Abbas Rejectionable, Turkish Cyberwar Against Israel, $2.775 Billion From Congress To Fund Iron Dome

Gail Collins
Charles Blow

"BBC is reporting that Venezuela may have massive oil reserves, more than even Saudi Arabia. You know what that means? We could have invaded closer to home and saved gas." – Jay Leno

"Well, this week, Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston revealed exclusively to Us Weekly, my bible, that they are getting married. Sarah Palin allegedly not happy about this, because she feels they barely know each other and they are making a big commitment. You know, kind of like when John McCain picked her for vice president." – Jay Leno

"A CBS News poll found that 57 percent of Americans support Arizona's new immigration law, although if you change it from Americans to people living in America, the number drops to 2 percent." – Jimmy Fallon

Our special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, sat down with the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas this morning, but his request to restart face to face negotiations with Israel was rejected. Abbas wants two and a half things to happen before he will sit down. Basically, he wants the starting point to be where the two parties had left off before Israel invaded Gaza. He wants the borders of the Palestinian state to be the old 1967 borders, and he wants a more neutral third party like NATO troops to be the guards along those borders. The half thing he wants is that Netanyahu does not negotiate, because he has reneged on everything he has previously agreed to. Even though there is supposed to be a building moratorium in the West Bank, they grandfathered in so many ongoing projects that there hasn't been any stoppage of building at all.

The US is bribing Israel to agree to sit down in direct negotiations, by funding the largest military appropriations ever from Congress, over $2.75 billion, or one quarter of Israel's Defense budget. That's on top of the regular economic aid we send every year. We are funding a program of defensive missiles called Iron Dome, designed to stop missies fired from Syria and Jordan. Also, a series of joint military training exercises are planned, where we bring over a bunch of vehicles and jets and guns for the exercises, then leave them in Israel when we are done. It's a nice handful of gimmee...

Unfortunately, we don't have similar gifts to entice the Palestinians, because we want them unarmed. That's why the PA's want a neutral guard, they figure they might be safer. We do fund the PA, and if we withdrew our financial support, it might fall apart. We know that the other Arab countries refuse to support them, they see keeping their Palestinian brothers poor and unhealthy as an embarrassment to Israel rather than a cruelty bestowed by themselves. Yes, they cannot see the cinders in their own eyes...

Even though major countries like the US, Russia, South Korea, and China are coming to agreements on international cyber-security, the cyber wars have already begun. In the aftermath of the nine deaths incurred during Israel's raid on the Turkish flotilla going to Gaza, Turkish hackers obtained and posted the e-mail addresses, passwords, and other personal information of 30,000 Israeli web surfers. It was discovered by an Israeli blogger, who then informed the police and several web sites. The hackers were then able to: "... use the information to penetrate Israeli bank accounts, use Israeli credit cards and open accounts on different websites...  there was dispute amongst the Turkish hackers in the online forum on whether it was correct to use the information for financial gain. Some hackers felt that using the information to steal money would undermine their political agenda. There was also a discussion of what the Koran says is permissible to do with the money of infidels." To date, there has been no response from Turkish officials, who may have added their own ideas on what to do with the infidels money...

For the first time a car bomb was used by a Mexican drug cartel, in its ongoing war with Mexican authorities. In a few days we'll know if it was locally made or bought from Iran. If it was bought from Iran, that signals that two former enemies now have business relations. The benefit of drug cartels dealing with Iran means that there are now protected drug routes across Iran, making the possible flow of methamphetamines into Russia expand at a higher rate. Just when Russia acknowledged they were helping Iran with their nuclear ambitions... The bad news for the North and South American continents will be the increasing use of car and suicide bombers on our home turf, and increasing security involving cargo crossing the borders. So, here's hoping that this tragedy is a one time fling with this kind of violence, because the impending war between Columbia and Venezuela may erupt at any time...

RIP BlogNetNews, We'll Miss You...