OBAMA RE-WRITES HISTORY ON BUSH AND JERUSALEM

A Soviet "nonperson" vanishes: commissar Nikolai Yezhov retouched after falling from favor and being executed in 1940.


The falsification of history via the doctoring of documents and photographs didn't begin in our modern computer era. In Stalinist Russia, it was commonplace for Soviet history to be rewritten with individuals who had somehow fallen afoul of Stalin removed from official photographs. In one noteworthy sequence, a photograph of Stalin with three revolutionary leaders is airbrushed and cropped and clipped until, one by one, those leaders disappear and only Stalin is left - conveying the message that Stalin carried the Russian Revolution by himself. Another photograph from the 1920s depicts a meeting of dozens of trade-union and Bolshevik leaders; by the late 1930s, all but a handful of them had been murdered at Stalin's orders.

For Joseph Stalin, photo retouching was a technique for controlling public perception and memory. People who vanished in real life - whether banished to the farthest reaches of the Soviet Union or eliminated by the secret police - vanished as well from photos, and even paintings. In many cases they were airbrushed out completely, in others their faces were clumsily blacked out with ink.

Now this creepy rewriting of history is being replicated by the current occupiers of our own Whitehouse; the Obama Administration; from Commentary magazine:

The Obama White House is gearing up for a Supreme Court case in which it will defend its refusal to list “Jerusalem, Israel” on the passports of Americans born in the Israeli capital. As part of its preparations the administration recently scrubbed all the captions on a White House photo gallery of Vice President Biden in the city, changing “Jerusalem, Israel” to “Jerusalem.” The optics of methodically erasing the word “Israel” from the White House webpage caused a predictable uproar.

The point of posting these two photos (above and below) is to show that, although the State Department refuses to say that Jerusalem is in Israel, even the White House website acknowledges this elementary truth. But not any more; within two hours of posting, the White House has apparently gone through its website, cleansing any reference to Jerusalem as being in Israel. Click on the photos to get a clear read on the respective captions.

They are attempting to literally "wipe Jerusalem, Israel off of the map" -S.L


. . . then, when the Washington Jewish Week’s Adam Kredo published an article claiming that the Bush administration had enforced an identical policy. Kredo cited a “search of the Bush White House’s archives” and photos of Laura Bush touring the Western Wall to conclude that the Bush White House webpage “never explicitly labeled [Jerusalem] as part of Israel.” . . . Obama’s defenders latched on to his article . . .

Elliot Abrams responded in a quote he gave to Jennifer Rubin, forcefully insisting that Kredo was “just wrong” and that the Bush White House “did not have a hard and fast rule that prohibited referring to Jerusalem” as part of Israel in documents and captions.

Basic Google searches are enough to show that Abrams is right and Obama’s defenders are flat wrong.

Sometimes Bush-era White House photos explicitly identified Jerusalem as being in Israel and sometimes they didn’t, just like sometimes they explicitly identified Tel Aviv as being in Israel and sometimes they didn’t. A naive “Jerusalem, Israel” Google search on the Bush White House archives is sufficient to turn up this 2002 photo of Vice President Cheney captioned as “a press briefing in Jerusalem, Israel.” It also turns up this photo labeled “Mrs. Laura Bush visits the Western Wall Tunnels… in Jerusalem, Israel.” That’s from the exact, precise, identical tour that Kredo linked to in order to “hammer home the point” that the Bush administration “never explicitly labeled [Jerusalem] as part of Israel.”

Getting beyond photo captions, Bush-era documents show that the previous White House was indeed able to correctly identify the city of Jerusalem as being inside the state of Israel. The record shows that the President even acknowledged that the Jerusalem consulate – the same one that won’t issue passports referencing “Jerusalem, Israel” – was located in Jerusalem, Israel. Bush’s statement nominating Jeffrey Feltman to be ambassador to Lebanon, for instance, explicitly described Feltman’s previous position as “Deputy Principal Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, Israel.”


Read all the details of this incredible story HERE


It gets worse for Obama’s defenders, though, than merely being demonstrably wrong. It turns out that while they were insisting that the Bush administration consistently refused to reference “Jerusalem, Israel,” the Obama State Department was busy scrubbing documents in which Bush administration referenced “Jerusalem, Israel.” Straight down the memory hole. That’s kind of amazing when you pause and think about it, no?

