Tale of Two Cities (The NYTs vs. Reality)

BigJournalism shows just how biased the NYTs is when they say things that aren’t actually true:

The Progressive newspaper of record, the New York Times headline proclaimed:

“Israelis See Netanyahu Trip as Diplomatic Failure.”

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned from Washington on Wednesday to a nearly unanimous assessment among Israelis that despite his forceful defense of Israel’s security interests, hopes were dashed that his visit might advance peace negotiations with the Palestinians.”

They continue:

Two new polls prove the NY Times report about Israeli reaction was totally biased.

A poll conduced by the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz which reported the positive Israeli reaction to Netanyahu’s trip.

“Ha’aretz Poll: Netanyahu’s Popularity Soaring Following Washington Trip”

“A new poll conducted by Dialog, under the supervision of Prof. Camil Fuchs of the Tel Aviv University Statistics Department, showed that 47% of the Israeli public believes Netanyahu’s U.S. trip was a success, while only 10% viewed it as a failure.”

In fact the poll seems to indicate the D.C. trip reversed Netanyahu’s decline in approval:

While in a Haaretz poll five weeks ago Netanyahu seemed to be in hot water with the public, with 38 percent expressing satisfaction with his performance and 53 percent disappointed with it, in yesterday’s poll the results were essentially reversed: 51 percent were satisfied, while 36 percent were not.

The moderate Jerusalem Post conducted its own poll conducted after Obama’s Speech to AIPAC:

When asked in the poll whether they saw Obama’s administration as more pro-Israel, more pro-Palestinian or neutral, just 12 percent of Israeli Jews surveyed said more pro-Israel, while 40% said more pro-Palestinian, 34% said neutral and 13% did not express an opinion.

Other polls taken after the Netanyahu trip agree with the other two:

A Telesker poll published in Ma’ariv on Wednesday found that the Likud had strengthened against Kadima. The poll predicted that the Likud would rise from 27 to 30 Knesset seats, while Kadima would fall from 28 to 27.

Asked who was more fit to be prime minister, 36.9% said Netanyahu; 28.3% said Kadima leader Tzipi Livni; 9.2% said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of Israel Beiteinu; 2.6% said Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Independence; and 18.2% answered none of the above.

A Sarid Institute poll broadcast on Channel 2 Tuesday night found that 38% of Israelis found Netanyahu most fit to be prime minister, and 35% Livni. The poll found that the Likud had grown in support at Kadima’s expense.

Since the last poll taken by the institute during a crisis over gas prices, Kadima fell by five seats and Likud rose by four.

The poll found that if an election were held now, Likud would win 34 seats (up seven from the last election in February 2009); and Kadima 29 (up one).

A Geocartographic Institute poll broadcast on Channel 1 Tuesday night predicted that the Likud would win 33 seats, and Kadima 22. According to that survey, 61% of Jewish Israelis oppose Obama’s formula of the 1967 lines with land swaps as a basis for an agreement with the Palestinians, while only 27% favor it.

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TRAITOR! (U.S. [i.e., the Obama admin] Changes Its Position On Israel/Palentine)

Obama has changed the United States position on this matter since the Arab nations attacked Israel [again] in 67′. Between Obama’s outreach to the neo-Nazi Islamist group, The Muslim Brotherhood, and this, one wonders just how long we have left?

President Barack Obama is endorsing the Palestinians’ demand for their future state to be based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war, in a move that will likely infuriate Israel. Israel says the borders of a Palestinian state have to be determined through negotiations.

In a speech outlining U.S. policy in the Middle East and North Africa, Obama on Thursday sided with the Palestinians’ opening position a day ahead of a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is vehemently opposed to referring to the 1967 borders.

Until Thursday, the U.S. position had been that the Palestinian goal of a state based on the 1967 borders, with agreed land swaps, should be reconciled with Israel’s desire for a secure Jewish state through negotiations.

…(source)…

American Woman Stabbed To Death By Muslims

Libertarian Republican notes a few items that fall under terrorism or annoying. The first was categorized as terror by the Israeli government:

WUSA9.com “American Tourist Killed In Israel” hours ago:

The woman, Kristine Luken was found with her hands bound and her body riddled with stab wounds in a forest near the Jewish farming community of Mata, some 12 miles southwest of Jerusalem. While the forest is inside Israel, it is close to the border with the West Bank and the Palestinian villages of Husan and Wadi Fukin.

The article goes on to note:

She had been working with the group “The Church’s Ministry among Jewish People,” also known as CMJ

Her companion Susan Wilson from the UK was also stabbed repeatedly. She lived.

During her ride to the hospital she gave them a description of two Arab men.

Wilson further told the investigators that the perpetrators first removed her Star of David necklace, and then purposely stabbed her in the chest where the necklace was. They then half-buried Luken, and left Wilson out in the open to die.

Wilson was an employee of the Messianic Jewish tour company Shoresh Tours.

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The other I think falls under Islamo-Fascism, but others will consider simply as annoying. Brooklyn has to listen to this five times a day:

Weird Iranian Happenings Days Prior To Possible Israel Attack

DebkaFile mentions a few interesting this, the most interesting to follow these pics and story:

…Tuesday afternoon, another Iranian high-up, defense minister Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, talked to reporters. He declared that the “long range UAV called Karrar would be unveiled on this day” – an apparent reference to the debkafile report of Monday, Aug. 16, that the death of Iran’s drone program head Reza Baruni had buried the program for years go come.

