Letters to the Editor
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@Ché Pasa
“I made a joke the other day about "re-education camps," but honestly, how do you fix what's been done to so many of the institutions, including the military, the nation relies on?”
It’s an enormous task. We have to take the lead from Glenn by first tearing down, brick by brick, the hide-the-truth wall built by the Busheviks and then returning the power to the people so that we can bring a lot of new blood into the congress and elect a president who really wants to use the power of the people. The two things we have going for our side are the talented, dedicted people using the Internet and the great dissatisfaction among the American people who know things have to change. If we start believing that the task is nearly impossible, we won’t succeed.
The change has to come from the bottom up and that is what is happening which is why I am now very active in local politics, and continue to seek the truth through the Internet.
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@Mona
I'm conflicted about polygamy because it is different than polyamory in that it is a church or state sanctioned relationship. I don't care for either. You and I won't have any problem agreeing that child abuse is the issue, not polygamy, per se. OTOH, I can't imagine polygamy being a successful family model in any context where women's rights are as equally valued as men's rights but I suppose matriarchists may have an opinion on this as well. One wonders what thay might look like.
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@Mona
I forgot to mention that it is just as easy to "dismiss a new religion you don't like by calling it a cult" as it is to defend a cult by calling it "a new religion that someone else doesn't like." Some cults will never be new religions that anyone likes and the last thing the world reall needs is new or more religions. Just my opinion.
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This Just In
American arrested as nuclear spy for Israel
By Randall Mikkelsen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States arrested an 84-year-old American on Tuesday suspected of giving Israel secrets on nuclear weapons, fighter jets and missiles in the 1980s, in a case linked to the Jonathan Pollard spy scandal that rocked U.S.-Israeli relations.
The arrest of Ben-Ami Kadish indicates that Israeli spying revealed by the Pollard case, still an irritant to the U.S. alliance with Israel, may have spread wider than previously acknowledged.
"It was bigger than we thought, and they hid it well," said former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova, who prosecuted Pollard.
Kadish acknowledged his spying in FBI interviews and said he acted to help Israel, according to court documents.
He was accused of reporting to an Israeli government handler who was also a main contact for Pollard, an American citizen serving a life term on a 1985 charge of spying for Israel.
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said, "We will be informing the Israelis of this action ... 20-plus years ago during the Pollard case we noted that this was not the kind of behaviour we would expect from friends and allies, and that would remain the case today."
Authorities said Kadish was arrested in New Jersey on four counts of conspiracy and espionage after an investigation that began in 2005. The first spy charge carries a possible death sentence.
Kadish made an initial appearance at Manhattan federal court. Looking frail and shuffling, Kadish smiled briefly at the judge who ordered his release on $300,000 bail and restricted his travel.
Kadish did not speak, and his lawyer made no comment upon leaving.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said of the arrest: "We know nothing about it. We heard it from the media."
Pollard pleaded guilty in 1986. Israel gave him citizenship in 1996 and acknowledged in 1998 the former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst was one of its spies. Israel has unsuccessfully sought Pollard's release.
Kadish is a Connecticut-born U.S. citizen who worked as a mechanical engineer at the Army's Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey.
His spying lasted roughly from 1979 to 1985, and his contact with the unidentified Israeli handler continued until March of this year, the federal complaint against him said.
Based on circumstances of the case, DiGenova identified Kadish's contact as Yosef Yagur, who has been linked in court documents to the Pollard case. A Justice Department spokesman said he could not confirm that.
The complaint cited Kadish as saying that, unlike Pollard, he received no money from the Israelis.
'CC-1'
Kadish used his security clearance to borrow 50 to 100 classified documents from the arsenal's library, the complaint said. He worked from a list provided by the handler, identified in court documents as "CC-1." The contact photographed the documents in Kadish's basement.
One classified document Kadish passed on "contained information concerning nuclear weaponry," the complaint said. Israel is believed to have nuclear weapons but has never acknowledged it.
Another document related to a modified version of an F-15 fighter jet that the United States had sold to an unidentified other foreign country, the complaint said.
A third pertained to the U.S. Patriot missile air defence system. The U.S. military first deployed the system in 1984, and Israel used the system to defend against Iraqi missiles in the 1991 Gulf war.
The complaint said Kadish kept contact with CC-1, met him in Israel in 2004, and spoke with him by telephone on March 20 of this year, after his first FBI interview. It said the handler told him to lie to U.S. authorities: "Don't say anything ... What happened 25 years ago? You don't remember anything," CC-1 was quoted as saying.
The complaint said the handler worked as the Israeli consul for science affairs at its Consulate General in New York from 1980 to November 1985.
During the late 1970s, he worked for Israeli Aircraft Industries, an Israeli government contractor, the complaint said. It said the handler left the United States when Pollard was arrested and had not returned.
The details fit Yagur's history. A woman who identified herself as Yagur's wife, when reached by telephone in Israel, said: "We're not speaking to journalists. Goodbye."
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed, Christine Kearney in New York and Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Editing by Patricia Wilson and Peter Cooney)
H/T Pat Lang
OK. There was more than one Israeli spy working in the US at the time of the Pollard case. Is this supposed to be a surprise? People who were knowledgable have known for decades that the FBI has been working on espionage cases involving Jewish Americans spying for Israel. It takes a long time to assemble court worthy cases for charges like that, especially against political resistance from administrations of both parties. What you have seen in the last few years is the maturation of some of these cases in the presence of some sort of leverage whichthe FBI has developed that allows them to get the Department of Justice to prosecute. There may well be more.
Americans (and others) should understand that all (grown up) countries spy on each other. Information is the coin of international relations. Spying is better than warring. One should not assume that any country is "innocent" of such things. If it is, the citizens of that country should be unhappy. Their government is not meeting its security obligations to them.
The Mossad or whichever Israeli agency was involved have long and tragic histories of using Jewish citizens of other countries to spy on their governments. That is a most irresponsible thing to do. The practise has led to the deaths or imprisonment of many Jews around the world.
What is their problem? They can't recruit Gentiles? pl
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2008/04/israeli-spy-arr.html