that israel girl

True Account in the Life of That Israel Girl

In my fantasies, I’m seduced into foreign intrigue.  In reality, I’m reduced to Nancy Drew.  Mischief me however, can find fool’s gold in a salt mine.  And so my San Francisco escapade begins…

En route from Little Italy to Chinatown, night sets in, then dark clouds as thunder storms erupt.  In search of

The Egyptian Sarcophagus

shelter, we sprint past stores, restaurants, and people fleeing the rain.

In the fervor, my eye catches something dark, a candlelit corridor.  At its end–a larger than life, Egyptian sarcophagus.  Enticing for a girl who loves mystery.

There is no sign outside the store, simply “The Dreaming Room” painted on front window, with tiny card that reads, “museum and gallery.”

“Let’s explore, shall we?!” I exclaim.

When you pass thru the portal to the unknown, one should always be careful you can return to your place of origin.  And hope whatever you find on the other side does not follow you back.

Inside, the collection is ancient macabre–miniture rams, human skulls, African human sacrificial weaponry, preserved head in jar.  There’s no other way to put it–I had ventured upon an occult den.

Is  this “art” collection even legal?  There are legalities governing the purchase and sale of art such as cultural

"The Dreaming Room" Museum & Gallery

property laws.  Some protect against unlawfully exported art for instance.  (”Cultural property” is objects, structures, specimens, collections or sites identified as having artistic, historic, scientific, religious, or social significance.)

Did I mention the unframed photo of Nicholas Cage with “museum” owners casually on display?  My companion surmises they filmed “National Treasure” here.  But it’s more akin to Cage’s flick, “9MM.”

Indeed, everything’s so suspect; how delectable!  Business card anywhere?
The owner says, “None anymore.”
“Are you online?”  I ask.
“No, we’re not,” he replies.
“How much for the Egyptian sarcophagus?”
“It’s not for sale.”  Then he adds, “As you can tell, we don’t exactly want to be found.”

By chance, should you journey to San Francisco, “The Dreaming Room” may interest you:
    
     245 Colombus Avenue
     San Francisco, CA  94133
     (415) 788-7882

Beware–its collection is not for the faint hearted.

Dante's Inferno

The “gallery” and mystifiying chat with owner left me wondering–and what exactly do you do here after hours?  Actually, don’t answer that–not interested.  I’d rather not traipse into Dante’s Inferno.

Source:
(1) The American Institute for Conservation of Historic & Artistic Works (AIC), “Definitions of Conservation Terminology,” http://aic.stanford.edu/geninfo/defin.html

“Waltz with Bashir” did not waltz away with the Oscar for best foreign film as predicted.  What a shame.

The Infamous Morning After

 Everyone thought “Waltz” would take it!  Audiences were left dumbfounded.  For a second, my blog felt like the Chicago Tribune, morning paper the day after Harry S. Truman took the White House yet the front page headlines read, “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

Did somebody get to the Academy?  I suppose some would say all is fair in love and war…

(For what it’s worth, That Israel Girl predicted 20 out of 24 dead accurate on her Oscar picks.)

“Waltz with Bashir” has got buzz.  The Israeli film’s cutting edge style and poignant thrust make it the Oscar favorite for Best Foreign Film this year. 

That Israel Girl predicts “Waltz” will walk away with the Academy Award tonight.

That Israel Girl’s take on Waltz with Bashir?  While “Waltz’s” dark, graphic novelesque style was impressive, the film’s barrage of negative slant minimized its credibility.  Ariel Sharon and others for instance, are hardly in a position to defend themselves against the charges “Waltz with Bashir” makes.

I recommend “Waltz with Bashir” with the caveat that real life does not always imitate art.

Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu has just been picked to form Israel’s coalition government.  That Israel Girl congratulates 

Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu

 Bibi, former Israeli Prime Minister, on a battle hard won. 

The only thing Bibi needs now is a Marcus Agrippa, the phenomenal Roman general to Octavian, future Augustus Caesar. 

Don’t care much for the Romans?  How about a Moshe Dayan then.  What do you think?

