Note - I lived in Japan for almost a decade. The Israelis have had a strong presence there for at least 2 decades. On the cover of the Japan Times, circa 1990, there was a small article stating that the Israeli Mafia and the Japanese Mafia had formed a pact.
I knew an Iranian who sold drugs for the Japanese mob (Yakuza). He said some Iranian Jews he knew were selling jewelry in Tokyo and making $2000 a day - in actuality, they were selling hash and meth to the Japanese. Some (not all) of these Israeli street hawkers are really in the drug trade. More than a few of them get jobs in Tokyo through connections in Bangkok at Israeli run guest houses, like the ones on Khao San Road.
There are better ways to make a living.
It’s said that a fool and his money are soon parted. And that’s exactly why there are so many Israelis selling jewelry on the streets of Japan – they’re making it even easier. But the good news for the traveller in search of a buck is that you don’t have to be Israeli to hawk fake Rolexes and silver rings to the Japanese. I did it and I’m as uncircumcised as the next goy.
The boss once asked me: “Tom, are you Jewish?”
“No.”
“Well, nobody’s perfect.”
Yes, you will be working for the Israeli mafia and they’ll suck all the work they can out of you. They’re lying, corrupt sleazebags but at least you won’t have to kow-tow to some nerdy Japanese boss. The Israelis have all the pitches on the streets sewn up these days so there’s no choice but to work for them. At least you don’t have to bring any stock yourself and they take care of all the practical stuff for you. All you’ve got to do is sell.
The set-up is like this: You get yourself to Japan and the Israelis will find some cheap accommodation for you. If you’re hard up they might even lend you a bit of money for the first week or two. Then after a few days of hanging around the stalls of the other sellers, learning the tricks of hard sell and some basic Japanese, you’ll be given a pitch of your own. You’ll be driven to work every day and set up four boards of jewelery and one table for the fake watches. For every item there is a minimum price, but you get 40% of the gross so you sell them for whatever you can get away with.
And then you’re on your own. For the next 10 hours you do your best to lie, flirt, bully and manipulate by any means possible anyone and everyone who passes by into buying something. “Please, sir! Come and look at my shop! Looking is free only! I make you good price! Buy something for your girlfriend!” Sound familiar? Yes, you have to become just like all those merchants and hawkers who drove you crazy all across Asia. Believe me, you’ll feel more sympathy for them in the future.
You’ll fleece drunken salary men returning from a night out at a blowjob bar, bimbos looking for a new Gucci accessory, and naive teenagers who want to buy their first Rolex. And if you can’t agree about the price? Well, this is a society of Samurai, after all. Looking some defiant student in the eye, I’d draw back my shoulders and say:
“Are you a man?”
“Yes, of course!”
“Then let’s play junken!”
Also known as scissors, paper, and stone, this ancient game is sacred and few lacked the honour to pay your asking price if they lost.
But whatever you do, don’t convert the prices into dollars in your head because you’ll die laughing. You can sell pieces of purple string to put around the wrist for $15. It all depends on your confidence. Once, my friend told me, our boss was hanging around his stall and he set down on the table some lighter that he’d bought at 7-11 for two dollars. Some drunken businessman came along and fell in love with the thing. He was talked into buying it for $100.
Of course, the business is not exactly legal. I was working on a busy shopping street over Christmas, and in 10 days the police closed me down 35 times. They’d march up to my stall and shout angrily in Japanese I would pretend not to understand. They’d make me sign some form in Japanese, then I’d turn off the lights and look sorry. When they were out of sight, I’d open up again. They couldn’t believe I kept coming back.
“He’s a real tough cookie, this one,” they must have mumbled.
And if it wasn’t the boys in blue wearing me down with their clipboard and forms, it was the Yakuza. They’re paid off by the Israelis of course, but there’s always some drunk criminal who wants to scare a gaijin ( any foreigner.) Usually it was just some young, Mafia wannabe punk out to prove himself, but once I was fooling around with some pissed old guy who came to me on a quiet night.
“I am businessman!” He told me and held up his left hand with the missing little finger. When the Yakuza fuck up, honour demands that they cut off one of their finger segments to atone. As a guitarist, it was a horrific sight. All I could say was: “Yes, sir! No, sir! How many bags full, sir?”
On a good day, selling silver in Tokyo was like stealing food from a paraplegic, and I couldn’t believe how a nation of such hopeless suckers ever got so rich in the first place. On the bad days, though, when rain came with the cold and random street aggravation, I hated the work as much as my own corrupted soul for sinking so low as to take such a job.
Still, I was lucky. Over three months I managed to save about US$3,000, but others I met only managed to cover their costs. This is definitely a job best suited to pretty girls and good liars.
Infectious Diseases and Travel Clinic, Bnai ion Medical Centre, Haifa, Israel.
BACKGROUND: Drug abuse constitutes a major sociomedical problem throughout the world. A unique subgroup with a higher potential of drug abuse are young travelers to Southeast Asia.
Less than a handful of studies have focused on this population, and even fewer have been carried out on site. Our aim was to characterize the phenomenon of drug abuse among Israelis and other nationals, and to define risk factors that would predict which travelers are prone to abusing drugs.
METHODS: Data was collected through questionnaires that were distributed in Southeast Asia to 430 travelers. Medical students administered the questionnaires across India, Thailand, Nepal, Vietnam, and Laos during 2002 and 2003.
