Ron Paul’s statement on the house floor:

Today the Dow Jones Average was down 350-some points, gold was up $32, and oil was up another $5. There is a lot of chaos out there and everyone is worried about $4 gasoline. But I don’t think there is a clear understanding exactly about why that has occurred.

We do know that there is a supply and demand issue, but there are other reasons for the high cost of energy. One is inflation. In order to pay for the war that has been going on, and the domestic spending, we’ve been spending a lot more money than we have. So what do we do? We send the bills over to the Federal Reserve and they create new money, and in the last three years, our government, through the Federal Reserve and the banking system has created $4 trillion of new money. That is one of the main reasons why we have this high cost of energy and $4 per gallon gasoline.

But there is another factor that I want to talk about tonight, and that is not only the fear of inflation and future inflation, but the fear factor dealing with our foreign policy. In the last several weeks, if not for months, we have heard a lot of talk about the potential of Israel and/or the United States bombing Iran. And it is in the marketplace. Energy prices are being bid up because of this fear. It has been predicted that if bombs start dropping, that we will see energy prices double or triple. It is just the thought of it right now that is helping to push these energy prices up. And that is a very real thing going on right now.

But to me it is almost like deja vu all over again. We listened to the rhetoric for years and years before we went into Iraq. We did not go in the correct manner, we did not declare war, we are there and it is an endless struggle. And I cannot believe it, that we may well be on the verge of initiating the bombing of Iran!

Leaders on both sides of the isle, and in the administration, have all said so often, ‘No options should be taken off the table — including a nuclear first strike on Iran.’ The fear is, they say, maybe some day [Iran is] going to get a nuclear weapon, even though our own CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate has said that the Iranians have not been working on a nuclear weapon since 2003. They say they’re enriching uranium, but they have no evidence whatsoever that they’re enriching uranium for weapons purposes. They may well be enriching uranium for peaceful purposes, and that is perfectly legal. They have been a member of the non-proliferation treaties, and they are under the investigation of the IAEA, and El Baradei has verified that in the last year there have been nine unannounced investigations and examinations of the Iranian nuclear structure and they have never been found to be in violation. And yet, this country and Israel are talking about a preventive war — starting bombing for this reason, without negotiations, without talks.

Now the one issue that I do want to mention tonight is a resolution that is about to come to this floor if our suspicions are correct, after the July 4th holiday. And this bill will probably be brought up under suspension. It will be expected to be passed easily. It probably will be. And it is just more war propaganda, just more preparation to go to war against Iran.

This resolution, H.J. Res 362 [listed as H. Con. Res 362 online] is a virtual war resolution. It is the declaration of tremendous sanctions, and boycotts and embargoes on the Iranians. It is very, very severe. Let me just read what is involved if this bill passes and what we’re telling the President what he must do:

This demands that the President impose stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains and cargo entering or departing Iran, and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials.

This is unbelievable! This is closing down Iran. Where do we have this authority? Where do we get the moral authority? Where do we get the international legality for this? Where do we get the Constitutional authority for this? This is what we did for ten years before we went into Iraq. We starved children – 50,000 individuals it was admitted probably died because of the sanctions on the Iraqis. They were incapable at the time of attacking us. And all the propaganda that was given for our need to go into Iraq was not true.

And it is not true today about the severity [of the need to attack Iran]. But they say, “Yeah, but Ahmadinejad — he’s a bad guy. He’s threatened violence.” But you know what? Us threatening violence is very, very similar. We must – we must look at this carefully. We just can’t go to war again under these careless, frivolous conditions.

Read more at campaignforliberty.com

SEE ALSO:
House co-sponsors
Senate co-sponsors
Please consider contacting them and letting them know how you feel.

The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh continues to detailing our road to war with Iran with remarkable clarity:

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. . . .

In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy. . . .

Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.”

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were “pushing back very hard” against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that “at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders”—the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world—“have weighed in on that issue.”

The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. . . .

