Meet Keratea: Greece's War Zone | zero hedge

Meet Keratea: Greece's War Zone | zero hedge

One of the more interesting "war zones" that most have never heard of is not in North Africe, nor in the Middle East, but in Greece. Meet Keratea, a small city of 15,000 people located close to Athens, where after over 100 days of struggle between authorities and the broder population, the riot police has officially decided to abdicate the city to its fate in what is the first popular mini-revolution in the developed world.

As unemployment rises and austerity bites ever harder, tempers seem to fray faster in Greece, with citizens of all stripes thumbing their noses at authority. Some refuse to pay increased highway tolls and public transport tickets. There has been a rise in politicians being heckled and even assaulted. Yesterday, in Thessalonika, scores of activists were arrested after violent clashes with police." Meet the new and improved face of austerity: now in a small town in Greece, which is about to default all over again, and soon in many other places in the increasingly more insolvent European periphery.

The PLO’s game plan revealed: Why the Hamas/Fatah agreement is a sham | NewsReal Blog

The PLO’s game plan revealed: Why the Hamas/Fatah agreement is a sham | NewsReal Blog

Fatah and Hamas hate each other and have no desire to cede their respective power. They will keep things together just long enough for September and their hoped-for international recognition. This is exactly what they have done in the past.

And here is how the PA is planning to incorporate Hamas while pretending that “Palestine” accepts Israel’s right to exist:

Tirawi dismissed concerns voiced over the possibility that a future Palestinian government with Hamas in it will refuse to negotiate with Israel, saying that the Palestinian government will have “no say” in such peace talks, since “the only body allowed to negotiate with Israel on behalf of the Palestinian people is the PLO.”

So this is the game:

The PLO is the party that negotiates with Israel, and the party that officially recognizes Israel.

The PA is only responsible for governing the Arabs in the territories, not with any foreign relations.

The PA, despite claims of being democratic, reports to the PLO.

The fake Hamas/Fatah reconciliation is meant to only address the PA, not the PLO. They won’t hold any elections until after September, if ever.

So the PLO will claim to still recognize Israel and be peaceful, as it will claim that from its perspective nothing has changed.

The instant that Palestine is declared a state that is recognized by the world, in part because of these assurances that it is a peaceful state that recognizes Israel, Hamas and Fatah (and all the other terrorist parties that decide to join the government) will immediately take over the PLO’s foreign affairs, as that is what nations do. The PLO’s foreign affairs role will be superseded by “Palestine.”

Who's fixing that airplane while you're getting groped? | Barbara Hollingsworth | Beltway Confidential | Washington Examiner

Every airline passenger knows the drill. Take off your jacket, shoes, watch and jewelry, cram your belongings into a plastic bin and stand in a long security line before meekly submitting to a naked scan or groping by latex-gloved agents of the Transportation Security Administration. Enduring such indignities, we’re repeatedly told, is the price we must pay for safety in the skies.

Yet there’s a very good chance that the mechanics who worked on the plane you’re just about to board weren’t patted down or fingerprinted. They might not have passed a background, drug or alcohol test. In fact, they might not even have a Federal Aviation Administration-approved license.

With the exception of American Airlines, which performs most of its fleet maintenance in the U.S., most of the major U.S.-based carriers outsource maintenance to places like China, El Salvador, Mexico, Chile and the Philippines, where security ranges from lax to nonexistent.  The danger of this widespread industry practice was highlighted in an April 6 report by the Transport Workers of America, Air Transport Division, which pointed out that  “At least one member of Al Qaeda was found working at a major maintenance facility in Singapore in 2003. The faulty procedures that allowed this lapse in security have not been addressed.”

 

Who's fixing that airplane while you're getting groped? | Barbara Hollingsworth | Beltway Confidential | Washington Examiner

The Ultimate Ally - By Michael Oren | Foreign Policy

The Ultimate Ally - By Michael Oren | Foreign Policy

Israel not only enhances America's defenses -- it also saves American lives. A kibbutz-based company in the Galilee has provided armor for more than 20,000 U.S. military vehicles. "Two days ago, my patrol was ambushed by insurgents using 7.62mm PKM Machineguns," David C. Cox, a platoon sergeant in Iraq, wrote the manufacturers. "None of the rounds penetrated the armor of the vehicle, including one that would have impacted with my head." Marine gunner Joshua Smith, whose Israeli-armored vehicle tripped an IED near Marja, Afghanistan, described how his unit "walked away smiling, laughing, and lived to fight another day." Military medical experts from both countries also meet annually to discuss advances in combat care. One such breakthrough was a coagulating bandage, the brainchild of a Jerusalem start-up company, a million of which have been supplied to U.S. forces (and even applied by a Tucson SWAT team medic to stanch the life-threatening head wound of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords).

