I am sorry for the blog hiatus, but I follow a method of historical research a bit akin to method acting! I am absolutely immersed in the world of Burnes. I am in Bhuj at tne moment, and yesterday was at Mandivi looking at the shipyards and harbours where Burnes procured his boats to sail up the Indus – they are still made today. Much larger than I had realised. In Mumbai I identified a “lost”, uncatalogued portrait of Alexander Burnes which I think is the finest of him anywhere. The owners did not know who it was. It is by Brockendon like the one in the royal geographical society but is quite different, with him in military uniform. It is by Brockendon, not a copy.
Today disaster. I have lost ten days worth of notes. I noticed this morning that I had two versions of the identical document of my notes open – an .ODT on open office. One was a much older version. Paradoxically they had the identical file name but both showed as saved – the save icon was blanked on each.
Having checked that the content was all there on the version on which I was working, and that it was saved, I decided the best thing was to close off the extraneous version. Disaster!! An error message came up saying open office would now close. On restart, document recovery brought up only the old version, minus ten days work. I had a moment of hope when I right clicked on the document icon and saw “restore earlier versions of the document” but clicking on that just brought up a ,essage that there are no earlier versions available.
I am heartbroken- these aren’t just notes that can be recovered from memory, but also painstaking transcripts of old manuscripts, some of which I probably can’t access again even if I had the time and money.
I can think of a dozen things I might have done to avoid this situation. Comments on how to avoid such happenings are not welcome in the current trying circumstance. The real question is, can anyone think of anything at all that might help? I am running Open Office on Windows 7.
I really cannot express how much in despair I feel. This trip has cost all my available cash and I have to come back soon as money is out.
[If any mods have hung around while the blog is quiet, I am getting an extremely small typeface, only on this site. Do we have a problem, or is it another computer glitch personal to me?]
Just 75 miles away from the English coast, there were two small fires in a PWR nuclear power station in Dieppe. Nothing to worry about say EDF!
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If there is something serious happening and as the wind is blowing strongly in a NNE direction at the moment, any radioactivity will be sent down into Brittany. Vice versa, if the wind was coming from the SE, we would be in trouble. Nobody wins.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17630358
Boris’s earnings. This declaration follows a spat he had with Ken in the LBC lift. He called Ken a f…ing liar.
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Boris Johnson earned £1.3m in three years
London mayor publishes financial details as part of deal designed to end pre-election tax row with Ken Livingstone
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Hélène Mulholland, political reporter
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 April 2012
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Boris Johnson (left) and his rival Ken Livingstone (right) have been embroiled in a row over their tax arrangements. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA WIRE
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Boris Johnson earned just short of £900,000 in freelance earnings on top of his six-figure mayoral salary in the first three years at City Hall, figures published by the Conservative mayor reveal.
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In the past 12 months alone, Johnson, who earns £250,000 for a Daily Telegraph column, received an additional £139,625 in freelance earnings, alongside his £143,911 mayoral salary.
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The scale of Johnson’s earnings will fuel claims by his rival Ken Livingstone that the Conservative candidate stands to benefit significantly from George Osborne’s decision to scrap the 50p top rate of tax – a move for which Johnson has strongly lobbied.
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Johnson was elected mayor in May 2008. From the period covering 2008-2009 to 2010-2011, he earned £896,643 on top of his mayoral salary. Last year, he earned £473,280, on which he paid £210,410 in income tax, and £3,339 in national insurance contributions, giving him total earnings of £1.3m over three years.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/apr/05/boris-johnson-financial-details-earnings?newsfeed=true
Gunther Grass like many young Germans did not have much choice during the war.We’ve got a Pope that was in the SS and we had a UN secretary also in the SS. They were elite regiments. The best at being the worst.Some of the most famous SS officers were Jewish. Heydrich to name but one.
I’m glad he has spoken out. This nonsense which is playing itself out in the middle east is farcical beyond belief.
Israel has become everything it accuses everybody else of being and have turned the Palestinians into the persecuted people of Palestine in the process and if Israel succeeds with their ethnic cleansing then the irony will be complete.Who will they have left to kill,starve ,batter ,bruise and humiliate ? The Romans finally withdrew from Palestine. Wonder where the Israeli’S will go.
