Ofra was Israel's pop star laureate. Her fans spanned generations and ethnic divides. She was chosen to sing in Oslo when Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize. She sang again at the memorial concert after Rabin's assassination. Ehud Barak and Bibi Netanyahu paid public tribute after her death. Peres eulogized her at the graveside.In the way of a change of pace, here's a repost of what was originally posted on Hyscience on April 29, 2007: The incredible Ofra Haza - The Greatest Israeli Singer That Ever Lived (You might want to turn up your speakers - especially in listening to the 1st video below - "Middle East"). Ofra is said to have bridged the divide between Israel and Arab countries - and has been described as having the most upper harmonic overtones of any singer in history!

Ofra Haza (Hebrew: עפרה חזה; November 19, 1957 - February 23, 2000) was a popular Israeli singer, actress and international recording artist.

Of Yemenite Jewish ancestry, Haza was born the youngest of nine children in the poor Tel Aviv neighborhood of Hatikvah. She became an instant local and then national success story, the subject of great pride for many Israelis of Yemenite origin.

Her voice has been described as mezzo-soprano, of near-flawless tonal quality, capable of lending itself to a variety of musical styles with apparent ease. It is thought likely that Haza's voice had the most upper harmonic overtones of any singer in history, reaching as many as 32 on some songs (edit - the great Yma Sumac could sing just 5) , such as "Love Song" from the album Shaday (1988) - see video clip below.

Inspired by a love of her Yemenite-Jewish culture, the appeal of her musical art quickly spread to a wider Middle Eastern audience, somehow bridging the divide between Israel and the Arab countries.

[...] In my Promised Land In the Middle East What will we do about terrorism? In my Promised Land In the Middle East What can we do about fanaticism? You and I on parallel lines You and I, we are the key Dreams are not enough To lead and guide us To peace In the Middle East Oh, oh, oh...

In the Middle East

Oh, oh, oh...

Desire for peace
Such yearning for peace
Does your country do
What you believe in?
In my Land there is war
And we're losing our soul
And ideology
Is losing meaning
You and I on parallel lines
You and I, when can we meet?
Dreams are not enough
To lead and guide us
To peace
In the Middle East

Oh, oh, oh...

In the Middle East

Oh, oh, oh...

[...] Flare lights, flowers, mothers, fathers,
Homeland, green fields and tears
Borders, rivers, desert, Dead Sea
We are the key
Flare lights, flowers, mothers, fathers,
Homeland, green fields and tears
Borders, rivers, desert, Dead Sea
When can we meet? (more).

Here is Ofra Haza singing Kaddish - the Jewish mourner's prayer. In this video, her incredibly beautiful voice is remarkably obvious.

For salvation, Kaddish,
For redemption, Kaddish,
For forgiveness, Kaddish,
For health, Kaddish,
For all the wars victims, Kaddish,
For all the holocaust victims, Kaddish

Yerushalaim Shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold)

Ofra Haza at Montreux Jazz Festival in 1990. - Love Song

Ofra Haza's greatest international recognition came with the single "Im Nin Alu", taken from the album Shaday. Here she sings it at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1990.

Tom Maguire comments on Andrew Sullivans view that you should vote for Obama:

So let me project Sully's view onto the current dust-up - we should vote for the black guy because of his cosmetic appeal to brown-skinned third worlders, but we should be appalled at the suggestion that third-world jihadists will consider him likely to be more sympathetic. Is everybody clear?

I am not.

PILING ON: Jimmy Carter, famous Democrat, former President and lifetime clown, met with Hamas; if Hamas were asked to guess which party is more likely to be sympathetic to them, can we think of a reason they would answer "the Democrats"?

Related: Barack Obama Whines Because John McCain Tells The Truth

The situation in Beirut is dire, with Hizbullah gunmen "shia thugs" having taken control of large parts of Beirut and forced the closure of MP Saad Hariri's media outlets in a major confrontation with Prime Minister Fouad Saniora's government.

Only yesterday, the Army Warned that "Tension Threatens Unity of the Troops":

The Lebanese Army Command on Thursday warned that persisting violence "poses a threat to unity of the military establishment" and offered to help the feuding factions work out a settlement. The command, in a communiqué, said the army is committed to carrying out its duty in protecting citizens and property. The command, in a communiqué, said the army is committed to carrying out its duty in protecting citizens and property "despite major difficulties that are known to all.""

And just in case you're among the incredibly naive nutjobs that somehow still believe that this all this has nothing to do with Syria and Iran: "At Ransacked Future TV Office, Hariri Photos Down, Assad Photos Up ... " (Images via BeirutSpring.com)

More news updates, images, video, and analysis are available over at Blacksmiths of Lebanon.