RESULTS: Questionnaires from 231 Israelis and 199 other nationals (mostly from the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia, and Germany) were analyzed. These travelers had a mean age of 25.3 years. We found that 54.3% of the travelers abused drugs during the trip.
Israelis (66.2%) abused drugs more frequently than did non-Israelis (40.7%, p < .001).
Males abused drugs significantly more than females did, as did secular more than religious people; however, those with an academic degree abused drugs less than others.
For 23.5% of the Israelis, the trip was their first encounter with drugs. Of the entire cohort, 72% abused cannabis products, and most of them (49.6%) did it on daily basis. The use of "hard" drugs (eg, lysergic acid diethylamide) was more common among non-Israelis than among the Israelis (37% and 20%, respectively; p < .006).
Much higher rates of drug abuse (70.1%) were found in India than in other Southeast Asian countries.
Logistic regression identified that prior use of drugs, Israeli nationality, travel to India, cigarette smoking, and traveling alone were significant predictors of drug abuse.
CONCLUSIONS: There is a disturbingly high rate of drug abuse in travelers to certain Southeast Asian countries, both among Israeli and other nationals. For many youngsters, this is their first encounter with drugs, and many plan to continue abusing drugs upon their repatriation. Travelers to Southeast Asia should be a major target group for primary, preventive, antidrug campaigns worldwide.
ISRAELI drug lords are increasingly targeting Australia for ecstasy smuggling, according to confidential Israel Police intelligence that shows crime syndicates view it as a booming market for the party drug.
Israeli crime syndicates control a significant share of the global ecstasy trade and have a long history of supplying the Australian market.
In March, 47-year-old Israeli man Benjamin RoMore..senfeld was sentenced in Sydney to 21 years' jail for importing 112 kilograms of MDMA powder, the main ingredient in ecstasy.
The shipment, valued at about $45 million, was organised from the northern Israeli port of Haifa.
According to Israel Police, Israeli crime gangs are smuggling large quantities of ecstasy from production houses in the Netherlands, then into Belgium and Spain. From there the route can be traced through the Middle East to Thailand or Singapore, then to Australia.
"We are well aware that members of the organised families here have established connections in Australia and view it as a lucrative and growing market that they are looking to exploit," a senior member of Israel's Coastal Police central unit told the Herald.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the police source said that Israel Police believed organised crime gangs using couriers who carried smaller parcels of drugs.
"This has been the pattern, especially because South-East Asia and Australia are such popular destinations for Israeli backpackers when they finish military service. They are young people, so this makes it easier for criminals to try to persuade them to carry drugs."
A Thai court sentenced two Israelis to death in November after convicting them of drug smuggling. The two men were arrested as part of a major drug operation and were caught with 23,000 ecstasy pills,which had been smuggled from Europe and were destined for sale in Australia.
The US State Department identified Israel as being at the centre of the global ecstasy trade in a 2003 report and said Israeli crime organisations had obtained control of the European ecstasy market.
"Organised crime is getting stronger in Israel, not weaker. Until we get more resources here to fight the criminals … their smuggling operations will continue to get stronger," the police source said.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, convened a special session of Parliament this week to develop a plan to combat the organised crime crisis. This followed the assassination on Monday of a senior mob figure connected to the Abutbul crime family. Another crime boss, Yaakov Alperon, 54, the head of the Alperon syndicate, was killed in a car bombing in Tel Aviv last month.
Figures presented to an inter-ministerial commission set up by the Israeli Justice Ministry showed that the country's five organised crime families turnover about $4.6 billion a year from criminal activity.
Israeli authorities pledged to devote greater resources to fighting organised crime. An Israel Police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said they were starting to make progress in a crackdown on drug smuggling.
"In recent weeks Israel Police have carried out several [successful] major operations," Mr Rosenfeld said.
This included the bust-up of an international cocaine ring, which led to the seizure of more than 1½ tonnes of cocaine being shipped from Peru.
However, Mr Rosenfeld disputed that Israelis had a major share of the world ecstasy market.
"Yes, there are Israeli cells operating, but our view is that it is a fairly low profile," he said.
Gupta the swastika salesman arrives at sunset, fires a kerosene lantern and displays his gold-painted trinkets on an Indian beach filled with hundreds of young Israelis dancing in a fog of hashish.
Draped in garlands strung with jasmine blossoms, the pulsating Israelis are freshly decommissioned from the military and seeking a cheap retreat to unwind from their obligatory two-to-three years of safeguarding the Jewish state. The conscripts find sanctuary in the thousands of dilapidated wicker seaside shacks and dozens of isolated jungle ghettos that weave along a 78-mile coast and snake up treacherous dirt tracks into the impoverished mountain villages of Goa.
According to Israeli and Indian officials, between 40,000 and 60,000 young Israelis have either permanently moved or established long-term residence in India. They have created new lives for themselves alongside the country's 900 million Hindus and 150 million Muslims and caused tension among the local population because of the widespread use of recreational drugs.
``Our souls need a permanent break from Israel,'' says army veteran Tomel Basel, 24, pocketing one of Gupta's 10 cent charms, the ancient cross with bent arms that is venerated by Hindus as a lucky adornment.
``We're all runaways,'' Basel says before filling his lungs with potent smoke and exhaling his separate reality on the squalor of Anjuna Beach. ``There's nothing for us back in Israel.''