Herr Grass knew that he would be painted with the Anti Semite brush as soon as he stopped his silence,and wrote what is already in many of our minds,with the exception of the Senate in the US.
Maybe through his poem ,he can convince more people to stand up.
Israel really are a menace. Vanunu spoke the truth.
The truth is not anti semitic.
Sooner or later somebody will translate it properly, I merely have made a start, its heavy going, I’m knackered and hence shall not be claiming that this is the infinitive version. I shall not argue with scholars either.
Here are the first four paragraphs, I’ll do the rest over Easter, got another heavy day tommorrow.
What has to be said
Why am I silent, silenced for too long
what is obvious,rehearsed as it was a gameplay,
at its end, we, survivors, are merely footnotes.
It is the asserted right of a first strike,
which could incinerate Iran’s people whilst steered to jubilation,
and subjugated by a braggard,
because, within his powercircle,
an Atombomb is assumed to be build.
Yet, why forbid myself to name this country by its name
in which for years,-although kept secret-
a growing nuclear potential was available, but out of control,
unapproachable for checks.
The common concealment of the evidence,
under which my silence was subordinated,
I now sense as a burdened lie and compulsion, persecution a close prospect,
as one ignores it,
the verdict ‘antisemitismn’is familiar.
A big RIP to Jim Marshall, inventor of the Marshall amplifiers and speakers, the man has put fun into rock’nroll, without ghim many rock musicians would be playing banjo’s.
3.5 mins from Glenn Greenwald on the subject of “Terror” and “Terrorism” – worth a look (but needs to be watched by those outside of this blog, really):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7uUFaq7Z4s&feature
“Air Force ramps up drone war”
New documents reveal plans to more than quadruple Reaper missions by 2016
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“As the wars wind down,” is a phrase often heard in Washington these days, whether from Time’s Pentagon correspondent Mark Thompson or ProPublica’s T. Christian Miller, or Veterans for Common Sense. The suggestion, not unfounded, is that as the United States withdraws from Iraq and plans to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014, the U.S. soldiers will be leaving foreign battlefields.
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But don’t expect the worldwide drone war now being waged in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen to wind down. To the contrary, an Air Force announcement posted online this week indicates the Pentagon anticipates more than quadrupling the size of the global drone war over the next four years. If that happens the number of suspected terrorists killed, the “deep resentment” provoked in the targeted countries, and the terrible civilian casualties are likely to grow as well …
Full text: http://www.salon.com/2012/04/05/air_force_ramps_up_drone_war/
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(My emphases)
Thanks, Nevermind.
Much better than my attempt to decipher online translation (which was also heavy work)! Look forward to seeing the rest when you have the opportunity.
We seem to have reached roughly the same conclusions, but you have his voice and intentions, I think.
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Why be silent?
I’ve kept stumm too long.
It’s obvious,
it’s a practised business plan,
and at best we will survive as footnotes.
It’s the “right” to a first strike
to quench Iran’s people,
(the subjects of loud bullies,
their very celebrations organised)
because – somewhere – it is thought
they are building a nuclear bomb
-But why? I ask myself,
naming that other country.
That one, for years, though it’s kept secret
has had a nuclear capability,
growing, out of control, since
accessible to no inspection.
Universal silence on this fact,
embracing my subordinate silence,
I feel to be a weighty lie,
and there’s coercion, the prospective penalty
for disregarding it;
the familiar verdict of “antisemitism”.
Seems the Kikistanis are bleating about diamond geezer G Grass.
For those of you who like facts, download free pdf ‘The Hoax of the 20th Century'[8mb]. Go to
{vho.org/aaargh/engl/engl.html}
then scroll down to ‘Butz, Arthur – Hoax of 20th Century
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[Mod/Clark – denialist/revisionist link deactivated, but link text retained so you can judge for yourselves.]
Gunter Grass: What Must Be Said
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“Why be silent?
I’ve kept stumm too long.