In recent months, oil prices have become increasingly volatile, mainly driven by financial market developments and the increased flow of speculative funds into oil futures. The turmoil in some global equity markets and the considerable depreciation in the US dollar have encouraged investors to seek better returns in commodities, particularly in the crude oil futures market. This has driven prices higher.

There is clearly no shortage of oil in the market. OECD commercial oil stocks remain above the five-year average, with days of forward cover at a comfortable level of more than 53 days. US crude inventories, meanwhile, rose by almost six million barrels last week, which is a further indication that oil supplies are plentiful. OPEC Member Countries continue to produce at more than 32 million barrels a day (mb/d). In addition, a number of new OPEC crude oil projects have started to come on-stream and OPEC spare capacity continues to increase, with the figure currently standing above 3 mb/d. At the same time, crude oil movements indicate that some Member Countries are unable to find buyers for their additional supply.

OPEC will continue to be proactive and monitor these developments closely. The Organization stands ready to act if the market shows a need for any further measures.

The Organization will continue to strive for a stable and balanced market, with prices that reflect fundamentals, and are favorable to both producers and consumers.

And as John Wilen notes in his AP piece today, many analysts feel speculative investment driven by the dollar's protracted decline is the real reason behind higher prices. However, there are other factors:

The dollar fell against the euro Thursday, attracting investors who view commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation. Also, a weaker dollar makes oil cheaper to investors overseas.

Still, the market sometimes ignores the dollar, as it did Wednesday when oil surged to new records although the dollar advanced. Some analysts say that's a sign that many investors are buying on pure momentum -- believing prices will head higher regardless of negative data, news or dollar movements.

"There's a lot of momentum driving the oil price up," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore.

The western United States has the largest untapped high quality oil shale reserves in the world. It is called the Green River formation. The formation is located in parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Many processes exist for getting a synthetic form of crude oil out of oil shale. If we were to produce about 12 million barrels of shale-derived crude oil per day, we would not need to import a single drop of crude petroleum. It is known that the process is currently cost effective at $70 per barrel. The formation is also known to be so large that the region has a capacity that can last several centuries.

Hezbollah and the Sunni Militias are fighting in Lebanon right now. Live reports from Lebanon here, images of the fighting can be found here.

No surprise, the Hezbollah has essentially declared war on the Lebanese government. Syria is most definitely involved. Naharnet reports that Hizbullah has linked its private telephone networks to the Syrian Army's communications system as well as to Syria's mobile telephone network allowing Syrian intelligence to operate freely in Lebanon and avoid Lebanese controls.

Here's Some observations into Sayyed Hassan Nassrallah's speech. It provides some insight into how this Islamofascist thinks.

Running updates are available at Lebanese Forces.com.

Eye Witness Video of Street Fighting:

Naharnet live coverage here ...

Other coverage:
Strike, Demonstrations, Mayhem across Lebanon (on Wednesday)

Hot Air
BBC coverage here ...

David Thompson on Sam Harris, "root causes" and the left's disbelief in Islam as a motive for terrorism...

"I think liberals, almost by definition, don't know what it's like to really believe in God. They don't know what it's like to be sure that the book they keep by their bedside is the literal word of the creator of the universe and that death is merely a passage to an eternity of happiness. And so they find it very difficult to believe that anyone actually believes this stuff and is motivated by the content of their religious beliefs. And so liberals, when they see the jihadist look into the video camera and say things like 'we love death more than the infidels love life' - and then he blows himself up - it's the liberal in our society, the religious moderate or the secularist, who is left thinking that's just propaganda."

Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that "documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim" while at a Catholic school during first through third grades. Kim Barker of the Chicago Tribune confirms that Obama was "listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school." A blogger who goes by "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" found that "Barack Hussein Obama was registered under the name 'Barry Soetoro' serial number 203 and entered the Franciscan Asisi Primary School on 1 January 1968 and sat in class 1B. ... Barry's religion was listed as Islam."

Also pointing to Obama having lied, as Pipes points out, ""In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936-1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Only Muslim children are named "Hussein"." Sounds to me like Barack Hussein Obama indeed has a reason to be sensitive about the "Hussein" part of his name.

So why should America care about whether or not Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim? It has to do with who Barack Obama really is, what he really stands for, and what does he really represent. In other words, who and what is America getting if it elects Barack Hussein Obama president.