What began in 1994 as the great post-military escape to India has turned into a new-age Diaspora of young and embittered men and women looking to flee what they say is their country's armed turmoil with the Palestinians and the spiritual emptiness of Judaism.
Many of the revelers on the sands of Anjuna Beach and elsewhere along what's known as the Karma Kosher Trail say they have no intention of returning to Israel, despite the efforts of four local rabbis and a $200,000 joint government-private sector campaign funded by Israeli banking and telecommunications magnate Nochi Dankner, a devotee of the Dalai Lama and chairman of IDB Holding Corp.
Shlomo Breznitz, a director of the campaign and founder of the India-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group in Israel, says the exodus is worrisome and potentially tragic. ``Karma kosher is much more of a widespread phenomenon than Israelis want to admit,'' says Breznitz, 71, a retired member of the Israeli parliament and former president and provost of Haifa University.
``India is about to become one of Israel's biggest trading partners,'' Breznitz adds. ``And we have 40,000 kids down there who have no idea when or if they will come back. Their attitude has already fueled very real anti-Israeli elements within the Indian government and created sufficient motivation for people in Israel and India to harm our bilateral trade agreements.''
Between 1992 and 2006, trade between Israel and India grew to $2.7 billion from $200 million and is poised to top $3 billion annually.
``Forty thousand over-enthusiastic Israelis in India are not going to get in the way of more than $3 billion of bilateral trade,'' says Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath. ``And there's enormous scope for increasing that trade.''
``Too much is at stake,'' Breznitz says. ``India has the world's second-largest Muslim population. There's a strong symbolic element to these youngsters, so it's not a question of if something might happen, but when it will happen. I read the security reports.''
Leanna Peled-Rosen, 27, doesn't care. She stripped the sergeant stripes from her sleeve in 2000, abandoning a promising military career as a self-defense instructor and anti-terrorist specialist to become a ballet dancer and live a Hindu lifestyle in Israel.
She is in Tel Aviv, saving money for a likely trip to India and aware of the growing economic ties between Israel and India in telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, construction, real estate and military hardware.
``The trade will further speed up the process of integrating Indian culture with Israeli society,'' Peled-Rosen says at the Sub Kuchmilga (Anything Is Possible) Indian restaurant. The sign on the door reads ``No Elephants Allowed.'' There's a bottle of bourbon on the bar and, on the jukebox, Bob Dylan is singing ``Changing of the Guards.''
``The government has absolutely no clue why we go to India,'' Peled-Rosen laughs, pointing to a group of uniformed Israeli soldiers huddled in a corner. ``The politicians will tell you that we live in a bubble, but it won't burst. Our spiritual lives are beyond the politics and religion of Israel.''
Peled-Rosen gestures toward a picture of Ganesh, one of the Hindu gods that decorate the restaurant. ``Those who have been forced to return from Goa because they've run out of money are vocal critics of the political and religious status quo,'' Peled-Rosen says. ``We won't back down.''
Two hours south of Tel Aviv, along the hardscrabble frontier of the Negev Desert, retired flower grower Rachamin Efraim pours a sweet drink on the Moshav Nevatim farm and smiles at the thought of young Israelis roaming the land of his forefathers.
``India is calm, a good place for young people who have grown up in a country where everyone is going crazy,'' says the 71-year-old Cochin Jew, one of some 70,000 Indian Jews Breznitz helped repatriate in the 1950s, more than 2,000 years after the tribe first arrived in southwestern India from Jerusalem.
Accompanying Efraim on the trip home to Israel in 1954 was Esther Atraham, then 18. Now 71 and living in the moshav's nursing facility, Atraham says it's foolish to begrudge the young Jews who have settled in Goa.
``Southern India is paradise on Earth,'' Atraham says, tugging the sleeve of her sari. ``I understand why the children go. They had a difficult time in the army. They want joy.''
Just how a disparate group of former Israeli soldiers over the past 13 years managed to build a stronghold in India without government oversight remains a mystery. Why they're leaving Israel is no secret among those preparing to head south from the 26 Rupee restaurant on the roof of a Tel Aviv warehouse.
``The war with the Palestinians never ends,'' says Smadar Waisman, 26, an Israeli Defense Force intelligence analyst who left the barracks to join an ashram in Israel.
``Military service turns good young Israelis into corrupt and insensitive people,'' Waisman says. ``We're forced to follow orders and do and see horrible things that no young person should be involved with. If you want your soul to survive the anxiety and depression of Israel, you leave for Goa.''
The long march from the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to Curlie's bar in the rocks overlooking Anjuna Beach would probably challenge Moses. Lapsed Israelis say it often requires skirting Indian visas, residency permits and making side trips to ``friendly'' Indian consulates in Beijing and Chiang Mai, Thailand. Some fly to Sri Lanka and jump a boat for the short ride across Pamban Channel, blending in among locals who are mostly exempt from Indian immigration checks.
``It's easy to pull off,'' says Anjuna Christian, a 66- year-old Frenchman who renamed himself after the beach he has lived on since moving here in 1977. ``The Israelis are Goa's next generational wave. They're coming no matter who likes it or not.''
