"Mr. Putin, is this the best way to fight the Occupy Kremlin movement in Russia?" (Steve)

The "Occupy Kremlin" movement?

Nev er heard of it!

Do you mean those people that constitute about 0.01% of the electorate and who believe that the 60% plus of the electorate votes in the recent presedential election were fraudulent?

D o you mean those people who are sponsored by foreign powers, either directly or indirectly?

D o you mean those people whose "leaders" consult with the envoy of a foreign power about the course of action to be taken against their government, which government they consider to be "illegal" because of ... well, because supporters of this "movement" didn't vote for Vladimir Putin or United Russia.

Some "movement"!

Day in and day out I travel the length and breadth of Moscow by metro, tram, trolleybus, and bus.  At the weekends I travel to the country on the electric train.  I have never during those travels seen one person wearing a white ribbon.

The only people that I have seen wearing such ribbons are the "occupy" squatters - the guitar strummers, many of them looking as though they have not long been out of school, "artists", bums, "students", anarchists, communists, "anarcho-communists" , assorted young bourgeois layabouts who have never experienced the '90s, a smattering of senior citizens - all of whom never seeming to have any work or family commitments. 

Oh yes, and that amazingly gifted and multi-talented TV show presenter Ksenia Sobchak, of course.

Israel can no longer count on the blind support of American Jews. This shift in perception is especially palpable on American college campuses. Despite all the efforts of pro-Zionist and pro-Israel propagandists in the U. S., young American Jews, as many opinion-polls indicate, turn their back on Israel and its extremist policies that offend liberal, democratic people. Among those concerned about the Israeli drift towards “fascism”, reported by Michael Warschawski from the “Alternative Information Center” in Jerusalem. For them, Israel bears a large burden of guilt for what is going wrong in the Middle East. After the Israeli leadership decided to colonize the Palestinian Occupied Territories, the “benign occupation” turned into a brutal occupation regime. Since the beginning of the first intifada in 1987, it has become impossible, even for the staunchest Israel supporter, to turn a blind eye to Israel´s massive human rights violations.

Finkelstein`s book “The Holocaust Industry” created an uproar among some representatives of the American Jewish community. The author argued that some money from European governments in the name of “needy Holocaust victims” was withheld and that some Jewish organizations pocketed some of the “Holocaust compensation” monies. Although the late well-known Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg praised the book and spoke in high terms of Finkelstein, it marked the beginning of the end of Finkelstein’s academic career. He lost immediately his teaching post at Hunter College, and later DePaul University used the book as the basis of getting rid of him.