Ragnar puts it this way:

The idea that Barack is some sort of "Manchurian Candidate" who will sell us out to al Qaeda as some sort of grand international conspiracy is pretty silly, but that's not the true concern here. The true concern, which is bolstered by everything we've learned about him over the past twelve months, is that Barack Obama is a social and political chameleon, capable of presenting whatever identity he needs to at a given point in time. No one, save perhaps his closest confidantes, can seriously claim to know what is to be found in the heart and soul of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, far too few voters seem to really care who Obama is. He has brown skin, and he gives a good speech, and that is apparently enough.

A socialist/Marxist, Black Nationalist, racially divisive/Afro-centric (if this doesn't apply to Obama why then did he sit in Jeremiah Wright's pews for 20 years?), political chameleon that has served as a Rorschach ink blot test for Democratic primary voters (they see in him whatever they want to see) and has lied about his Muslim childhood is the last man in America that we should consider for the presidency.

Related:

Obama and Communism: Ayers, Dohrn and FARC

Marxists/Socialists/Communists for Obama (On Obama's website)

(Jerusalem Post) With Iran racing forward with its nuclear program, Israel now believes the Islamic Republic will master centrifuge technology and be able to begin enriching uranium on a military scale this year, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The new assessment moves up Israel's forecasts on Teheran's nuclear program by almost a full year - from 2009 to the end of 2008. According to the new timeline, Iran could have a nuclear weapon by the middle of next year.

Iran, a senior defense official said on Tuesday, had encountered numerous technical obstacles on its way to enriching uranium but was now on track to master the technology needed to enrich uranium within six months.

Israel is also concerned that Teheran is developing a cruise missile that can evade interception by the Arrow, the IDF's anti-ballistic missile defense system. Iran is suspected of having smuggled Ukrainian X-55 cruise missiles and using them as models for an independent, domestic project. A cruise missile, which flies at low altitudes to dodge radar detection and interception, could be used to carry a nuclear warhead.

Continue reading ...

Back on April 9 of this year ABC News reported that Iran has more than tripled its ability to produce enriched uranium in the previous three months, adding some 1,000 centrifuges which are used to separate radioactive particles from the raw material:

The addition of 1,000 new centrifuges, which are not yet operational, means Iran is expanding its enrichment program at a pace much faster than U.S. intelligence experts had predicted.

"If they continue at this pace, and they get the centrifuges to work and actually enrich uranium on a distinct basis," said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, "then you're looking at them having, potentially having enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 2009."

Previous predictions by U.S. intelligence had cited 2015 as the earliest date Iran could develop a weapon.

As Shimon Peres has warned, a combination of a fanatic leadership, a terroristic center and a nuclear bomb will come together, is a nightmare for the world. From all that the world is seeing unfold on the Iran nuclear threat, even as this post is being written, that nightmare is coming ever closer to reality unless Iran's nuclear ambitions brought to a halt. The West's options for doing so aren't attractive and pose great risks, but the result of our failure to act is certain.

Interesting Related Video: The Iranian Threat; a vido about Iranian involvement in the ME conflict in Iraq, Iran's ultimate goal in the region, and how we have to stop Iran before it acquires nuclear weapons - before it's too late:

Related Video (aired last year): "Iran: The Ticking Bomb," a FOX News documentary exploring Iran's support of global terrorism, its pursuit of nuclear weapons and its proxy war with the United States:

Related: Alireza Jafarzadeh - Evidence of Tehran's Destructive Meddling in Iraq Is Mounting

However, as Ace frames it (title of this post borrowed from Ace), there's a whole lot of commie ninnyhammers backing the Chosen One - along with a few cacafuegos...., that everyone really needs to know about if we are to avoid having this guy and his Marxist friends in the White House.

As Rezko Watch points out, Obama has been acting as if the American public does not have the brains to figure out what he stands for. Truth has taken a bit-time beating in the media coverage of Barack Obama's presidential campaign up to now, and what is needed is a close examination of Barack Obama's associations which means opening a window on the American Left and observing the deep divisions in the movement:

[...] looking beyond his connections to an entire network of hard-core Maoists -- looking to his connection to a Kenyan warlord, to a pastor who as much advocates the violent overthrow of the US government, to a Chicago political fixer with ties to the Baathists -- the true picture of Barack Obama slowly emerges.

Throughout his adult life, Obama has been drawn to people who are essentially fascist in their outlook, people who find the democratic process too messy and slow to bring about change, people who believe in manipulating the system of democracy to undermine its principles in order to grab power.

To call this "guilt by association" is to ignore that the associations were Barack Obama's choices, and that the choices guided his career as both a political organizer and politician.

