducting "witch hunts".

"This (inquiry) is in the public interest," he said.

"It's the public that absorbs the information and that depends upon the media for information in a healthy and functioning democracy and we need the media and it's a very important part of our lives.

"The Murdoch empire is relentless about wanting inquiries into politics and politicians, and that's how it should be, but they don't like it when it's the other way around."

And furthermore it seems that bloggers and tweeters could also be at risk.

From the press conference yesterday of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy:

Journalist:

But you’d also have to define who could be complained about and what the penalities would be once they were complained about? A tweeter, a blogger, a…

Conroy:

Well, as you said. Now you’re canvassing areas that I think will be richly canvassed in the inquiry, and these are the sort of… these are, the questions is… you’re asking all the legitimate questions.

Further reading: Andrew Bolt’s take.

Obama to visit his Aussie counterpart PM Julia Gillard

Obama's golf visit out of bounds - From the Age

I wonder if he knows that there is a comedy series on the tax-payer funded ABC about Gillard's life in The Lodge - the Aussie equivalent of the White House?

Here’s a taste!

Then there’s this piece of garbage from Bloomberg: Obama’s soul-mate Gillard.

This contains a sentence that is totally untrue:

"Yet Gillard inherited a long to-do list because Rudd (2007 to 2010) and John Howard (1996 to 2007) had largely left the economy on autopilot."

John Howard’s government paid down the debt he was left from previous Labor governments and Kevin Rudd, who called himself a ‘fiscal conservative’, spent tax-payers’ money like a drunken sailor.

Still, we are all getting so good at predicting how the left-leaning media reports things.

I guess we will have to wait and see if he has a round of golf or not.

I am pretty sure he will be able to borrow some clubs if he needs them.

THE United States President, Barack Obama, has been advised to leave his golf clubs at home when he visits Australia in November.

Although the trip will coincide with the Presidents Cup tournament in Melbourne, a side trip to visit the US team is being advised against because it would be a bad look at home.

The White House and Gillard government confirmed yesterday that after two aborted attempts the President will visit on November 16 and 17.

The visit, to mark the 60th anniversary of the ANZUS treaty, will be sandwiched between the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Hawaii and the East Asia Summit in Bali.

In the same week Mr Obama is in Australia, the best US golfers will be playing their non-European counterparts at Royal Melbourne Golf Club, which last hosted the event in 1998. Australia is the first country outside the US to host the biennial tournament twice.

Mr Obama is a keen golfer and was the honorary chairman of the 2009 tournament. Julia Gillard is the chairwoman of this year's event.

But diplomatic sources said as well as visiting Hawaii and Bali, his trip would include the G20 in Cannes. Under domestic pressure over the economy, the spectre of the President at a golf tournament on top of three holiday destinations would not go down well.

Mr Obama cancelled a trip in in March last year due to a crisis over healthcare reform in the US. He was then due to visit in June 2010 but cancelled because of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The same week, Kevin Rudd was rolled for the leadership.

The Sydney Morning Herald understands the US government has been putting out feelers to ascertain how stable Julia Gillard's job is.

As Ms Gillard informed Parliament of the visit yesterday, she was taunted by Coalition MPs who claimed she needed the visit to boost her own flagging fortunes.

After question time, Tony Abbott clarified that the Coalition meant no disrespect and Mr Obama was welcome.

Further reading: The ANZUS Treaty

The UN's Durban 111 Conference: An Arab's point of view

Khaled Abu Toameh: The UN's Durban III Conference: An Arab View

From HNY

Arab dictatorships and Muslim fundamentalists will get a morale boost next week when the United Nations hosts its "Anti-Racism" Durban III conference in New York. But it is not only Israelis and Jews who eventually pay the price for this type of incitement -- it is also the few remaining moderate Arabs and Muslims.

As in the past, the conference will serve as platform for all those who hate Israel and Jews and seek to destroy the Jewish state.

The UN conference's anti-Israel and anti-Semitic messages and rhetoric will once again be used by the enemies of peace and compromise in the Middle East to justify their violence against Israel and Jews.

The mob that attacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo last weekend will undoubtedly use the messages coming out of the conference to justify their crime. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Hamas and Hizbullah proxies will say that the conference proves that their right when they for the elimination of Israel.

By hosting speakers like Ahmadinejad, the UN is helping spread his message of hatred and anti-Semitism.

Ahmadinejad and his allies are always happy to exploit such gatherings to promote their denial of the Holocaust and desire to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

This year's UN conference is being held at a time when anti-Israel sentiments, especially throughout the Arab and Islamic world, are on the rise. It also coincides with a "diplomatic intifada" that the Palestinian Authority is waging against Israel in the international arena.

This is an "intifada" that is primarily designed to isolate Israel in the international arena by depicting the Jewish state as a source of instability because of its refusal to comply with the Palestinian Authority's demand for a full withdrawal from all the 1967 territories.

The Palestinian Authority is hoping that membership in the UN would give its representatives access to many UN organizations, where they say they want to prosecute Israelis as war criminals and have Israel expelled from these bodies.

