Red Suspenders

Red Suspenders

The old joke asks, “Why does a fireman wear red suspenders?” and the answer is “To hold up his pants.” The secret reason is “to meet women.”

I didn’t realize this until my waistline hit 40 and I couldn’t hold up my pants with a belt. I had several colors and styles to choose from: black, tan, something that looked like a distorted American flag, and red. I bought several pairs. It turned out that there was a special power in red suspenders.

Just as a peacock displays a gorgeous tail to attract the peahens, red suspender are a magnet for women. They say that blondes have more fun, but men with red suspenders trump that.

To add special allure to the suspenders, wear one with an  “accidental” twist.  Women who grew up dressing their dolls graduate to dressing their guys. What man hasn’t heard his wife say, “You aren’t going to wear that, are you?” So when a woman sees that your suspenders have a little careless twist in them, she can’t resist fixing it.

It’s astonishing how strange women will be unable to resist adjusting my red suspenders. This doesn’t happen with any other color.

So, guys, want to meet women? Get yourself a pair of bright red suspenders. They will change your life.

Hamas Tunnels: why Israel fought back

The right hand edge of the paste-in is lost, but you'll ge the idea.

Stories From The Battlefield: Hamas Tunnels Used To Target Israel’s Kindergartens

9:16 AM 07/27/20144

By Mordechai Ben-Menachem

Multiple media outlets report that Hamas’s offensive tunnel network – now known to have been composed of over forty attack tunnels dug underneath Israel’s border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip – was set to be activated during the Jewish High Holidays (September 24^th) as a mass terror attack.

The attack was meant to generate as many as ten thousand casualties, men, women and particularly children and hundreds of captives. Explosives were particularly placed underneath kindergartens to make certain that these “institutions” would be the first struck, even before any thing else.

The IDF recently published the below map showing that tunnels were created in pairs, to empty out on both sides of nearby communities. The known cost of the infrastructure – each tunnel costs upward of some $1 million – clearly shows that Hamas was planning a coordinated mega-attack. It must be understood that use of even one tunnel would inevitably trigger Israeli retaliation against the entire network.

A map of a small portion of the tunnels meant to be used 9 weeks from now.

Revelations regarding the planned tunnel attack magnitude played a decisive role in the Israeli government’s rejection of a ceasefire proposed late Friday by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Unbelievably, Kerry actually proposed in his latest “cease-fire proposal” – none of which have been honored by Hamas so far – that Israel refrains from degrading remaining attack tunnels. This mind-boggling concept would necessarily be rejected by any sane government, of any country.

Israeli security sources, citing information acquired in interrogations of captured brigands, described a scenario under which hundreds of heavily armed Hamas fighters would have spilled out into Israel in the dead of night and within 10 minutes been positioned to infiltrate essentially all Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. Waiting then in hiding until schools and kindergartens were occupied, the terrorists would then attempt to kill the children first, and then kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible. The plot was set to take place during Jewish New Year, on September 24.by Taboola

“It’s like the Underground, the Metro or the Subway,” Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said. “These tunnels are all connected. I would describe it as Lower Gaza.”

Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said, “A whole city of terror tunnels has been found. Without the ground operation, we would have woken up one day to an Israeli 9/11.”

Except, the actual objective was to be five times 9/11.

This picture shows clearly the width of one of the tunnels, sufficient for wheeled vehicles to transverse it. Hamas did not build a “subway” system for Gaza residents. They built an infrastructure for one purpose, and one only, an industry of death.

Israeli military officials reported that the tunnels are stocked with tranquilizers, handcuffs, syringes, ropes and other materials used for subduing abductees, civilians and soldiers. The tunnels also had fantastic quantities of explosives and additional military materiel meant to be used in the up-coming mega attack. Much of these explosives had already been placed underneath Israeli kindergartens. Some of these tunnels were as deep as 30 meters underground.

Fantastic quantities of explosives were stored in every tunnel, meant to be used in a mega-attack on civilian communities and infrastructure.

Sources say the Gaza Strip war, Operation Protective Edge, could serve as a prelude for a more extensive underground war with the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah. Perhaps, not ‘just’ in the Middle East.

The tunnels inside Gaza and under the Israeli border are not a secret project Hamas ran under the noses of Israel and the Palestinian public. Everyone in Gaza, knew that beneath Gaza, the City and all of its environs, a network of tunnels was being dug over the past five years, with an investment of tens of millions of dollars. Yet no one in Israel, public or military, was prepared for the scope of the tunnels – the danger that became clear in the past week or two.

Senior Hamas operatives show off their offensive tunnels to their spouses. Unbelievably, this is actually a picture of a Marriage taking place in the ‘place of death’.

In order to create this monstrosity, Hamas needed significant professional help; and this help had to have come from a large organization or state entity. This is not just the monetary aid it received from Qatar, America’s ally. This is professional guidance for the performance of such an underground feat. Perhaps Hamas could have used experts from the tunnels dug at Rafah under the Gaza-Egypt border, but those were significantly simpler, and did not demand any extraordinary investment or effort.

A Hamas operative climbing upward in a pier of one of the major tunnels. Notice the work on the sides of the tunnel.

Who supplied these quantities of material? Who planned what would be needed? How did Hamas acquire thousands of ampoules of tranquilizer, syringes and other, additional drugs to be used? These are far beyond the quantities and variety of what is needed by any civilian medical service.