Air France Flight 447 - Remus 6000 Autonomous Underwater Vehicles - Popular Mechanics

Air France Flight 447 - Remus 6000 Autonomous Underwater Vehicles - Popular Mechanics: "0 miles north of the plane's last known position." After Air France flight 447 disappeared off the Brazilian coast shortly after takeoff on the night of May 31, 2009, French aviation authorities were keen to find out what had gone wrong. To do that, they needed to find the wreckage, especially the plane's flight data recorders (black boxes). The only problem: The impact site was unknown.

To narrow the search, the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA) called upon oceanographic experts from 11 institutes around the world to assess where the wreckage most likely lay, based on ocean currents and on the final position that the plane's navigation computer had automatically broadcast. Those experts produced a 750-square-mile search area about 50 miles north of the plane's last known position.

Read more: Air France Flight 447 - Remus 6000 Autonomous Underwater Vehicles - Popular Mechanics

Closing Velocity: HISTORIC: Israel's Iron Dome Missile Defense Intercepts Gaza Rockets

Closing Velocity: HISTORIC: Israel's Iron Dome Missile Defense Intercepts Gaza Rockets: "The Iron Dome missile defense system on Thursday successfully intercepted for the first time two rockets that were fired at the Israeli city of Ashkelon from the Gaza Strip.

Iron Dome's success Thursday marks the first time in world history short-range rockets were ever intercepted."

Israel’s Blessing | FrontPage Magazine

 

Despite the world of troubles facing Israel, a miraculous resource discovery has come to the land.

President Obama has dissed Israel, the UN is no friend, and the nations surrounded Israel are hostile. It took Moses 40 years to lead the Israelites out of Egypt to the only land in the Middle East without oil—long a source of wry humor. But Israel, at last, has been granted an almost miraculous blessing.

First, in 2009, Israel announced the discovery of a major natural gas field off its coast in the Tamar region. Then at the end of last December, an immense natural gas discovery was confirmed in the Eastern Mediterranean within Israel’s territorial waters. It has the potential for making Israel a major energy exporter over the next decade while providing the country with possibly 200 years of natural gas. This could negate Israel’s plans to buy natural gas from Russia.

Noble Energy, Inc., a Houston-based company, made the discovery. It said drilling tests in its Leviathon field confirmed it was the world’s largest offshore gas find in the past decade and “easily the largest exploration discovery in our history,” said Charles Davidson, CEO of Noble, which has a controlling interest in the field. Leviathon is nearly twice the size of the Tamar field, also off the coast, discovered by Noble and its partners in 2009. The Leviathon discovery confirmed geologic models of the basin and “validates it contains significant natural gas resources,” Noble said. Chairman Gideon Tadmor of a partner company, Delek Drilling, said the field is “the largest gas discovery in deep water in the past decade. The field covers about 125 square miles, a story in Bloomberg News reported. The field could yield as much as 21.1 trillion cubic feet of gas, an independent engineering firm calculated, Energy-pedia news reported March 29.

Israel’s Blessing | FrontPage Magazine

ElBaradei: We'll fight back if Israel attacks Gaza - Israel News, Ynetnews

ElBaradei: We'll fight back if Israel attacks Gaza - Israel News, Ynetnews: "Former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who had previously announced his intetions to run for the presidency of Egypt, said Monday that “if Israel attacked Gaza we would declare war against the Zionist regime.'"

Fukushima on the Med? � Commentary Magazine

Fukushima on the Med? � Commentary Magazine: "No sooner had an earthquake and tsunami unleashed a series of events that led to disaster for a Japanese nuclear reactor than Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey planned to erect nuclear power stations in an earthquake zone.

If a disaster occurred in Japan, if it is likely in Iran, why not have Turkey make the same mistake for a third time? “We are now counting the months, even weeks, before we start our project with Russia for the nuclear plant at Akkuyu [in Mersin, on the Mediterranean],” Erdogan told reporters last month."

U.N. Vote on Palestinian State Could Force Israel's Hand - NYTimes.com

 

JERUSALEM — With revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East, Israel is under mounting pressure to make a far-reaching offer to the Palestinians or face a United Nations vote welcoming the State of Palestine as a member whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority has been steadily building support for such a resolution in September, a move that could place Israel into a diplomatic vise. Israel would be occupying land belonging to a fellow United Nations member, land it has controlled and settled for more than four decades and some of which it expects to keep in any two-state solution.

 

U.N. Vote on Palestinian State Could Force Israel's Hand - NYTimes.com

Israel, The Third Nation on the Moon? - Daniel Freedman - Freed Thinking - Forbes

Israel, The Third Nation on the Moon? - Daniel Freedman - Freed Thinking - Forbes: "If all goes according to plan, by December 2012 a team of three young Israeli scientists will have landed a tiny spacecraft on the moon, explored the lunar surface, and transmitted live video back to earth, thereby scooping up a $20 million prize (the Google Lunar X Prize), revolutionizing space exploration, and making the Jewish State the third nation (after the U.S. and Russia) to land a probe on the moon. And they’re doing it in their spare time."