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Aug 29, 2010

Israel Seemingly Will Not Rest Until It Sets The Middle East Ablaze

 


 

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Israel-Seemingly-Will-Not-by-michael-payne-100828-349.html

August 28, 2010

Israel Seemingly Will Not Rest Until It Sets The Middle East Ablaze

For OpEdNews: Michael Payne* - Writer



Israel seems hell-bent on launching an attack on Iran, notwithstanding the fact that such military action could inflame the entire Middle East. Israel, which has a large and very potent nuclear arsenal, is convinced that Iran is developing a nuclear capability and, therefore, has clearly indicated that it is ready to strike at any given moment. The state of paranoia in Israel has reached new heights and now endangers the entire region.



While the confrontation between Israel and Iran has been going on for years, with the U.S. monitoring the situation, Israel's constant threats continue to exacerbate this highly tenuous situation. President Obama has largely been silent on this matter but did spearhead the UN sanctions against Iran. On occasion, he makes the foolhardy statement that, "all options are still on the table." Gone is his previous campaign promise that he would meet directly with Iran's leaders in order to seek a resolution to the standoff. Yet another broken promise? What else is new?



Both Israel and the U.S. have significant "vital interests" (there's that nebulous term that our president and the generals routinely use) in the Middle East region. With Israel, it's an obsession with using its military power to dominate the region; to make certain that no nation can pose a serious threat to its security. Over the decades it has demonstrated its military power on numerous occasions against those nations who dared to challenge it. Peaceful negotiations with any nation have no place in Israel's agenda.



The U.S. on the other hand has similar but far more ambitious objectives in the Middle East. For decades, it has been establishing a foothold in that region for one reason, and one reason only; it's all about control of critical resources, namely, oil - it's always been about oil. For those who still dispute that conclusion here is my question for them. If the U.S. continued military presence and actions over these many years is not about oil then what exactly do they think it is?



Well, the U.S. has this ever-growing presence in the Middle East because we are a nation that is largely dependent upon oil imports from OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) and other oil-producing nations. A decision was made years ago by the powers in Washington that we would not let any other nation gain control over the vast oil reserves of the Middle East; and that decision was underscored by the pre-emptive attack on Iraq.



In 2003, Saddam Hussein was the designated bogeyman and so Iraq, based on the Bush/Cheney lies about weapons of mass destruction, became a prime target and was taken down. Now some seven years later Mahmoud Amadinejad, the very vocal President of Iran, has been identified as the latest bogeyman that must be taken down, together with the Iranian nuclear power facilities.



The only remaining impediment to U.S. control of that region is Iran, that obstinate nation that refuses to be intimidated or become subservient to those who want to control the Middle East. You can bet that those in Washington and Israel are burning the midnight oil trying to figure out how to deal with this massive roadblock to their intentions. But however this situation is resolved, the most important issue is that someone, somehow must convince Israel that their attack on Iran would, almost certainly ignite a Middle East Inferno; one that could easily spread in a domino effect.



Here is the scenario that could unfold if Iran's nuclear facilities come under attack. On August 22 the Iranians started up their first nuclear facility, the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant. This plant will be internationally monitored and supervised, and the project includes a pledge by Russia to safeguard it against materials being diverted for potential use in developing nuclear weapons.



Russian officials were present at this start up and its engineers will be at that plant on a continuing basis so it behooves Israel to think twice or, rather, many, many times before it ever decides to launch an attack against that facility or for that matter, any other facility. If Israel would react in its typical impulsive way and if, in its constant state of paranoia, it suddenly initiates an attack, the consequences of that action would, without a doubt, infuriate the Russians; and that would not bode well for Israel.



Besides Russia, Iran has established a very good relationship with China. There are more than 100 Chinese state companies operating in Iran. Iran is a major exporter of natural gas and petroleum to China, which now has become Iran's most important trading partner. And as a part of this trade partnership, China has supplied Iran with more than 1,000 very sophisticated anti-air and anti-ship missiles.



Just imagine what might happen if, on a given day, the government of Israel decides to launch an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. When such attacks occur, as has been the case many times in military actions, one never knows where the bombs or missiles might explode. And just suppose that when the attack is underway that there are Russian advisers or nuclear engineers, or representatives from China present in those areas. Just think about what kind of "blowback" might follow.