How was all this brought in to the Gaza Strip? The logistics of this planned attack are the work of a well-organised military, not that of a militia or club. This was no amateur plan.

Observers note that attack scenarios lined up with recently revealed data about the sophistication, scope and nature of the offensive tunnel network. As previously reported here, this sophistication and know-how is being copied right now by Mexico-based Hezbollah agents along the Southern US border. Tunnels in Southern Lebanon, as in South US, are significantly more difficult to detect than those in the sandy terrain of the Gaza Strip.

“Hamas planned these tunnels for years, and planned to use them to kidnap soldiers,” Israeli military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mordechai Almoz said. “[Now] they see the tunnels collapsing one after the other.” For the last two years, the Israeli army has sought to develop skills and equipment to fight in enemy tunnels and bunkers. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have used tunnels to operate command and control, to infiltrate Israel and abduct soldiers, to fire rockets and to conceal fighters amid invasion of the Gaza Strip.

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Mordechai Ben-Menachem is a former researcher/lecturer at Ben-Gurion University and an author of 30 book ranging from engineering to poetry. He is also an ordained clergyman and a former soldier.

Israel cf Gaza

Israel cf Gaza

a letter by

Harley L. Sachs

If you built a house in Israel you must build a shelter of 1.5 ft thick reinforced concrete.   Hamas in Gaza, however, builds tunnels for assassins to infiltrate Israel, not air raid shelters. Hamas fires rockets indiscriminately at civilian targets in Israel; Israel is after the tunnels and the rocket launchers and stockpiles. When there are warnings of an impending strike Hamas tells the children to get up on the rooftop as human shields, then exploits the pictures of dead and dying children.

Hamas has only one agenda: to destroy Israel and kill the Jews.

After WW II there were an estimated forty million refugees, but in a couple of years they were all resettled or repatriated. In the years since the 1948 Israeli war, the Palestinians have remained in refugee camps fed by a permanent UNRA United Nations Relief Organization, your tax dollars at work. The UNRA employees have lifetime employment providing handouts to the Palestinians.

Forty percent of Gazans are unemployed, yet before the Intefada and Hamas, many had jobs in Israel. No more. Now Israel imports foreign guest workers, but not Palestinians. Hamas is the Gazans’ worst enemy, not Israel. . 

I am a time traveler

Here I am, a time traveler out of the 1940's and 50's, so the 21'st century is Buck Rogers stuff for me. I come from a time when all telephones are black and licensed by Ma Bell. There is no FM radio, no jet planes, no television, no cell phones, no computers, and postage costs three cents (seven for overseas). There are also no freeways and the Pennsylvania turn pike is an innovation. The very idea of a space satellite in stationary orbit above the earth is pure, speculative science fiction,  Beebee has gone down in a diving bell and a helium balloon went to 100,000 feet. Radar is a top secret Ww II weapon, but not used for microwave cooking. The fastest army plane does about 300 mph and are propellor driven.  Breaking the sound barrier is considered speculative and dangerous.Most trains run on coal. People heat their homes with coal and the only air conditioning is in some movie theaters. People cross the ocean on ships, six days to England. Movies cost a quarter and for that you can sit all day and warch the double feature over and over, including Flash Gordon. Auto tires are bias play and last about 15000 miles. No seat belts. A cup of coffee costs a dime and chicken is 20 cents a pound.  Phonograph records are on breakable wax. The only plastics are nylon,  bakelite, and cellophane. Frying pans are iron, not non-stick.

So no wonder I feel a bit bewildered here in the 21st century!!

Result of free promotion

What a thrill! The posting of "Wounded Warrior"for five days as a free download reached readers in seven countries including Japan and India A one time exposure won't make much of an impression, so I am doing this again,this time with the prize-winning story "Two old Men,"work I am proud of.. When that promotion is over I'll do a countdown deal with one of the novels.  Incredible that sixty people got "Wounded Warrior." Reminds me of an old WW II movie, "Tomorrow the world!""

Revised short story now offered for 99 cents

The story posted with an invitation for comments has been revised. The finished version was set up as a five day free promotion under the title Ä Wounded Warrior from the memoir of Dr. Nate Solomon

Time for women to organize and fight back.

Time for Women to Organize Against Rape and Abuse

African Americans have the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Jews have the Anti-Defamation League. So where is the national organization of women who proactively stand up against rape and abuse? That’s the thesis behind my latest book, StopRape.com which shows how a raped marine recruit employs social media to give all rape victims, female and male, a platform not only to tell their stories, but to post the pictures and addresses of the men who attacked them. That social media site is then used to guide the Women Warriors Against Rape and Abuse to go after the perpetrators.

The story is told through the eyes of a young TV reporter at a small, remote station, Kerstin Mikkola, who hopes the report will lead to a bigger and better job with the network, but she is soon part of the story herself, and in danger.

The moral, if a novel can risk that, is when law and order fail, the last resort for justice is revenge. The Women Warriors are out to avenge the victims, and the result can be tragic. For an example, consider Afghanistan and Pakistan where there is no justice for the victims of drone strikes, so plans are for revenge against the United States. Those folks have long memories and hold perpetual grudges.

It’s pitiful that American women can’t even get equal pay for equal work. The Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified. So when are women going to, if you’ll pardon the analogy, stand up like men and fight back?