Iran–November 4, 1979.  Rabid masses take the streets, burn effigies and American flags.  ”Death to America” chants reverberate amidst blindfolded American hostages.  The Iranian Hostage Crisis has exploded.

American Hostage in Iran

An impotent US President led to a humiliated United States.  And Iran’s Islamic regime was born.

Fast forward to present day.  Iran celebrated the revolution’s 30th Anniversary Tuesday with crowds chanting “Death to America.”

Then at his first press conference, President Obama revealed the US will “start sitting across the table, [in] face-to-face diplomatic overtures [with Iran].  He continues, “So there are going to be objectives…but I think that there’s the possiblity at least of a relationship of mutual respect and progress.”

Ahmadinejad’s response, “The Iranian nation is ready to hold talks, but 

Former US Embassy Now Hangs "Death to America" Banner

 talks in a fair atmosphere with mutual respect.”  

Readers take note: Ahmadinejad had just received word he’s running against reformist, Khatami, who’s more willing to negotiate on Iran’s nuclear program.  In short–Ahmadinejad needs a photo-op.  PR to sway the elections in his favor.

The Iranian President continues, “If you want to eradicate crime, let’s work together with the Iranian nation and other nations of the world and let’s put on trial the Zionist leaders of the Zionist regime.”

Tea with aggressor Ahmadinejad?  Something reminiscent of Chamberlain and France caving into Hitler’s demands for Czechoslovakia prior to WWII in the Munich Agreement?  Appeasement–all Hitler needed to conquer the world.

Churchhill lamented, “His Majesty’s government [England] would have saved the situation, yet in the end they gave it 

Munich Agreement Signatories

 late…all is over…Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken Czechoslovakia recedes into darkness.”  Churchill and the Allies would eventually fix the appeasement mess, and conquer Hitler.

The current US plan–sounds like appeasement to me.  Are we burying Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic, anti-West rhetoric as the Munich Agreement did Adolf Hitler’s?  Anyone for Munich Agreement–the Sequel?  Didn’t think so.

Sources:
(1) “Iran Hostage Crisis,” youtube.com
(2) President Barack Obama’s 1st Press Conference to the American people, Feb. 9, 2009
(3) “Ahmadinejad: Iran welcomes Obama overtures,” CNN.com, Feb. 10, 2009
(4) “Top Iranian Reformer to Challenge Ahmadinejad, Reports Say,” CNN.com, Feb. 8, 2009
(5) “The Munich Agreement,” speech by Sir Winston Churchill to House of Commons, Oct. 5, 1938, winstonchurchill.org/P4a/pages/index.ctm?pageid=1189

Miuccia Prada made me the woman I am today. Or at least I used to think. 

In a past life, I was a guy’s gal–not a gal’s gal.  My mantra–”It’s a man’s world, I just live in it.” That is, until Gender Jihad made the scene.

I came to the conclusion–Cleopatra’s cool, but Queen Elizabeth I rocks. And the Prada Brigade was born: we’re guerilla fighers packaged in femininity, protecting women’s rights globally.

Know this Gender Jihadists–the Prada Brigade’s got your back. Make no mistake about it–this Israel Girl is on the same team as Gender Jihadists. You’re Muslim feminists fighting for gender equality in the Islamic world.

Many call you the “bad girls of Islam.” Your charge–misogynist teachings in the Koran have made women legally and socially inferior in Muslim countries.

Muhammed Sani Umar, Director of Northwestern University’s Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa, told me all about it.  His lecture, “Global Debates on Islam in the 21st Century,” ranks Gender Jihad as one of the most contentious issues in Islam.

Wafa Sultan’s an honorary member of the Prada Brigade. She’s an Arab-American psychologist based in Los Angeles. She’s also a fighter for religious freedom. Watch her slug it out with an Islamic cleric. The video’s an oldie but goodie.  This says it all:

If Wafa Sultan makes it back to the Arab world–she may not live to her next debate.