The “Jerusalem, Israel” captions and statements from the Bush-era White House are digitally archived and frozen, and so beyond the administration’s reach. But Bush-era State Department reports are stored on the Obama State Department’s servers. Two old documents in particular – the State Department’s FY 2002 and FY 2003 Performance and Accountability Reports – come up quickly in searches. When they were originally written they both had appendices identifying the location of the Jerusalem consulate as “Jerusalem, Israel.” Some time in the last two weeks that location was changed to “Jerusalem.” Whoever made the changes even went back and scrubbed the old “hard copy” PDFs. You can do the compare and contrast yourself. Click on these links for scrubbed versions of FY 2002 HTML, FY 2003 HTML, FY 2002 PDF, FY 2003 PDF, and on these links for cached original versions of FY 2002 HTML, FY 2003 HTML, FY 2002 PDF, FY 2003 PDF.


- SEAN LINNANE SENDS


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WAR WITHOUT END - Part II

the War on Terror from the perspective of an Israeli soldier.

Continued from Yesterday.

When Israel, representing the Jewish People, came back to the Temple Mount in June 1967, the Western World was electrified, the Islamic world dumbfounded, terrified, and confused. The Israelites returned to their ancestral homeland. Something monumental was happening. Western Reporters during the Six Day War could barely contain their emotions. Everyone was waiting for some kind of universal message to come flowing out of the Temple Mount like Isaiah or something.

This is the scene where 1,900 years earlier in the year 70, a crazed war-hardened suicidally determined Jewish People almost beat the entire Roman army defending the Second Temple. The Greeks at Thermopylae were a close second. Josephus speaks about how Titus had to bring in Legions all the way from England to finally crush the Jews, who even then kept on fighting after the Temple was destroyed.

And then, 1,900 years later in 1967, we got it back against our will. We didn’t even want it. Levi Eshkol, at the time the Israeli Prime Minister, was literally begging King Hussein of Jordan to stay out. He didn’t of course. So Israel had to take back Judea and Samaria, today sadly referred to as the “West Bank” to hide Jewish association with it. And then we came back to the Mount.

And everyone looked at us. What are they going to do? Their ancestors fought like rabid dogs there, they had a Temple, twice, that still is the very beating heart of what would later become Western civilization. “Do something!” the Western world screamed. They ached for some kind of Messianic message.

Of course, we had no idea what to tell them. Jews can’t stand all this responsibility. We don’t want to speak in the name of God. It makes us nauseous. We’re a stiff-necked people. The Temple Mount was too much for us, so we just gave it right back and did nothing. Now we think some wall that Herod, that evil king built, is holy. The Wailing Wall, we call it. Ha. What fools we are. Now the world sees us as occupiers in the “West Bank,” a land that isn’t ours. We showed everyone we didn’t want it, so why are we complaining?

When we left that Mount, the War on Terror began, in June 1967. Not September 2001. Why? Because the inspiration, the possibility for terrorism, began when they saw that the spiritual center and founder of Western civilization – the Jewish People – lacked spiritual direction, which we refused to provide the world when we had the opportunity. We were too scared to speak in the name of God. That’s when the other side realized the West is spiritually weak. That yes, maybe the West can destroy you militarily, but in the end, they’ll just retreat in confusion about why they fought you in the first place.

How do we turn this around?


To be continued . . .


The author is a former Israeli soldier. Born and raised in America for 24 years, he moved to Israel in 2007. Here he shares his view of the War on Terror from the perspective of a religious Israeli soldier.


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WAR WITHOUT END - Part I

The War on Terror from the perspective of an Israeli soldier.


I’d like to thank STORMBRINGER for giving me the opportunity write down my thoughts. I was never a combat soldier, so I’m not writing from a combat perspective, but rather from a philosophical one.

The battlefield that America and Israel are on is a very dangerous one. The war we are fighting is identical. It might be surprising, but neither America nor Israel understands the enemy against which they are fighting. There is one reason for this. Both America and Israel do not know what they should be fighting for.