At that point, crazy things could happen such as the start of a massive war that could involve Iran, Israel, Russia, China, and the U.S. And who knows how many other Middle East nations that might react to such an explosive situation? World wars can be ignited under various scenarios, such as when the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on June 28, 1914 resulted in World War I; or by monumental happenings such as when Germany rolled over the nations of Europe at the inception of World War II.



That a tiny nation of no more than 7.5 million people with an area of only 8,000 square miles could cause a massive regional war should be unthinkable. But with the current situation in the Middle East, and with Israel having an itchy trigger finger, it involves extreme danger for the entire world. In this very fragile world such a conflict could erupt into a major catastrophe with so many of these potential opponents having substantial nuclear capabilities.



This is a study in paranoid behavior. According to Wikipedia, "Paranoia is a thought process heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself." Does that describe the state of Israel today or what?



Living in the same neighborhood with a person or a family with those symptoms would certainly be a harrowing experience; but just think what it is like for a nation in the Middle East to listen to the almost daily diatribes coming out of Israel relative to their desire to attack Iran.

Israel is, literally, playing with fire if it goes off the deep end and springs an attack; but who is going to stop it? The only nation that has the influence and the power to dissuade Israel and to defuse this potential time bomb is the U.S. and its current president Barack Obama. But does that fact give anyone any amount of faith and confidence in this critical matter?



Our government and our president know full well just how very grave this situation has now become. Even a very small spark could set the Middle East ablaze. This escalating confrontation has reached a most critical point and it's time that our president, Mr. Obama, stops vacillating and proves to the world that he is worthy of his Nobel Peace Prize.

Michael Payne


*Michael Payne concentrates his writings on domestic social and political matters, American foreign policy and climate change. His articles have appeared on Online Journal, Information Clearing House, Peak Oil, Google News and many others.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.



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Spike Lee is wrong...The Truth About Tuskegee

 

Jared Taylor Archive
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February 02, 2004

The Truth About Tuskegee

By Jared Taylor

[Recently by Jared Taylor: American Renaissance's Conferences: Talking About The Taboo. To register for the February 20-22 AR conference, click here.]

The Tuskegee syphilis study ranks almost with slavery and lynching as a symbol of America's racist past. There is probably not one black American adult who does not know—or thinks he knows—about an experiment from the 1930s in which government health authorities deliberately withheld treatment from 400 black syphilitics just to see what would happen to them.

In some versions of story, the government deliberately infected the men. At the very least, the authorities are said to have been guilty of withholding the effective treatments that became available in the 1950s.

Blacks often cite fear of "another Tuskegee" to explain why few of them cooperate with public health programs or donate organs for transplant. They never know when white doctors might experiment on them.

Anthropologist Richard Shweder of the University of Chicago has just published a detailed analysis of the Tuskegee study in which he shows that virtually every popular assumption about it is false. (Tuskegee re-examined,  January 8, 2004)

The study was undertaken by "progressives" who wanted to fight a disease that afflicted many blacks, it had the full support of black medical authorities to the end, and—most important—it probably caused no harm to the 140 men (not 400) who took part.

The U.S. Public Health Service started the study in 1932 in Macon County, Alabama, where syphilis rates for blacks ranged between 20 and 36 percent.

At the time, there were a number of treatments for the disease but they were complicated, disagreeable, and not very effective. They involved a year-long series of carefully-monitored intravenous injections of an arsenic compound that had such unpleasant side-effects that fully 85 percent of patients dropped out before treatment was complete. Of the 15 percent who stuck it out, few were cured.

Public health officials knew they needed better drugs. But they also needed a baseline to which they could compare the results of treatment. This was why they wanted to know what happens if there was no treatment.

As Prof. Shweder explains, syphilis is not always the raging killer most of us think it is. First of all, it is only in the early stages of the disease, when sores appear on the body, that it is contagious. This was the only stage at which arsenic had any effect at all. After that, syphilis goes into a latent state, in which there are no symptoms, and the patient is not infectious. Untreated syphilis can then go on the tertiary stage and destroy vital organs like the heart and brain—this is what happened to famous victims like Nietzsche—but for perhaps 80 percent of syphilitics, the disease stays latent, as if they never had it. The longer the disease is latent, the longer it is likely to stay that way. It is, in Professor Shweder's terms, "self-limiting or self-correcting."