Sources:
(1) “Islam feminists urge gender jihad,” by Danny Wood, BBC News, Oct. 31, 2005
(2) “A Gender Jihad For Islam’s Future,” by Asra Q. Nomani, Washingtonpost.com, Nov. 6, 2005
(3) Lecture on “Global Debates on Islam in the 21st Century” given by Muhammed Sani Umar, Director of Northwestern University’s Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought, in November 2008
(4) “Wafa Sultan debating Islamic Cleric,” MEMRI TV, youtube.com
(5) Amina Wadud Research Report, The Pluralism Project at Harvard University, 2005

A Fictional Tale

Angelina Jolie dishing S&M on celeb TV.  Status quo, American faire.  S&M you say?  Sounds intriguing.  Where can I get some?

Germany–world’s S&M capitol?  Too cold.

Washington DC?  CIA boys are top.  Been there, done that.

Give me something new, something fresh.  Got it–I’ll jet over to Iran for some 

Iranian Self-Flagellation

state-sanctioned sadomasochism.  Where men self-flagellate and dominate.

They’ll strap you into hijab, strip your rights, and smack you for being naughty.  Like initiating petitions to beg the Islamic regime to let women go sans veil in public.  In betweeen smackdowns, you’ll hit the opium pipe.  Strike that–meth’s Iran’s drug du’jour.

Hit the hot spots–Tehran’s Foreign Ministry (IFM) digs.  Mein Kampf sits in the IFM shop window to get you in the mood.

Submit to Iranian intelligence and Revolutionary Guard.  Meet up with the authoritarian of my dreams?  In schoolgirl motif, I’m before the king. 

Former US Embassy Tehran, reads "Death to America"

Ahmadinejad–upon throne enveloped in “Death to America” wall hangings.

Of course, Mr. tough talk’s dominance in public means he’d like to be whipped in private.  Basic psychology 101.  And this Israel Girl is more than happy to assist.

He feigns unworthiness.  (His “ta’arouf” –tete a tete niceties, negotiations prelude–Persian politesse.)  Ahmandinejad’s enticed to bargaining table.

In platform Louboutin’s, I tower over 5 foot Ahmadinejad.  Inferiority complex, right?  Coquette turns matriarch.  Lolitaesque garb–a ruse.  Staring up at me, he capitulates.

“On your knees,” I command.
Excited, he nods.
“Now you know who’s boss.  You’ll do what you’re told,” my whip cracks.  “Your nuclear fetish’s over.”
“Who sent you?”  He quivers.
“Don’t you know who I am?”  I glare.  “We are the angels of death sent by God to turn Sodom and Gomorrah into salt.”

S&M–the new diplomatic strategy.  Clearly not Obama’s cup of tea, but just may be Hillary’s Molotov cocktail.

Source:
(1) The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, by Hooman Majd, Doubleday, 2008

In the dark hours of WWII, Nazi physicists fought to complete a secret program known as Uranverein ordered by their Fuhrer.  Uranverein, meaning Uranium Club, was Nazi Germany’s nuclear energy project.  The clandestine group’s objective–nuclear fission research to build the atomic bomb.  Hitler and the Nazi’s not only believed weapons of mass destruction were their national right, an atomic bomb was their divine destiny.  

Iranian Nuclear Scientists At Work

 What would be left of the world had they succeeded?  Today, the international community is again faced with a macabre scenario–Ahmadinejad’s regime will have a nuclear weapon within two years.

The world has legitimate grounds to worry.  Iran has a hostile track record.  Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s government openly funds and trains Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, to fulfill their abhorrent dreams to “wipe Israel off the map.”  In effect–Iran is fighting a bloody proxy war against Israel in which innocent lives have been lost on both sides.  There is also insurmountable evidence Iran wreaks havoc against American troops in Iraq, and now Afghanistan.  How can we then believe Iran’s development of a nuclear program, already in the advanced stages, is benign when they sponsor global terrorism against Israel and the United States, and espouse reprehensible, blatant anti-Semitic rhetoric?  Now there is a very real danger Hamas could soon acquire nuclear materials from Iran.