Those who manage to secure a legitimate visa from the Indian Consulate in Tel Aviv pay $629 for a round trip that begins with a rickety bus ride to Amman and a Gulf Air flight to Bahrain and Mumbai. From there it's a sweltering and crowded nine-hour train ride to Panaji, Goa's capital.
The cost of deliverance is initially underwritten by the Israeli Defense Force. Combat veterans leave the army with a maximum cash bonus of $2,100. Combat support staff walk away with $1,800. Everyone else pockets $1,452.
On the beach, life is cheap and flea-ridden.
A room with a plank bed and a pink mosquito net costs $5 a night or $11 for three people. Sleeping under a fragrant cashew tree is free. Kitchens with names like the Outback Indian Israeli Restaurant come with Hebrew-speaking Hindus who ladle vegetarian fare for a few cents a plate.
``A lot of us either never served in the army or left it more than a decade ago,'' says Asaf Rottenberg, a 30-year-old waiter who abandoned his job at Tel Aviv's LaLa Land restaurant. ``People my age come here because Israel is an empty place.''
Historically, foreigners looking to sate their spiritual appetites begin at STARCO, an Anjuna hotel and restaurant that for 30 years has been celebrated as Goa's hippie headquarters. The sign on the roof still advertises ``Booze, Food & Shelter,'' dished out in that order by Swedish Maggie, who arrived in Anjuna from Stockholm 24 years ago and never left.
``You must respect the people in the country where you go,'' Maggie says while a young Indian boy massages her feet in the garden.
``The Israelis don't. They're real bad, causing trouble and getting too heavy in the drug-smuggling scene.''
``I'm not concerned about the drug use,'' says Indian Industry Minister Nath. ``The presence of Muslims in India is also not a concern. India is not just the world's biggest democracy, it's the world's rowdiest democracy.''
For Breznitz, a psychologist who once worked for the U.S. National Institutes of Health, karma kosher is more than a curious national crotchet with stark parallels to the American and European hippies who preceded the Israelis to Goa during the 1960s and early 1970s.
``It's dangerous,'' Breznitz says. ``There are hordes of young Israelis moving around India and
too many of them fail to blend in and look down on the locals.''
Breznitz's apprehension can be heard during conversations on the porch of a crumbling stone villa in Anjuna. It's from this old Portuguese house where Rabbi Meir Alfasi, 22 and an envoy of the powerful Brooklyn-based Hassidic group Chabad-Lubavitch, cheerfully spends his days tending two goats, three chickens and riding a motor scooter equipped with walkie-talkies around Goa, trying to bring Jews back to Judaism.
As Alfasi sees the scene, the 40,000 Jews wandering through India are prisoners in a new Babylonian Captivity.
``India is the lowest place on Earth, an impure place in the middle of idolatry'' Alfasi says.
``Lots of idols and lots of Jews looking to be assimilated in the local culture. Our mission is to prevent that from happening.''
The Chabad outpost, which includes a kosher kitchen and a room for a synagogue that holds Goa's only Torah, opened its doors in 2000. A dozen Jews for Saturday service is considered a good crowd. The chocolate cake is delightful.
``It's a big draw,'' Alfasi smiles.
Alfasi says Israelis generally remain in India for five to 10 years, adding that the Indian government is now quietly trying to help him reduce that time by limiting the number of visas it issues to Israelis and the period they can legally remain in the country.
``It will be hard for them to find us here, Meir,'' says Yomtov Yoni, 23, an air-conditioner repairman and Israeli air force fireman whom Alfasi is trying to bring back into the fold.
``India is huge,'' Yoni adds, straddling a motorcycle. ``Israel is the size of Anjuna Beach. We are free here, Meir.'' ``You see, the situation is not so good,'' Alfasi says,stringing flower necklaces around a 12-foot-high menorah and preparing a Friday Shabbat dinner under the stars.
Dancing alone atop a hill behind the nearby village of Arambol, 2,500 miles (4,022 kilometers) south of Mount Sinai, a young Israeli man with a mane of curly hair quotes the scripture according to Goa Gil, a roadie for the San Francisco band the Sons of Champlain who landed here in 1969 and transformed himself into a guru.
``The psychedelic revolution never really stopped,'' reads the gospel according to Goa Gil. ``It just had to go halfway round the world to the end of a dirt road on a deserted beach, and there it was allowed to evolve and mutate, without government pressures.''
As dawn breaks on Saturday, holy cows, Toyota taxis and sacred elephants clog the filthy, packed-mud path that coils through Arambol's slums, market stalls and genuine Indian massage parlors. The vapor of beer, saffron and breakfast hashish overwhelm the human chaos in the early morning heat.
Near the bottom of the beach road, a few dirt alleys down from an Israeli tattoo parlor, is the crisp white tent office of Ashok Kumar, a fifth-generation ayurvedic Indian healer.
The marquee above Kumar's turbaned head guarantees a remedy for a long list of afflictions that range from ``leprosy'' to ``typhoid.'' There are potions to relieve ``sexual disorders'' and spices to cure``madness.'' The line of patients is long.
``I see two or three Israelis every week,'' the 28-year-old Kumar says. ``They all have the same problem: madness. Their nervous systems are spent and they need their brains rebalanced.''
The cost of sanity is $16 to $35, depending on severity.
Back in the cool of his Haifa home, Breznitz likens the treatment to emancipation.