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Yes, he seemed to be well-practiced at keeping quiet. Except with other people, of course. While he spent 60 years wagging his moralizing finger at Germans for their failure to remember the war he rather left out the fact that he was in the bloody SS! Slight ommission there!
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I quite agree with the historian, Joachim Fest, “After 60 years, this confession comes a bit too late. I can’t understand how someone who for decades set himself up as a moral authority, a rather smug one, could pull this off.”
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Donny Darko: Gunther Grass like many young Germans did not have much choice during the war.We’ve got a Pope that was in the SS and we had a UN secretary also in the SS.
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The Pope was never in the SS. Joseph Ratzinger was conscripted to the Hitler Youth but never attended any meetings.
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Donny Darko: Some of the most famous SS officers were Jewish. Heydrich to name but one.
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Heydrich was not Jewish, however, the rumour that he was Jewish did float about largely because he was feared and hated by other Nazis who wanted to discredit him. His supposed Jewish ancestry was even investigated by Gregor Strasser and found to be not true. (see Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich In Power p.53-54 for details).
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Boneyface: Seems the Kikistanis are bleating about diamond geezer G Grass.
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Well, whether “kikistanis” is using a racist term as its root is immaterial given that you have now linked to a notorious Holocaust denial publication at what looks like a neo-Nazi/white supremacist site. Just as I thought you couldn’t get any baser.
US troops in Darwin and US drones in the Cocos Islands.
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Dr Gideon Polya writes – extracted from https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by
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His entries are long and link-dense but worth ploughing through. Especially on drones here and elsewhere on Afghanistan opiate production and the deaths caused by opiate use.
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‘On 28 March 2012 The Conversation published an article about the proposals to make Australia’s Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean an airforce base for US drones. The article by Associate Professor David Glance (PhD in physiology from Imperial College London, director of the UWA Centre for Software Practice, a UWA research and development centre) was entitled “Spying, flying and delivering tacos – with drones the sky’s the limit”:
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{https://theconversation.edu.au/spying-flying-and-delivering-tacos-with-drones-the-skys-the-limit-6103 . The Conversation censored one of 2 comments I posted.}
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Komodo In the entry for 30 March on the link, there is a reference to ‘the Michael Hintze Fellow and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Centre for International Security Studies, Sydney University’. Those Hintze tentacles spread far and wide don’t they!
The disgusting way in which British citizen Babar Ahmad has been treated is appalling.
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http://johngossip.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/babar-ahmad-shameful-case-of-injustice.html
Far from taking Guenther Grass side, can it ever be too late to speak out?
This peom is about the inability of germans to loose the guilt of their forefathers, still eager to supply nationalists with ICBm capable ultrasilent submarines.
When Gunther Grass was pulled for the Waffen SS, he was 17, ein kleiner Butsche, and like many young boys his age mesmerised by the flagwaving torch bearers, he was taken in by the SS’s swagger and demeanor.
Sadly he choose to keep his story quiet for a long time, but there are Nazi’s still alive who never repented, who have been ‘overlooked’ too valuable for the allies, just as Werner von Braun was, nobody ever crows about them.
What is know of those brownshirts that joined Moseley? over 30.000 they say, have they suffered from their complicity? must be worth a research project for someone who can’t live without their daily does of WW2.
Did I see Angry back again? This is for him (and anyone who feels like they might need a smile)
“9/11 in under five minutes”
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/243744-9-11-In-Under-Five-Minutes
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(Sorry, I know the topic is forbidden, but this is comedy – kinda sorta)
Meanwhile, the “stunt” in Toulouse gets fishier:
“Thirty-two hours of fame: how the strange story of Mohamed Merah does not add up”
More at EndtheLie.com – http://EndtheLie.com/2012/04/06/thirty-two-hours-of-fame-how-the-strange-story-of-mohamed-merah-does-not-add-up/#ixzz1rFr44dr8
Sorry you lost your file, but hopefully a computer geek will be able to recover it for you.
As you are in India, let me suggest a morale booster: get a packet of Brooke Bond Red Label tea.