The Iranian people have been sold by Ahmadinejad the notion nuclear development is their basic national right.  Yet do we really want to trust Iran’s government with any nuclear program, peaceful or otherwise, when the country is strife with drug addiction?  In Iran, “Although opium tops the list in terms of favored drugs, heroin, crack, and even crystal meth…are becoming commonplace among working and middle classes,” Hooman Majd, journalist and grandson of an eminent Ayatollah, indicates in his book, “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ.”  He goes on to say that most Iranian experts “put [the drug abuse] figure as high as 10 percent and some even at 15 percent and higher.”  The author writes:

“The Islamic Revolution, which inverted class distinctions and frowned upon anything Western, changed things a bit when it inadvertantly caused a resurgence in the use of opium as a recreational activity, perhaps because of the ban on alcohol and the ready availability of opium (although illegal) as a substitute, but also perhaps because the old-fashioned, and particularly Iranian, customs were now in vogue.  Drug use in general, though, has escalated dramatically since the revolution first intentionally created a modern republic without bars, pubs, or real public entertainment, and unintentionally a birthrate that has produced far more employable youths than the economy can provide jobs for.”

If potentially over 15% of the Iranian population is drug addicted as Majd indicates, it’s only logical to suppose the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, if not the country’s leaders, which both oversee the nuclear program, could indeed be  viewing

Iran's President, Ahmadinejad

the world and Israel through a drug induced haze.  Ahmadinejad and his cohorts certainly speak of the “satanic US and Zionist regime” in paranoid, delusional, and often times violent rhetoric.  He also charms Iran’s populist groups with his working class roots.  After all, he’s of the very group most afflicted by drugs.  The entire Revolutionary Guard is recruited from the religious and working classes.  Drug abuse could in fact be another similarity with the Nazi’s who ”had no qualms about pumping their soldiers full of drugs and alcohol.  Speed was the drug of choice, but many others became addicted to morphine and alcohol,” Andreas Ulrich reports in, “Hitler’s Drugged Soldiers.”  Ulrich goes on to tell, “The German military was supplied with millions of methamphetamine tablets during the first half of 1940.  The drugs were part of a plan to help pilots, sailors and infantry troops become capable of superhuman performance.  The military leadership liberally dispensed such stimulants, but also alcohol and opiates, as long as it believed drugging and intoxicating troops could help it achieve victory over the Allies,” and that a form of methamphetamine soon became a “top-seller among the German civilian population.” 

In essence, would we entrust an apocalyptic weapon to entities we even suspect of dangerous drug addiction that makes people hallucinate, act irrationally, and take violent measures?  Let alone the notion that Middle East experts assert Iran would give nuclear weapons to terrorists as they have rockets and munitions to Hamas and Hezbollah.

The Iranian regime’s ruthless pursuit of a nuclear program underscores the need for the economic equivalent of the Powell Doctrine–strike with decisive force using every resource and tool employed against the enemy, ending the conflict quickly by forcing the weaker force to capitulate.  If the current Iranian regime has their way, a nuclear holocaust could be eminent.  Then President Ahmadinejad just may surpass Adolf Hitler as the world’s archetype of evil.

Sources:
(1) “Hitler ‘tested small atom bomb,’” Ray Furlong, BBC News, Berlin, March 14, 2005
(2) Other Nazi nuclear fission experimentation referenced from interview conducted by That Israel Girl with US military defense engineer, sub-contractor, January 2009
(3) “Hamas Digs in for War in Gaza,” The Austrailian, March 16, 2007
(4) Broad, William J.; Sanger, David E., “Iran Said to Have Nuclear Fuel for One Weapon,” The New York Times, Nov. 19, 2008
(5) US Secretary of Defense, Gates, briefs Congress on Afghanistan, 2009
(6) “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ,” by Hooman Majd, pages 70-71, 97-128, Doubleday, 2008
(7) “Hitler’s Drugged Soldiers,” Andreas Ulrich, Spiegel Online International, May 6, 2005
(8) “Experts Warn Barack Obama of Nuclear Iran,” Times Online UK, Dec. 3, 2008