By Stan Goodenough
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert tried Friday to explain the reasons why the Jewish people have "no choice" but to surrender the cradle of their nationhood and the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to the Muslim Arabs for the creation of a Palestinian State.
Anyone who believes that Israel can maintain its current hold on all Judea and Samaria is "living in a dream," he insisted. Israel "needs to withdraw."
In an apparent effort to sweeten the pill, Olmert told a group of Jezreel Valley farmers Israel would not withdraw unilaterally as it did from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
The abandonment of any more land to the Arabs would be negotiated step-by-step with the terrorist Palestinian Authority, he pledged.
Olmert further tried to persuade his audience as to the "necessity" of taking these steps.
"Everyone understands that the State of Israel can't exist without a guarantee of a Jewish majority," he said.
In order "to ensure" this majority Israel would have to make "tough decisions."
Israeli leftists have successfully used this specter of the "demographic bomb" to buttress their arguments in favor of land surrender. The findings of other groups which dispute this demographic ...   more »

Who knows what course histroy would have taken had the Israelite kingdom not split
The Man Who Saved Olmert
What Destroyed Solomon's Temple?
Moshe Ya'alon As a National Metaphor  
Next week, as mourners converge on Jerusalem the way they have been doing every Ninth of Av since 71 AD, Jews the world over will recall matter-of-factly that the temples were destroyed "for unwarranted hatred." Who can disagree? In this case, faith and research concur.
Yet this pertains to the Second Temple, the one that was built by Herod and torched by Titus after its defenders, while braving Roman arrows, found time to betray, starve and knife each other. Less thought is paid to the circumstances of the First Temple's destruction some five centuries earlier.
True, biblical Judah's catastrophe is the focus of the graphically morbid Lamentations ("Alas, women eat their own fruit, Their new-born babes! Alas, priest and prophet are slain, In the sanctuary of the Lord!") whose public reading launches the fast, yet that tragedy is more distant, and less documented, than the one we were handed by Rome.
The Second Temple is a vivid memory. We have accurate descriptions of its architecture, we know its remaining wall ...   more »

WASHINGTON, July 20 (RIA Novosti) - A former Reagan official has issued a public warning that the Bush administration is preparing to orchestrate a staged terrorist attack in the United States, transform the country into a dictatorship and launch a war with Iran within a year.
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, blasted Thursday a new Executive Order, released July 17, allowing the White House to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies and giving the government expanded police powers to exercise control in the country.
Roberts, who spoke on the Thom Hartmann radio program, said: "When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order], there's no check to it. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule."
"The American people don't really understand the danger that they face," Roberts said, adding that the so-called neoconservatives intended to use a renewal of the fight against terrorism to rally the American people around the fading Republican Party.
Old-line Republicans like Roberts have become increasingly disenchanted with the neoconservative politics of the Bush administration, which they see as a betrayal of fundamental conservative values.
According to a July 9-11 survey ...   more »

MONTEREY, Calif. - Jumbo squid that can grow up to 7 feet long and weigh more than 110 pounds are invading central California waters and preying on local anchovy, hake and other commercial fish populations, according to a study published Tuesday.  
An aggressive predator, the Humboldt squid — or Dosidicus gigas — can change its eating habits to consume the food supply favored by tuna and sharks, its closest competitors, according to an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
"Having a new, voracious predator set up shop here in California may be yet another thing for fishermen to compete with," said the study's co-author, Stanford University researcher Louis Zeidberg. "That said, if a squid saw a human they would jet the other way."
The jumbo squid used to be found only in the Pacific Ocean's warmest stretches near the equator. In the last 16 years, it has expanded its territory throughout California waters, and squid have even been found in the icy waters off Alaska, Zeidberg said.
Zeidberg's co-author, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute senior scientist Bruce Robison, first spotted the jumbo squid here in 1997, when one swam past the lens of ...   more »

Lawmakers in Indonesia's Papua are mulling the selective use of chip implants in HIV carriers to monitor their behaviour in a bid to keep them from infecting others, a doctor said Tuesday.
John Manangsang, a doctor who is helping to prepare a new healthcare regulation bill for Papua's provincial parliament, said that unusual measures were needed to combat the virus.
"We in the government in Papua have to think hard on ways to provide protection to people from the spread of the disease," Manangsang told AFP.
"Some of the infected people experience a change of behaviour and can turn more aggressive and would not think twice of infecting others," he alleged, saying lawmakers were considering various sanctions for these people.
"Among one of the means being considered is the monitoring of those infected people who can pose a danger to others," Manangsang said.
"The use of chip implants is one of the ways to do so, but only for those few who turn aggressive and clearly continue to disregard what they know about the disease and spread the virus to others," he said.
A decision was still a long way off, he added.
The head of the Papua chapter of ...   more »

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
WASHINGTON - Airport security officers around the nation have been alerted by federal officials to look out for terrorists practicing to carry explosive components onto aircraft, based on four curious seizures at airports since last September.  
The unclassified alert was distributed on July 20 by the Transportation Security Administration to federal air marshals, its own transportation security officers and other law enforcement agencies.
The seizures at airports in San Diego, Milwaukee, Houston and Baltimore included "wires, switches, pipes or tubes, cell phone components and dense clay-like substances," including block cheese, the bulletin said. "The unusual nature and increase in number of these improvised items raise concern."
Security officers were urged to keep an eye out for "ordinary items that look like improvised explosive device components."
The 13-paragraph bulletin was posted on the Internet by NBC Nightly News, which first reported the story.
A federal official familiar with the document confirmed the authenticity of the NBC posting but declined to be identified by name because it has not been officially released.
"There is no credible, specific threat here," TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said Tuesday. "Don't panic. We do these things all the time."
Homeland Security spokesman ...   more »