``They feel entitled to clean their heads from Israel,'' Breznitz says. ``I hope that those who come back return with a desire to change Israel, but a lot of people don't like new ideas and are frightened about what these youngsters represent for the future.''
To contact the reporter on this story: A. Craig Copetas in Goa, India, at
Here is the backstory to the political cartoon above:
In the summer of 2003, the world watched as land, water, and dignity were stolen from the Palestinian people — all with the silent complicity of the US media. To express my growing outrage, I drew this cartoon at my kitchen table in Maine.
After realizing that no newspaper would accept it, I decided to publish the cartoon as an advertisement in the NY Times. I focused on the quarter-page space in the Op-Ed section reserved for opinion ads. Contacting the Times, I learned that pro-Israel organizations had reserved the space for 30 of the next 52 Sundays. I took the first available date.
My cartoon was scheduled to appear on September 21, 2003.
The Times required several changes to the cartoon so that it conformed to the acceptability standards of the newspaper. These changes were made. The Times production staff then asked for and was sent the camera-ready copy.
I paid the cost of the ad in full.
On Friday, September 19 I received notification that the cartoon’s publication was cancelled by order of the Times’ publisher. I recall simply shaking my head at the news - wryly noting that this action by the Times was validating the very point of the cartoon.
I next submitted the cartoon to USAToday, where it was accepted. The morning that the cartoon appeared, I received a call at 8:45am from a USAToday vice president.
He said that in all his years at the paper, he had never had a response like what was happening as a result of the cartoon’s publication. Apparently, American pro-Israel groups are geared up for such "emergencies" and inundated USAToday offices nationwide with telephone calls and emails. But of course it was too late.
Two postscripts:
1. I received more hate mail/ threats than I did accolades.
2. A year later, senior management at USAToday was replaced.
In a hate-filled column in the San Francisco Chronicle (“Tree sitter is not in Berkeley any more” - March 18, 2009), Debra J. Saunders insinuated that Tristan Anderson, still lingering in a coma in Tel Aviv after taking an Israeli tear gas canister to the face, costing him part of his frontal lobe and possibly his right eye, deserves this comeuppance for daring to join Palestinians in protest against Israel’s illegal Apartheid wall, which divides farmers from their olive groves in the West Bank town of Ni’ilin. (He was taking pictures far from the wall, well after the protest had subsided.) Let Saunders look at bloody video of my friend Tristan, a former Berkeley Oak Grove tree-sitter, and say to his parents or his girlfriend that he “found out in the worst way that political protest outside the Bay Area isn’t all energy bars and catch-and-release.”
To be so angry, Saunders must have spent a lot of time sitting in traffic laying on the horn during the march in Tristan’s name, 500 strong by my count, which began at the Israeli Consulate on March 16 and wended through downtown San Francisco.
After the march for Tristan returned to the Israeli Consulate, SFPD officers charged up onto the sidewalk and viciously clubbed people without provocation, as video posted online plainly shows, sending one protester to the hospital for nine staples to his head. A few days later, on the same day four Oakland police officers were murdered, seething San Francisco cops again clubbed peaceful antiwar protesters, sending several women to the hospital with head and rib injuries.
"I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of Israel. And to the racism, hate and bigotry for which it stands, one cowed nation, under the Star of David..."
Controversial British MP George Galloway's request for an injunction to enter Canada has been denied by a Federal Court judge.
The decision prevents Galloway from appearing in person at an event in Toronto this evening, the first of three scheduled events in Canada.
The federal government has told Galloway he could not enter Canada because he allegedly engaged in terrorist activities.
In a letter to Galloway, the government says the MP delivered humanitarian goods to war-torn Gaza and gave $45,000 to Hamas, which is a banned terrorist organization in Canada.
On Sunday, one of the lawyers who made the injunction bid said Galloway gave money to the head of the government in Gaza, not to the head of Hamas, even though they are the same person.
Organizers of Galloway's speaking tour have said the Toronto speech, scheduled for 7 p.m. ET, would go ahead - either in person if he wins the court injunction, or via video if he loses.
Get your IDF "Baby Killer" T-shirts TODAY!!! Need any more American tax money Israel? Your gophers and suckups in Congress are always ready to gobble down another load of your "essence" in exchange for some $$$$$.
Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills."
There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range...Another sniper's shirt also features an Arab man in the crosshairs, and the announcement, "Everything is with the best of intentions."
What is the idea behind the shirt from July 2007, which has an image of a child with the slogan "Smaller - harder!"?
"It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally, and also the target is smaller."
Can You Help this Billionaire and stave off her imminent collapse, preventing her from winding up on the streets?
Time to sell that 103 million dollar yacht, which was appraised at 70 million last year. Let someone else have that 212' long floating palace with it's banquet room and cinema and nine guest rooms.
CARNIVAL Cruise heiress Shari Arison is unloading some of her luxurious possessions. The Israeli-American billionaire put her 211-foot yacht, My Shanti, on the block for $103 million this week. Shari and her brother, Carnival CEO Micky Arison, inherited portions of their father Ted Arison's fortune when he died, but due to the flailing cruise business, the siblings are hurting for cash. It was reported that Shari -- once labeled the richest woman in the Middle East by Forbes -- is "down to her last $2.7 billion." Carnival, the Arison Foundation and the yacht broker all declined to comment.
"Only 103 Million, folks, do I hear a bid for this luxurious playtoy?