Today, most public information campaigns don't emphasize this. Health authorities trumpet the potential for devastation rather than tell people they have a good chance of escaping unscathed. The Illinois Department of Health is the exception in explaining that:

"If untreated, syphilis then lapses into a latent stage during which the disease is no longer contagious and no symptoms are present. Many people who are not treated will suffer no further consequences of the disease."   

It was this latent stage that health authorities wanted to investigate in 1932. Consequently, when they examined 410 syphilitic blacks for possible inclusion in the study, they found many were in the early, infectious stage, and rejected them as candidates. They turned over no fewer than 178 for the standard arsenic treatment, and kept 140 for the study. They then checked up on these men at rather lengthy intervals—in 1938, 1948, 1952, and 1963—giving them full physical examinations, and treating them for any disease other than syphilis.

A black nurse named Eunice Rivers ran the program, keeping in close contact with the men to make sure they did not drift out of touch. She was apparently a remarkable woman who created something of a social club around the study.

The outset of the program was therefore entirely unobjectionable. The men had already entered the latency stage of syphilis, for which the standard and largely ineffective cure of the day was no good at all. Foregoing that was no hardship, and in exchange they got free medical checkups and the benefits of Nurse Rivers' kind attention. The authorities at Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute blessed the study.

By the mid-1950s, however, penicillin became available as a standard cure for syphilis. Should not the Public Health Service have stopped the study and treated the men? Wasn't it "racist" not to?

No. By the 1950s, the men had been infected for 20 or 25 years. Some number had died of heart disease probably brought on by tertiary syphilis, but for those who were still alive in the 1950s, the disease had very likely run its course. Ninety men were still part of the program at the time of the last examination in 1963. Penicillin treatment, even when it first became available, would probably have done them no good. Prof. Shweder suggests that by then these men may well have had life expectancies as high as black men of the same age who had never had syphilis at all!

It is possible, of course, to criticize the study on he grounds that its subjects did not give "informed consent." No one explained the rationale of the study to them, other than to say they had "bad blood" (the euphemism for syphilis at the time), and that their occasional medical examinations had something to do with it. However, as Professor Shweder points out, the concept of "informed consent" did not exist in 1932. It was common for doctors to tell their patients very little, whether they were black or white. Shweder goes on to argue that since there was little harm to the men and some benefit, the Public Health Service would probably have had no shortage of subjects even if it had explained every detail at every stage.

Of course, the study finally was stopped in 1972, hardly helped by press coverage like that of the New York Times, which titled its July 26 story of that year, "Syphilis Victims in U.S. Study Went Untreated for 40 Years."

Not even the redoubtable Eunice Rivers was able to fight off the terrible cloud that descended on the program. It has gained a permanent place in the lore of American "racism."

The "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male," as it was officially called, is probably beyond redemption. The standard version of white perfidy probably cannot be displaced any more than the truth aboutAmerica's World War II relocation camps can displace the common conviction that they were "concentration camps" in which Japanese were forcibly interned.

Nor is this process of falsifying history in ways that discredit whites over. It is now common "knowledge" that DNA evidence has proven Thomas Jefferson fathered illegitimate children with Sally Hemings, even though it has done no such thing.

So many whites so badly want to hear the worst about themselves they can hardly let the truth spoil a good yarn about "racism."

Jared Taylor (email him) is editor of American Renaissance and the author of Paved With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America. (For Peter Brimelow's review, click here.) To register for the next AR conference, click here.


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New Report: Blacks Make Big Gains in Iowa Population

 

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2010/04/new_report_blac.php

New Report: Blacks Make Big Gains in Iowa Population


-- 
William Petroski, Des Moines Register, April 3, 2010


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Black Teens Chant "Beat Whitey Night" At Iowa Fair

 

Aug. 25, 2010

Black Teens Chant "Beat Whitey Night" At Iowa Fair



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Christopher Hitchens and the Quest for Grade-A Muslims

 



Christopher Hitchens and the Quest for Grade-A Muslims

by M. Junaid Levesque-Alam Almost 50 years ago, Frantz Fanon raced against death to finish his famous indictment of colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth. In that book, he wrote: "Western bourgeois racial prejudice as regards the nigger and the Arab is a racism of contempt; it is a racism which minimizes what it hates." But there [...]

