by mike lester, the rome news-tribune

by jimmy margulies, the record of hackensack, nj

“Police are looking for a man in Phoenix who robbed a bank and told the teller he wanted the money in twenties, forties and sixties.
Authorities believe he could be one of President Obama’s economic advisers.” (Jay Leno)

Dit staat de Nederlander Rop Gonggrijp -WikiLeaks-vrijwilliger - te wachten als hij naar de Verenigde Staten zou reizen.

Jacob Appelbaum — the WikiLeaks volunteer - was detained and interrogated for hours and had his electronic goods seized the last time he attempted to re-enter the U.S. t that time he was told that this would happen each time he left the country and came back. And indeed he encountered a similar treatment on Sunday when he returned home from Iceland.
This time at the Seattle airport, he was again detained, questioned, and had his electronic goods taken — all without a warrant. This time he purposely traveled without a laptop or cellphone (the only item he had with him was a memory stick onto which he embedded the Bill of Rights). Appelbaum recounted his ordeal yesterday on Twitter, and BoingBoing has collected his narration here.

In Tucson tonight, President Obama played the role that all presidents must play at times of great tragedy: consoler in chief. His speech at the memorial service for the victims of Saturday’s massacre seemed not to come from a speechwriter’s pen, but from the heart.
Asking whether it “helped” or “hurt” the president politically seems petty. After he described how Rep. Gabriel Giffords’ husband, Mark, had just visited her and announced that “Gabby opened her eyes for the first time,” politics vanished. At a moment of great sorrow, there was a glimpse of the kinder, gentler America that Obama described — an America in which “we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.” (Eugene Robinson, Washington Post)

foto hevalo

Reageren op ikjes.
Op de site van het NRC Handelsblad kan sinds kort weer worden gereageerd op het ‘ikje’. Bijna twee jaar lang kon dat slechts op drasties. We houden hier die traditie in stand.
Is uw ikje niet geplaatst door het NRC dan kunt u het publiceren op drasties in de categorie Trots Op Ikje. Opsturen via ‘contact us’.

Ze hebben GeenStijl nu echt wereldwijd in de smiezen.
Een 18-jarige Marokkaan werd tot zestien uur werkstraf veroordeeld in het Anne Frank Huis voor het discrimineren van joden in een gesprek met GeenStijl.
Naar verluidt krijgt hij ook een gratis opleiding tot jongerenwerker aangeboden.
Iedereen in Israel vindt het een goede straf.
Maar heeft iemand een idee wat ze er hier - グローバル - van vinden?

Perfect punishment for Dutch teen’s anti-Jewish slur

Jewish Chronicle - A teenager whose offensive comments about Jews were published online has been given a particularly fitting punishment.
The Dutch 18-year-old, referred to as Omar E. in court, has been sentenced to community service at the Holocaust hiding place of Jewish diarist Anne Frank.
He had told the website GeenStijl that he believed Jewish people should be exterminated.
[read on] (more…)

Mark Rutte heeft zijn Australische ambtgenoot Julia Gillard Nederlandse hulp op watergebied aangeboden. Maar Australiërs verzuipen nog liever dan zich door Nederland te laten helpen. Daar komt het antwoord van BZ-minister Rosenthal op vragen van de PvdA op neer hoewel hij het wel iets anders heeft opgeschreven.

Thanks but no thanks: Australia rejects Dutch flood offer

WAtoday.com.au - They might be the world’s foremost authorities on keeping land dry, but the Australian government says it doesn’t want them - yet.
The Dutch government has offered technical expertise to Australia to help out in the devastating Queensland floods, but Prime Minister Julia Gillard has turned it down.
About 26 per cent of the Netherlands is below sea level and its flood mitigation measures, both from rivers and the sea, are widely considered the most advanced in the world.
[read on] (more…)

Remember the birds killed in Arkansas?
Well, we know what happened. Respected prophet Cindy Jacobs has it all figured out. It’s nature telling us that America is going against God’s principles.
What principle might that be that it deserves killing nature, you ask?
Well, America repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, making it now possible for people to be honest about their sexuality, even in the army.
In the video, Jacobs connects many important dots in the latest acts of an angry and wrathful God. [read on] (more…)

by frederick deligne, nice-matin, france

by j.d. crowe, mobile register

Blood libel (also blood accusation) refers to a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, almost always Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays. Historically, these claims have–alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration - been a major theme in European persecution of Jews.

The libels typically allege that Jews require human blood for the baking of matzos for Passover. The accusations often assert that the blood of Christian children is especially coveted, and historically blood libel claims have often been made to account for otherwise unexplained deaths of children. In some cases, the alleged victim of human sacrifice has become venerated as a martyr, a holy figure around whom a martyr cult might arise. A few of these have been even canonized as saints.

Finally, the real victim of the Tucson tragedy speaks up.

In a scathing Facebook post and web-video tirade, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accused the media of “blood libel” against her for mentioning her infamous cross-hair map in the wake of the shooting in Tucson. Palin called journalists and pundits’ focus on her “reprehensible,” and said it “serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.”

National Jewish Democratic Council: “Instead of dialing down the rhetoric at this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to accuse others trying to sort out the meaning of this tragedy of somehow engaging in a “blood libel” against her and others.
This is of course a particularly heinous term for American Jews, given that the repeated fiction of blood libels are directly responsible for the murder of so many Jews across centuries — and given that blood libels are so directly intertwined with deeply ingrained anti-Semitism around the globe, even today.”

Remember the cross-hairs [=vizier] of a gun on the website of Sarah Palin pointing at the district of Democratic Congreswoman Giffords? Who was shot!
Palin, the rightwing’s favorite candidate for the presidency, made two statements yesterday in which she outlines a simple scenario of cause and effect. If she or her people are accused of inciting violence, the result will be violence. Her message was unambiguous. There’s only one question remaining: Was it a threat or a warning?
[read on] (more…)