The biding will start as soon as the downtrodden Shari returns with her yacht from her Mediterranean cruise.
This is a Dutch (Netherlands) documentary from 2005. It is about a 'Worst Case' scenario where speculation on the currency exchange market plus a substantial sell-off of dollars from a hedge fund cause a chain reaction in the market, the economy and the political system.
Mr. Robert Kagan and his wife, Mrs. William Kristol are proudly announcing to the world the birth of their baby, the Foreign Policy Initiative, nicknamed FPI.
"I'm so happy," beamed the obviously happy Mrs. Kristol, "That this newest creation, spawned from my rectum, will grow up to be just like his big brother, the Project for the New American Century , or as we lovingly call that thing, PNAC!!!"
Not to be outdone, the husband, Mr. Kagan said that "Having little FPI around to stir up trouble and woe on our cattle, the GOY, is a wonderful thing to behold. Maybe his brother, PNAC, will teach FPI how to make another Pearl Harbor," said Mr. Kagan, winking at me and smiling ear to ear.
Mrs. William Kristol said that "FPI will be a tax-exempt entity, since everyone knows that us Chosen Ones don't pay taxes, that chore is for our beasts of burden. Which helps make all the pain from the rectal tearing and anal warts I suffered bringing little FPI to life worth every thrust!!!"
"I must admit, but only to my numerous fans, that Mr. Kagan suffers from impotence and I had to get a little help from Jamie Fly, who did to me what he did to Ohio in the 2004 presidential campaign!!"
"As soon as we can, we're going to get the rest of our coven together and chant long forgotten spells written in ancient Greek and 6th Century BC Aramaic over little FPI to give him that little extra he'll need to accomplish his tasks," said Mrs. William Kristol. "This should put little FPI in touch with those we worship, like Sheol and Tophet!!"
Little FPI in all his crowning glory
This reporter couldn't but help notice the two horns protruding from the spawn's deathskull like head and the hideous grin on its face, but due to decorum, I elected to not point this out to the enthusiastic couple.
Reporting from Our Blessed Talmud Hospital in Manhattan, this is Ariel Sharon for Holocaust™ news service.
In Pursuit of Iran: How Zionist Echo-Chambers Sell The Scam
The Zionist Origins of World War III
They're at it again. The same pack of rabid dogs who helped scare Americans into invading Iraq and Afghanistan have another prey in their sights: Iran. This pack of mad dogs scents blood and is very adept at manipulating Americans into fighting wars for Israel by using their effective "echo chamber," a relentless assault on our senses.
Another predominantly Muslim country is being targeted by the "Wars for Empire and Israel" crowd. We're being told recycled lies about Iran that worked so well in scaring the hell out of Americans and making them believe that Saddam had "nooks" and was about to launch them at the USA. We're being told that Iran is smuggling YELLOWCAKE out of the Congo, just like Saddam had smuggled YELLOWCAKE out of Niger.
We're being told on FOX and HBO "comedy" programs like the boot licker Bill Maher's Real Time and in other media that the Iranians are a bunch of blood-thirsty killers, who want to let loose a nuclear Armageddon on the world, to bring back some messiah--When the truth is that real culprits that hope and pray for that are Americans, the oddly named "Christian Zionists."
Just like we were told that Iraqi's hate Americans and love death more than life.
And being deliberately scared by another raging Islamaphobe, a Russian Jew by the name of Jamie Glazov, mobbed up with the King of Islamaphobia, David Horowtiz. Glazov likes to compare Occupied Palestine to Nazi Germany and Hamas to Nazi's, bent on death and destruction because they love death and hate living.
Glazov says former President Carter lives in a moral sewer.
And yes, he rattles the sabers constantly, babbling on about Iran and how that nation is trying to start Armageddon, while portraying Israeli Jews as being "kind, peace loving, generous souls." Wonder what planet Glazov lives on?
We're being told time is running out, which is the BS fed to us back in early 2003 about Iraq. Relentless.
There is a country that is peopled with blood-thirsty psychos that has no qualms about using WMD's, especially on civilians. This nation has launched countless wars of aggression against mostly 3rd world nations, to either keep their thuggish bitch dictator in place or install some heavy-handed goon that will be happy with getting paid chump change while that nation's corporations rape, pillage and plunder the natural resources.
If you guessed that country to be Israel, you're close, but Israel comes in at #2.
The world's #1 terrorist state that is fond of using false-flags, of spreading lies and distortions on the MSM to start wars of aggression and of gladly killing civilians is the country that formerly belonged to We the People.
A BRAZILIAN archbishop dropped a bombshell overnight when he said Catholics and gypsies had been more persecuted than Jews during World War II.
"The Jews talk about six million people killed. But how many Catholics were victims of the Holocaust? They were 22 million in all,'' Archbishop Dadeus Grings, from Porto Alegre in southern Brazil, told advertising magazine Press & Advertising.
The archbishop also contended that while "Jews say they were the main victims of the Holocaust, the biggest victims were the gypsies, because they were exterminated".
The Jewish federation of the state of Rio Grande do Sul was quick to fire back, stressing that "this was not the first time Dadeus referred to the Holocaust in a distorted way".
UK Schools to make Twitter and Wikipedia mandatory
Whatever happened to reading, writing, and arithmetic?