Angrysoba is of course obliged to toe his own party line, much as any citizen of Germany during WW2 was obliged to do. Hasbara demands no less. True, Angrysoba is not likely to be shot or to find himself doing hard manual labour on zero rations as the reward for dissent, but he has obviously bought into a romantic nationalist-supremacist myth. It would not surprise me to learn that he has served in the IDF, and we can take it as a given that he is unlikely to recognise, let alone speak out about the excesses of the Zionist state.
I am surprised at his lack of empathy with Grass.
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Me, I think anyone who faced Koniev on the Eastern front in 1945 and survived deserves respect at least, and I am not too worried about how and when they tell their story. The collective wrath of Zion against a tank gunner who had nothing to do with the holocaust is indicative of a desperate and conscious distraction from the serious issues he raises.
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Just one further thought: the 18-year-old Grass came out of the war (as The Tin Drum unequivocally shows) with the realisation that his country had been lied to by its leaders. Perhaps his brief service in a line regiment engaged in total war, in a devastated landscape, impeded by his destitute, fleeing countrymen, might have had something to do with that. If he had ever been a gung-ho Nazi (and simplistic philosophies are attractive to the very young) this was a notable conversion.
Quite an audience.
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@CraigMurrayOrg
Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, human rights activist and writer
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London, England · http://www.craigmurray.org.uk
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Follow
1,742 Tweets
28 Following
2,436 Followers
Nuid, great link. So good I’ll post it twice:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/243744-9-11-In-Under-Five-Minutes
Everyone on earth should see this (batshit tinfoil-hat babykilling conspiracy theorist or not)
Angrysoba: There’s quite a few books that explain Heydrich’s jewishness as the reason for his extremes in dealing with the Czech problem.If you go down a generation or two,you’ll find a jew in most german families. Isn’t that why the Gestapo were so hated ?
As for Ratzinger, SS Div 12 was Hitler Jugend.
Kids are only as good as their parents.. doesn’t matter. Not their fault.
Guess there was no way of denying Kurt Waldheim eh ??
It doesn’t matter if the Ghetto is Warsaw or Gaza, the crime is the same and its wrong.
The Rev. Komodo’s Thought for the Day:
Proposal: Christ was executed at the behest of the religious Jewish community of Palestine.
Zionists: Blood libel. How dare you associate us with the historical activities of our forebears? Antisemite.
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Proposal: Guenter Grass was a peripheral, late, and uninvolved member of an organisation, other parts of which, entirely, murdered Jews.
Zionists: Grass is obviously guilty by association, is and forever will be an antisemite and if you support him you are one too.
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Conclusion: Everyone is antisemitic
Zionists: Hooray. No-one can criticise us.
In case anyone hasn’t found it yet, the translation is here:
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/05/gunter-grass-what-must-be-said
“Meanwhile, the “stunt” in Toulouse gets fishier:
“Thirty-two hours of fame: how the strange story of Mohamed Merah does not add up”
More at EndtheLie.com – http://EndtheLie.com/2012/04/06/thirty-two-hours-of-fame-how-the-strange-story-of-mohamed-merah-does-not-add-up/#ixzz1rFr44dr8 ”
To say the least it was about as fishy as can be from the beginning. Now it just reeks!
Start > Control Panel > Backup & Restore Centre > Restore Files
That should hopefully work if you had previously updated the system. It will restore the file to the state it was in when the system was last updated.
…So you may still lose a bit of the work
Craig: Hopefully you are only immersed in your work and have recovered all that was lost.
A question, Britain has just pulled its embassy staff out of Mali. I have never noticed the withdrawal of Embassy personnel quite so often as I have under this Conalition from countries suffering internal problems. What’s the reason for what seems to me to be minor events? Usually Embassies are well protected from without and within.Does this not make GB look foolish or does it gain them respect at an International level ? The Tuaregs in this so called coup didnt even need to fire a shot. The Army ran.
We’ve got the Washington Post hoping that NATO will fly south and restore Democracy like they did in Libya.
I keep getting that gnawing feeling that the unforseen circumstances (chaos) in these newly liberated countries was the goal all along. Who needs more oil if you can double the price of the stuff that’s already on the market ? I just filled my tank today.. €80 for 64 Litres.I was complaining when there was parity.
