Fox News reports that several people were injured and one person was in custody after an explosion near New York City's Port Authority bus terminal during this morning's rush hour, prompting mass chaos and halting multiple subway lines, according to a report citing law enforcement sources.
NYPD and the FDNY confirmed to Fox News they are investigating reports of an explosion "of an unknown origin" near 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue. Police tweeted A, C, E subways lines are being evacuated. NYC Office of Emergency Management also tweeted there was "police activity" near West 42nd Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues and advised commuters to expect delays.
I'm listening to the rangdeedio right now, hoping to learn more. Another source says the explosion was caused by a pipe bomb in a walkway or tunnel under the bus terminal. No word yet on the citizenship, ethnicity or religion of the person taken into custody. Of course that person may or not be the bomber, and may or may not be named "Mohammed" something or other.
Regardless of whether or not the perp is an Islamic extremist, I predict the bombing (if that's what it was) will be blamed by the lamestream media, Democrats and other anti-Trumpers on POTUS' statement last week that the US of A officially recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel. (Lifetime pct .986.) A lot of people -- Western politicians as well as bitter Palestinians and fanatical Muslims -- seem to be pretty worked up about this, so let's examine it.
Regular readers should know that I hold no brief for Israel or the Jews. Any reasonably astute observer of the politics and economics of America and the rest of the West should know, too, that the things that really matter -- banks and the monetary system, the lamestream media, even the entertainment industry -- are controlled by international Jewry. One of the most powerful political groups in the USA, and Washington in particular, is the Jewish lobby. Both openly and secretly, Jews provide major funding to both the Democrats and Republicans. No matter who's in power, you will never
never find the nominal rulers of America challenging or even criticizing Israel.
Israel is, when you think about it, the creation of Adolf Hitler. Lots of Jews -- maybe not 6 million, but lots -- died or were displaced in World War II, and the victorious Allies, suffering badly from Christian guilt, decided that something must be done for those who survived. Like giving them their Promised Land. Not a chunk of Europe, of course, but some other land, inhabited (if at all) by less deserving people. And so, out of a barren territory called Palestine, the United Nations carved the "Zionist entity" known as Israel.
Speaking yesterday at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, (((Benjamin Netanyahu))), the President of Israel, said that Jerusalem has for 1000s of years been "the capital of the Jewish state." You could look it up, he said. "It's in the Bible." That is true if one speaks of the homeland of the Jews in the religious sense, but only partially true if one looks at world politics and international law.
A century ago, as World War I drew to a close, the territory in question was part of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish-ruled "sick man of Europe". When the sick man lay dying, the Great Powers -- Britain and France, in this case -- carved up the Middle East between them. You can find a reference to the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 in the movie
Lawrence of Arabia. Britain's share included the land of Palestine, which had been a southern part of Syria. (The French got the northern part of Syria -- lucky them.) The British mandatory territory of Palestine was established by the League of Nations, and existed from 1920 until 1948,
with its capital at Jerusalem.
Under the 1947 UN Partition Plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, Jerusalem was meant to be placed under international sovereignty and control. It was granted special status based on its importance to the three Abrahamic religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam. As so often happens in that awful part of the world, war broke out following the UN's recommendation, and in 1948 Zionist forces took control of the western half of Jerusalem and declared the territory part of its state.
Not quite two decades later there was another war between the Arabs and Israelis, worse for the Arabs than the first. During the Six-Day War, Israel captured the eastern half of Jerusalem, which was under Jordanian control at the time, and effectively annexed it by extending Israeli law, bringing it directly under Israeli jurisdiction. This is what lawyers call
de facto jurisdiction, meaning an administration or government that holds power
as a matter of fact, not necessarily as a matter of law.
Having thus had
de facto control of all of Jerusalem since 1967, the Israeli government, in 1980, Israel passed the "
Jerusalem Law", stating that "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel", thereby formalising its annexation of East Jerusalem. And that's how the situation stands today, as far as the state of Israel is concerned. Until President Trump's announcement, no other country -- well, none that counts -- acknowledged... or denied... the validity of the Jerusalem Law. Most countries -- the ones that count -- maintain their embassies and other missions in Tel Aviv, the capital ordered by the UN Partition Plan, which still remains Israel's commercial capital.
What the anti-Trumpers aren't admitting is that the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is not an idea that sprang fully formed out of President Trump's mind. Egged on by the powerful Zionist lobby (see above), the 104th Congress passed, on 23 October 1995,
the Jerusalem Embassy Act, signed into law by the unimpeachable President William Jefferson Clinton.
The purpose of the Jerusalem Embassy Act was to initiate and fund the relocation of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. That was to be done by 31 May 1999, at the latest. The Act also calls for Jerusalem to remain an undivided city and for it to be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel. You can look it up!
For reasons which we can only guess, Presidents Clinton, Bush II, and Obama, ignored the wishes of Congress and the law of the land, and refused to implement the Jerusalem Embassy Act. Their excuse was that the Act was a Congressional infringement on the executive branch's constitutional authority over foreign policy. All three of them consistently claimed the presidential waiver on national security interests.
President Trump signed the waiver in June 2017, but apparently changed his mind some time later and decided to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital -- which it is, as a matter of fact -- and begin the relocation of the US embassy,
as required by American law. If any political scientist or constitutional scholar can advance a good argument for doing otherwise, I would like to hear it.
Footnote: Quod scripsi, scripsi. But I still like the illustration Ed. chose for this piece. My preference would be to see Jerusalem declared an international city, the capital of
neither Israel nor the proposed separate Palestinian state. I fear that solution is too sensible, too
peaceful to be accepted by the extremists, whether Zionist or Islamist. I expect the war of words... and worse... to continue.
And so it came to pass that, on the 16th of this month, the new coalition government was announced. Herr Kurz is the Chancellor. The FPÖ, led by Heinz-Christian Strache (pictured) holds the key ministries of defence, foreign affairs and the interior. (For North Americans, the ministry of the interior, in most European governments, is responsible for such things as immigration, internal security and the police.)
