Saturday, April 04, 2009
All Eyes on North Korea
The world's worst dictatorship, a nuclear-armed, Hitlerian hell on earth, will soon launch a ballistic missile capable of flying over Japan and reaching Hawaii and Alaska.
North Korea's missile test is illegal, a violation of a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution that followed the rogue nation's detonation of a nuclear device.
The launch is also intentionally provocative. Pyongyang is testing more than a Taepodong-2. The mass murderers in military uniforms and business (and leisure) suits are testing the United States and the so-called international community.
North Korea expects the West to fail this test. We sadly agree. The democracies are on the defensive; and China and Russia are likely to block moves to bring about new U.N. sanctions. (A Chinese-manipulated military coup is the best long-term solution for the North Korean problem.)
Meanwhile, Iran, is watching. As China Confidential first reported, a delegation of Iranian intelligence and military officers, scientists and technicians have traveled to North Korea to observe the launch; more important, Iran's political leadership is following every development. The Stalinist/Kimist state's Islamist ally regards the event as a test of the new U.S. administration's courage and political will.
China Confidential predicts that just as diplomacy failed to stop North Korea from developing atomic arms and ICBMs, diplomacy will fail to stop Iran from developing these weapons of mass destruction.Friday, April 03, 2009
World's Most Miraculous City is 100 Years Old
This reporter's favorite city on earth ... a tribute to the humanist spirit and the Zionist dream ... a city built against all odds ... is a century old. The Jewish Daily Forwardreports:Every few weeks, gay Arab men from all over Israel gather for a party at a rented nightclub on Tel Aviv’s Herzl Street. The highlight of the evening is a drag show, with heavily made-up amateur performers dressed as sexy, pouting Arab pop stars. They are followed by Raafat, a performance artist from Jaffa, who lip-syncs old-fashioned Palestinian nationalist songs. Nearly all these men lead double lives; if they were to reveal their sexual orientation in their conservative communities, they would risk ostracism or even death. But in Tel Aviv they are free to celebrate their Palestinian, gay identity — at a club located on a street named after the founder of modern Zionism.
Click here to continue.
This scene probably wasn’t exactly what Tel Aviv’s founders had in mind when they envisioned the first Hebrew city. But when one recalls that their intention was to build a truly modern city, informed by the ideals of 19th-century European liberalism and of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, it makes perfect sense. They laid the groundwork for the Middle East’s most forward-looking and culturally vibrant metropolis.
Then and Now: The city of Tel Aviv got its symbolic start on April 11, 1909, when a group of Jews gathered among the sand dunes north of Jaffa to draw lots for plots of land in what was planned to be a new Jewish neighborhood.
A famous black-and-white photo, taken on a beach just north of Jaffa, is believed to show a group of Zionist pioneers in April of 1909 drawing lots for plots of land, on which they would build what was then intended to be a new Jewish neighborhood. They called it Achuzat Bayit, or “Homestead.” A few months later, the name was changed to Tel Aviv, or “Hill of Spring,” after the Hebrew title of Theodor Herzl’s seminal novel, “Altneuland.”
Thus began one of Zionism’s greatest success stories — a thriving, intensely vital city built from scratch in only a few decades. It became home to the first high school with a curriculum taught entirely in Modern Hebrew. All the Hebrew-language newspapers that dominate Israel’s contemporary media were founded in Tel Aviv, their offices today still in their original locations. Habima, the Hebrew theater started in Moscow, ultimately found its natural home in Tel Aviv. And let’s not forget the first casino with Hebrew-speaking croupiers, or the modern era’s first brothel with Hebrew-speaking prostitutes and clients.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The above-referenced photograph of the founding of Tel Aviv appears below. Look carefully. Do you seen any Arab villages, any signs of life, except for the brave, Zionist visionaries seeking to establish the first Jewish city in the Land of Israel in 2,000 years?
Saturday 4 April 2009
Posted by Britannia Radio at 07:57