Sections of the Dead Sea Scrolls on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 2008. Photograph by Baz Ratner, Reuters

Western civilization as we know it was founded by two nations: America and Israel. America is the muscle behind the West. It is the best country that has ever existed on Earth. Israel is the brain of the West. Not the State of Israel, as it is quite new in its third version, but rather the People of Israel, which goes back three millennia. We gave the world the Bible, the Judeo-Christian values of ethical monotheism, hard work, and faith, which are what inspired the Founding Fathers to establish the great force of freedom that is America.

Whatever happens to America and Israel will determine what happens to the West. To calm you down, I have no doubt whatsoever that we will win in the end. What I fear is how much we will both have to lose before we do.

Whether the Jews or the State of Israel likes it or not, the world watches us for spiritual direction. The People of Israel don’t really like this fact, we don’t want the attention, and we don’t even acknowledge it as a People. When Israel conquered the Temple Mount in 1967 after destroying the entire Egyptian Air Force in minutes, conquered the entire Sinai Peninsula in a day, and then took Judea, Samaria, and the Golan, the war ended on the Temple Mount.

Israeli soldiers at the recapture of the Temple Mount in 1967.

A few days later, when the Jews left that Mount, the entire idea of terrorism and the war against the West was born. How is that?

Israeli soldiers raise the Israeli flag over the Western Wall June 7,1967 alongside the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel on the day of its capture from Jordanian forces in the June 1967 Middle East War. Photo: Getty Images

To be continued . . .


The author is a former Israeli soldier. Born and raised in America for 24 years, he moved to Israel in 2007. Here he shares his view of the War on Terror from the perspective of a religious Israeli soldier.



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BATTLE OF AMMUNITION HILL

This is so heroic I HAVE to post it . . . from DoubleTapper . . . via Theo Spark's Last of the Few . . .

Throughout history, the Jewish People has maintained a presence in Jerusalem, ever since King David established the city as his capital nearly 3,000 years ago. Except for a very few periods, when they were forcibly barred from living in the city by foreign conquerors, Jews have always lived in Jerusalem. Throughout millennia, and in the face of conquest, forced exile, violence and discrimination, Jews have maintained their direct link to Jerusalem, returning to live in their city again and again.

Between 1949 and 1967, while Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan, there was an Israeli enclave about a mile to the east of the border, in the Jordanian section. This was Mount Scopus, with the campus of the Hebrew university and Haddassh hospital. There was an agreement whereby every two weeks 200 Israelis would cross Jordanian territory to the enclave, and sit there until the next group replaced them two weeks later.

Throughout the whole period everyone knew that sooner or later the war would resume, and that when that happened Israel would try to reconnect the mountain with the city. To prevent this the Jordanians built a series of fortifications in that mile, and its centerpiece was Ammunition Hill, an apt name borrowed from the days after the British conquered the city in 1917 and General Allenby stored his army's ammunition there.



Map of Battle of Ammunition Hill:



On the night between June 5th and 6th 1967 the IDF paratroopers, backed by a few tanks, made their attack, directly on the Jordanian fortifications. The battle on Ammunition Hill raged from...

Read more on the amazing Battle of Ammunition Hill, and a ballad; on DoubleTapper


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A READER ASKS

The following appeared in May 2009:

Q: What is the mission of your blog?

A: The intent of Blog Stormbringer is to stimulate thought, to explore history and philosophy with a military approach, and to sometimes launch a bit of humor . . . I especially enjoy the history of Ancient Greece and Rome, and drawing parallels to our modern experience, hence the submissions Caligula’s Horse and View From Within the Phalanx.

I have visited Greece and Rome several times, and other locations throughout these ancient empires and what is known as the "Holy Land". In high school I studied Latin under a very impressionable Italian woman whom to this day I am convinced was a secret admirer of Benito Mussolini.

Q: Did you develop a charter for your blogs, is it just observations, or a journal?

A: In the early stages of the Global War on Terror I used to get involved in heavy email political discussions / arguments; over time this became tiresome and since the ’08 election it is simply redundant. After firing funny jokes and other material his way, Theo Spark over at Last of the Few suggested I get into blogging. There are still some technical hiccups I am working out, and Theo is providing guidance. I might lighten up on politics and concentrate more on history, philosophy and military themes. The crude humor stays; I hope we never get to the point where we cannot laugh, especially at ourselves.