The Democratic leadership’s agreement to commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon, and many others. “The oversight process has not kept pace—it’s been coöpted” by the Administration, the person familiar with the contents of the Finding said. “The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re authorizing.” . . .

“When Fallon tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.” . . .

But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military. . . .

“The coherence of military strategy is being eroded because of undue civilian influence and direction of nonconventional military operations,” Sheehan said. “If you have small groups planning and conducting military operations outside the knowledge and control of the combatant commander, by default you can’t have a coherent military strategy. You end up with a disaster, like the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.” . . .

In recent months, according to the Iranian media, there has been a surge in violence in Iran; it is impossible at this early stage, however, to credit JSOC or C.I.A. activities, or to assess their impact on the Iranian leadership. The Iranian press reports are being carefully monitored by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who has taught strategy at the National War College and now conducts war games centered on Iran for the federal government, think tanks, and universities. The Iranian press “is very open in describing the killings going on inside the country,” Gardiner said. It is, he said, “a controlled press, which makes it more important that it publishes these things. We begin to see inside the government.” He added, “Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash somewhere. There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.”

Earlier this year, a militant Ahwazi group claimed to have assassinated a Revolutionary Guard colonel, and the Iranian government acknowledged that an explosion in a cultural center in Shiraz, in the southern part of the country, which killed at least twelve people and injured more than two hundred, had been a terrorist act and not, as it earlier insisted, an accident. It could not be learned whether there has been American involvement in any specific incident in Iran, but, according to Gardiner, the Iranians have begun publicly blaming the U.S., Great Britain, and, more recently, the C.I.A. for some incidents. The agency was involved in a coup in Iran in 1953, and its support for the unpopular regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi—who was overthrown in 1979—was condemned for years by the ruling mullahs in Tehran, to great effect. “This is the ultimate for the Iranians—to blame the C.I.A.,” Gardiner said. “This is new, and it’s an escalation—a ratcheting up of tensions. It rallies support for the regime and shows the people that there is a continuing threat from the ‘Great Satan.’ ” In Gardiner’s view, the violence, rather than weakening Iran’s religious government, may generate support for it. . . .

Gardiner also mentioned a trip that the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, made to Tehran in June. After his return, Maliki announced that his government would ban any contact between foreigners and the M.E.K.—a slap at the U.S.’s dealings with the group. Maliki declared that Iraq was not willing to be a staging ground for covert operations against other countries. . . .

The Pentagon consultant told me, “We’ve had wonderful results in the Horn of Africa with the use of surrogates and false flags—basic counterintelligence and counter-insurgency tactics. And we’re beginning to tie them in knots in Afghanistan. But the White House is going to kill the program if they use it to go after Iran. It’s one thing to engage in selective strikes and assassinations in Waziristan and another in Iran. The White House believes that one size fits all, but the legal issues surrounding extrajudicial killings in Waziristan are less of a problem because Al Qaeda and the Taliban cross the border into Afghanistan and back again, often with U.S. and NATO forces in hot pursuit. The situation is not nearly as clear in the Iranian case. All the considerations—judicial, strategic, and political—are different in Iran.”

He added, “There is huge opposition inside the intelligence community to the idea of waging a covert war inside Iran, and using Baluchis and Ahwazis as surrogates. The leaders of our Special Operations community all have remarkable physical courage, but they are less likely to voice their opposition to policy. Iran is not Waziristan.” . . .

The former official said that, a few weeks later, a meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. “The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,” he said. . . .

Obama repeated his plea for “tough and principled diplomacy.” But he also said, along with McCain, that he would keep the threat of military action against Iran on the table.

Read more from www.newyorker.com

A rare assertion of Congress’s authority:

“‘By refusing to answer even the most basic questions about this program, the Department of Justice has given us little choice. In fact, we’re only doing what they told us to do,’ said Congressman Brad Miller in a statement. ‘The Department of Justice… said that if Congress didn’t like what they were doing, we could pull their funding. Well, that’s what we’ve done… Until an agency can provide reasonable explanations, and assurances that our citizens’ privacy won’t be violated, it would be irresponsible to give the Department of Justice this large increase in funds.’