So there is very little doubt that the Iranians are arming and training Iraqi insurgents, and they are in part responsible for the recent rise in U.S. casualties. Last month, 52 U.S. personnel were killed in Iraq, by far the highest total since September 2007. This isn't a revelation.

The US has long claimed the Iranians were training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran, which Iran has consistently denied, and there have been numerous reports about Hezbollah operatives in Iraq. Additionally, Iran's Qods force has provided leadership, weapons, and cash to competing factions in Iraq, fostering and supporting violence in Iraq and the killing of American forces. With Iran so much involved in Iraq's violence and directly responsible for the deaths of Americans, it has been only a matter of time before common sense would begin to rise to a level of conversation about stopping Iran's interference in Iraq's affairs and America's progress in Iraq.

Entering the scene we have John Bolton, America's former ambassador to the United Nations, who is now calling for US air strikes on Iranian camps where insurgents are trained for war in Iraq:

Mr Bolton said that striking Iran would represent a major step towards victory in Iraq. While he acknowledged that the risk of a hostile Iranian response harming American's overseas interests existed, he said the damage inflicted by Tehran would be "far higher" if Washington took no action.

"This is a case where the use of military force against a training camp to show the Iranians we're not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do," he said. "Then the ball would be in Iran's court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops."

Mr Bolton, an influential former member of President George W Bush's inner circle, dismissed as "dead wrong" reported British intelligence conclusions that the US military had overstated the support that Iran was providing to Iraqi fighters.

"The point is not (and will never be) that some free person spoke, or wrote, or illustrated in such a manner as to inflame the Muslim community. The point is that only the Muslim community is combustible in this way. The controversy over Fitna, like all such controversies, renders one fact about our world especially salient: Muslims appear to be far more concerned about perceived slights to their religion than about the atrocities committed daily in its name

And here's a bonus - it's yet another message to liberals: 'Right From Left'

Cross posted from Hyscience

It means when they whack that site, they'll be taking out a lot of Hezbollah scum along with the al-Quds scum and the future Shiite death squads of Iraq scum. If they ever stop the blah blah blah, that is.

The U.S can't allow Iran to kill American troops indefinitely, be it by proxy or otherwise. With so much now in the open about Iran's ever-increasing role in the violence in Iraq, and even an apparent accusation coming out from a former Iranian president that the country's hard-line rulers are engineering unrest abroad, I wouldn't be surprised to see targeted attacks on selected sites in Iran - when the time is "ripe" - which could be sooner than we think.

Let's recall that the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is directly controlled by Saudi Arabia and enforces the highly radical Wahhabi theological writ in America's 1,200 officially recognized mosques (out of a possible total of 4,000, including unrecognized and small congregations), by which ISNA controls most mosques in America and thus also controls who will speak at every Friday prayer, and which literature will be distributed there. Also, that ISNA is one of the groups pointed to in US Senator Charles Schumer's September 2001 press release discussing the role that top officials in the Saudi government, including Interior Minister Prince Naif , play in spreading militant Wahhabism in the United States and throughout the Middle East.

It's time for Muslim extremist groups like ISNA and CAIR to learn English grammar and realize that Americans are aware of their comprehensive plan to set down roots in civil society; it begins by both founding and taking control of American Muslim organizations, for the sake of unifying and educating the U.S. Muslim community - this to prepare it for the establishment of a global Islamic state governed by sharia:

The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization-Jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who choose to slack.

[...] the international Muslim Brotherhood - whose Palestinian division is Hamas - operates as a self-conscious revolutionary vanguard in the United States. The court documents indicate that many leading Muslim-American organizations - including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim American Society - are an integral part of the Brotherhood's efforts to wage jihad against America by nonviolent means.

The Muslim Brotherhood is an affiliation of at least 70 Islamist organizations around the world, all tracing their heritage to the original cell, founded in Egypt in 1928. Its credo: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." Sayyid Qutb, hanged by the Egyptian government in 1966 as a revolutionary, remains its ideological godfather. His best-known work, Milestones, calls for Muslims to wage violent holy war until Islamic law governs the entire world.

I'll throw out the first answer. Not no, but hell no!

HT - Hot Air

Related:
The Muslim Brotherhood in America Defined as "Threat Organization" in DOD Memo
State House Proselytism (of Islam)

"All the oil operations are being made in euros or in yens" Hojjatollah Ghanimifard has explained. Ghanimifard is the director of foreign relations of the Iranian National Oil Company. Iran finishes this way its process of reducing its exposition to the dollar, after the tensions between Teheran and Wasington because of the nuclear crisis. In fact, last december an Iranian Government speaker informed already that 90% of the revenues obtained by the oil exports weren't made in dollars.