They don’t need a war with Iran,just the threat of one.
I don’t agree with angrysoba about Grass – except that I think it’s rather strange that he kept so quiet about it for so long too. On the other hand he put his torment into his literature, which is what made The Rats such a gruelling, grotesque and gruesome read. Perhaps he, like many artists, thought that the proof was in the work, rather than the personal/personality.
However, to call someone Hasbara for having a different point of view is just sad. I’d far rather raise an eyebrow over someone who claims to be concerned for the persecuted minority (in this case, Palestinians) linking to Holocaust denier/anti semitic sites myself, but then I don’t like Nazis.
Encouraging Mary – I hope 38deg push hard with this.
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Thanks Azra – I hope to take a class of children there to learn…
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Speaking of radioactivity Mary…
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FUSION or CON-FUSION
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When brilliant scientist Brian Cox visited the National Ignition Facility, part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to film a piece for his Nat Geo ‘Future Energy’ series he noted the banner on the main entrance welcoming ‘Patriot Act’ Extension supporter and Zionist Dianne Feinstein and her mate Arnie ‘I’ll be back’ Swatzernegger to the facility complex.
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Brian was elated looking at the worlds most powerful LASER system and the prospect of future fusion power to save a world devoid of fossil fuel. The size of a football stadium, its 192 laser arms are aligned to less than the width of a hair according to project manager, Zionist Professor Moses .
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Unlike the European ITER project to investigate fusion, NIF has an ugly secret; their work is funded from the US Government nuclear weapons budget through the Stockpile Stewardship Program and presented to Congress as a vital facility for designing very small pure fusion bombs that do not require nuclear fission and hence no nasty radiation fall-out. In fact this type of bomb will produce very fast neutrons that will kill all life in a 500 mile radius while leaving infrastructure intact.
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This deception has managed to avoid the legal implications of violating a number of Treaties including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
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Hypocrisy to the max – bastards!!
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_fusion_weapon
Technicolour – I have already raised an eyebrow over said holocaust denier. Whose alleged concern for the Palestinians alternates with anti-Muslim rants: he can safely be dismissed from serious consideration. Is angrysoba hasbara? I think so. He promotes the Zionist agenda when he appears here And I am entitled to say so.
Why was Grass silent for so long? That is precisely the question the poem addresses:
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But why have I kept silent till now?
Because I thought my own origins,
Tarnished by a stain that can never be removed,
meant I could not expect Israel, a land
to which I am, and always will be, attached,
to accept this open declaration of the truth.
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Looks like he was right, doesn’t it?
@ Technicolour,
” I don’t agree with angrysoba about Grass”
It is hard to speak truth to power, without a label being placed on one.
If it must be said – for anyone who does question a country’s foreign policy and/or military conduct, they are then said to be ” anti-something”. Well anti the foreign policy and the military conduct, but this does not mean automatically anti the ethnicity such as being labelled anti-Semitic.
The truth:-
1948 there were Palestinians living on the land – and some 700,000 were displaced.
By 1967, under international law there was a recognition of the state of Israel and the 1967 boundaries.
After 1967, the policy of extension of and settlement on lands occupied by Palestinians has continued and there has from the on-set been Palestinian resistance.
So – Gunter Grass warns in his poem about the error Germany is making in selling the submarines to Israel and also questions the irony of the nuclear weapons holding Israel being unquestioned and unaccountable while the non-nuclear weapons and accountable Iran, being threatened with a first strike from Israel and/or the US. In this narrative in the poem it is not Iran cast as the “demon” and he does warn of the consequences of such a war being started – and he is correct.
Grass joined up to defend his country at a time of impending defeat, with little prospect of personal survival. How many Chattanoogas would defend the crumbling zionist entity without their American nanny? Come Der Tag, they’ll be fighting for the pedalos out of Tel Aviv. But if exiled Arabs have no right
of return to occupied Palestine, should we allow exiled Jews the right of return to Europe?
@angry
“a neo-Nazi/white supremacist site”
An Israeli one, then.