The project, known as the National Security Analysis Center (NSAC), is supposed to bring together ‘hundreds of millions of electronic records created or collected by the FBI and other government agencies,’ ABC News notes. The idea is to use that ‘vast ocean of data to ‘predict’ who might be a potential terrorist, in the absence of intelligence linking the man or woman to any radical or extremist group.’”

Read more from blog.wired.com

This article is outrageous and disguisting. It’s so wrong in so many ways, I don’t even know where to begin. This is like punching someone in the face, then accusing them of conspiring to hurt your fist.

Read more

“DAMADOLA, Pakistan, June 27 (Reuters) – Taliban militants in northwest Pakistan publicly slit the throats of two Afghans on Friday after they were accused of spying for U.S. forces suspected of launching a missile strike in May.

The two men, one of them a former Taliban fighter, were brought blindfolded before a crowd of several thousand people near the village of Damadola in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border before they were executed.

. . . .

The crowd shouted Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest) when the Taliban held up the severed heads of the victims who Rehman said were from the eastern Afghan province of Kunar.”

Read more from uk.reuters.com

. . . and what the people’s champion in Congress is doing about it.

The following appears on Dr. Ron Paul’s Congressional website:

“You may not have heard of the American Community Survey, but you will. The national census, which historically is taken every ten years, has expanded to quench the federal bureaucracy’s ever-growing thirst to govern every aspect of American life. The new survey, unlike the traditional census, is taken each and every year at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. And it’s not brief. It contains 24 pages of intrusive questions concerning matters that simply are none of the government’s business, including your job, your income, your physical and emotional heath, your family status, your dwelling, and your intimate personal habits.

. . . .

Keep in mind the survey is not voluntary, nor is the Census Bureau asking politely. Americans are legally obligated to answer, and can be fined up to $1,000 per question if they refuse!

I introduced an amendment last week that would have eliminated funds for this intrusive survey in a spending bill, explaining on the House floor that perhaps the American people don’t appreciate being threatened by Big Brother. The amendment was met by either indifference or hostility, as most members of Congress either don’t care about or actively support government snooping into the private affairs of citizens.”

Read more from www.house.gov/paul

“Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen leaves Tuesday night on an overseas trip that will take him to Israel, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. The trip has been scheduled for some time but U.S. officials say it comes just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get the Bush administration to strike Iran’s nuclear complex.

CBS consultant Michael Oren says Israel doesn’t want to wait for a new administration.”

Read more from CBSNews.com

See Also:

The AIPAC Girl: “[Nancy Pelosi] quietly agreed to strip out of the $100 billion funding bill for Iraq a provision that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before launching any new war on Iran.” This war-enabling, AIPAC-inspired move by Pelosi is also covered at accuracy.org.

Iraqi Drones May Target U.S. Cities

Monday, February 24, 2003

WASHINGTON — Iraq could be planning a chemical or biological attack on American cities through the use of remote-controlled “drone” planes equipped with GPS tracking maps, according to U.S. intelligence.

The information about Iraq’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program has caused a “real concern” among defense personnel, senior U.S. officials tell Fox News. They’re worried that these vehicles have already been, or could be, transported inside the United States to be used in an attack, although there is no proof that this has happened.

Secretary of State Colin Powell showed a picture of a small drone plane during his presentation to the U.N. Security Council earlier this month.

“UAVs outfitted with spray tanks constitute an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons,” Powell said during his speech. “Iraq could use these small UAVs, which have a wingspan of only a few meters, to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or, if transported, to other countries, including the United States.”

Powell said there is “ample evidence” that Iraq has dedicated much time and effort to developing and testing spray devices that could be adapted for UAVs. “And of the little that Saddam Hussein told us about UAVs, he has not told the truth,” Powell said.