The "Durban III" conference is being held almost on the same day the Palestinian Authority is planning to ask the UN for recognition of a Palestinian state –- a move that is likely to end the peace process and plunge the region into a dangerous period of uncertainty and tensions.

In the region, there is already much talk of a possible violent confrontation between Palestinians and Israelis as a result of the UN statehood bid.

The anti-Israel messages emerging from the conference will only increase tensions and accelerate the eruption of another "cycle of violence."

The conference is taking place at a time when Hamas and Hizbullah have tens of thousands of missiles directed toward Israel and ready to be used at any time. Those who are chanting "Death to Israel" on the streets of Cairo and Amman will be happy to see that their messages are being echoed in the corridors of the UN next week.

Syrian dictator Bashar Assad will also benefit from the "Durban III" conference as it will distract attention from the daily massacres that his security forces are perpetrating against the Syrian people.

It would have been better if this year's UN conference had been dedicated to discussing human rights conditions in Syria and the rest of the Arab world. But by singling out Israel, the UN conference is playing into the hands of the radicals and dictators in the region by providing then with the legitimacy they need to pursue their dream of destroying the Jewish state.

What the Middle East needs is conferences that promote peace and coexistence, not hatred and violence.

Mark Steyn on Free Speech in the West - September 2011

Using rights to gag free speech

TO be honest, I didn't really think much about "freedom of speech" until I found myself the subject of three "hate speech" complaints in Canada in 2007.

I mean I was philosophically in favour of it, and I'd been consistently opposed to the Dominion's ghastly "human rights" commissions and their equivalents elsewhere my entire adult life, and from time to time when an especially choice example of politically correct enforcement came up I'd whack it around for a column or two.

But I don't think I really understood how advanced the Left's assault on this core Western liberty actually was.

In 2008, shortly before my writing was put on trial for "flagrant Islamophobia" in British Columbia, several National Review readers e-mailed from the US to query what the big deal was. C'mon, lighten up, what could some "human rights" pseudo-court do? And I replied that the statutory penalty under the British Columbia "Human Rights" Code was that Maclean's, Canada's biggest-selling news weekly, and by extension any other publication, would be forbidden henceforth to publish anything by me about Islam, Europe, terrorism, demography, welfare, multiculturalism, and various related subjects.

And that this prohibition would last forever, and was deemed to have the force of a supreme-court decision. I would in effect be rendered unpublishable in the land of my birth. In theory, if a job opened up for dance critic or gardening correspondent, I could apply for it, although if the Royal Winnipeg Ballet decided to offer Jihad: The Ballet for its Christmas season I'd probably have to recuse myself.

And what I found odd about this was that very few other people found it odd at all.

Indeed, the Canadian establishment seems to think it entirely natural that the Canadian state should be in the business of lifetime publication bans, just as the Dutch establishment thinks it entirely natural that the Dutch state should put elected leaders of parliamentary opposition parties on trial for their political platforms, and the French establishment thinks it appropriate for the French state to put novelists on trial for sentiments expressed by fictional characters.

Across almost all the Western world apart from America, the state grows ever more comfortable with micro-regulating public discourse-and, in fact, not-so-public discourse: Lars Hedegaard, head of the Danish Free Press Society, has been tried, been acquitted, had his acquittal overruled, and been convicted of "racism" for some remarks about Islam's treatment of women made (so he thought) in private but taped and released to the world.

The Rev. Stephen Boissoin was convicted of the heinous crime of writing a homophobic letter to his local newspaper and was sentenced by Lori Andreachuk, Alberta's "human rights" commissar, to a lifetime prohibition on uttering anything "disparaging" about homosexuality ever again in sermons, in newspapers, on radio-or in private emails. Note that legal concept: not "illegal" or "hateful," but merely "disparaging."

Dale McAlpine, a practicing (wait for it) Christian, was handing out leaflets in the English town of Workington and chit-chatting with shoppers when he was arrested on a "public order" charge by Constable Adams, a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community-outreach officer. Mr. McAlpine had been overheard by the officer to observe that homosexuality is a sin. "I'm gay," said Constable Adams. Well, it's still a sin, Mr McAlpine said. So Constable Adams arrested him for causing distress to Constable Adams.

In fairness, I should add that Mr McAlpine was also arrested for causing distress to members of the public more generally, and not just to the aggrieved gay copper. No member of the public actually complained, but, as Constable Adams pointed out, Mr McAlpine was talking "in a loud voice" that might theoretically have been "overheard by others." And we can't have that, can we? So he was fingerprinted, DNA-sampled, and tossed in the cells for seven hours.

In such a climate, time-honored national characteristics are easily extinguished.

A generation ago, even Britain's polytechnic Trots and Marxists were sufficiently residually English to feel the industrial-scale snitching by family and friends that went on in Communist Eastern Europe was not quite cricket, old boy.

Now England is Little Stasi-on-Avon, a land where, even if you're well out of earshot of the gay-outreach officer, an infelicitous remark in the presence of a co-worker or even co-playmate is more than sufficient....

Read it all in The Australian