Regarding the delay in Moscow’s delivery of S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, Vahidi declared: “We build whatever we want inside the country… and the production of long-range air defense system in Iran is already on the agenda of the defense ministry.”

Former US envoy to the UN John Bolton Tuesday Aug. 17 repeated his warning that Israel has “eight days” to launch a military strike against Bushehr and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant. Once Russian loads it with fuel on Saturday, it will be too late because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian citizens, he said…

Here is the more interesting part of this story:

“Three drones hit the reactor killing at least five of its staff members”??

Are these drones being hijacked by Israeli hackers or Iranian patriots that dissent from the religious/political radicals in charge? These combination of events seem far from accidental – DEBKA Reports:

…Two mysterious incidents are reported by debkafile in the run-up to the fueling up of Iran’s first nuclear reactor Saturday, Aug. 21

Tuesday, Aug. 17, an Iranian F4 Phantom fighter jet was claimed by Tehran to have crashed 6 kilometers north of the Bushehr nuclear reactor in southern Iran. debkafile’s military sources report it was shot down by Russian-made TOR-M1 air-missile defense batteries guarding the reactor. A local government official Gholam Reza Keshtkar said the pilot and co-pilot ejected from the plane before it crashed and were rushed to hospital….

[….]

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iranian and intelligence sources, Bushehr citizens were sure they heard three mighty explosions – not one. So the deputy district governor for security affairs, Mohammad Hossein Shenidi, who is responsible for safeguarding Bushehr and its reactors against air or missile attacks, pitched in with a lighter version of the communiqué: A single drone had indeed been fired, he admitted, but it carried no explosives because its only purpose was to simulate a loud bang to check the level of local alertness.

According to our sources, the townspeople were correct: Three drones hit the reactor killing at least five of its staff members….

…(read more)…

Israel Patents Next Gen Sniper Scopes

FireArm Blog Story:

…The patent describes a LIDAR (Laser Identification Detection And Ranging) unit which works by firing a laser beam at the target. The reflection of the laser is captured by an array of photodiodes. Fluctuations in the signals received by the photodiodes are used to detect both the direction and velocity of cross wind…

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(Burris Eliminator LaserScope. Automatically calculates elevation holdover)

Wired Magazine has some more insight on this amazing product:

Earlier this month, a British Army sniper Corporal Craig Harrison broke the world’s record for superaccurate shooting, taking out a pair of Taliban machine gunners from a mile-and-a-half away. It was a one-in-a-million feat — one performed under “perfect” conditions, Harrison says: “no wind, mild weather, clear visibility.”

Darpa, the Pentagon’s way-out research arm, is hoping to use lasers and advanced optical systems to make other snipers Harrison-accurate, even when the winds are howling. The agency is looking for 15 ultraprecise sniper scopes to put in shooters’ hands by next year.

The “One Shot” program originally aimed to give snipers the power to hit a target from 2000 meters away in winds as high as 40 miles per hour. In the first phases of the 3-year-old program, shooters used prototype rifles dressed with lasers and fancy computer hardware to do damage from 1,100 meters away in 18-mile-an-hour winds. The scope-mounted lasers can “see” wind turbulence in the path of the bullet and feed the data to computers, enabling real-time calculation of — and compensation for — the wind-blown trajectory.

The program is just one of several high-tech hardware upgrades the U.S. military is pursuing for its snipers. Plans are also in place to make bullets that can change course in mid-air and a stealth sniper scope that would make shooters all but invisible.

With initial demonstrations complete, the next step for One Shot is to make 15 “field-testable prototype, observation, measurement, and ballistic calculation system[s], which enable [s]nipers to hit targets with the first round, under crosswind conditions, up to the maximum effective range,” Darpa says in its program announcement. Total cost: $7 million….

…(read more)…




Military Build Up Around Iran Continues

This is a growing story and DebkaFile fills in recent military news in its growth. Here are my two previous stories on it:

Here is an update:

USS Nassau

debkafile’s military sources report that Washington has posted a third carrier opposite Iran’s shores. It is supported by amphibious assault ships and up to 4,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel, bringing the total US strength in these waters to three carriers and 10,000 combat personnel.

The USS Nassau (LHA-4) Amphibious Ready Group 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, tasked with supporting the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet area of operations, is cruising around the Bab al-Mandeb Straits where the Gulf of Aden flows into the Red Sea. Its presence there accounts for Tehran announcing Sunday, June 27 that its “aid ship for Gaza” had been called off, for fear an American military boarding party would intercept the vessel and search it. This would be permissible under the latest UN sanctions punishing the Islamic Republic for its nuclear program.

The third US carrier group to reach waters around Iran consists of three vessels:

1. The USS Nassau Amphibious Assault ship is not just an enormous landing craft for the 3,000 Marines aboard; its decks carry 6 vertical take-off AV-HB Harrier attack plans; four AH-1W Super Cobra, twelve CH-46 Sea Knight and CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters, as well choppers convertible to fast V-22 Osprey airplanes capable of landing in any conditions.

This vast warship has 1,400 cabinets for sleeping the entire Marine-24th Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard.

2. The amphibious transport dock ship USS Mesa Verde which carries 800 Marines equipped for instantaneous landing.

3. The amphibious dock landing ship USS Ashland which carries 400 Marines and 102 commandos trained for special operations behind enemy lines.

…(read more)…