Read more from FOX”News”.com

There’s an important, controversial and (surprise, surprise) under-reported effort underway to legitimize our military occupation of Iraq past this coming December’s expiration of the UN mandate.

In Debate Over Permanent Bases In Iraq, U.S. Seeks Authorization For War In Iran
The ongoing negotiations between Iraqi leaders and the Bush administration over the future role of the military occupation “have turned into an increasingly acrimonious public debate.”

The Bush administration’s demand for 58 permanent bases in Iraq — a near doubling of the current 30 bases — are causing Iraqis to warn that the status of forces agreement would be “more abominable than the occupation.” The administration is reportedly holding hostage “some $50bn of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement.”

The reason the White House is so hell-bent on signing a long-term agreement may have less to do with Iraq and more to do with Iran. According to press reports of the ongoing negotiations, the Bush administration is seeking the “power to determine if a hostile act from another country is aggression against Iraq.” Ali al Adeeb, a leading member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party, confirmed:

The Americans insist so far that is they who define what is an aggression on Iraq and what is democracy inside Iraq. . . if we come under aggression we should define it and ask for help.

The administration’s request would seemingly allow the U.S. to brand Iran as an enemy of Iraq and attack Iran in the name of defending Iraq pursuant to a legal obligation under the status of forces agreement. Read more from thinkprogress.org

Iraq takes a turn towards Tehran
[Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki] is torn between appeasing the United States, which brought him to power and kept him there despite all odds, since 2006, and pleasing his patrons and co-religionaries in Tehran.

The Americans tell him to sign a long-term agreement between with the US, maintaining 50 permanent American military bases in Iraq. The Iranians angrily order him not to, claiming this would be a direct security threat to the region as a whole, and Iran in particular. The Americans reportedly are pressing to finalize the deal by July 30, 2008, upset that no progress has been made since talks started in February. Iran has carried out a massive public relations campaign against the deal, calling on all Shi’ites in Iraq to drown it. Read more from Asia Times Online

Baghdad insists on right to veto US operations
Iraq is insisting on the right to veto any US military operations throughout its territory under a “status of forces” agreement currently being negotiated between Baghdad and Washington, according to a senior member of the Iraqi government.

The agreement will last for a maximum of two years and can be terminated by either side with six months’ notice, Hussain al-Shahristani, Iraq’s oil minister, told the Guardian yesterday.

His remarks come amid intensive closed-door negotiations between the Iraqi and US governments which have led to complaints in the US Congress as well as Iraq that the Bush administration is tying the next US president’s hands by seeking to maintain long-term bases in Iraq for possible attacks on Iran and other neighbouring states.” Read more from prisonplanet.com

Legalizing occupation: Bush’s last manoeuvre in Iraq
Now the Bush administration is ready to crown its Iraq travesty with a long-term strategy that would turn Iraq’s occupation into a lasting one. The US is ‘negotiating’ a treaty with the Iraqi government, one that would replace the UN mandate and legalise the US occupation of Iraq permanently.

Basically, time is running out for Bush. If no treaty is reached by the end of the year, his administration could find itself pleading to the Security Council for another extension of the mandate. This would be an embarrassing and dangerous scenario for US diplomacy because it would allow Russia and China to re-emerge as important players wielding fearsome veto powers. Read more from onlinejournal.com

SEE ALSO:
-Bill Presses Iraq to Recognize Israel from forward.com

“Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano signed a bill today that prohibits the implementation of the REAL ID in Arizona. SB2677 received a Final vote of approval in the House last week by an overwhelming margin of 51 to 1. Napolitano’s signature was uncertain until today when she signed the bill into law.

The bill prohibits implementation of the REAL ID Act of 2005, which was passed by Congress as part of a supplemental spending bill for tsunami relief and the War on Terror. The bill did not receive a hearing in either the House or the Senate, and the public was largely unaware of it until it had already been signed into law.