A government commissioned overhaul of elementary schools in the United Kingdom would make learning about blogging, Twitter, Wikipedia, and podcasting mandatory.
National history? Well, that's covered in secondary school so it's up to the teachers to decide whether or not to teach it in elementary school. Oh, and they have to choose between teaching about World War II or Queen Victoria. Huh?
The plans, which will be drafted by Sir Jim Rose, who was appointed to overhaul the curriculum, will be published next month, according to The Guardian.
Here is a sampling of the changes:
"Children to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication. They must gain "fluency" in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spellchecker alongside how to spell."
" Every child would learn two key periods of British history but it would be up to the school to decide which ones. Schools would still be able to opt to teach Victorian history or the second world war, but they would not be required to. The move is designed to prevent duplication with the secondary curriculum, which covers the second world war extensively."
Bill Maher: Just another shill for Empire and Israel
Is Bill Maher, host of the HBO Friday night program Real Time, just another pimp and whore for Wall Street and the "Wars for Empire and Israel" crowd?
He never misses a chance to kiss establishment ass, like on his March 20, 2009 show, when he was licking that mass murderer's ass, "Bloody" Maddy Albright, Slick Willie's Secretary of State and all around skank. The same "Bloody Maddy" that said letting 500,000 Iraqi children die due to US and British sanctions was a jolly good way of doing business. He even flirted with that scuzz ball. Ugggh.
He kissed Israeli war criminal and 9/11 backer "Bibi" Netanyahu's perfumed panties, in a fawning display that was nauseous.
Billy boy's a dedicated Islamaphobe, never missing a chance to diss Muslims or crack wise about Islam, which is natural for some fool who still sings the praises of the 9/11 "Omission Commission."
He likes to make fun of those "conspiracy" theorists who say FEMA has build detention camps around the US. Tell you what Bill, if you won't believe us bloggers, take your face out of that mirror and read this story in your buddy Ariani's Huffington Post about those detention centers being built to house illegals and "to support the rapid development of new programs."
Bill likes his good friend, WH Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, giving that vicious bastard a forum to push for another war for Israel.
And likes to have on the notorious Bridget Gabriel, who claims Israeli's saved her from being beheaded as a teenager when the world's "most moral army" invaded Lebanon in 1975. First, the Israeli's "rescued" her mother, who had been wounded by "Muzzies," then they rescued Gabriel, who had been hiding from Lebanese "anti-Semites" who were stalking her to kill! Sounds like some goddamn Holocaust™ fairy tale, updated for 1975.
Here's part of a little talk Gabriel gives to Americans around the country. If she's not MOSSAD, I'll kiss her ass:
I was raised in Lebanon where I was taught that the Jews were evil, Israel was the devil, and the only time we will have peace in the Middle East is when we kill all the Jews and drive them into the sea. When the Moslems and Palestinians declared Jihad on the Christians in 1975, they started massacring the Christians, city after city. I ended up living in a bomb shelter underground from age 10 to 17 without electricity, eating grass to live and crawling under sniper bullets to a spring to get water.
It was Israel who came to help the Christians in Lebanon. My mother was wounded by a Moslem's shell and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment.
Yes, Israel is always coming to the rescue of the Lebanese. Like they did in the Summer of 2006. And in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in 1982.
Seeing a pattern here? Maher's obviously intelligent and smart enough to know in show biz, as in the US Congress, kissing Israeli ass and groveling before his Zionist Masters is important. He's just a refined, "hipper" version of Bill O'LIElly and Rush Limbaugh, pushing their brand of snake oil by singing a different tune.
Maher's a complete washed up, sold out shit head, but as long as he pushes the Establishment line, he'll be left alone to snort Peruvian flake, smoke hydroponic weed and fuck all the Playboy mansion babes his bones can handle without having to worry about getting busted.
Oh well, at least he's getting more than 30 pieces of silver for his soul.
Japanese view of the "War on Terror" in xenophobia - CAT SHIT ONE
Note the depiction of the camels as the bad guys. American, British and Zionist jingos generally refer to Arabs, Persians, Pashtuns and associated ethnicity "ragheads," "camel fuckers" and "sand niggers."
Similar criticism was leveled at Resident Evil 5 video game featuring Africans as belligerent zombies, until one plays the game to find out there are supporting African characters.
Jay Rockefeller: Internet should have never existed
Mr. Rockefeller, you should be ashamed to lash out at a bastion of liberty and free speech, but your tirade is to be expected. After all, you're nothing more than a bag man for Big Coal, which you slavishly serve and help rape your beautiful state for a handful of coins.
You're also part of the "Wars for Empire and Israel" crowd, voting for the illegal and immoral Iraq War and for giving the president a blank check for torture. And to let the same spy on Americans without warrants. For which you profited handsomely, raking in big bucks for your "campaign" expenses.
You've voted against programs to help children and ones to help poor students to afford college.
And your part of that notorious Rockefeller family that has been running con games on Wall Street for decades.
New York, NY, March 25, 2009 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) labeled a syndicated cartoon by Pat Oliphant appearing today in newspapers across the country and on the Internet as "hideously anti-Semitic" because of its use of Nazi-like imagery and hateful evocation of the Jewish Star of David.
The cartoon portrays a headless, jack-booted figure marching in a goose step with a sword in one hand and pushing a Star of David on a wheel with the other. The Jewish Star has fangs and is chasing after a woman carrying a child, labeled "Gaza."