Q: What is the origin of the name Stormbringer?

A: One of my favorite bands is Deep Purple, of course, and one of their great songs is Stormbringer - inspired by the science fiction / fantasy novels of Michael Moorcock. A good friend who is also a reader introduced me to these books a long, long time ago. Whenever I went to the desert I always named my GunVee “Stormbringer” - I’m not really into the swords & fantasy genre, I just like the sound of that name; STORMBRINGER. It's got a ring to it like some kind of heroic Viking saga. That’s my GunVee in the photo across the top of the blog.

Q: Who IS Sean Linnane - the man behind the pseudonym?

I am not a hero, but I have served with heroes . . .

For legitimate reasons involving my current employment, I use the pseudonym Sean Linnane - for the same rationale I studiously AVOID commenting on certain subjects. It is probable that I will reveal my identity at some future point; the situation is dependent on my work. There are some issues I will never discuss, of course; unlike some, I take the non-disclosure statements I signed seriously.

One thing about me is that I am not politically correct. Another thing about myself: I am a practitioner of a mystical desert sect which happens to be the most persecuted religion on Earth; that is, I am a Christian. But I don't discriminate: when I was in Jerusalem, in '86, I visited the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, up on the Temple Mount, on a Friday. There I was, wearing the robes and surrounded by Arabs at prayer, contemplating on how this place was the site of the original Temple, and also served as the first headquarters of the Knights Templar. On Saturday I attended services at the Great Synagogue on King George Street, and on Sunday I went to St. George's, the Anglican Cathedral (which looks like a Crusader fortress, complete with Crusader flag flying over it) in East Jerusalem, because I am an Anglican. Personally, I don't see any contradiction in this; like the Arabs say, "We are People of the Book".

Q: What am I the reader, to take away from reading it?

A: Philosophy is the study of concepts such as existence, justice, knowledge, truth, beauty, mind, and language. The original Greek meaning of the word is "love of wisdom". Individual character development is essential to our society, if we are to prevail over the destructive forces that are not only out there on the far-flung fringes of the Empire, as it were, but also within the gates. Stormbringer is about education, information, and thought-provoking opinion, based on the experiences of my life and the extraordinary people I've encountered along the way.

A theme I wish to explore is Leadership, which I define as Planning, Decision-Making and Risk Management. Immediately after I retired from active duty, I found there was a great thirst in the business world for the kind of management and organizational skills that are formally taught in military leadership schools. Encouraged by a friend who is also a sort of mentor, I wrote a series of articles on the subject and developed Military Leadership Applications for Small Business Owners & Mid-Level Managers, which I’ve already presented at seminars. I presented Murphy’s Laws of Combat last week as introductory background material for my readership, in the Leadership department. There will be more material like this forthcoming.

THIS IS AMAZING

What we're looking at here is a 1:1000 scale model that happens to be possibly the most accurate model of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in existence - all the work of a retired property-developer named Alec Garrard, who has been working on it for nearly 30 years.

The 1,800-square foot project is located in a one-street village named Needham in eastern England. The model Temple in the English countryside town is built of thousands of tiny clay bricks and tiles, all of which Garrard fashioned, baked, and painted manually.

For historically accurate sources Garrard consulted Josephus, the Mishna, and more. Garrard began building his Holy Temple for his own pleasure, and “didn’t realize the great interest it would attract.”

Source: Arutz Sheva, Israel National News

REBUILDING OF THE THIRD TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM

The Second Temple (Herod's Temple).

Those familiar with the Torah and new testament scriptures know of the prophecies of the third temple being rebuilt. STORMBRINGER believes we are fortunate to live in times where this is all coming together.

Efforts by the Temple Institute in Israel have restored many of the sacred vessels and temple items such as the menorah and the high priest’s breast plate. Original artifacts from the last temple have been discovered. DNA testing now exists that can confirm who are Cohanim (only ones who can serve in the priesthood), and a computer registery established. Training programs for rabbis are now in operation. Techelet, a special blue dye needed to produce the high priest’s robe can now be made again as the snail producing it that was thought to be extinct has been found again in the Red Sea.