‘Everyone thinks that the REAL ID is just about protecting us against terrorism,’ said co-sponsor Senator Karen Johnson (R-18). ‘But it really represents a cash cow for technology companies as well as the birth of the National ID card, complete with all the biometric information that technology can handle face recognition, fingerprints, etc.’

‘Corporations which specialize in selling identity cards stand to gain millions of dollars in profits if the Real ID Act is implemented,’ said Johnson, ’so, of course, they’re eager for everyone to be required to carry a National ID card everywhere they go.’ Two of those corporations are Digimarc ID Systems and L-1 ­ the Number 1 and Number 2 companies for the manufacture of state driver’s licenses and identity cards. L-1 is considered the main driver behind the REAL ID and last year had nearly $100 million in federal contracts involving identity cards. Digimarc spent $350,000 in the first six months of 2007 lobbying Congress on the Real ID Act. Apparently the two companies are soon to be merged, resulting in a powerhouse corporation, pushing the ‘identification-as-security’ concept to the maximum in order to increase company profits as they add more and more biometric features to state driver’s licenses.

. . . .

‘It’s odious, onerous, and a violation of our civil liberties.’

‘I refuse to be tagged and numbered,’ said Johnson. ‘Requiring people to carry papers takes away their freedom. There are other, better ways to stop terrorism and to protect us against criminals. The federal government needs to butt out and let the states handle driver licensing. It’s not the business of the Dept. Of Homeland Security to tell us how to run our state.’

Real ID ­ SB2677
1. Proponents always claim that the sole purpose of the Real ID is to prevent another 9/11-type attack by disrupting terrorists travel. That is bogus. If the government really wanted to prevent such an attack, they would secure our borders, which would (1) cost less than implementing Real ID, (2) would be more effective at keeping terrorists out, and (3) would be less intrusive and less inconvenient for American citizens. Until the borders are secure, all the rosy pleas for the Real ID are just so much hogwash.
2. The Real ID will cost the states billions of dollars. The Dept. Of Transportation estimates that in Arizona alone, it will cost $40 to $70 million to implement just in the first year, and $15 to $20 million in subsequent years. But they really don’t have a clue ­ they don’t know what the regulations are going to be yet. They are just estimating. It will depend on what the Rules say when they are finally issued.
They already do some things that will be part of the requirements. For example, they already check citizenship, or whether or not someone is legally authorized to be in the country. So that would not be an additional expense. But even factoring in that some things required by REAL ID are already being handled, the $40 to $70 million is over and above what we already do!!!
3. The Real ID is an invasion of privacy. Why should so much personal information be compiled on one place for so many people to have access to?
* medical history
* social security number
* insurance information

4. The Real ID increases the risk of Identity Theft. Identity theft is a major problem in Arizona already. Throwing everyone’s personal information ­ including social security numbers, birth dates, medical information, driver’s license and auto licensing information, etc. ­ into one massive data base just makes it easier for identity thieves to harvest identities for fraudulent purposes. The Real ID requires all Arizona driver’s license information to be compiled with all the information for the other 49 states and the District of Columbia into one massive database that will be accessible by thousands of clerks and government employees throughout the country. This is a horrendous idea, an invitation to identity theft on a massive scale.”

from rumormillnews.com

“It appears the Ron Paul wing of the Idaho Republican Party has scored its first victory at the party’s state convention in this North Idaho resort town.

The state party’s platform committee voted overwhelmingly Friday to add to state platform language supporting abolishing the Federal Reserve System and pegging the dollar to gold and silver.”

Read more from idahostatesman.com

“In a major change of policy, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that passengers refusing to show ID will no longer be able to fly. The policy change, announced on Thursday afternoon, will go into force on June 21, and will only affect passengers who refuse to produce ID.”