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:
Pat Oliphant's outlandish and offensive use of the Star of David in combination with Nazi-like imagery is hideously anti-Semitic. It employs Nazi imagery by portraying Israel as a jack-booted, goose-stepping headless apparition. The implication is of an Israeli policy without a head or a heart.
Israel's defensive military operation to protect the lives of its men, women and children who are being continuously bombarded by Hamas rocket attacks has been turned on its head to show the victims as heartless, headless aggressors.
What's got Abe Foxman's knickers in such a twist? This cartoon:
"JA, VE have our ways of dealing with these pigs, JA!"
Continuously bombarded by Hamas bottle rockets? Yes, poor defenseless Israel is once again the victim.
Where's my hankies, I feel a good cry coming on!
Maybe if the cartoon had shown some headless Gazan kids, blown to pieces by some of Abe's buddies in the IDF, he'd like that better?
Or maybe the cartoon should of shown the wild animals in the Gaza Zoo that were machine gunned to death by IDF thugs, that would be pleasing to Abe?
How about some pics of the Gazan ambulances, medical clinics and food distribution centers that have been bombed into oblivion by the world's "most moral army," that would be A-OK with Abe, huh?
What's actually scaring fascist thugs like Foxman is that the world is getting wise to the #1 ME terrorist state and threat to world peace, Israel and that they might not be able to go on one of their regular killing sprees against Occupied Palestine without some repercussions.
Pity those poor Wall Street bankers, forced to fly to Congressional investigations in private jets. Don't recall anyone in Congress asking those Wall Street gangsters if they rode to the hearing in private jets, like they asked the Big 3 auto execs.
(Newser) – JPMorgan Chase, recipient of $25 billion in taxpayer money, is about to be the proud owner of two new luxury private jets and a lavishly renovated Westchester County airport hangar, complete with roof garden, ABC News reports. The $138 million purchase, described as “completely tone deaf” by one watchdog, will push at least one small carrier out of the hangar, cutting its business, and staff, in half.
The Gulfstream 650s are billed as the “most comfortable” private jets ever, while the hangar is described as “the premiere corporate aircraft hanger on the eastern seaboard.” JPMorgan claims no bailout money will be used in the purchases—part of the company’s normal aircraft replacement policy—and no payments will be made until TARP funds have been repaid.
If you needed to "liberate" some of OUR money so it could make "aliyah" to Israel, then you definitely need a private jet.
Curious as to what a 65 MILLION dollar Gulfstream 650 looks like?
Yes, life sure be hard for those Wall Street gangsters!
Obama announces his newest team of Bank Bailout Advisors
Secretary Larry comments on the current crisis: "Our genius ain't appreciated around here... let's scram!"
Secretary Moe, what is your opinion of this mess?" "Where are those three loafers?" "They're in there, talking politics. I just heard one of them say, 'Let's have a New Deal'."
Secretary Curly chimes in with: "Five hundred dollars!? Hmmm... that's almost a million!"
In an extraordinary move, the Charity Commission in Britain has issued a hostile briefing about the Gaza solidarity campaign inspired by Respect MP George Galloway, just before he arrived in North America for a speaking tour.
The Viva Palestina campaign, which organised a convoy of over 100 vehicles bringing aid to the besieged population of Gaza, has been in contact with the Charity Commission over the last week and sent it a substantial letter today in response to letters only received this morning.
Before receiving that letter, however, some officials at the Commission have issued a statement to the media to say they are launching a “statutory investigation”, even though the Viva Palestina campaign has sought to co-operate with all relevant authorities throughout. As Galloway touched down in the US to begin his speaking tour he made the following statement:
“If anyone needs investigating, it is the Charity Commission itself. There is no good reason why the Commission should jump the gun and issue a statement that it is launching an investigation when, in fact, it was about to receive the information and correspondence it had asked for. But there are plenty of bad reasons for this outrageous behaviour.
“Let the facts speak for themselves. On Friday, Rupert Murdoch's Sun reports that a right wing, pro-war, Bushite in Canada is stamping all over free speech and seeking to ban me from the country. On Saturday, Hazel Blears wrote to the largest Muslim organisation in the country calling for the head of its Deputy Director General Dr Daud Abdullah, because of his support for the Palestinian cause.
“On Monday morning, I set off to the US and Canada for a sell out speaking tour on the issue of Palestine. While I'm in the air the Charity Commission decides not to wait for a letter it had asked for and which will reach it tomorrow, Royal Mail permitting, but instead launches a public attack on the aid convoy I led.
“This isn't the first time the Charity Commission has intervened in a blatantly political way. It did it over the miners strike a quarter of a century ago and against other solidarity movements. It did it over my campaign against sanctions on Iraq, when it repeatedly went though the books of a political campaign despite the fact it never found anything untoward.
“In truth, I expected this kind of attack. So, I'm sure, did the millions of people whose support for the people of Palestine is an affront to the establishment and its organs. Doubtless supporters of the Iraq war and Israel's aggression against the Palestinians will hope that this will damage solidarity efforts. They are deluded.
“We won't be intimidated. Viva Palestina will continue to campaign. And if the reaction in Canada to these kind of attacks is anything to go by, I anticipate an even greater outpouring of support for our campaign – moral, political, financial and in every other way.”