Keep your eye on the news. We are living in interesting times.


Israeli soldiers at the recapture of the Temple Mount in 1967.

The Temple in Jerusalem and related matters are of great interest to many professional soldiers and intelligence analysts that I have served with; this is the first a series of articles on the Temple and prophecy by STORMBRINGER team member VALERIA.

A READER ASKS . . .

Q: What is the mission of your blog?

A: The intent of Blog Stormbringer is to stimulate thought, to explore history and philosophy with a military approach, and to sometimes launch a bit of humor . . . I especially enjoy the history of Ancient Greece and Rome, and drawing parallels to our modern experience, hence the submissions Caligula’s Horse and View From Within the Phalanx.

I have visited Greece and Rome several times, and other locations throughout these ancient empires and what is known as the "Holy Land". In high school I studied Latin under a very impressionable Italian woman whom to this day I am convinced was a secret admirer of Benito Mussolini.

Q: Did you develop a charter for your blogs, is it just observations, or a journal?

A: In the early stages of the Global War on Terror I used to get involved in heavy email political discussions / arguments; over time this became tiresome and since the ’08 election it is simply redundant. After firing funny jokes and other material his way, Theo Spark over at Last of the Few suggested I get into blogging. There are still some technical hiccups I am working out, and Theo is providing guidance. I might lighten up on politics and concentrate more on history, philosophy and military themes. The crude humor stays; I hope we never get to the point where we cannot laugh, especially at ourselves.

Q: What is the origin of the name Stormbringer?

A: One of my favorite bands is Deep Purple, of course, and one of their great songs is Stormbringer - inspired by the science fiction / fantasy novels of Michael Moorcock. A good friend who is also a reader introduced me to these books a long, long time ago. Whenever I went to the desert I always named my GunVee “Stormbringer” - I’m not really into the swords & fantasy genre, I just like the sound of that name; STORMBRINGER. It's got a ring to it like some kind of heroic Viking saga. That’s my GunVee in the photo across the top of the blog.

Q: Who IS Sean Linnane - the man behind the pseudonym?

I am not a hero, but I have served with heroes . . .

For legitimate reasons involving my current employment, I use the pseudonym Sean Linnane - for the same rationale I studiously AVOID commenting on certain subjects. It is probable that I will reveal my identity at some future point; the situation is dependent on my work. There are some issues I will never discuss, of course; unlike some, I take the non-disclosure statements I signed seriously.

One thing about me is that I am not politically correct. Another thing about myself: I am a practitioner of a mystical desert sect which happens to be the most persecuted religion on Earth; that is, I am a Christian. But I don't discriminate: when I was in Jerusalem, in '86, I visited the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, up on the Temple Mount, on a Friday. There I was, wearing the robes and surrounded by Arabs at prayer, contemplating on how this place was the site of the original Temple, and also served as the first headquarters of the Knights Templar. On Saturday I attended services at the Great Synagogue on King George Street, and on Sunday I went to St. George's, the Anglican Cathedral (which looks like a Crusader fortress, complete with Crusader flag flying over it) in East Jerusalem, because I am an Anglican. Personally, I don't see any contradiction in this; like the Arabs say, "We are People of the Book".

Q: What am I the reader, to take away from reading it?

A: Philosophy is the study of concepts such as existence, justice, knowledge, truth, beauty, mind, and language. The original Greek meaning of the word is "love of wisdom". Individual character development is essential to our society, if we are to prevail over the destructive forces that are not only out there on the far-flung fringes of the Empire, as it were, but also within the gates. Stormbringer is about education, information, and thought-provoking opinion, based on the experiences of my life and the extraordinary people I've encountered along the way.

A theme I wish to explore is Leadership, which I define as Planning, Decision-Making and Risk Management. Immediately after I retired from active duty, I found there was a great thirst in the business world for the kind of management and organizational skills that are formally taught in military leadership schools. Encouraged by a friend who is also a sort of mentor, I wrote a series of articles on the subject and developed Military Leadership Applications for Small Business Owners & Mid-Level Managers, which I’ve already presented at seminars. I presented Murphy’s Laws of Combat last week as introductory background material for my readership, in the Leadership department. There will be more material like this forthcoming.