Read more at dailypaul.com

London:

“London police have announced a ban on anti-war campaigners hoping to protest against President George Bush’s visit to Downing Street this Sunday. The Whitehall ban has been immediately condemned as a ‘totalitarian act’ by the playwright Harold Pinter, while Stop the War organisers are urging people to defy it and to demonstrate nearby in Parliament Square.” Read more from thefirstpost.co.uk.

France:

“Not content with simply limiting itself to blocking despicable child sex abuse, a move three major ISPs in the US also agreed to today, the French government feels it necessary to go a radical step further and decide for its citizens whether or not they can view content it considers inappropriately racist and or linked to terrorism.

In fact, worse still is that any site is now game for a French blockade, as Sarkozy’s government is inviting people to send in huge long lists of sites which offend their delicate sensibilities. The French government, which will purportedly be able to receive complaints from Internet users in real time, will be able to add sites to a so called ‘black list’, which it will then force national ISPs to block.” Read more from theinquirer.net.

-Among my five prediction for 2008, was “the threat of child predators will be leveraged as an excuse to regulate the internet, or internet access.” Fascism is being carried to us with (arguably) good intentions and great slogans. I wonder if skaskiw.com might be considered linked to terrorism, since I advocate something other than obliteration of Islamic nations and peoples, since I sometimes say “Palestinian” without saying “terrorist,” since I refuse to hate or fear anybody, since I believe in liberty, in the Constitution.

The unfortunate truth is that any and every media-approved politician goes before AIPAC and promises whatever they want. Even Obama, the supposed peace candidate, joins them in their great lies. Iran is NOT a threat to the the United States. Obama also weighed in very inappropriately on the long-standing issue of Jerusalem. I’m no longer sure I can vote for him.

I.

from ynetnews.com (6/4/08): “Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Wednesday Iran posed a ‘grave’ danger in the Middle East and vowed to stop it from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

‘The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat,’ Obama said in a speech to a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. ‘I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon; everything,’ he said to a standing ovation. (Reuters)”

-I’m tired of everyone pretending like this shit isn’t being said. He, like McCain, is pledging another needless war. More and death and destruction, more hatred and lies by our media, more deployments for our military, more coffins, more trillions of dollars borrowed from Asia or printed out of thin air. Enough is enough. The threat of terrorism best met by good police, and good border security, not military occupations of foreign countries, and certainly not by invasions of countries under false pretenses.

See Also:
-From salem-news.com: Carter Reveals Israel’s Possession of 150 nuclear weapons
-From thinkprogress.org: Lieberman, Bennett, And Kristol See Petraeus Hearing As ‘An Argument’ For ‘Going Into Iran’
-from english.aljazeera.net: Arabs Shocked by Obama Speech

II.

from ynetnews.com (6/4/08): “Democratic US presidential candidate Barack Obama spoke at an AIPAC meeting in Jerusalem saying that ‘Jerusalem will remain the undivided capital of Israel.’”

-Why does the road to the U.S. Presidency seem to run through Israel? Jerusalem was captured by Israel during the 1967 war. It’s status is a long-standing and very controversial issue between Israel and Palestine. Obama has no business siding so definitively on Israel’s side for political gain.

See Also:
-from nytimes.com: Israel Demolishes 8 Arab Homes in Jerusalem
-from haaretz.com: Israel razes Arab home in J’lem over illegal building permit. “While the home was built without a permit, Palestinians say it’s virtually impossible for them to obtain building permits in Jerusalem.”
-The Israeli Committee Against House Demolition
-from ynetnews.com: Israel approves plan to build 1,300 homes in East Jerusalem.
-from news.bbc.co.uk: “The rights group, B’Tselem, said the cameras were provided to enable Palestinians to get proof of attacks. A spokesman for the Israeli police said that an investigation was under way. So far, no-one has been arrested.” BBC News obtained video footage of yet another violent settler attack against Palestinians, this time, a 70-year-old farmer and his 58-year-old wife. Realize that this is what our taxes subsidize.
-from upi.com: US suspends move of embassy to Jerusalem.

From Britain’s timesonline.co.uk