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- UK Unions single out Israel boycott

 




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- Rabbi slammed for promoting 'genocide'

 






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Effort fails to open new Jewish day school in Pinellas County-JOOSCAM

 



Effort fails to open new Jewish day school in Pinellas County-SCAM


POSTED COMMENTS:

TimTom wrote:

Lets get a few things straight... The pinellas county Jewish day school closed because of poor financial deals, corrupt policies, lying and cheating others. They didn't pay employment taxes for two years and failed to pay bills. Not only did they do that, they didn't pay teachers their salaries and cheated each teacher out of eight to nine thousand dollars. Next, the new Jewish school failed to materialize because the few people trying to start it alienated others as it was political right from the start. They excluded people who were not on their inner circle. Shame on the Jewish community for ignoring the crimes of their own.TimTom wrote:

And another thing... Isn't it funny that they have not declared bankruptcy yet. The former board is trying to sue former families to get money and pay for their mistakes. Instead of paying the teachers, they are paying the lawyers

===========



The news article:

Link: http://www.tampabay.com/news/religion/effort-fails-to-open-new-jewish-day-school-in-pinellas-county/1115155

Effort fails to open new Jewish day school in Pinellas County


By Lorri Helfand, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Saturday, August 14, 2010CLEARWATER — Hopes of starting a new day school two months after Pinellas County's only Jewish day school closed have disintegrated.

A group had planned to open Tampa Bay Jewish Academy in Clearwater on Monday, but they were not able to attract enough students.

"It's very unfortunate," organizer Robby Cicco said. "The Pinellas County Jewish Day School closed late in the year, and we weren't able to get the enrollment."

Having such a school is vital for a number of families in the community.

"It reinforces the foundation you establish at home for Jewish identity," said Susan LeVine, whose children attended the Pinellas County Jewish Day School.

It's not just the quality secular education and Jewish studies that are important, Cicco said, "it's the camaraderie and socialization."

The Pinellas County Jewish Day School closed after 30 years in the community. It happened because of low enrollment, according to officials. But some parents said they chose not to enroll their children because they were worried about the school's financial problems.

There was a lot of "ill will" about the former day school, which rubbed off on the new effort, said Cicco, who wasn't involved with the Pinellas County Jewish Day School. His son is starting kindergarten this year.

A few weeks before the Jewish day school closed, more than 100 parents, educators and Jewish leaders met to discuss opening a new school. Parents of more than 75 children had expressed an interest.

But, over the next several weeks, enthusiasm dwindled as numbers shrank.

With the future of the new school unsure, parents were desperate to find other options or keep spots at private schools, Cicco said.

And, after the organizing group decided the school could include only kindergarten though second grade the first year, more families looked for other options.

By mid July, the group had a commitment of about 10 students for the new school, which was going to be housed at Congregation Beth Shalom. And that was well short of the 30 or so they needed to break even.

"It all kind of faded away," Cicco said.

Some parents, like LeVine, chose public schools.

More than 20 Pinellas students ended up at Hillel School of Tampa, with the help of scholarships from the Jewish Federation of Pinellas & Pasco Counties, said its executive director, Bonnie Friedman.

Friedman said she worked with community members to explore various opportunities for a day school. And she spoke with the head of Hillel School to see if there was a possibility of a satellite school in Pinellas in the future.

Amy Wasser, head of Hillel, said there has been no formal dialogue about that.

But, she said, "Hillel is always open to working with the community on both sides of the bay to make sure there are opportunities for Jewish education for the students of our community."

Cicco said he's not giving up on the quest to open a new Jewish day school.

"My hope is to keep trying for next year," he said.

LeVine wished her children could have graduated from the Pinellas County Jewish Day School. But she's confident her children, who are going to three different schools, will be fine.

"I'm looking forward to them mixing with the real world," LeVine said. "I think it's important they know they're Jewish and they are a minority, and they'll meet all kinds of different and wonderful kids."

Lorri Helfand can be reached at lorri@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4155.


[Last modified: Aug 13, 2010 07:58 PM] 

Copyright 2010 St. Petersburg Times




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